Talk:Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II

Unusual feature mentioned at GAU-8_Avenger -- the front landing gear are offset to accomodate the large main gun. Is the A-10 the only aircraft that has this feature? And which side?

The gun is offset to port (with the firing barrel, at the starboard-most position, being on the centre line). Presumably then the nosewheel is offset to starboard.

The part about the Clinton administration being paranoid seems rather NPOV. Perhaps it should be removed? Berrik

Agreed with Berrik. Also it may be noted that for instance Swedish UN soldisrs on the ground benefited from having the A-10's available on call. The intimidating power of airborne support is quite good when the other side does not know what the ROE are for the planes. --J-Star 11:21, 2004 Nov 15 (UTC)

I agree that the current phrasing may be more POV than required, but I don't agree with complete removal; that restrictive ROE limited the plane's usefulness in that conflict may well be true. We should probably do what we normally should do when expressing a point of view: find someone who said that and quote them. —Morven 18:18, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

Friendly Fire

The article mentions two friendly fire incidents. However, I remember another; two A-10s attacked a refugee camp (with UN guards) on the border of Albania, in front of TV cameras. However, I don't remember any detals. --Ahruman 2005-04-04

Deletion revert

An anon removed large chunks of this article for no reason that I could see. I reverted that deletion since the information that was removed was correct as far as I am aware and appropriate for inclusion in the article. Kelly Martin 03:33, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

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Does anyone have copyright free pictures of the HUD area that show the two meters on either side of the screen? I believe that design is a problem unique to the A10 and is responsible for crashes including Captain Button's.

You can reach me at http://VisionAndPsychosis.Net. The related material is on the Captain Button page.

Gun picture

That doesn't do justice to the gun. There's nothing for a size comparison.

You look at the picture, and you think "cool, it's a 7-barrel gatling gun". It looks like any common 50-caliber gun... except that it's a huge beast of a gun. The face of that thing is about as big as a human head, but from the picture you might guess it to be only 3 inches (7cm) across. The picture might as well be the gun of an Apache; it looks no bigger without something to compare against.

The ammo is crazy big too. The bullets are about 4 inches long, or about 12 inches when you include the casing.

BTW, the length of the gun should be mentioned. According to my fading memory, the gun is 23 feet long. It runs the length of the plane.

24.110.60.225 05:56, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, the gun and its ammo drum is bigger than a Volkswagon Beetle. I've got a picture of it next to a VW but I'm not sure about the copyright laws. David Ayton 13:19, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Development history

So we have half a page on A-10 in video games and not a single word on its design and development history? What gives? There is plenty to tell about the engineering innovations and the political obstacles (e.g. the flyoff against A-7). The A-10 is a bit too new for my interests but perhaps someone would be up to the task? - Emt147 ^Burninate! 07:01, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Fixed up a bit. Guapovia 15:29, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

• It's a start. Thanks for your help! - Emt147 ^Burninate! 00:44, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Television, films and video games

This section needs to be seriously trimmed. This is an article about an aircraft, not about computer games. The information like movie scene summaries and what attacks computer game units can do is totally irrelevant to the A-10. I will move the entire section out to a separate page unless there's a good reason for it to stay. Anyone? - Emt147 ^Burninate! 05:30, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I take the total lack of responses to be a consensus. The pop culture stuff was moved to A-10 Thunderbolt II in popular culture. - Emt147 ^Burninate! 05:56, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

need information source of "whispering death" nickname

"The A-10 has received several nicknames from its enemies. In the first Gulf war 1991, captured Iraqi tankcrews called it: "Whispering Death" (a nickname that has also been attributed to the WW2 Bristol Beaufighter). In the 2003 defeat of conventional Iraqi forces, captured Fedayeens referred to the A-10 as "the Devil's Cross" a name that was also used for it in Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising (1986). Captured Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters referred to it as 'the silent gun'. The rounds hit their target before the target heard the report of the gunfire" Is there a valid source for what it appears to be politically incorrect propaganda?, i mean we know that in middle east they are somewhat backwards, but to be as backwards to call a plane "whispering death"?... its not like they would call a train iron horse either.

I highly suspect that this is propaganda or soldier stories. The name "whispering death" has been attributed to Corsair and Beaufighter as well and AFAIK there is no historical evidence whatsoever that it was actually used by the enemies. The same goes for "the Devil's cross," particularly seeing how Tom Clancy used the term 5 years prior and I suspect US servicemen read Clancy more than Taliban fighters. I will pull it until someone can come up with references. - Emt147 ^Burninate! 00:12, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

In the first Gulf war 1991, captured Iraqi tankcrews called it: "Whispering Death" (a nickname that has also been attributed to the WW2 Bristol Beaufighter). In the 2003 defeat of conventional Iraqi forces, captured Fedayeens referred to the A-10 as "the Devil's Cross" a name that was also used for it in Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising (1986). (pulled text, - Emt147 ^Burninate! 00:13, 2 February 2006 (UTC))

I'd heard that 'Whispering Death' was the Nickname the NVA, and VC gave the F-111. I personally doubt that we captured many men in the Gulf Wars who were attacked, because many surrendered before that happened, and many who didn't were just plain dead. LWF 22:34, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Here's one ref that makes the "whispering death" claim: http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/iraqifreedom/annasiriyah/default.aspx It doesn't sound insulting or backward to me by the way. I think you are reading too much into it.

One man with no credentials to speak of made an unreferenced and uncited claim, probably because he heard it from someone else. I will revert all "whispering deaths" with a vengeance unless someone can present an actual source for this. It's a myth that has been perpetuated for different aircraft since at least World War II because it sounds cool and makes for a good story. There is no truth that I know of behind it. Beaufighter and Corsair had large non-turbocharged radial engines with straight exhausts. F-111 runs on two massive afterburning turbofans. A-10 again runs on turbofans and has the aerodynamics of a school bus. Whispering my ass. The only airplane I know of from WW2-to-present time period that could be genuinely quiet is a P-38 Lightning at slow cruise because the large turbos very much muffle the engines and the aircraft is aerodynamically clean. And yet, no one ever claimed P-38 to be called that. - Emt147 ^Burninate! 00:03, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Picture shift

I am going to shift around some of the pictures around to make this look cleaner, unless anyone has any objections in the next week or so. Cornell Rockey 02:54, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Done and done. the pictures removed were: Image:Thunderbolt.a10.fairford.arp.jpg & Image:Thunderbolt.a10.closeup.fairford.arp.jpg

Cornell Rockey 14:36, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Frankly, it could probably do with more pictures being removed (as long as they’re in the Commons gallery, which all except Image:Thunderbolt_II_flight.jpg and Image:2seatwarthog.jpg seem to be). -Ahruman 18:25, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Those two pictures I removed were the least attractive, and I guess I'm partial to more stunning photographs. Honestly, Commons has a ton of A-10 pictures, & I'm tempted to nominate those two for deletion to cut the burden on wiki servers. Cornell Rockey 14:32, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Guys, you are much too keen to remove perfectly good photos. Have you realised that the two ground pics are the only two pics of the aircraft on the ground and might well be the sort of pic a reader wants for a project or homework or whatever? Is it up to you to make that judgement? Just present a variety of pics (including ground ones!) and let the reader decide.

To say the reader can go to Commons to see them is not being thoughtful to the reader. We should not force them to change to another site to see pics if the article has plenty of room for them.

There's no reason to put them up for deletion because I've read many times that the pics and text of WP occupy less than the hard drive capacity of a modern home computer. The poor speeds we see on WP are not due to that - Adrian Pingstone 12:43, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

No metion of JAAT

There is no metion of JAAT, (joint air attack team), in which attack helicopters and A-10s work together. The attack helicopters shoot at the air defences, and the A-10s attack the ground vehicles. It is supposed to be more effective than the two different aircraft attacking independent of one another. It has also been called JAWS, (joint air weapon system). 204.80.61.10 19:45, 2 May 2006 (UTC)Bennett Turk

Will need a citation or source. I'm not personally familiar so I can't comment on it. --Mmx1 16:58, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Wing torn off...don't think so

this quote in the aricle:

"The aircraft is designed to fly with one engine and a wing torn off"

sounds ridiculous, I believe the one engine down capability but flying with half your wings equals crash and burn time. I don't know what to change there (maybe the correct statement should say somthing about the ability to maintain flight with sever wing damage or something to that effect) so I'll just leave this statement to spur the correct revisions. J Shultz 19:56, 29 April 2006 (UTC)