21 clues and not one guess? Is anyone other than Ernie still in the game? I would have thought SOME ONE would have at least guessed the manufacturer by now.
Time for a few more clues:
Looking for an aircraft:
1) The subject plane was designed and built by the same company that designed and built several "iconic" aircraft
2) Of the "iconic" aircraft, many of them saw combat
3) Some of the "iconic" aircraft saw service decades after their introduction
4) The subject plane was multi-engined
5) The subject aircraft was not a "single-seater"
6) The subject aircraft was armed with two guns an could carry over 10 tons of ordinance
7) The subject plane was developed as an answer to a plane designed and built by an adversary
8) The subject plane even has some design features in common with the adversary's plane
9) The subject plane used both old and new tech in its design
10) The subject plane was designed for one mission, spent most of its service life doing another
11) Ironically, another "iconic" aircraft from the same manufacturer suffered from the same mission change
12) Also ironically, the newer plane(who's first flight was 13 years after the subject plane) was over twice as fast, had half of the engines and crew but carried less than half the ordinance load at half the range as initially configured
13) Both planes had the gear required for the original mission removed and the specialized equipment for the new mission installed not long after being made operational
14) Roughly 150 of each type of aircraft were produced, including 36 of the iconic plane being built to replace 27 lost to the enemy and operational accidents
15) Both the subject and iconic plane from the last 4 clues were equipped with a tricycle landing gear arrangement, as was the adversary's plane mentioned previously
16) Something even more ironic is that the adversary's plane had the same "repurposing" as the subject and "iconic" planes did
17) The subject plane, which took many design features from the adversary's plane ended up being roughly twice the size, four times as heavy(empty), had nearly triple the range while being over 100MPH faster
18) All of the factors listed in clue 17 came to pass in less than 4 years as the first flight of the subject plane was 3 years and 8 months after the adversary's plane
19) The engines on the subject plane had 3 times the power of the adversary's engines
20) On the subject plane, the two guns were mounted in a manned tail position, a holdover from a previous design as well as a belief that the plane was too fast to be caught from any direction except the rear
21) The rest of the crew were all located in the forward third of the aircraft, either flying the plane or operating the mission specific equipment
22) The number of crew members was equal to the number of engines
23) The subject plane was more than 100 MPH faster than the manufacturer's most famous plane
24) The manufacturer's most famous plane is generally regarded as one of the best of the type ever made in it's era
25) The subject plane was almost twice as fast as the manufacturer's most famous plane of the same type
26) The non-subject plane referenced in the previous clue was even flown on a mission from the land of Shangri La, according to government sources
Good Luck
Last edited by Hydro Junkie; 09-18-2021 at 06:54 PM.