The Greatest Attack Jet You've Never Heard Of - A-37 Dragonfly - "The Super Tweet"

pretty much everybody already knows about America's gun with wings the A10 warthog and a ton of more people already know that it's grandpa is the original Thunderbolt the P-47 and its dad is the A1 Skyraider but pretty much nobody talks about the a10's mom which is actually where it got the DNA for a nose-mounted minigun today we're talking about the a37 dragonfly aka the super tweet [Music] [Music] ladies and gentlemen that is a 5 000 pound fighter jet carrying 3 000 pounds of Napalm that is literally a ton and a half of Firepower in a very small package and on the off chance at 3 000 pounds of jungle jelly wasn't going to be enough to get the job done it also has a GAO 2 mini gun underneath the hood capable of firing 3 000 rounds per minute the only downside with that was it could only actually carry 1500 rounds with it but hey it's going to be a wild 30 seconds it was okay at best I wasn't talking to you anyways as I was saying before I was rudely interrupted the a37 is the aerial equivalent of a go-kart covered in guns this thing is absolutely tiny to put it into perspective the F4 Phantom which was the other fighter jet used all the time during Vietnam was weighing in at 55 000 pounds and the dragonfly is coming in at five however despite its small stature and the fact that it gets literally no recognition for it at all it is arguably the most effective fighter jet of the entire Vietnam War Once Upon a Time in 1952 the United States Air Force came out and said hey we need to incorporate more Jets into our Fleet the only problem is we don't have any Pilots that actually know how to fly a jet so we need to get a new type of jet trainer plane that we can train all of our pilots on Q the Cessna t-37 it was absolutely perfect it was small cheap easy to take off easy to land super easy to fly and it had side-by-side seating for an instructor and a student this jet was so perfect that it was actually the U.S Air Force's primary jet trainer for 52 years it didn't retire until 2009. the only problem with the t-37 is that it generated a very very high-pitched shrieking noise while it was running thank you that noise unaffectionately earned it nicknames like the Screaming Mimi the six thousand pound dog whistle my personal favorite the converter due to its unique ability to convert fuel into [ __ ] noise and of course the Tweety Bird which would later be abbreviated to Simply the tweet and that's pretty much all you need to know for right now fast forward to Vietnam all right so Vietnam basically the United States is finding out the hard way that Ultra fast fighter jets like the F4 simply are not that great at providing close air support to troops on the ground as it turns out it's pretty hard to aim a bomb while you're traveling at the speed of Mach [ __ ] and actually hit the target who to thunk and as we've talked about in a previous video This is actually where the Navy's A1 Skyraider is performing way better than anybody thought it should due to its ability to fly low and slow and actually engage a Target accurately the Air Force seeing all the Navy's success said hey we need to do the same thing the only problem was the Air Force didn't have skyraiders and they didn't have the time to come up with a whole new plane so what do you do you take the Air Force's t-37 trainer jet that every pilot you've had has been trained on for the last two decades cover it in guns and send that [ __ ] into combat obviously okay obviously they didn't just cover it in guns they also gave it a cool paint job they swapped out the engines gave it a couple of General Electric j85s those are three times more powerful than the original engine and they ran so hot in the dragonfly sat so low to the ground that it would actually melt the asphalt beneath it if it didn't get going once they started it and then also I don't know why I think this is so cool but I do these little nub thingies on the end of the Wings now those are extra fuel tanks each one of those holds 95 gallons of fuel so that it had a better combat range so the Air Force created this badass little fighter jet the only problem now was none of the actual fighter pilots wanted to fly it because it wasn't cool enough it was too small it was too slow blah blah blah so the Air Force was like well I mean technically pretty much every pilot we have has been trained on this thing so [ __ ] it they just started pulling pilots from other places like refuelers Supply cargo pilots everybody and they just started putting them in these little [ __ ] Jets and sending them into combat surely this is a recipe for disaster right wrong the dragon flying it's not fighter pilots would immediately go on a rampage they quickly became the most accurate close air support aircraft in the entire Vietnam conflict their average accuracy was within 45 feet of the designated Target [ __ ] 45 feet doesn't sound very close to me but dude we're not talking about playing darts here this is 3 000 pounds of [ __ ] jungle jelly and white phosphorus believe me the only difference between a bullseye and 45 feet is maybe enough time for you to say oh [ __ ] before you wake up dead Not only was the a37 dragonfly absolutely devastating to the enemy but it was also virtually Untouchable in the most comical way possible you see enemy anti-aircraft Gunners were accustomed to firing at F4 Phantoms traveling at like 1400 miles an hour but when the dragonfly showed up topping out at like 500 miles an hour the enemy anti-aircraft Gunners would always overshoot so the dragonfly Pilots just got to fly and watch all the Flack and [ __ ] explode like five miles in front of them and then they just got to drive right through it after the fact maybe the best example of slow is smooth and smooth as fast I've ever heard which brings us to the second chair in the phallic excavation I mean dick dimple I mean cockpit second chair in the cockpit remember I told you they were side by side one for student one for instructor well in the combat version the dragonfly they didn't need a second pilot or a spotter or anything so the chair just went in empty most of the time because while it was more weight for sticky fire that was until word got out that these planes pretty much never got shot down and then all the bigwigs wanted to go on a ride so they could be in a combat Mission if you're not picking up what I'm putting down I'm trying to tell you that that second seat in the a37s cockpit it's kind of like that chair in the corner of the hotel room it pretty much goes unused and if it is being used whoever's in it's probably just there to watch I cannot believe I made that [ __ ] joke but wait there's more not only is it super accurate not only is it very safe it's also extremely easy to maintain and really cheap the dragonfly has a two to one maintenance ratio meaning that for every hour it's flying it requires two hours of Maintenance this means you can give two dragonflies to a crew of maintainers and they're able to keep one of those birds in the air 24 7 all the time if that's what the mission requires this is the epitome of accuracy by volume so just to be clear when it comes to close air support during Vietnam it is the most accurate the safest and the easiest to maintain aircraft and you get all of that for four hundred thousand dollars and that is exactly why nobody knows about this [ __ ] plane okay if you're not picking up what I'm putting down I'll explain it just a little bit slower the United States military just took a bunch of Pilots with subpar training for the tasks that they were assigned stuck them inside of subpar fighter jets and then sent them into combat and then they somehow outperformed the fighter pilots that had actual fighter pilot training and the enormous super expensive fighter jets now be honest do you really think that the politicians and high-ranking Military Officers that are in charge of budget related [ __ ] Are Gonna Let the world know that absolutely not okay we can't have everybody running around knowing that the Napalm coming out of a 400 000 plane is just as hot as a Napalm coming out of a five million dollar plane it'll be [ __ ] Anarchy as far as the world needs to be concerned the more money we spend to kill a [ __ ] the more dead he is I guess it's [ __ ] stupid so the war in Vietnam ends in the US military cannot get rid of these dragonflies fast enough they are literally giving them out for free like they're [ __ ] candy they're giving some to Australia they're giving some to the South Vietnamese they're given a bunch to the countries in Central America some of the ones that went to Central America are still in service today that shows you how badass This Plane really was so they give away all these perfectly good planes for free but then trouble would strike because now guess what oh no America doesn't have a close air support plane anymore who could have predicted this I guess we better just you know build a new one it's gonna be bigger it's gonna be better the minigun in the nose this time is going to be absolutely enormous and it's all going to come at a price tag of like [ __ ] 20 times as much but hey politicians got to feed their kids somehow right ladies and gentlemen the best thing to ever come out of political corruption the A-10 Warthog AKA America's gun with wings we have now officially come full circle so in conclusion ladies and gentlemen the a37 dragonfly is the most effective fighter jet that you've probably never heard of and it's all because it and the men that flew it were way too good at their job for their price tag thank you for watching the video best way to support the channels go buy some merch at thefatelectrician.com quack bang out you know next time the US government's gonna give away some fighter jets they could at least raffle them off to the taxpayers that paid for him because I'd like a [ __ ] dragonfly all I get is [ __ ] Dragon Balls [Music] [Applause] thank you

Channel: The Fat Electrician

Views: 1,365,126

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Id: CXmgmGLkzA0

Length: 9min 6sec (546 seconds)

Published: Sun May 21 2023