Animal House "Forget it. He's rolling":

[hartree]

Hey, Pelzig. You're going to have to update those aviation history books you write:

From a CNN wire story:

"when American jets dropped nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

Comments

[dariens_haircut]

Jets? They were B-29s. Propeller driven. The engines were turbocharged, but they were still radial, so not turboprop.

One hopes the error is CNN's, rather than coming from the Prime Minister. Whoever it is could have just said "planes", "bombers", or "aircraft".

But then maybe this is exactly the point you were making.

[shockwave77598]

Jets? :)

And here I thought that the ME262 was the only combat jet aircraft during WW2 - and it was German.

[quasiskunk]

British Meteors were also operational, and used against the other German "jets" -- the V1.

The generic "jet"

[vindonnus]

They're probably trying to make "jet" a generic term for aircraft in what I would refer to as an effort to "dummy down" our language. Turbo-prop has a whole new meaning now!

[quasiskunk]

Heh...jet, piston, same thing, right? :P Thank you, CNN, for getting it right in your eyes again x.X

[ext_349246]

Jets at least existed during WW2. The first Nuclear bomb wasn't developed until after the Korean war was over.

I always thought that the fact we dropped an Atomic bomb from a propeller driven airplane was an example of our technology advancing in the wrong direction....

[quasiskunk]

Wait...whut???

The first 3 atomic bombs (and the only 3 around) were detonated on July 16, Aug 6 and Aug 9, 1945. The last two were dropped on Japan; the first one was detonated at Alamogordo, N.M. to prove it would work. The first Hydrogen bomb wasn't detonated until 1952; which was during the time of Korean War.

Jet-powered planes were around starting in 1938, but in 1945, there were none around that could carry the 20,000 lb. weight of Little Boy and Fat Man. In fact, there were exactly 2 planes that could carry them on the Allied side, and only 1 was American. Even if there were jets that could carry such a load, there would be no way for them to fly that far, as the first jet engines were rather thirsty. Long range with a little bomb load, or big load and short range; it was a hard decision for almost 10 years. Not until after the Korean War was there some semblance of a large jet plane that had a decent range with a large bomb load.