# January 1936: build your RAF



## tomo pauk (Mar 9, 2014)

Similar to the two current topics: what would be the most sensible way to improve RAF's capabilities in the next 10 years? What aircraft types should receive more resources, what engines to support, what not to do, when to start work on jet engines, what armament etc. Would you still maintain the division between BC and FC? What about long range fighters? Cooperation with Canada, Australia, NZ, both in manpower hardware? Changed emphasis on some parts of training process? 
You need to cover hardware needs of the Coastal Command (along with FC and BC), but not the FAA.


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## davebender (Mar 9, 2014)

If Britain is committed to a huge RAF Bomber Command as happened historically then a complementary long range escort fighter should be at the top of the list.


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## nuuumannn (Mar 9, 2014)

Oooh, this is going to be loaded with hindsight, which means suggestions that could not have been even possible in 1936, much like producing a long range escort will be put forward. No one had long range escort fighters at that time because it was believed that bombers would always get through. Fighters were for defensive purposes. The British way was to arm its bombers with powered gun turrets and were the first to do so, setting a precedent that other countries took their time in doing, despite the crucible of war proving it necessary, but then again, how, in 1936 would defence analysts have known that?

Before anyone mentions what happened to aircraft like the Battle and Blenheim, let's think for a moment about these aeroplanes at the time. The RAF was equipped with Gloster Gauntlets as its front line fighter; the Battle looked like it was from outer space and remember that it was designed to supercede the Hawker Hart and Audax in the tactical day bomber role, which these aircraft had been performing well in the Middle East and throughout the Empire - not a thought of how the Battle would do against a highly organised force like the German Army in 1940 - again, hindsight that could not have been known in 1936. The Blenheim (or at least the Bristol 142) was the last word in modernity in 1936, faster even than the fighters in RAF service; why would the armed forces have any doubts about its future?

Think carefully about this one, because a lot changed between 1936 and the outbreak of WW2. Aeroplanes and ideas thought advanced in 1936 were considered obsolescent and outdated in 1939/40. And vice versa, things considered _de riguer _as a result of combat experience during the war could not necessarily have been anticipated in 1936. You go to war with the army you have, not the one you'd like.

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## Jabberwocky (Mar 10, 2014)

davebender said:


> If Britain is committed to a huge RAF Bomber Command as happened historically then a complementary long range escort fighter should be at the top of the list.



The RAF never concieved of situation where France would be lost and the war would continue. Escort doctrine was never really considered. RAF fighters were to have been based in France, but primarily as a defensive asset.

If you do want a long-range escort for the RAF, there are a couple of possibilities.

1) Spitfire developed with inboard wing tanks, enlarged forward tanks and plumbing for drop tanks from the start. 120-125 Imperial gallons and a Merlin III gives it still air cruising range in excess of 800 miles. Add a 30 gal d/t and its about an extra 160-180 miles cruising range. Combat radius would be about 340-350 miles.

Major problem is that adding the fuel tanks and plumbing adds about 200-260 lbs in weight, even without filling them. That's a fair penalty for an aircraft with 1030 hp. Balance with the shorter Merlin III may have also been a problem with wing tanks.

2) Westland Whirlwind is developed slightly earlier and with the revised fuel system/cross feed fuel tanks as well as the nose and fuselage centre tank and plumbing for drop tanks that Petter proposed for the stillborn Mk II. 

Petter's proposals would have added a 25-30 gal nose tank and a 35-45 gal rear fuselage tank. At a minimum, internal fuel goes up 45% to 194 Imp gal. Best case, internal tankage goes to 209 Imp gal, an improvement of 55%. 

Still air cruising range would go from around 570 to 630 miles to about 900-980 miles. 

Adding another 90 gal with 2 x 45 gal Hurricane style 'airship' type drop tanks gets you another 330-360 miles, even with the extra drag.

Westland Welkin managed to get 400 Imp gal onboard, including a 79 Imp gal fuselage tank.


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## tomo pauk (Mar 10, 2014)

Some random questions:
-would it be good to forget about a turret fighter?
-how much of the Fairey Battles to build?
-skip the Taurus, Peregrine and Vulture all together?
-what about the Centaurus, Sabre, Deerhound, Fairey's engine projects?
-the best most expedient way to acquire 1500 HP engine? 2000 HP engine? 
-when to start designing the high speed bomber, powered with liquid cooled engines, with about zero defending MGs, that could be produced using non-traditional methods? 
-the high performance twin-engined fighter, with heavy armament?
-early night fighters?


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## Shortround6 (Mar 10, 2014)

Lots of people were thinking about long range escort fighters. Things like the Bell Airacuda and Bf 110, and using twins as escort fighters was a bit of a problem. Even the P-38 wasn't a great dogfighter, Much better than no escort fighter but not really able to mix it up one on one (assuming pilots of equal skill and in pre-war planning you had better make that assumption. Assuming your pilots are better than the enemy pilots can lead to some rude awakenings). 

As Nuuumannn has pointed out, without applying hindsight things aren't going to change much. British _were_ slow in adopting 2 pitch propellers let alone constant speed props. A Merlin III was the best of it's time at altitude. Problem was that was good for only 880hp for take-off, put that together with a fixed pitch prop and take-off was not too great. You need different props or two speed supercharger and/or bigger airfields (or big wings) to take-off with greater weights. ALL 3 happened, eventually. Of course in 1940 the planes got heavier.


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## Shortround6 (Mar 10, 2014)

> -would it be good to forget about a turret fighter?



In hindsight? yes, except then you loose one of the first "successful" night fighters, or at least a cheap one (single engine). 



> -how much of the Fairey Battles to build?



If you don't build 2000 of them what do you build to expand and train the RAF with? The Battle did a lot more to train RAF and commonwealth air forces (both air and ground crews) than it every accomplished in combat. Perhaps more were built than really needed but cutting the number by 1/2 or so just means you need a different crew trainer. 



> -skip the Taurus, Peregrine and Vulture all together?



Possibly but the Peregrine was probably the least costly in terms of effort. It might have made a much better tank engine than the Liberty too 



> -what about the Centaurus, Sabre, Deerhound, Fairey's engine projects?



The ONLY one in hindsight to be worth anything was the Centaurus, and until you can make Hercules engines at several hundred a month (sleeve production problem) the Centaurus is a no go. Then throw in whatever individual problems it had. 



> -the best most expedient way to acquire 1500 HP engine? 2000 HP engine?



In 1938 they knew the Merlin had the _potential_ to be a 1500-1600hp engine if given the right fuel. Best and most expedient are mutually exclusive. "Best" was the Sabre, the most technological "gee-whiz" engine of it's time (barring a few that never made it off the ground). Most expedient was the Vulture, stick two Kestrels on one crankshaft and rev it up higher. We know _NOW_ that both were less than optimum solutions. Perhaps and H-24 Using Kestrel/Peregrine cylinders? trades crankshaft problems for more size/weight and gear train to join cranks?

"Best 1500hp engine may very well NOT be the best way to a 2000hp engine.



> -when to start designing the high speed bomber, powered with liquid cooled engines, with about zero defending MGs, that could be produced using non-traditional methods?



again rather depends on the engines and propellers. What would be the performance of a Mosquito using Merlin IIIs and fixed pitch 2 bladed props? Merlin X with 2 pitch props? Please remember that the Mosquito was _designed_ for a 1000lb bomb load. Four 250lb bombs. Again, please keep in mind field requirements, Landing and take-off distances and tire pressure requirements ( which govern the size of the wheels/tires for a given weight airplane). 



> -the high performance twin-engined fighter, with heavy armament?



Rather depends on availability of engines and armament, also please remember that _initial_ estimates for the Beaufighter called for a speed of 370mph (one reason they canceled the Whirlwind) and they missed that one by about 40 mph. 



> -early night fighters?



A real example of needing fore-knowledge, until you actually have some sort of _working_ airborne radar you are designing totally in the dark. How big is it, how heavy, what does it need for operator/s, etc. 
Early "night fighters" without radar are simply day fighters that are easy to fly at night (low landing speed, landing lights/flares, exhausts shielded/placed to help maintain pilots night vision). Success rate is in the 00.0 X % range. Doubling effectiveness might not even get you into the 00.X% range.


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## tomo pauk (Mar 10, 2014)

The Merlin X was rated, on 100 oct fuel, for 1280 HP for take off as early as 1938. On 87 oct it was 1075 HP. Forgetting the Peregrine Vulture might help to produce more of the Mk.X than historically?


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## Shortround6 (Mar 10, 2014)

Assuming you start design in 1938 you may get _service_ aircraft in late 1940 or early 1941. The real Mosquito started design work in Oct 1939 ( after well over a year of alternative design studies) and first operational flight by a photo recon version was in Sept 1941. First operational bomber is delivered in Nov 1941. 
What was RR promising for Power from a late 1940 Merlin (one year in the future) vs what were they promising in 1938? 100 octane was pretty much a given in the fall of 1939 (although how much over 100 octane was not a given) while 100 octane had a rather uncertain timeline in 1938. It was coming but _when_ and in _what quantities_ were being promised in 1938?


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## tomo pauk (Mar 10, 2014)

Shortround6 said:


> Assuming you start design in 1938 you may get _service_ aircraft in late 1940 or early 1941. The real Mosquito started design work in Oct 1939 ( after well over a year of alternative design studies) and first operational flight by a photo recon version was in Sept 1941. First operational bomber is delivered in Nov 1941.



Agreed pretty much re. pre-Mossie service date.



> What was RR promising for Power from a late 1940 Merlin (one year in the future) vs what were they promising in 1938? 100 octane was pretty much a given in the fall of 1939 (although how much over 100 octane was not a given) while 100 octane had a rather uncertain timeline in 1938. It was coming but _when_ and in _what quantities_ were being promised in 1938?



The 1st Merlin XXs were rated also for 1280 HP for take off; they did offer much better hi-alt performance than Merlin X, however. On 87 oct fuel, the Merlin X has almost 300 HP more than Merlin III for take off, yet British have had no problems conceiving a bomber around it.

added: the Pe-2 was carrying 1320 lbs normal bomb load, 2200 lbs max (short ranges, less fuel carried?). Range (not radius) was 770-870 miles*, it was carrying a 'surplus' (vs. Mossie) of 1 crew member, 4 LMGs and ammo. All of that on M-105 engines, 1100 HP for take off. There should be no reason for an 'unarmed' bomber to exceed this on Merlin X on 87 oct fuel, let alone on 100 oct?

*Shavrov mentions 1200 km, and over 2100 km for fighter variants? 330 imp gals was carried in 'regular' Pe-2 bombers' wing tanks


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## parsifal (Mar 10, 2014)

One thiing I would do from 1936 is restore the independance of the FAA. That might give the RN a chance to introduce better aircraft and improve the pilot supply situation, and not cost the RAF any more than what they were already putting into the FAA

The obvious type for development would be the F5/34, and the obvious strike aircraft would be to develop the skua as a better divebomber to work with the Swordfish. I cant see any reall replacement or development for the Swordfish

One area crying out for improvement is airborne ASW. the development of a proper airborne DC would have helped


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## fastmongrel (Mar 10, 2014)

Massively increase the RAFVR (RAF Volunteer Reserve) Training scheme. Not just for pilots but also for air and ground crew. For Pilot initial training give private pilots a grant so they can purchase a trainer, to pay off the grant they have to do so many hours training RAFVR recruits.


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## tomo pauk (Mar 10, 2014)

parsifal said:


> One thiing I would do from 1936 is restore the independance of the FAA. That might give the RN a chance to introduce better aircraft and improve the pilot supply situation, and not cost the RAF any more than what they were already putting into the FAA
> 
> The obvious type for development would be the F5/34, and the obvious strike aircraft would be to develop the skua as a better divebomber to work with the Swordfish. I cant see any reall replacement or development for the Swordfish
> 
> One area crying out for improvement is airborne ASW. the development of a proper airborne DC would have helped



Ive specified 'no FAA' for this thread, but, what a heck 

Swordfish is a given. The replacement should be a monoplane. Something along the lines of the Nakajima Kate, maybe, using the Pegasus? Have the Swordfish tested with improved Pegasus, in case the monoplane proves problematic. By the time the Merlin VIII/X/XX or Hercules are around, design a multi purpose bomber, ie. both for torpedoes and dive bombing. Something along the lines of navalized Fairey Battle. Until that one comes around, keep the Skua on the decks. Don't waste anything on the Roc. 
Instead of Sea Gladiator, better use Gloster's factory for at least same number of Hurricanes to install a hook onto.


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## parsifal (Mar 10, 2014)

sorry didnt mean to derail the thread. perhaps look at ti in these terms. If the FAA is made independant in 1936, it has a better chance of having a decent park of aircraft in 1940. If it can reasonably enter German airspace with better fighters and attack aircraft, and more importantly, more of them, it can then move around the periphery of German airspace and cause a lot of havoc for the LW, picking off isolated and weak garrisons as the opportunities arise. if the F5/34 is made cmpetitive, it has a range advantage that the hurricane and Spit dont, and can therefore minimise the risk to the carriers in hit and run raids allover the place. the LW will be forced to dissipate its strength to effectively counter this, and this, in turn, leessens the pressure on the RAF at thye critical time.

Swordfish is a real problem. it is an aircraft that looks very vulnerable, and yet,as an attack aircraft, it has few peers. Every time performance is put in front of mission effectiveness, you downgrade your force capability. Its docile handling characteristics gave it a very valuable capability of being able to take af and land on a carrier deck in rough weather and at night. Im not sure i would want to lose that for an extra 50 or 100mph of speed


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## nuuumannn (Mar 10, 2014)

Tomo, I feel like I've railroaded your thread! I get what you are doing, so for the sake of argument, let's play.

Turret fighter. this might seem like an easy one considering the fate of the Daffy in the Battle of Britain, but hindsight at play again - how could those who released F.9/35 have known that Germany would invade France and their bombers, which the turret fighter was to destroy would be escorted by single-seat fighters? The gun turret was Britain's piece of modern technology - a silver bullet weapon? Boulton Paul had worked on powered turrets before De Boysson, the Frenchman who designed the turret produced for the Defiant intorduced himself to J.D. North, and other firms were working on turrets also, and their application was seen as a big advance in technology. After equipping bombers with WW1 era Scarff ring gun mountings fitted with a single or two WW1 era Lewis or Vickers K guns, the idea of turrets was a leap in advance. Both B.12/36 and P.13/36, the future bomber specifications released that year both stipulated gun turrets as a necessity for defence. In a fighter, the concentration of firepower a turret offered was considered to be a big advantage, with the flexibility of being able to position the aircraft anywhere around a fleeing bomber and fire at it at will was crucial to the idea and seemed like a good one. The Defiant was also considered as a ground attack aircraft, although quite how that would work, I don't know; bomb shackles were fitted and dropping trials carried out.

Unarmed bomber; this one was actually considered by more than a few forward thinking individuals. No doubt, with the two bomber specs previously mentioned, the idea to a turret-equipped fast, modern bomber got the juices flowing among the Air Staff - B.12/36 producing a four engined heavy and although the Supermarine bomber was selected for production, only the Stirling actually got built and P.13/36 was for a twin engined fast medium bomber, the Vulture equipped Avro 679, which became the Manchester and the HP.56, which was never built, but was modified with four Merlins and became the Halifax. It was using P.13/36 as a basis that George Volkert of Handley Page, who had been promoted to chief engineer over German born Gustav Lachmann (who designed the Teutonic looking Hampden) produced a paper in May 1937 about a theoretical high-speed unarmed bomber. His idea was not to actually build one, but to shock the Air Staff into considering it, which at a time of peace would have been happy with their released specifications and future plans. 

Many actually did consider it, more so than is often realised and recounted in the story of the Mosquito, but by the time that aircraft was designed, objections arose because no one believed Geoffrey de Havilland's projected figures, almost all thinking they were too optomistic. Also, many didn't like the idea that the Mossie didn't have a turret and was not originally conceived with other jobs in mind - Blackburn had by this time produced its B.28, which was a high speed, fast unarmed bomber reconnaissance platform with the option of being able to fit a turret, which was actually offered a production specification, but was never built, so GdeH tilted his hat toward a night fighter and a separate recon variant, which seemed to delay the canning of his baby, although the insistence of a gun turret, which nearly killed the 'unarmed' bit of the design, railroaded it a bit until Freeman jumped in and stated a turret was a dumb idea, and that the prototype that GdeH was building should be completed as an aerodynamic test bed before the turret equipped version flew. Anyway, all this was far in the future in 1936, but the seeds were being sown for high speed bombers, but again, the turret played a big part and it was the thing for bombers.

Engines. In 1936, there was no way that anyone could have predicted the Vulture would end up the way it did; P.13/36 was written around it and Volkert changed the HP.56 because of fears there wouldn't be enough of them and bench trials with RR weren't altogether as happy as they should have been, but that wasn't for another year yet, so in 1936, the future of the Vulture looked rosy. On paper it was an attractive proposition, compact, light and powerful. The Peregrine was the same. The Merlin was for its time a big engine and the Griffon or 'R' was considered a bit of an aberation and despite RR going ahead with a test bed, was not seriously considered for production until the navy wanted a big long range recon fighter, which became the Firefly, but again, this wasn't until 1938, so the Peregrine offered compactness and good power-to-weight ratio.

The FAA does actually fit into the RAF since the FAA was a branch of the RAF in 1936 and had been since 1924, when the "RAF Fleet Air Arm" was officialy formed. With the formation of the RAF in 1918, the RNAS effectively disappeared and RAF crews flew and maintained the aircraft aboard carriers and ships. Might not have been such a bad idea to divorce the two earlier, as Parsifal suggested - and it could (and perhaps should) have been done at any time prior to the outbreak of war.

The one thing, if I was to offer any development in advance, would be to improve Bomber Command's ability to find its way to its targets. The Germans were the best at this once war broke out and they had devices in production that aided in this during their attack on Poland; Knickebein was used against Warsaw, so this is what Bomber Command should be doing. Unfortunately the bomber staff were reluctant to change things from the way they had been going for years since the end of WW1, but there was light, although pessimistic light at the end of the tunnel, if only fleetingly. Edgar Ludlow Hewitt, who became BC head in 1937 was acutely aware of the problems facing the force and sent off memos describing his pessimistic view of how British bombers would do in light of modern advances, including their inability to find their way to their targets and a lack of long range escorts, but even later toward the outbreak of war, he was not heeded and was considered to be a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, so not long after war was declared, he was ousted from his position, possibly because of his gloomy demeanour. This is of course despite the fact that he was right!

As for long range escort fighters in 1936, I'll give the Airacuda, but not the Bf 110 - it was designed as a 'destroyer' rather than specifically an escort fighter, but it fit the profile. Both of these seemed like good ideas in 1936, though.


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## Shortround6 (Mar 11, 2014)

nuuumannn said:


> Engines. In 1936, there was no way that anyone could have predicted the Vulture would end up the way it did; P.13/36 was written around it and Volkert changed the HP.56 because of fears there wouldn't be enough of them and bench trials with RR weren't altogether as happy as they should have been, but that wasn't for another year yet, so in 1936, the future of the Vulture looked rosy. On paper it was an attractive proposition, compact, light and powerful. The Peregrine was the same. The Merlin was for its time a big engine and the Griffon or 'R' was considered a bit of an aberation and despite RR going ahead with a test bed, was not seriously considered for production until the navy wanted a big long range recon fighter, which became the Firefly, but again, this wasn't until 1938, so the Peregrine offered compactness and good power-to-weight ratio.



Peregrine was considered a "Merlinized" Kestrel. Basic problem with the Peregrine which was shared by a number of mid 1930s engines was that it wasn't big enough. When work started the engine makers thought they needed to offer a range of engine sizes that didn't change a lot from one step to the next. Airframe makers in the early/mid 30s were just feeling their way to bigger/stronger airframes that could use 1000hp and up engines. In just a few years they wanted bigger engines and passed by the 750-1000hp 'compact' engines that they had been asking for just a few years before. There would continue to be a market for 450-600hp engines but the market for 750-1000hp engines vanished as 1000-1500hp an up engines became available just as the market for 1000-1500hp engines faded away as 2000-3000hp engines became available(helicopter use excepted). P&W post war R-2180 being a case in point. 



> As for long range escort fighters in 1936, I'll give the Airacuda, but not the Bf 110 - it was designed as a 'destroyer' rather than specifically an escort fighter, but it fit the profile. Both of these seemed like good ideas in 1936, though.



The "idea" of long range "fighters", even if not called escorts, was popular with the theorists of the time and as were multi-purpose aircraft. The twin engine multi-place (seat) aircraft was popular in France and France in the early mid 30s had influence in military thinking that would fade considerably by 1940.


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## pbehn (Mar 11, 2014)

Get Mr Whittle and Rolls Royce together and give them whatever resources are needed (anytime in the previous 6 yrs would have been good too) may have jet bombers and fighters by 1943/44


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## fastmongrel (Mar 11, 2014)

pbehn said:


> Get Mr Whittle and Rolls Royce together and give them whatever resources are needed (anytime in the
> previous 6 yrs would have been good too) may have jet bombers and fighters by 1943/44



Get Miles aviation to build the new jet planes they were a really forward thinking company. Though it might look like its flying backwards


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## tomo pauk (Mar 11, 2014)

nuuumannn said:


> Tomo, I feel like I've railroaded your thread! I get what you are doing, so for the sake of argument, let's play.



...at least until I got involved with my business, and that will hit the high gear some time around Easter 



> Turret fighter. this might seem like an easy one considering the fate of the Daffy in the Battle of Britain, but hindsight at play again - how could those who released F.9/35 have known that Germany would invade France and their bombers, which the turret fighter was to destroy would be escorted by single-seat fighters? The gun turret was Britain's piece of modern technology - a silver bullet weapon? Boulton Paul had worked on powered turrets before De Boysson, the Frenchman who designed the turret produced for the Defiant intorduced himself to J.D. North, and other firms were working on turrets also, and their application was seen as a big advance in technology. After equipping bombers with WW1 era Scarff ring gun mountings fitted with a single or two WW1 era Lewis or Vickers K guns, the idea of turrets was a leap in advance. Both B.12/36 and P.13/36, the future bomber specifications released that year both stipulated gun turrets as a necessity for defence. In a fighter, the concentration of firepower a turret offered was considered to be a big advantage, with the flexibility of being able to position the aircraft anywhere around a fleeing bomber and fire at it at will was crucial to the idea and seemed like a good one. The Defiant was also considered as a ground attack aircraft, although quite how that would work, I don't know; bomb shackles were fitted and dropping trials carried out.



I was not pointing out that anyone should consider the quick fall of France. But some math can help us. The Hurricane has twice the firepower of a 4-gun turret fighter. It needs half of crew worth. Hurricane does not need a cooperative target. The turret fighter, with one 1000-1500 engine will hardly be able to be up-gunned with cannons. Unlike the classic fighter, and RAF was enthusiastic about cannons. The turret ads cost, while reducing performance.Turret fighter is lousy in head-on intercept. If the fighter has no appreciable performance advantage vs. bomber, it will be ill able to position the aircraft anywhere around a bomber. It would be also okay from the bombers not to return fire 
The Defiant as an ground attack aircraft will also want the target not to fire back, if it's guns are to be fired in a broadside while the Daffy is flying at steady course, altitude and speed.



> Unarmed bomber; this one was actually considered by more than a few forward thinking individuals. No doubt, with the two bomber specs previously mentioned, the idea to a turret-equipped fast, modern bomber got the juices flowing among the Air Staff - B.12/36 producing a four engined heavy and although the Supermarine bomber was selected for production, only the Stirling actually got built and P.13/36 was for a twin engined fast medium bomber, the Vulture equipped Avro 679, which became the Manchester and the HP.56, which was never built, but was modified with four Merlins and became the Halifax. It was using P.13/36 as a basis that George Volkert of Handley Page, who had been promoted to chief engineer over German born Gustav Lachmann (who designed the Teutonic looking Hampden) produced a paper in May 1937 about a theoretical high-speed unarmed bomber. His idea was not to actually build one, but to shock the Air Staff into considering it, which at a time of peace would have been happy with their released specifications and future plans.



Teutonic looking aircraft? That was a good one 
Turret equipped and unarmed bomber should be mutually exclusive things? The idea is to axe the guns gunners, so one can reduce the size of aircraft and devote more engine power, in order to produce more speed. The RAF can remeber that Hart and Battle were, when introduced, faster than it's fighters. Just up the bar.



> Many actually did consider it, more so than is often realised and recounted in the story of the Mosquito, but by the time that aircraft was designed, objections arose because no one believed Geoffrey de Havilland's projected figures, almost all thinking they were too optomistic. Also, many didn't like the idea that the Mossie didn't have a turret and was not originally conceived with other jobs in mind - *Blackburn had by this time produced its B.28*, which was a high speed, fast unarmed bomber reconnaissance platform with the option of being able to fit a turret, which was actually offered a production specification, *but was never built*, so GdeH tilted his hat toward a night fighter and a separate recon variant, which seemed to delay the canning of his baby, although the insistence of a gun turret, which nearly killed the 'unarmed' bit of the design, railroaded it a bit until Freeman jumped in and stated a turret was a dumb idea, and that the prototype that GdeH was building should be completed as an aerodynamic test bed before the turret equipped version flew. Anyway, all this was far in the future in 1936, but the seeds were being sown for high speed bombers, but again, the turret played a big part and it was the thing for bombers.



Seems that people high up have had no problems, prior the war, believing Camm that Typhoon will beat the 460 mph mark? Was the B.28 really produced, or was not?? The term 'many did not like' points us to about the similar mentality that determined that every bomber must be able to dive bomb. I mean,what the term 'like' has to do with anything in military matters?? Stuff either works or does not, and fast bomber was proven as workable almost decade ago. 



> Engines. In 1936, there was no way that anyone could have predicted the Vulture would end up the way it did; P.13/36 was written around it and Volkert changed the HP.56 because of fears there wouldn't be enough of them and bench trials with RR weren't altogether as happy as they should have been, but that wasn't for another year yet, so in 1936, the future of the Vulture looked rosy. On paper it was an attractive proposition, compact, light and powerful. The Peregrine was the same. The Merlin was for its time a big engine and the Griffon or 'R' was considered a bit of an aberation and despite RR going ahead with a test bed, was not seriously considered for production until the navy wanted a big long range recon fighter, which became the Firefly, but again, this wasn't until 1938, so the Peregrine offered compactness and good power-to-weight ratio.



The power-to-weight ratio of engines is more a sale's pitch, than something of a real value. If the engine does not develop a suitable power, it will never propel an 8 gun fighter to 360 mph. Merlin III was capable to do that, Peregrine less so. Merlin was not that a big engine, size was about Hispano V-12 engines, RR Buzzard of DB-600. The Vulture might be considered as abbeartion, not the Buzzard/R/Griffon engines, with clear lineage?



> The FAA does actually fit into the RAF since the FAA was a branch of the RAF in 1936 and had been since 1924, when the "RAF Fleet Air Arm" was officialy formed. With the formation of the RAF in 1918, the RNAS effectively disappeared and RAF crews flew and maintained the aircraft aboard carriers and ships. Might not have been such a bad idea to divorce the two earlier, as Parsifal suggested - and it could (and perhaps should) have been done at any time prior to the outbreak of war.



Yep, the 'divorce' should've happened earlier. 



> The one thing, if I was to offer any development in advance, would be to improve Bomber Command's ability to find its way to its targets. The Germans were the best at this once war broke out and they had devices in production that aided in this during their attack on Poland; Knickebein was used against Warsaw, so this is what Bomber Command should be doing. *Unfortunately the bomber staff were reluctant to change things from the way they had been going for years since the end of WW1,* but there was light, although pessimistic light at the end of the tunnel, if only fleetingly. Edgar Ludlow Hewitt, who became BC head in 1937 was acutely aware of the problems facing the force and sent off memos describing his pessimistic view of how British bombers would do in light of modern advances, including their inability to find their way to their targets and a lack of long range escorts, but even later toward the outbreak of war, he was not heeded and was considered to be a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, so not long after war was declared, he was ousted from his position, possibly because of his gloomy demeanour. This is of course despite the fact that he was right!



Re. bolded part: no surprise here, the side that just won the war is rarely persuaded to chage it's way of looking at things. French military was even worse in this regard. 



> As for long range escort fighters in 1936, I'll give the Airacuda, but not the Bf 110 - it was designed as a 'destroyer' rather than specifically an escort fighter, but it fit the profile. Both of these seemed like good ideas in 1936, though.



There won't be any long range fighters produced in 1936 - you have a few years to come up with something 

BTW, sorry if my tone is a it harsh, it's the establishments that I don't like


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## Shortround6 (Mar 12, 2014)

tomo pauk said:


> I was not pointing out that anyone should consider the quick fall of France. But some math can help us. The Hurricane has twice the firepower of a 4-gun turret fighter. It needs half of crew worth. Hurricane does not need a cooperative target. The turret fighter, with one 1000-1500 engine will hardly be able to be up-gunned with cannons. Unlike the classic fighter, and RAF was enthusiastic about cannons. The turret ads cost, while reducing performance.Turret fighter is lousy in head-on intercept. If the fighter has no appreciable performance advantage vs. bomber, it will be ill able to position the aircraft anywhere around a bomber. It would be also okay from the bombers not to return fire
> The Defiant as an ground attack aircraft will also want the target not to fire back, if it's guns are to be fired in a broadside while the Daffy is flying at steady course, altitude and speed.



Part of the problem here was you dealing with a lot of unknown problems and the fact that it could take 3 years or more to go from "idea"  to service aircraft. Some "experts" thought fighter pilots could not deal with the closing speeds and maneuvering of 300+mph aircraft. Given only a few hours per year of gunnery training they were probably right. 
Right answer was more training.
Wrong answer was the turret fighter, which _started_ with the Hawker Demon turret fighter;








> Turret equipped and unarmed bomber should be mutually exclusive things? The idea is to axe the guns gunners, so one can reduce the size of aircraft and devote more engine power, in order to produce more speed. The RAF can remeber that Hart and Battle were, when introduced, faster than it's fighters. Just up the bar.



It is easy to say "up the bar" it is a lot harder to do. 

RAF first line fighters when the Hart was introduced in Feb 1930:





Siskin introduced in 1923





Bulldog introduced in 1927
Neither are particularly streamlined aircraft. 

The first line RAF fighter entering squadron service in May 1935





at least they cowled the engine 

It was not hard for monoplane bombers with retracting landing gear to outrun fixed gear biplanes. Expecting them to outrun monoplane fighters with retracting landing requires about as much faith (or more) than turret fighters 



> Stuff either works or does not, and fast bomber was proven as workable almost decade ago.



The fast bomber _only_ worked when it used technology (aerodynamics and engines) that the fighters were _not_ using. The 'cult of maneuverability' often kept 1930s fighters slower and poorer armed than they could have been as pure bomber interceptors. 



> The power-to-weight ratio of engines is more a sale's pitch, than something of a real value. If the engine does not develop a suitable power, it will never propel an 8 gun fighter to 360 mph. Merlin III was capable to do that, Peregrine less so. Merlin was not that a big engine, size was about Hispano V-12 engines, RR Buzzard of DB-600. The Vulture might be considered as abbeartion, not the Buzzard/R/Griffon engines, with clear lineage?



Power to weight is only part sales pitch and varies a bit with the aircraft involved. As an example say you have the choice of either a Merlin 45 or a AM-35A engine in the Spring of 1941. Both have similar power at 18-20,000ft but the Merlin is around 400lbs lighter not including radiators and coolant. In a single engine fighter saving over 400lbs of engine wight can make a big difference in the other choices to made ( fuel or armament or wing size or....) while saving 800-900lbs on a 20,000lb bomber may not be quite as big a deal ( but may be 25% or more of bombload?) while on a 50,000lb 4 engine bomber 16-1800lbs is a bit smaller percentage it is still important. This is an extreme case and the difference of 0.04lbs per HP is nowhere near as important. 

British got sucked into the twin engine _heavy_ bomber trap like the Germans did. They just didn't follow the first foot with the second foot and both arms.


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## parsifal (Mar 12, 2014)

funny thing is that for lower speed fighters of the WWI era, a turretted fighter might have worked. Lowe speed will reduce the tracking problem and give the gunner more time to react to a closing fighter . I admit, it was probably never a great idea, but in 1935 it might at least have made a bit of sense, in 1940, it was a waste of money and time.


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## nuuumannn (Mar 12, 2014)

Tomo, great information and reasoning; don't worry about the tone; not an issue for me. I essentially agree with everything you are saying. The problem is you are thinking ahead into the future using what you know happened in 1940 to base your reasoning on, which in 1936 the RAF could not have known; hence my statements in the first instance. 

This includes about Hurricanes versus Defiants, smart logic, but of course the fact was that in 1936 the two roles were slightly exclusive to each other, defensive fighter and bomber destroyer. The turret fighter was to do one job and the single-seater another, although the theory behind the turret fighter was that they would, in formations of four, attack bombers and the single-seaters hang about waiting for stragglers to break off after attack. As for return fire, yeah, that could be expected as one of the hazards of war, but the advantage of the thinking behind the turret fighter was that it could slot into the bombers' blind spots, such as under their bellies - as Defiants actually did as night fighters - and fire their guns obliquely upwards, or other areas where return fire coverage was lacking. This is, of course the theory behind the idea, obviously, the reality by day was very different, but by night, the turret fighter idea did actually work because of the lack of aircraft in the air! Which says nothing for the environment the RAF planners were expecting when they drew the specification up!

Also, France was the big change to the British plans - it even caught the Germans by surprise, they did not expect to achieve what they did as quickly or as easily as they did. It changed everything.

Unarmed bomber; the idea was a good one and interested many, but was not really emphasised in the minds of the Air Staff for another year or so, so in 1936 we saw B.12/36 and P.13/36 released with turrets as standard. Some time between Volkert releasing his paper in 1937 and the Mosquito, the Air Staff decided that what they wanted was not an unarmed bomber, but a 'Speed Bomber' - some neddy actually stated this, might have been Liptrot - can't remember, but the turret was to be mated to a high speed bomber of small proportions (thus merging two separate lines of thought) and it was based on this that the objections to the DH.98 were raised. No one believed GdeH's figures and the fact that it did not have a turret concerned Sholto Douglas, so it was redrawn with a tail turret. The Air Staff made the two inclusive and attempted to merge the ideas into one. SR is right about this one.

As for the B.28, it wasn't built, and when I wrote produced - perhaps I confused you here - I meant that Blackburn offered the design to the Air Ministry, which approved it and requested a prototype, but a mock up was completed only. It was to be based on the Botha, but powered by Griffons. The concept was not new; the Airco D.H.4 was considered a high speed bomber/recon machine in WW1.

The thing about the Peregrine, SR, is that in 1936, it looked right. Yes, in hindsight everything you are saying is true, but in 1936 the RAF didn't have that foresight. Fighters (Gauntlets) were powered by 645 hp Mercury engines; the Peregrine at nearly 900 hp was considered a good size, compact engine - after the very successful Kestrel, its future looked bright. Thankfully the RAF had the foresight to see that the Merlin, applied in most things' specifications around the mid 1930s was the right size and had plenty of potential instead.


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## pbehn (Mar 13, 2014)

Its a fair point that we post with hind sight so our opinions of what should have been done are coloured by what actually happened BUT ...what about some foresight.

Bearing in mind the attrition in WW1 why didn't anybody take steps to have the massive expansion in production of aircraft and pilot training before the conflict started. Why didnt they do sufficient practice with Front line bombers and fighters and determine that the bombers were effectively helpless. I read (I think in a history of bomber command) that they believed that the more fighters were put against the bombers then the more fighters would be shot down. This when they had Hampdens and Wellingtons. The Vic formation, the attack tactics nothing was suitable , surely with a bit or elementary "wargaming" attack against defence as even amateur football teams do would have yielded a lot of good info.


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## merlin (Mar 13, 2014)

I don't think wqe should get 'hung-up' on the use of 'hindsight' - only that the changes you want to make have plausible reasons for happening instead of the original sequence.


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## nuuumannn (Mar 13, 2014)

> only that the changes you want to make have plausible reasons for happening instead of the original sequence.



This is very apt. But, like I stated with the turret fighter; no one could have predicted the fall of France _again_ - hence hindsight. Like I said, it changed everything. You still have to apply a measure for timely thinking, like there's no way that in 1936 that anyone could have predicted the Fairey Battle or the Bristol 142 was going to be obsolescent four years later, or that we'd be at war within a few years at all. 

Wargaming, it happened, but not in what we'd consider realistic scenarios. The big problem with the mid Thirties was that peace was a very believeable concept and only a few - a very few at the time feared that Britain might get sucked into war again, thinking the Nazis were bad. That year, the Germans held the XIth Olympiade in Berlin; it was the opening of the Third Reich to the world and the world's press were invited to examine how well the Nazis were doing since they had entered power, with displays of military might and exhibitions extolling the virtues of national socialism. This even extended to visits to Sachsenhausen concentration camp an hour by train from Berlin, which was known as the 'Model' camp, where the Germans showed those invited to view how well they treated their political prisoners - no 'Final Solution' or gas chambers yet. 

If you look at aviation achievements in 1936, almost all the headlines are of airmen or aviatrixes flying record flights round the world - Amy Johnson, Jean Batten et al, also the growth of airlines, United employed female air hostesses on their new DSTs (DC-3s), Air France introduced modern four engined all metal airliners and new routes, Pan Am started a trans-pacific route from San Francisco to the Phillipines. On the military front, the news was more about new modern types, like Supermarine's new fighter prototype and of course, in international news the Fascist nations were bucking the trend by continuing a war in Abbysinnia and the Spanish Civil war was kicking off. 

One of the biggest testing grounds for WW2 was the Spanish Civil War, but the Brits did not heed the warnings from that, preferring not to take part, at least officially.


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## merlin (Mar 14, 2014)

to quote - nuuumannn 

"This is very apt. But, like I stated with the turret fighter; no one could have predicted the fall of France again - hence hindsight. Like I said, it changed everything. You still have to apply a measure for timely thinking, like there's no way that in 1936 that anyone could have predicted the Fairey Battle or the Bristol 142 was going to be obsolescent four years later, or that we'd be at war within a few years at all".

I agree that no one could have predicted the Fall of France - not even Hitler expected that with the May '40 Campaign, yet if in WW1 the Germans avoided the forts of Verdun and went through Belgian, all the more likely to do so again in any future war. And with Belgian airbases available, they would be the greater potential for bomber raids to be escorted!! Granted not certain - but it seems plausible to theorise that at the time.

The Battle was an aircraft born out of the anticipated restrictions of the Geneva Disbarment Talks, in the event these didn't apply but the aircraft went ahead anyway, stretching it to stop it completely, but again seems plausible to call a halt to continued production at the Shadow factories e.g. Austin factory makes Hurricanes instead of Battles.

The Blenheim was a very good aircraft when it came out, but hampered by the Mercury engines - a crime to the crew who flew it in '42 that it was in service for so long, again options for earlier replacement!!

How about - in 1938 the Air Ministry in seeking an aircraft from non-strategic materials - went to de Havilland, Bristol, Armstrong Whitworth. Bristol dropped out, but the other two both had different ideas - prototypes were built - the Mosquito (earlier than OTL) was draw dropping brilliant, whilst the 'Albemarle' was disappointing - AW explained than performance was lost because of all the extra weight. 
A standard construction model followed - which much improved the AM ordered which replaced the Blenheim.
This may be a 'late' replacement scenario for the Blenheim - an earlier on may be to order the Bristol to P.13/36


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## tomo pauk (Mar 14, 2014)

nuuumannn said:


> Tomo, great information and reasoning; don't worry about the tone; not an issue for me. I essentially agree with everything you are saying. The problem is you are thinking ahead into the future using what you know happened in 1940 to base your reasoning on, which in 1936 the RAF could not have known; hence my statements in the first instance.



Thanks for the kind words 



> This includes about Hurricanes versus Defiants, smart logic, but of course the fact was that in 1936 the two roles were slightly exclusive to each other, defensive fighter and bomber destroyer. The turret fighter was to do one job and the single-seater another, although the theory behind the turret fighter was that they would, in formations of four, attack bombers and the single-seaters hang about waiting for stragglers to break off after attack. As for return fire, yeah, that could be expected as one of the hazards of war, but the advantage of the thinking behind the turret fighter was that it could slot into the bombers' blind spots, such as under their bellies - as Defiants actually did as night fighters - and fire their guns obliquely upwards, or other areas where return fire coverage was lacking. This is, of course the theory behind the idea, obviously, the reality by day was very different, but by night, the turret fighter idea did actually work because of the lack of aircraft in the air! Which says nothing for the environment the RAF planners were expecting when they drew the specification up!



It was been stated several times in this forum, by he people I find knowledgeable about RAF's internal gearings in the 1930s, that both Hurricane and Spitfire were tasked with one major thing: defence of metropolitan UK. And so were Gladiatros before them. Germany was to be dealt with bombers. Army cooperation (cooperation??) was to receive bread crumbs, with Hectors and Lysanders.
Fortunately, the turret fighter proposal from Supermarine was not accepted, so they went with Spitfire in high gear.



> Also, France was the big change to the British plans - it even caught the Germans by surprise, they did not expect to achieve what they did as quickly or as easily as they did. It changed everything.



Agreed.



> Unarmed bomber; the idea was a good one and interested many, but was not really emphasised in the minds of the Air Staff for another year or so, so in 1936 we saw B.12/36 and P.13/36 released with turrets as standard. Some time between Volkert releasing his paper in 1937 and the Mosquito, the Air Staff decided that what they wanted was not an unarmed bomber, but a 'Speed Bomber' - some neddy actually stated this, might have been Liptrot - can't remember, but the turret was to be mated to a high speed bomber of small proportions (thus merging two separate lines of thought) and it was based on this that the objections to the DH.98 were raised. No one believed GdeH's figures and the fact that it did not have a turret concerned Sholto Douglas, so it was redrawn with a tail turret. The Air Staff made the two inclusive and attempted to merge the ideas into one. SR is right about this one.



Thanks for this. 
I still maintain that a fast bomber would've been an asset for any air force. Thankfully, the Germans managed to slow the Ju-88 substantially down, and we might wonder just how good the B-26 would've been with a thinner wing and less guns gunners.



> As for the B.28, it wasn't built, and when I wrote produced - perhaps I confused you here - I meant that Blackburn offered the design to the Air Ministry, which approved it and requested a prototype, but a mock up was completed only. It was to be based on the Botha, but powered by Griffons. The concept was not new; the Airco D.H.4 was considered a high speed bomber/recon machine in WW1.



Thanks for clarification. I guess Botha needed Griffons very badly


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## Shortround6 (Mar 14, 2014)

tomo pauk said:


> I still maintain that a fast bomber would've been an asset for any air force. Thankfully, the Germans managed to slow the Ju-88 substantially down, and we might wonder just how good the B-26 would've been with a thinner wing and less guns gunners.



You also have to consider the bombs and bomb loads they were considering 'effective' at the time. 

and the often forgotten question of field length/type. Best bomber in the world doesn't do much good if there are only 2-3 airfields in the country that can operate it. 

Budgets in the mid 1930s were small fractions of what they would be once the shooting started. while buying "new" aircraft with the requirement they operate from "old" airfields may seem short sighted, with the money available it was sometimes a question of buying 'limited' aircraft in 'limited' numbers *OR* expanding old airfields with larger runways and operating the "old" (literally, not just old designs) aircraft from them. 

The "state" of the RAF in regards to bombers on Jan 1 1935 may be interesting;
1. Not _one_ monoplane bomber was _in service_ with the RAF. That is not one single aircraft, not type. 
2. Of the _heavy_ bombers in service, *no* design was under 5 years old and some were almost 12years old in design. These are "night" bombers.
3. There was only _one_ day medium bomber squadron, and it's _mix_ of aircraft were basically (in design) 8 years old. 
4. NONE of the light bomber and general purpose (army co-operation?) squadrons had a design less than 6 years old. 
5. Not a single British bomber in service could reach the nearest point in Germany from British soil, drop a 500lb bomb and return to Britain. 

Some types of bombers that entered service in 1935/36





A slightly modernized 1926 design. 





While a 1930/31 design it does not go into service (14 built) until late 1936





First operational RAF aircraft with retracting landing gear. Goes into service with first squadron in March of 1936. 

The Blenheim while ordered "off the drawing board" to the tune of 150 aircraft and long lead items for 450 more 9 months before the the Hurricane is ordered into production, it does not go into service with the first squadron until March of 1937, beating the introduction of the Battle in May of 1937.

In 1936-38 the selection of _suitable_ bombers is rather limited. Perhaps the British did not push the designers hard enough but in 1936-38 it was a question of building Battles, Blenheims and the like or building biplanes or building _nothing_ to equip the "new" squadrons being formed. 

While the "first" Wellington flew in June of 1936 the first "production" Wellington did not fly until Dec 1937 (with quite a number of changes). Again ordered "off the drawing board" back in 1935/36 with 180 aircraft in the first batch the first Service squadron gets their first aircraft in Oct 1938. 

British have an engine problem. While the Armstrong Siddley Tiger engine provides at least fair service during the 30s (and is the first production engine with a 2 speed supercharger) it hits a development dead end at under 1000hp. The Bristol Mercury and Pegasus won't go much over 1000/1100hp HP even with 100 octane and the Hercules is running late. Merlin already has more airfames needing it than can be supplied at times. For some reason they do not try a 4 engine bomber with under 1000hp engines just to get something going ( guys in the treasury again?).

Bomber "theory" in the 1930s also vastley under estimated the size of the bombs that were needed to really damage large structures. Bomb loads comprising large numbers of "small" bombs of 100/110lb and 220/250lb sizes were often specified. This leads to a lot of designs having trouble being upgraded to large size (500lb and up) bombs in large numbers without a _lot_ of work. 

Fast bombers can be useful but they also have problems, like not real great range. The JU-88 was one example of this. Using the same or slightly better engines than the He 111 it carried a _LOT_ less fuel in the wings. Now consider it could carry a few less bombs in the bomb bay ( He 111 could carry 32 50 Kg bombs compared to the JU-88s 28 ) Range of a JU-88A-1 with full internal bomb load was 620 miles at 217mph at 18,050ft. ( hardly a problem for any decent monoplane interceptor). It could make 1055 miles by using the forward bomb bay as fuel space but that cut the bomb load to a mere ten 50kg bombs ( 1/3 what the He 111 carried). While the fast bomber may very well suffer fewer losses per 1000 sorties, it may not look so good if you figure losses per 1000 tons of bomb dropped. 
I would also be rather careful in comparing the speed records set by the JU-88V-5 to actual service speeds even if you leave of the ventral gondola.

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## tomo pauk (Mar 14, 2014)

Excellent analysis, well worth reading.
Again, some comments:



> British have an engine problem. While the Armstrong Siddley Tiger engine provides at least fair service during the 30s (and is the first production engine with a 2 speed supercharger) it hits a development dead end at under 1000hp. The Bristol Mercury and Pegasus won't go much over 1000/1100hp HP even with 100 octane and the Hercules is running late. Merlin already has more airfames needing it than can be supplied at times. For some reason they do not try a 4 engine bomber with under 1000hp engines just to get something going ( guys in the treasury again?).



IIRC the Pegasus, Tiger and Mercury were fulfilling the Bomber command needs by a large margin? The Battle can receive Pegasus, it will provide even more HP on take off, though the speed would not be something to brag around. Or, cancel the Battle all together after 700-800 examples built, that makes up for further 1300 Merlins before 1940 ends? Not developing the Exe and Peregrine gives more resources to develop and produce more Merlins. Not going for Defiant gives further 1000+ Merlins, part of wich can go for bombers' needs. 



> Bomber "theory" in the 1930s also vastley under estimated the size of the bombs that were needed to really damage large structures. Bomb loads comprising large numbers of "small" bombs of 100/110lb and 220/250lb sizes were often specified. This leads to a lot of designs having trouble being upgraded to large size (500lb and up) bombs in large numbers without a lot of work.



Going for a high wing aircraft, with uninterrupted bomb bay should help to retain flexibility re. bomb sizes? Eg. the Hampden (1st flight in 1936) has been able to carry, in a bomb bay, a magnetic mine weighting 2000 lbs, a far cry what the Ju-88 or He-111 were capable for.



> Fast bombers can be useful but they also have problems, like not real great range. The JU-88 was one example of this. Using the same or slightly better engines than the He 111 it carried a LOT less fuel in the wings. Now consider it could carry a few less bombs in the bomb bay ( He 111 could carry 32 50 Kg bombs compared to the JU-88s 28 ) Range of a JU-88A-1 with full internal bomb load was 620 miles at 217mph at 18,050ft. ( hardly a problem for any decent monoplane interceptor). It could make 1055 miles by using the forward bomb bay as fuel space but that cut the bomb load to a mere ten 50kg bombs ( 1/3 what the He 111 carried). While the fast bomber may very well suffer fewer losses per 1000 sorties, it may not look so good if you figure losses per 1000 tons of bomb dropped.



We know that Ju-88's performance was compromised by modifying it to the dive bombing, and addition of crew members, guns gun positions and ammo. The aircraft was bigger than Mosquito, Pe-2 or A-20, and the speed will be lower than those. Some foresight will be needed re. internal fuel tanks.
The RAF can keep it's LR bombers, until the fast bomber is perfected. 



> I would also be rather careful in comparing the speed records set by the JU-88V-5 to actual service speeds even if you leave of the ventral gondola.



Ditto. I'd really love to see performance numbers conditions of the aircraft in the tests.


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## Shortround6 (Mar 14, 2014)

> IIRC the Pegasus, Tiger and Mercury were fulfilling the Bomber command needs by a large margin? The Battle can receive Pegasus, it will provide even more HP on take off, though the speed would not be something to brag around. Or, cancel the Battle all together after 700-800 examples built, that makes up for further 1300 Merlins before 1940 ends? Not developing the Exe and Peregrine gives more resources to develop and produce more Merlins. Not going for Defiant gives further 1000+ Merlins, part of wich can go for bombers' needs.



A Battle with a Pegasus engine would be even more useless than a standard Battle. 






Vickers Wellesley bomber that went into service in April 1937 and went on to equip 6 Home squadrons before being shuffled off to the mid-east. 

Five were modified for the long range record setting flight to Australia with longer, lower drag cowls. But even a Wellington/Hampden type cowl means a lot of drag. 






Please remember that the Battle was _never intended_ to be a tactical bomber or support aircraft. While the 2 speed Pegasus offers more power for take-off it offers around 150hp less at 15,500ft and has more drag. The 257mph top speed of the Battle at 15,000ft becomes???? Range drops to?????

Here is were the Battle fit into things. 

Expansion Schemes

In 1934 they planned to add 41 1/2 new squadrons to the RAF by early 1939. The plan was constantly "updated and improved" with "proposed" front line strength in March 1939 rising from 1,544 aircraft in the July 1934 plan to 2,770 aircraft (still in March of 1939) in the Jan 1937 plan. At the Time of the Jan 1937 plan not a single squadron had received a single Battle, Blenheim or Wellesley bomber let alone Hurricane or Spitfire. 

What do you equip these squadrons with? Granted the _Plan/s_ fell behind schedule but _waiting_ for better airframes to use the Merlin engines in means a whole lot of "pilots" running about over grassy fields with arms outstretched making _vrooom, vrooom _ noises while mechanics and fitters dismantle and reassemble the the officer pilots Austin 7 cars 









> Going for a high wing aircraft, with uninterrupted bomb bay should help to retain flexibility re. bomb sizes? Eg. the Hampden (1st flight in 1936) has been able to carry, in a bomb bay, a magnetic mine weighting 2000 lbs, a far cry what the Ju-88 or He-111 were capable for.



In part because the requirement for the Hampden required it to carry a torpedo. Large, uninterrupted bomb bays impose a structural penalty. Take a few cardboard mailing tubes and cut a series of holes in them on one side, small and large or a number of small holes in one tube. How much bracing do you think you have to add to the one with largest, longest hole to get back the strength? 

The Whitley and Stirling (in addition to the Battle) had bomb bays in the wings. 



> We know that Ju-88's performance was compromised by modifying it to the dive bombing, and addition of crew members, guns gun positions and ammo. The aircraft was bigger than Mosquito, Pe-2 or A-20, and the speed will be lower than those. Some foresight will be needed re. internal fuel tanks.



You need more than foresight, you need volume near the center of gravity, Thin airfoils on small wings means less volume in the wings for fuel tanks ( or some rather innovative construction?) and fuselage tanks need to be near the center of gravity just like the bomb load, or a fancy fuel management system (pilot/flight engineer switching tanks) to keep the airplane in trim. The last has been done but violates the KISS principal and WILL result in higher accidents/operational losses. (Private twin engine aircraft like Piper Aerostars with complicated fuel systems have higher accident rates than similar twins with simpler systems)


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## tomo pauk (Mar 14, 2014)

Shortround6 said:


> A Battle with a Pegasus engine would be even more useless than a standard Battle.
> Vickers Wellesley bomber that went into service in April 1937 and went on to equip 6 Home squadrons before being shuffled off to the mid-east.
> 
> Five were modified for the long range record setting flight to Australia with longer, lower drag cowls. But even a Wellington/Hampden type cowl means a lot of drag.



You will remember what I've proposed to do with Battles. The Battles with a radial should hopefully be looking like, well, Battles with a radial (from airpages.ru):








> Please remember that the Battle was _never intended_ to be a tactical bomber or support aircraft. While the 2 speed Pegasus offers more power for take-off it offers around 150hp less at 15,500ft and has more drag. The 257mph top speed of the Battle at 15,000ft becomes???? Range drops to?????



I never claimed that Battle is intended to be a tactical bomber, like Ju-87 or Su-2. The performance figures will go down, no doubt about that. 
The fast bomber with 2 Merlins will assume tasks that radial (or any) Battle is unfit for.




> Here is were the Battle fit into things.
> 
> Expansion Schemes
> In 1934 they planned to add 41 1/2 new squadrons to the RAF by early 1939. The plan was constantly "updated and improved" with "proposed" front line strength in March 1939 rising from 1,544 aircraft in the July 1934 plan to 2,770 aircraft (still in March of 1939) in the Jan 1937 plan. At the Time of the Jan 1937 plan not a single squadron had received a single Battle, Blenheim or Wellesley bomber let alone Hurricane or Spitfire.
> ...



Just by looking at the number of new designs slated for the RAF of late 1930s it is clear that RAF's fortunes were not wholy dependent on Battle alone. Wellington, Whitley, Hampden, Blenheim, Beaufort, Wellesley, two separate torpedo bombers. Then Anson, half combat half training plane. Plus fighters, four separate designs? Five, if we include Whirlwind.



> In part because the requirement for the Hampden required it to carry a torpedo. Large, uninterrupted bomb bays impose a structural penalty. Take a few cardboard mailing tubes and cut a series of holes in them on one side, small and large or a number of small holes in one tube. How much bracing do you think you have to add to the one with largest, longest hole to get back the strength?



At any rate, Hampden managed to have a bomb bay without any great weight increase. Even if one has an intersected bomb bay, they need to make reinforcements. Big bomb bay will have less reinforcements, but each will be stronger to made up for lack of numbers.



> The Whitley and Stirling (in addition to the Battle) had bomb bays in the wings.



Never loved those features 



> You need more than foresight, you need volume near the center of gravity, Thin airfoils on small wings means less volume in the wings for fuel tanks ( or some rather innovative construction?) and fuselage tanks need to be near the center of gravity just like the bomb load, or a fancy fuel management system (pilot/flight engineer switching tanks) to keep the airplane in trim. The last has been done but violates the KISS principal and WILL result in higher accidents/operational losses. (Private twin engine aircraft like Piper Aerostars with complicated fuel systems have higher accident rates than similar twins with simpler systems)



Mosquito was holding 536 imp gals in it's wings (644 US gallons), the wing being smaller and thinner than of Ju-88.

added: Ju-88A-4 and A-14 were carrying 1680 liters in wing tanks, or about 370 imp gals.


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## Shortround6 (Mar 14, 2014)

tomo pauk said:


> You will remember what I've proposed to do with Battles. The Battles with a radial should hopefully be looking like, well, Battles with a radial (from airpages.ru):
> 
> I believe that is a test mule for a Hercules. By the time you have _any_ Hercules engines to spare about the _last_ thing you want to do with them is stick them on a Battle.
> 
> ...


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## tomo pauk (Mar 14, 2014)

Shortround6 said:


> I believe that is a test mule for a Hercules. By the time you have _any_ Hercules engines to spare about the _last_ thing you want to do with them is stick them on a Battle.



Nope, it's the Wright Cyclone on board.



> The Battles did perform a great service to the RAF and the commonwealth as operational trainers. Perhaps too many were built but if you cut the numbers too much you just have to build more Ansons or (heaven forbid) Bothas



Agreed on all accounts.



> Somewhat true but the timing is not quite the same. It takes until the end of 1938 to get two squadrons equipped with Hampdens. Due in large part with problems with the Taurus engines the First operational squadron doesn't get _any _Beauforts until Jan 1940. While the Whitley I started to reach it's first squadron in March 1937 it was with somewhat unreliable engines and production was slow. Later Tigers were better but the Merlin X really helped. 7 squadrons total were equipped with Whitley's at the start of the war . One reason the Blenheim was still in use in 1942 is not because the British really thought it was very good but because several of the aircraft that were supposed to replace it were failures. The fact that the Anson was still being used in combat squadrons is also a clue that the British did not have the numbers of 1st line combat aircraft they _wanted._
> Please look at the time form first flights (or from the flight of the 2nd prototype which was often the first "production" model and went straight to "official" tests rather than squadron service) to when a plane was actually 'trickled' into squadron service, I say 'trickled' because it often took several months for the 1st and 2nd squadrons to get a full compliment of aircraft. Battles served with 17 bomber squadrons at the outbreak of the war. They served with 4 Polish bomber squadrons during 1940 and with 7 training squadrons from Sept 1939 to Nov 1940. 739 Battles were sent to Canada for use as trainers and 364 went to Australia. Again I say perhaps too many were made but if you cut the numbers by around 1000 then you do have to come with at least 500-800 of something else and no, they can't be Tiger Moths



Thanks for the number of training Battles that went overseas for training, as well as for other data. 1100 Battles that really don't need Merlins, but can be equipped with something more in supply and less in demand.



> Well, they did allow the plane/s to carry _a lot_ of 250lb bombs.



Same thing would allow a decent bomb bay, if that feature is badly wanted/needed?



> yes and no, it carried 400 gallons in eight tanks in the wings between the fuselage and engines and outboard of the engines ( JU-88 carried 369 gal in four tanks?) while the Mosquito had a pair of 68 gallon tanks in the _wing_ where it passed through the fuselage (or in the top of the bomb bay?)


Thanks for correction. The fuselage tanks still allowed the Mosquito to carry full bomb load of 2000 lbs. With cookie aboard, the fuel was down to 500 imp gals, because of weight limit?


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## Shortround6 (Mar 14, 2014)

tomo pauk said:


> Thanks for the number of training Battles that went overseas for training, as well as for other data. 1100 Battles that really don't need Merlins, but can be equipped with something more in supply and less in demand.


They may not _need_ Merlins but part of the idea of using only semi-obsolete aircraft ( instead of totally obsolete, like Hart biplanes) for "operational training" is that you are training both aircrew (air gunner/radio operators/ bomb aimers/navigators. etc) and to some extent ground crew. It might be nice for the engine mechanics to have few months working on some sort of Merlin before posting to a combat squadron flying Merlin powered aircraft. 
And for British engines in 1938-40 you are pretty much limited to the Bristol Mercury and Pegasus for alternative engines. The Bristol Sleeve valves aren't around in any quantity and the ones that are working are in higher demand than the Merlin. The Tiger really doesn't bear thinking about and that leaves..............? 
Mercury may be marginal in power and the Pegasus is being loaded into Hampdens, Wellingtons, Sunderlands, Swordfish and a few other odd aircraft.


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## tomo pauk (Mar 15, 2014)

The overseas engine mechancics' crews will have to learn the Merlin's intricaties on Hurricanes.

Leaving the good old Battle aside for a moment, what about the 'other' engine makers designers? Whar should the Napier be working on from start of 1936? Armstrong Siddeley? Fairey? Bristol, apart Hercules?


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## Shortround6 (Mar 15, 2014)

tomo pauk said:


> Leaving the good old Battle aside for a moment, what about the 'other' engine makers designers? Whar should the Napier be working on from start of 1936? Armstrong Siddeley? Fairey? Bristol, apart Hercules?



Not all factories/companies were the same size.
Fairey, for example had no engine production capability. An experimental shop yes, the ability to make hundred engines a month of any type, no. 
Armstrong Siddeley had a bunch of good trainer engines. The basis of the Tiger dates back to the end of WW I. 
Bristol was stretched thin as it was, dumping the Taurus might have bought something, but a whole "new" engine? 
The Sabre, with 20/20 hind sight was a complete waste of time and effort. Work started in late 1935 (just before your start date) and the engine only became reliable in squadron service in 1943?
7 years or more goes back to the A-S Deerhound, it usually took 3-5 years to go from drawing board to squadron use for engine with 5 years being more likely than 3. The R-2800 took around 2 years from first flight (not first run) to squadron use in the B-26.
Any engine you can dream up in 1936-37 is probably too late for the BoB even in small numbers so it's impact is going to come later in the war.


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## tomo pauk (Mar 15, 2014)

Wasn't hard to agree on that 

How much there is point in tweaking up the Rapier, or at least it's installation? Maybe Napier and Fairey can be 'persuaded' to join their forces into making a H-16 or H-24 engine(s), 40-50 L, with poppet valves? Griffon should fill the 1500 HP 'slot' initially? Canceling the Taurus, and maybe Perseus should bought some time for the Hercules?


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## Shortround6 (Mar 15, 2014)

No point at all in playing with the Rapier, it's 1000hp was at 8,000ft. it didn't make any more power at 15,000ft than the Peregrine and juggling supercharger drive ratios isn't really going to buy you much over all. 

The Fairey Monarch may have worked fairly well as it was but had some real problems trying to develop it for more power without a total redesign. 
Trouble with the Perseus is that it is a sleeve valve Mercury, you can get a bit more power out of it but it is still a 1520 cu in (24.9 liter) air cooled engine. nothing you do to it will move into a different class of engine.


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## fastmongrel (Mar 15, 2014)

Tell Bristol to give up any hope of selling anything to the RAF/FAA in the future other than Hercules and Pegasus and get them to give up on the dozen other engines they were messing with. Tell Armstrong Siddeley to root round in the spares box and find a decent set of bearings. Get a big Canadian company with production line experience to buy the rights to the PW R1830 with an option to build any future PW engines.


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## tomo pauk (Mar 15, 2014)

In my grand scheme (TM), the Canadians will be starting producing the Merlins in 1938, or latest in 1939.


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## Shortround6 (Mar 15, 2014)

Unless you have absolute dictatorial powers a lot of this is not going to happen. Yes, Bristol made a mistake in trying to offer different 4 engines from 24.9 to 28.7 liters. But in hindsight it was the Taurus that was the Mistake. Since a Mercury is pretty much a Pegasus with 1 inch less stroke and a good part of the tooling existed before 1936 you don't save much by knocking of the Mercury. Perseus used Hercules cylinders, sleeves, pistons, at least to start. Only other program they were really fooling with was the Centaurus and telling Bristol _before_ the war broke out that they would be kept in 2nd or 3rd place (no 2000 hp engine) among British engine makers wasn't going to happen. 

The A-S Tiger didn't need just new bearings, it needed a new crankshaft and new crankcase to hold the bearings. From some stories J. Siddeley could be a pretty hard headed fellow. 

The trouble with trying to get a "BIG" Canadian company to build any sort of aircraft engines in 1936-40 period is there weren't any BIG Canadian companies with large production line experience that aren't closely tied to American companies or that weren't already spoken for ( Canadian auto/truck plants built large quantities of vehicles for the Allies).

In 1938 in Canada the Aviation engine "industry" consisted of a repair and overhaul facility owned and run by Armstrong-Siddeley located _inside_ the works of the Ottawa Car manufacturing company (makers of street cars). Perhaps some small production of small A-S engines did take-place there, There was considerable expansion during WWII.

But Please remember that ANY large scale production of most types of war material is highly dependent on the US, at least for the first few years. The Majority of machine tools will have to come from the US as will the majority of fittings/specialty parts and major sub assemblies ( carburetors, generators.starter motors, magnetos, etc). Allison had over 3000 sub-contractors supply parts/materiel for the Allison engine. It is going to take time ( a number of years) to build up even a part of the support system that a major aircraft engine factory would need in Canada. 

I am not trying to put down or belittle the Canadians in anyway. They performed near miracles in producing certain types of war material but there were limits to how many new factories that could be built/equipped and managed in Both Canada and the US. 

You _might_ be able to get an aircraft engine factory built an into operation by 1940 but what do you have to give up for it? 

What American engine factory gets shorted machine tools?
What other Canadian war factory gets shorted tooling, or management personnel or engineers or ?????

Canada built about 200 aircraft total in 1938 including DH Tiger Moths and was subcontracting parts for a number of other aircraft (Blackburn Shark?)

The Fairchild (Bristol) Bolingbroke (Blenheim) may help shed light on this. The "plan" started in 1937 with the Canadian government accepting the need to modernize and expand the RCAF. A modified Blenheim is selected as the aircraft needed and a suitably modified prototype flies in England on Sept 24 1937. Of 9 British produced Blenheim IVs (same thing as a Bolingbroke)earmarked as pattern and evaluation aircraft to be sent to Canada from 1938 production only 4 make it. There was an initial order for 18 aircraft from the Canadian production line, even with a large amount British supplied components the first Canadian built aircraft is not delivered until Nov 15 1939 and the 18th aircraft is delivered Aug 28th 1940. In the meantime the Bolingbroke has been adapted to American structural and equipment standards and called the Bolingbroke IV. First Bolingbroke IV was delivered Jan 30 1941. 

Now maybe that could have been speeded up somewhat but there would have been no waving of a magic wand and the creation of a large factory capable of producing thousands of aircraft engines in the late 30s.

And lets think about this. _*IF*_ the Canadians had been capable of build a large Merlin Factory in 1939/40 *WHY* did the British approach the US and try to get Ford at first and then Packard to build the Merlin? 

*WHY* did the British (in 1939) pay Pratt Whitney enough money to double the floor space of their factory to meet British orders ( after the French had already paid to double the size of the original factory). 

Why were they paying the US and US companies rather than keeping the money _inside the commonwealth?_


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## tomo pauk (Mar 16, 2014)

Shortround6 said:


> Unless you have absolute dictatorial powers a lot of this is not going to happen. Yes, Bristol made a mistake in trying to offer different 4 engines from 24.9 to 28.7 liters. But in hindsight it was the Taurus that was the Mistake. Since a Mercury is pretty much a Pegasus with 1 inch less stroke and a good part of the tooling existed before 1936 you don't save much by knocking of the Mercury. Perseus used Hercules cylinders, sleeves, pistons, at least to start. Only other program they were really fooling with was the Centaurus and telling Bristol _before_ the war broke out that they would be kept in 2nd or 3rd place (no 2000 hp engine) among British engine makers wasn't going to happen.



No dictatorial powers, just buyer's powers 
I've never stated that Centaurus need to be axed. The Taurus is a good candidate for that, and actually I'd very much love to see the Centaurus being developed earlier.



> The A-S Tiger didn't need just new bearings, it needed a new crankshaft and new crankcase to hold the bearings. From some stories J. Siddeley could be a pretty hard headed fellow.



In other words, A-S should churn out the Tigers and Cheetahs for aircraft that are away from limelight, like transports, trainers, Coastal Command needs, and Whitley until something better is available?



> <snip>
> Why were they [UK and France] paying the US and US companies rather than keeping the money _inside the commonwealth?_



Question is how much the Europeans have had confidence in the Colonials? Okay, USA is a world powerhouse, things cannot go terribly wrong there. However, the Australians managed to license build the Twin Wasps Jr and Twin Wasp, later the Merlins. The CAC was established in 1936. 



> And lets think about this. IF the Canadians had been capable of build a large Merlin Factory in 1939/40 WHY did the British approach the US and try to get Ford at first and then Packard to build the Merlin?



The 1939/40 is way too late to commence with Merlin project in Canada or Australia. The negotiations have to start in 1936, with factory being built in 1937, or latest in 1938.



> WHY did the British (in 1939) pay Pratt Whitney enough money to double the floor space of their factory to meet British orders ( after the French had already paid to double the size of the original factory).



Same thing: when things got ugly, only the big US companies have had capacity to turn the money other resources into workable engines quickly enough. Commonwealth needs an earlier start.

To move a bit from engines: how should the needs for a land-based torpedo bomber be addressed?


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## Shortround6 (Mar 16, 2014)

tomo pauk said:


> No dictatorial powers, just buyer's powers
> 
> In other words, A-S should churn out the Tigers and Cheetahs for aircraft that are away from limelight, like transports, trainers, Coastal Command needs, and Whitley until something better is available?



In 1935-36-37 the engine companies were still looking at/for foreign and commercial sales. The Government could not forbid a company from working on an engine, at least to prototype status. They did their best to discourage Fairey. 

The Tiger faded from sight pretty quick in the late 30s, with some justification. A-S should, as historically, churn out the Cheetah. 



> However, the Australians managed to license build the Twin Wasps Jr and Twin Wasp, later the Merlins. The CAC was established in 1936.



_Established_ in 1936. Got license for and _started_ production of NOT the Twin Wasp Jr. but the 9 cylinder Wasp R-1340. and that was closer to 1938. Production of the R-1830 followed several years later with the Merlin several years after that. 

It takes time to build up from almost scratch." the first CA-1 Wirraway, RAAF serial A20-3, made its maiden flight on 27 March 1939" and the 6th was delivered by the beginning of Sept. 1939. 



> The 1939/40 is way too late to commence with Merlin project in Canada or Australia. The negotiations have to start in 1936, with factory being built in 1937, or latest in 1938.
> Same thing: when things got ugly, only the big US companies have had capacity to turn the money other resources into workable engines quickly enough. Commonwealth needs an earlier start.



The Commonwealth had to start even earlier. and then you are back to the problem of _which_ engine/aircraft you tool up for. The Commonwealth projects also need machine tools and equipment that they cannot manufacture themselves without adding even more delays so the machine tools and equipment have to come from either the UK (delaying the shadow factory program there) or the US. 



> To move a bit from engines: how should the needs for a land-based torpedo bomber be addressed?



Simple way. Ditch both the Botha and the Beaufort (except for enough Beauforts to work out construction, 2-4?) and use Whitleys until you can hang a Torpedo under the Beaufighter.


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## tomo pauk (Mar 16, 2014)

Shortround6 said:


> In 1935-36-37 the engine companies were still looking at/for foreign and commercial sales. The Government could not forbid a company from working on an engine, at least to prototype status. They did their best to discourage Fairey.



The companies can, by all means, sell the engines abroad. It's the RAF's engines where we will be calling the shots 
Fairey should be promised a good deal of airframe production, provided they sell their engine division to RR, Napier or Bristol?



> The Tiger faded from sight pretty quick in the late 30s, with some justification. A-S should, as historically, churn out the Cheetah.



+1 on that.



> _Established_ in 1936. Got license for and _started_ production of NOT the Twin Wasp Jr. but the 9 cylinder Wasp R-1340. and that was closer to 1938. Production of the R-1830 followed several years later with the Merlin several years after that.



I'd be satisfied with Merlins coming out from Canada by mid 1939.



> It takes time to build up from almost scratch." the first CA-1 Wirraway, RAAF serial A20-3, made its maiden flight on 27 March 1939" and the 6th was delivered by the beginning of Sept. 1939.
> The Commonwealth had to start even earlier. and then you are back to the problem of _which_ engine/aircraft you tool up for. The Commonwealth projects also need machine tools and equipment that they cannot manufacture themselves without adding even more delays so the machine tools and equipment have to come from either the UK (delaying the shadow factory program there) or the US.



Canada can build Merlins, Australia the Pegasus, later they should build the next Bristol with substantially more power.Canada and Australia should receive the licenses to build training A/C, plus Hurricanes (earlier Canada, later Australia once the production of Merlins ramps up in UK and Ca)? 



> Simple way. Ditch both the Botha and the Beaufort (except for enough Beauforts to work out construction, 2-4?) and use Whitleys until you can hang a Torpedo under the Beaufighter.



Guess you mean Hampden, rather than Whitley? Would the Blenheim with Pegasus be much of a torpedo bomber?


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## fastmongrel (Mar 16, 2014)

Shortround6 said:


> Simple way. Ditch both the Botha and the Beaufort (except for enough Beauforts to work out construction, 2-4?) and use Whitleys until you can hang a Torpedo under the Beaufighter.



I really hope that was a brain fade there, sending a Whitley to torpedo bomb  would have been kinder to just shoot the crew on the ground.


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## Shortround6 (Mar 16, 2014)

More of a brain fart guys 



> The companies can, by all means, sell the engines abroad. It's the RAF's engines where we will be calling the shots
> Fairey should be promised a good deal of airframe production, provided they sell their engine division to RR, Napier or Bristol?



Doesn't quite work that way. British are short of "engineers" which covers not only _designers_ but office staff down to draftsmen. The only way to really speed up some programs is move some "engineers" from one program to another but if you don't have the authority to actually _shut down_ a private company program (which they are trying to sell to another country or for airline use) then you don't have any way to shift any real number of "engineers". 

The Fairey engine "division" was never more than a small experimental shop. The "first" Fairey engine was the Felix of of 1926 which was actually 50 imported Curtiss D.12 engines. 

This was followed in the early 30s by the V-12 Prince and Super Prince of 25.54 liters, 3 engines had accumulated 550 hours by the end of 1934. One engine was installed in an airframe.

This was followed (or perhaps in parallel ) by the H-16 Prince an H-24 Monarch using the same size cylinders as Prince for 34 and 51 liters total number of these engines doesn't seem to be known but seems to very small. 2-3 Battles are used as test beds and while the first Monarch drawings are dated 29 Aug 1932 the engine doesn't pass a a 50 hour type test until until May/June of 1939 (with first aircraft installation predating that in Oct 1938.) The program creeps along until 1943. 

Fairey probably built under a dozen engines in 8-10 years and there is no way to tell how much was contracted out (like block castings) and how much may have been done in house.


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## nuuumannn (Mar 16, 2014)

Let's not underestimate the Beaufort; it was a good aeroplane. The Botha wasn't, but it was the insurance policy, so easy to ditch. The Beaufighter is the obvious choice and if I had a choice between the Hampden and Beaufort, I'd choose the latter. If we are getting rid of the Taurus, the answer is simple; the Beaufort II and all the Aussie Beauforts were powered by American engines.


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## parsifal (Mar 17, 2014)

why not go straight to the Beafighter. It was pretty good in the tactical strike role and much more survivable. Im a big beafort fan, but it had its limits. so too did the Beaufighter, but it was clearly the superior aircraft. 

Just sayin


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## tomo pauk (Mar 17, 2014)

Without an earlier start more focused development of the Hercules (provided by cancellation of the Taurus?), there is no Beaufighter? Alternatively, we might want to install Merlin on it, the shortcoming being too many designs want the Merlin?



Shortround6 said:


> ...
> Doesn't quite work that way. British are short of "engineers" which covers not only _designers_ but office staff down to draftsmen. The only way to really speed up some programs is move some "engineers" from one program to another but if you don't have the authority to actually _shut down_ a private company program (which they are trying to sell to another country or for airline use) then you don't have any way to shift any real number of "engineers".



The private company, eg. Bristol, has already developed 2 engines that offer ~1000 HP. How much there is reason to design another engine of 1000+ HP (Taurus), since company is more than capable to aim for the 1500 HP mark (Hercules)? RAF can simply say: no, we won't buy another 1000 HP engine, but we will buy a 1500 HP one. 
I'm not certain that RR was designing the Peregrine for civil use, and they definitely were designing the Exe for the needs of FAA. Offer the FAA with a low alt Merlin (ie. future Mk.VIII), to be shortly followed by an improved version with two speed supercharger. Both FAA and RAF will receive either more, or better Merlin in case Exe and Peregrine are axed.



> The Fairey engine "division" was never more than a small experimental shop. The "first" Fairey engine was the Felix of of 1926 which was actually 50 imported Curtiss D.12 engines.
> 
> This was followed in the early 30s by the V-12 Prince and Super Prince of 25.54 liters, 3 engines had accumulated 550 hours by the end of 1934. One engine was installed in an airframe.
> 
> ...



Thanks for the overview. 



nuuumannn said:


> Let's not underestimate the Beaufort; it was a good aeroplane. The Botha wasn't, but it was the insurance policy, so easy to ditch. The Beaufighter is the obvious choice and if I had a choice between the Hampden and Beaufort, I'd choose the latter. If we are getting rid of the Taurus, the answer is simple; the Beaufort II and all the Aussie Beauforts were powered by American engines.



Blackburn can build either Hampden, or Blenheim with Pegasus engines? Ditto Australia? I'd love to see the Beoufighter as an aircraft with a thinner wing.

Some early war British engines, from Flight archives. Black lines 'bracket' take off power, between blue and 1st black line is max altitude regime. Please, open the pic separately, for bigger resolution:


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## Shortround6 (Mar 17, 2014)

The Taurus was supposed to offer the same or slightly more power than a Pegasus in a smaller diameter engine. 46.2 in vs 55.1 with 11.7 sq ft of frontal area vs 16.8sq ft. 70 % of the frontal area of the Pegasus. In the mid/late 1930s this was seen as a considerable advantage as low drag cowlings of radial engines were nowhere near what they would be in 1942/43/44. The Taurus also "offered" better fuel economy due to higher compression, part because of the smaller cylinders and part due to the sleeve valves. The better fuel economy may or may not have been achieved due to other things, I don't know. It was an attractive proposition _if_ you were looking for a 1100hp engine. The problems start to come in with the whole sleeve valve production problem, the Taurus suffering from over heating and the fact that by 1940-41 1100hp (or less) was too little for a "new design" entering service. Taurus was already turning 3250 rpm and even with it's small cylinders that was 3023fps piston speed. While a Taurus might have been able to match an R-1830 ( 20% less displacement but turned 20% more rpm, roughly) It is rather obvious that it was going to hit a wall due it's size even _IF_ more boost is used with better fuel ( air cooled engines did not accept large increases in boost without major changes to the cooling fins, among other changes).

Taurus was enough trouble that the British _were_ planing to switch to the P&W R-1830 for British built planes, _until_ the ship carrying the first 200 engines was sunk. 

The Hercules hit the same main problem, there may have been minor problems in development but the big one was that while Bristol ( and later Napier) could make sleeves in small quantities for prototype a or low production rates that worked(for more than around 20 hours) they could_ not_ make them in large quantities. Since this is a rather specific problem assigning more "general" engineer staff or men who specialized in other areas (supercharger men, stress men, etc) may not get you much. 

Another problem was that needs had changed rather rapidly. an airframe that _might_ have been OK with 1000 hp engines in 1938/39 now needed armor, self sealing fuel tanks, more defensive guns, etc and performance dropped. Expectations also rose and while a 1000lb bomb load seemed fine in 1934 (Blenheim vs 460lb Hart) and 1500lbs in The Beaufort was a 50% increase in 1937/38 1500lb internal load was not all that hot in 1940/41 for a twin engine bomber. 

Some of these planes were a bit on the marginal side. The Bolingbroke tired two other engines besides the Mercury when fears of a shortage of British supplied engines ( ships sunk by German U-boats) came up. 14 or so were powered by P&W R-1535 Twin Wasp Jr. but lack of power at/near gross weight ( plane could not maintain altitude on one engine) forced a reduction in bomb load to 500lbs. One Plane was given 9 Cylinder cyclones (an older version NOT 1000-12000hp Cyclones) but the larger engine cowls restricted vision, perhaps not too good on the Blenheim to begin with and one reason for the raised cockpit on the Beaufort? There are other reasons but but hanging Pegasus engines with their 9-10 in bigger diameter cowlings on the Beaufort doesn't do much for either performance or field of view.


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## nuuumannn (Mar 17, 2014)

While going straight to the Beaufighter and skipping the Beaufort sounds easy to do, you're messing with two different concepts and aircraft developed for different roles. The Beaufighter was originally designed to be a derivative of the Beaufort, as it was initially named Beaufort fighter and was designed as a heavy fighter, which was to share some component commonality with the former, but in practise shared little. The RAF didn't initially need the Beaufighter as a torpedo bomber; it already had the Beaufort! I guess it's like putting the chicken before the egg. Also, the Beaufort had much of Barnwell's input, whereas the Beaufighter was largely Frise and Fedden, mainly because Barnwell killed himself flying one of his own creations - apparently he wasn't a very good pilot.

Another thing, like SR stated, issues with the Hercules are going to hinder any attempt to build an aeroplane powered by it, although you could go straight to Beaufighter II with Merlins as Tomo suggested, with its evil handling and complaints from its pilots, along with high accident rate.


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## parsifal (Mar 18, 2014)

Theres a lot of merit in what you say, but I am a bit doubtful as to the need for the hercules in the first place. Whilst in Australia the first home designed and built Beafighters and Beaforts were about 4 years later. The DAP Beaforts were built with Twin Wasps, but were delayed by the promise of the Taurus, which never materialised for us. We had been negotiating for the production of the twin wasp as a follow on for the R1340 already in production, but we were talked out of. For the Australian built Beafighters, we had planned in 1941 to build the R2600 under licence. They were tested, and were successful and the Americans very keen to set up licence production, but we did not proceed, because supplies of the hercules were promised, and once again we accepted what we were told on face value. But the British supplied Hercs were only available as a trickle until 1944, which greatly restricted the production of DAP Beafighters to about 350. We could have built more than twice that number if the engines were in better supply. The DAPs experiences with the Taurus and the Hercules and the Hercules were major reasons why we insisted on building the Merlin and the Griffon ourselves they were both powered by the twin wasp.

The upshot of all this is that the Brits, rather than hang around waiting for dubious engines to arrive, should instead have swallowed their pride and adapted the beafort to the R1830, and somewhat later, the Beafighter to the R2600. this would have seen the Beafort from about 1938, and the Beafighter from about mid 1939 i think....


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## Shortround6 (Mar 18, 2014)

A bit too optimistic in timing, The Beaufort was _ordered_, like a number of other British of the time, "off the drawing board" in 1936 but the first "production" Plane "L4441" (actually first prototype) didn't fly until Oct 1938 while the rest of the planes on the "production"line waited for flight tests to be completed and see what modifications might or might not be needed. L4441 was finally delivered to No 22 Squadron in Nov 1939 upon completion of testing for initial familiarization of pilots while they waited 2 months for first _true_ production aircraft. First operational flights were in May of 1940 and the problems with the Taurus really began to show up. British fly their first twin wasp powered plan in Aug of 1941 ( work started when?) Australians fly their first Australian-assembled Beaufort A9-1 on 5 May 1941 with the first Australian-built aircraft A9-7 coming off the production line in August.

R-2600 production in 1939 was 163 engines, 140 of them in the last 4 months (Sept being the first month to exceed 8 engines in one month).


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## tomo pauk (Mar 18, 2014)

Beaufighter _was_ tested with R-2600 engines, in second half of ww2, though.
Unless there is an early effort to license produce them in Australia or elsewhere, the historic US demand will make them as good as unavailable for the Aussies/CW. Every A-20 needed 2, so did the B-25. Avenger is an important 'costumer', too.


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## parsifal (Mar 18, 2014)

Shortround6 said:


> A bit too optimistic in timing, The Beaufort was _ordered_, like a number of other British of the time, "off the drawing board" in 1936 but the first "production" Plane "L4441" (actually first prototype) didn't fly until Oct 1938 while the rest of the planes on the "production"line waited for flight tests to be completed and see what modifications might or might not be needed. L4441 was finally delivered to No 22 Squadron in Nov 1939 upon completion of testing for initial familiarization of pilots while they waited 2 months for first _true_ production aircraft. First operational flights were in May of 1940 and the problems with the Taurus really began to show up. British fly their first twin wasp powered plan in Aug of 1941 ( work started when?) Australians fly their first Australian-assembled Beaufort A9-1 on 5 May 1941 with the first Australian-built aircraft A9-7 coming off the production line in August.
> 
> R-2600 production in 1939 was 163 engines, 140 of them in the last 4 months (Sept being the first month to exceed 8 engines in one month).




Austraians were tooling up for Beafort production from October 1939. they were promised delivery of the jigs for the taurus by the end of the year, but this was delayed until firstly April then June '40. in November '39, Wackett proposed switching to the twin wasp, but was overulled by his political master when the foreign office assured them that deliveries would occur within 3 months of the previous deadlines ( in fact Wackett had proposed Twin Wasp production from 1938, but it was soundly vetoed by the Foreign Office and as a result our govt acquiesced). this never transpired, for some fairly sound reasons I might add, but that doesnt excuse the brits for lying about what they could achieve. April dragged on to June 1940, and still no delivery of Taurus engines. At that point (fall of france), the air mnistry decided to slap an export ban on the export of engines and associated techs. Good reasons for that as well, but tough luck for us. Then, wackett repeated something he had been advocating since 1938. because they were more reliable as suppliers, we should switch to R1830 production. Further, Wackett and his design team calculated that conversion of the Beafort to take the replacement engine was a relatively simple excercise. Brits were aginst that as well, citing that it was technically not possible, or beyond the Australian capability to do such a conversion. Finally in 1941 we had had enough and in April a Beafort was test flown with a twin wasp, which I think had by then entered production in aus. There were problems, which delayed final clearance for production to September or Novemeber (I forget).

The point from all that is that the twin Wasp Powered version of the Beafort could have flown from 1940, but was delayed until the end of 1941, for not good reason. 

I think if work on the taurus had been abandoned, in favour of setting up a licence production of the Twin Wasp, both the Australian and Bristol production of the beafort would have been greatly improved. In my opinion the Taurus was an engine fraught with problems, and significantly retarded the delivery dates for the Beafort. pride goit in the way of common sense in my opinion


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## parsifal (Mar 18, 2014)

duplicate post, sorry


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## parsifal (Mar 18, 2014)

tomo pauk said:


> Beaufighter _was_ tested with R-2600 engines, in second half of ww2, though.
> Unless there is an early effort to license produce them in Australia or elsewhere, the historic US demand will make them as good as unavailable for the Aussies/CW. Every A-20 needed 2, so did the B-25. Avenger is an important 'costumer', too.



Thats true, and Befighter delivery from Australian suppliers was also delayed until around that time, because of a number of problems, the most important of which was the failure to supply enough Hercules from England. That engine drought all of a sudden and miraculaously changed, when Wackett once again suggested we produce the R2600 and use it instead of the hercules. This was something he had advocated almost from the beginning of the Beafighter program.

Wackett was canny. He seemed to know ther were inherent problems for the AQustralians to rely on British engine suppliers. And our aircraft deliveries did take a big hit because we chose to rely on the unreliable


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## merlin (Mar 18, 2014)

So I wonder how much it might have been if the 'twin-wasp' option was accepted in 1938 !?


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## Shortround6 (Mar 18, 2014)

merlin said:


> So I wonder how much it might have been if the 'twin-wasp' option was accepted in 1938 !?



Not much change except the planes produced in in England in 1940 and early 1941 would have had better engines. But not enough better to change the Performance by much.


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## parsifal (Mar 18, 2014)

Shortround6 said:


> Not much change except the planes produced in in England in 1940 and early 1941 would have had better engines. But not enough better to change the Performance by much.



Timewise probably not much difference, but operationally the Taurus, despite its great promise, was a major drag chute on Beafort effectiveness, mostly because of reliability issues. Even the RAF acknowledged that they would have been far better off to power the Befort with a twin Wasp installation, simply on the basis of reliability

There were good aspects to the Taurus, but it was fatally flawed as an engine IMO. Taurus was a sleeve valve design, resulting in an uncluttered exterior and very low mechanical noise. It offered high power with a relatively low weight, starting from 1,015 hp (760 kW) in the earliest versions. It was also compact, with a diameter of 46 inches (1170 mm) which made it attractive to fighter designers. Unfortunately, the engine has also been described as "notoriously troublesome", with protracted development and a slow growth in rated power. After several years of development, power had been increased from 1,015 hp (760 kW) to only 1,130 hp (840 kW). As the most important applications of this engine were in aircraft that flew at low altitude, engine development efforts focussed on low-altitude performance.

The first Taurus engines were delivered just before World War II began and found some use primarily in the Fairey Albacore and Bristol's own Beaufort torpedo bomber. Starting from April 1940, it was suggested to replace the Taurus engines of the latter by the famous Pratt Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp 9in England and somewhat earlier in Australia), but this change was vetoed by the air ministry or at least postponed to the autumn of 1941 while attempts were made to cure the reliability problems of the Taurus, and later had to be temporarily reversed because of shortages of Twin Wasp engines. The Twin Wasp was, however, strongly preferred by both the RAF and the RAAF, especially for overseas postings, because of its much greater reliability. In later models of the Taurus engine the reliability problems were mostly cured by a change in the cylinder manufacturing process, although the engine kept a poor reputation, and in the Albacore the Taurus engine was retained until the end of that aircraft's production in 1943.

There were no other operational applications of the Taurus engine, because its initial reliability problems discouraged the development of Taurus-powered aircraft, and because later-war combat aircraft demanded more powerful engines. Its production lines were closed down in favour of the Hercules engine, but this engine had its own set of issues to contend with .


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## Shortround6 (Mar 19, 2014)

I pretty much agree with that. 

The Twin Wasp was about 10% heavier and a bit bigger in diameter which cut into the extra power it offered making the performance difference rather small. The extra supercharger gear on the twin wasp (depending on version?) gave more power at well above torpedo bombing height. But the timing of the airframe doesn't really allow much change from the historical even with an engine change. 

The whole question of wither the sleeve valve was really worth the cost may never be answered but was marginal at best. The sleeve valve solved a lot of problems the poppet valve engines were suffering from in the late 20s or very, very earlier 30s but the time and cost of bringing the sleeve valve to production status meant the the problems with the poppet valves had pretty much been solved by the time the sleeve valves went into production. 

While the Beaufort was a nice advance over the Blenheim it wasn't enough of an advance to to keep up with the needs of WW II combat for very long.


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## parsifal (Mar 19, 2014)

Beafort was fine for our requirements until the end of the war. We were somewhat envious of the later marks of b-25, but there was an immense amount of pride in the CAC Beaforts. We could have done better, but for the engine issues that dogged us from the start. The intended replacement for the Beafort was the CAC CA4 and later the CA11 (basically an improved CA4, it was to be named Woomera). But this was finally dropped in 1944, though its test flights showed a fair amount of promise. if the Woomera had been ready by the latter part of 1942, it would have been a remarkable achievement for the Australians, easily the best overall bomber in the PTO at that time. as it was, i would consider the Beaforts in the SWPac at least one of the best at that time


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## Amur_Tiger (Mar 23, 2014)

New to this site but I've been developing an interest in aviation and in particular their engines, so without further ado.

Create a Royal AeroEngine establishment specifically for the solving of common problems and challenges for engine designers, breaking it down into 3 main categories.

1. Supercharger development. RR, Bristol and Napier all could have benefited from effective superchargers but in the end only RR really had access to this. To motivate the employers of those skilled engineers to 'share with the rest of the class' a profit-sharing setup would be offered where the company would receive a share of the profit based on their contribution of engineers to the team as well as the performance boost offered to the engine. This team would focus on one engine at a time until they'd developed the best feasible supercharger for that engine before moving onto the next, from another company.

2. Production techniques and reliability. This would be aimed at easing the shift of an engine from development to mass production by having the engine manufactures provide them with a technique to build an engine component and after attempting to follow the instructions would grade the result based on the amount of time required and how close it is to spec. They'd also hopefully have a decent amount of knowledge on mass production techniques and how best to mass produce various parts to spec. This is particularly aimed at helping Bristol and Napier get past their sleeve valve issues.

3. Materials development. Mainly this would be to provide more support to Special Metals Corporation in developing Nimonic as early as possible but this would also be about alerting the engine manufactures about what exactly they were developing and allow them to prepare designs or plan adjustments to existing designs to incorporate these new materials.

I'd blur the lines between Fighter Command and Bomber Command, allowing either to have squadrons of the other's aircraft organically a part of their organization but stressing that their purpose as a command would remain the same. Fighter Command bombers wouldn't be targeting anything that didn't directly aid their goal of achieving air superiority ( runways, radars and that's it ). Bomber Command wouldn't be clearing the sky anywhere that wasn't in the immediate vicinity of their bombers. Squadrons could be transferred from one command to the other as the needs of the war progressed. The goal of this is to make it easier for Mosquito strikes on German runways to disrupt their operations vs the UK and for spitfire escorts to offer what protection they could, as long as they could and in the process start developing the pressure for a longer ranged escort fighter.

The primary avenue of cooperation with both Canada and Australia would be through coastal command as it would be the experiences of that command that would most closely reflect any encounters their own air forces would have with the enemy. Both countries would be encouraged to build both the aircraft and engines used in coastal defense. Other reasons being that these aircraft would have a much easier time self-deploying closer to the action and that the aeroengine requirements for these tended to be easier, making it less troublesome for nascent aircraft industries to produce and hopefully lay the groundwork for producing more complex and powerful engines in the future. If nothing else this would take some of the pressure off UK based engine producers and allow them to focus on the more challenging engines.

Encourage Hawker to pursue radial based fighters, both in anticipating the Hercules but also getting some assurances ( and potentially some stockpiles ) of Twin-Wasps in case of delays/problems with the Hercules. In concert with this of course encourage Bristol to push the performance as much as possible as it's no longer primarily a bomber engine.

If you can avoid taking away resources from the Mosquito encourage De Havilland to put some effort into a single engined fighter around 1940 or so as the Sabre/Centaurus/Griffon start to emerge, obviously given the size of these powerplants a similarly large plane would be recommended.

Alternatively, or as well encourage SuperMarine to do the same around the same time while keeping the cost to the Spitfire's development to a minimum.

The focus of both these projects would be to create a larger aircraft somewhat along the lines of the Tempest/P-47 that with the correct engine would be able to provide longer legged escort as well as higher altitude performance, presuming the supercharger team doesn't become a disaster.


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## merlin (Mar 24, 2014)

First - Amur Tiger - welcome to the Forum, and thank you for your ideas.

Some of my thoughts:

a) - the meeting with the Wackett Mission went well, despite the jibe of 'bloody colonials' they had some interesting feedback both from their 'tour' of the Continent, and British Aero companies, and they were confident that something could be finalised shortly. The 'Mission had left with a parting request, for a report on what they found in the US to be sent to them, as well as the Australian Government.
b) - the Hendon Air Display in June, was thought to be an ideal time to meet the Aero airframe engine manufactures all together. At this meeting the Air Staff were able to impress on the 'heads of industry' there the need to expand their premises , and to expand their workforce, as future orders were going to be ten times plus what previous ones were. Even where a company's design doesn't win - the order could be that other manufactures will be co-opted, being that in mind the RAF will expect full co-operation - in that ideas to make work better are expected from everyone!!
With that 'carrot' firmly dangled, the 'stick' came out which initially caused uproar to the effect the RAF if the circumstances demanded would consider buying foreign - be it airframe or power-plants!!
c) - two Bomber spec's were issued in '36 - the first resulted in the order to Boulton-Paul P.90 - later to be named 'Barnsley', fortunately the company resisted requests to turn it into a bomber/transport. There was a design from Shorts but it was felt that it might interfere with Sunderland production - especially after the twin-engine flying boat spec R.1/36 was rescinded, Shorts were also asked to press ahead with a military version of the 'G' Class flying boat. With the second of the bomber specs issued - that as well as the large Avro Handley Page designs, to also order the smaller Bristol - to be named 'Buckfast' - to supplement the Wellington and replace the smaller twin-engine bombers Blenheim, Hampden, and Whitley.
d) - the 4 x 20mm Cannon Fighter spec - prototypes were ordered from Boulton-Paul (Dante) Westland, with the earlier Gloster twin-engine design with 2 x 20 mm + MGs. - 'Guardian'. The initial Dante flight was disappointing - because of the low powered Hercules - however the FAA seeing the opportunity, ordered a navalised version from Blackburn. The next version - had an improved performance, (here I'm being 'creative' reasoning that Bristol are worried about the RAF ordered a US engine for the Buckfast Beaufighter (instead of Hercules).
e) - rather than just one company, Vickers were also involved with adapted the HS-cannon for British manufacture and use, and with the earlier appearance of the Dante (compared with OTL cannon Spitfire) the jamming problems were solved earlier.
f) - the Austin plant was used to produce Hurricanes, after a short period of making Battles, though this needn't have a great impact on Hurricane numbers as the Gloster plant was busy with the single engine Grendell Guardian 'twin' - while their own plant also had the Henley.
g) - the Army Co-operation Command had squadrons slated for deployment to France of:- Grendalls, Hurricanes, Battles, Lysanders, Guardians, and Henleys.


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## Shortround6 (Mar 24, 2014)

British design staffs were not overly large and with aircraft becoming increasingly complicated, the ability of most British companies to handle more than 2 programs at the same time was rather limited. DeHavilland for example was starting initial design work on the Vampire in late 1941. Work on the Albemarle is confusing, some claim it was a Bristol design moved to A-W because of lack of design staff at Bristol and others claim it was all A_W with the competing Bristol design stopped to free up Bristol designers for other work. 
Many British designs were slow to go from initial request to service use because of lack of designers/engineers. Adding more projects isn't going to help without canceling projects.

The Twin Wasp was rarely,if ever, a true substitute for the Hercules being about 150hp lower powered at best and often 300-400 hp lower in power depending on month/year.


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## parsifal (Mar 24, 2014)

i agree the Twin Wasp was not really a substitute for the Hercules. It was never seriously discussed as a good enough substitute for the Beafighter by CAC. Although a problematic engine itself, Wackett had proposed using the R2600 as a substitute, including licence production of the engine. Tests were flown with the American engine installed. i dont know if those test flights were successful or not, but Wacket certainly made it sound like they were. i have doubts. anyway, further development was not required, as the supply of Hercules engines from England finally improved in 1944 and the need for an R2600 fit went away


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## tomo pauk (Mar 24, 2014)

Beaufighter with R-2600s. Please note the differences in the engine installations with the plane to the right:

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e68/GTwiner/ca15/scan0015.jpg

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## parsifal (Mar 24, 2014)

thanks tomo, any idea where and what context that photo was taken?


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## tomo pauk (Mar 24, 2014)

Seems like that was an ex-Beaufighter Ic, no. A19-2 (ex T4921), Fairey-built, tested at 30 Squadron RAAF. Trials were deemed successful.
I don't have any other data.


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## merlin (Mar 24, 2014)

Yes, interesting p tomo pauk - as I thought twin-wasp is a potential alternative to the Taurus and/or Mercury, whilst the R-2600 is an alternative to the Hercules.


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## nuuumannn (Mar 24, 2014)

> Work on the Albemarle is confusing, some claim it was a Bristol design moved to A-W because of lack of design staff at Bristol and others claim it was all A_W with the competing Bristol design stopped to free up Bristol designers for other work.



The problem is, like so many of the myths that have arisen about British aircraft, there are a number of books, including the Putnam book on Armstrong Whitworth (the authors employed by Putnam are guilty of continuing many of these myths), that state that the Albemarle was based on the Bristol 155, which was transferred to AW for continuation to B.9/38, but this is not true. The AW.41 was John Lloyd's own design. The Bristol 155 was to be built to B.17/38 and the AW.41 to B.18/38, but the requriement for an aeroplane that could be built of non strategic materials, wood and steel, which was able to be sub-contracted out to firms not proficient in aircraft manufacture (sounds a bit like the 787!), with sub sections that could be transported by the standard 60 ft Queen Mary trailer was the same. Lloyd later expressed that he had little enthusiasm for the project; the brief was for a conventional aeroplane with little novelty, but Lloyd was impressed by the nose undercarriage layout he had witnessed on aeroplanes in the USA. The Bristol 155 was designed initially as a tail dragger, but a nose u/cart variant was also drawn. It was not proceeded with. There was nothing intinsically wrong with the Albemarle, but it was never going to succeed in its intended role; it was too ordinary to be any competition to the new four engine heavies emerging in 1940/41 as a result of P.13/36 and B.12/36.

A bit more info on the pic of the Beaufighter with the Cyclones provided by Tomo; it was taken at Fisherman's Bend in 1944 (note the Beauforts in the background) and like Tomo states was a Beau Ic built at Filton, along with the RAAF's first 15 Beaufighters - T4921 was the RAAF's second Beaufighter, the other British built RAAF ones coming from Fairey. The aircraft, A19-2 was withdrawn from service with 30 Sqn (the first home based RAAF Beau unit) and sent for modification to DAP in February 1943. it first flew with the Cyclones a year later in August 1944. I'm not sure when exactly the image was taken, but I've seen another of it from the rear, showing the pointed nacelles off. It's interesting to note that it doesn't have the dihedral on its tailplanes, like the Aussie built Beaus, which were based on the Beaufighter VI, also in the picture; by August 1944, DAP had built some 14 Beaufighters, the first, A8-1 had been completed in May and was delivered in June. A19-2 went into storage in March 1946 and was presumably scrapped at Tocumwal, with most of the rest of the Beaufighters and Beauforts.

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## tomo pauk (Apr 1, 2014)

The RAF and its suppliers might hopefully get some hints from friends and foes alike? Eg. earlier introduction of pressure-injection carburetor, ditto for individual exhaust stacks, maybe an introduction of small (sized like MC.200, Bf-109, Yaks) Merlin-based fighter, more fuel earlier-on on fighters (should come in handy at least in MTO and Asia/Pacific), timely copying of the cooling system of the Mustang, mine shell for the Hispano, longer air intakes (as on P-40 and P-51), adopting the P&W two-stage system to the Hercules...
After all, plenty of people were getting hints from the RAF its suppliers  

I'm not going to suggest fuel injection for British engines, that is kinda taboo...


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## KiwiBiggles (Apr 1, 2014)

tomo pauk said:


> I'm not going to suggest fuel injection for British engines, that is kinda taboo...



I don't think it was as much taboo, as just not considered overall a useful path. British engine developers were generally very keen on high boost pressures, and thought the charge cooling effect through evaporation in the inlet manifold useful enough overall to outweigh the benefits of fuel injection.


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## tomo pauk (Apr 1, 2014)

I've read that many times. However: 
How big was the penalty to have backfire screens installed (that fuel-injected engines did not needed, and Merlin (and V-1710) did)? How big was the manifold pressure in Bristol and Napier engines? How much and asset was a 10-15% of increased mileage/range/radius, that was available through use of fuel injection?


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## fastmongrel (Apr 2, 2014)

tomo pauk said:


> I've read that many times. However:
> How big was the penalty to have backfire screens installed (that fuel-injected engines did not needed, and Merlin (and V-1710) did)? How big was the manifold pressure in Bristol and Napier engines? How much and asset was a 10-15% of increased mileage/range/radius, that was available through use of fuel injection?



Fuel Injection requires a lot of precision manufacturing it might have been as simple as the Air Ministry making the decision that they would rather have something else made by a precision engineering company when a Carb could be made by a company making carbs for Cars and Motorbikes.


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## Shortround6 (Apr 2, 2014)

I am not at all sure that I want to fly in a plane equipped with Amal carburetors 

However you are correct that the fuel injection system required many more (hundreds) of precision machined parts that a aircraft carburetor system. British had looked at several other Germane "devices" like the MG 151 cannon and decided that they took too much precision machine work to be worth copying.


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## tomo pauk (Apr 2, 2014)

I'm sure you're right, fastmongrel. Unfortunately, it took plenty of time for the pressure injection carb to take hold in the UK (instead of the float-type carb) that is not just insensitive to negative Gs, but also improves engine performance. link
Luckily, (but not coincidentally; thanks to the designers, of course) the Merlin was outfitted with generously sized both supercharger and the carburetor's inlet, and that gave benefits for the high altitude capabilities. The later work by Hooker's team further improved the already well-founded basis.


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## merlin (Apr 26, 2014)

Surprised this thread seems to be 'dying' - though pleased my earlier post didn't get 'shot-down'!

In Sept '36 Swinton made the suggestion that orders could be placed in America - Ellington was told to prepare a plan for two or three squadrons each of US Fighters and bombers, in the event of needing to increase first-line strength rapidly in the next 15 months, before the Shadow factories had any effect, yet the British Purchasing Commission was set-up until April '38. I wonder what could have been ordered earlier or as per otl but other than the Hudson, Harvard Catalina!!

Pre-war expansion Scheme were marked by letters - 'F' was from Feb '36 and was the only one of the '34-39 schemes to be completed, in late '37 the Air staff were requested to draw up a scheme which " you consider is militarily the proper insurance for safety". The result Scheme 'J' proposed a bomber force of 90 squadrons (70 in 'F'), of which 64 would be heavy and 26 medium (compared to 20 heavy 65 medium in the abortive 'H') - but it involved the mobilization of industry and it was costly! So 'J' was referred back - to make it cheaper hence 'K' of Jan '38. In Nov '38 Sir Kingsley Wood announced that Scheme 'M' planned to raise the metropolitan Air Force to 163 squadrons with an all heavy bomber command of 85 Squadrons, and Fighter Command going from 38 (of Scheme 'L') to 50 - as he said " ... to give the highest priority to strengthening of our fighter force, that force which is designed to meet the invading bomber in the air".

What can to be seen from all this upheaval of policy, is that there were opportunities to change, e.g. US equipment, perhaps the Bristol P.13/36 is disguised as a new medium bomber (two not four engines) - replaces other mediums, a replacement light-bomber - to reduce costs! 
Where the challenge will be is to have a well-equipped Army Co-operation Command ready in time for continental service - something everyone seemed to be against!!


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## tomo pauk (Apr 27, 2014)

Unless that Bristol is a 'proper' bomber (at least 2 Hercules, a suitable bomb bay), not overly thick wing, reasonable crew and guns number, why not? Sorta British Ju-88, but with decent internal bomb load. 
Though I'd still like an unarmed bomber, starting with Merlin X engines, that can later receive Hercules for fighter-bomber and night-bomber duties. Maybe let the co-pilot (having a swiweling seat) man the rear-facing gun, so the Air Ministry has less objections to accept it.

One interesting Merlin might be useful, BTW. 
The Merlin 46 and 47 have had the impeller of increased diameter installed, 10.85 in vs. 10.25 in for 'regular' (non-cropped) Merlin 45. Improved hi-alt capabilities, but at cost of the lower low-alt power. So, I'd like to see the 'big impeller' installed on 2-speed engines - so the low-alt and take off power remains competitive. Also, start installing the pressure-injection carbs on the engines ASAP, those not just completely solve the neg-G isues, but also improve engine power. Install the individual exhaust stacks. That way the Spit V should cut at half the performance disadvantage vs. Fw-190 and Bf-109F-4/G-2. Take a look at US (NACA and P&W; winter of 1941/42) experiments with individual exhausts for the radials, should give some performance boost for the radial engines machines, at least for daylight duties (where there is no need for flame dampers). Contemplate installation of wheel well covers for Spitfires (Typhoon has them, even if it is a different machine for the needs of this thread). Starting with Spitfire V, try to have the internal fuel increase by 20-30 imp gals, and by further 20-30 imp gals once more powerful engines are to be installed.
As for the USA - send several Merlin XX to the NAA (just like the Curtiss received the Merlin XX for the future P-40F) for trial installation on the Mustang as soon as possible, like second half of 1940.


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## Shortround6 (Apr 27, 2014)

On the exhaust thrust for radials.

R-2600










Hercules









Some engines are a lot easier to set up for exhaust thrust than others. Rearward facing exhaust ports near the outer edge of the engine may be best but may also cause the most drag, side facing ports on a V-12 are pretty good. Forward facing ports half way down the cylinder pose a few problems.


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## Shortround6 (Sep 29, 2014)

Bump to go with Tomo's 1940 RAF thread.


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## Shortround6 (Sep 29, 2014)

Since we have more time to work with things in this thread than trying to cobble together stuff after BoB lets see what we can do here. 

Bristol, Junk the Taurus and see what can be done with the Mercury, better use of 100 ocatane gas? two speed supercharger? more cylinder fins? 

Look at a hybrid Blenheim/Beaufort. See if construction method/s used in Beaufort can be used to update the Blenheim, at least in part. Lighter structural weight. Use Beaufort clamshell landing gear doors instead of the Blenheims 'apron" doors






Loose and engine and you have how many sq ft of airbrake dragging you down if the landing gear is down???? You may get a better fit for better streamlining with the gear up too. Such doors were fitted to the last variants. 

Fit fulling feathering /constant speed props instead 2 position props, better performance and better safety.

A better turret, even if still only two .303s, turrets that retract for less drag while cruising and extend (slowing the plane down) for combat might be ok for long flights with little opposition but not what is wanted in really contested airspace. 

A two speed Supercharger might offer another 100hp or so for take-off even on 87 octane fuel, 100 octane might add almost another 100hp to that allowing for higher take-off weights and or better safety if it lost and engine on take-off.

Use Beaufort design to jump off from for Beaufighter. but don't build much for Beauforts _unless_ you can get P W R-1830s.


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## tomo pauk (Sep 29, 2014)

Have we already covered the land-based torpedo bomber? Any chance for the Blenheim with up-rated engines, or something along the lines of the Fiat G.55S?


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## Shortround6 (Sep 29, 2014)

You might be able to use the up-rated Blenheim as a torpedo bomber but at shorter ranges than the Beaufort. 

Things like the Fiat G.55S only work if the enemy _very obligingly _ sails his ships very close to your air bases. Great if you need torpedo bombers to close off the English channel, not so hot if you are trying to hit convoys/shipping along the Norwegian coast or even the North Dutch coast 100km short of Emden


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## merlin (Oct 1, 2014)

tomo pauk said:


> Have we already covered the land-based torpedo bomber? Any chance for the Blenheim with up-rated engines, or something along the lines of the Fiat G.55S?



Well I have earlier - Blenheim has been replaced (see post #64) - by a bigger aircraft, some of which could allocated to CC for LR-TB, and the Atlantic Gap is covered by the new very large Short Swansea Flying boat - version of the 'G' Class - with a range of 3,000 miles.


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## nuuumannn (Oct 1, 2014)

I'm not in favour of trying to improve the Blenheim. It's a bit of a sow's ear. The Beaufort enters RAF service as its premier torpedo bomber on schedule and perhaps - issues with the Beaufighter notwithstanding, and the requirement for night fighters, Frise could offer the design as a torpedo bomber sooner - as suggested earlier? This wasn't done until 1942 and even then the Air Ministry refused until a more comprehensive paper on the Beaufighter torpedo bomber was prepared by Bristol that convinced the ministry, so Frise needs to do it as soon as the Beaufort is in service. Scrap Blenheim production altogether and replace with the Beaufighter.

One of the objections the Air Ministry had to the Beaufighter as a torpedo bomber was its high speed, particularly at release height - in reality this was overcome, the Beaufighter needed to slow down to drop the torpedo, but offered a faster transit than the Beaufort. By the time Torbeaus entered service though, the Coastal Command Strike Wing packages making their assaults on Norway were escorted by either Mustangs of Spitfires.


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## parsifal (Oct 2, 2014)

I thought the Beafighter had to have a shortened smaller torpedo designed and built for it, and this was also a limitation on the earlier introduction of the torbeau


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## Shortround6 (Oct 2, 2014)

Britain had a problem with the Blenheim. They never came up with a satisfactory replacement until much, much too late. The Beaufort being a bit of a dud (mainly because of it's engines) and the Beaufighter also arrived late due to engine problems. The Mosquito doesn't even go into action (bomber or fighter wise) until May of 1942. This leaves _waaay_ too many crews little option but to POR (Press On Regardless) for little return. Blenheim's last bombing mission in Europe was Aug 18th 1942. Let alone it's use in North Africa of the Far East. 

as for the Beaufort This is from wiki so TIFWIW. "Although designed as a torpedo-bomber, the Beaufort more often flew as a level-bomber. The Beaufort also flew more hours in training than on operational missions and more were lost through accidents and mechanical failures than were lost to enemy fire." The last could be said of a number of planes though. 

Less than half the number of Beauforts were made than Blenheims. Aside from being a stepping stone to the Beaufighter and being one of the airplanes that the Australian aircraft industry cut it's teeth on it really didn't do much that couldn't have been done by other aircraft types. The idea that you could replace 9 cylinder 24.9 liter engines with 14 cylinder 25.4 liter engines and stick a fatter fuselage on essentially the same wings and get much of a jump in performance/capabilities needs a LOT of faith in the sleeve valves. That faith crashed and burned, roughly 1/4-1/3 of Beauforts built used P W 14 cylinder 30 liter engines and more would have if the engine supply had been more secure. 

A _modestly_ improved Blenheim might well have paid dividends in greater survivability (better engine out capability, redundant systems, etc) rather than major differences in speed or bomb load. The British were late to the game when it came to constant speed and/or full feathering propellers. US airliners were using full feathering props before the Spitfire even flew the first time let alone got fitted with even a two pitch prop. The vast majority of BC aircraft in 1939/40 had two pitch props. 

Perhaps the Hercules could be straightened out quicker if they weren't fooling with the Taurus at the same time? The Taurus having it's main claim to fame being in supply a few test sleeves to the Sabre. And it is really questionable if the whole Sabre program was worth the time and money spent on it. With about 4600 Sabre powered Typhoons and Tempest built (including post war) it's contribution, while valuable may not have been critical.


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## nuuumannn (Oct 2, 2014)

Hmm, just a few points there, SR; your post is loaded with rash opinions. The Beaufort, yep, the the Mk.I had plenty of issue with its unreliable engines, but gave excellent service. Remember, the type was Coastal Command's primary torpedo bomber from 1940 to 1943, equipping five squadrons and yes, it did carry out more bombing ops than torpedo work, but all that proves is that it worked pretty hard in other roles aside from the one it was intended for - the British _were_ at war. The pocket battleship _Lutzow_ was torpedoed and disabled by a Beaufort, which kept it in dry dock for six months. Also, the Mk.I with the Taurus XII had improved reliability. Although produced in small numbers, the Mk.II was a success and proved that the primary issue was one of powerplant rather than airframe. If not the Beaufort, then what? The Botha and Hampden? It's vital. Until the Beaufighter comes along, the RAF doesn't have an effective primary torpedo bomber. 

"Crashed and burned" is a little overly dramatic description; highly inaccurate and no reflection on the abilities and good service the type gave, as is the fact that less were built than the Blenheim. The reason why the Blenheim was kept in production and service for so long reflects numerical inadequacies within the RAF itself, not necessarily any performance advantages over its contemporaries, including the Beaufort. It was recognised at the time that by the time the war began, the Blenheim was inadequate and approaching obsolescence, but what could the RAF do? It had lots of them and had to go fight with what it had. Once superior aircraft like the Mosquito, Beaufighter etc enter service, the Blenheim was removed from front line duties in Europe pretty quickly. It suffered very high losses in all the commands it served in and was wholly inadequate a fighting machine in the European environment.

Regarding modifying it, when do you propose to do this and with what engine? You've already rubbished every other British engine around at the time and improving the Mercury isn't going to buy you much. By the time you've strengthened the framework to accommodate a new engine, then what? In service for late 41 - early 42? What are you going to do with it and will it be able to match performance of contemporary types. What about the Beaufighter in this? The RAF felt it was unreliable early on, but there weren't enough of it, nor the Mosquito - continuing Blenheim production for the sake of a marginal increase in performance isn't worth it, frankly.

Regarding the Sabre - actually, it was critical. the careers of the Typhoon and Tempest hinged on it until other engines came along. It was one of the powerplant types that the British standardised on producing, so definitely critical. 

Parsifal, the Beaufighter could carry any standard British torpedo, the Mk.XII, XIII, but also had the Mk.XV, which enable the Beaufighter's higher speed to be taken into account when delivering the weapon.

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## parsifal (Oct 2, 2014)

Beaforts did some fine work in CC, sank more than any other single type of LBA in terms of enemy shipping until 1943, undertook some really courageous and successful missions against heavily defended battleships in 1941 and afaik were the only RAF type capable of carrying a full sized 18 air torpedo (I double check that tonite. In 1943 RAAF Beauforts undertook crucial work in places like the Bismarck Sea and then proceeded to maintain the suppression of key Japanese bases in SWPA. 

Australian built Beauforts used the Twin Wasp, because we got shafted over the Hercules, not because we preferred the TW. I think in the end that worked out for the best, but it certainly wasn't planned to happen that way.

Claiming the beaufort was a dud is just a little more fanciful than I can accept, sorry SR.


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## Shortround6 (Oct 3, 2014)

nuuumannn said:


> Hmm, just a few points there, SR; your post is loaded with rash opinions. The Beaufort, yep, the the Mk.I had plenty of issue with its unreliable engines, but gave excellent service. Remember, the type was Coastal Command's primary torpedo bomber from 1940 to 1943, equipping five squadrons and yes, it did carry out more bombing ops than torpedo work, but all that proves is that it worked pretty hard in other roles aside from the one it was intended for - the British _were_ at war. The pocket battleship _Lutzow_ was torpedoed and disabled by a Beaufort, which kept it in dry dock for six months. Also, the Mk.I with the Taurus XII had improved reliability. Although produced in small numbers, the Mk.II was a success and proved that the primary issue was one of powerplant rather than airframe. If not the Beaufort, then what? The Botha and Hampden? It's vital. Until the Beaufighter comes along, the RAF doesn't have an effective primary torpedo bomber.



Gave excellent service? So did the Blenheim 
And it did other jobs than the one it was intended for. 
let's not confuse the effect of the weapon (torpedo) with the delivery system (particular airplane/airframe).




> "Crashed and burned" is a little overly dramatic description; highly inaccurate and no reflection on the abilities and good service the type gave, as is the fact that less were built than the Blenheim. The reason why the Blenheim was kept in production and service for so long reflects numerical inadequacies within the RAF itself, not necessarily any performance advantages over its contemporaries, including the Beaufort. It was recognised at the time that by the time the war began, the Blenheim was inadequate and approaching obsolescence, but what could the RAF do? It had lots of them and had to go fight with what it had. Once superior aircraft like the Mosquito, Beaufighter etc enter service, the Blenheim was removed from front line duties in Europe pretty quickly. It suffered very high losses in all the commands it served in and was wholly inadequate a fighting machine in the European environment.



Crashed and burned referred to the Taurus engine, not necessarily the Beaufort airframe. But since only two airframes went into production with Taurus the engine problems affected the aircraft types. I don't like the "The reason why the Blenheim was kept in production and service for so long reflects numerical inadequacies within the RAF itself, not necessarily any performance advantages over its contemporaries, including the Beaufort. It was recognised at the time that by the time the war began, the Blenheim was inadequate and approaching obsolescence, but what could the RAF do? It had lots of them and had to go fight with what it had."
Part as it is a bit confusing. Yes the British had to fight with what they had when the war started and yes, that also meant producing existing designs in some cases. In the case of the Blenheim however they were still using them in 1942 for 1000 bomber raids ( purely for propaganda to make the "magic" number rather than any real target effect) and first MK V was delivered until June of 1942. MK Vs continued in service in secondary theaters (MTO?) until 1944. Nobody believed it was really very good at this point ( or even 2 years earlier). 
The Beaufort is sort of what the Blenheim V (or VI) should have been. But the project was damned by being both too ambitious and not ambitious enough. Too ambitious in that they wanted more payload ( crew, guns, bombs, fuel) from engines that were only a little bit more powerful, and not ambitious enough in that the bombload requirement only went from 1000lb to 1500lbs and the gun armament, while doubled over the pre-war Blenheim, still only totaled _four_ .303 mgs. 
The British skipped a generation of light/medium day bombers. And their next generation that actually flew was late and jumped to 2000+ HP engines. Once the shooting started they filled the gap with Lockheed Hudsons/Venturas and Martin Baltimores. Which rather points to the lack of a 1200-1700hp engine early in the war. That isn't quite right as the Melrin certainly performed well in that class but you can't power _every_ airframe with Merlin engines. The Hercules turned out to be a fine engine but it was expensive, not quite powerful enough to begin with (although a light/medium/torpedo bomber designed from the _start_ for a 1400hp engine would have been a good start) ran rather late in actual service timing. 



> Regarding modifying it, when do you propose to do this and with what engine? You've already rubbished every other British engine around at the time and improving the Mercury isn't going to buy you much. By the time you've strengthened the framework to accommodate a new engine, then what? In service for late 41 - early 42? What are you going to do with it and will it be able to match performance of contemporary types. What about the Beaufighter in this? The RAF felt it was unreliable early on, but there weren't enough of it, nor the Mosquito - continuing Blenheim production for the sake of a marginal increase in performance isn't worth it, frankly.



I believe I have "rubbished" them with fair reason. The Napier Dagger? The AS Tiger? The RAF couldn't get rid of them fast enough and that was before the shooting started. 
The Blenheim _should_ have been replaced much sooner than it was, but since it wasn't and unless you come up with a whole new airframe and move Hercules engine development up by quite a number of months you don't get a decent replacement. A few "improvements" to the Blenheim to help more crews survive during the bridge months/years until better planes do come along doesn't seem that far out of line. The Beaufighter should have been pushed a bit harder as a multi-use airplane. Perhaps by dumping the Taurus off the Swansea pier in 1939 the Hercules _might_ have been moved up in timing? 
P&W recognized in the late 1930s that the R-1535 simply wasn't big enough for future needs and stopped development to work on the R-1830 as the 'small' engine and the R-2800 as the big engine. That, in retrospect, is what Bristol needed to do. Ditch the "new" _small_ engine and concentrate on the new big engines while modifying the "old" small engines just eough to try to bridge the gap. 



> Regarding the Sabre - actually, it was critical. the careers of the Typhoon and Tempest hinged on it until other engines came along. It was one of the powerplant types that the British standardised on producing, so definitely critical.



Actually it wasn't _critical_ at all as things turned out. A lot of planning went into it. A crap load of money went into it. A lot of aircraft were designed/planned around it. Due to late development and problems with early service engines all the other planes *except* the Typhoon were dropped. The Typhoon turns out to be not all that good at it's _intended_ job and gets shuffled off to ground support, short range tactical bomber. Yes it did do a lot of good work but the war in Europe did NOT hinge on the Sabre or Typhoon. There were 3 Squadrons of Tempests in early July 1944 and 3 more added by the end of August, Nice to have but not really "critical".


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## tomo pauk (Oct 3, 2014)

In a more peaceful tone: since the thread 'starts' in 1936, the 'better Typhoon' could be designed around 300 sq ft wing, a good deal thinner one (15% TtC ratio?), so both speed and altitude capabilities are improved. The fuel tankage need to be about twice as Spitfire and Hurricane (some 180 imp gals?), both to cater for a more powerful/thirstier engine, and to increase loiter 'fighting' time when in defense. Increased endurance/range vs. Spit Hurri should enable better concentration of fighter units, despite being located on more distant locations of respective fighter groups. 

In case Taurus is removed both from development and production, the work on Centaurus should be a bit faster? Or a two stage Hercules? In case RR gets the 2-stage Griffon in production earlier in 1943, the 'better Typhoon' could get it?

Alternatively, we can gear the 'Typhoon' towards the Griffon and Hercules, with a bit smaller airframe? Another option is for the Hawker to produce a jet fighter?


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## Shortround6 (Oct 3, 2014)

It sort of depends on _what_ you know and _when._

Some of my proposals for the Blenheim didn't really require a crystal ball at the time. 

From Hamilton standard web site. Hamilton Standard Hydromatic Propeller History
Hamilton Standard introduced the first _practical_ controllable pitch propeller in 1930.
In 1934 they won the Collier trophy for the greatest achievement in aviation in 1933. 
In 1935 they introduce the constant speed governor. 
In 1937 they introduced the fully feathering propeller as an alternative to using propeller "brakes" on an inoperative engine to stop the propeller from turning. It is soon adopted by 21 domestic and foreign airlines. 

Why it took so long for the British to get on the band wagon I have no idea (Germans took out a license much quicker) but there was no good excuse for all those early war British planes to be flying around with fixed pitch or 2 pitch propellers. There are several not so good excuses 
Rotol and DH were doing what they could but started later than they needed to, due in part, to official disinterest. 

Quite a number of 2 seat or twin engine British aircraft used twin Lewis guns on a scarf mounting in WW I, Why they thought a single Lewis gun was adequate defensive armament for light bombers in the mid/late 1930s can only cause a lot of head shaking.

Those apron landing gear doors take a lot of looking the other way too. Why you would want a 1/2 dozen sq ft (or more) of airbrake deployed every time the landing gear was down takes a LOT of explaining after the first few engine out (single engine) landings or take-offs. 

These are rather different issues than trying to pick a winner out of a number of proposed engines or trying to pick a _great_ airfoil without decent wind tunnel experiments or flight tests. 

Unfortunately for sleeve valve engines, most of the problems they were supposed to solve in the late 20s or 1930 were solved by other means by 1939/40.


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## wuzak (Oct 3, 2014)

de Havilland Propellers was formed in 1935.
Rotol was formed in 1937.

de Havilland produced Hamilton Standard constant speed propellers under licence.

I guess prior to that it was the engine manufacturers who built props? Rotol, of corse, being formed by Rolls-Royce and Bristol.


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## Shortround6 (Oct 3, 2014)

The companies may have seen an advantage but there seems to have been some resistance to actually buying/equipping service aircraft with them. At least in the 1934-39 period. I believe Rotol was formed, in part, by Roy Fedden (and perhaps somebody at Rolls) getting fed up with the lack of British interest in modern propellers. Fedden and few others could see the advantages but some people thought the weight, price and complexity weren't worth it. This based off experiments done back in the 20s with much slower, lower powered aircraft.


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## nuuumannn (Oct 3, 2014)

Problem with the Belnheim with American engines, SR, is that there was no way that in 1936 the British would accept powering a front line military aircraft with them. You're right about the problem the Brits had with the Blenheim - what option did they have? The proposal you make regarding re-engining it leaves no option since the British engines required were too unreliable - as you've stated by rubbishing them, so the Mercury is all you have. Is it a Blenheim V you are after in 1936? So, essentially, the Blenheim goes from being a nearly obsolescent aircraft during WW2 to a slightly faster nearly obsolescent aeroplane that's unpopular with its crew. There's nothing you can really do with it except take it off the production line as soon as feasibly possible and relegate it to support roles. Why didn't the Brits do this and keep it in production and service for so long? That's a damned good question. Hmmm.

The Beaufort, again we are faced with the same problem as the Blenheim regarding its engines. The Taurus is not going to get better in a hurry, but what is left is little substitute, so it has to continue, otherwise, what torpedo bomber does the RAF have? The Botha? You complain about the Beaufort! It _did_ give excellent service, as did the Blenheim actually, the latter carrying out tasks beyond its original remit, expectation and capability, resulting in high losses and unecessary deaths of aircrew. Regarding the Beaufort launching torpedoes at the _Lutzow_ and other targets that Parsifal mentions in his post, yes, the weapon is responsible, but what you are proposing means the RAF has no effective front line land based torpedo bomber, which makes such attacks less likely, which is not acceptable. What use is an air launched torpedo with nothing to fire it from? Therefore, like the Blenheim, there is no other option but to proceed with fitting the Taurus until US engines can be supplied, which was not going to happen until after the war began. Many in Britain had real issues with the order for Hudsons, what would they have thought if it was proposed that British aircraft were powered by American engines?! 

Regarding the definition of medium bombers, well, the British did consider the Blenheim a medium bomber to begin with, and who are we to argue in 1936 with aircraft like the heavy Wellington and Whitley not far away? By wartime and the advent of the heavies, these became medium bombers and far from the British being left short handed by not having a class of aircraft like the Boston or Mitchell (hindsight - lovely to have) pre-war, the main reason the Brits went to the US was to bolster numbers of aircraft, albeit types that were in many cases technically more advanced that their own, the Hudson compared to the Anson, for example. It's worth remembering that with the arrival of the Mosquito, the Boston and Mitchell were out performed. It is also worth remembering that the first Bostons to arrive in Britain, in mid/late 1940 became trainers (Boston Is) and undertook conversion to night fighters (Boston IIs) as Havocs. Boston medium bombers didn't make an appearance until summer 1941, sensibly replacing Blenheims.

As for the Sabre, again, what other options are there? I guess the Sabre was troublesome from the start, but the Air Ministry had placed stock in it and certainly expected the numerous issues to be cured far swifter than they were, but, like I said, it was expected as one of the principal engines under development - the attraction of its power output must have been a factor behind this. At the time the Air Ministry considered it crucial to their plans - with hindsight, you are right - but during wartime, not so easy to just can something, even when it doesn't work as well as you'd like - look at the Halifax and Manchester.



> I guess prior to that it was the engine manufacturers who built props?



Largely, although there were different firms that were contracted to do so as branches of existing firms, like de Havilland Propellers, Fairey Reed etc. The Brits did develop a variable pitch propeller that was experimentally fitted to either a Gauntlet or a Gladiator, can't remember which in the early to mid 1930s, but for some odd reason this was not progressed with - a bit of a blunder leaving that 'till late in the day.



> Quite a number of 2 seat or twin engine British aircraft used twin Lewis guns on a scarf mounting in WW I, Why they thought a single Lewis gun was adequate defensive armament for light bombers in the mid/late 1930s can only cause a lot of head shaking.



This is precisely why the Brits were the first to develop power operated turrets, which they did before anyone else. The status quo overseas was not much better than .303 Lewis guns for bombers at the time, remember.


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## Shortround6 (Oct 4, 2014)

Mercury engines (late ones) came in two versions. Full supercharger and medium supercharger, on 87 octane fuel the full supercharged one gave 840hp at 14,000ft. This is not going to be improved much, if at all. The medium supercharged version/s gave 890hp at 6000ft. The real problem was at take-off where the full supercharger was limited to 725/730hp on 87 octane. the medium supercharger was limited to 830hp. A two speed supercharger (already fitted to the Pegasus) would have given both. An extra 14% (100hp) would have been nice in an engine out situation and would have been nice for take-off. SO nice that the British actually went one better and often ran the Mercury's in the Blenheim on two different grades of gas. The outer tanks were filled with 100 octane and the inner tanks with 87 octane. Take-off and climb out were done with 100 octane fuel and then they switched to the 87 for cruise to target area where they switched back to the 100 octane and then back to the 87 octane for the trip back. Put the 100 octane together with a two speed supercharger and you have just under 1000hp for take-off. No change at 14,000ft. 
2 speed supercharger doesn't seem like much to ask for when others want two stage Hercules and Sabre engines 
Beef up the landing gear a bit ( Blenheims had a lower landing weight than take-off weight, the reason for those fuel dump pipes under the outer wings, they had to dump hundreds of pounds of fuel in a hurry if they lost an engine at low altitude or on take-off) and the Blenheim might have been able to 'fill in' as a torpedo bomber. With the torpedo hanging outside it wouldn't have the range of the Beaufort though. *IF* you could get the two speed supercharger and stronger landing gear (and attachment points?) there is a good chance you wouldn't need the Botha 



> the latter carrying out tasks beyond its original remit, expectation and capability, resulting in high losses and unecessary deaths of aircrew


.
I believe a fair number of my proposals are to _prevent_ some of the "high losses and unecessary deaths of aircrew" as much as they are to increase the operational capability of the Blenheim or turn it into 'super bomber". Better engine out capability means more crews make it back after loosing an engine, and better chances of getting the plane back on the ground in one piece if an engine cuts out on take-off. Better cockpit layout would help there too and doesn't realy cost much in the grand scheme. 
It should have been replaced much quicker but the "replacements" were _slow in coming_. Improve the Blenheim so more aircrew survive until the replacements come and for this "what if" try to make sure the _effective _replacements come sooner by ditching some of the intermediate designs that took up so much time and weren't that effective. All too many Beaufort crews were lost too.


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## wuzak (Oct 4, 2014)

How about giving the Whitley flaps, so that they can reduce the wing incidence and improve the top and cruise speeds?


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## gjs238 (Oct 4, 2014)

Shortround6 said:


> 2 speed supercharger doesn't seem like much to ask for when others want two stage Hercules and Sabre engines



This sentiment seems fitting for the Americans as well:
2 speed supercharger *(on Allison V-1710) *doesn't seem like much to ask for when others want two stage *R-1830*, *R-2800* and *V-1650* engines


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## Shortround6 (Oct 4, 2014)

gjs238 said:


> This sentiment seems fitting for the Americans as well:
> 2 speed supercharger *(on Allison V-1710) *doesn't seem like much to ask for when others want two stage *R-1830*, *R-2800* and *V-1650* engines



Depends what you are looking for.

A Mercury giving 840hp at 14,000ft is already doing pretty good for a 25 liter air cooled engine, altitude wise. But the take-off performance was bit lacking. The Fiat A74-RC38 used in Fiat CR 42s, Fiat G.50s and Macchi C.200s was only good for 840hp at 12,500ft although they could pull 890hp for take-off from the 31.2 liter engine. Using a lower gear ratio to improve take-off performance is one thing ( and used by just about ALL big American radial engines). 

Going to a two speed supercharger on the Allison really isn't going to buy you a whole lot of altitude performance (a couple of thousand feet) *but* it might buy you that altitude performance _while_ increasing the take-off power to around 1425hp, instead of cutting it to 1200hp.


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## tomo pauk (Oct 4, 2014)

There is a good deal it the timing. 
In the time Merlin X was available (pre-war; 2 speed S/C), the service V-1710 'C' was barely in production. By the time the V-1710 'F' was in production (early 1941), the Merlin XX (with Hooker's improvements to the S/C) was already in production for maybe half a year, and P&W was introducing a two-stage R-1830. By the time the V-1710 F with a reliable 9.60:1 supercharger drive ratio is in production (second half of 1942), both Merlin and R-2800 are available with 2-stage supercharger. 
Being the 1st and foremost a 'fighter' engine, the single stage V-1710 lacked a bigger supercharger (9.50 in diameter, against Merlin's usual 10.25 in S/C), more than a multi-speed one.


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## gjs238 (Oct 4, 2014)

.


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## swampyankee (Oct 4, 2014)

The big problem with many of the aircraft developed isn't the design, but the specifications that led to that design: the Swordfish was a good design to a very demanding specification (for one thing, the aircraft had to be able to be launched by the catapults of non-carriers). The spec probably couldn't have been met by a monoplane.

The specs were, to a great extent, caused by a mix of penury (Tories didn't want to spend any money; Labourites didn't want to spend any on the military) and inter-service politics (which were probably exacerbated by lack of money); the latter probably led to the RN losing a great deal of staff expert on aviation matters, which fed into the specs problem when the FAA was formed.

So, it's 1936, and what do I as the new czar of all the British aviation world?

1) It's better to defend Britain over the fields of Europe: at least the pieces of airplane falling from the sky won't hurt your own subjects. This would require closer defense cooperation with France and Belgium. This means that you'll need aircraft that can fight over at least the parts of Continent, from British bases.

2) Germany had demonstrated its affection for using submarines against merchant ships in a recent war. Assume they'd do so again, so some long-ranged aircraft for MPA would be incredibly useful. The last war had shown that even unarmed aircraft can force submarines to submerge, reducing their mobility.

3) Maybe dive bombers won't work against battleships, but not all ships are battleships, and sinking enemy destroyers, cruisers, and transports is not going to hurt the British war effort.

4) Spend some money on float-less carburetors, better gun sights, etc.

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## tomo pauk (Oct 4, 2014)

The heavy fighter, based around two Merlins, was well within scope of British industry. A 'classic twin', like 'Whirlwind and a half', or a 'metal DH Hornet', or a really materialized Gloster Reaper. A fighter-bomber and a night fighter variant should leave more Mossies for bomber duties.


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## nuuumannn (Oct 5, 2014)

> I believe a fair number of my proposals are to prevent some of the "high losses and unecessary deaths of aircrew" as much as they are to increase the operational capability of the Blenheim or turn it into 'super bomber". Better engine out capability means more crews make it back after loosing an engine, and better chances of getting the plane back on the ground in one piece if an engine cuts out on take-off. Better cockpit layout would help there too and doesn't realy cost much in the grand scheme.
> It should have been replaced much quicker but the "replacements" were slow in coming. Improve the Blenheim so more aircrew survive until the replacements come and for this "what if" try to make sure the effective replacements come sooner by ditching some of the intermediate designs that took up so much time and weren't that effective. All too many Beaufort crews were lost too.



Problem is, when do you start doing this and what impact would it really have? I don't believe much would change and with the workload Bristol had pre WW2, what gives in its place? A two-speed supercharged Mercury gives the Blenheim what in performance? An extra 10, 20 maybe 30 mph? Still makes it vulnerable and like you've pointed out, there are other issues with it rather than just its low engine output. Still not convinced and with hindsight, I don't believe it would make a huge amount of difference to the type in the long run. RAF losses will still be high on the type. Much of this had to do with how they were used rather than the aircraft itself, but its low performance certainly didn't help. Also, there's is no way you are going to get a torpedo to be carried under a Blenheim!  You'd have to strengthen and redesign the undercarriage, then add more powerful engines, Hercules' maybe, get rid of extra crew... wait, that's a Beaufighter...


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## Shortround6 (Oct 6, 2014)

The difference in speed would be nonexistent at higher altitudes, 13-18,000ft. Use the high gear from the fully supercharged engine and a low gear about the same as the moderately supercharged engine. Better performance at low altitude though. British turrets, while ahead of the rest of the world (mostly) seemed to suffer a disconnect. They had fighters with eight .303s and were planing on 20mm cannon and yet thought single drum feed .303 guns were adequate defense? 
or twin .303s on the big bombers? 
All I am hoping for is fewer operational losses and perhaps more crews getting back with damaged aircraft. Having more power and less drag (a prop that fully feathers) may mean much higher speeds/climb when on one engine. 

as to the torpedo, Most sources give 1320lbs as the bomb load for the Blenheim, which includes eight 40lb bombs hanging on a pair of racks, one behind the other, under the fuselage behind the bomb bay. They also carried enough fuel for 1400 miles. Torpedo weighed about 1700lbs. Use 56imp gallons less fuel and weight problem is solved. Not the range of a Beaufort but a lot better than a Vildebeast which is what you are replacing. BTW the max take-off weight for the MK V Blenheim was 17,000lbs so they did beef up the landing gear at some point. 
With the extra power at low level from the 2 speed supercharger it may be possible.


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## tomo pauk (Oct 6, 2014)

Now that we've beaten the fighters and twin-engined bombers to death, what about heavy bombers. When is a good time to introduce 4-engined stuff? The 1st ones can rely on Pegasus/Perseus/Mercury engines, even the A-S Tiger can be useful here. Would still need either escort (but won't get it?) or to operate during the night. Next gen bombers can use Merlins and Hercules, while the 1st gen can do MPA work.


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## nuuumannn (Oct 6, 2014)

> British turrets, while ahead of the rest of the world (mostly) seemed to suffer a disconnect. They had fighters with eight .303s and were planing on 20mm cannon and yet thought single drum feed .303 guns were adequate defense?



Experience during the war taught the British that .303s were inadequate, they took their time about introducing the .5, although both Boulton Paul and Frazer Nash built .5 in gun armed turrets early on, they weren't put into production.

If you are going to reinvent the Blenheim, I'd get rid of the turret and save yourself some weight. It was not powered. 

Regarding torpedo aircraft, the Beaufort spec was hampered by the fact that the Air Ministry wanted a crew of four, hence its bulky size mid fuse area. Originally it was designed based on the Blenheim, so for your theoretical non-existent Beaufort scenario, you could use the Blenheim as a basis for a torpedoplane, but ignore the four crew requirement; the Beaufighter only had two, but that was in wartime and experience had meant that aircrew could multi task, but again, what to power it with? I still don't accept a revamp of the Blenheim as it was; it's not really worth the effort, I'm afraid - using hindsight as a judge. The only thing would be to reinvent it from scratch. Structurally it wouldn't be strong enough to carry a torpedo; you'd have to redo the lower fuselage under the wing and remove the bomb bay for strengthening.

Sorry Tomo.



> Next gen bombers can use Merlins and Hercules, while the 1st gen can do MPA work.



The thing is, you are describing the Whitley and Wellington. You could come up with alternatives to B.12/36 (Stirling) and P.13/36 (Manchester and HP.56). B.12/36 also produced the Supermarine heavy bomber (Type 316, then 317), construction of which was cancelled after Woolston was bombed during the war, which destroyed work on the aircraft, leaving the troublesome Stirling. Firms that conceived bombers to this include AW, whose design looked a bit like a four engined Whitley, the Boulton Paul design was technically advanced, Bristol and Vickers. The Air Ministry stated that this spec was (quote) "of outstanding importance..." and were happy with the Short and Supermarine designs, but the death of Mitchell left a bit of uncertainty in their minds, leaving the S.29 as the favoured aircraft. Because of Short's haphazard means of manufacture - although common to most British firms, the Stirling took a long time to conceive and was plaqued with production issues and wasn't that great a performer when it did get into service, so perhaps a better Stirling?

The next spec P.13/36 is for a medium bomber to suppliment the former, but in effect it kind of evolved into another heavy. By this time, both specs stipulated powered turrets for defence. It also had the rather straining requirement of being able to be catapulted from the ground with a full bomb load (!) Thankfully, this was later relaxed, although I've seen pics of Manchesters sitting on test rigs, though I don't know if it was ever done. Engine options are the restriction here, the stipulation was for Vultures and HP dropped the twin Vulture HP.56 for four Merlin HP.57, mainly because of a possible shortfall of engines. This also meant that Chadwick and Dobson at Avro planned a four engined Manchester from early on, so as an insurance plan, get that going simultaneously to the Vulture engined one. We know HP are going to have trouble with their Halifax, which means it would be another two to three years after it flies for the first time before the issues are sorted.

Regarding MPA, perhaps a long range four engined aircraft from scratch?


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## Greyman (Oct 6, 2014)

nuuumannn said:


> If you are going to reinvent the Blenheim, I'd get rid of the turret and save yourself some weight. It was not powered.



Definitely powered.


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## nuuumannn (Oct 6, 2014)

Well slap my thighs and call me Susan. Thanks Greyman.

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## parsifal (Oct 7, 2014)

youll be right susie

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## Shortround6 (Oct 7, 2014)

nuuumannn said:


> Experience during the war taught the British that .303s were inadequate, they took their time about introducing the .5, although both Boulton Paul and Frazer Nash built .5 in gun armed turrets early on, they weren't put into production.
> 
> If you are going to reinvent the Blenheim, I'd get rid of the turret and save yourself some weight. It was not powered.
> 
> Regarding torpedo aircraft, the Beaufort spec was hampered by the fact that the Air Ministry wanted a crew of four, hence its bulky size mid fuse area. Originally it was designed based on the Blenheim, so for your theoretical non-existent Beaufort scenario, you could use the Blenheim as a basis for a torpedoplane, but ignore the four crew requirement; the Beaufighter only had two, but that was in wartime and experience had meant that aircrew could multi task, but again, what to power it with? I still don't accept a revamp of the Blenheim as it was; it's not really worth the effort, I'm afraid - using hindsight as a judge. The only thing would be to reinvent it from scratch. Structurally it wouldn't be strong enough to carry a torpedo; you'd have to redo the lower fuselage under the wing and remove the bomb bay for strengthening.



British had pretty much figured out that the .303 was lacking in effectiveness well before the war. Which is why they were working on the 20mm canon. What is puzzling is that when they were trying to build fighters with eight .303s that fired at 1200rpm each (or close) it _seemed_ like they thought a _single_ .303 Lewis gun (600rpm) was adequate to defend the bomber/s even though they had often used _twin_ Lewis guns and many WW I bombers/flying boats against much less sturdy fighters. 
Now maybe the Lewis guns were 'place holders' until they could get enough Vickers 'K' guns (900-1000rpm) and the Lewis guns were *free*, being left over WW I guns stored in warehouses. 
Granted the power mountings/turrets offered much better tracking/aiming than the old hand powered mounts but if you are going to the weight/complexity of a turret saving weigh by leaving out a 22-30lb gun and around 30-45lbs of ammo /drums seems like a poor trade off. 

While powered the Blenheim turret may have had only 180 of traverse. Of course many hand held mounts, while they could traverse over 180 degrees on the ground were *very* limited in _effective_ traverse in the air as the slipstream buffeted the gun/s and tried to push them back into pointing at the tail. That or you used a large, high drag wind defector/s.






Hampden's gun mounts were not powered and please notice the sophisticated method of keeping the gunner form shooting up his own aircraft 
Early Hampdens had single guns. 
British also seemed to think that a single _fixed_ .303 Browning was adequate defense from the front on the faster, more _maneuverable_ bombers. Try to imagine a squadron of bombers in formation all bobbing and weaving about as the pilots tried to get their gun sights on attacking fighters 
Hampden, BTW, is an alternative for long range torpedo bomber. It was certainly used as such but perhaps not until later in the war? 

For some roles the Blenheim flew getting rid of the turret would have been an advantage. Like nightfighter, of course designing a new belly pack for the guns instead of going on to make hundreds of that thing made by railroad apprentices (even steam locomotives had curves) would have helped also. 

There is nothing you can do to a Blenheim to make it a decent warplane in 1943/44 when the last were coming out of service but there was a lot that could have done earlier. Better landing gear and landing gear doors _were_ fitted. A better turret was fitted (although it certainly didn't lower the drag). Better propellers could have been fitted, not so much for performance (although they would have helped) as for crew safety/survival. 
Trying to take existing Blenheims and turn them into torpedo bombers (like existing Blenheims were turned into fighters) probably wouldn't have worked. But building a run of torpedo bombers in the factory with suitable modifications may have worked. And if you are going to keep the Blenheim around, making a Blenheim X that used similar construction to the Beaufort (more aluminum and less steel) might not have been out of the question.


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## tomo pauk (Oct 7, 2014)

A little bit about the engines - what about an alternative to Hercules and Centaurus? A Twin Mercury maybe - 50 liter engines have a certain charm


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## Shortround6 (Oct 7, 2014)

You mean something like this? 







Alfa Romero built about 150 but never did get them to work right.

Doubling engines was a *lot* harder than it appears at first glance.


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## Juha (Oct 7, 2014)

Shortround6 said:


> ...Hampden, BTW, is an alternative for long range torpedo bomber. It was certainly used as such but perhaps not until later in the war? ...



From 42 to early 44 IIRC, also some 23 TB Mk Is were given to Russians who used them appr, a yea r in Barents Sea area.

juha


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## Greyman (Oct 7, 2014)

Shortround6 said:


> While powered the Blenheim turret may have had only 180 of traverse.



The turret rotated 60 degrees port/starb and the gun cradle rotated 40 degrees. So basically 100 degrees either direction.


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## nuuumannn (Oct 7, 2014)

> Trying to take existing Blenheims and turn them into torpedo bombers (like existing Blenheims were turned into fighters) probably wouldn't have worked. But building a run of torpedo bombers in the factory with suitable modifications may have worked. And if you are going to keep the Blenheim around, making a Blenheim X that used similar construction to the Beaufort (more aluminum and less steel) might not have been out of the question.



Yep, you're right, it wouldn't have. Starting from scratch is your only option, but, I still don't believe the Blenheim had any more mileage in it. Via the Beaufort, the Beaufighter is where your attention should be going. it can be argued that the Beaufighter is what the Blenheim should have been in the first instance. Powerful, able to carry a significant load and a variety of stores, two crew, versatile etc... This is the thing; if improvements to the Blenheim make it a bit better, then how does it match up with the Beaufighter or is Bristol just duplicating effort?


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## Shortround6 (Oct 7, 2014)

The improved Blenheims are to hold the line until the Beaufighters show up, Not replace the Beaufighter. That is the only mileage I would try to get out of them. Hold the line with fewer losses, Then go into their training role. 

The British tried to stretch the Blenheim with the Bisley or MK V version but 1942/43 was too late for improved landing gear and a two gun turret without some sort of change to the engine, which it did not get. Just 100 octane and a bit more boost which the earlier ones already had. 
And the constant idea that shipping 2nd rate planes off to the mid or far east was acceptable.


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## nuuumannn (Oct 7, 2014)

> The British tried to stretch the Blenheim with the Bisley or MK V version but 1942/43 was too late for improved landing gear and a two gun turret without some sort of change to the engine, which it did not get. Just 100 octane and a bit more boost which the earlier ones already had. And the constant idea that shipping 2nd rate planes off to the mid or far east was acceptable.



The Blenheim V had disappointing performance and was disliked by its crews; it was consdered unsuitable for European operations, so was sent out to Africa. It entered service three months after the Blenheim IV was withdrawn from the European theatre. Bristol went a bit far with it and tried desperately to make a better Blenheim, which, let's face it, couldn't really be done in a 1940s context - as I've hinted at all along. The Buckingham was Bristol's answer to a Blenheim replacement. Here's where the chain of events gets a little lengthy. The Buckingham was developed from a day bomber project called the Beaumont to spec B.2/41 and this supplanted an earlier spec B.7/40, to which Bristol offered a bomber variant of the Beaufighter powered by Griffons or Hercules. Obviously, by the time the Buckingham had flown (4 February 1943), the Mosquito was proving its excellence and had better performance than the Bristol product.

The Beaufighter was available in 1940/41 as a fighter, but obviously, troubles meant that its development was prolonged, despite numbers in service growing through 1940. The Mk.II went some way to address the Hercules issues, but introduced problems of its own. If Bristol had discontinued Blenheim production and brought the Beaufighter onto former Blenheim production lines around 1940, more Beaufighters would have been available within two to two and a half years of the beginning of the war, possibly earlier. By then the majority of the Hercules issues were dealt with and the Beaufighter VI was entering service and Coastal Command had a decent torpedo bomber.


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## yulzari (Oct 8, 2014)

With the large Vickers commitment to geodesic construction, could a 4 engined Warwick have superceded the Wellington instead of Wellingtons being churned out to the end of the war? The Pegasus is being suoerceded by Hercules so perhaps initially a x4 Pegasus or Twin Wasp or Tiger installation and Hercules thereafter.


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## Shortround6 (Oct 8, 2014)

The Warwick was a stretched Wellington as it was. There were about 6 ft of fuselage plugs and a new wing center section that pushed the old Wellington outer wing panels out for about 10ft more wingspan. This made for a rather cheap and easy way to get a bigger bomber. It was let down by the lack of large engines to power it. With the cancellation of the Vulture, the late arrival of the Sabre and the much delayed Centaurus the first few hundred were powered by P W R-2800s which were bit under powered for the job. There were also control issues, especially with one engine out (fin and rudder too small?). 
Trying for a 4 engine version would mean almost a whole new wing. The center section to hold 4 engines might push the old outer wings out too far (and/or they won't be strong enough to hold the higher weight) meaning they (and the ailerons have to be modified). 
I am not sure of the bomb bay details but obviously a longer but not deeper or wider bomb bay than the Wellington was not what was wanted from 1943 on. You also have the fact that if you keep the old wing you are dealing with a pre 1936 airfoil which is going to be looking a bit dated by 1943, if you are going to build a new wing why not use a newer/better airfoil?


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## merlin (Oct 8, 2014)

nuuumannn said:


> The thing is, you are describing the Whitley and Wellington. You could come up with alternatives to B.12/36 (Stirling) and P.13/36 (Manchester and HP.56). B.12/36 also produced the Supermarine heavy bomber (Type 316, then 317), construction of which was cancelled after Woolston was bombed during the war, which destroyed work on the aircraft, leaving the troublesome Stirling. Firms that conceived bombers to this include AW, whose design looked a bit like a four engined Whitley, the Boulton Paul design was technically advanced, Bristol and Vickers. The Air Ministry stated that this spec was (quote) "of outstanding importance..." and were happy with the Short and Supermarine designs, but the death of Mitchell left a bit of uncertainty in their minds, leaving the S.29 as the favoured aircraft. Because of Short's haphazard means of manufacture - although common to most British firms, the Stirling took a long time to conceive and was plaqued with production issues and wasn't that great a performer when it did get into service, so perhaps a better Stirling?
> 
> Regarding MPA, perhaps a long range four engined aircraft from scratch?



I'd stick to the Boulton-Paul design, it was favoured, until Supermarine did a bit of lobbying! This enables Shorts to continue with Sunderland production, and go to the a proper military version of the 'G' Class flying boat.


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## yulzari (Oct 9, 2014)

Shortround6 said:


> Trying for a 4 engine version would mean almost a whole new wing.



Would this have not also have applied to the Manchester to Lancaster and the 2 to 4 engined Halifax?

Vickers had already committed to the geodesic construction system and stayed with it into the Windsor so any Vickers heavy bomber has to be geodesic and the Warwick is an easy step from the Wellington without necessarily competing for engines until production allows for Hercules/Merlin Warwicks.


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## Shortround6 (Oct 9, 2014)

yulzari said:


> Would this have not also have applied to the Manchester to Lancaster and the 2 to 4 engined Halifax?
> 
> Vickers had already committed to the geodesic construction system and stayed with it into the Windsor so any Vickers heavy bomber has to be geodesic and the Warwick is an easy step from the Wellington without necessarily competing for engines until production allows for Hercules/Merlin Warwicks.



The 2 engine Halifax never existed except on paper so you aren't throwing away anything in tooling/jigs/fixtures. 

With Avro it was also a question of design or new wing or maybe build Halifax's. 

The Warwick was _supposed_ to be an easy step up but the engines failed (all of 4 of them), and the Warwick turned out to be less than satisfactory in any case. Trying to make a 4 engine version requires more work (what else gets delayed?) and if you start with low powered engines you don't get a very capable bomber. You get the Drag of 4 engine Lancaster or Halifax but with 60-75% of the power.


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## yulzari (Oct 9, 2014)

Certainly the Warwick would be less capable than a Lancaster but Vickers commitment to geodesic construction means that the alternative to 4 engined Warwicks was 2 engined Wellingtons, which was what we actually used.

IIRC the structure of a geodesic framework can be strengthened by increasing the depth of the members, the thickness of their material or the density of the net. Any of these only require a new set of forming jigs. Even the Wellington managed to use some of the Wellesley jigs and the huge redesign of the prototype used mostly the same jigs. This was one of the sales points of the system to Vickers. A 4 engined Warwick was doable and within a timescale that could have seen it into service before the Stirling. After all, the Wellington and Warwick were designed together.

More Lancasters would indeed be better than 4 engined Warwicks but that would not have been the choice. The choice is Wellington or Warwick. A Warwick designed to take any of the 1,000bhp existing units would be a flexible production option using Bristol Pegasus, Wright Cyclone, P&W Twin Wasp, Bristol Taurus, Napier Dagger, Armstrong Siddeley Tiger, Rolls Royce Merlin, Bristol Hercules as might be available.

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## tomo pauk (Oct 9, 2014)

I'd leave the Hercules and Merlin for other heavies, though.


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## Shortround6 (Oct 9, 2014)

yulzari said:


> More Lancasters would indeed be better than 4 engined Warwicks but that would not have been the choice. The choice is Wellington or Warwick. A Warwick designed to take any of the 1,000bhp existing units would be a flexible production option using Bristol Pegasus, Wright Cyclone, P&W Twin Wasp, Bristol Taurus, Napier Dagger, Armstrong Siddeley Tiger, Rolls Royce Merlin, Bristol Hercules as might be available.



You are bouncing from 1100lb engines to 2000lb engines and from 1000hp hp or less to 1200/1300hp in 1940 to 1700hp in 1943/44. Expecting an airplane to perform close to the same with all those engines is a bit much 

as in a plane _designed_ to use 1300hp engines is going to under-powered and hard to take-off and climb out with 900-1000hp engines unless you really restrict teh bomb and fuel load and if you do, what's the point of making it?

and if you design the plane for 900-1000hp engines and try to add 1300-1400hp engines later you are adding a couple of tons of power-plant weight. This also affects bending stress in the wings and other things aside from simple weight calculations. 

And three of them probably should have never seen service, two for sure. The Tiger was nothing but trouble in it's later Versions. The Whitley was re-engined as fast as possible. The Dagger _might_ have been OK in it's MK III 800hp version but not much good can be said of the 1000hp MK VIII. The Taurus _might_ have been OK in the Albacore but was never a really good engine in the Beaufort. It got better as time went on but by the time it got better there were much better alternatives. 
You also don't have an unlimited supply of engines of any type. Especially in 1939/40/41. P W 1942 production of R-1830s was over 12 times what their 1939 production had been. 
The real Warwick was rather curtailed in Production because of P W slow delivery of R-2800 engines, by the time they thought they would get 200 engines they had only gotten 80. The British _had_ planned to switch the Beaufort to R-1830s until the ship carrying the first 200 engines was torpedoed. Faced with a delay of months (P W didn't have 200 more engines sitting in a warehouse, replacement engines would have to be drawn a few at time from the production or some other aircraft program would be looking at dozens if not over a hundred airframes with no engines). 

The Americans got away with 1200hp heavies in part due to the turbo-chargers which allowed for cruise settings of around 700-750hp _lean_ and 1000-1100hp max continuous at any practical altitude, or thousands of feet higher than non-turboed engines would provide the same power. Due to the thinner air this meant more speed for the same power ( or less power for the same speed which means more range). 

Sticking a Hercules on a Plane designed for Pegasus engines is like sticking R-2600s on a plane designed for R-1820s.


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## yulzari (Oct 10, 2014)

Good thing nobody replaced the Pegasus with Hercules on the Wellington or Tigers with Merlins on Whitleys then. Let alone replacing Taurus with Hercules or Merlins when using Beaufort wings (which were themselves oversized Blenheim wings) on Beaufighters. 

I do note that replacing x2 2,000bhp with x4 1,000bhp motors is not quite the same. In the Warwick you are replacing the Sabre, Centuarus, R2800 x2 with the list above x4.

The comparison has to be between the Wellington and Warwick. They are the only two possibilities for Vickers to make.

BTW When De Havillands engine department were asked to comment on the Napier Dagger they found that the Napier standard baffling simply had too little exit capacity and increasing this let the Dagger cool itself quite adequately. Too late though.

However, I think we have been over this ground before and agreed to differ.


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## Shortround6 (Oct 10, 2014)

Did they beef up the landing gear in the later versions of the Wellington? Or have to change anything else?

Wellington Prototype, tare 18,000lbs, all up 24,850lbs
Wellington Mk IC, tare 18,556lbs, All up 28,500lbs
Wellington Mk X, tare 22,474lbs, all up 36,500lbs

Tare weight does NOT include guns although it may include the turrets.

Whitley Mk II III, (tiger engines) tare weight 15,475lb, all up 22,990lbs
Whitley MK V (Merlin) tare weight 19,350lbs, all up 33,500lbs. 

Granted more was changed than just the engines but each of those planes picked-up about 2 tons tare weight with the new models, and 4-5 tons all-up. 

You may need heavier landing gear and tires, different brakes and other modifications. Sticking the bigger parts on the lower powered early versions gives you a not very useful airplane. 

BTW, the Beaufort used different wing construction than the Blenheim. Light alloy extrusions and forgings in places instead of steel plate and angle stock. The wing was both lighter _and stronger._

One might also note that seldom, if ever, were older models of aircraft 're-engined' to bring them up to "new" standards in the field. 

The Dagger, even if De Havillind was right, doesn't get you much. The 1000hp was at 8750ft. Better than the Taurus's 3500ft FTL but hardly what you want for a 4 engine heavy bomber. Take off was 955hp.
The Pegasus engines used in the Wellington were good for 965hp take-off( had to be restricted with 87 octane fuel), had 1000hp at 3,000ft in low gear and 885hp at 15,500ft in high gear. 
The Dagger was about 200lbs heavier per engine.


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## yulzari (Oct 10, 2014)

So the argument is that we would be better off with Wellingtons?|


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## Shortround6 (Oct 10, 2014)

Well, in 1938-40 you are going to get 2 Wellingtons for every 4 engine Warwick from an engine standpoint. 

Work on a 4 engine Warwick may delay improvements to the Wellington. 2 engine Warwick was delayed at times due to work being done on the Wellington and it shared a lot more structure. 

_EVERY_ engine change is going to require hundreds if not thousands of hours of drafting work for different firewalls, engine mounts, exhausts, cowls, control mechanisms accessories and piping. Things as simple as fuel and oil lines are going to different from the firewall forward. It isn't hard work but each engine installation needs a full set of drawings and that means time. 

A bomber using 4 Pegasus or 4 Daggers or 4 other small and/or low powered engines (the R-1830s being delivered even in early 1940 were not 1200hp versions,1200hp Wright R-1820s don't start showing up in production planes until the summer /Fall of 1940) is not going to give you any real big operational advantage. It serves as little more than 'getting your feet wet". 
The first 86 Halifaxes used Merlin X engines and nobody was particularly happy with them. Even switching to the Merlin XX still left problems until the allowable boost was increased. 

The RAF was short of all sorts of combat aircraft in 1938-41, trying to introduce low powered 4 engine bombers isn't going to solve much and once high powered engines are available they would be better used in a more modern airframe.


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## tomo pauk (Oct 10, 2014)

Shouldn't the 2 'Warwick 4s' carry about the same payload to about same distance as 4 Wellingtons, in case both are outfitted with similar engines? Conversely, the 'W 4' will be able to reach a target that is beyond Wellington's range.
We also need to train less crew for 1 'Warwick 4' than for 2 Wellingtons.


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## yulzari (Oct 10, 2014)

My line of thinking is this. Vickers are committed to geodesic construction and changing to stressed skin will almost mean closing the factories and equipping brand new ones and re training staff. The only designs are Wellington, Warwick (and later Windsor).

Which would be the best choice to use? IOTL Vickers made Wellingtons until five months after the war ended.

Wellingtons used Bristol Pegasus, Rolls Royce Merlin and Bristol Hercules (not counting post war jet and turboprop test aeroplanes).

Warwicks were to use Rolls Royce Vultures, Bristol Centaurus, Napier Sabre or Pratt Whitney R-2800

Ironically Vickers modernised the design type into the stressed skin Viking airliner (including the worlds first jet airliner single test type) Valetta military transport and nosewheel Varsity trainer (which had a pannier bomb bay for practice bombs)which last served in 1992 at RAE.


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## Shortround6 (Oct 10, 2014)

When are these things supposed to go in service? 

The first Wellingtons reach a squadron in Oct 1938, By Sept 1939 8 "operational" squadrons had received Wellingtons (not sure if all squadrons had full compliments) but not all were actually declared operational by day and none were operational by night. 2 more squadrons were held in 'reserve' and and another one was conducting crew training. In late 1940 Wellington IIs were being issued to some squadrons to replace Fairey Battles. This rather points to need for a comprehensive plan. Build Warwick 4s so you build fewer Wellingtons so you can use Battles and Blenheims in greater numbers for longer? 

The First Wellingtons had crap Vickers "turrets" or powered gun mounts which did NOT traverse even 180 degrees and a retractable ventral 'dustbin'. 
Same armament on the 'Warwick 4' ? 

And until you figure out the navigation problems it doesn't really matter which bombers you use. Miss the target city with 200 Wellingtons or with 100 Warwick 4s? 

For an interesting "snap shot" of the planes Britain was using and planned to be using the article from Nov 1937 is rather interesting, granted it is what information could be released to the public and is trying to paint a rosy picture.

1937 | 3235 | Flight Archive

We have the advantage in hindsight of _knowing *exactly* when_ the war would start and what problems they hadn't solved yet and how long it took to solve some of them.

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## tomo pauk (Oct 11, 2014)

In case Vickers is really capable to move fast from production of Welington to production of 4-engined bomber, 1941 seem like realistic proposition? Once Wellington is to receive powered turrets and Hercules engines, the ratio between 'producible' 'Warwick 4' and Wellington moves from 2:4 to 3:4? The 'W4' will have far better flying capabilities in engine-out situation - less aircraft crews lost. Having the 'W4' in production by 1944 would be a better proposal than having Wellington by that date.

Going by the original premise of this thread, Battles would be produced in quantity of 700-800, rather than 2000+ examples. Fairey can build Hampden instead? The non-development/production of Botha leaves Blackburn to produce, say, Perseus Blenheim, or Hampden, or Whitley?


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## Shortround6 (Oct 11, 2014)

I am not sure what the Warwick 4 really gets you. Trying to turn a 1938/39 Warwick 4 with Pegasus engines into a 1944 Warwick 4 with 1700hp Hercules engines is going to take a bit of modification all on it's own and are you really going to wind up with a plane any better than a Halifax III or a Lancaster? 

Granted with hindsight we can specify different bombays than the Wellington, Warwick, Sterling and Halifax used so as to get more 4000lbs and such but ALL the early bombers had problems with the bomb bays when they changed the type/s of bomb/s they wanted to use. 

You might also try comparing tare weights to see what the ratio of aircraft might be. Late Wellingtons went about 22,500lbs , the Warwick 2 went about 29,000lbs, the Halifax went about 36,000lbs ( Melrin X engines) to 39,000lbs (Hercules) 
While the Short Stirling with it's oversized fuselage went 43,000lbs.
The Manchester was 26,760lbs while a Lancaster went about 36,450lbs. 
Those are weights without guns, ammo, radios etc. 

You are not going to get 3 four engine bombers for 4 two engine bombers. 

We have been over the Battle before, while perhaps more were made than really needed cutting production by 1400-1500 leaves you woefully short of aircraft to equip active squadrons late 1039/40 and really up the creek without a paddle for crew trainer aircraft from 1940 on. 

We also need to check to see what some of these "alternative" factorys were actually doing before deciding they could _just_ build plane XXX. 

For instance Blackburn built over 1700 Swordfish, first one delivered Dec 29, 1940, they built 635 Barracudas and one of their factories built 250 Sunderlands at about 60 per year. _Fully_ occupying that factory. 
Blackburn was also appointed as the 'sister' company to Grumman and handled (with the aid of sub contractors) ALL of the modifications to American Naval aircraft used by the British. Installations of British radios, IFF, oxygen equipment, catapult spools, rocket launchers, and so on. 

Also please consider it can take 6 months to a year from first production aircraft to building them at a good rate in a given factory. 

The need for suitable training aircraft (or even barely suitable) cannot be under estimated either. Perhaps too many crews were lost in training and certainly too many were lost using unsuitable operational aircraft and unsuitable tactics but shorting the training squadrons puts you in the same situation the Germans and Japanese found themselves in. Poorly trained crews, even with good planes, do NOT achieve good results. 

British tried some specialized training aircraft but some came up short;





First flight	18 June 1937 but the order for 250 was cut to only 50 with the last 20 being delivered as engine-less air-frames for ground instruction.

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## Juha (Oct 12, 2014)

Shortround6 said:


> ...
> For an interesting "snap shot" of the planes Britain was using and planned to be using the article from Nov 1937 is rather interesting, granted it is what information could be released to the public and is trying to paint a rosy picture.
> 
> 1937 | 3235 | Flight Archive
> ...



Thanks for a very interesting link but I must say that the recognation of the foreign national markings has been abysmally poor in 37 at the Flight office, the Gladiator is Latvian, not Finnish and the Anson is Finnish not Swedish.


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## tomo pauk (Oct 12, 2014)

I'm not sure what part is devoted to yulzary and what to me, but at any rate:



Shortround6 said:


> I am not sure what the Warwick 4 really gets you. Trying to turn a 1938/39 Warwick 4 with Pegasus engines into a 1944 Warwick 4 with 1700hp Hercules engines is going to take a bit of modification all on it's own and are you really going to wind up with a plane any better than a Halifax III or a Lancaster?



'My' Warwick 4 will still remain on Pegasus and similar engines. It would be better than Wellington that was produced by 1944 and used until war's end.



> Granted with hindsight we can specify different bombays than the Wellington, Warwick, Sterling and Halifax used so as to get more 4000lbs and such but ALL the early bombers had problems with the bomb bays when they changed the type/s of bomb/s they wanted to use.



Agreed.



> You might also try comparing tare weights to see what the ratio of aircraft might be. Late Wellingtons went about 22,500lbs , the Warwick 2 went about 29,000lbs, the Halifax went about 36,000lbs ( Melrin X engines) to 39,000lbs (Hercules)
> While the Short Stirling with it's oversized fuselage went 43,000lbs.
> The Manchester was 26,760lbs while a Lancaster went about 36,450lbs.
> Those are weights without guns, ammo, radios etc.



Thanks for the numbers. Hopefully the Pegasus-powered 'W 4' will be somewhere around 30,000 lbs, under same conditions. Vs. the Merlin heavies, we save 2500-3000 lbs on powerplant weight alone.



> You are not going to get 3 four engine bombers for 4 two engine bombers.



Depends what is compared. Cost of the B-26 and B-17 was about the same, what B-17 was capable to do was beyond B-26s capabilities. If we want to field two B-26s instead of one, we need twice the number of crew, for example. What most of major countries lacked was trained manpower, not equipment. 



> We have been over the Battle before, while perhaps more were made than really needed cutting production by 1400-1500 leaves you woefully short of aircraft to equip active squadrons late 1039/40 and really up the creek without a paddle for crew trainer aircraft from 1940 on.



For 1939-40 - RAF (and other powers) need a bomber that is a bit more of a target practice for enemy fighters and AAA. Unfortunately, Battle was that, Ju-87 joined to the list shortly after, later the Su-2 joined, closely followed by Japanese and some US s/e bombers. Expecting from a single MG to defend a bomber is, well, silly, especially if one wants ones fighters to carry in the air a battery of MGs, or even cannon(s). 
RAF can train their crews on Ansons, along with plenty Miles and US-built trainers at 1st, then switch to, indeed, Battles and other more worthy planes. 



> We also need to check to see what some of these "alternative" factorys were actually doing before deciding they could _just_ build plane XXX.
> 
> For instance Blackburn built over 1700 Swordfish, first one delivered Dec 29, 1940, they built 635 Barracudas and one of their factories built 250 Sunderlands at about 60 per year. _Fully_ occupying that factory.
> Blackburn was also appointed as the 'sister' company to Grumman and handled (with the aid of sub contractors) ALL of the modifications to American Naval aircraft used by the British. Installations of British radios, IFF, oxygen equipment, catapult spools, rocket launchers, and so on.
> Also please consider it can take 6 months to a year from first production aircraft to building them at a good rate in a given factory



Thanks again for the info.
Blackburn also built 580 Bothas. With those deleted from design and production, Blackburn can start building stuff that is already designed tested, like indeed they were doing with the A/C you've listed. In case the 'better Blenheim' is chosen instead of Bothas, they can build more of the former. 



> The need for suitable training aircraft (or even barely suitable) cannot be under estimated either. Perhaps too many crews were lost in training and certainly too many were lost using unsuitable operational aircraft and unsuitable tactics but shorting the training squadrons puts you in the same situation the Germans and Japanese found themselves in. Poorly trained crews, even with good planes, do NOT achieve good results.
> 
> British tried some specialized training aircraft but some came up short;
> 
> First flight	18 June 1937 but the order for 250 was cut to only 50 with the last 20 being delivered as engine-less air-frames for ground instruction.



Agreed. Miles-built stuff seem like real winners.


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## Aozora (Oct 12, 2014)

tomo pauk said:


> 'My' Warwick 4 will still remain on Pegasus and similar engines. It would be better than Wellington that was produced by 1944 and used until war's end.



What sort of armament would a Pegasus powered Warwick 4 be able to carry? Bomb load? Projected operational gross weight? Projected operational height at POGW? The Pegasus XVIII, which would have been the most powerful Pegasus available in 1944, put out 1,065 hp maximum at take off and 965 hp @ 13,000 ft on emergency power ratings; it had a maximum economical cruise rating of 585 hp @ 20,000 ft (100 octane fuel). Without a decent supercharger or turbocharger there is no way the Pegasus could have provided a four-engined bomber with anything other than mediocre performance, at best:








tomo pauk said:


> Thanks for the numbers. Hopefully the Pegasus-powered 'W 4' will be somewhere around 30,000 lbs, under same conditions. Vs. the Merlin heavies, we save 2500-3000 lbs on powerplant weight alone.



This would imply a maximum operational weight of c. 58-63,000 lbs? So the power loading at take-off (1,065 hp x 4 = 4,260 hp) at maximum gross weight would have been somewhere between 13.6 and 14.7 lbs/hp (Lanc at 68,000 lbs = 13.3 lbs/hp approx, Halifax III at overload of 65,000 lbs = 12.7 lbs/hp)? 

A Warwick W4 might be marginally better than a Wellington by 1944, but it would still have been thoroughly obsolete for front-line BC duties, especially for the daylight raids BC increasingly mounted post mid-1944.


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## Shortround6 (Oct 13, 2014)

The Pegasus stayed pretty much status quo for the duration of the war. All the development was going into the sleeve valve engines. The Pegasus was actually a pretty good engine but _*nothing*_ you would want to design a 4 engine heavy bomber around given that you KNOW it doesn't get any better.
The Halifax I was something of a dog with Merlin X engines. With Merlin XX engines it's ceiling and cruising heights improved by 3,000ft or so. It got even better with the switch to the Hercules engines but that wasn't until Jan of 1944. 
Building Warwick 4s with Pegasus engines in 1944 _might_ give you a better Air-sea rescue plane but it would be a pretty lousy bomber. 

Compare it to a Y1B-17





"Four Wright R-1820-39 Cyclone radials rated at 930 hp for takeoff, 850 hp at 5000 feet, 775 hp at 14,000 feet. Performance: Maximum speed 256 mph at 14,000 feet. Landing speed 70 mph. Cruising speed 217 mph at 70 percent power. Service ceiling 30,600 feet. An altitude of 10,000 feet could be attained in 6.5 minutes. Normal range 1377 miles. Range with 4000 pounds of bombs was 2400 miles and 3320 miles with no bombs. Dimensions: Wingspan 103 feet 9 3/8 inches, length 68 feet 4 inches, height 18 feet 4 inches, wing area 1420 square feet. Weights: 24,465 pounds empty, 34,880 pounds normal loaded, 42,600 pounds maximum. Armament: Armed with five 0.30-inch machine guns with 1000 rpg. One gun was mounted in each of nose, dorsal, ventral, and two waist positions. A maximum bombload of 8000 pounds could be carried in an internal bomb bay."

From Joe Baugher's web site. Now I will note that the engines in these early planes were _never_ given a military rating and the powers at altitude given are the MAX Continuous power or pretty close to the climb powers in the chart provided by Aozora. They did NOT have turbos. They also weighed just under 1200lbs or very close to what the Pegasus weighed. The engines were "G" series engines, not "G-100" or "G200" engines. Later B-17s got the G-200s which weighed about 115-125lbs more (plus turbo). 
Perhaps the Pegasus could have been developed but it would have gained weight, (just like "H" series R-1820s gained even more weight than the G-200s).The planes power to weight ratio will get better but those 4 big radials (Pegasus was about the diameter of the R-1820 or the R-3350) are _never_ going to be as streamline as a V-12 engine. 

Please notice the defensive armament and the speed. Five hand held .30 cal guns are never going to be good enough to operate in daylight (or even moonlight  and given the somewhat streamline gun positions compared to early British turrets,leaving the guns home and plating over the openings isn't going to get you enough speed to escape the enemy fighters. The Y1B-17 being fairly well streamlined compared to British bombers to begin with.

Add picture of Halifax MK I:


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## tomo pauk (Oct 16, 2014)

Thank you both for effort to post the valuable data 

We might want to look at the Short Sunderland Mk.II (data from Wikipedia). Four Pegasus XVIII engines, empty weight of 34,500 lb, 11 crew members. Fuel load of 2,025 imp gals initially, later increased to 2,550, all permanent tanks (Halifax was at 1882 permanent, 2342 with auxiliary tanks, Lanc carried a bit more). Bomb load was lacking, 2000 lbs, but more crew and MGs were carried. Speed was also lacking, 210 mph vs. 280 for the Lanc. Wing area (1,487 ft²)was about the same as of B-17, and some 10-12% greater than for Lanc and Hallifax.

The bomber with 4 Pegasus engines does not need the deep hull (difference vs. Sunderland of at least 2000 lbs?), nor there would be need for 2550 imp gals of fuel for 14-hour patrol missions. 1000 imp gals of fuel less is worth 7200 lbs, plus what ever the tanks weighted (1/2 pound per gallon? - 500 lbs). The bomber will also need a smaller wing, for the same wing loading (less drag and weight). The crew and number of MGs same as what Lanc have had (further less weight and drag); again both smaller fuselage and wing are needed than what Sunderlad had. 
So 'my' bomber will be at 30000 lbs empty, 1000-1100 sq ft wing; fuel: 700 (with max bomb load) -1500 (max fuel) imp gals, 6-10000 lbs bomb load, 240-250 mph at 15000 ft.


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## Shortround6 (Oct 16, 2014)

Look again at the Y1B-17, maybe they could do a a bit better, but another 15-25mph doesn't change anything. 

Please remember that the drag goes up with the square of the speed and actual power required because of the time element, goes up even more. 

To get the Y1B-17 up to 282mph (assuming it did the 256mph with 775hp) would require 1030hp according to the cube law. 

Lets assume you can shift the wing higher on the Y1B-17 and not get stuck with the real B-17s bomb bay problems. Going very far with 8-10,000lbs isn't really going to happen. 

Data card for the Halifax I ;

http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/Halifax/Halifax_I_ADS.jpg

larger, heavier, more power and please note ranges are for most economical speed which is 195mph at 15,000ft. Also please note the difference in Ceiling between max weight and mean weight. Also note the take off distance. 

The Halifax II took off in 200yds less distance despite weighing 1,000lbs more, max weight ceiling went up 3,000ft. 

I would also note that Wiki (or who ever wrote it) didn't transfer the source materiel quite right for the Sunderland, the 34,500lb weight is _tare empty_ which is a bit different than some other empty weights. tare weight does NOT include such things as guns or radios. Service load (including 11 man crew) was 7060lbs. Petrol (2,155 gallons) was 15,540lbs, oil (100 gal) 900lbs. 
The 178mph cruise speed is the *MAX* economical cruise speed, equivalent the Halifax doing 233mph instead of 195mph. It is also at 5,000ft which means the supercharger is in low gear. Granted the air is thicker and has more drag but the engine is giving about 10% more power to the prop because it is not driving the high speed supercharger gear. 
The Sunderland is just so different it doesn't really make a good comparison even it it does use the same engines. 

here are some numbers for very early B-24s without turbos, gun turrets, armor or self sealing fuel tanks.

Four Pratt Whitney R-1830-33 (S3C4-G) Twin Wasp fourteen-cylinder air-cooled radials rated at 1200 hp for takeoff and 1000 hp at 14,500 feet. Performance: Maximum speed 273 mph at 15,000 feet. Cruising speed 186 mph. Landing speed 90 mph. Service ceiling 31,500 feet. An altitude of 10,000 feet could be attained in 6 minutes. Range was 3000 miles with a 2500 pound bombload. Maximum range was 4700 miles. Weights: 27,500 pounds, empty, 38,360 pounds gross, 46,400 pounds maximum. Dimensions: Wingspan 110 feet 0 inches, length 63 feet 9 inches, height 18 feet 8 inches, wing area 1048 square feet.

Again from Joe Baugher's website. This for the LB-30A version of the B-24 and it didn't fly until Jan 1941. It used sealed portions of wing for fuel tanks (wet wing, not self sealing) and could not be used for combat. I would also note that both the performance figures here and for the Y1B-17 would much more likely than not, be for the "gross" weight and not the _maximum_ and would more closely correspond to the British mean weight. I mean less than 11,000lbs between empty and gross and the plane is 'supposed' to hold 8,000lb of bombs? take out even 1200lbs for a crew if 6 and you don't have much left for gas and oil. 

designers were trying but you just don't get a very useable 4 engine bomber with engines around 1000hp.

Data card from Mike Williams site.


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## Shortround6 (Dec 3, 2017)

Bumping this thread as a reply to the question in the "If the RAF had lost the BoB thread...."

about what the British could have done differently to defeat the Germans quicker.

AS with just about every nation, less rivalry between the services would be a good start. 
Less empire building and more realistic assessment of of actual needs and capabilities.
That is a bit less of trying to take over from the Royal Navy as the primary Military Force able to win wars on it's own. 

There are number of suggestions through this thread. 

Better training with planes/weapons they had would have helped and more pre war testing/evaluation of weapons like bombs, mines, torpedoes and guns
might have also paid large dividends, like finding out the 100lb anti-sub bomb was nearly useless and thus the 10 squadrons of Avro Ansons that Coastal Command had in 1939. 

A better attitude towards safety of aircraft and air crew could have seen lower operational losses and thus less need for frantic construction of obsolete types and the need for partially trained crews which just made the problem worse. 

More later.

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## Shortround6 (Dec 3, 2017)

I have harped on the British "reluctance" to adopt the constant speed propeller, especially in it's full feathering version. 

It is on WIki so I have no idea how true it is. " Due to wartime shortages, some Beaufighters were placed into operational service without equipment necessary to feather the propellers. As some models of the twin-engined Beaufighter could not stay aloft on one engine unless the dead propeller was feathered, the lack of feathering equipment directly contributed to several operational losses and the deaths of aircrew." this is supposed to be from "The Sky Suspended" by Bailey, James Richard Abe (Jim). 

Now if a Beaufighter could not stay in the air on one engine with the dead engine not feathered I wonder at the possibilities of lower powered twin engine aircraft like Beauforts, Blenheims, Wellingtons and the like. 
The Lockheed Hudson was called "Old Boomerang" because it supposedly always came back, how true this story is I don't know but it does seem to date back back to around 1942 or before and not be a post war invention. 
I don't know if this was because it so rugged or _because _it came with fully feathering propellers and was much more capable of staying in the air on one engine?

Pilots notes on the Wellington I say "At light load it may be possible to maintain height on one engine at cruising boost and rpm". 
Note the words "at light load" and "may be". Now trying flying over water for 2-3 hours like that. 
Dead engine should have the prop control set to positive course pitch.
Some British aircraft were fitted with brakes on the propshaft to stop the dead propeller from turning (wind milling) , which is a rather weak substitute. How many scores if not hundreds of air crew were lost due to cheap propellers I have no idea. 

21 airlines were using fully feathering propellers in 1939 so it wasn't exactly secret and the benefits were well known and well publicized.


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