My 8 yr old has gone deep into MilAv. He has his toy planes, which came in small packages, and list the intellectual property rights of the various models on the back. Last weekend he asked why Northrop Grumman owns the trademark to the F4U, b/c he knew it was built by Vought.
I think the answer is that grumman briefly owned vought and depending on when the toy was made they may have owned the trademark at that very specific time!
So Northrop Grumman bought Vought from Carlyle in 1994, but Carlyle then started another aerospace company under the Vought name in 2000, which has been part of 787 saga. The history of Vought lives at Northrop Grumman.
There were about 40 years from the Wright Brothers (1903) to the turbojet era (c. 1943). The CF-18 entered Canadian service 42 years ago and is still our frontline fighter.
Then you have European manned hot air balloons going back three steps (until 1783 CE), and then about thirty steps (until 559 CE) of Chinese manned kites.
Wrights were testing their third major revision glider, and started testing wing designs in a wind tunnel, still a decade away from powered flight. Plenty of balloons and dirigibles tho.
you can do this with SO MANY examples…the 1981 and 2021 Abrams tank would externally look similar…and then there’s a Sherman? or Grant/Lee? or a Stuart?
and yet in 1941 hitler wanted the entire whole of europe and the emperor of japan wanted all of asia today in 2024 putin wants europe and xi wants asia risking nuclear war to build there empires so the question is is 2024 different from 1941 in any real way ??
