FAIRCHILD AT-21 GUNNER BOMBER CREW TRAINER PROMOTIONAL FILM 87594

[@smokeyray5017]

I live right down the street from where those aircraft were built In Burlington NC It's amazing how many people ride by there and have no idea of what happened in that building. I'm 60 and remember the airfield. It has a Walmart on it now. Sad.

[@jonoedwards4195]

Great post PF.

[@whalesong999]

Interesting video and film find. I understand it had a quite short service life. I believe I saw a couple of these in a scrap yard on the west side of Wichita, Ks when I was a boy.

[@allandavis8201]

A really interesting and informative documentary once again PF, glad that they keep coming up in my recommend box. Thanks for sharing this with us all. 👍

[@RealTechZen]

The first use of a pressure molded plywood laminate structure in an airplane was the 1919 Loughead S-1 Sport biplane. The molding process and design of the plane, including folding wings, were the creation of a brilliant young engineer hired by the Loughead brothers, and it was his first design to be built; John Knudsen Northrop. Sadly it failed to sell in a market flooded with surplus Curtis JN-4 Jennies selling for as little as fifty dollars. After that, Jack went to work for Douglas Aircraft and gave them their first major success, the Douglas World Cruiser (folding wings and all). Truth be told, Jack Northrop was the greatest design innovator in the early history of American aviation. If not for corrupt politicians, he would have been the Elon Musk of his time.

[@RealTechZen]

The Ranger V-770 had low power output and overheating problems in pretty much every aircraft in which it was tried. This was almost certainly due to the bureaucracy of wartime Pentagon resource allocation idiocy. The engine and the cowling were designed forated a particular turbocharger which was the most common one in use by proven operational aircraft. During developmental testing of a new engine and/or new aircraft, the generals reasoned that those turbochargers were too valuable to the war effort to "waste" on unproven equipment, so they instead provided some turbochargers that were laying around because they had proven to be too small and inefficient to be useful in the war effort. The result was not enough boost for the engine to produce its intended power output, and therefore planes that were too slow to produce the designed volume of airflow through the cowling, so the engines overheated.

[@craigtice2773]

My father trained in something made of wood that they called, "The bamboo bomber". He couldn't remember the aircraft model, but I bet it was the AT-21.

[@jimmypeters]

The Bamboo Bomber was the Cessna AT-17 Bobcat, derived from the civilian Cessna T-50, which can be seen on KZbin in the earlier Sky King tv series episodes. Later series eps featured the Cessna 310B.

[@colvinator1611]

Thanks a lot for the video. It's not unlike a Hudson is it ?

[@jamesbugbee6812]

These from-the-ground-up crew trainers (AT-7 & '21) fascinated me as a kid, like maybe they were meant 4 kids 2 learn how 2 run bombers.

[@lesizmor9079]

I wonder how that Al-Fin process worked out over the long haul. There is a similar process being used these days, called Nikasil cylinders. Used by one of the companies who convert VW air-cooled engines into Experimental Aircraft engines. The word on the street is that the process does not hold up and the steel liner comes loose from the aluminum after a while.

[@SoloPilot6]

Actually, the greatest rival(s) to the AT-21 were the AT-7 and AT-11 (derived from the C-45, a version of the Beech 18). This was the initial career-track trainer for many bomber-crew officers (pilots, navigators and bombardiers), who would move to the larger planes after getting experience in the smaller, cheaper to operate planes. The AT-21 attempted to improve on this role by being more capable and versatile than the AT-45, but just didn't cut it.

[@chasyes1]

neat lil' plane! Looks like a Lockheed Ventura and a N. american B-25 put together!The Ranger Engines and its' lightweight made it very nimble...the US could AFFORD to build ships like this just for training while our enemies could BARELY produce combat planes PERIOD!(when ya don't get bombed, it's ez to make 'em!)

[@dancahill8555]

Didn't they do wind tunnel testing? There were a good handful of WW2 types that were purpose-built that turned out to be relatively useless.

[@chasyes1]

this plane was FAR from useless! it was a trainer for more powerful combat aircraft

[@Mishn0]

That's why it was retired from service a year after its introduction.

[@bBersZ]

If anything, it was a good looking plane

[@billbright1755]

Carbon fiber forerunner.

[@dkoz8321]

This aircraft was deemed unsuitable for its mission by US Army Air Corps. Not Fairchild's finest hour.

[@kellyreim6627]

Had a bunch of these at Ponca city all gone now.

[@sarjim4381]

The Duramold process wasn't well suited for aircraft. Early models of the AT-21 had significant cracking problems due to vibration and delamination when used in humid environments. Howard Hughes was a great believed in laminated wood being the aircraft composite structure of the future, and it was the only easily available material to use for his famous HC-4, better known as the Spruce Goose. Even the lightness of Duramold wood wasn't enough to make the HC-4 a military or commercial load carrier due to its great size and underpowered engines. It was also a seaplane at a time that seaplanes were already becoming obsolescent.

[@PeriscopeFilm]

Interesting. I have seen similar construction techniques used in this era, very successfully, with other forms of transport. For instance many buses in the 1950s had a laminated wood body with layers of wood and aluminum or steel. Not many of them survive (for all sorts of reasons) but one key reason is that once water penetrated the initial wood layer, the metal layer would rust and it would catastrophically fail.

[@sarjim4381]

It was a tricky process for the 1940's. They developed better glue and better methods of getting the glue between the layers in the 1950's but that came as aluminum and aluminium composites were also developed, and aluminum was cheaper than the wood composite because of improvements in aluminum smelting techniques.Of course, carbon fiber and other materials make better and lighter composites now, and they have gotten cheaper and better ways have been found to make those materials. I'm 71 years old and it's fascinating to watch some of the old films on your channel since I was alive through many of the events in those films. I've seen the changes in life, mostly for the better, in person, and we are generally a lot better off today than when I was born in 1946.

[@DoRC]

Also it's super unstable....

[@barryhopesgthope686]

Pity there weren't many of the C- 82s in the Berlin Airlift. These could have broken the Soviets' back in short time.

[@stevengrotte2987]

Kinda like "The Wooden Wonder," a.k.a. The Dehavaland Mosquito ( so I can't spell) the British WW 2 light/medium fighter bomber.

[@tyroniousyrownshoolacez2347]

Epic bust.

[@stevengrotte2987]

So that is how they made ,"The Ames Chair."

[@PeriscopeFilm]

Eames?

[@stevengrotte2987]

Thank you for the correction.

[@JL-dance]

Damn is that a b-35?

[@merlemorrison482]

looks a good bit like a C-119.......

[@stevengrotte2987]

The Flying Boxcar.

[@lesizmor9079]

This was not what came to be called the "Flying Boxcar". The FB was a C-119, made by a different company. The plane shown in the beginning of this video looks very similar to the FB, but is not it.

[@brianbrouillard3701]

C to.