Peacemaker

by philg

The Wikipedia page on the Pilatus PC-6 short-takeoff-and-landing (STOL) aircraft has an interesting nugget: the “armed gunship” version of what is otherwise a tool for delivering cargo to rough/short strips is called the “Peacemaker.”

7 thoughts on “Peacemaker”

  1. George Orwell in ‘1984’
    “War is peace.
    Freedom is slavery.
    Ignorance is strength.”

  3. Th PC6 is too ugly to mention. Instead, discuss the Pilatus PC21 (+8/-4g, 370kts, outrageously expensive PT6) vs Diamond Dart 450 (+7/-5g, 250kts, cheap Ukrainian APU converted to turboprop). Because what is cooler than ejection seats?

  4. The B-36 was a peacemaker. Doesn’t the marriage industry call itself the peacemaker?

  5. From the wiki:

    Unit cost:

    $55,000 (1962)[2]
    $1,900,000 (2010)[3]

    What accounts for this crazy inflation in the price? Automobiles are only maybe 10x as expensive as in 1962 despite being much improved (air bags, pollution controls, better crash protection, computer control of spark and fuel, etc.) but this is more that 30x.

  6. $55,000 in 1962 would be worth about $400,000 in 2010 according to the BLS’s CPI calculator. So the price has gone up roughly 5X in real terms. That has kind of happened all over the aviation world, except in airliners (I think), and it has definitely been a factor in killing general aviation. I can’t explain it except that building airplanes is more of a craft production than assembly line.

    [Let’s check the airliner situation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_707 says a 707 was $4.3 million in 1955. That’s about $38.5 million today. http://blog.seattlepi.com/aerospace/2009/07/01/how-much-is-a-shiny-new-boeing-737-worth-not-72-million/ says that a Boeing 737 was selling back in 2009 for about $47 million. So the price is pretty close to what a 707 cost.]

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