Posted on 01/03/2022 9:48:55 AM PST by Widget Jr
Pierre Sprey, a 1960s Pentagon “whiz kid” who was a formidable intellectual force in military analysis and weapons development, often tangling with top defense officials to improve U.S. military readiness and weapons development, died Aug. 5 at his home in Glenn Dale, Md. He was 83.
The cause appeared to be a sudden heart attack, said his son, John Sprey.
The French-born Mr. Sprey (pronounced “spray”) was a multilingual polymath whose interests encompassed history, engineering and literature. A Baltimore Sun profile declared that he “may well be the most fascinating person you’ve never heard of.”
[ August 20, 2021 ]
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
It was Alexander Kartveli at Fairchild Aircraft who was the lead designer of the A-10. Kartveli lead the design of the P-47 Thunderbolt, F-84 Thunderjet, and F-105 Thunderchief during his career. He died in 1974 from a heart attack, two years after the A-10 first flew.
Mmmmmmm. Warthogs. Me likey.
fugly beautiful airplane
Kind of related: Morris Rosenthal, scientist who worked on a bunch of stuff from the Manhattan Project to the space shuttle and was a pal of Albert Einstein, recently died at age 97.
Vietnam caught the USAF completely flat footed and the USAF had to buy Navy planes... Phantoms and A7s for ground attack. Even after that embarrassment they still tried to go back to their favorite hobby horse... air superiority and strategic bombers only. When I was in Nam the Navy and Marine support would come in low. The USAF planes were ordered to stay high.
The book about John Boys is interesting.
People take the main thrust of the book to be Boyd and the Fighter mafia fighting the generals.
There are many more lessons to be learned from that book.
The US Marines were at one point in time, big fans of Boyd.
The article is in Washington Times, not Washington Post, aka Washington Compost.
So ugly they’re good lookin’. Love the A-10. Had ‘em at Davis Monthan AFB in Tucson. I was on the EC-130H Compass Call there way back 30 years ago. I used to give tours of the base. Civilians could sign up and meet near the main gate and we’d show up with a bus and take them around the base and into the AMARC back then (well before 9/11). We used to pass around a dummy round from the A-10. That opened some eyes.
In fairness, it's right in their fight song....
Off we go into the wild blue yonder,
Climbing high into the sun
Incredible plane. From what I understand it is a huge Gatling gun with wings attached.
Uh oh. My mistake.
The biography of Boyd is indeed an excellent book. Apparently, Boyd was not a terribly likeable fellow. But he got a lot done and made real contributions in several areas. And certainly some people understood him and liked him well enough. Sprey was one of those people. RIP Mr. Sprey.
It is amusing that the A-10 came out of the same shop that gave us the F16 both aircraft that were optimized for the mission for which they were designed.
Atleast they tangled over weapons systems. Now, there is little tangling, and what hasn't been suppressed is about having trannies, satan worshippers, or BLM activists in the service.
Get it right, it’s a Gatlin gun attacked to a titanium tun with wings.
The P-51 of the modern era.
They also pushed for alternatives to the A-10 and F-15 after they were in service, as if the Air Force would just drop their new planes for cheaper and less capable replacements. There was no way that would happen.
They almost completely disregarded what the USSR was building. The Mig-23 first flew in 1967 and the Mig-29 and Su-27 flew in 1977. If the USSR was going toward more capable, more expensive, lower quantity designs, the USAF was not going to go in the other direction.
Yeah, pretty bad ass rig... :)
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