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0:00 - Introduction
2:04 - The mission behind the carriers
4:19 - First attempts at building them
8:39 - Choosing the carrier craft
12:55 - Building the parasite fighter
18:13 - How would it work inside the carrier?
22:23 - How the flying carrier would be used
25:44 - What happened to flying carriers?

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The INSANE history of FLYING AIRCRAFT CARRIERS

in 1983 the Soviets shot down a 747 carrying 269 people.., men women and children. Their excuse, that it was an American top secret spy plane.

A unforgivable, horrible mistake… but as it turns out, the Americans were planning to turn a 747 into just that... a top secret, weapon of mass destruction.

High above the Indian ocean flies an insane new aircraft.

What looked like a simple Boeing 747 is quickly revealed to be much more. Ten small parasite fighter interceptors launch from the bays and fly forward, engaging in enemy aircraft and securing the local airspace.

And then like their arrival, they vanish into the middle of the ocean - starting the new age of flying carrier aircraft.

Airborn Aircraft Carriers would allow fighter jet sorties to get into the action in one third of time of a battle group, carry more firepower than a ground-based fighter squadron, and be used for everything from bomber defense, deep strike attacks or interception. It was such a revolutionary concept that air force predicted that it would make sea-based aircraft carriers obseulte by the year 2000.

But what you might not know, is that this 747 concept isn’t the only design…

Both Lockheed and Boeing were given the impossible challenge to make a mothership aircraft and design an advanced fighter jet that could go toe to toe with russias best, and keep the entire project top secret.

This is the incredible tale to build the worlds most insane weapon - the flying aircraft carrier!

In the fall of 1973, the US government commissioned an impressive study called “INVESTIGATION OF A -MICRO-FIGHTER /AIRBORNE AIRCRAFT CARRIER CONCEPT”

and boy this is a long and detailed document with strategies, plans for operation, alternative nuclear-powered prototypes and a heck of a lot more

The study had three objectives
Decide on the carrier craft
Choose the parasite aircraft that would go inside them
And how the airborn aircraft carrier would be used in Europe, the Middle East and the Indian Ocean.

The first, choosing the actual carrier aircraft, was harder than you might think.

Flying Aircraft carriers were not a new concept at all by the 1970s. The US military had proposed such a design before using airships and biplanes flying underneath them,such as the Macon and Akron.

They could hold up to 5 curtis F9cs each and did successfully launch and recover them,

but the us navy found that weather conditions would render the airship useless - losing both airships with fatalities in such cercumstances.

As airships themselves were phased out, you know, Hindenburg, the idea was abandoned.

That is until the Russian’s started building flying carriers.

They converted a soviet TB-3 bomber from world war 2 into a mothership that could launch five fighter aircraft.

America being America, realised that the carrier race had begun and restarted the program.

They chose the Convair b-36 as a base aircraft. As it was a powerful bomber, it would have an excellent carrying capacity to carry jets as escorts.

But while the B-36 carrier was an easy choice, the parasite aircraft was harder to figure it out.
They concluded they would need to redesign a plane from the ground up -
and the Mcdonnell XF-85 was the result.

Called affectionately the goblin, this micro fighter would be the perfect escort fighter for the b-36 as it did bombing missions all over the world.

Alas - while the xf-85 performed well in tests, they never got them to work together.

The reason was the way that the carrier would recover its mini fighters after a mission.
Take-off was fine, but when pilots returned back to the bomber plane, they would have difficulting navigating the slipstream and hitting the tiny target on the landing trapeze. Factor in how tired the pilots would be after a combat mssion at 20,000 feet and you can see how this was a hard nugget to crack.

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