The Dude Who Tried to Revolutionize War Planes By Building an Incredible One in His Backyard

Описание: On a bright, sunny July day in 1986, a crowd gathered at Friendship Airfield outside Carman, Manitoba, to witness a curious event. As they watched, the doors of one of the airfield’s ramshackle hangars slid open and out taxied an aircraft unlike anyone had seen before. The nose and cockpit were sleek and futuristic, resembling that of the supersonic Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. But that was where the elegance ended, for awkwardly bolted to this cockpit was a frankensteinian combination of short, stubby wings, a bulky fixed undercarriage, a rear-mounted engine and pusher propeller, and a pair of chunky, upward-raked tail booms. The brainchild of eccentric self-taught engineer and aircraft restorer Bob Diemert, the aircraft was far more than a one-off homebuilt, represented the culmination of Diemert’s single-minded crusade to revolutionize aerial warfare and arm his home country for far cheaper than conventional fighter jets. This is the story of the Defender, the Canadian warplane that never was.

This is an abridged version of a video on our channel TodayIFoundOut which you can check out and subscribe to here:    / @todayifoundout