Winters are long and cold in Canada, especially in Manitoba- that a guy did this doesn't really surprise me. It's become a common urban legend- someone building something in their basement or garage- and then having no idea how to get it out without taking out a wall.
I recently watched a video of a guy filming his neighbor put a lift kit on a truck in his garage only to have to take it apart and lower it again because it wouldn't fit through the door.
I was born in Winnipeg but lived 2 hours North in Ashern between lake Manitoba and lake Winnipeg and it would be so cold in the winter and then in the summer so many mosquitoes and bugs
I knew a mate of my brother's, who built a commercial fishing vessel in his back garden. They had to rent a crane to get it over the house and on to the low loader! That made the local news. It's still being run by his grandson.
It isn’t even an urban legend. On Top Gear UK (the middle not that was good) James May (iirc) interviewed a guy building a car in his kitchen that later intended to take a wall out. Apparently it started with rebuilding a carburetor in the kitchen “because it was warm in there and that’s where the tea is” until he built the whole car in their instead of the originally planned upon garage.
I saw an program about him many years ago, he is a mechanical genius. Having said that he's also " eccentric ", AKA bat s**t crazy! He put an inground swimming pool in his living room and was trying to get backing for building a steam powered airplane. His fabrication and restoration skills were second to none, he was in demand all over the world for restoring WW2 aircraft.
Ground effect planes are Finnish invention Toivo Kaario made one in 1930s , 1942-44 in Charlottenburg in Berlin he was learning how to build airplane engines. He also patented "bell wing" similar to hovercraft , but it has rigid skirt, that result in higher speed on ice 1959 He was in Princeton in Symposium on Ground Effect Phenomena as expert and 1960 US military was interested in ground effect plane All ended in accident 1961 , ground effect prototype was completely destroyed , Toivo Kaario got only few bruises, and all backers vanished.
I saw that documentary too. Watching further videos about him, his rebuilding skill were actually quite poor. There's a video about a Japanese Zero fighter he rescued, which was too dangerous to fly after he destroyed the structure extracting it from the jungle.
All his "restorations" were done incorrectly. Had had no clue about flightworthiness regulations and just slapped stuff together to make it "look good". He may have been "eccentric" but as an aircraft mechanic of many years myself, we have a word for people like him. Hack.
Its too sad that he was too late for our managerial times where everything is so bureaucratic and you can't do anything anymore without kissing some stup1d official. It makes all the effort putting into containing the Soviet Union seems pointless, we became the Soviet Union, just look at the EU. The enemy we should have been fighting wasn't the Russians, but the bureaucrats. It became painfully obvious in 2020 after the "minor flu crisis". Its the leviathan that is the enemy, the central planned government. We were supposed to be better than that, but no, even thou the economical system is capitalism (or was), we still got to the same place. We should take the power back from the managerial elites. Become unmanageable !
I’m not someone that thinks everyone needs a to go to college, in fact I openly oppose that idea. But the phrase “self taught engineer” sounds like it’s the first line in countless disaster stories
Ground effect vehicles ARE super super efficient and cool... As long as the terrain you're skimming over is relatively flat (As in: Even waves are a problem if they get big enough) and as long as you want to fly in a straight line and don't turn ever. If not, they become clumsy and potentially super dangerous.
For a guy who's been restoring very functional propeller fighter planes all his life, his "defender" project sure lacked a lot of inspiration. You'd think he'd just copy the best features from a few WWII fighters and call it a day, as opposed to trying to reinvent the wheel and fail continuously.
As a Canadian with a career and and passion in aviation spanning several decades, I have never heard of this guy. If he is a “Canadian folk hero” he isn’t much of one.
Just imagine being old man Jiro Horikoshi and you get a phone call out of the blue from some dude in Canada asking about restoring one of the planes that you designed? I'm not even sure how you'd respond to that.
My brother's, father-in-law was in The RCAF, during WW2. After the war he worked as a test pilot at DeHavilland Aircraft. He was one of the guys flying observation when Geoffrey DeHavilland augered into the ground trying to break the sound barrier. He ended up flying during The Berlin Airlift. He was a very soft spoken and self contained man. His knowledge and gentle humour was a great loss.
@@stejer211right? Apparently his brother also had a friend who built a commercial fishing boat in their backyard and then needed a crane to load it onto the trailer. Sounds like his brother has the cool stories and he's been riding his brothers coattails his whole life🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣or he's full of shit. That's more likely 🤣
A pilot at our local airport restored several WWII trainers in the 1970s. I went up with him in his North American SNJ (Navy version of the AT6 Texan trainer, aka the Harvard in Commonwealth use). He too sourced parts from anywhere and everywhere, including spent 22 LR casings which he discovered worked well enough as ersatz brass fittings on the engine. When he later sold his collection, I heard from my brother that the new owners were aghast once they uncovered the "workmanship" applied to these planes. Oh well, they weren't the first customers he had suckered.
The Germans had the same problem with a late WW 2 aircraft . So they had a system built in , that would use explosives to blow off the propellers before injecting .
I mean, if he knew the prop placement was an issue, what did he plan pilots in combat situations would do when their low and slow plane was predictably hit with gunfire?
@@stephen3164 The guy's concept of warfare was to throw as many bodies as he could at the enemy. I think the answer to your question has three letters...
I remember going to his field as a kid in the pre-defender days. The Val restoration was recently completed, and I crawled through a few of the WW II birds.
Yeah I had to do the same. I wasn't familiar with the word he used. It appeared to be a Blenheim to me so I looked them up and found the MKIV was also called the Bolingbroke.
@@kineticdeath With a 300 pound armoured bathtub to sit in, it will have to be the ground that kills you at least. Also that's assuming that no one sold all the AA bullets to buy food, this is a long running issue for the Soviets and now Russians.
He was reinventing the wheel (or the Volksjager). The Super Tucano and the Sky Warden are the current best in class for this aircraft type. An interesting guy. I just read the earlier comment which mentions the OV-10 Bronco, which I had forgotten about when naming the examples above. THAT aircraft has the same heritage except that the two (marine??) pilots(?) who developed it were recently returned from a combat environment in South-East Asia. It was super appropriate for improvised airstrips in 'forward' areas. Things kept evolving as technology advanced and along came the A-10, which does not operate from too forward a base but is fast enough to get forward in a hurry. The unit cost in 1970 was about the same as the today(inflated) cost of the ammo load for the GAU-8 gatling cannon. I would note that Canada did not seriously consider the OV-10 or the A-10 as our Armed Forces did not perceive a role for either aircraft without also owning an air superiority type like the F-18 -and- the weapons systems which we had planned to deliver were nuclear, requiring a fast getaway.
I mean lets be real here. In war you're going to have casualties. Omaha beach was literally "expendable drones". IF he had suceeded the same practice would just carry into the skies. Which I've advocated for myelf. Get cheap aircraft, minimal training needed to fly it, and just have them be "sky infantry".
It's interesting that someone who spent so much time rebuilding combat aircraft would fail so badly in their own attempt at building a combat aircraft. It goes to show that just because you can build something or even piece it back together to make it work, doesn't mean you understand "how" it works.
The point behind the Defender reminds me a lot of the reasoning behind the Super Tucano prop powered, long endurance attack and recon plane, Bob was really forward thinking and dozens of countries in the world are now using cheap, prop powered light aircraft along with supersonic fighter jets.
But of course, tens of thousands of aircraft would require tens of thousands of pilots, tens of thousands of maintenance personnel, an untold number of support staff and enormous infrastructure to support it all. I remember seeing a program on this guy and thought at the time that he was a few passengers short of a full plane. I also remember when The Commemorative Airforce was still called The Confederate Airforce but I suppose that too many people didn’t appreciate the irony. They did send some wonderful aircraft up here to the Hamilton International Airshow though.
How interesting. I can’t help but draw the comparison with David Hahn, the Radioactive Boy Scout. It takes a lot of drive and determination to keep going forward on something that is so outside the realm of the norm, and in the face of decades of failure. Kudos and god speed.
No way!!! My dad was a member at that airport and knew everyone closely!!! Even had the chance to sit in that aircraft!!! So cool to actually have my town in a video
"We wanted to bring this absolutely massive gun into the air so it could perforate enemy armor, so we built a plane around it!" And now everyone is trying to come up with enough reasons to take it out of service.
@@Reddotzebra Top attack ATGMs fired by guys zipping around on E-biles and FPV AT drones are basically enough reason to take it out of service. Add in modern fighters lobbing guided munitions from over the horizon, and it's basically outdated in every conceivable way.
@kauske While you are right on what you said, you are leaving out its infantry supporting role, which is now being tried to replace by cheaper but flimsy Super Tucano prop planes, etc. Lobbing guided bombs is a great idea on paper but infantry combat is most times close and personal, where the Warthog excels. Even guided bombs can cause fratricide, as a human is usually best at preventing that (fails notwithstanding) when kept on the loop, and the combining of both the A-10 in close direct coordination with such bombs and weapons is an even better idea.
Today I found out about a weird Canadian guy with the same name as me. I like that. The idea behind the prototype aircraft isn't actually bad- there is a whole class of Close Air Support Aircraft, that do pretty much what he described, the best known being the A10 Warthog. It's just a shame that wasn't what the Canadian Air Force asked for, and that his design for one was so bad.
"No no you don't need parachute, the propellor will just kill you instantly anyway" Can't see why that approach didn't work out for him with the authorities
Well I mean his theory was fairly sound. Let's go over what he wanted to do: A slower, low-flying aircraft that could spot tanks and engage them. A front mounted weapon to destroy said tanks. A rear-mounted propulsion system to allow the weapon mounted in the nose of the craft. An armored "bathtub" to protect the pilot since it would be slow and low to the ground. An aircraft that was much cheaper to fly than the jets the US wanted to sell Canada. And finally, an aircraft to help NATO defend against an Russian attack. Dude had the concept of a A-10 Thunderbolt but just didn't have the capacity to build it.
That's akin to listing specs for a F1 racecar and the end result is building a gokart. The problem with low and slow aircraft is that they might as well be flying target practice, not only will the jets decimate you, but just about any belt fed machine gun on the ground would take you out too. Not to mention all of the manpads and such. It doesn't matter if the cockpit is armored or not...if your plane is made of formed aluminum sheets, it only means that you'll be in good health as you're spiraling to your death in a flaming bathtub. The A-10 is not as survivable of an aircraft as you might think, so probably not the best example anyway.
@@Skinflaps_Meatslapper the A-10 is as survivable aircraft as I think? Out of 8,000 missions in Desert Storm & Shield, only six were shot down. I'm not comparing them to aircraft of today; I'm comparing them to the role in the time period they were designed and built.
@@thatjeff7550 They would've been a great replacement for the A1 in Vietnam, but by the time pen turned to plane, they were primarily expected to be used in the Fulda Gap strategy. In that role, they expected a very high loss rate. The entire fleet of 700 or so A-10's were projected to last about a week of combat before they were all downed. The problem is that any CAS aircraft is going to be extremely vulnerable, regardless of how up armored and tough it is compared to other aircraft, due to it being low and slow. It's a sitting duck in highly contested airspace, which is why the A-10 was only ever used in combat after air superiority and uncontested airspace was achieved. What people fail to realize is that even though an A-10 might come back with half a wing or most of its tail missing, it's done. Written off and scrapped. The only effective difference between coming home on a wing and a prayer and punching out is that the pilot got a ride home and didn't have to rely on anyone to extract him. The enemy took out the plane either way you look at it. So unless you've got a rather substantial force of air superiority fighters to clear the way for something like an A-10, you're cooked. That hypothetical massive fleet of A-10's isn't going to do much beyond keeping your combat SAR teams busy. Nobody in their right mind would send them out unless they had clear skies, and they wouldn't amount to a hill of beans in any near peer engagement, so your troops on the ground needing CAS won't be getting any support at all. That's why the USAF has been trying to get rid of them in favor of something that IS more survivable in contested airspace, so they CAN send air support.
@@thatjeff7550 No. No, it isn't. Trying to take the hit is just fundamentally far less effective than not getting hit at all. At least one of those were downed with a Igla, the soviet counterpart to the fim-92 stinger. Meanwhile, it was responsible for more friendly fire than every other aircraft combined while both the aardvark and even the fighting falcon absolutely smoked it in the CAS role.
@@Skinflaps_Meatslapper You appear to be falling into the common misunderstanding of what the close in CAS means. It is referring to how close the ordinance is landing to friendlies, not how close the supporting aircraft is getting to the enemy. Both the F-16 and F-111 far outperformed the A-10 in the CAS role in desert storm, but they did it from a couple miles up.
When I was a kid, I envisioned the compulsory ( in time of war ), conversion of thousands of private planes such as Cessna's, into mass attack light bombers.
“He climbed into the cockpit and made that twin bloss blare. He gunned it down the runway and we watched him disappear. We knew he was a thoroughbred when he pushed her through the gate. For in that Pratt and Whitney were fifteen hundred pounds of hate.” -Bob Diemert
There are actually quite a few civilian VLJs that use turbines from cruise missiles. Since they don’t require the wings to be foldable they can carry several thousand pounds more than a cruise missile. I’m surprised there aren’t any military aircraft that have utilized the same engines, because that’s definitely enough payload to be useful for strike or drone hunting. They could probably just bolt the predator avionics to one to a VLJ to act as a heavy strike drone. Even the smallest VLJ can carry 1300lbs. It’s a third the cost of the Predator and a tenth of the Reaper, but has several times the payload as the Predator, but half that of the Reaper. Which for the cost is still light years better than either. For the same cost you could build a twin engine VLJ that would annihilate either. You would think the technology would be more widely implemented, instead of just a few civilian implementations. Because they obviously fill a very useful military niche.
At some point in life most people hit their head against a wall long enough and say- well that's not a good way to pass through since there is door in the wall anyways
My dad was an aerospace engineer involved in defense work in the 1070s and I remember hearing about a lot of this. There were many at the time making the argument for many more cheaper warbirds. You don’t hear that argument much anymore.
With the Ukraine war there’s been lots of use of drones and consequent recognition of their utility. I think drones are going to be the solution when you need lots of cheap aircraft.
Basically it means a bunch of people who individually owned the historic aircraft agreed to cooperate on various things. Check the definition of “confederation” for an idea of the organization. Has nothing to do with the Confederate States of America. They changed their name to the Commemorative Air Force since confederate while being a perfectly reasonable word by definition caused too much confusion.
Met diemert once at a fly-in in kamloops my grandpa took me to about 20 years ago. He was in town to help someone that was trying to replicate one of his designs. Definitely a pretty eccentric guy, though if I'm being honest, as a 14 year old I was paying more attention to the car collection of the guy that was building the plane than the planes themselves.
According to an account in Ian Toll’s “The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific 1943-1944” to get freshly built A6M “Zero” aircraft from the Mitsubishi factory they needed to hauled by a team of oxen and later Percheron horses, from the factory to the nearest airfield, a few miles away.
Really interesting story, I've actually seen at least one of his planes (the "Val" at Planes of Fame) but had never heard about him before. By the way, just FYI, the "Ji" in "Jiro" sounds like an English "G" (gee). The most commonly used system of Japanese romanization was developed by an American so most pronunciations are relatively intuitive for English speakers.
So since the movie Battle of Britain and the Commemorative Airforce was mentioned (they need a video as well), might I recommend video on Connie Edwards. BTW the CAF wouldn't have been HQ'd in Dallas during the years mentioned.
The fact that the guy proved those that "those listened to were wrong" makes the guy more right. It's people like this the visionary’s that prove everyone else wrong. A light slow moving plane able to hunt down and kill tanks, cheap, effective and in numbers.... Pretty much the Orlan series of Russian Drones able to seek and laz targets for a number of very effective munitions including the Kraznapol that has reaped utter destruction on Uranian armour and static targets. Right idea, slightly different tech.
@@brianb-p6586 Do you work in government or the post office...? In 2003 I built one of the fastest graphics PC's in Britain, it's job to interpellate PAL to NTSC converting it from 24 to 29 frames a second. Encoding that signal to send it compressed over a single CAT5 to be uncompressed in real time. Simply, it converting DVD to HD720 to run on Plasma TV's. Too expensive & too large as a viable product, was it a failure no. Became the base tech for the scalar is in current TV's and the PS/XBox twiddle box's. You can't broadcast HD, the consoles can't process a true HD image even Blue Ray disks are diluted. So like this guy, the product was not sound, but the idea went on to bigger things as technology improved/miniaturised. It's about vision.
"His greatest adversary ever" I was sure he was going to say Gravity lol Seems like he would have been way better suited literally starting with a Cessna and modifying it until the original aircraft was gone. At least then he could have been sure he began with an airworthy plane. But he doesn't strike me as someone willing to accept failure as an option no matter how many flashing red lights and buzzers told him it was a really dumb idea .
I think he lived long enough to see that he was actually right. Cheap flying vehicles, priced in thousands not millions, are one of key elements of modern battlefield and their importance in the nearest future will only increase. The only thing he failed to understand was that the solution to his massive bathtub problem was removing the pilot - and the bathtub - from the equation altogether.
@@NoIce33 I assumed the moment he got rid of pilot and his bathtub, the weight of the plane would fall below the amount of lift produced at liftoff speed - with the weight being higher than lift being the main problem of the version with the bathtub from what I understood from the material :)
To me ground effect planes sound great except hopping over ships, rough seas and whatever else. I think I also heard that due to flying at low(est) altitude, they are in the densest air available and the increased drag offsets the ground effect benefit. That source never mentioned low altitude also means the most horsepower from that dense air. Over a tundra you would have cold (denser) air, so even more power and no obstacles. Cold dense air is great for controlling a plane. Anyways, always wondered why nothing at least reliable enough to get experience and data from has never reached fruition. I heard there are a couple tiny bay shuttles in existence.
I wonder what this guy would think about the Megaprojects video you released a couple weeks ago. The one about the special forces propeller aircraft being used, cheaper then jets. Bet Bob would have loved it
I thought this was going to be about drones. The first predator was built in a garage using amateur hobby parts from ultralights. They still use Rotax hobby engines.
If he'd only thought of reducing the weight by taking the pilot out, he may have been on the way to developing a drone. He had a lot of the rest of that idea in place.
About the sponser. I need to check that out. I started getting adverts for books about kicking Cocaine. I never touched the stuff ever. I giggled at how wrong the algorythm was. A week later A freind admited to haveing a huge coke problem and was trying to quite and wanted support. They don't just show you adverts they think you want, they show your freinds!
Hmmmm...did your friend ever use your computer??? If no it still isn't surprising to me because advertising is a unscrupulous form of evil that manipulates & prays on everyone. Since coke is so addictive & you are a friend it made a correlation that u could be hooked too or know about their problem & may wanna help. Money makes people come up with a computer algorithm that attempts to get you to spend,spend,spend! With no "confusing "parameters like ethics, wage income, outstanding debt, mental health, or other financial responsibilities. That doesn't matter . Just consistently diagnosing you to better separate you from your $ !!!
"And remember, if the allies can't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy." (Apologies to The Red Green Show) Keep in mind had he been born in Ukraine a few decades later, he'd probably be a leader in their long-range drone program. He had the right idea at the wrong time, because he was trying to lift an unnecessary amount of armor. I had an uncle like that who finished building a homebuilt despite having a stroke that left him half-paralyzed and unable to fly it. It took over a decade and a lot of garage mechanic cleverness. It was flyable despite various parts from Walmart used in its construction.
I would have thought the wings on race cars would be a good starting point, as they have a lot of development behind them, and are designed to create a lot of force from a small size.
Creativity is great, there's this thing I can introduce you to called, "math." Also, "paper," and "pencil." You can save a lot of time and efforts, if you learn to use these things creatively and well." -- advice Bob Diemert badly needed.
10:19 'the confederate airforce were looking for planes' 😂 Damn, the civil war is still in full swing! I know it was just a verbal slip up but it was hilarious
The Confederate Air Force is actually a thing - an organisation restoring and flying old war birds. In 2000, it renamed itself the Commerorative Air Force.
I mean, the idea isn't bad in itself. Prop ground attack planes have been used to good effect in modern conflicts... although their design teams probably had more resources than this guy.
I like the idea of trying to outnumber the Soviets, I don't think I have ever heard anyone propose that ever before, everyone has always assumed the Soviets would have overwhelming numerical superiority and it's interesting to hear someone brave enough to propose outnumbering them!
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It's "BOGAN VILLE"...
Please ask your script team to make an effort with your placenames !!
😊😊😊
😊
Bro I love your videos but you speak way too fast.
@ #Islamm#KFC
Winters are long and cold in Canada, especially in Manitoba- that a guy did this doesn't really surprise me. It's become a common urban legend- someone building something in their basement or garage- and then having no idea how to get it out without taking out a wall.
You're wrong. Taking the wall down was part of the plan the whole time! Lol
I recently watched a video of a guy filming his neighbor put a lift kit on a truck in his garage only to have to take it apart and lower it again because it wouldn't fit through the door.
I was born in Winnipeg but lived 2 hours North in Ashern between lake Manitoba and lake Winnipeg and it would be so cold in the winter and then in the summer so many mosquitoes and bugs
I knew a mate of my brother's, who built a commercial fishing vessel in his back garden. They had to rent a crane to get it over the house and on to the low loader! That made the local news. It's still being run by his grandson.
It isn’t even an urban legend. On Top Gear UK (the middle not that was good) James May (iirc) interviewed a guy building a car in his kitchen that later intended to take a wall out. Apparently it started with rebuilding a carburetor in the kitchen “because it was warm in there and that’s where the tea is” until he built the whole car in their instead of the originally planned upon garage.
I saw an program about him many years ago, he is a mechanical genius. Having said that he's also " eccentric ", AKA bat s**t crazy! He put an inground swimming pool in his living room and was trying to get backing for building a steam powered airplane. His fabrication and restoration skills were second to none, he was in demand all over the world for restoring WW2 aircraft.
Ground effect planes are Finnish invention Toivo Kaario made one in 1930s , 1942-44 in Charlottenburg in Berlin he was learning how to build airplane engines.
He also patented "bell wing" similar to hovercraft , but it has rigid skirt, that result in higher speed on ice
1959 He was in Princeton in Symposium on Ground Effect Phenomena as expert and 1960 US military was interested in ground effect plane
All ended in accident 1961 , ground effect prototype was completely destroyed , Toivo Kaario got only few bruises, and all backers vanished.
I saw that documentary too. Watching further videos about him, his rebuilding skill were actually quite poor. There's a video about a Japanese Zero fighter he rescued, which was too dangerous to fly after he destroyed the structure extracting it from the jungle.
@DumbledoreMcCracken did you watch the whole video? He brings it up.
All his "restorations" were done incorrectly. Had had no clue about flightworthiness regulations and just slapped stuff together to make it "look good". He may have been "eccentric" but as an aircraft mechanic of many years myself, we have a word for people like him. Hack.
Its too sad that he was too late for our managerial times where everything is so bureaucratic and you can't do anything anymore without kissing some stup1d official.
It makes all the effort putting into containing the Soviet Union seems pointless, we became the Soviet Union, just look at the EU.
The enemy we should have been fighting wasn't the Russians, but the bureaucrats. It became painfully obvious in 2020 after the "minor flu crisis".
Its the leviathan that is the enemy, the central planned government. We were supposed to be better than that, but no, even thou the economical system is capitalism (or was), we still got to the same place.
We should take the power back from the managerial elites.
Become unmanageable !
This is just the kind of ingenuity it takes to build a passenger submarine to visit the Titanic.
Apparently, he was very good at proving that things deemed impossible by specialists are indeed impossible.
You don't know for sure until you try.
The title of this channel sure nailed it for me. As a 60 year old Winnipeger I never heard this story. Thx for the enlightenment 😀
Dude, I'm from Morden and never heard of this guy. He doesn't even get mentioned in the town history. Wtf
If you ask some of the local pilots they will tell you about him. Bob Gerbrandt could tell you all about it.
I’m not someone that thinks everyone needs a to go to college, in fact I openly oppose that idea. But the phrase “self taught engineer” sounds like it’s the first line in countless disaster stories
Ground effect vehicles ARE super super efficient and cool... As long as the terrain you're skimming over is relatively flat (As in: Even waves are a problem if they get big enough) and as long as you want to fly in a straight line and don't turn ever.
If not, they become clumsy and potentially super dangerous.
Fortunately, Manitoba is very flat country.
So they're like Dictatorships and Twitter: Only a good idea under ultra unrealistic circumstances that aren't even intended to be achieved
Only good under perfect and therefore unrealistic conditions: just like Dictatorships
Or Twitter
Or the Clippers
@@ericferguson9989 Manitoba is not nearly flat enough for a WIG craft, other than over lakes.
For a guy who's been restoring very functional propeller fighter planes all his life, his "defender" project sure lacked a lot of inspiration. You'd think he'd just copy the best features from a few WWII fighters and call it a day, as opposed to trying to reinvent the wheel and fail continuously.
I think they tied his hands by copyright infringement
As a Canadian with a career and and passion in aviation spanning several decades, I have never heard of this guy. If he is a “Canadian folk hero” he isn’t much of one.
I don't get it, either.
Just imagine being old man Jiro Horikoshi and you get a phone call out of the blue from some dude in Canada asking about restoring one of the planes that you designed? I'm not even sure how you'd respond to that.
Ok desu
My brother's, father-in-law was in The RCAF, during WW2. After the war he worked as a test pilot at DeHavilland Aircraft. He was one of the guys flying observation when Geoffrey DeHavilland augered into the ground trying to break the sound barrier. He ended up flying during The Berlin Airlift. He was a very soft spoken and self contained man. His knowledge and gentle humour was a great loss.
What does this have to do with the video, other than you trying to score internet points over someone else's accomplishments?
@@stejer211right? Apparently his brother also had a friend who built a commercial fishing boat in their backyard and then needed a crane to load it onto the trailer. Sounds like his brother has the cool stories and he's been riding his brothers coattails his whole life🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣or he's full of shit. That's more likely 🤣
@@Rick-k7m In any case, he's going to need a bigger boat to store all of his sailor stories.
@ lmfaooooo good one🤣
A pilot at our local airport restored several WWII trainers in the 1970s. I went up with him in his North American SNJ (Navy version of the AT6 Texan trainer, aka the Harvard in Commonwealth use). He too sourced parts from anywhere and everywhere, including spent 22 LR casings which he discovered worked well enough as ersatz brass fittings on the engine. When he later sold his collection, I heard from my brother that the new owners were aghast once they uncovered the "workmanship" applied to these planes. Oh well, they weren't the first customers he had suckered.
No need for a chute, the prop is gonna get you anyway. I like the logic.
The Germans had the same problem with a late WW 2 aircraft . So they had a system built in , that would use explosives to blow off the propellers before injecting .
@@welshpete12 same with some heli eject system. at least one used dropable rotor for that reason.
I mean, if he knew the prop placement was an issue, what did he plan pilots in combat situations would do when their low and slow plane was predictably hit with gunfire?
@@stephen3164 The guy's concept of warfare was to throw as many bodies as he could at the enemy. I think the answer to your question has three letters...
Not everyone like that logic, which is why SAAB was the first company to have ejection seats as standard equipment.
I remember going to his field as a kid in the pre-defender days. The Val restoration was recently completed, and I crawled through a few of the WW II birds.
For all interested, a Bolingbroke is a Canadian variant of the Bristol Blenheim. I had to go research Bristol twin engine bombers to find that out.
Yeah I had to do the same. I wasn't familiar with the word he used. It appeared to be a Blenheim to me so I looked them up and found the MKIV was also called the Bolingbroke.
4:46 That's an F-104, not an F-014.
Reinventing the ov-10
In heavy steel with a tiny engine....🤡
That's kinda what I thought the video was about from the title. Because the Bronco prototype was built built in a garage by two guys.
I was thinking Cessna O-2 Skymaster but I can see the Bronco too.
It sounds like an episode of the Red Green show😅
@@RETOKSQUID I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thought that. Muskrat Air!
so basically he wanted swarms of expendible and cheap drones, but with pilots.
Canadian TIE fighter. But much, much slower.
imagine these running into a a soviet armored push, complete with ZSU-23-4's...
@@kineticdeath With a 300 pound armoured bathtub to sit in, it will have to be the ground that kills you at least. Also that's assuming that no one sold all the AA bullets to buy food, this is a long running issue for the Soviets and now Russians.
He was reinventing the wheel (or the Volksjager). The Super Tucano and the Sky Warden are the current best in class for this aircraft type. An interesting guy.
I just read the earlier comment which mentions the OV-10 Bronco, which I had forgotten about when naming the examples above. THAT aircraft has the same heritage except that the two (marine??) pilots(?) who developed it were recently returned from a combat environment in South-East Asia. It was super appropriate for improvised airstrips in 'forward' areas.
Things kept evolving as technology advanced and along came the A-10, which does not operate from too forward a base but is fast enough to get forward in a hurry. The unit cost in 1970 was about the same as the today(inflated) cost of the ammo load for the GAU-8 gatling cannon.
I would note that Canada did not seriously consider the OV-10 or the A-10 as our Armed Forces did not perceive a role for either aircraft without also owning an air superiority type like the F-18 -and- the weapons systems which we had planned to deliver were nuclear, requiring a fast getaway.
If the enemy has 100,000 ATA missiles you just need 100,001 planes.
I mean lets be real here. In war you're going to have casualties. Omaha beach was literally "expendable drones". IF he had suceeded the same practice would just carry into the skies. Which I've advocated for myelf. Get cheap aircraft, minimal training needed to fly it, and just have them be "sky infantry".
It's interesting that someone who spent so much time rebuilding combat aircraft would fail so badly in their own attempt at building a combat aircraft. It goes to show that just because you can build something or even piece it back together to make it work, doesn't mean you understand "how" it works.
According to the video most his restorations needed fixing or complete redesigns afterwards too though
The point behind the Defender reminds me a lot of the reasoning behind the Super Tucano prop powered, long endurance attack and recon plane, Bob was really forward thinking and dozens of countries in the world are now using cheap, prop powered light aircraft along with supersonic fighter jets.
A huge difference is hat the Super Tucano is a soundly designed and functional aircraft, while Bob's crap didn't even fly.
But of course, tens of thousands of aircraft would require tens of thousands of pilots, tens of thousands of maintenance personnel, an untold number of support staff and enormous infrastructure to support it all. I remember seeing a program on this guy and thought at the time that he was a few passengers short of a full plane. I also remember when The Commemorative Airforce was still called The Confederate Airforce but I suppose that too many people didn’t appreciate the irony. They did send some wonderful aircraft up here to the Hamilton International Airshow though.
How interesting. I can’t help but draw the comparison with David Hahn, the Radioactive Boy Scout. It takes a lot of drive and determination to keep going forward on something that is so outside the realm of the norm, and in the face of decades of failure. Kudos and god speed.
No way!!! My dad was a member at that airport and knew everyone closely!!! Even had the chance to sit in that aircraft!!! So cool to actually have my town in a video
This sounds like the red green show did an aviation episode
You're shitting me! This guy got the last zero prints from jiro??? That needs a whole video!
Im sure they were copies. But intriguing stuff id also like to hear that one!
I respect Mr. Horikoshi even more now. He didn't have to do that but like any great artist, appreciates when somebody enjoys their artwork.
Should do ‘project grizzly’ that guy was nuts too
So the same idea that keeps the A10 flying
"We wanted to bring this absolutely massive gun into the air so it could perforate enemy armor, so we built a plane around it!"
And now everyone is trying to come up with enough reasons to take it out of service.
@@Reddotzebra Top attack ATGMs fired by guys zipping around on E-biles and FPV AT drones are basically enough reason to take it out of service. Add in modern fighters lobbing guided munitions from over the horizon, and it's basically outdated in every conceivable way.
@kauske While you are right on what you said, you are leaving out its infantry supporting role, which is now being tried to replace by cheaper but flimsy Super Tucano prop planes, etc.
Lobbing guided bombs is a great idea on paper but infantry combat is most times close and personal, where the Warthog excels. Even guided bombs can cause fratricide, as a human is usually best at preventing that (fails notwithstanding) when kept on the loop, and the combining of both the A-10 in close direct coordination with such bombs and weapons is an even better idea.
Today I found out about a weird Canadian guy with the same name as me. I like that.
The idea behind the prototype aircraft isn't actually bad- there is a whole class of Close Air Support Aircraft, that do pretty much what he described, the best known being the A10 Warthog. It's just a shame that wasn't what the Canadian Air Force asked for, and that his design for one was so bad.
"No no you don't need parachute, the propellor will just kill you instantly anyway"
Can't see why that approach didn't work out for him with the authorities
That auto front tire really gives a chuckle. 😂😂😂
Well I mean his theory was fairly sound. Let's go over what he wanted to do:
A slower, low-flying aircraft that could spot tanks and engage them.
A front mounted weapon to destroy said tanks.
A rear-mounted propulsion system to allow the weapon mounted in the nose of the craft.
An armored "bathtub" to protect the pilot since it would be slow and low to the ground.
An aircraft that was much cheaper to fly than the jets the US wanted to sell Canada.
And finally, an aircraft to help NATO defend against an Russian attack.
Dude had the concept of a A-10 Thunderbolt but just didn't have the capacity to build it.
That's akin to listing specs for a F1 racecar and the end result is building a gokart. The problem with low and slow aircraft is that they might as well be flying target practice, not only will the jets decimate you, but just about any belt fed machine gun on the ground would take you out too. Not to mention all of the manpads and such. It doesn't matter if the cockpit is armored or not...if your plane is made of formed aluminum sheets, it only means that you'll be in good health as you're spiraling to your death in a flaming bathtub. The A-10 is not as survivable of an aircraft as you might think, so probably not the best example anyway.
@@Skinflaps_Meatslapper the A-10 is as survivable aircraft as I think? Out of 8,000 missions in Desert Storm & Shield, only six were shot down. I'm not comparing them to aircraft of today; I'm comparing them to the role in the time period they were designed and built.
@@thatjeff7550 They would've been a great replacement for the A1 in Vietnam, but by the time pen turned to plane, they were primarily expected to be used in the Fulda Gap strategy. In that role, they expected a very high loss rate. The entire fleet of 700 or so A-10's were projected to last about a week of combat before they were all downed. The problem is that any CAS aircraft is going to be extremely vulnerable, regardless of how up armored and tough it is compared to other aircraft, due to it being low and slow. It's a sitting duck in highly contested airspace, which is why the A-10 was only ever used in combat after air superiority and uncontested airspace was achieved. What people fail to realize is that even though an A-10 might come back with half a wing or most of its tail missing, it's done. Written off and scrapped. The only effective difference between coming home on a wing and a prayer and punching out is that the pilot got a ride home and didn't have to rely on anyone to extract him. The enemy took out the plane either way you look at it. So unless you've got a rather substantial force of air superiority fighters to clear the way for something like an A-10, you're cooked. That hypothetical massive fleet of A-10's isn't going to do much beyond keeping your combat SAR teams busy. Nobody in their right mind would send them out unless they had clear skies, and they wouldn't amount to a hill of beans in any near peer engagement, so your troops on the ground needing CAS won't be getting any support at all. That's why the USAF has been trying to get rid of them in favor of something that IS more survivable in contested airspace, so they CAN send air support.
@@thatjeff7550 No. No, it isn't. Trying to take the hit is just fundamentally far less effective than not getting hit at all. At least one of those were downed with a Igla, the soviet counterpart to the fim-92 stinger. Meanwhile, it was responsible for more friendly fire than every other aircraft combined while both the aardvark and even the fighting falcon absolutely smoked it in the CAS role.
@@Skinflaps_Meatslapper You appear to be falling into the common misunderstanding of what the close in CAS means. It is referring to how close the ordinance is landing to friendlies, not how close the supporting aircraft is getting to the enemy. Both the F-16 and F-111 far outperformed the A-10 in the CAS role in desert storm, but they did it from a couple miles up.
When I was a kid, I envisioned the compulsory ( in time of war ), conversion of thousands of private planes such as Cessna's, into mass attack light bombers.
The world need many more of these kind of people!
it reminds me of those Canadian cars in South Park
I saw the TV programme on Bob years a go, and his crazy looking genius partner, I could not make my mind up, the guy was so focused
Gentlemen, listening to his description of his concept. I give you The Grumman A-10 Warthog!
Possibly the Republic Aviation A-10 Warthog? Grumman and Republic both with roots on Long Island, NY.
“He climbed into the cockpit and made that twin bloss blare. He gunned it down the runway and we watched him disappear. We knew he was a thoroughbred when he pushed her through the gate. For in that Pratt and Whitney were fifteen hundred pounds of hate.” -Bob Diemert
There are actually quite a few civilian VLJs that use turbines from cruise missiles. Since they don’t require the wings to be foldable they can carry several thousand pounds more than a cruise missile. I’m surprised there aren’t any military aircraft that have utilized the same engines, because that’s definitely enough payload to be useful for strike or drone hunting. They could probably just bolt the predator avionics to one to a VLJ to act as a heavy strike drone. Even the smallest VLJ can carry 1300lbs. It’s a third the cost of the Predator and a tenth of the Reaper, but has several times the payload as the Predator, but half that of the Reaper. Which for the cost is still light years better than either. For the same cost you could build a twin engine VLJ that would annihilate either. You would think the technology would be more widely implemented, instead of just a few civilian implementations. Because they obviously fill a very useful military niche.
This is the Shahed 136 with a pilot. Simon, do the Shaed 136 and related drones?
At some point in life most people hit their head against a wall long enough and say- well that's not a good way to pass through since there is door in the wall anyways
My dad was an aerospace engineer involved in defense work in the 1070s and I remember hearing about a lot of this. There were many at the time making the argument for many more cheaper warbirds. You don’t hear that argument much anymore.
Ah yes, the decade after the Battle of Hastings was huge for aerospace defence work. There was a lot of research into eye arrow technology I heard.
With the Ukraine war there’s been lots of use of drones and consequent recognition of their utility. I think drones are going to be the solution when you need lots of cheap aircraft.
Simon, you should look into the Christmas Bullet. At least the subject of this video was actually trying and had some skills.
“Confederate Air Force?”
Basically it means a bunch of people who individually owned the historic aircraft agreed to cooperate on various things. Check the definition of “confederation” for an idea of the organization. Has nothing to do with the Confederate States of America. They changed their name to the Commemorative Air Force since confederate while being a perfectly reasonable word by definition caused too much confusion.
@@danh6720*Swastika* _has entered the chat..._
If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy. Keep your stick on the ice, we're all in this together.
Thanks Red
I won't be at the meeting next week. got to run this load out to Port Asbestos.
Simp
Met diemert once at a fly-in in kamloops my grandpa took me to about 20 years ago. He was in town to help someone that was trying to replicate one of his designs. Definitely a pretty eccentric guy, though if I'm being honest, as a 14 year old I was paying more attention to the car collection of the guy that was building the plane than the planes themselves.
According to an account in Ian Toll’s “The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific 1943-1944” to get freshly built A6M “Zero” aircraft from the Mitsubishi factory they needed to hauled by a team of oxen and later Percheron horses, from the factory to the nearest airfield, a few miles away.
It sounds dumb but overwhelming air defences is what they're going to do with drones
With drones, it's a viable strategy. With a pilot in a plane, not so much.
Really interesting story, I've actually seen at least one of his planes (the "Val" at Planes of Fame) but had never heard about him before.
By the way, just FYI, the "Ji" in "Jiro" sounds like an English "G" (gee). The most commonly used system of Japanese romanization was developed by an American so most pronunciations are relatively intuitive for English speakers.
The concept is actually genius. The problem is it already exists in the form of the a-10. Could be a lot cheaper though drones prove that
Bob Simple would be proud of him.
So since the movie Battle of Britain and the Commemorative Airforce was mentioned (they need a video as well), might I recommend video on Connie Edwards. BTW the CAF wouldn't have been HQ'd in Dallas during the years mentioned.
The fact that the guy proved those that "those listened to were wrong" makes the guy more right. It's people like this the visionary’s that prove everyone else wrong. A light slow moving plane able to hunt down and kill tanks, cheap, effective and in numbers.... Pretty much the Orlan series of Russian Drones able to seek and laz targets for a number of very effective munitions including the Kraznapol that has reaped utter destruction on Uranian armour and static targets. Right idea, slightly different tech.
But he didn't prove anyone wrong - his"aircraft" didn't even fly.
@@brianb-p6586 Do you work in government or the post office...? In 2003 I built one of the fastest graphics PC's in Britain, it's job to interpellate PAL to NTSC converting it from 24 to 29 frames a second. Encoding that signal to send it compressed over a single CAT5 to be uncompressed in real time. Simply, it converting DVD to HD720 to run on Plasma TV's. Too expensive & too large as a viable product, was it a failure no. Became the base tech for the scalar is in current TV's and the PS/XBox twiddle box's. You can't broadcast HD, the consoles can't process a true HD image even Blue Ray disks are diluted. So like this guy, the product was not sound, but the idea went on to bigger things as technology improved/miniaturised. It's about vision.
I'm a colonel in The Confederate Air Force, I was introduced by Nick Lowe. That was a very blurry week.
He should have called it "stealth" painted it black and charged 20 billion per copy. Easy sale.
"His greatest adversary ever" I was sure he was going to say Gravity lol
Seems like he would have been way better suited literally starting with a Cessna and modifying it until the original aircraft was gone. At least then he could have been sure he began with an airworthy plane.
But he doesn't strike me as someone willing to accept failure as an option no matter how many flashing red lights and buzzers told him it was a really dumb idea .
Did he even once waste a thought that this thing would also be able to carry a substantial payload to be of any use?
Man, that chatgpt working hard. It sure has a recognizable style. I wonder how it didn't evolve itself by now.
I think he lived long enough to see that he was actually right. Cheap flying vehicles, priced in thousands not millions, are one of key elements of modern battlefield and their importance in the nearest future will only increase. The only thing he failed to understand was that the solution to his massive bathtub problem was removing the pilot - and the bathtub - from the equation altogether.
Getting it airborne would have helped a lot, too.
@@NoIce33 I assumed the moment he got rid of pilot and his bathtub, the weight of the plane would fall below the amount of lift produced at liftoff speed - with the weight being higher than lift being the main problem of the version with the bathtub from what I understood from the material :)
There's a documentary on TH-cam about the defender.this is the idea of the drone swarm but its trying to make a manned version
I'm so glad Simon trimmed up that crazy hermit/ homeless/ Taliban beard. Looking good!
To me ground effect planes sound great except hopping over ships, rough seas and whatever else. I think I also heard that due to flying at low(est) altitude, they are in the densest air available and the increased drag offsets the ground effect benefit. That source never mentioned low altitude also means the most horsepower from that dense air. Over a tundra you would have cold (denser) air, so even more power and no obstacles. Cold dense air is great for controlling a plane. Anyways, always wondered why nothing at least reliable enough to get experience and data from has never reached fruition. I heard there are a couple tiny bay shuttles in existence.
I wonder what this guy would think about the Megaprojects video you released a couple weeks ago. The one about the special forces propeller aircraft being used, cheaper then jets. Bet Bob would have loved it
Diemert and Semple should have joined forces to build a flying tank... call it the Dimple by Bob&Bob
The cockpit/hull and layout design reminds me Y-wings in star wars
His swarms of small, cheap, manned combat aircraft now realized by smaller, cheaper, unmanned drone swarms.
I thought this was going to be about drones. The first predator was built in a garage using amateur hobby parts from ultralights. They still use Rotax hobby engines.
If he'd only thought of reducing the weight by taking the pilot out, he may have been on the way to developing a drone. He had a lot of the rest of that idea in place.
About the sponser. I need to check that out. I started getting adverts for books about kicking Cocaine. I never touched the stuff ever. I giggled at how wrong the algorythm was. A week later A freind admited to haveing a huge coke problem and was trying to quite and wanted support. They don't just show you adverts they think you want, they show your freinds!
Hmmmm...did your friend ever use your computer??? If no it still isn't surprising to me because advertising is a unscrupulous form of evil that manipulates & prays on everyone. Since coke is so addictive & you are a friend it made a correlation that u could be hooked too or know about their problem & may wanna help. Money makes people come up with a computer algorithm that attempts to get you to spend,spend,spend! With no "confusing "parameters like ethics, wage income, outstanding debt, mental health, or other financial responsibilities. That doesn't matter . Just consistently diagnosing you to better separate you from your $ !!!
The world needs more men and women like Bob.
Here here!
I like your cloths these past couple years. good on ya.
Dude!! I grew up in Morden!! Just went back last year for Corn and Apple. I literally never heard of this guy. . .WHY DO I NOW KNOW ABOUT THIS GUY!?!?
4:52 Fighting Falcon. Not Flying Falcon.
and or "Viper" in american circles. And yeah it took me like 30 years to learn thats what they called it.
@@kineticdeathit’s still officially called the Fighting Falcon. Viper is a nickname.
"And remember, if the allies can't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy."
(Apologies to The Red Green Show)
Keep in mind had he been born in Ukraine a few decades later, he'd probably be a leader in their long-range drone program. He had the right idea at the wrong time, because he was trying to lift an unnecessary amount of armor.
I had an uncle like that who finished building a homebuilt despite having a stroke that left him half-paralyzed and unable to fly it. It took over a decade and a lot of garage mechanic cleverness. It was flyable despite various parts from Walmart used in its construction.
6:05 it looks EXACTLY like the unmanned Bayraktar TB2
A slight problem with the "overwhelm with numbers" strategy is a pilot is more expensive than a plane.
He never backed down in the face of facts
This was great, since you guys are doing canadians, could you do one of these for Troy Hurtbois, the Bear Suit and Firepaste Inventor.
I would have thought the wings on race cars would be a good starting point, as they have a lot of development behind them, and are designed to create a lot of force from a small size.
Automotive racing wings are not efficient enough for aircraft. They are developed for a different application with different conditions and goals.
Love the channel!
So, since it never flew it was more of a "ground craft" than an aircraft.
Please do an episode on out-of-place artifacts that have been excluded from archaeological reports!!!
I guess this guy was a big fan of the CHRISTMAS BULLET .
Feel free to make a video about that " airplane " .
Lots of people revolutionized weapins in thier backyard, its pretty common, including plane design.
I would watch that movie. I picture something like "This Summer Starring Adam Sandler". Oh god, no ...
The "Semple Tank" of the air 😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣
He was a few decades too early. The USA just bought a bunch of aircraft to fill the role he was trying to build. lol.
He should have focus on a private light air craft for the masses.
Sounds like something I made in Kerbal Space Program.
'Sir, that madman is asking for $25k for a research grant, what should I tell him? That the funds aren't available or that he's mad as a box o frogs?'
@4:40 Ouch- writers need to check their number. Canadair CF-104, not CF-014.
Lol imagine if he succeeded and just 1 quirky canadian from Manitoba became more successful and influential than the entire Avro Canada company 😂
I remember the documentary being shown in 89 or 90 on (I think) Channel 4.
Creativity is great, there's this thing I can introduce you to called, "math." Also, "paper," and "pencil." You can save a lot of time and efforts, if you learn to use these things creatively and well." -- advice Bob Diemert badly needed.
You should really do a video on the New Zealand man who built his own cruise missile using a pulse jet.
10:19 'the confederate airforce were looking for planes' 😂
Damn, the civil war is still in full swing!
I know it was just a verbal slip up but it was hilarious
The Confederate Air Force is actually a thing - an organisation restoring and flying old war birds. In 2000, it renamed itself the Commerorative Air Force.
I mean, the idea isn't bad in itself. Prop ground attack planes have been used to good effect in modern conflicts... although their design teams probably had more resources than this guy.
Canadian Flying T-34s would be the military equivalent of fighting 1000 Rats vs. a single Bear
I like the idea of trying to outnumber the Soviets, I don't think I have ever heard anyone propose that ever before, everyone has always assumed the Soviets would have overwhelming numerical superiority and it's interesting to hear someone brave enough to propose outnumbering them!
There’s no shortage of cranks in the world. Not sure why this particular one deserves a video.