What We Need for 21st Century Combat?

"The way to build aircraft or anything else worthwhile is to think out quietly every detail, analyze every situation that may possibly occur, and, when you have it all worked out in practical sequence in your mind, raise heaven and earth and never stop until you have produced the thing you have started to make."

XP-56 Black Bullet – The strange looking WWII fighter interceptor that you may not know of

 

Ultimately, it was unsuccessful and did not enter series production. source

The XP-56 was essentially a hybrid flying wing to which was added a stubby fuselage to house the pilot and engine.
The Northrop XP-56 Black Bullet was a unique prototype fighter interceptor built by the Northrop Corporation. It was one of the most radical of the experimental aircraft built during World War II. Ultimately, it was unsuccessful and did not enter series production.
The initial idea for the XP-56 was quite radical for 1939. It was to have no horizontal tail, only a small vertical tail, used an experimental engine, and be produced using a novel metal. The aircraft was to be a wing with a small central fuselage added to house the engine and pilot. The hope was that this configuration would have less aerodynamic drag than a conventional airplane.

What should Uruguay do with its shipwrecked Nazi eagle?

 

The huge bronze eagle and swastika, personally designed by Hitler, was salvaged by a British-led team from the stern of the pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee in 2006. 77 years later, it’s own battle still continues.
War trophies don’t come much more imposing than the solid bronze statue that once adorned the prow of the Graf Spee, a notorious German battleship that sank numerous Allied merchant vessels. When a 700 pound bronze statue of an eagle perched upon a giant swastika sunk onboard German battleship Graf Spee off the coast of Uruguay in 1939, it was thought to be lost forever. Following its recovery from the watery depths by local business man Alfredo Etchegaray in 2006, no one seems quite sure what to do with it.

In December of 1939 the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee fought a relentless battle with an allied task force off the coast of Uruguay. Badly damaged after a ferocious fight, the Admiral Graf Spee was pulled into a Uruguay harbor and scuttled. Seventy-five years later, pieces of the wreckage are in the hands of the Uruguay government and salvagers, prompting a debate about what to do with the Nazi artifacts.

The ship’s captain, Hans Langsdorff, scuttled the damaged vessel offshore outside the capital of Montevideo after the Battle of the River Plate after British intelligence tricked him into believing the Royal Navy was about to surround the ship. It burned for three days before finally sinking; Langsdorff killed himself shortly afterward.