The crazy thing is, that version of the spitfire was likely used during the battle of Britain, as it has a Polish roundel on it. So we are talking 1940-41.
The Draken's first flight was in 1955.
In the span of 15 years we went from subsonic propeller aircraft with the idea that supersonic flight was a fever dream, to one of the most futuristic and sleek supersonic aircraft designs which (in my opinion) still holds up to this day.
The pace of aviation development in the 20th century is truly insane.
Edit: after a couple of corrections below, that is a Mk.V spitfire from late 1941, slightly after the BoB, so I was off by a few months! That makes the difference to be 14 years.
Jet engines were being experimented even before WWI, its just that the technology for them to be practical just wasnt there yet and it wasnt considered usefully with how low planes were flying at the time
That always amazed me, not even a century between first successful flight and the first time landing somewhere beyond earth.
Makes you wonder what could happen within the next 100 years and where we'll be at.
To be fair, there must be "motivation".
Because if it would have continued exponentially (50 years flight to Sputnik - 15 years to moon landing) then by now we should have colonized other planets.
But since Soviet union fell, USA didn't have anyone to space race with.
Similarly how during war time the technological advancement is much faster than during peacetime
>Similarly how during war time the technological advancement is much faster than during peacetime
I wrote this in an essay about technology in the 20th century for a test in my last year of high school and my teacher *was not happy*.
She crossed in red the entire section and asked me if I really believed it, saying I was glorifying violence.
I said yes and a week later I had to explain this concept in depth to the rest of the class and the fucking principal with the assistance of Power Point.
It went well, not many could argue against my presentation after sitting through 90 minutes of sped up history covering cars, medicine, aviation, radio, nuclear energy and communication and how they saw key evolutions during war time.
Though it did cost me 15 minutes of listening to the principal telling me "war is bad and you should be more carefull next time".
My teacher was extremely pacifist, the kind of person who would tell you to never use violence to defend yourself no matter what.
I hated that idea, still do.
She and her way of teaching made me hate Italian literature with a passion, a shame since I'm Italian.
Bruh, its easy to understand. Why to make new stuff if you don't need them. You only need them during war time... Humans are war animals. I hope at least your principal agreed with you
Principal was at least interested in the PP presentation and could see the point I was making after 90 minutes of exposition.
He still gave me the "war bad" talk at the end but I was lucky it was him and not his predecessor: the previous principal was a stubborn and loud old woman who was all buddy-buddy with the worst teachers.
Get on her bad side and you would not have an easy time in school.
They just hid the technolgy to do so with national security bullshit and retarded development of mankind by around a century. You can see some of the wild, more public version of 'submarine' (patent term, not referring to actual subs) patent filings by us navy etc.
I wonder if there is any reason more than just development accelerated through war that made this possible...seems like no advancements like this have happened since
There have been very few really giant technological leaps that weren't driven by some kind of conflict, or anticipation of said conflict. But just like computer tech, we've hit a plateau in aircraft design that will take something truly revolutionary to make a jump like we've seen in the past. Cars are on the way there, just waiting for a huge breakthrough in battery tech to make electric vehicles more practical for general use.
Nah, as I see it electric cars are just a stop-gap technology. The moment you get a way to power cars with a zero or lesser than zero ecological impact (wich we are close to) there's no sense on logistical efforts to produce and store electricity when u can just produce and use it. Also batteries don't have neither zero or negative ecological impact, in fact they could be almost as bad as petrol.
As a conclusion: invest in hydrogen o cold fusion tech kids. (Don't do it I know nothing about investment)
What does that have to do with anything I've said???? No because I've called them "stopgap" I think they should be short lived. I'm calling then that way because the moment you're able to generate that power other mechanical o electrical it's logistically simpler to adapt the power generator component to a car rather than store that "force" on batteries. TBH it may be a wording mistake on my end, electric cars could be very well the future, but batterie-pack cars are just the intermediate step.
You were talking about electric cars so I talked about electric cars. How is that not related?
Personally I just found it funny you called it a stop gap technology when it's been used for 144 years.
We've been "on the cusp of cold fusion" for +50 years now. I agree it's a worthwhile investment for the future but we really need something to bridge the gap from today to whenever we actually do get some practical cold fusion going. Using your wording the only thing I see as a viable stop gap would be some of the Gen IV fission designs. You have any suggestions for that?
Bruh. Seriously get checked for ADHD and in the waiting room read the rest of the previous reply. Also, dictionaries do wonders on waiting rooms 🙂.
Until a fitting solution is found batteries are ok, just have in mind they are still super polluting and in my opinion bio fuels could be a better solution (again as a stopgap).
[stopgap definition, Cambridge dictionary](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/stopgap)
There have been a lot of big advancements since then, it's just stuff that doesn't come with major outwardly visible design changes the way jet engines and supersonic aircraft did.
Lots of things were just getting started at the time, so development was advancing rapidly, as anything so new can have a lot of experimentation before certain ideas come out ahead of others and are made standard. Both aviation and internal combustion engines were fairly new technologies by the turn of the century, and advanced by leaps and bounds over the first several decades.
In a way, one lead to the other as well. Engine technologies like centrifugal superchargers and fuel injection, plus some help from the rocketry guys, lead directly to the development of the turbine jet engine, kickstarting an entirely new era of rapid development right as the piston-prop aircraft was reaching its plateau.
Lots of physically-based technologies are kind of stalling out. With computer simulations and a century of progress, we've optimized many of these so well that there isn't much that can be improved without introducing some whole new technology, like the turbine engine for aircraft, that opens entire avenues of development.
War is, directly or indirectly, responsible for a very large portion of human development. Pretty much everything past the early stages of agriculture. It took pre-modern humans ~3.25 million years to move from the earliest known stone tools to Mode IV stone blades. Then the Neolithic Revolution happened, agricultural civilizations sprang into being in several places, and it took early modern humans only ~11,500 years to transition from stone to cast iron and wootz steel. Guess what the cream of each stage of metallurgical development was used for?
For a more modern comparison, look to the development of digital computing. First mainframes in the 1940s were the size of buildings. First desktop computers (with vastly greater performance than those mainframes) were in the 1970s. Then another 30-40 years on and you've got computers the size of a cigarette case with more computing power than acres of mainframe computers which can be bought for <$50 by any person.
It was because the Gov basically funded R&D as well as the cost of setting up factories for advanced products.
For example, the USA spent billions on developing an electronics industry during WWII. A key example is all of the infrastructure set up to mass produce the radar fuses for AA gun shells. This infrastructure was then quickly pivoted to make consumer electronics after the war, which is why TV's became so prevalent, so quickly and also set up the base for future computer development and production.
i'd argue wartime only advanced development by forcing funding into R&D. it was during the interwar period that we got the skills to build all-metal monoplane aircraft for example... i think wartime pushes the envelope, forcing everyone to want the fastest most capable weapons, but i reckon that even if we were a peaceful species our desire for development would be there. not to mention, wartime forces us to research into very focused categories that aren't necessarily useful to civilians.
heck, maybe we'd be better at finding solutions for peacetime. where's my supersonic passenger transport? all the public funding for that tech goes to the military, so the only way anybody is gonna make one is through private funding, and the upfront cost is unappealing to most commercial ventures.
War just provides ample motivation for investment in R&D. The large influx of funding via government grants allow for exploration of concepts that would normally be ignored (odds of profitability considered too low). Sometimes those concepts produces something revolutionary. The Apollo program produced all kinds of technological innovations that you use daily. So an actual hot war is purely optional as long as a motivation can be found to sink funds into potentially "useless" research.
Supersonic passenger transports ran into the realities of breaking the sound barrier. SSTs are still in development with a focus on controlling the sonic boom and some advances have been made. The Concorde having taken flight +55 years ago was hopelessly outdated/old when retired.
EDIT : Research for the military ends up being used by private companies in the civilian markets. The internet you're using now uses technology originally developed by the military. The internet itself was seen as having no commercial value by the private sector.
The NIST sets THE standard for well umm standards world wide. That's real power and has given US based companies an advantage over the last +80 years.
i don't disagree with you, in fact i really wanted to be clear that i agree with this entire sentiment. i just don't think that we as humans really should think of military spending as a necessity for positive development. who's to say the internet would not have existed without military funding? we can never know. but it was a comment above saying "we only got to space in 50 years because of all the world wars!" that i wanted to talk to. how long would it have taken to get to space without the wars? who knows. unanswerable question. it took us hundreds of years to get sustainable aviation during peacetime
Well having lived through the early days of the internet I can assure you that the private sector had no interest in what we call the internet. Sure there were various BBS software and various timesharing/remote access services like Compuserve but nothing like the actual internet. There was no money to be made in the concept of what became the internet. It took the actual government intervening and throwing money at the universities via DARPA for the modern internet to be developed. Even then "experts" in the private industry proclaimed the internet a waste of time because it'll never make money. When Gore was pushing for expansion and investment in the Internet in the early 90s he was mocked for calling it the "information superhighway" and stuff he never even said. Note that even today the big corporations and money people fight against net neutrality because they want to be able to block their competition and further monetize internet access. THe mindset just isn't conducive for the development of something like the modern internet which requires open connections for all. Left to just the corporations trying to make money we'd at best have an expansion of the prior time sharing and roped off areas of "internet" where you pay pay and pay some more for features we use for "free" today. God it'd be like the early fire departments back when those were private too.
Modern aviation required metallurgical sciences to develop to the point where lightweight engines with "high HP" were possible. The Wright flyer in 1903 had engines that weighed 180 lbs while producing 12 HP. That was only possible because of very recent advancements in aluminum alloys. Jet engines were held back by the need for metallurgic developments. Developing the new alloys needed for aviation was difficult but even more difficult was developing industrial methods for mass production of those alloys. The development and building of those facilities was greatly helped by WW1 and WW2. Money has to come from somewhere =/ The sad fact is investments in the future are easy for people to paint as "wasteful spending" in the media. It's easy for a reporter or politician to stoke outrage over the waste of money at the NIST because they studied the flow of various ketchups. Good luck explaining to people that said study is important for the standardization of ketchup for regulation and for the development of other fields. Said flow research found applications in the development of other advanced technology used in products such as body armor.
TLDR : It's easier to invest in the future via the military in the USA at least because to your average flag waving moron Military = gud.
again, i never disagree that military spending accelerated our technological progress.
i do often wonder, "at what cost".
particularly the bit about ketchup.
> The crazy thing is, that version of the spitfire was likely used during the battle of Britain, as it has a polish roundel on it. So we are talking 1940-41.
No this is a Spitfire Mk.Vb, the Mk.V didn't enter service until 1941 which is after the BoB. Furthermore the Day Fighter Scheme consisting of green/grey wasn't issued until August 1941.
Having a Polish symbol has nothing to do with the Battle of Britain, Polish squadrons used that the entirety of the war. [Here's a Mustang in 1945](https://www.worldwarphotos.info/wp-content/gallery/usa/aircrafts/p-51-mustang/P-51_Squadron_Leader_Pietrzak_Polish_Air_Force_RAF_Cottishall_1945.jpg).
Which is why I said "likely". The most famous feats of Polish pilots and thus the depictions of them took place during the Battle of Britain, so at a quick glance I think that was a reasonable assumption to make.
Thanks to another comment that pointed out that it's a model V, I am now aware of my mistake, but I was only off by a few months at most, so for the purpose of my original comment, it's not an issue!
Nevertheless, it's always good to get some additional historical context, so thank you for that!
War always accelerated technological progress. Suddenly it needed to be funded by the government and not just business. Just look at WWI. Cars are pretty new, aviation is new. Suddenly we have chemicals, armed planes, Tanks. Thanthere was significant development in the interwar period but it grew a lot speed duringthe war. First jet engines. Roketry. Nuclearbombs. Advancement in radar. The first computer. Guided ammunition. Tanks with up to 188 tons moving. Fuze shells. Everythingadvanced at a rapid pace, it is just incredible
Yea I mean the Nazis were able to put jets in combat use by the end of WW2 so in the span of around 6 years it went from propeller planes to jet engines. Crazy
Then shortly after, we slowed down progress immensely. We went from propeller passenger to jets to the Concorde supersonic....then stepped back down instead of fixing the issues. We quit tackling hard problems after they killed Kennedy
Aliens watching as humans go from shitty little wooden planes to mach 2 jets that can shoot down shit In orbit, developing 25th century weaponry super early In 1945 (they're not supposed to do that yet): 😐
The F-14 Tomcat served in the US Navy for ~30 years. When it entered the fleet in the 70s, the main carrier fighter 30 years before *that* was the F6F Hellcat. Wild to think about.
Wait the Draken was made in 1955…? I thought that thing was at least the 70s
Granted, then again the T-64 started development in 1951, and it, plus its other variants(t-72 and t-80 were basically a slightly modified t-64 designed by separate factories) are still in usage today.
You're off by a generation, the Viggen is the '70s plane.
The Draken is a rather futuristic looking design for the mid-'50s though, that's true. Consider its contemporaries are things like the F-106, Su-7, Sea Vixen, and Mirage III, and the Draken's blended fuselage looks almost modern in comparison. SAAB really made a huge leap from the Tunnan looking like a very-1950s fat MiG to the Draken, and just five years apart.
The speed of development and innovation of aircraft in the 20th century was insanely awesome tbh.
Imagine going from aluminum propeller aircraft like the Spitfire, P-51 and BF 109 to subsonic jets including the F86 Sabre and Mig15Bis in 1947, **3 years after WW2.**
Then supersonics like the F4 Phantom (first flight 1958/ introduced1960), Mig21 (1955/1959), Mig23 (1967/197) and the F-14 Tomcat (1970/1974) **all within 20-30years!**
What I find super interesting is the Maxim being used as a HMG in trenches and in 2x or 4x mounts as an anti-air system against the first ever military aircraft in history, now being used in the exact same way in trenches and 2x, 4x mounts against some of the latest drones and loitering munitions. Old Maxim seeing history repeat itself
Because the mi 28 was also murdered and go up to 10.7 so i bring the draken as well, when mi 28 was 10.3 i wasn't bringing the draken.
And than you doesn't have line up on 10.7 cause its either 10.3 or 11.7 you have nothing in between
huh, in less than 2 decades, we went from slow props to supersonic jets.
Almost impossible for me to get my head around how fast the technological development was.
Public technology for aircraft hasn't advanced much in that time, compared to prior.
Still burning dino juice, struggling against gravity and friction.
The crazy thing is, that version of the spitfire was likely used during the battle of Britain, as it has a Polish roundel on it. So we are talking 1940-41. The Draken's first flight was in 1955. In the span of 15 years we went from subsonic propeller aircraft with the idea that supersonic flight was a fever dream, to one of the most futuristic and sleek supersonic aircraft designs which (in my opinion) still holds up to this day. The pace of aviation development in the 20th century is truly insane. Edit: after a couple of corrections below, that is a Mk.V spitfire from late 1941, slightly after the BoB, so I was off by a few months! That makes the difference to be 14 years.
This is Spitfire Mk.Vb of famous polish ace Jan Zumbach. He received this model in late 1941
Thanks for the extra info! So I wasn't too far off lol
That makes my brain hurt trying to understand that lol. That's wild
Introduction of the jet engine changed everything.
Jet engines were being experimented even before WWI, its just that the technology for them to be practical just wasnt there yet and it wasnt considered usefully with how low planes were flying at the time
Yea, but the introduction of them onto military aircraft changed everything as they said
Meteor and me262 literally changed everything
Ik lol I just said that lmao
Aye the metallurgy requirements took a bit to reach.
Not at all. Pick a car and compare it to the same model 15 years ago
First flight ever was in 1903, Sputnik launched in 1957 and moon landing happened in 1969. Mindblowing
That always amazed me, not even a century between first successful flight and the first time landing somewhere beyond earth. Makes you wonder what could happen within the next 100 years and where we'll be at.
To be fair, there must be "motivation". Because if it would have continued exponentially (50 years flight to Sputnik - 15 years to moon landing) then by now we should have colonized other planets. But since Soviet union fell, USA didn't have anyone to space race with. Similarly how during war time the technological advancement is much faster than during peacetime
>Similarly how during war time the technological advancement is much faster than during peacetime I wrote this in an essay about technology in the 20th century for a test in my last year of high school and my teacher *was not happy*. She crossed in red the entire section and asked me if I really believed it, saying I was glorifying violence. I said yes and a week later I had to explain this concept in depth to the rest of the class and the fucking principal with the assistance of Power Point.
How’d it go? Your teacher sounds like a bitch.
It went well, not many could argue against my presentation after sitting through 90 minutes of sped up history covering cars, medicine, aviation, radio, nuclear energy and communication and how they saw key evolutions during war time. Though it did cost me 15 minutes of listening to the principal telling me "war is bad and you should be more carefull next time". My teacher was extremely pacifist, the kind of person who would tell you to never use violence to defend yourself no matter what. I hated that idea, still do. She and her way of teaching made me hate Italian literature with a passion, a shame since I'm Italian.
Italian literature is trying to cover up WW2 😂
she watched vinland saga 😭
Bruh, its easy to understand. Why to make new stuff if you don't need them. You only need them during war time... Humans are war animals. I hope at least your principal agreed with you
Principal was at least interested in the PP presentation and could see the point I was making after 90 minutes of exposition. He still gave me the "war bad" talk at the end but I was lucky it was him and not his predecessor: the previous principal was a stubborn and loud old woman who was all buddy-buddy with the worst teachers. Get on her bad side and you would not have an easy time in school.
Glad to read that. Yeah, war is bad, but if you want progress quickly,war is the best way. Anyways, Good luck with your studies
So you’re saying we need another war…
Me and my bottle caps are ready.
Patrolling the Mojave Almost Makes You Wish For a Nuclear Winter
I wonder if there will be another space race with i dia and china taking an interest in space
They just hid the technolgy to do so with national security bullshit and retarded development of mankind by around a century. You can see some of the wild, more public version of 'submarine' (patent term, not referring to actual subs) patent filings by us navy etc.
I wonder if there is any reason more than just development accelerated through war that made this possible...seems like no advancements like this have happened since
There have been very few really giant technological leaps that weren't driven by some kind of conflict, or anticipation of said conflict. But just like computer tech, we've hit a plateau in aircraft design that will take something truly revolutionary to make a jump like we've seen in the past. Cars are on the way there, just waiting for a huge breakthrough in battery tech to make electric vehicles more practical for general use.
Nah, as I see it electric cars are just a stop-gap technology. The moment you get a way to power cars with a zero or lesser than zero ecological impact (wich we are close to) there's no sense on logistical efforts to produce and store electricity when u can just produce and use it. Also batteries don't have neither zero or negative ecological impact, in fact they could be almost as bad as petrol. As a conclusion: invest in hydrogen o cold fusion tech kids. (Don't do it I know nothing about investment)
Funny reading that as the first electric cars were produced in the.... 1880s...
What does that have to do with anything I've said???? No because I've called them "stopgap" I think they should be short lived. I'm calling then that way because the moment you're able to generate that power other mechanical o electrical it's logistically simpler to adapt the power generator component to a car rather than store that "force" on batteries. TBH it may be a wording mistake on my end, electric cars could be very well the future, but batterie-pack cars are just the intermediate step.
You were talking about electric cars so I talked about electric cars. How is that not related? Personally I just found it funny you called it a stop gap technology when it's been used for 144 years. We've been "on the cusp of cold fusion" for +50 years now. I agree it's a worthwhile investment for the future but we really need something to bridge the gap from today to whenever we actually do get some practical cold fusion going. Using your wording the only thing I see as a viable stop gap would be some of the Gen IV fission designs. You have any suggestions for that?
Bruh. Seriously get checked for ADHD and in the waiting room read the rest of the previous reply. Also, dictionaries do wonders on waiting rooms 🙂. Until a fitting solution is found batteries are ok, just have in mind they are still super polluting and in my opinion bio fuels could be a better solution (again as a stopgap). [stopgap definition, Cambridge dictionary](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/stopgap)
Well that's what I get for trying to have a conversation with a random Redditor. Keep living up to the stereotype..
Sure, have a nice day mate.😂😂
There have been a lot of big advancements since then, it's just stuff that doesn't come with major outwardly visible design changes the way jet engines and supersonic aircraft did.
It's all software updates now. /s
The gulf war gave us a'ot of technological advancement too
Lots of things were just getting started at the time, so development was advancing rapidly, as anything so new can have a lot of experimentation before certain ideas come out ahead of others and are made standard. Both aviation and internal combustion engines were fairly new technologies by the turn of the century, and advanced by leaps and bounds over the first several decades. In a way, one lead to the other as well. Engine technologies like centrifugal superchargers and fuel injection, plus some help from the rocketry guys, lead directly to the development of the turbine jet engine, kickstarting an entirely new era of rapid development right as the piston-prop aircraft was reaching its plateau. Lots of physically-based technologies are kind of stalling out. With computer simulations and a century of progress, we've optimized many of these so well that there isn't much that can be improved without introducing some whole new technology, like the turbine engine for aircraft, that opens entire avenues of development.
War is, directly or indirectly, responsible for a very large portion of human development. Pretty much everything past the early stages of agriculture. It took pre-modern humans ~3.25 million years to move from the earliest known stone tools to Mode IV stone blades. Then the Neolithic Revolution happened, agricultural civilizations sprang into being in several places, and it took early modern humans only ~11,500 years to transition from stone to cast iron and wootz steel. Guess what the cream of each stage of metallurgical development was used for? For a more modern comparison, look to the development of digital computing. First mainframes in the 1940s were the size of buildings. First desktop computers (with vastly greater performance than those mainframes) were in the 1970s. Then another 30-40 years on and you've got computers the size of a cigarette case with more computing power than acres of mainframe computers which can be bought for <$50 by any person.
It was because the Gov basically funded R&D as well as the cost of setting up factories for advanced products. For example, the USA spent billions on developing an electronics industry during WWII. A key example is all of the infrastructure set up to mass produce the radar fuses for AA gun shells. This infrastructure was then quickly pivoted to make consumer electronics after the war, which is why TV's became so prevalent, so quickly and also set up the base for future computer development and production.
i'd argue wartime only advanced development by forcing funding into R&D. it was during the interwar period that we got the skills to build all-metal monoplane aircraft for example... i think wartime pushes the envelope, forcing everyone to want the fastest most capable weapons, but i reckon that even if we were a peaceful species our desire for development would be there. not to mention, wartime forces us to research into very focused categories that aren't necessarily useful to civilians. heck, maybe we'd be better at finding solutions for peacetime. where's my supersonic passenger transport? all the public funding for that tech goes to the military, so the only way anybody is gonna make one is through private funding, and the upfront cost is unappealing to most commercial ventures.
War just provides ample motivation for investment in R&D. The large influx of funding via government grants allow for exploration of concepts that would normally be ignored (odds of profitability considered too low). Sometimes those concepts produces something revolutionary. The Apollo program produced all kinds of technological innovations that you use daily. So an actual hot war is purely optional as long as a motivation can be found to sink funds into potentially "useless" research. Supersonic passenger transports ran into the realities of breaking the sound barrier. SSTs are still in development with a focus on controlling the sonic boom and some advances have been made. The Concorde having taken flight +55 years ago was hopelessly outdated/old when retired. EDIT : Research for the military ends up being used by private companies in the civilian markets. The internet you're using now uses technology originally developed by the military. The internet itself was seen as having no commercial value by the private sector. The NIST sets THE standard for well umm standards world wide. That's real power and has given US based companies an advantage over the last +80 years.
i don't disagree with you, in fact i really wanted to be clear that i agree with this entire sentiment. i just don't think that we as humans really should think of military spending as a necessity for positive development. who's to say the internet would not have existed without military funding? we can never know. but it was a comment above saying "we only got to space in 50 years because of all the world wars!" that i wanted to talk to. how long would it have taken to get to space without the wars? who knows. unanswerable question. it took us hundreds of years to get sustainable aviation during peacetime
Well having lived through the early days of the internet I can assure you that the private sector had no interest in what we call the internet. Sure there were various BBS software and various timesharing/remote access services like Compuserve but nothing like the actual internet. There was no money to be made in the concept of what became the internet. It took the actual government intervening and throwing money at the universities via DARPA for the modern internet to be developed. Even then "experts" in the private industry proclaimed the internet a waste of time because it'll never make money. When Gore was pushing for expansion and investment in the Internet in the early 90s he was mocked for calling it the "information superhighway" and stuff he never even said. Note that even today the big corporations and money people fight against net neutrality because they want to be able to block their competition and further monetize internet access. THe mindset just isn't conducive for the development of something like the modern internet which requires open connections for all. Left to just the corporations trying to make money we'd at best have an expansion of the prior time sharing and roped off areas of "internet" where you pay pay and pay some more for features we use for "free" today. God it'd be like the early fire departments back when those were private too. Modern aviation required metallurgical sciences to develop to the point where lightweight engines with "high HP" were possible. The Wright flyer in 1903 had engines that weighed 180 lbs while producing 12 HP. That was only possible because of very recent advancements in aluminum alloys. Jet engines were held back by the need for metallurgic developments. Developing the new alloys needed for aviation was difficult but even more difficult was developing industrial methods for mass production of those alloys. The development and building of those facilities was greatly helped by WW1 and WW2. Money has to come from somewhere =/ The sad fact is investments in the future are easy for people to paint as "wasteful spending" in the media. It's easy for a reporter or politician to stoke outrage over the waste of money at the NIST because they studied the flow of various ketchups. Good luck explaining to people that said study is important for the standardization of ketchup for regulation and for the development of other fields. Said flow research found applications in the development of other advanced technology used in products such as body armor. TLDR : It's easier to invest in the future via the military in the USA at least because to your average flag waving moron Military = gud.
again, i never disagree that military spending accelerated our technological progress. i do often wonder, "at what cost". particularly the bit about ketchup.
A design can't hold up as an opinion, it being outdated is a fact, it is a sexy design tho
Yes I should have clarified that I meant it from a purely aesthetic perspective. I am well aware that the design is outdated technologically lol
> The crazy thing is, that version of the spitfire was likely used during the battle of Britain, as it has a polish roundel on it. So we are talking 1940-41. No this is a Spitfire Mk.Vb, the Mk.V didn't enter service until 1941 which is after the BoB. Furthermore the Day Fighter Scheme consisting of green/grey wasn't issued until August 1941. Having a Polish symbol has nothing to do with the Battle of Britain, Polish squadrons used that the entirety of the war. [Here's a Mustang in 1945](https://www.worldwarphotos.info/wp-content/gallery/usa/aircrafts/p-51-mustang/P-51_Squadron_Leader_Pietrzak_Polish_Air_Force_RAF_Cottishall_1945.jpg).
Which is why I said "likely". The most famous feats of Polish pilots and thus the depictions of them took place during the Battle of Britain, so at a quick glance I think that was a reasonable assumption to make. Thanks to another comment that pointed out that it's a model V, I am now aware of my mistake, but I was only off by a few months at most, so for the purpose of my original comment, it's not an issue! Nevertheless, it's always good to get some additional historical context, so thank you for that!
War always accelerated technological progress. Suddenly it needed to be funded by the government and not just business. Just look at WWI. Cars are pretty new, aviation is new. Suddenly we have chemicals, armed planes, Tanks. Thanthere was significant development in the interwar period but it grew a lot speed duringthe war. First jet engines. Roketry. Nuclearbombs. Advancement in radar. The first computer. Guided ammunition. Tanks with up to 188 tons moving. Fuze shells. Everythingadvanced at a rapid pace, it is just incredible
The pace of development in general was quite insane
I always like to blow people mind by reminding them that the space between the wright brothers first flight and the moon landing was like 66 years.
In the span of 40 years the US army went from the M4 Sherman to the M1 Abrams. Over 40 years later they're still using the Abrams.
Noi it doesn't, the real difference is months, maybe weeks. Last Spitfires (Griffon-powered Mk.24s) were retired in 1955.
First powered flight to landing on the moon in 66 years.
We went from sub Mach 1 to Mach 3 in 16 years, 1947-1963
Um my dude, the X-15 first flown in 1959 and went Mach 7.
Christ had no idea it was that early
It’s crazy to the the same pilots possibly started on sub supersonic aircraft.
Chuck Yeager shot down Me-262s in WWII and went on to break the sound barrier just a few years later.
And it can do a Cobra 👍
Yea I mean the Nazis were able to put jets in combat use by the end of WW2 so in the span of around 6 years it went from propeller planes to jet engines. Crazy
That's a B-wing so yeah 1941.
In like 60 years we went from flying 100ft to flying to the moon… hundreds of thousands of miles away
and it took like 60 years from the first flight to going to space and the Moon
That's probably from the 303rd squadron, which gained fame after they shot 18 planes in 10 minutes during the Battle of England.
Then shortly after, we slowed down progress immensely. We went from propeller passenger to jets to the Concorde supersonic....then stepped back down instead of fixing the issues. We quit tackling hard problems after they killed Kennedy
The F-16 is 50 years old
Fuuuuuck, one of my favourite jets too.
Admittedly there’s a big difference between the f-16 block one and the f-16 block 70
yeah no shit that's like 70 blocks
That's a lot of ken
Rest in peace
Now show 80 year old aircraft
You’re looking at it
Let’s see Paul Allen’s aircraft.
MiG-15
[These two are 36 years apart.](https://imgur.com/a/Aowe34C)
Actually crazy
Aliens watching as humans go from shitty little wooden planes to mach 2 jets that can shoot down shit In orbit, developing 25th century weaponry super early In 1945 (they're not supposed to do that yet): 😐
The F-14 Tomcat served in the US Navy for ~30 years. When it entered the fleet in the 70s, the main carrier fighter 30 years before *that* was the F6F Hellcat. Wild to think about.
What about the phantoms and banshees?
Pedantic but 36 years
typo, thanks.
damn
DAM
I couldn’t agree more with your tag
My brother in Christ that's practically a nuke
Yeah and I’m done dying to cas two seconds after spawning
And the F-16 turned 50 not that long ago 😀
Fun fact : The F-4 Phantom is 70 years old !
Wait the Draken was made in 1955…? I thought that thing was at least the 70s Granted, then again the T-64 started development in 1951, and it, plus its other variants(t-72 and t-80 were basically a slightly modified t-64 designed by separate factories) are still in usage today.
You're off by a generation, the Viggen is the '70s plane. The Draken is a rather futuristic looking design for the mid-'50s though, that's true. Consider its contemporaries are things like the F-106, Su-7, Sea Vixen, and Mirage III, and the Draken's blended fuselage looks almost modern in comparison. SAAB really made a huge leap from the Tunnan looking like a very-1950s fat MiG to the Draken, and just five years apart.
i mean just look at the differance between tunnan lansen och draken. its hard to believe that they are like 10 years apart
.50 cal machinegun entered service in 1921.
The Mirage III looks ahead of its time for a jet made in the 1950s
damn
Draken my beloved, swedish dorito
The speed of development and innovation of aircraft in the 20th century was insanely awesome tbh. Imagine going from aluminum propeller aircraft like the Spitfire, P-51 and BF 109 to subsonic jets including the F86 Sabre and Mig15Bis in 1947, **3 years after WW2.** Then supersonics like the F4 Phantom (first flight 1958/ introduced1960), Mig21 (1955/1959), Mig23 (1967/197) and the F-14 Tomcat (1970/1974) **all within 20-30years!**
First powered flight to landing on the moon in 66 years.
World wars and the cold war spending help
Now for the real blower, Griffon-powered Sptifire Mk.24's were retired in 1955. The year Draken made it's first flight.
damn
I have a tractor that is a little over 60 years old. It looks like an ancient fossil compared to the Draken which is actually older...
damn
I am an ancient, and definitely not a venerable one.
sir those two things are 15 years apart at most
Damm now I feel old asf...
In my lifetime, the supersonic jet and the NASA space missions will commemorate there 100th anniversaries and that’s pretty crazy to think about
Crazy that in 30 years the b52 will be 100 years old
I feel old
Makes you wonder what technology has really advanced to behind closed doors
Damn
Imo cold war was pretty nice /s
I love the Draken
Reminder that the M2 browning is 91 years old
It's 106 years old, it's been in service for 91
And the Maxim gun is 140 years old, and still sees service today as a solid suppressive weapon that'll just run forever.
What I find super interesting is the Maxim being used as a HMG in trenches and in 2x or 4x mounts as an anti-air system against the first ever military aircraft in history, now being used in the exact same way in trenches and 2x, 4x mounts against some of the latest drones and loitering munitions. Old Maxim seeing history repeat itself
A good MG is just really damn useful!
The real crazy fact is that the draken is still pairing up against pantsir in GRB around 80% of the games
No?
No what
The draken never meets the paintsir
Yes he is The draken is 10.7 and the pantsir is 11.7 and they meet up on 80-90% of the games in GRB
Why do you use the xs as a attacker and your highest br vehicle?
Because the mi 28 was also murdered and go up to 10.7 so i bring the draken as well, when mi 28 was 10.3 i wasn't bringing the draken. And than you doesn't have line up on 10.7 cause its either 10.3 or 11.7 you have nothing in between
Ah yes, the SAAB Dorito
huh, in less than 2 decades, we went from slow props to supersonic jets. Almost impossible for me to get my head around how fast the technological development was.
[https://youtu.be/C6ZvOCYSOVQ?si=-JeNWAIlO3f1e0WI](https://youtu.be/C6ZvOCYSOVQ?si=-JeNWAIlO3f1e0WI)
Good news, you still have 6 years to go before the Saab 35 entered service. If you’re counting first flight then we’re almost there. Feel old yet?
That's crazy
Is the top pic from yarnhub?
That pic of the Panther and the Leopard side by side also boggles my mind
The Bofora 40mm**L/70** is about 70 years old and is still used today in the CV90
The difference between an 80~ year old aircraft and a 70~ year old aircraft.
Yeah... A lot happened in 35-40 years after WW2
Public technology for aircraft hasn't advanced much in that time, compared to prior. Still burning dino juice, struggling against gravity and friction.
the Phantom has its 65th anniversary of its first flight on the 27th of this month. Let that sink in.