A-10 Thunderbolt II (N24)

Video from the channel TVMissile_dE about Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 41:36. Language: German. Video type: Documentary.

Documentary broadcast by the German channel N24 that traces the history of the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II, the US Air Force's close air support aircraft. It alternates testimony from pilots, historians and engineers with the reconstruction of several real missions. It opens in Afghanistan in June 2012, when two A-10s taking off from Bagram rescue, amid a heavy storm, a 90-man special operations team surrounded by the Taliban. That episode is used to present the aircraft's strengths: slow, low flight in bad weather, direct communication with ground troops and an extremely powerful cannon.

The piece traces the aircraft's origin to the rivalry between the Air Force and the Army in the 1960s. Faced with the Army's Cheyenne attack helicopter, General John P. McConnell launched an experimental attack program in 1966 that would lead to the A-10, designed to protect ground troops and cheaply stop Soviet armor in Europe. The documentary covers its 1976 unveiling, the crash at the 1977 Paris Air Show at Le Bourget, and another accident during cannon testing in 1978, which gave ammunition to its detractors within the Air Force itself. It then follows the Gulf War, where General Schwarzkopf championed its use against General Horner's skepticism; the rescue of an F-117 pilot shot down over Serbia in 1999; and Kim Campbell's return to base over Baghdad in April 2003 with her hydraulic systems destroyed, thanks to the mechanical backup controls.

According to the documentary, the cannon fires about 70 rounds per second, and in the Gulf War the A-10s destroyed more than 1,000 tanks, 2,000 military vehicles and more than 1,200 artillery pieces. The closing section addresses the 2015 budget presented in February 2014 by General Mark Welsh, which dropped the A-10 in favor of the F-35. It also covers the House of Representatives vote that in 2014 blocked its retirement.