Category: Flying

Stories about flying planes and helicopters, discussions of technique and teaching.

Boeing 767 crash in Miami

by philg

Friends have been asking me to help them understand the recent Boeing 767 crash at KMIA (see “5 dead, 5 injured after Amazon cargo plane overruns runway at MIA, sheriff says” (NBC)).

The plane is reported to have crashed at 1758Z, two minutes before 2 pm Eastern time. Based on recordings at liveatc.net, however, it seems that the crash was closer to 1753Z. Here are the weather reports before and after:

METAR KMIA 061853Z 00000KT 10SM TS SCT025CB SCT070 SCT170 BKN250 29/24 A2993 
SPECI KMIA 061813Z 20012G17KT 10SM TS SCT025CB BKN048 BKN100 BKN250 30/23 A2992
METAR KMIA 061753Z 19017G26KT 10SM TS SCT020CB BKN048 BKN150 BKN250 30/22 A2994 RMK AO2 PK WND 18026/1752 WSHFT 1737 SLP137 TSB12 OCNL LTGICCG E-S TS E-S MOV E CB DSNT NW 
SPECI KMIA 061713Z VRB03KT 10SM TS SCT030CB BKN050 BKN250 32/22 A2992 RMK AO2 TSB12 OCNL LTGICCG S TS S MOV E

Although the closest report to the crash is the 1753Z METAR and the wind was 19017G26KT (from 190 true at 17 knots, gusting 26), shortly after the crash the ATC Tower is heard telling listeners that the wind was only 190 at 8 (source: ATC app, an interesting new service). Depending on which weather report we think was applicable at the moment of the landing, there was a tailwind component of somewhere between 3 and 8 knots on Runway 30 (magnetic 304; true heading of about 300 (Miami magnetic variation is 5W)).

It is unclear why the heavy Boeing was assigned Runway 30, which is only 9360′ long and, due partly to a displaced threshold, has a “landing distance available” (LDA) of 7913′. That’s enough to allow a B767 to land in 60% of the available runway, but doesn’t leave a lot of additional room for error considering the typical final approach speed of 130-140 knots. Runway 27, by contrast, offers nearly 13,000′ of LDA and has more favorable alignment with wind coming from 190.

Typical Florida summertime heavy rain does not seem to have been a factor in this accident, but in any case all of the runways at KMIA are grooved and that’s supposed to prevent hydroplaning (the “dry” braking distance is used for planning even if the runway is actually wet). ATC communications with other aircraft before the accident don’t reveal anything out of the ordinary. The accident aircraft did not declare an emergency or report any issues prior to the accident.

Most runway overruns are caused by excessive energy: too much airspeed and too much altitude. It is tough to dissipate this energy if one lands halfway down the runway at a higher-than-standard groundspeed (remember that kinetic energy varies as speed squared). Why isn’t there a computer in an expensive jet that looks at the GPS position relative to the runway and the groundspeed and shouts “Go Around!” if an overrun seems likely? There is, but not for the typical jet. Airbus ROPS (Runway Overrun Prevention System) was introduced in 2009 on the A380 and has now been extended to the entire family of idiot-proof airliners. It says “Runway Too Short!” if it expects an overrun. Embraer has something similar called Runway Overrun Awareness and Alerting System and deploys it on airliners as well as on the single-pilot Phenom 100 and Phenom 300 personal jets (where “personal” means “affordable for Nvidia and AI company employees”). The Embraer system arrived on the Phenom 300E in 2020 and has a clearer warning: “Overrun; Go Around”. The Europeans are supposedly trying to require that all newly registered airliners have something like this.

Not a great day for aviation and, so far, not enough information to begin to guess at the cause of the accident.

Related:

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Revisiting the new terminal at LaGuardia: awesome outdoor space, but no place to work

by philg

I changed planes between BGR and DJT(!) at LGA the other day. During my 2023 visit (The fancy new terminal at LaGuardia Airport) I didn’t note the awesome outdoor balcony:

Every airport should have this!

Not so great, however, was the lack of public desks at which to work. DJT has at least 100 workstations at which one can sit at a laptop with reasonable ergonomics, plus the laptop into 110V, etc. LGA has chairs with power outlets for aimless scrolling on one’s phone and loungers for even more laziness, but nothing for work other than perhaps in the Delta Sky Club, which is so elite that they don’t sell day passes.

Readers wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t supply photos for a PhD in Masketology. Here are examples of (a) chin diaper, (b) under-nose mask, and (c) surgical mask worn correctly (but still useless due to not being an N95?):

If people feel unsafe after entering a place where 100 percent of the humans have been screened by TSA, Starbucks is a Safe Place:

A full range of Pride gear was for sale (August 22, so still roughly a month before National HIV/AIDS & Aging Awareness Day and Bisexual+ Awareness Week and after Southern HIV/AIDS Awareness Day and Gay Uncles Day (full calendar)). Are these for people who are arriving in NYC and realize that they forgot to pack Pride gear? Or for people who didn’t realize that they were 2SLGBTQQIA+ until they visited NYC for a weekend and need to buy Pride gear before returning home?

Here’s one approach to female modesty that is common in NYC, the niqab:

By contrast, here’s an image that could be considered haram due to the amount of female bare skin on display:

NYC is likely already a predominantly Islamic city as measured by hours spent in religious observance. How long before the people whose idea of proper dress is Image #1, above, vote to forbid the female outfits in Image #2? Maybe an adult in a niqab can tolerate this shameless display of flesh, but would she want her children to be exposed to this kind of lifestyle?

Let me close by pointing out a triumph of operations research. There are two UP escalators (from the gates) and one DOWN (to the gates), presumably because someone figured out that people are more likely to arrive in a big group (plane pulls in) than they are to depart in a big group.

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Royal Air Force Red Arrows at Oshkosh

by philg

This was the first year that the UK’s Red Arrows appeared at EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”). It’s a quiet understated elegant display compared to what the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds put on and they fly the BAE Systems Hawk, a single-engine jet trainer from the 1970s. The Red Arrows have a “trademark Diamond Nine shape” but for whatever reason only 6 or 7 of them were able to fly at Oshkosh, depending on the day (during one show, a Hawk had to return to land due to a missing gas cap).

Who are the pilots? They appear to all be “legacy Britons” with names such as “Jon Bond” and “Rob Thomas”. As Keir Starmer pointed out (while wearing a mask, of course!), “Our nation’s diversity is one of its greatest strengths” (maybe when our copies of Jason Arday‘s autobiography show up we will learn that Prof. Dr. Arday, Ph.D. was at one time a Red Arrows pilot, which is certainly easier than running 30 marathons in 35 days):

Here’s the whole routine:

What else was interesting at the air shows? Jared Isaacman put the “Admin” in NASA Administrator by zooming around in his personal MiG-29:

In other “Don’t mess with NASA” news, the agency also brought one of its F/A-18s and also an F-15:

The Wisconsin National Guard was pathetic this year compared to 2025 in which they’d fire off a 155mm artillery round every 15 seconds. They also didn’t bring their tanker. Maybe the artillery rounds had to be shipped out to Ukraine and the tanker went to our surrender-slowly-to-Iran project? Fortunately, we haven’t had to turn over our Goodyear Blimps yet:

Check out the killer tail number:

Let’s definitely not give N1A to the Iranians!

Traffic after the evening air show wasn’t fun, so maybe stop at SOS Brothers for refreshments and music rather than being in the middle of a Ceuta-style wave of humans:

Legal filings from the 2019 dispute also give some of the history between EAA and the brothers:

In 1996, Winnebago County took 1.2 acres of land from the brothers through an eminent domain land acquisition. The move was part of the federally sanctioned Airport Improvement Program to increase the space between EAA crowds and air show flights.

The brothers sued after the county later turned the land over to EAA, which began using it for its own concessions. The county and state paid a combined $800,000 to settle the lawsuit.

Circling back (so to speak) to the Red Arrows, here are Jason Arday’s official portraits as a team member:

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Graham Platner’s next job: airline pilot (First Class FAA Medical while 100% disabled according to the VA)

by philg

Graham Platner was able to farm oysters, run for Senate, and have sex with every progressive female in Maine while receiving a disability pension from the Veterans Administration for 100% disability. What’s next for this noble fighter for river-to-the-sea liberation? How about airline pilot, a job that requires a First Class medical certificate from a Federal Aviation Administration medical examiner. Is it possible to be 100% disabled under the standards of one government agency, and receive a share of the $150+ billion that the VA pays out for disability, and 0% disabled under the standards of a sibling government agency? The answer, we learned at Oshkosh, is a resounding “Yes!”

Here’s a booth of specialists who help with the magic:

We also stopped by the Graham Platner Veterans Administration Service Center in Wisconsin (100% of parking spaces marked in blue):

What else was worth seeing among the vendors? I liked WingTent, despite the fact that it won’t work for us low-wingers:

“With standard wheels, the [16 lb.] WingTent can produce an enclosure that is approximately 220 sq ft. at the base”

On the back of a truck and sadly not for sale:

Here’s a bizarre one: Flare Bourbon. Covidcrats in all of the lockdown states deemed alcohol “essential”, but should a group of pilots get together and make booze?

My vote for best vendor ad:

For about $220, I was able to purchase a “women owned” banana (Aviator’s Club North):

I purchased a T-shirt from the NGPA:

And, of course, for fans of Christopher Nolan’s latest magnum opus, the best product of all on display at Oshkosh:

A Greek guy reviews the film that is named after the minivan:

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Boring, but important: Piston engine oil and leaded gasoline talks at Oshkosh

by philg

I dragged a friend to a Phillips 66 talk at the Lycoming pavilion and we found that Phillips 66 had dragged out a team of four experts, including the company’s top “scientist” in this domain, to answer questions from piston peasants.

What did we learn? A preference for straight weight 100W is purely superstitious and, even in a reliably warm climate such as Florida’s, it is smarter to use Phillips XC 20W-50 (bizarrely, the “50” in the multiweight and the “100” refer to the same “SAE 50” spec for viscosity at higher temperatures).

If you have a Lycoming engine, you should definitely use the “Victory” version of Phillips, which is preblended with a Lycoming-recommended anti-wear additive. For Continental owners, the representatives who were present leaned toward either the Victory version or XC plus CamGuard if the plane isn’t flown frequently.

Since every group needs at least one obnoxious person, I asked “You have a huge team of PhD scientists. All that CamGuard has is a snake. Why can’t you put something in the oil that will prevent corrosion for a plane that doesn’t fly regularly?” Unlike America’s Greatest Scientist, the chief scientist at Phillips 66’s oil division did not invoke the 5th Amendment. He answered that corrosion is an almost undefeatable enemy. There is always some water in the oil, even if a plane is based in the Arizona desert and even if the owner puts a Drybot in the filler tube (sadly, suitable only for T hangar royalty; those of us in shared hangars can’t expect the line guys to keep unplugging it and plugging it back in when the aircraft is moved). There is thus no substitute for flying regularly (“at least monthly”, but of course weekly is better).

What about the FAA-industry dream of unleaded gasoline in 1950s engines? So far, there isn’t a great one-fuel-fits-all solution. Patrick Ealy, a master’s student at University of North Dakota, gave a talk about capturing the lead out of the exhaust stream (about 40 minutes in; the first part of the talk is more about how aviation 100LL is falsely accused of being a significant contributor to America’s falling average IQ; he points out that even “unleaded” car gasoline has some naturally occurring lead in it and there are a lot more ground vehicles out there burning dinosaur blood than there are piston aircraft).

Related:

  • “Unleaded fuel takes center stage at AirVenture” (AOPA): “the FAA plans to release new versions of the transition plan after each phase. … The first phase includes authorizing fuels and doing comparison testing. … The third and fourth phases focus on the wide-scale transition—first in the Lower 48, with a goal of completing the work by 2030, followed by Alaska two years later.” (for the Cirrus SR20 with IO-360-ES engine… no unleaded fuel is approved by Cirrus, though GAMI G100UL is approved for this engine/airframe by the FAA)
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Celebration of the B-1 Bomber (BONE) at Oshkosh

by philg

One of the talks at Oshkosh (EAA AirVenture) that we enjoyed was by Kenneth Katz, author of The Supersonic Bone: A Development and Operational History of the B-1 Bomber, John Chilstrom (B-1 pilot), and Fred Swan (B-1 Wizzo).

They reminded us that the B-52, which first flew in 1952, was considered a temporary aircraft that would hold us until we had a full fleet of supersonic bombers. The requirements that turned into the B-1 (“B-ONE” or “Bone”) were first set forth in 1955. The B-1 evolved so slowly, changing from a very fast high-altitude machine to a barely-supersonic low-altitude machine, that Jimmy Carter, running for office in 1976, was able to promise to strangle it in its crib. During the Carter administration, the USAF managed to continue some testing of the prototype B-1s against Russian radar systems that Israel had captured in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. (Oshkosh is pretty much the opposite of New York City; speakers referred to “our friends in Israel” when mentioning various forms of military cooperation, e.g., Israel providing the U.S. with MiG fighters to seed a secret training and testing squadron in Nevada. Nobody enthuses about river-to-the-sea liberation, Queers for Palestine, or anything else that is sacred in the Mamdani Caliphate.) The B-1s got through much better than the B-52s.

The machine that first flew in 1974 (more than 50 years ago) is still in use today, e.g., as part of our gradual surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran (maybe Jimmy Carter was right; he surrendered to Iran in 1979 and if our foreign policy is to surrender to anyone tougher than Grenada then why do we need the B-1 or, indeed, an air force?).

The WSO (“Wizzo”) talked about bombing Iraq in 1973. Bombs and missiles are loaded into a rotating carousel and if conditions change, e.g., someone thinks there is a chance to drop a particular bomb on Saddam’s head, it is necessary to jettison other items in order to get to the desired munition. Here’s how this is loaded up:

A couple of B-1s made low passes, but none stopped to visit this year (2018 was the last time?).

It was common in airshows and talks at Oshkosh for those who’ve served in our military to be praised. Of course, a percentage of these folks exhibited remarkable bravery and took significant risks. Guess who didn’t receive any praise, though? The taxpayers who made it possible for the machines on display to be designed, built, and operated! Eighty percent of federal income tax receipts come from roughly 20 million tax returns (Tax Foundation). Even assuming that over half of these are joint returns, that’s just 10 percent of the U.S. population that is dumb enough to work and pay significant tax. Would it be so difficult to say “If you paid tax on more than $150,000 in income last year, thank you for your service and for enabling us to have F-35s, F-22s, B-1s, aircraft carriers, and all of the other amazing stuff that we’ve been using as part of our surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran”? Speaking of the F-22, here’s one parked at the FBO:

Circling back, so to speak, to the B-1… what is a likely role for the aircraft in a world of ever-more-advanced drones?

How much do attendees at Oshkosh love bombers? Have a look at the simulated bombs that are an essential part of every airshow at EAA AirVenture:

Somewhat related,

“The destruction of Germany’s great war industries was accomplished almost entirely from the air. No one can stand among their ruins without a feeling of awe for the devastating power of such attacks. The courage and skill of our pilots and their crews in these operations is legendary. They deserve the highest tribute of our people.”

— The Honorable Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War

Found on the cover of a book about the B-24 at the Aeromart within EAA AirVenture:

(We seem to have chosen the opposite approach with the Islamic Republic of Iran, i.e., allow them to continue as an industrial power and ask them nicely not to use their industry to make weapons.)

Boeing now takes credit for the B-1B, which was entirely developed and built by North American Rockwell. Boeing lost the design competition circa 1970 and acquired Rockwell in 1996, 22 years after the B-1’s first flight. What else does Boeing take credit for? At the Boeing pavilion’s gift shop, the Black Americans who won World War II:

ChatGPT, regarding the Tuskegee Airmen:

  • the display in your photograph is best understood as modern corporate and cultural messaging
  • they did not fly Boeing aircraft operationally (the Stearman was used for primary training, though)
  • No Tuskegee Airman officially qualified as an ace during World War II (vs. 1,279 non-Tuskegee pilots)
  • The group encountered enemy aircraft on only 35 of its 179 Fifteenth Air Force bomber-escort missions, partly because it entered that campaign relatively late, as German fighter opposition was declining.

Elsewhere on the field, we are informed that the “fearless” pilots who fly the B-29, an actual Boeing plane, were not the men who plowed through 16 hours of thunderstorms round-trip to Japan, but rather “fearless women” who operated the B-29 over the Continental U.S.

ChatGPT:

Many male test pilots, instructors and crews were already flying the B-29. [Enola Gay pilot Paul] Tibbets himself trained the women, and a male instructor or aircraft commander was involved in their qualification. The aircraft could not have been developed, tested and fielded otherwise.

The reluctance concerned a troublesome new aircraft, not a universal refusal by men to undertake danger.

The women were selected partly because Tibbets expected the gender comparison to embarrass reluctant male crews. The stunt depended upon the period’s assumption that a man ought to be ashamed if a woman undertook a flying risk he avoided.

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Elizabeth Warren’s Stinson at Oshkosh

by philg

Here’s a Stinson that was disabled by an engine failure over the Red Lake Nation, a dream environment for a progressive (“the only fully “closed reservation” in the United States of America. In a closed reservation, all land is held in common by the tribe and there is no private property.”). The plane belonged for about seven months to Elizabeth Warren before AOPA and the FAA finally persuaded the tribe to return it to Darrin Smedsmo, below:

Here’s the AOPA story:

Smedsmo says he called AOPA “within minutes,” and connected with Deputy General Counsel Jared Allen, who started working immediately to help Smedsmo navigate the situation. … Allen met with Smedsmo and his attorneys at least once a week for months, and shared updates with the FAA. Meanwhile, in December, AOPA sent a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy urging them to intervene.

If you want to preserve access to airports and, apparently, emergency landing areas, this would be a great time to sign up for lifetime AOPA membership!

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The most beautiful warbird at Oshkosh this year (PBY Catalina)

by philg

Fresh out of a 7-year restoration in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, this sub-killing PBY Catalina is my pick for the most beautiful warbird of EAA AirVenture 2026:

(Also a very welcome sight in 1945 for sailors from the USS Indianapolis who were abandoned to exposure in the Pacific Ocean.)

The 35,000+ lb. plane belongs to the American Heritage Museum in Maskachusetts (their press release), but will live for a year at the EAA Museum in Oshkosh. Some details on the plane’s history:

Credit to the folks in New Smyrna Beach, Florida who handled the 7-year restoration:

In other seaplane news, as soon as we got to the EAA Seaplane Base, a 30,000+ lb. Grumman Albatross flew over our heads and splashed down. A bit later, a Grumman Mallard took off and then did a fly-by:

We encountered the plane on wheels a few hours later, back at KOSH, and the owner invited our boys to climb up into the cockpit and then down through a tunnel into the bow:

Any other fun warbirds? A Boeing B-52 in Boeing Plaza next to the Boeing pavilion:

A couple of B-1s flew by. Some additional aggression, but apparently not enough to stave off surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran:

The A-26 Invader and Al Franken:

EAA AirVenture also has some hardware related to potential civil war. Suppose, for example, that Ayatollah Mamdani’s Red Guards come to your house to arrest you for being part of the bourgeoisie. You might be able to flee down I-95 in the $465,000 BEC Defense Renegade APC, built on a Ford F-600 4×4 chassis:

It’s perfect for “family protection”:

If you prefer speed to armor, Piper is ready with a Corvette:

(Parked in front of the “Fury” makes sense since anyone in South Florida would be furious that this isn’t at least a Z06 version. 495 horsepower is insufficient for the trip to Publix.)

Just don’t try to flee the Mamdani Caliphate in a Joby. As in previous years, they showed up with something that does everything except fly:

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Will Amazon be the dominant commercial drone company?

by philg

“EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2026 introduces Vertical Lift Center, offering focal point for rotorcraft and vertical lift technology”:

Rotorcraft and vertical lift technology will be the featured highlights at the new EAA Vertical Lift Center to be unveiled during EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2026. The 73rd Experimental Aircraft Association fly-in convention is July 20-26 at Wittman Regional Airport.

As announced at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2025, this area will feature an emphasis on helicopters and VTOL aircraft as part of a partnership with the Robinson Helicopter Company and Vertical Aviation International (VAI), a membership organization dedicated to supporting the vertical lift industry. The dedicated space within AirVenture’s Aviation Gateway Park will display aircraft as well as promote rotorcraft education, industry recruitment, and innovative technology in the vertical lift industry.

“The future of flight is vertical, and EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh is an ideal stage to sponsor and showcase the innovation happening across our industry, from traditional rotorcraft to the next generation of piloted, remotely piloted and unmanned systems,” said David Smith, President and CEO of Robinson Helicopter and sponsor of the inaugural Vertical Lift Center at AirVenture 2026. “As the demand for skilled engineers, A&P mechanics, and test pilots reaches an all-time high, Robinson is committed to supporting education and careers across vertical lift. We encourage everyone to visit the Vertical Lift Center to discover how these advancements are shaping the next era of flight and how they can become a part of it.”

Robinson, under new MIT-educated leadership, seems to be making dramatic project in autonomous aircraft. Who’s going even faster, though? The hurry-up-and-deliver crew at Amazon Prime Air (Wokipedia seems to be understating the scale of this enterprise):

All of the FAA regulatory hurdles that are impossible to surmount Amazon seems to have surmounted, e.g., operating Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS, for which Amazon got approval in 2024). The company is building its own airframes, its own engines, its own software, and then is operating its own Part 135 cargo airline. This is a throwback to the old days of Boeing, before President FDR broke it up into airframes (Boeing), engines (Pratt), and airline (United). (Bill Boeing quit at this point and became a developer of racially segregated suburban real estate.) The FAA seems to be trying to encourage a whole industry in this area, but among the vendors at Oshkosh, Amazon appeared to be way out in front. The guys in the booth said more than 1,000 drones were currently in operation and that the assembly line is capable of producing mroe than 1,000 additional drones per year.

Could a human pilot do what the Amazon drone does? It would be unfair to ask a human to drop a Blackhawk into a driveway surrounded by trees, but suppose that we gave a Robinson R44 pilot the same amount of open space relative to machine size. Could the R44 pilot go straight down, avoiding obstacles and vortex ring state, push a package out the side, and lift back up? Theoretically, yes, but to do it 50 times per day every day would require a remarkably high level of proficiency, not to mention a ton of power! (Helicopters are most efficient when taking off and landing like airplanes, ironically.)

What’s the planned scale for Amazon? April 2026 article:

Jassy said Prime Air service will be able to serve communities with 30 million customers by the end of the year, with a much wider catalog of goods to choose from, and is expected to annually deliver 500 million packages by the end of the decade in under 30 minutes. The ability to scale up drone deliveries is possible now because of more than 85 same-day fulfillment centers that carry Amazon’s top 90,000 products and serve as launch pads for the autonomous delivery vehicles.

Does anyone need this? Consumers in China already experience something similar, though delivery is mostly by scooter. I was surprised during a 2019 visit to Shanghai at the lack of any stores like CVS and also at the absence of supermarkets. It turned out that everyone was getting everything delivered in about the same amount of time that it would have taken them to walk to CVS and back.

Amazon has competition in this area, of course. Zipline is one and they’ve supposedly done a couple of million deliveries, but the product that they brought to Oshkosh didn’t seem as finished as Amazon’s. Wing, part of Alphabet/Google, has a similar system to Zipline’s in that the main drone stays up in the sky while a sub-drone is lowered by cable. The Amazon solution seems cleaner and a better fit for suburban American life. The “longline” idea does seem to open up the possibility of deliveries to tighter spaces, e.g., within the Mamdani Caliphate or San Francisco, but how can it work to deliver high-value packages autonomously in those places given the number of package thieves?

The barriers to entry for creating human-occupied eVTOL “super drones” seem to be remarkably low right now. Some truly tiny companies, e.g., with only 10 engineers, were exhibiting. Below is a sampling of some of the human lifters.

Here’s a hybrid from France (reclaiming the country’s early leadership in aviation!) with two hours of flight time:

Here’s one from Korea, apparently sized for Koreans:

We’re informed that everything good that happens in Britain is thanks to non-British immigrants, but the team at Skyfly has a distinctly pale appearance:

Their product had an encouraging finished look (the potential customer in the red pants, however, like she might be a better fit for a Cirrus SR22):

Jump Aero was exhibiting in a separate tent. This company, founded by a co-founder of Terrafugia (a flying car), offers a practical use case for human-occupied eVTOL: deliver a paramedic to the scene of an accident.

What about Robinson, the sponsor of all of the above? If we ever decide that we want to win a war, rather than almost immediately surrendering, Robinson is there with an autonomous R66 that can deliver ammo to a beleagured hilltop.

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A Navy of seaplanes for a world of drones and hypersonic missiles

by philg

One of the many interesting talks at EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”) 2026 was by James Schreiber, a U.S. Navy veteran-turned-IBM-patent-lawyer with a passion for seaplanes.

First, there is no reason that seaplanes can’t be part of a modern navy. The ShinMaywa US-2 is a four-engine monster with tremendous range in service with Japan (source):

Here’s the radius of search and rescue action:

Contrary to what we tell MIT students, a seaplane actually can land in real waves (up to about 10′ in this case):

(If the Canadians weren’t sending so many of their tax dollars to Hamas, they could have purchased water bombing versions of this magnificent 120,000+ lb. beast and preserved U.S. air quality.)

We learned that one of the most interesting periods of our U.S. Navy was the 1950s. The USAF had gained ascendancy in government and the doctrine was to destroy our enemies via strategic bombing from land-based airplanes, such as the then-new B-52 (considered a short-term solution at the time, a stopgap until the glorious age of supersonic bombers), and ballistic missiles. The Navy’s funding requests for new aircraft carriers were denied and, thus, the Navy tacked (so to speak) toward submarines and sea-based airplanes. The Navy had designs for jet-powered fighters, bombers, and transport seaplanes. The Convair F2Y Sea Dart is the most famous example, a supersonic fighter that first flew in 1953. For raining down destruction on our enemies (back when we actually wanted to win wars!), the Martin P6M SeaMaster first flew in 1955. For moving troops and vehicles from harbor to harbor, the Convair R3Y Tradewind, which first flew in 1954 (a little heavier than the above-mentioned Japanese seaplane and, therefore, potentially even better for our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters trying to fight fires in Canada with whatever funding scraps they have left over from serving as the Palestinians’ logistics arm).

Part of the 1950s rationale for a fleet of sea-based aircraft was that they’d be more challenging for the enemy to find and target than runways and monster-sized aircraft carriers. Perhaps that rationale is even more, uh, rational today? Let’s consider our gradual surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran (can’t be called a “war” because we apparently don’t have any ambition of winning, in which winning would be defined as destroying the Islamic Republic’s oil and electricity industries so that they wouldn’t be able to rebuild and run weapons factories). The ships of the Iranian Navy that were larger than an aircraft were quickly destroyed by the U.S. On our side, our fixed bases, such as Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, have proved vulnerable to Iranian missiles.

Readers: What do you think about resurrecting the 1950s idea?

An awesome T-shirt from the Seaplane Pilots Association (not in their online shop yet):

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