The Official, Unofficial Story Of The A-10 as heard while enlisted in the USAF

Floz wrote 05/16/2015 at 01:26 • 2 points

The unofficial story of the A-10 Warthog, a very cool amalgam of technology begins with GE.  Yes, General Electric, they bring good, and sometimes dangerous things to life.  You see, they built an amazing chaingun cannon.  This gun chews through a tank as easily as any infantry troop can shoot through a canvas-topped truck.  (btw, I don't know for certain that GE is actually responsible for this chaingun)

They took it to the USMC, who said, "It's certainly big, loud, and deadly.  We like all three of those... but it might be too big...  It won't fit on any of our existing planes without causing them to crash... no thanks, try the Navy."  

The Navy reply read, "We already are fully equipped for antiaircraft and ship-to-shore artillery, and these are too big for anything else.  Try the Army?".  

The Army tried the weapon.  They bolted this absolutely massive chaingun cannon that drinks ammo like water and chews armor for fun to a tracked chassis.  It flipped over too easily, scaring the test gunner into demanding a remote fire-controller.  Following this entertaining incident, their recommendation was "Maybe the bus drivers can use it.".  These poor lost GE sales folks then visit an Air Force base.  Upon demonstrating the cannon for their developers, they received the following response...

"Leave it here in the hanger, we'll build a plane around it."

After many further months of design and wind-tunnel testing, it was determined that once a pilot was strapped into a titanium bathtub, hooked to control surfaces of ridiculous proportions, armored to survive flying through a warzone... With this amazing chaingun cannon and a small ammo salvo, they realized there was an issue.  It was too heavy to fly.  Pondering this problem, an engineer steps outside for a breath of fresh air (or a smoke?) and watches a KC-135 fuel tanker taxi, then take off.

"What if we used two of those engines... they're not terribly big, and they make a load of power."

Thus was born one of the most frightening aircraft to face from the ground... the A-10 Warthog.  That eerie engine-howl going over, that means he didn't want to unleash the devils can-opener on you.

I heard this story from an avionics tech I was stationed with years ago.  It stuck in my memory as a good tall-tale for a very cool piece of tech.