North American OV-10 Bronco

[Scott Youmans]

27th TASS?  (George shot).  Always liked their rearing-stallion markings.

I believe so.

[josephea6]

Nice one Scott!

[phantomphan1974]

CDF OV-10 Bronco Ukiah Airport by PhantomPhan1974 Photography, on Flickr

[phantomphan1974]

CDF OV-10 Bronco Ukiah Airport by PhantomPhan1974 Photography, on Flickr

[Scott Youmans]

Marsh OV-10A conversion - 2006

[Jeff D. Welker]

Sunrise OV-10 at an undisclosed location in Florida. Photograph by Major Doug Glover VMFA(AW)-533 Hawks.



Maj. Glover is not currently a member of AzAP (working to change that); however, he knows how much Joe likes OV-10's and authorized me to share this image.

[Scott Youmans]

This is a major development.  No pun intended.

[Joe Copalman]

Hmm.  Stallion 51's bird?

[Scott Youmans]

Yup, sure looks like it.  Glad to see another one flying.

[Scott Youmans]

YOV-10A BuNo 152885 - Here's one for you OV-10 fans out there.  This is a rare photo of the 7th prototype before it was painted, probably 1966.  Note the T74 (PT6) turboprops in place of the Garrett T76s. From what I can gather, North American was strongly in favor of using the Pratt & Whitney engine over the Garrett.  Not sure why.  By the time the 7th ship was built they had already incorporated some of the changes to the tops of the fins that were more "production-like".  In this photo the sponsons are not installed but this aircraft was generally seen with the later canted sponsons.  Also noteworthy are the rounded wing tips added to the original 30 foot wing that had squared-off tips.  Later this aircraft had the interim Hoerner tips that lengthened the span to 34 feet.   Production aircraft had an extensively redesigned 40 foot wing with rounded tips. The OV-10 and especially the original 30 footer was a relatively radical design in some ways, effectively a deflected slipstream concept with the prop-wash bathing the majority of the wing and double-slotted flaps.  The flaps had an additional feature which was a door hinged span-wise that was attached to the leading edge of the main flap section on the lower surface.  When the flaps were not deflected the door covered the gaps created by the two slots.  When the flaps were deflected this door opened (leading edge down) and acted as a scoop to direct high velocity air from the prop slipstream below the wing through the slots and thus increasing the lift coefficient.  North American took credit for this innovation calling these devices "Gipper" doors after the engineer who designed them.  I saw an article in a very old Aviation Week showing that the idea had been developed by Northrop quite a few years earlier.

[Scott Youmans]

OV-10A (Marsh Upgrade) - This is a blatant Photoshop composite of two images made to use on the Marsh Website many years ago.  Cloud photo was taken out of an airliner window.

[Chris Kennedy]

YOV-10A BuNo 152885

Same airplane in July, 1967.

[Scott Youmans]

Chris, yes that's the one.  Probably the best photo I've seen of it!

[Chris Kennedy]

Chris, yes that's the one.  Probably the best photo I've seen of it!

Thanks, Scott. Do you have a connection to Marsh, or do you just collect Bronco stuff?

[Scott Youmans]

Chris, both are true.  I've been an OV-10 nut since about 1968 when the first prototype was tested here by Garrett.  My association with Marsh started when Joe Copalman introduced me to Floyd Stilwell at the early phases of the upgrade program. I'd met Bill Osmon when he worked at Marsh a couple of years before that through my job.  At any rate I got to know many of the folks at Marsh pretty well and was involved in doing some photogrpahy for them throughout the programs for the FAC and the DOS.