Germany's U-2 - WW2s Highest Air Combat
Mark Felton Productions
I was half asleep this morning and I got to wondering what 400 MPH in an airplane would be like. Intellectually it's easy, you take your distance from, say, the 2,000 miles from Portland Oregon to Brownsville Texas, divide it by 400 MPH and you've got 5 hours, which is pretty quick, but that doesn't feel like anything. Is there anyway to show that speed that would give you some visceral impact?
The are land speed record cars that can hit 400 MPH, and daredevil pilots can make low passes that are fast and loud, but that's not quite what I want. I think what I want is some situation that you get into with an airplane at 300 knots that would not be a problem, but at 400 knots would be dangerous, or would require a different approach. Probably something that is only taught in flight school for fighter pilots. Anyway, I didn't find anything that suited. There are some single engine turbo-prop airplanes that can approach 400 knots, but the few videos I saw focused on how wonderful they are.
This video doesn't give me what I was looking for, but it tackles the high altitude problem which I always enjoy. Eight miles high in an unpressurized, unheated airplane with only an electrically heated flightsuit and an oxygen mask - that's like Star Wars in 1940.
I think the motorcycles at Bonneville got up to about 360 mph before they moved to enclosed streamliners.
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