The Fighter-Bomber

on September 05, 2017

What do you do if you have to cope with targets both on the ground and in the air? Leaving aside the suggestion of a Flak 88 and a set of ear plugs, we come to the answer of the fighter-bomber. An aircraft fast and agile enough to deal with a dogfight ( assuming that the pilot is incautious enough to get into one ) and big enough and heavy enough to haul bombs and drop them. On the enemy, and preferably a considerable distance from home.

The aircraft has to be rugged, as the business of both aerial combat and ground pounding puts a heavy strain on the airframe. The engine has to be big enough to cope with this weight. The armament...the reason that the whole thing is out there in the first place...has to be precise and effective enough to justify all the other factors that evoke the risk of employing it.

Same with the F/B camera. It has to go to the beach or the race track - to the wedding or gala dinner - and operate with as much speed as the pure fighter. It has to produce the detailed umpty-million-byte file for the studio portrait or product shot. It has to be rugged - physically tough. All day use is a strain. And it has to be repairable, because no matter how it is flown, it will get chunks shot off it from time to time. No good choosing some hangar or workshop queen for regular pro use.

Does it matter how it looks? Not really. Most F/B cameras are going to be black lumps anyway, as are many of their lenses. Oh, you will get some people thrilling over white lenses, graphite bodies, and colour accents wrapped around equipment...but really this makes little difference. Let's face it - the USAAF eventually stopped bothering to paint their Thunderbolts in olive drab and just settled for polishing the bare metal and they did just fine. I don't suppose we will see any full-frame DSLR's in bright silver with invasion stripes but it is a tempting thought...

Aircraft you might want to look up in this class were the Republic Thunderbolt and the Hawker Typhoon. I should also look to the larger full frame Canon, Nikon, and Sony cameras in much the same way. I believe you can get aftermarket racks for 3.5 inch rockets too, if you are shooting weddings...

Featured Image: The Easy Model Thnderbolt D is from Hobbytech, but the rest of the vehicles are from Modelmania in Elizabeth Street, Melbourne. A dangerous place to go, particularly if you have spare time and loose change. The 1:76 vehicles can be nearly as expensive as the ones in larger scales...

BACK TO TOP
x