>A-20 Havoc>Only five years in production>7,000 built in total>Retired less than 10 years after production>Almost none leftWTF
That's US wartime production for you. They made 6,258 M3 Lee tanks despite it being a weird stopgap shitbox.
>>64541828every single weapon the US had at the end of the war was considered obsolete or almost there, so everything that wasnt considered absolutely essential was scrapped as quickly as possible
The fuselage was too narrow to be used as a twin-engine general-purpose aircraft after the war.
I wonder how many are tucked away in obscure places. I also wonder how many are in Russia?
>best plane ever designed>let down by pesky things like physics and being a piece of shit
>>64541828A-20 was an expedient weapon system that came along at 'just the right time' (as other anons noted some of it was purely production-logistical) and was adaptable to just the right specific roles of light bomber, night fighter (briefly) and low level attack.Additionally—similar to North American's NA-73 (Mustang Mk I)—was not immediately adopted by USAAF but was first produced/contracted in substantial numbers for France and U.K. (and later Soviet Union).>>64541908>narrowwhen the A-26 Invader was introduced to USAAF, it was mainly deployed in Europe because in the Pacific pilots preferred the A-20's narrow fuselage for its excellent side visibility in low level flight.>>64541848>quickly scrappedYes some of the combat aircraft were, including B-17s, B-24s, P-38s, B-26 Marauders, P-40s and others (depending on their continued usability as multirole utility/trainers) plus jet engines had come along.
>>64541828the A-20 was kino and it deserved better
>>64541848>everything that wasnt considered absolutely essential was scrapped as quickly as possiblethey didn't just offload stocks of shit onto the national guard and such?
>>64542600stuff that was still "good enough" like surplus small arms, vehicles, and a small number of armored vehicles were used to pad out the national guardbut much more was simply sold into foreign service at rock bottom prices, often solely because it was cheaper to just tell the country that this stockpile of tanks was theirs now than it was to pay the shipping cost back to the USa common anecdote was that troops stationed in japan were offered a jeep for free, but had to leave it in japan because the cost of shipping was larger than the price of a new jeep
>>64542600>>64542617That top-of-thread anon's comment ("scrapped") was scattershot and vague. (He presumably intended to refer mostly to some aircraft types that had become obsolete by the latter two years of WWII)yes all kinds of vehicles airplanes weapons artillery gear small arms ships ammunition and other funsies were given not only to U.S. National Guard units but also to other smaller less-wealthy countries/anticommunist allies.P-47 Thunderbolt was quickly phased into NG and foreign service while the P-51D was kept in front line USAF service 1950 Korea. Other materiel was shipped to Europ
>>64541828replaced by pic rel
>>64541828it's not only US stuff. German iconics like tanks are near extinct breed. Whenever you have some specimen that survived thanks to careful owners, like it happened with that Panther, bureaucrats want to immediately destroy it if some bigger force does not immediately interfere and stop them As for US airframes it is pretty amusing how out of the gigaproductions everything got destroyed. Like was it so hard to take decommissioned examples and then just stuff them under a tarp in the dry desert? Its not like they ask any money for it. Best you get these days for certain units are at the bottom of literal oceans, 4.8+ kilometers deep
