From: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V5 #132 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Wednesday, 13 July 1994 Volume 05 : Number 132 In this issue: Re: VINDICATOR Re: VINDICATOR See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: George Allegrezza 12-Jul-1994 1647 Date: Tue, 12 Jul 94 16:57:28 EDT Subject: Re: VINDICATOR The Vindicator was the mainstay of SAC in "Fail-Safe". It was a three-seat four engine intercontinental bomber that could reach 1500 mph at low level for short periods. The RS-70 (formerly the B-70) is mentioned as the replacement for the Vindicator, but I always had the impression that the Vindicator was supposed to be some kind of super B-58. Maybe Burdick and Wheeler, the authors, saw some of the B-58 follow-on proposals? The F-104 style fighters that tried to shoot down the Vindicators were called Skyscraper or Skyscrapper, depending on which character in the book is describing it. Has anyone seen a Skyscraper patch? Might be a good name for a TAV that descends into the upper atmosphere to scoop up and liquefy oxygen to extend its orbital lifetime. The Lockheed "use" of the name is interesting. If we assume it's legit (big assumption), were they trying to con people into drawing some kind of parallel with the fictional airplane? Or maybe they just thought Vindicator sounded cool. Or maybe Henry Fonda really ran the Skunk Works :-)? George George Allegrezza | Digital Equipment Corporation | Digital is like one big turkey farm on the Littleton MA USA | week before Thanksgiving. allegrezza@tnpubs.enet.dec.com | ------------------------------ From: freeman@MasPar.COM (Jay R. Freeman) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 94 16:04:01 -0700 Subject: Re: VINDICATOR I think there was a type called "Vindicator" in US service in the second world war. If memories left over from my airplane fanatic days serve -- and they may not -- it was a dive bomber made by Vultee, produced in small numbers only, and thoroughly unsuccessful. *Very* bad karma for the Skunk Works. -- Jay Freeman ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V5 #132 ********************************* To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "majordomo@mail.orst.edu". If you want to subscribe something other than the account the mail is coming from, such as a local redistribution list, then append that address to the "subscribe" command; for example, to subscribe "local-skunk-works": subscribe skunk-works-digest local-skunk-works@your.domain.net To unsubscribe, send mail to the same address, with the command: unsubscribe skunk-works-digest in the body. Administrative requests, problems, and other non-list mail can be sent to either "skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu" or, if you don't like to type a lot, "prm@mail.orst.edu A non-digest (direct mail) version of this list is also available; to subscribe to that instead, replace all instances of "skunk-works-digest" in the commands above with "skunk-works". Back issues are available for anonymous FTP from mail.orst.edu, in /pub/skunk-works/digest/vNN.nMMM (where "NN" is the volume number, and "MMM" is the issue number).