Another great episode guys. John’s definitely right about these things having a reputation out of all proportions

RESILIENCE: As the guys say, the A-10 is ridiculously tough. The pilot sits in a titanium “bathtub” that was originally taken from the steel bathtub built into the Il-2 Sturmovik of Soviet WW2 fame. The engines are built out that way on those little pylons so they are not beside each other and one shell cannot take both engines out. The side tail fins even protect the engines’ IR signature a little. The plane also carries a lot more armor plating than most planes (most warplanes carry none, actually), and even redundant controls are spread out much further in the Warthog than other designs (an F-16’s redundant flight control pathways, for example, tend to be beside one another . . . they provide safeguard against systems failure. The A-10’s are space far apart so a single ZSU-23-4 23mm cannon round found take out both systems. And finally, those large, broad wings mean that the pane can take a lot of airframe damage and still retain sufficient power and lift (it’s not designed to go very fast, at least as far as jet warplanes go) to get home.

In Gulf War One A-10s flew home missing huge sections of wings, tails, elevator flaps, and in one case (I head) even one engine missing. Not all this damage was on the same plane, of course.

FIREPOWER: The Avenger cannon is a seven-barreled rotary cannon that is 19 feet long. Justin and John are spot on when they say the plane was designed around the gun. It weighs (and is as long as) a full-sized 1970s Cadillac. It has a rate of fire of something like 4200 rounds per minute (70 shells a second, hence the chainsaw “BRRRT”). Each shell hits the target with 60,000 foot-pounds of force. Given their low angle of attack, they usually don’t hit the roof armor, but of course a plane can hit the sides and rear pretty much at will, so the end result is the same, a very, very high lethality rate against armor.

One tiny thing, @dignity . . . big rotary cannon like this aren’t actually called “miniguns.” They’re called rotary guns, chain guns, gatling guns, etc. These are usually 20mm or 30mm . . . so when they make a similar system that is very small (12.7mm, 7.62mm or 5.56mm for example, MUCH smaller), THOSE are called “mini-guns.”

So a mini-gun is a rotary gun that fires a machine gun or rifle-sized round. Guns like the GAU-8 fire 20mm or 30mm CANNON rounds (many, many times bigger). Not all rotary guns that do the “BRRRT” are mini-guns, just the very small ones (hence the name). The A-10’s rotary gun . . . (heh heh) . . . not very small. 😀 😀