F.A.Q Section - Ask your questions here :) Q: Do you take aircraft requests? A: I have a list of aircraft I plan to cover, but feel free to add to it with suggestions:) Q: How do you decide what aircraft gets covered next? A: Supporters over on Patreon now get to vote on upcoming topics such as overviews, special videos, and deep dives. Q: Why do you use imperial measurements for some videos, and metric for others? A: I do this based on country of manufacture. Imperial measurements for Britain and the U.S, metric for the rest of the world, but I include text in my videos that convert it for both.
On 6 June 1943, Capt. "Fatty" Chow Chi-Kai (also spelled Chow Chin-kai), squadron leader of the 23rd Squadron, had just landed his P-40 when the base was attacked by Japanese bombers and fighters. Rather than wait for his plane to be refueled, he borrowed what was believed to be a P-66 and was credited with three kills in an extraordinary battle which took place over his airfield. Chow received the Blue Sky - White Sun award from Chiang Kai-Shek for his action. He was only the fourth recipient of China's highest award and he was soon promoted to Major and appointed acting Group commander.
@@RexsHangar I only know about it because last month I found a photo of a Chinese fighter I could not identify. My brother thought it was a P-43, but the cowling and land gear were wrong. It's line reminded me of a Vultee, so I did some digging and verified it was a P-66. In the process I found several stories about the fighter, one of which was a long article on the development and use of this plane in WWII. It tracks closely with your information. I'm not sure if YT will let me post the links, so I will try to do so in my next comment.
@@juliusdream2683 Much of what we read on the internet is a regurgitation of the same story, so it gives the illusion of truth. None of this information has been verified, including the claim that Chow used a P-66. Perhaps somewhere in the archives of the Chinese Air Force the facts behind this story remain hidden. Anyone up for a trip to Taiwan?
@@Paladin1873 When TH-cam won't let me publish links - I try to post something that can be Googled - that way someone wishing to find the article - can find it themselves. It's to bad TH-cam is that way - but they are. I used to post all kinds of links - but gradually realized that those posts disappeared shortly after. They do seem to allow Wikipedia - and - other TH-cam Videos - but those are the only ones I have any confidence about. I spent a lot of time creating posts - that just vanished until I realized that. .
I had only known it as a short citation in a compendium of US fighters, the designed by Johnny Cash Fisher Eagle gets more print. Thanks for helping me get more context behind that. Stuff like this keeps me subscribed!
Superb video! great insights. That aforementioned Ki-48 kill over Enshih was credited to Chen Zhaoji of the 41st Sqn. Ref article by Richard Dunn, he was flying a P-66. Also on the same day over Liangshan, 'Fatty' Chow Chi Kai of the 23rd Sqn was credited with shooting down three Ki-48s while flying a borrowed P-66 from another unit. Both the P-66 and P-43 looked similar, difficult to confirm actual a/c type flown by those pilots from Chinese wartime records.
Curtiss had the exact same problem with the XP-42 when trying to make a radial engine fighter have a streamlined nose. Turns out a large intake is simply a necessity for an air-cooled engine, and trying to dispense with it is almost as silly as trying to make an aircraft with no fuel tanks.
I can’t thankyou enough for not putting any ads on your channel,and of course you have lifted my understanding of aviation immeasurably…..yours is my go to site for interesting things,your passion and knowledge comes through all your work,of course there is Greg’s if I really want to scramble my brain with great detail.and thanks to him for his amazing work too. but for shear pleasure…..you are tops.thanks so much again.
Looks like Vultee went down the same ultra-streamlined radial engine cowling concept as Focke-Wulf did with the Fw190, only without the trick annular oil cooler and booster fan.
@@patrickshaw8595 Although "Valiant" was the official name, "Vibrator" was an informal moniker it was popularly given. Never heard "Ensign Eliminator" associated with it though.
Even myself, with no skill in engineering, took one look at that prototype and said “overheating” before Rex did. Hey, let’s starve this air cooled engine of cooling air! What could go wrong? I mean, it’s not like air cooled engines hadn’t been around for more than 30 years…
To be fair even the mighty FW190 started life with a "streamlining" cowl which resulted in overheating. Might be other examples. The point is, for radials in the 1000 - 1500 hp range it was desirable to try some form of drag reduction to keep them in line with the water cooled equivalents. Only when they started putting brutes like the 2000+ hp double wasp engine in service that idea went away, since that amount of power was more than enough to "brute force" the plane up to speeds limited by other factors.
Another fighter that looked so good, but wasn't good enough. Given the really wide stance of the main landing gear, it's surprising that there were ground handling problems.
Ground loop. The more stable the landing gear, wider and forward, the easier it is to ground loop. If the wheels are moved back to stop the ground loops, it noses over.
@@brucebaxter6923 Thanks. I thought that a wider track would make directional control while taxiing easier, compared to narrow-track gear like the Bf-109 or Spitfire.
@@petesheppard1709 only for tipping over and torque roll. But when your fixed wheels are in front of the gentry of gravity …. The tail wheel just can’t hold it and you spin end for end, youtube a few ground loo tail dragger and you will get the idea pretty quick
@@brucebaxter6923 I'm not going to refute what you say without a LOT of checking because you sound like you have looked into ground looping .... BUT *First impression - Pete Sheppard's take (wide wheels, well forward = stability) seems the most intuitive* Still, 'common sense' does get things wrong 🙄
All I knew about this aircraft were the specifications and development history, so your inimitable way of covering these lesser known aircraft is once again most welcome.
Yup, the fuselage and especially the tail strongly resemble the Corsair, at least to the aircraft recognition portion of my occipital lobe. 🛩👀 🧠 Gull that wing and throw in a R-2800 and what have you got?
On another YT video of the Vanguard someone quipped "Love child between a Corsair and a Buffalo". To which I might add "the Corsair must have been wearing beer goggles".
One of those aerial views gave me that same impression - cockpit set further back in the fuselage and the slope of the fuselage back to the tail. There were also views that reminded me of the Zero.
Think "I grew up" next to this things factory with air stip? Downey Ca! Rockwell Int in my youth. I can find a "Vultee" sign on a building as of a year ago. LATER the Gemini to Shuttle. "Vultee" was a street in my neighborhood and on my paper route. Learned to ride bikes, skates, mini bikes, motorcycles, cars, stick in their parking lots. Lived on the same street even when we moved.
I'm not any kind of expert in aero engines, but I was under the impression that for air cooled engines to work... you need, you know, air to cool them? I'm sure Pratt and Whitney knew that too, so surely there was more to their idea than just sticking a big cone on the front of their engine and hoping it would still get enough cooling? Or had no one tried that before?
@@bentilbury2002 Try to look at the front of the Focke-Wulf 190. Basically they masively expanded the pointy hub, minimising the amount of flat area at the front.
Way to make me feel ancient when you assume that the Vanguard is an unknown. Too late to the party and another of the group of trainer-based aircraft that might have been winners in a 1936 war. The Chinese reported that the P-66 had a strong tendency to ground loop and required careful use of brakes. Combined with a powerful engine, this made it dangerous for inexperienced pilots.
Given the dismal Seversky P-35s and Reggiane 2000s Sweden had to depend on early in the war, those 140 Vanguards would have been a real boon until the domestic J22 entered service in 1943.
I have always thought the P66 looked oddly similar to a zero. Like if you look at it from the right angles the untrained eye may think its an A6M of some kind.
I am really impressed with them fact that you managed to obtain and share so many visuals of this aircraft The WW2 edition of Pearl Harbor had to use Dauntless and Avengers to stand in for Japanese aircraft when recreating the 7 December raid. 'Even the 1941 movie, "Dive Bomber," made with full Navy support, had a fake plane or two. The 1955 Jimmy Steward "Strategic Air Command" featured to aircraft, the B-36 and the B-47, plus the rest of the USAF. I can probably locate a few other movies that have the correct aircraft but I know it's difficult. I appreciate the work you did to bring the images of the Vultee P-66 Vanguard back to life.
Good to have you back Chris. My my, me like this one. Really pretty thing that. Wide landing gear, good, ground loops imminent then. 1200 hp is not exactly a lot. And really loved your pun in the clear direction of PM N.umbskull Chamberlaine, pricelessly waving his piece of paper signed by the 'Adolf', worth less than the paper it was on. One of the really bad, really horrible moments in British history.
Thank you for shedding some light on this often overlooked aircraft that actually did kind of have some motion in the ocean when it came to the Asian Pacific theater just not in the standard service we think of
Vultee was perhaps ahead of its time to its detriment. Designs intended to serve as both advanced trainers and light fighters are usually underpowered and only suitable as fighters for export to counties that cannot afford or obtain more capable fighters. There is no surprise that USAAF was not interested in a 1,200 hp fighter that offered no advantage over fighters already in service or entering production.
I have a soft spot for this plane. Thanks for covering it in the depth it deserves! (If only they hadn't added the extra dihedral to the outer wing segments! Can't unsee it now lmao)
The domestic swedish fighter in development when the mentioned US embargo came, eventually flew as the J-22. The fastest fighter of the period, weighted on engine power that is. Powered by a reverse engineered PW Twin Wasp, (engines bought from Germany, taken as spoiles in France) it reach 590 kph using only 1065 hp.
I've had the priviledge of working on a BT-13, it was a neat little machine and the steel truss construction of the forward fuselage meant that you could effectively de-skin the aircraft making access to most things an absolute breeze. Last I heard the owner had ground looped it at a fly in, not sure what happened after that.
Hang in there bro. You've provided a metric fuqton of quality content over the last few years. Take the time to get yourself sorted and focus on upholding the high standards we've come to expect of Rex's Hanger. Sometimes quality has a quantity all of its own 😉
The FW190 prototypes ran into similar problems with the conformal cowlings, resulting in a propellor system behind the cowl opening that drew more cooling air in without creating more drag with a larger opening...
A long time ago - probably about the 1970's - I saw the fuselage of one of these at 'Harvey Young' airport in Tulsa Ok. It had a bare firewall with no engine or cowling. At the time I thought it looked like some kind of miniature Corsair knockoff. In light of your excellent video - I wonder how that little rascal got there. ( It did not stay there very long. )
Bit freaked out by USAAF nomenclature. The P-59 Airacomet was powered by a jet engine. And yet here we have this high number - 66 - attached to something that first flew THREE YEARS BEFORE the Airacomet.
That is because the low number for the Airacomet was purposeful disinformation. There was a canceled Bell project the XP-59, they reused the number from that.
It's perhaps a little ironic how the Valiant would form the bulk of the converted airframes used as faux Japanese aircraft in Tora Tora Tora. (And Pearl harbor)
No complaints. Freaking awesome that at this point in History so many people were going into business in a super new field! This is how we perfect inventions, trial, error, correction, etc. A totally AVERAGE design enabled many more people to become curious about aerodynamics, internal combustion, exhaust- and crank-driven turbo / superchargers, charge cooling, ram air effect, flush rivets n fasteners, microwave radars, and etc. What people imagined into reality in our past is undervalued. Cheers!🥂🌈
And for the price of your soul and sanity, you can play it in wt. Thanks for the great video on this obscure plane. Do you plan to cover more italian planes in the future?
It looked like a hybrid between the P-36 and the corsair. Or a corsair shrunken down to P-36 size. And the aforementioned zero-like appearance in some angles. Good plane, but yeah, it came too late
It seems improbable that a company that was producing obsolescent or very generic planes such as the trainer at the same time was working on the B36, a state of the art top tier world bomber. Then went on to design another top tier state of the art bomber, the B58.
The kit company 'Dora Wings' make a cracking 1:48 scale kit of this aircraft, if you are going for looks, this makes a nice change from the better known aircraft of the era. The kit is of a very high quality, your video makes a good ad for it!
Hey Rex would you ever consider a series on the aircraft of the Fleet Air Arm (Albacore, Fulmar, Seafire, etc), kinda like the P-40 series from a couple years ago? You've covered a few of these already, but only in the mega-episodes, never on their own.
From a very interesting family of three types of aircraft, a fighter , advanced trainer and basic Trainer . The basic trainer the Vultee BT 13 Valiant was the most successful . The VC51 advanced trainer is almost unknown as it lost out to the North American Texan. The P-66 was the Fighter variant,
Always liked the 'other' company to build a bent wing bird. If they had only figured out the streamline cooling or given up on it quicker who knows how much more refinement they could have done for that aircraft or where Vultee itself could have gone.🧐
It’s interesting during the course of the war the number of US designs that were dead-ends. Usually because they weren’t very good. Contrast that to the number of German designs that showed great promise, but didn’t progress because of the lack of resources and focus.
Contrary to popular belief, the US Army Air Force (USAAF) was create on 20 June 1941, nearly six months before the US entry into WWII. The US Army Air Corps was reduced to a combat arm of the USAAF. The Air Corps was not abolished until the creation of the United States Air Force in 1947, at which point the USAAF also ceased to exist.
F.A.Q Section - Ask your questions here :)
Q: Do you take aircraft requests?
A: I have a list of aircraft I plan to cover, but feel free to add to it with suggestions:)
Q: How do you decide what aircraft gets covered next?
A: Supporters over on Patreon now get to vote on upcoming topics such as overviews, special videos, and deep dives.
Q: Why do you use imperial measurements for some videos, and metric for others?
A: I do this based on country of manufacture. Imperial measurements for Britain and the U.S, metric for the rest of the world, but I include text in my videos that convert it for both.
The Nakajima Ki-84 was pretty overlooked, but it was one of Japan's most capable fighters that was a match for the American's Corsair and Hellcat!
Koolhoven Fk 58
Morane-Saulnier Ms 406
Avia B-534
ANBO-I, ANBO-II, ANBO-III, ANBO-IV, ANBO-41, ANBO-V, ANBO-51, ANBO-VIII.
uhm when P-59 (first American jet) or glosser e (first British jet)
Thanks, at least you didn't spend August laid in hospital come to a kitten now big enough to create real chaos. Hope things are sorted in your favor.
On 6 June 1943, Capt. "Fatty" Chow Chi-Kai (also spelled Chow Chin-kai), squadron leader of the 23rd Squadron, had just landed his P-40 when the base was attacked by Japanese bombers and fighters. Rather than wait for his plane to be refueled, he borrowed what was believed to be a P-66 and was credited with three kills in an extraordinary battle which took place over his airfield. Chow received the Blue Sky - White Sun award from Chiang Kai-Shek for his action. He was only the fourth recipient of China's highest award and he was soon promoted to Major and appointed acting Group commander.
Thats fascinating! Is there a particular book that covers this event?
You lie 😂just kidding good google job. Or however you came about that information.
@@RexsHangar I only know about it because last month I found a photo of a Chinese fighter I could not identify. My brother thought it was a P-43, but the cowling and land gear were wrong. It's line reminded me of a Vultee, so I did some digging and verified it was a P-66. In the process I found several stories about the fighter, one of which was a long article on the development and use of this plane in WWII. It tracks closely with your information. I'm not sure if YT will let me post the links, so I will try to do so in my next comment.
@@juliusdream2683 Much of what we read on the internet is a regurgitation of the same story, so it gives the illusion of truth. None of this information has been verified, including the claim that Chow used a P-66. Perhaps somewhere in the archives of the Chinese Air Force the facts behind this story remain hidden. Anyone up for a trip to Taiwan?
@@Paladin1873 When TH-cam won't let me publish links - I try to post something that can be Googled - that way someone wishing to find the article - can find it themselves. It's to bad TH-cam is that way - but they are. I used to post all kinds of links - but gradually realized that those posts disappeared shortly after.
They do seem to allow Wikipedia - and - other TH-cam Videos - but those are the only ones I have any confidence about.
I spent a lot of time creating posts - that just vanished until I realized that.
.
New Rex’s Hangar, wooooo! I’m excited to learn about the P-66.
We Drink Deep and Descent!
I had only known it as a short citation in a compendium of US fighters, the designed by Johnny Cash Fisher Eagle gets more print. Thanks for helping me get more context behind that. Stuff like this keeps me subscribed!
Superb video! great insights.
That aforementioned Ki-48 kill over Enshih was credited to Chen Zhaoji of the 41st Sqn. Ref article by Richard Dunn, he was flying a P-66. Also on the same day over Liangshan, 'Fatty' Chow Chi Kai of the 23rd Sqn was credited with shooting down three Ki-48s while flying a borrowed P-66 from another unit.
Both the P-66 and P-43 looked similar, difficult to confirm actual a/c type flown by those pilots from Chinese wartime records.
Where is this information from
@@tristanmakeiv7037article 'Vultee P-66 in Chinese Service' by Richard L Dunn, aviation history author & researcher.
Curtiss had the exact same problem with the XP-42 when trying to make a radial engine fighter have a streamlined nose. Turns out a large intake is simply a necessity for an air-cooled engine, and trying to dispense with it is almost as silly as trying to make an aircraft with no fuel tanks.
Convair would later have issues with the B-36 and it's R-4360s for similar reasons.
I can’t thankyou enough for not putting any ads on your channel,and of course you have lifted my understanding of aviation immeasurably…..yours is my go to site for interesting things,your passion and knowledge comes through all your work,of course there is Greg’s if I really want to scramble my brain with great detail.and thanks to him for his amazing work too.
but for shear pleasure…..you are tops.thanks so much again.
Looks like Vultee went down the same ultra-streamlined radial engine cowling concept as Focke-Wulf did with the Fw190, only without the trick annular oil cooler and booster fan.
Vultee was following Pratt and Witney's direction and advice. Don't blame Vultee for the idea, but they should have had more sense than to persevere.
I wonder how it'd perform with the conventional cowling but a big spinner, as most other countries' radial engined planes had
@@VickyHong1879
Or a second air scoop at the top of the cowling....giving more balanced cooling air entry ....
And the J2M
The trainer was designated the BT-13, and known as the. "Vibrator" or "the ensign eliminator".
Vultee BT-13 Valiant. it was called.
I thought the "Ensign Eliminator" was given to the Corsair.
@@patrickshaw8595 Although "Valiant" was the official name, "Vibrator" was an informal moniker it was popularly given. Never heard "Ensign Eliminator" associated with it though.
Got a couple hours in one. Flies like a greased pig lol
THE VULTEE VANGUARD?! Good LORD we are digging deep.
Your fairy comment awhile ago was cringy asf 😬
Brother, it’s good to see you here.
HAY! I was there? it got better! MUCH BETTER!
Even myself, with no skill in engineering, took one look at that prototype and said “overheating” before Rex did.
Hey, let’s starve this air cooled engine of cooling air! What could go wrong?
I mean, it’s not like air cooled engines hadn’t been around for more than 30 years…
To be fair even the mighty FW190 started life with a "streamlining" cowl which resulted in overheating. Might be other examples. The point is, for radials in the 1000 - 1500 hp range it was desirable to try some form of drag reduction to keep them in line with the water cooled equivalents.
Only when they started putting brutes like the 2000+ hp double wasp engine in service that idea went away, since that amount of power was more than enough to "brute force" the plane up to speeds limited by other factors.
Another fighter that looked so good, but wasn't good enough.
Given the really wide stance of the main landing gear, it's surprising that there were ground handling problems.
Ground loop.
The more stable the landing gear, wider and forward, the easier it is to ground loop.
If the wheels are moved back to stop the ground loops, it noses over.
@@brucebaxter6923 Thanks. I thought that a wider track would make directional control while taxiing easier, compared to narrow-track gear like the Bf-109 or Spitfire.
@@petesheppard1709 only for tipping over and torque roll.
But when your fixed wheels are in front of the gentry of gravity …. The tail wheel just can’t hold it and you spin end for end, youtube a few ground loo tail dragger and you will get the idea pretty quick
@@brucebaxter6923 I'm not going to refute what you say without a LOT of checking because you sound like you have looked into ground looping .... BUT
*First impression - Pete Sheppard's take (wide wheels, well forward = stability) seems the most intuitive*
Still, 'common sense' does get things wrong 🙄
@@Farweasel
To put it in common sense,
The front wheels on a tail dragger work like tail fins, they don’t like being at the front.
All I knew about this aircraft were the specifications and development history, so your inimitable way of covering these lesser known aircraft is once again most welcome.
Great story, from someone who looked at the Vultee P-66 and thought it resembled the later Vought Corsair, as in it was done by the same company.
It does look a little like the Corsair.
Yup, the fuselage and especially the tail strongly resemble the Corsair, at least to the aircraft recognition portion of my occipital lobe. 🛩👀 🧠
Gull that wing and throw in a R-2800 and what have you got?
On another YT video of the Vanguard someone quipped "Love child between a Corsair and a Buffalo".
To which I might add "the Corsair must have been wearing beer goggles".
It looks like something that would be painted blue and used in a made-for-TV movie about Pappy Boyington and the Black Sheep...
One of those aerial views gave me that same impression - cockpit set further back in the fuselage and the slope of the fuselage back to the tail. There were also views that reminded me of the Zero.
Rex; great video and nice to have you back. Get yourself sorted first, we can always re-watch your previous videos while we wait. Cheers.
Think "I grew up" next to this things factory with air stip? Downey Ca! Rockwell Int in my youth. I can find a "Vultee" sign on a building as of a year ago. LATER the Gemini to Shuttle. "Vultee" was a street in my neighborhood and on my paper route. Learned to ride bikes, skates, mini bikes, motorcycles, cars, stick in their parking lots. Lived on the same street even when we moved.
I'm not any kind of expert in aero engines, but I was under the impression that for air cooled engines to work... you need, you know, air to cool them? I'm sure Pratt and Whitney knew that too, so surely there was more to their idea than just sticking a big cone on the front of their engine and hoping it would still get enough cooling? Or had no one tried that before?
Fock Wulf showed it could be done.
@@GrigoriZhukov What did they do differently?
@@bentilbury2002 Try to look at the front of the Focke-Wulf 190. Basically they masively expanded the pointy hub, minimising the amount of flat area at the front.
You have to still have the right size air intake and oil cooler.
@@oskarrasmussen7137they also had a cooling fan in there too
Way to make me feel ancient when you assume that the Vanguard is an unknown. Too late to the party and another of the group of trainer-based aircraft that might have been winners in a 1936 war. The Chinese reported that the P-66 had a strong tendency to ground loop and required careful use of brakes. Combined with a powerful engine, this made it dangerous for inexperienced pilots.
Given the dismal Seversky P-35s and Reggiane 2000s Sweden had to depend on early in the war, those 140 Vanguards would have been a real boon until the domestic J22 entered service in 1943.
I have always thought the P66 looked oddly similar to a zero. Like if you look at it from the right angles the untrained eye may think its an A6M of some kind.
I thought it was just me. Im pretty sure it's just the pointy tail but I'm glad someone else sees a zero
According to RAF Aircraft Serial Numbers Database, 100 Vanguard were registred by the RAF (serial numbers BW 208 to BW 307).
Another excellent episode. Very entertaining.
I am really impressed with them fact that you managed to obtain and share so many visuals of this aircraft
The WW2 edition of Pearl Harbor had to use Dauntless and Avengers to stand in for Japanese aircraft when recreating the 7 December raid. 'Even the 1941 movie, "Dive Bomber," made with full Navy support, had a fake plane or two. The 1955 Jimmy Steward "Strategic Air Command" featured to aircraft, the B-36 and the B-47, plus the rest of the USAF. I can probably locate a few other movies that have the correct aircraft but I know it's difficult. I appreciate the work you did to bring the images of the Vultee P-66 Vanguard back to life.
Looks like a cursed P36
Great video and neat airplane! Really enjoying these obscure aircraft.
Really looking forward to a future Convair episode, The b-58 Hustler was an awesome looking aircraft.
Looking forward to the live stream shenanigans. No worries about logistical issues.. you will always have our support. Rock on, Rex!
Congratulations on 200k! Also, good show as usual :)
It looks like a Zero and an Fw 190 had a baby. But that baby was dropped as a baby.
Rex's Hangar ---> I applaud and approve of the dry humour at about the 12:45 section: "..... disassemble themselves......" 😊
How about a video on Macchi fighters from Italy?
Fascinating history! I've got one of these kits to build in the stash and bought it without any knowledge on the aircraft - now I know! :)
Good to have you back Chris. My my, me like this one. Really pretty thing that. Wide landing gear, good, ground loops imminent then. 1200 hp is not exactly a lot. And really loved your pun in the clear direction of PM N.umbskull Chamberlaine, pricelessly waving his piece of paper signed by the 'Adolf', worth less than the paper it was on. One of the really bad, really horrible moments in British history.
Great looking aircraft. Reminds me of the Corsair from the back of the canopy
Yay! More Rex’s Hanger to listen to whilst I’m making my plane in Flyout!
Thank you for shedding some light on this often overlooked aircraft that actually did kind of have some motion in the ocean when it came to the Asian Pacific theater just not in the standard service we think of
Great documentary as usual. Thanks for your great work. !!!
Vultee was perhaps ahead of its time to its detriment. Designs intended to serve as both advanced trainers and light fighters are usually underpowered and only suitable as fighters for export to counties that cannot afford or obtain more capable fighters. There is no surprise that USAAF was not interested in a 1,200 hp fighter that offered no advantage over fighters already in service or entering production.
I have a soft spot for this plane. Thanks for covering it in the depth it deserves!
(If only they hadn't added the extra dihedral to the outer wing segments! Can't unsee it now lmao)
The domestic swedish fighter in development when the mentioned US embargo came, eventually flew as the J-22. The fastest fighter of the period, weighted on engine power that is. Powered by a reverse engineered PW Twin Wasp, (engines bought from Germany, taken as spoiles in France) it reach 590 kph using only 1065 hp.
Thanks a lot Rex for this video and your hard work. Take care
I've had the priviledge of working on a BT-13, it was a neat little machine and the steel truss construction of the forward fuselage meant that you could effectively de-skin the aircraft making access to most things an absolute breeze. Last I heard the owner had ground looped it at a fly in, not sure what happened after that.
Another unsung non- Hero presented. THX Rex!
Love your content
Hang in there bro. You've provided a metric fuqton of quality content over the last few years. Take the time to get yourself sorted and focus on upholding the high standards we've come to expect of Rex's Hanger. Sometimes quality has a quantity all of its own 😉
Great presentation - _THANKS_ !
Me who knew the p66 because I used it on WT, till I unlocked the p40. Well maybe I'm not that far from the AAC at the end of the day
Glad your back ! :D Fiber to the property (FTTP) is the only way to surf the web.
REX (still) LIVES!!
Lives?
If he keep producing material of this calbre
soon people will be saying he rocks
I am quietly impressed how well his channel is developing
The FW190 prototypes ran into similar problems with the conformal cowlings, resulting in a propellor system behind the cowl opening that drew more cooling air in without creating more drag with a larger opening...
A long time ago - probably about the 1970's - I saw the fuselage of one of these at 'Harvey Young' airport in Tulsa Ok. It had a bare firewall with no engine or cowling. At the time I thought it looked like some kind of miniature Corsair knockoff. In light of your excellent video - I wonder how that little rascal got there. ( It did not stay there very long. )
18:03 has nearly the same empennage as the F4U Corsair
More amazing content. Thanks again!
Thanks Rex
I am a fan of the "Underdog" airplane and the Vanguard certainly is included in my list.
Another great video. Thanks 🙏
I think it's a good looking aircraft and I don't care who knows it. Thanks again for a great video.
Problems aside, these are great vids! Like the P-43 came at wrong time
Bit freaked out by USAAF nomenclature. The P-59 Airacomet was powered by a jet engine. And yet here we have this high number - 66 - attached to something that first flew THREE YEARS BEFORE the Airacomet.
That is because the low number for the Airacomet was purposeful disinformation. There was a canceled Bell project the XP-59, they reused the number from that.
I came late to the party, but Rex you do you.
I didn’t know that’s how that company came about. The hustler was a great aircraft and the F106 .
Worth waiting for!
It's perhaps a little ironic how the Valiant would form the bulk of the converted airframes used as faux Japanese aircraft in Tora Tora Tora. (And Pearl harbor)
Great video.
Give starlink internet a try. I don't have any problems. Rex I am looking forward to the longer videos but I really like the short aircraft guides.
Splendid. 👍
So, basically a hand-me-down aircraft that nobody wanted that was best used to waste enemy ammunition.
In those days, at that date, 1200 hp was just simply not enough at all. That power was available in trainers of the day.
loved this plane in warthunder
didn't know it was initially an attempt at streamlining radial engines
🛩️/10
No complaints. Freaking awesome that at this point in History so many people were going into business in a super new field! This is how we perfect inventions, trial, error, correction, etc. A totally AVERAGE design enabled many more people to become curious about aerodynamics, internal combustion, exhaust- and crank-driven turbo / superchargers, charge cooling, ram air effect, flush rivets n fasteners, microwave radars, and etc. What people imagined into reality in our past is undervalued. Cheers!🥂🌈
And for the price of your soul and sanity, you can play it in wt.
Thanks for the great video on this obscure plane.
Do you plan to cover more italian planes in the future?
"WT"?
Ahhhh ... IL-2 for children. 😉
I'm sure someone else has pointed this out, but if I saw just the rear half of the fuselage I would think I was looking at a Corsair.
Well done!
I always liked this plane. Decent in Warthunder as well.
Interesting to hear of the origin of Convair.
The Greg's Airplanes fans wanna hear your opinions and research on the P47. A match of the titans.
This video's thumbnail image vaguely reminds me of the Beechcraft T-34B trainer aircraft, only with a radial engine.
It looked like a hybrid between the P-36 and the corsair. Or a corsair shrunken down to P-36 size. And the aforementioned zero-like appearance in some angles. Good plane, but yeah, it came too late
It seems improbable that a company that was producing obsolescent or very generic planes such as the trainer at the same time was working on the B36, a state of the art top tier world bomber. Then went on to design another top tier state of the art bomber, the B58.
Specs on par with the Hawker Hurricane, right? It's amazing how in such a short span of time developments in engines made planes obsolete so quickly.
The kit company 'Dora Wings' make a cracking 1:48 scale kit of this aircraft, if you are going for looks, this makes a nice change from the better known aircraft of the era. The kit is of a very high quality, your video makes a good ad for it!
Hey Rex would you ever consider a series on the aircraft of the Fleet Air Arm (Albacore, Fulmar, Seafire, etc), kinda like the P-40 series from a couple years ago? You've covered a few of these already, but only in the mega-episodes, never on their own.
From a very interesting family of three types of aircraft, a fighter , advanced trainer and basic Trainer . The basic trainer the Vultee BT 13 Valiant was the most successful . The VC51 advanced trainer is almost unknown as it lost out to the North American Texan. The P-66 was the Fighter variant,
I'm retirement age and have been an avid reader of WWII-related material for over 50 years. I've never heard of this one before.
This strikes me as a fighter with a lot of potential as a trainer, and very little as an actual fighter.
Always liked the 'other' company to build a bent wing bird. If they had only figured out the streamline cooling or given up on it quicker who knows how much more refinement they could have done for that aircraft or where Vultee itself could have gone.🧐
Love the content
if i had not played war thunder, id never known this plane existed before this video
Great video.
Australian NBN....
Turnbull's legacy😂
It’s interesting during the course of the war the number of US designs that were dead-ends. Usually because they weren’t very good. Contrast that to the number of German designs that showed great promise, but didn’t progress because of the lack of resources and focus.
This plane has a lot of lines that show up in far more famous and successful planes that came after it.
made a balsa wood model of this fighter in British livery, there were a few 😊
Oh the vultee vanguard. When an American company made Japanese looking aircraft
P-66 is one of the most beautiful aircraft ever. Not joking. In fact, nearly all of the vultee aircraft are beautiful.
Contrary to popular belief, the US Army Air Force (USAAF) was create on 20 June 1941, nearly six months before the US entry into WWII. The US Army Air Corps was reduced to a combat arm of the USAAF. The Air Corps was not abolished until the creation of the United States Air Force in 1947, at which point the USAAF also ceased to exist.
Oof, outperformed by the Warhawk. That's just depressing
Looks like a mix of a Corsair and a Curtis Interceptor.
Just in time for my commute, works for me lol
THANK FOR A NEW VIDEO! I AM RUNNING OUT OF CONTENT LOL
The Vultee Vanguard looks very similar to the Fokker XXI but with retractable undercarriage.
It does vaguely resemble the P 47 (my personal favorite) but no comparison on performance
Looks a lot like the FW190