Tilt Rotor Aircraft

...but, WHEN are we gonna dump the spinning propellors and fly soley on jet exhaust?

There is this family of planes.

My first job as a Co-op 30 years ago was working on a series of 8 maintenance trainers for the AV-8B Harrier for the US Marines.

Quite an interesting aircraft....and loud too!!

Loud doesn't even approach the reality of that beast. And they seemed to like to fly them out of Bagram around 0200 when I was trying to sleep in a tent about a half mile away.

The aircraft that came into service a few years after I did, and only fairly recently retired. Politics again!!

A wonderful design of aircraft....and very advanced for its time.........

The US marines are probably still using them (as far as I know?)

Makes me wonder how much flight time you can get out of the wing structure.

Thanks for the additional information!

There's a tool for every job.

Amen! We depended on SH3-A's to keep overboard watch over the four quadrants of the carrier, active and passive sonar and 300# depth charges if necessary, day or night, rain or shine for hours, at altitude's that give little time to react. We and one casualty in the four years, due to an ASE (automatic stabilization equipment) malfunction, but the crew made it out thanks to another SH3.

Also your antique Sh-t hook is faster and more dependable than almost all of the new choppers designed and as you say the UH-1 can come in hot, flare, and unload almost in no time and the troops learn very fast that they can survive a few extra feet of dropping out of the chopper to get to the ground faster. There are a few military craft that when they built them they "Got it Right the First Time". The A1-Sky raider, the Huey Cobra, the B-52, and the venerable Chinook are just a few that if they built them new today they would still be workhorses. Just think what they could do if they used today's technology to upgrade them now.

Rich Hurd

RVN 1970-1971

Ospreys are a tool for a job. But the Marines adaptation of the Lockheed Martin F-22 is totally awesome:

That's the F-35, not the F-22.

You are correct obviously, my bad, the Raptor is cool too but a different tool for a different job with no vertical takeoff or landing.

There was another way 60 years ago - the Fairey Rotodyne. It was a noisy beast. I lived about 7 miles away from the Fairey Aviation airfield at White Waltham as a schoolboy and frequently heard it taking off and landing - it sounded like a giant steam train approaching when the rotor tip pressure jets were ignited. Even in the 1950's it could fly at around 200 mph with up to 65 passengers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9633v6U0wo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJqcVVnk3DM

Impressive, the first video shows a landing in a twenty knot wind. The only drawback, based on the videos is area required on ground. What happened to this design?

You can look it up on Wikipedia, but basically, no military orders were forthcoming with which to finance further development and no orders from British European Airways (B.E.A.), so it got cancelled. They were getting the noise problem solved, but it wasn't to be. The usual vacillation, politics, lack of money, lack of orders, fear of something new ....... etc. Terrible shame.