F-35

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A very brief history of the war contradicts your basic thesis.

The USAAF recognised the need of a Bomber for the Pacific Theatre of war prior to the commencement of WW2. The requirements for the Pacific Theatre were considered beyond that of the B17 Flying Fortress and the need for the B29 Super Fortress was born.

When they entered service they were based in India first and later in forward bases in China commencing bombing raids in the second half of 1944. Tokyo was still out of reach at this point. The Japanese recognised that operationally the Island of Tinian, would be a perfect launch pad for US Superfortress operations and they garrisoned troops there. The Allies seized the island during the Battle of Tinian between July and August of 1944.

Was the Lancaster bomber avoided because it was British? Only the most addled Anglophile would think so. The B29 flew higher and faster, enough to be untroubled by enemy airpower. While the Lancaster could haul the weight, its air performance would have been degraded by the warm humid conditions of the Pacific, so that whatever performace it posted in the European theatre of war, it would have been a sitting duck comparatively over Japanese skies. And its doubtful it could have made the round trip based on Tinian.

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There's a significant difference between being capable of carrying a bomb, to delivering a bomb from a protected launch base at safe range, through heavily contested air space to reach the target.

Given that the Lancaster was unable to meet the mission criteria, its a moot point that national chauvinism dictated the use of an American plane.

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What you expect is informed by your own pernicious set of biases that more often than not are way off the mark.

I will concede that to characterise Japanese air space as heavily contested is overstated, but to suggest it was uncontested ignores the fact that Japanese air defence did not have the capacity to identify incoming aircraft with adequate warning time which meant that Japanese fighter craft simply did not have enough time to scramble to the B29's altitude. This ability of the B29 to cruise at high altitude left it virtually untouched until the Korean war when the Russian made Mig 15 jet fighter finally had the speed and altitude advantage to stop the B29 bombing with impunity.

@kmax87 said
This ability of the B29 to cruise at high altitude left it virtually untouched until the Korean war when the Russian made Mig 15 jet fighter finally had the speed and altitude advantage to stop the B29 bombing with impunity.

There's an almost unbelievable tale of technological transfer that happened at the end of WW2 that has interesting resonances to this day.

In 1946 Artem Mikoyan (the mi in Mig) and other Soviets were given a tour of the Rolls Royce powerplant factory. Later at a social gathering playing billiards, Artem a bit of a shark, bet a Rolls executive that if he won a round the prize should be a Rolls jet engine. Anyhow he won and the only promise he had to make was not use the engine for military purposes. Artem was true to his word, but proceeded to back engineer the Rolls to produce the Klimov RD-45 which successfully propelled the Mig 15, which put an end to the B29.

Years later the Russians were the first to design and build a supersonic VTOL fighter the Yakovlev Yak 141. The Soviets were running out of money and having cancelled the project, Lockheed Martin stepped up to the tune of close to half a billion dollars for the tech.

On close inspection, from the vectored thrust to the location of the main engine to the overall dimensions to the companion vertical thrust just aft of the cabin its all F-35 meet Yak-141 your father.

Yes they are not identical, LM developed a shift driven lift fan system to replace the 2 turbojets doing the job in the Yak and on and on, but go to YouTube and you will find examples of the Yak 38 (the subsonic progenitor of the 141) hovering and landing in ways that look remarkably similar to a certain F-35.

Now for the circles within circles and wheels within wheels bit, Lockheed Martin patented their one engine plus lift fan design, but guess who builds it?

Rolls Royce!

4edits yikes!

@Duchess64
Note that Kmax87 apparently obstinately refuses to accept the fact...

As we have noted for years that Duchess64 wouldn't give an inch if her stubborn life depended on it.

Enjoy dealing with it from the other end.

@Duchess64
Who is saying otherwise anyway?

Well this thread has taken a turn. Certainly I've enjoyed the history lesson.

But it speaks to the larger issue with the development of this particular technology and its price tag. The historical precedent for war technology winning WWII from 80 years ago is important. But that war was not far removed from on-the-ground trench warfare. We had tanks and planes and big bombs. That's not how wars will be fought in the future. It makes no sense to spend this kind of cash on obsolete machinery. Someone (probably Russia) hacked into the Pentagon and roamed around on the servers for a whole year. That can do (and probably did) WAY more damage to our national security than having an F-16 instead of an F-35. We weren't prepared. Also, this isn't the last global pandemic. What if that was a bioweapon? We were completely unprepared. The idea of military readiness has completely changed. We don't need these planes. We should be deliberating and investing in fighting future wars, not past ones.

@Duchess64
If I remember right, radar was invented by the Brits but did not have all that much resolution to figure out what is flying.
But the Varian brothers changed all that when they invented the klystron in their garage and that changed the state of radar since the Brits were using frequecies around 200 megahertz but the Varian Klystron bumped that frequency into the gigahertz range with resultant huge increase in detectability of the return pattern of individual aircraft because of the some ten times the resolution of the radar system.

I don't think Japan had anything like a radar, old Brit or the newer Klystron tubes so there was no warning.

If there had been radar in Japan they for sure would have scrambled all the planes they could but they were behind the times technologically speaking so had no early defense.

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Let's not forget that the greater altitude means evading anti-aircraft shelling, too.

Higher and faster, the B29 was a better craft to use. you just won't admit it.