Last Mig-15 still in service

[Snaggle]

 

[Klaiber]

I just watched this.

Okay, small rant - I used to really like Mark Felton's videos, but found that he often says stuff without elaborating or clarifying, which causes verification problems with his videos. 

The best example can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKB-oqdoduw

Either way, regarding this MiG-15, Mark Felton says at 1:50 that the MiG-15 "had its origins in captured Nazi aircraft designs."  

That throwaway line is doing a lot of heavy lifting.  He's referring to either the Focke-Wulf Ta 183 and/or the Messerschmitt P.1101 here.  Both were never built.

By phrasing things this way, Mark Felton is implying that Mikoyan copied German tech to get the MiG-15, which reinforces the perpetual stereotype that Western Cold War aircraft were better than Soviet aircraft of the same era.

Mikoyan-Gurevich always denied they copied German designs, citing Soviet-built antecedents such as the MiG-8 and the I-270.  And when they did mention German designs, they clearly reference the Me-262.

Honestly, there is the same tenuous connection between the Ta 183/P.1101 and the FJ-2 Fury and the F-86 Sabre (both North American designs) as there is to the MiG-15.  North American had access to the exact same German plans and data.  But somehow, when people talk about the Fury or Sabre, they never parse things in quite the same way.  U.S. companies had "theories confirmed" by German designs, whereas Mikoyan and Sukhoi copied.

It's just lazy.

PS: Just to show you I'm consistent, I think the whole "the Horton wing inspired the B-2" is BS too.

[TedsOnMeds]

Cool that so many MiG designs are still in service.

I'm glad Felton's videos popularize military history in bite sized chunks;

I, too, am not fond of his propensity for spreading rumors/perpetuating wartime myths about espionage, combat effectiveness of certain vehicles, etc. 
 

[Snaggle]

1 hour ago, Klaiber said:

But somehow, when people talk about the Fury or Sabre, they never parse things in quite the same way.  U.S. companies had "theories confirmed" by German designs, whereas Mikoyan and Sukhoi copied.

May stem from incidents such as Tupolev Tu-4

But we may never know what was copied or not... as everyone was doing it....

2 hours ago, Klaiber said:

Just to show you I'm consistent, I think the whole "the Horton wing inspired the B-2" is BS to

But you have to admit the: Northrop N-1M , Northrop YB-35 , and Northrop YB-49 look very similar...

 

 

23 minutes ago, TedsOnMeds said:

I, too, am not fond of his propensity for spreading rumors/perpetuating wartime myths about espionage, combat effectiveness of certain vehicles, etc.

He creates views\videos which is one man's opinion......

[TedsOnMeds]

I'd actually be curious what the process for making one of his production are.

He's been around long enough that surely he has an assistant or team of employees helping work on his stuff by now. He might not even be responsible for the scrips, I know that can happen to some channels as they get larger. Knowledge hub, Alt history hub, the various off shoots of Simon Whestler's Biographics show, Game Grumps, Russian Badger, etc are all managed by entire teams, and the figureheads for them pretty much just own the channel, outsource the editing and come in to to the voice over once they have enough money to keep a staff on payroll. 

Regardless, eyeballs on content isn't directly corelated to quality of information; it's good to look at some of this YouTube history stuff to help get introduced to a topic but always super enjoyable to actually dive the topic through primary sources if access can be had to them. Some of the older design documentation is declassified now.  

 

[Klaiber]

3 hours ago, Snaggle said:

May stem from incidents such as Tupolev Tu-4

But we may never know what was copied or not... as everyone was doing it....

Oh I agree.  They blatantly copied stuff.  Sometimes above board like with the Lisunov Li-2 (the licensed built Soviet version of the DC-3).  And sometimes in not legitimate ways (like with the Tupolev Tu-4).  I just think they deserve a bit more credit for pushing the envelope.

I've always thought that Wings of the Red Star did a good job with the subject (starting from 3:08):

 

[Klaiber]

3 hours ago, Snaggle said:

But you have to admit the: Northrop N-1M , Northrop YB-35 , and Northrop YB-49 look very similar...

That's what I mean!  Northrop had their own flying wings, dating back to 1940.  They didn't need to copy the Horton/Gotha.  It's just another example of unsupported things that creep into videos for clicks.

[Klaiber]

2 hours ago, TedsOnMeds said:

I'd actually be curious what the process for making one of his production are.

He's been around long enough that surely he has an assistant or team of employees helping work on his stuff by now. He might not even be responsible for the scrips, I know that can happen to some channels as they get larger. Knowledge hub, Alt history hub, the various off shoots of Simon Whestler's Biographics show, Game Grumps, Russian Badger, etc are all managed by entire teams, and the figureheads for them pretty much just own the channel, outsource the editing and come in to to the voice over once they have enough money to keep a staff on payroll. 

Regardless, eyeballs on content isn't directly corelated to quality of information; it's good to look at some of this YouTube history stuff to help get introduced to a topic but always super enjoyable to actually dive the topic through primary sources if access can be had to them. Some of the older design documentation is declassified now.  

 

Mark Felton makes so many videos so quickly that I often wonder what his QA looks like.  And how big his team is.

I do think he has an agenda.  But so do we all.

The thing that bothered me wasn't that he was incorrect about the Lancaster and the Atomic bombs.  Rather, it was that (as far as I know) he never provided evidence for his claims or issued a retraction for incorrect things.  Not owning a mistake is worse than making one in the history game.

[TedsOnMeds]

4 minutes ago, Klaiber said:

Mark Felton makes so many videos so quickly that I often wonder what his QA looks like.  And how big he's team is.

I do think he has an agenda.  But so do we all.

The thing that bothered me wasn't that he was incorrect about the Lancaster and the Atomic bombs.  Rather, it was that (as far as I know) he never provided evidence for his claims or issued a retraction for incorrect things.  Not owning a mistake is worse than making one in the history game.

Oh totally, that has to be a super important aspect. I can't imagine having to run a team that finds topics and pumps out videos to an audience on that scale that frequently. Stuff is bound to fall through the cracks, surely. 

I think a lot of the Military Vehicle Enthusiast community falls for Woozle effect, too. Somebody says a thing, writes an article or a video on it, then that article/video gets cited as a source and nobody can actually substantiate or prove the claim until it's just seen as a truism or common-knowledge fact. It's how you end up with the "Four Sherman's to kill a Tiger" myth and "The T-34 was the first tank with sloped armor!" and the "AK can keep running full auto while CAKED in mud!" and things of that nature. I feel like everybody's fallen for that at some point, including people on the research teams for these big channels.