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Reposting after server glitch because it seemed to be a popular thread. Added videos this time.

I got this via e-mail and enjoyed looking it over. I thought some of you might, too.

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First, there was this gun......



It was developed by General Electric, the "We bring good things to life" people.

It's one of the modern-day Gatling guns.

It shoots very big bullets...

It shoots them very quickly...

Someone said, "Let's put it in an airplane."

Someone else said, "Better still, let's build an airplane around it."



So they did. And "they" were the Fairchild Republic airplane people.

And they had done such a good job with an airplane they developed back in WWII .....called the P-47 Thunderbolt!

They decided to call it the A10 Thunderbolt.

They made it so it was very good at flying low and slow and shooting things with that fabulous gun.

But since it did fly low and slow, they made it bulletproof, or almost so.

A lot of bad guys have found you can shoot an A10 with anything from a pistol to a 23mm Soviet cannon and it just keeps on flying and shooting.

When they got through, it looked like this.



It's not sleek and sexy like an F18 or the stealthy Raptors and such, but I think it's such a great airplane because it does what it does better than any other plane in the world.

It kills tanks.

Not only tanks, as Saddam Hussein's boys found out to their horror, but armored personnel carriers, radar stations, locomotives, bunkers, fuel depots... just about anything the bad guys thought was bulletproof turned out to be easy pickings for this beast.



See those engines? One of them alone will fly this plane.

The pilot sits in a very thick titanium alloy "bathtub."

That's typical of the design.

They were smart enough to make every part the same whether mounted on the left side or right side of the plane, like landing gear, for instance.

Because the engines are mounted so high (away from ground debris) and the landing gear uses such low pressure tires, it can operate from a damaged airport, interstate highway, plowed field, or dirt road.

Everything is redundant.

They have two of almost everything.

Sometimes they have three of something.

Like flight controls, there's triple redundancy of those,
and even if there is a total failure of the double hydraulic system, there is a set of manual flying controls.



Capt. Kim Campbell sustained this damage over Bagdad and flew for another hour before returning to base.

But, back to that gun.

It's so hard to grasp just how powerful it is.



This is the closest I could find to showing you just what this cartridge is all about.

What the guy is holding is NOT the 30mm round, but a"little" 50 Browning machine gun roundand the 20mm cannon round which has been around for a long time.

The 30mm is MUCH bigger.



Down at the bottom are the .50 BMG and 20x102 Vulcan the fellow was holding.

At the bottom right is the bad boy we're discussing.

Let's get some perspective here: The .223 Rem (M16 rifle round) is fast.

It shoots a 55 or so grain bullet at about 3300 feet/sec, give or take.

It's the fastest of all those rounds shown (except one).

When you move up to the ..30 caliber rounds, the bullets jump up in weight to 160-200 grains. Speeds run from about 2600 to 3000 fps or so.

The .338 Lapua is the king of the sniper rifles these days and shoots a 350 grain bullet at 2800 fps or so.

They kill bad guys at over a mile with that one.

The 50 BMG is really big. A guy has one on his desk.

Everyone who picks it up thinks it's some sort of fake, unless they know big ammo.

It's really huge with a bullet that weighs 750 grains and goes as fast the Lapua.

I don't have data on the Vulcan, but hang on to your hat.

The bullet for the 30x173 Avenger has an aluminum jacket around a spent uranium core and weighs 6560 grains (yes, over 100 times as heavy as the M16 bullet, and flies through the air at 3500 fps (which is faster than the M16 as well).

The gun shoots at a rate of 4200 rounds per minute, Yes, four thousand.

Pilots typically shoot either one- or two-second burst which set loose 70 to 150 rounds.

The system is optimized for shooting at 4,000 feet.

OK, the best for last.

You've got a pretty good idea of how big that cartridge is, but I'll bet you're like me and you don't fully appreciate how big the GA GAU-8 Avenger really is.

Take a look.



Each of those seven barrels is 112" long.

That's almost ten feet.
The entire gun is 19-1/2 feet long.

Think how impressive it would look set up in your living room.

Oh, by the way, it doesn't eject the empty shells but runs them back into the storage drum. There's just so dang many flying out, they felt it might damage the aircraft.

Oh yeah, I forgot, they can hang those bomb and rocket things on 'em too, just in case.

After all, it is an "airplane"!

Like I said, this is a beautiful design.



I'm glad it's ours.



Look at how fast the ammo moves through the feed channel:



And this is probably the closest you'll ever get to taking incoming from an A-10 and live to tell about it (interesting part starts at 0:23):

Nice...

OK, what I said before

You should see the Warthog in a fight, for real shootin' stuff.

It is amazing. Comes out of no where, then you hear this gut wrenching deep from the belly sounding beer burp and a hillside - or Iraqi tank column - simply disappears.

Tough bird and a bad-ass weapon.

Bustin' tanks isn't the only thing the A-10 will have on it's resume....

http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/news/s ... formed.asp

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced that it will spend more than $10 million on converting an A-10 Thunderbolt attack aircraft, aka the "tank killer," into a severe storm penetrator.

Already hardened for wartime use, the A-10 will be able to endure incredibly severe environments such as those found in intense severe thunderstorms, according to NSF's Brad Smull. From battering hail, high winds and lightning strikes, the A-10 will be able to handle it all.

This will not be the first aircraft to be flown into severe thunderstorms for the purpose of advancing science. The A-10 will actually be a replacement for the veteran T-28 military trainer, which was flown on storm chasing missions for 35 years before being grounded in 2005.

While the T-28 was successful in collecting data on variables such as wind speed, water vapor and electrical currents, the A-10 will be capable of carrying more instruments, flying higher and staying in storms longer than the T-28, according to sciencemag.org.

Thunderbolt indeed.


Oh, and here's the ScienceNOW live chat replay:
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2 ... ?ref=topst

I can think of no better aircraft to fly directly into a severe thunderstorm than an A-10.

And even though I have the utmost confidence in the strength of the A-10's structure, I still am glad I am not the one flying it into a severe thunderstorm.

I showed this to my son yesterday. To say that he was impressed with the gun is an understatement. Thankfully, he was able to sit on one just a few weeks ago.

Queso wrote:

Errrr. Is there somewhere you can actually buy the round on the internet?


I've always have liked the A10. Even have an old beat up A10 hat. I've looked on the internet for a new one as nice but can't seem to find one.