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Wikipedia Trails - From a Lightning Bolt to an Aardvark

I started with Vajra. Vajra is Indra's weapon and it translates to "Thunderbolt". I think lightning is pretty cool, and the Vajra is one of the topics I will be writing about for my project.

I was then led to the Mirage 2000 aircraft. As an aerospace engineer, I can get pretty excited about aircraft sometimes. Vajra is the Indian Airforce's nickname for their variant of the Mirage 2000.

From their I learned that the Mirage was originally based off of designs for a variable-sweep aircraft. Variable sweep aircraft are really cool so I decided to read up more about them.

Finally, I was led to the F-111 Aardvark. The F-111 was the first variable-sweep aircraft to make it to production. This aircraft pioneered what would become a very popular military aircraft mechanic for the next couple of decades or so.


Black and white, four-photo series showing the sequence of a F-111A sweeping its wing for supersonic flight.
F-111 Sweep Sequence
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  1. UnknownMarch 31, 2018 at 2:32 PM

    Chris, quite the interesting trail you found this week, but definitely not one I am surprised by, considering your Aerospace Engineering background. Learning that Vajra was the Indian name for the Dassault Mirage 2000 was interesting, and just shows that Air forces the world over love calling their aircraft the "Thunderbolt." The F-111 had an extremely interesting nuclear bombing tactic, that I don't know if your research showed, but the plan was how to drop a nuke from less than 5000 feet and survive.

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