A radical plane redesign

[@lateralcast]

BOOK OUT NOW!: www.lateralcast.com/book FULL EPISODE: www.lateralcast.com/episodes/110

[@AndreVandal]

Just got my copy of the book Lateral, cool!

[@IceMetalPunk]

"Comrade, how do we make plane go farther?" "Is simple, Comrade: more plane."

[@Ivanfesco]

Incredibly Gary Brannan-esque comment

[@AnasHart]

Plane look like bird, so why not plane fly like bird, comrade?

[@adityapradeep4020]

I went in a very dark direction- thought these were suicide bombers, so double the range since they ain't coming back!

[@rolfs2165]

Less dark: the plane is the bomb, the pilot ejects before hitting the target.

[@MyRegardsToTheDodo]

No, that wasn't the Russians, that was the Japanese a few years later.

[@ChrisWar666]

I was thinking something along those lines, too

[@Wick9876]

It's only 1938 so that'd be an impressive training accident rate.

[@hebl47]

@@rolfs2165 They'd be ejecting in enemy territory, so their fate wouldn't improve much.

[@LordTrousers]

SPOILERS AHEAD The Wikipedia article for the answer to this question has some incredible extra detail in the opening paragraph: "Depending on the variant, the fighters either launched with the mothership OR DOCKED IN FLIGHT(!?!?)" Imagine being in a 1930s Biplane and being told "Okay, now land on top of that other plane." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zveno_project

[@David-qs9yl]

In flight they would engage like a modern air refueling works, with a tow hook of some sort it would catch the plane flying below it and anchor it

[@cybergeek11235]

The USAF tried that with a plane called the "Goblin" (thing's about the size of a smart car) - never really took off (that hurt me more than you) because, IIRC, after being launched out of the bomb bay the turbulence made it hard-to-impossible to get _back_

[@TheWinjin]

@@cybergeek11235 I think the important difference here is that Goblin was tried in the reactive era. These were operating in biplane era, even before WW2 advances in planes. Basically average speed grew exponentially from 38 to 45 But I do agree, Goblins are the cutest little things and I'm sad they didn't work out

[@Mysticpoisen]

This is one of the ones I said the answer immediately, but in a "I have an even dumber idea" manner, did not expect to be right.

[@IceMetalPunk]

Whenever you think, "no one would be stupid enough to try this," history's always there to respond, "hold my beer." And sometimes, the stupid thing actually works, flying in the face (pun intended) of Fortuna herself.

[@va1korion]

Mustard has a video on this. The most amazing thing is that those actually flew combat missions in 1941.

[@gnaskar]

That was enough to get me to figure it out. That was a cool video.

[@cyberfutur5000]

Haha, after half of it I realized that I knew what the question is about and how desperately Tom is dropping hints in every sentence.

[@Daniel-jm5hd]

My first random thought turned out to be almost correct. I had a picture of the space shuttle being piggy-backed on a ?747.

[@purplegill10]

Ironically, that was also first done by the soviets. That's why the AN-225 was built in the first place with the really odd tail because it was created with the intention to fly with the Buran (soviet space shuttle) on top of it.

[@DelphinusZero]

I imagined they were launching the planes with a rocket booster that dropped off

[@curtismmichaels]

I was expecting this to be the first in-flight refuel. This was way cooler!

[@ala5530]

By 1938, in-flight refuelling had been around for roughly a decade (although that didn't necessarily mean that Russia had the technology or tanker planes to do it, so it could have been their adoption of in-flight refuelling). I have to admit, I was originally thinking something along the same lines.

[@still_guns]

I knew this immediately thanks to video games! The Zveno project was available in IL-2 Sturmovik Forgotten Battles and 1946, though due to limitations of the game engine and some missing fighter types, it couldn't be as wacky as the full project. Still, a Tupolev TB-3 carrying to Polikarpov I-16's is quite the sight!

[@lmpeters]

"Mustard" has an excellent video about these planes, along with other weird experimental aircraft that occasionally saw the light of day.

[@rileytat123]

5:36 There is something called glider towing, where basically a small motorized aircraft (around Cessna 172 sized) takes of with a glider strapped to the tail with ropes and the glider is released mid-flight. (Correct me if I'm wrong)

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

2:05 - The USA actually did that. One of their early Cold War nuclear bombers carried the bomb *IN* an external fuel tank. The original design would have had the bomber using the fuel in the external tank first, then dropping the fuel tank from around the bomb, then drop the bomb and fly home on internal fuel. For the final design they realized that was needlessly complex, because what happens if the fuel tank doesn't separate properly - then you can't drop your bomb; so they made the nuclear bomb+fuel tank a single unit. (The B-58 Hustler.)

[@SoapyWetDish]

It can't just be me who started humming "Stop the Pigeon" half way through this

[@DavidEmery-tn2dh]

Well, I am now!

[@sachariel6951]

betting on the wing profile, just because 1938 was still around the time when aerodynamics of a wing were still not as well understood as they are nowa Edit: oh wtf, it was *that* plane, lmao

[@lumoneko299]

I knew about the plane, but I didn’t know they kept all the engines running during flight, wow.

[@ilyaholt8607]

I was thinking it's something to do with the pilots. Like, they kept getting lost and never got very far, so the "slight modification" was... giving them all a map.

[@timothybradford8216]

I finally saw these guys on video; this is not how I expected them to look. Except Tom of course. I’ve seen him before.

[@ripopol]

0:32 making my guess "only small modifications were made to THESE FIGHTERS". "these fighters" being the key words in the sentence, another non-fighterplane was introduced or heavily modified to get the effect. My guess is the range is grown by in-air tanker airships (big plane with a hose, put hose in little plane, Refill in-air, more fuel at no significantty increased weight=More range)

[@greg.murphy]

that was much closer than my initial

[@WyvernYT]

A tow-on-a-cable scheme would have been pretty easy, too.

[@tschetscher]

If you are curious about the plane in question: Tupolev TB-3 was the plane in question and the improvements are part of a plan called Zveno (Zveno-SPB), look it up after you finish watching

[@gcewing]

Other possibilities I was thinking of: 1. Mid-air refuelling 2. Aircraft carrier (the ship kind)

[@jaywu1951]

so, there was an idea I had when I was about 7 or so... where you could use your fighter's missiles' rocket engines as a sort of rocket booster. Have they added little propeler engines to their bombs?

[@soffeebeans]

I feel like with just the context of "weird aviation thing" and "Soviet" that pretty much guarantees that Tupolev was involved.

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

The USA also worked on this - putting a pair of P-51 Mustangs attached at the tips of the wings on each side of a bomber. Never used in combat as far as I know. And later in the Cold War to put a pair of early jet fighters (which were notoriously fuel-thirsty) onto a bomber.

[@WyvernYT]

What a period-appropriate, and Russian, approach to the problem! Anyone interested should look up the McDonnell XF-85 Goblin, which was the American take on this. It looked completely bonkers, but by all reports flew very nicely and on the hardware side was very promising - until the USAF decided we didn't really need it. But check it out if only to marvel at the peculiar design choices.

[@rolfs2165]

"featuring a distinctive potato-shaped fuselage" lol

[@cybergeek11235]

I saw one at the SASF in Nebraska like a decade and a half ago, and have been in love with the concept ever since. It really IS a goblin-looking thing though, huh?

[@ChristofferETJ]

Since I knew the answer, I'm more amused to see the boxes for Caroline's new microphone setup. And, feeling a little tired, drawn to Ella's sofa.

[@chesshead]

Do Airfix make a kit for that?

[@TheArchitectThatWas]

Parasite aircraft reminds me of that story about the US asking if they could fly a bomber plane or something over another country but they refused since they didn't want to take part in the war so instead of going around they just flew the plane in formation under another plane to avoid radar detection. Couldn't find the details anywhere about that story though.

[@sophiamarchildon3998]

First thoughts: only scaled up the plane design (akin to a Boeing 737 vs a 777)? Double the fuselage/engines like a P-38 Lightning? Maybe in a twisted way, "heavy" is not only meant as mass but also yield/mass ratio, via either better explosives (e.g. ANFO vs C4), or going thermobaric (lighter-per-yield aerosol bomb relying on the oxygen of the ambient air). Or simply switching to a more effective bomb type and usage (like dropping underwater torpedoes instead of standard above-water bombs on top of a ship). It also applies to other more specific munitions, such as armour-piercing/bunker-busting (e.g. shaped-charge), anti-personnel (e.g. fragmentation, bio/chemical), even guided or carpet-style ones (e.g. dead-reckoning gyroscopic/wire-guided, clustered).

[@sophiamarchildon3998]

They could have carried spare-fuel tanks as "bombs", but why such specific numbers then? Could the explosive payload also be used as fuel (in specific-case of thermobaric)? Was it glider-like bombs that could extend the effective range of the plane and not the range of the plane itself? Adding a turbo-charger to the engines could also do the trick, but I thought they were well-known before WW2, especially in aviation. So was forced-induction retrofitted to existing atmospheric designs?

[@sophiamarchildon3998]

2:04 Switching from liquid uncompressed fuel (gasoline, diesel) to compressed, liquefied, gases (methane, propane) which is more energy-dense?

[@sophiamarchildon3998]

3:55 Was it going full-Kamikaze, so no fuel needed for the return-trip?

[@sophiamarchildon3998]

Results:even after all my guesses, I did not think of simply two-staging it? Revoke my KSP licence.

[@ThursdayNext67]

I was surprised when Ella mentioned taking out the fuel gauge. I saw a video a few days ago about western pilots being shocked that some Russian fighter jets didn't have a fuel gauge. When they asked why, they were told that was info for the engineers not the pilots.

[@MEKKANNOID]

That would be the oil pressure. Fuel remaining is definitely info relevant to a pilot

[@jonathan_60503]

Early random guess -- is the small modification a tow hook? Were the fighters towed part of the way?

[@MercenaryPen]

not an unreasonable idea- considering this was being done with transport gliders during the period

[@HenryGertcher]

I remember a cartoon in the early 90s did something like that. I think it was Duck Tails but I could be wrong.

[@walljedi]

7:26, Yes, the fuel efficiency of cyclists. I know what you meant though

[@MyRegardsToTheDodo]

Measured in pasta and arrogance.

[@justandy333]

Straight out of the box, I'm thinking WW2 Gliders used to be dragged to near their drop zones, so something of that kilt. They would use a heavy bomber or transport aircraft to literally drag the fighters to their area of operation? I must admit I've not heard of this being used but Perhaps in Russia?

[@justandy333]

Hmm, So not far off. 😃. They wern't dragged but they were actually physically attached to the Bomber. I must look this up, sounds like something out of the whacky races!

[@cybergeek11235]

2:00 - I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that some fighters can already strap an extra fuel tank to a bomb slot - used to be able to in the fighter jet simulator we had back in the 90s, so it MUST be a real-life thing, right? Just like the square-shaped yellow bullets! 😁

[@siosilvar]

yep, some planes have hardpoints for external fuel tanks, and some of those are dual-purpose for either fuel or weapons (like on the Warthog). in WW2 the brits even made single-use fuel tanks out of papier-mache

[@ninnusridhar]

My brain's first idea was "did they replace kerosene with petrol?"... So that's how sleepy i was...

[@SonOfFurzehatt]

I thought we were going down the ground effect route.

[@Slikx666]

My initial thought was an airship, not as wrong as i thought. Not as wrong as tom saying Russian at the end. 😆

[@WyvernYT]

I thought of that too - it should work, it's grossly impractical for anything other than military purposes, and we don't need it, but in the 1930s? The '20s and '30s were just the time between making planes that fly at all and having planes that don't need that nonsense. Imagine a hot air envelope, perhaps muchly pre-filled at the air strip by ground machinery, with a hose connecting it to the fighter's exhaust pipe and a support harness to hold a fighter. This horrible contraption would take off vertically, make terrible air speed toward the engagement zone (note the option for unreasonable loiter time here, BTW), and then when it was time for combat the whole balloon would be jettisoned and the fighter would proceed as normal.

[@MyRegardsToTheDodo]

@@WyvernYT That contraption would be barely controlable, though. And it would be target practice for any defense aircraft that spotted it before it reached it's destination.

[@ljphil78]

This was actually an American invention, Google USS Macon and USS Akron both of which launched in the early 30's

[@WyvernYT]

@@ljphil78 Our flying aircraft carriers, yes! Magnificent inventions. Triumphs of technology. Demonstrations of what can be accomplished by military budgets unconstrained by common sense. They were not, sadly, actually practical military equipment.

[@optimusdag]

The solution brought memories of "Dick Dastardly & Muttley in their Flying Machines"

[@_Juke_]

The glorious TB-3 that barely flies

[@mawillix2018]

It took me 5 minutes to get this one.

[@jumpitydude]

So I wasn't too far off when thinking of aircraft carriers. I was just thinking of the wrong type of vessel.

[@Aziraphale686]

The first thing I thought of was how the space shuttles had to be carried on a 747 before it could be released to enter orbit. I would have ruined the question immediately lol.

[@ChristianConrad]

After hearing only the question, up to ~0:30, I'm guessing: They carried _a lot fewer_ of those twice-as-heavy bombs as they had of the earlier ones.

[@yurisei6732]

If they were launched by catapult, the increased inertia of a heavy bomb would allow it to travel further, right? Provided you could put twice the energy into the plane on launch.

[@loddude5706]

To my shame, I knew of the 'parasite fighters' idea, but was actually shouting 'drop tanks' at the screen : )

[@MercenaryPen]

I was also thinking in terms of drop tanks

[@hens0w]

Air dropped armor has for the most part been shambles being too light to do very much and very accident prone with large percentages of tanks being destroyed before or during landing or by the next tank landing. Nowadays helicopters are well placed to provide the fire support an air dropped tank might have been envisioned too; and air freighting MBTs remains very persuasive.

[@loddude5706]

@@hens0w - Drop-able fuel-tanks! : )

[@hens0w]

@loddude5706 oh, yes I'm an idiot

[@VonOzbourne]

No shame. I was as well, but only in the manner that I eventually figured it was more interesting than that, but was annoyed that they didn't at least realize to mention it to rule it out.

[@epimorphism]

My guess: the pilots were given a parachute -- they didn't need to make a return trip back!

[@MyRegardsToTheDodo]

Considering that those pilots then would land in enemy territory, that would most likely be a waste of qualified pilots.

[@hens0w]

​@@MyRegardsToTheDodo Art 48 of Protical 1 of the GC creates law that states are meant to let them land and capture them. However ever nation as enlisted men who are trigger happy: "My habit of attacking Huns dangling from parachutes led to many arguments in the mess, Some officers [from the upper class] thought it 'unsportsmanlike'. Never having been to a public school [read as: fee-charging school], I was unhampered by such considerations of 'form'. I just pointed out that there was a bloody war on, and that I intended to avenge my pals."

[@user-zp4ge3yp2o]

​@@hens0w Attribution?

[@hens0w]

@@user-zp4ge3yp2o British WW1 flying ace James Ira T. Jones. You can find evidence of similar points of view on every side of every war since.

[@Michael_Farquharson]

Shout out to the newest hoi4 dlc for reminding me these exist just a few days before this video

[@MartianHomebody]

My Favorite crew for this show

[@geoffroi-le-Hook]

at 5:09 they are thinking of a jet-assisted takeoff

[@Rollermonkey1]

They launched the plans from a dirigible?

[@loqkLoqkson]

They put on wings?

[@DragonSeru]

I wanted the answer to be they switched from imperial to metric or vice versa and suddenly the number they could go and reach was nearly twice as large, but alas...

[@tgypoi]

I want to find a video of that in action

[@geoffroi-le-Hook]

I remember hearing Americans turning around on bombing missions to Japan due to being low on fuel and then landing with half a tank because they didn't account for headwind / tailwind.

[@epiendless1128]

But did they catch the pigeon?

[@57thorns]

Two guesses, one "silly": 1. They fitted the planes with aerodynamic bombs: 2. They forbid the pilots to return after the mission.

[@MrTohawk]

Coincidentally in the 50s the US started a parasite project with the name Tomtom

[@ala5530]

My initial thought was mid-air refuelling, then I thought maybe drop tanks. I even considered early attempts at JATO/RATO boosters. The actual answer was so much dumber and more glorious though.

[@djcfrompt]

The Americans did a parasite jet fighter during the Cold War. It was a tiny thing that would attach under I think a B-52 and could then detach to fight off enemy fighters if the need arose.

[@vaclav_fejt]

I'm an aircraft history nerd, how did I not know this? The interference drag must have been off the charts, though.

[@oliverfalco7060]

I proudly announce, for the first time, that I knew this one already 😎 🖐🏻🎤 (yes, the emojis are meant to represent a mic drop)

[@notthatcreativewithnames]

If watching Paper Skies teaches me one thing, it's probably about the Russian "smekalka" stories.

[@SkunkPresant]

And the US used airships to do the same thing. And used bombers after the war to do the same thing.

[@uditkotnis7531]

I thought they glided back.

[@audreyprewett8076]

So they made airplane Voltron?!

[@nathanielhill8156]

Initial thought They cheated and flew slower. Drag increases with the square of velocity, so it takes 4 times the horsepower to go twice as fast

[@square1k]

I didn't get this at all, but I feel like I ought to, having seen the end of "Captain America: The First Avenger" which shows a similar concept (but with a flying wing).

[@garybutler3256]

If the planes are carrying bombs, are they not bombers rather than fighters? 😉

[@Alexis-lt3zy]

my guess: Something like planes flying like geese and together being more efficient? not sure

[@Alexis-lt3zy]

I was pretty close! That's really cool, though

[@losthor1zon]

Turns out this was really close to the answer. Well done.

[@kurtrussell4063]

My first guess was kamikaze pilots

[@paydaygh9388]

My guess: Russian. Replace the storage units for Vodka with Fuel Tanks.

[@PsyKeks]

I thought, the planes just didn't return and the small change needed was a pilot eject 😅 Later I thougt, it was booster rockets.

[@ronrolfsen3977]

Duck tape was only invented 4 years later. Before Duck tape how could this be considered a small modification?

[@spiralpython1989]

DUCT tape was only invented 4 years later… Duck tape is a brand of duct tape that was only launched in the early 1980s.

[@MySisterIsASlytherin]

Kerbal Space Program logic

[@faenethlorhalien]

I had to google images this and oh wow. Russia has always been a nation of wild ideas, but this one takes the damn cake.

[@KernelLeak]

In Soviet Russia, range extends plane!

[@HarryGateau]

Those printers = HP garbage

[@MyRegardsToTheDodo]

Nope, Epson and other printer manufacturers do it too. You could trick them by putting a piece of tape over the chip, so that the printer couldn't read the cartridge and kept printing until they were empty, but then the printer companies made them in a way that they wouldn't print at all if they couldn't read the chip. I'm using an old laser printer that was decomissioned in the office I worked at the time, about 12 years ago. I am still on the same cartridge I got it with and even if it stops working, a replacement cartridge is less than $30 on ebay.

[@Rollermonkey1]

That old? Maybe still hand-deployed bombs, and got rid of a co-pilot. doubling some 2-pound bombs to 4-pounds or something like that.

[@dodgyduck9841]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/f5umqp-uqJ2bkLc Great video on the design and strategy of these bombers if anyone wanted to know more

[@boy638]

Why don't planes do this anymore? (as far as I know)

[@MyRegardsToTheDodo]

It's still done in some fields, especially space travel. For military purposes it's not really useful, though. Today's fighter planes generally have enough range to reach their destination from a carrier or a friendly base, or they get refueled mid-air (which wasn't an option back then). Today you also don't have that many bomb runs like you had in WWII, you'll either send kamikaze drones (which don't have to come back and therefore can go further) or rockets.

[@PMON9]

I'm guessing they put the bombs inside the plane?

[@CDArena]

Betting on air refueling

[@darjanator]

Considering how bleak the Russian military can get, my thinking was that the only thing they changed as the mission parameters where they gave the pilots ejection seats and a "good luck" card and made them use all the fuel and then bail out into enemy territory after dropping the bombs.

[@MyRegardsToTheDodo]

The Japanese tried that idea a few years later, minus the ejection seats.

[@cybergeek11235]

HI DARJ!

[@darjanator]

@@cybergeek11235 oh no

[@archivist17]

This wasn't a unique idea. In fact, the first successful arrangement of this type of system was in 1916, and the idea was pursued into the jet age and beyond for drone technology.

[@fariesz6786]

and who invented it first? 🪶

[@wallace3913]

blorp

[@GoErikTheRed]

I’m WWII the Germans developed remote control kamikaze planes that would be attached to the control plane on the way out

[@Zadster]

Nowhere near as interesting as the USS Akron, which was an *airship* that carried aircraft that could dock back with the airship after a flight. For understandable reasons, its career is generally described as "accident prone".

[@Leafsdude]

My immediate thought is discovery of the Jetstream. Don't know if the dates match up, but it's definitely something that would have had that significant of an effect.

[@dimarc67]

Tupelev EB-3 - kzbin.info/www/bejne/mGHKaXufdseBd6c

[@nialltracey2599]

Sorry, but this series has jumped the shark. It seems to have run out of interesting surprising things and everything is either something that has already been the subject of several recent clickbaity KZbin videos of just something that once gairbhe to one of the guys seeing questions or a random subscriber.

[@arenadi5776]

I've developed such an internet crush on Caroline 💗💗

[@cannot-handle-handles]

I can see why; I find them rather cute, too!

[@lucidmoses]

JATO Rockets jump to mine.

[@Myrtanae]

Ok'aab

[@lightningwingdragon]

"what if it's even stupider than that" It's the Russia air force, so yea. I only got the answer when Tom said "it's different on the way back" It's that stupid bomb transporter thing. Big bomb, tiny transport.

[@HappySmiley23]

No way that this wasn't tried since! If the physics workd then, imagine now with CFD and better safety, control etc... SpaceX manages 27 engines so a few slow planes should be easy... Imagine the US general (Or India, China even...) that claims to improve 80% of something. Actually, can we get a Kerbal build please? @ScottManly

[@DukeBG]

selecting a question about russian air force while the modern russian air force commits war crimes daily in a war of aggression?

[@serhiyint]

russian or soviet though? You are helping spread russian propaganda