# Qualities that made for a great aircraft that don't show up in performance stats.



## michael rauls (Oct 14, 2018)

I thought a discussion of some of the less tangible qualities of an aircraft that made it effective in general or perhaps great just for a specific mission might be interesting.
The example of this that comes to my mind is the F6F. If you look at the performance stats, while certainly not bad, were not spectacular. Top speed 375, rate of climb about 3000 ft per minute if I recall. Reasonably maneuverable but not astoundingly so( at least as is my impression from what I have read). All descent stats but not outstanding in any one area.
So it seems its marked success must have come from less tangible qualities. In the case of the Hellcat I have read quotes from many pilots citing" docile handling characteristics"( or some variation of that) as a main reason the loved the plane. I believe it was Cambell who said" i love this plane so much if I could I would marry it".
I'm left to conclude( I hope rightfully so) that " docile handling characteristics" which I'm assuming means a plane that for example you can push a little more because you don't have to worry so much about getting it into a spin for example while not showing up in performance stats are worth quite a bit in actual combat.
Would love to here everyones thoughts on this.
Also certainly didn't intend for this thread to be limited to the F6F.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Oct 14, 2018)

I thought docile handling was the ease at which a plane could be flown especially in adverse conditions. With regard to a carrier borne aircraft it may or may not be in combat with the enemy, it always has to be landed back on the carrier. Over the course of naval combat with carriers I believe more planes have been destroyed by the ship that carried them than the enemy in carrier operations, I don't know if it is the same with lives lost in carrier landings versus enemy action.


----------



## swampyankee (Oct 14, 2018)

In general three things aren’t readily found in performance statistics:

Control harmonization. An aircraft with disparate forces required for pitch, yaw, and roll will be less pleasant and more tiring to fly
Departure characteristics. An aircraft that gives a predictable warning near stall and can be recovered quickly will be easier to fly in combat. 
Dynamic behavior, that is how quickly the aircraft accelerates in roll (especially), pitch, and yaw
An aircraft that can be described as “sweet-handling” will permit a pilot, especially one inexperienced in type, to use more of the aircraft’s performance.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
2 | Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Oct 14, 2018)

"Being there" The Hurricane was not a high performance design in 1940, but it was readily available and easy to produce, in a war of attrition numbers matter, a lot of "not bad" is better than a handful of "very good". By contrast the Me 262 was a high performance design but one of many issues it faced was that its engine needed metals that Germany didn't have. It is of no importance at all whether 30 aircraft produced in 1945 were or were not slightly better than the potentially 600 opponents they faced over their home airfield, the battle had been lost long before.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## michael rauls (Oct 14, 2018)

pbehn said:


> I thought docile handling was the ease at which a plane could be flown especially in adverse conditions. With regard to a carrier borne aircraft it may or may not be in combat with the enemy, it always has to be landed back on the carrier. Over the course of naval combat with carriers I believe more planes have been destroyed by the ship that carried them than the enemy in carrier operations, I don't know if it is the same with lives lost in carrier landings versus enemy action.


Yes I thought docile handling would include the ease with which a plane could be flown but also logically thought it would include things like good stall warning and not having a tendency to spin etc. Seems if you have a plane with " vicious stall characteristics" as I have read say the p40 for example discribed by many pilots that ( no dig against the p40 I love that plane)wouldn't qualify as docile handling characteristics. I am not a pilot( though i hope to be when time permits) so I realize i may be all wet here in my understanding of what docile handling characteristics means but even if that is the case I think the topic of qualities that make a great plane that don't nescesarily show up in performance stats should be interesting.
Another example might be resistance to battle damage as in the p47 for example. Doesn't show up in performance stats but very important. I would say even decisive at times.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Oct 14, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> Yes I thought docile handling would include the ease with which a plane could be flown but also logically thought it would include things like good stall warning and not having a tendency to spin etc. Seems if you have a plane with " vicious stall characteristics" as I have read say the p40 for example discribed by many pilots that ( no dig against the p40 I love that plane)wouldn't qualify as docile handling characteristics. I am not a pilot( though i hope to be when time permits) so I realize i may be all wet here in my understanding of what docile handling characteristics means but even if that is the case I think the topic of qualities that make a great plane that don't nescesarily show up in performance stats should be interesting.
> Another example might be resistance to battle damage as in the p47 for example. Doesn't show up in performance stats but very important. I would say even decisive at times.


I briefly (very briefly) rode my race bike on the road, it was a road bike modified for racing, and was a complete dog on the road after modification. I take "docile handling" to mean the ease at which a top performing vehicle can be used for a mundane task like landing on a carrier, you will never be able to drive an F1 car from your house to the supermarket and park it. The F6F as I understand it had top performance when required but was also like a family saloon (perhaps an exaggeration) also, when required.


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Oct 14, 2018)

I believe Swampyankee touched on this with his mention of departure characteristics but more specifically, it help if the slope of the Coefficient of Lift versus AoA curve has a gradual slope past the stall so that loss of lift is not a sudden thing.
Along the same lines, ideally, one would want a very high peak Coefficient of Lift for lower stall speeds, and very little migration of the center of lift so that the aeroplane behaves in a predictable fashion.

I believe also that "control modulation" or the relationship of aircraft response to control inputs is a factor that is very important but also not often mentioned. Certain aircraft can be held at a certain G-Load without difficulty while others are much less precise and will constantly overshoot or undershoot the target.

Along with control forces, there is also the relationship of the movement of the stick to the response of the aircraft. A specific case where this was not ideal was the P-39 Airacobra which seems to have gotten a lot of attention lately. From straight and level flight in cruise condition with a CL of about 0.2 to maximum CL of 1.4 only took about 1 inch of travel of the control stick. (NACA L-602).

Control coupling also tends to result in less than predictable behaviour but only tends to get mentioned with more modern high performance aircraft.

- Ivan.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Oct 14, 2018)

Throughout the war, the view offered to pilots improved, almost all late war designs had bubble type canopies, this despite the pilots view not being severely criticised previously. The Spitfire started the war with a Malcolm hood and it was fitted to P-51s as a modification 4 years later.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## michael rauls (Oct 14, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Throughout the war, the view offered to pilots improved, almost all late war designs had bubble type canopies, this despite the pilots view not being severely criticised previously. The Spitfire started the war with a Malcolm hood and it was fitted to P-51s as a modification 4 years later.


Good point. That's another good example of things that affect how " good" an aircraft is that don't show up in performance stats that had not imediatly occurred to me.


----------



## pbehn (Oct 14, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> Good point. That's another good example of things that affect how " good" an aircraft is that don't show up in performance stats that had not imediatly occurred to me.


Some things defy explanation, years after the introduction of the Spitfire into frontline service Hawkers produced the design for its replacement where such a simple thing as the pilots ability to see around him was seemingly not considered. The Typhoon and almost all US "bird cage" designs were a step backwards and I have 
never seen any explanation why apart from "that's how it was".

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## jetcal1 (Oct 14, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> I believe Swampyankee touched on this with his mention of departure characteristics but more specifically, it help if the slope of the Coefficient of Lift versus AoA curve has a gradual slope past the stall so that loss of lift is not a sudden thing.
> Along the same lines, ideally, one would want a very high peak Coefficient of Lift for lower stall speeds, and very little migration of the center of lift so that the aeroplane behaves in a predictable fashion.
> 
> I believe also that "control modulation" or the relationship of aircraft response to control inputs is a factor that is very important but also not often mentioned. Certain aircraft can be held at a certain G-Load without difficulty while others are much less precise and will constantly overshoot or undershoot the target.
> ...


"predictable behaviour" must surely count as an intangible when you're fatigued and or wounded.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Oct 14, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Some things defy explanation, years after the introduction of the Spitfire into frontline service Hawkers produced the design for its replacement where such a simple thing as the pilots ability to see around him was seemingly not considered. The Typhoon and almost all US "bird cage" designs were a step backwards and I have
> never seen any explanation why apart from "that's how it was".



One explanation might be that in general, the change from a razorback to a bubble top design was a detriment to the aerodynamic qualities. The gain was better visibility from the cockpit, but there was typically more drag and less keel area for stability which often had to be addressed by adding a fin fillet and even then stability may have still been less than the original design.

- Ivan.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## michael rauls (Oct 14, 2018)

Not to Bogart the thread but another example of this may be the SBD.
( hey look at that. I was able to shoehorn the SBD into another conversation ). 
In all seriousness, on paper looking at the performance stats there doesn't seem to be anything that would indicate it would have a positive kill ratio against mostly fighters( about 100 of the 138 total as I recall) but none the less it did. 
Have read that it had great handling characteristics and was very tough so I'm 
assuming that these two factors had a great deal to do with its success in this department.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Oct 14, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> One explanation might be that in general, the change from a razorback to a bubble top design was a detriment to the aerodynamic qualities. The gain was better visibility from the cockpit, but there was typically more drag and less keel area for stability which often had to be addressed by adding a fin fillet and even then stability may have still been less than the original design.
> 
> - Ivan.


True but that is one example and the results of a quick fix, the P-51 and F4U just had the Malcolm hood put on them, bubble canopies came later. This survived into the post war era, look at an early hawker hunter or Mig 21 for example. It is as if designers had the idea that if you go fast enough you don't have to look behind.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Funny Funny:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Shortround6 (Oct 14, 2018)

Early Mig 21 wasn't too bad, but like the A-4 Skyhawk, there wasn't much room in the fuselage to put things so the dorsal area behind the cockpit just got bigger and bigger.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## jetcal1 (Oct 15, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Some things defy explanation, years after the introduction of the Spitfire into frontline service Hawkers produced the design for its replacement where such a simple thing as the pilots ability to see around him was seemingly not considered. The Typhoon and almost all US "bird cage" designs were a step backwards and I have
> never seen any explanation why apart from "that's how it was".
> /QUOTE]
> 
> ...

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## jetcal1 (Oct 15, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Early Mig 21 wasn't too bad, but like the A-4 Skyhawk, there wasn't much room in the fuselage to put things so the dorsal area behind the cockpit just got bigger and bigger.



It was fun folding my 73" frame into an A-4 to do an engine run.

Reactions: Funny Funny:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Oct 15, 2018)

pbehn said:


> True but that is one example and the results of a quick fix, the P-51 and F4U just had the Malcolm hood put on them, bubble canopies came later. This survived into the post war era, look at an early hawker hunter or Mig 21 for example. It is as if designers had the idea that if you go fast enough you don't have to look behind.



Hello Pbehn,
I am not sure what you mean by just one example or a quick fix. The Mustang and Thunderbolt both went through the same transformation in canopies. The redesign for the Mustang was actually much greater than it appeared at first glance. Both aircraft still ended up with some directional stability issues. The F4U / F2G never really had a bubble canopy if you consider that the only examples with bubble canopies were a couple prototypes and not production aircraft. It is sort of like saying that the P-40 series eventually got a bubble canopy with the Q model but does a single example really count?

Eeeek! Jets!
The Hawker Hunter had a canopy close enough to a bubble that I would give it that credit.
I believe the MiG 21 and others of that era were designed with the idea that maneuvering combat was obsolete and that aircraft were just launch platforms to be vectored in by radar and weapons would be launched beyond visual range anyway.
If you think about it, they were not alone. The Jaguar, Tornado, Mirage, English Electric Lightning, and most of the century series had canopies that were not so good for rear vision.

- Ivan.


----------



## GrauGeist (Oct 15, 2018)

The P-36 was considered by many pilots to be a wonderful handling aircraft and it has the distinction of being the first U.S. fighter to bring down a Japanese fighter (A6M2) of the Pacific war.

This brings me to a point to consider - what were the qualifications of the pilots who made the fighter (any fighter) what it was?

When the U.S. went to war, their pilots were inexperienced, trained in old tactics that hadn't been proven since WWI and often times, these un-tried pilots were pitted against combat experienced adversaries.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## jetcal1 (Oct 15, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> The P-36 was considered by many pilots to be a wonderful handling aircraft and it has the distinction of being the first U.S. fighter to bring down a Japanese fighter (A6M2) of the Pacific war.
> 
> This brings me to a point to consider - what were the qualifications of the pilots who made the fighter (any fighter) what it was?
> 
> When the U.S. went to war, their pilots were inexperienced, trained in old tactics that hadn't been proven since WWI and often times, these un-tried pilots were pitted against combat experienced adversaries.




"This brings me to a point to consider - what were the qualifications of the pilots who made the fighter (any fighter) what it was?" 
- At the risk of sounding trite, I consider one of the leading "qualifications" would be the ability to innovate. 
Against the A6M2, you had Chennault who basically called for energy combat against the A6M and you had Flatley and Thach calling for maneuvering combat with the Thach Weave. Different tactics, but sound innovations. Some times it's technical innovation like Galland and his Battering Ram 190's.
It's the ability to do the OODA thing without making it look like you're doing the OODA thing.

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Oct 15, 2018)

jetcal1 said:


> It may have been something as simple as not having the engineering staff available or deciding to wait until a new production line was opened. Even as simple as, "Gee boss, we have 2,000 old style canopies either on hand or on order and they're all paid for." Can we use them until they're exhausted?"
> There's always a bit of friction between engineering, the floor, and the customer.
> //S// Everything in the UK should have had a bubble canopy after the Whirlwind flew in 1938. Including the Hurricane and the Spitfire.//S//


In a way, I agree, the Whirlwind went into service in late 1940 the Spitfire in 1938, but Hawkers were still messing about with their old type design after that, the FW 190 started appearing in late 1941 which also had a bubble type canopy. There must be some speed penalty even with a Malcolm hood because PR spitfires didn't use them and optical distortion was an issue.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## tomo pauk (Oct 15, 2018)

IMO, the timing was everything. 
If one has plenty of, say, fighters that can do 250 mph, and climb at so many fpm, and have just two LMGs abroad, they are a far better thing than the enemy fighters that are supposed to do 300 mph, climb very fast, and have 4 MGs of any calibre, but whose are alo just to roll out from factory(ies). Here we can also facto-in the ability of the design to be mass produced.
Other things that make a good fighter (apart from ability to change it's postion fast, while ranging far, wide & high) were, in no particular order: 
visibility, layout of cockpit - 'human interface' (gauges, handles, switches - yes, I'm looking at you, P-38), size (big size = enemy will spot you easier), ability to sustain light damage, wepon set-up, how much there is stretch in a design (so more powerful & heavier engine(s) can be installed, more fuel, weponry, protection, electronics), how easy for novice pilot is to adopt to the type, ability to be easily serviceable, stall warning & behavoiur.
For the bombers, some of the above apply, but here we also look whether the co-pilot is next to the pilot (applicable for 2/3/4-engined types mostly), how easy is to ababndon the bomber need be, size of the bomb bay so there is less need to carry anything outboard, defensive weponry fo the most of the types.
For all carrier-borne A/C, one might want docile handling during low-speed flight, plus what applies from above mentioned.

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Agree Agree:
1 | Winner Winner:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## jetcal1 (Oct 15, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> IMO, the timing was everything.
> If one has plenty of, say, fighters that can do 250 mph, and climb at so many fpm, and have just two LMGs abroad, they are a far better thing than the enemy fighters that are supposed to do 300 mph, climb very fast, and have 4 MGs of any calibre, but whose are alo just to roll out from factory(ies). Here we can also facto-in the ability of the design to be mass produced.
> Other things that make a good fighter (apart from ability to change it's position fast, while ranging far, wide & high) were, in no particular order:
> visibility, layout of cockpit - 'human interface' (gauges, handles, switches - yes, I'm looking at you, P-38), size (big size = enemy will spot you easier), ability to sustain light damage, weapon set-up, how much there is stretch in a design (so more powerful & heavier engine(s) can be installed, more fuel, weaponry, protection, electronics), how easy for novice pilot is to adopt to the type, ability to be easily serviceable, stall warning & behavoiur.
> ...



In being, easy to build, easy to fly. Has any country actually had a such a critter at the beginning of a war? The Hawker Hurricane is the closest thing I can think of. (I would also add easy to fix!)


----------



## GregP (Oct 15, 2018)

As far as handling characteristics go, we can make comments about:

1) Handling around stall (F6F and Bf 109 excelled at this, ailerons remained effective through the stall)
2) Linearity of control forces (twice the pull or push gives twice the pitch or roll)
3) Changes in control effectiveness with speed changes
4) Sensitivity in trim to speed changes (most WWII fighters were VERY speed sensitive, not the Fw 190)
5) Ergonomics of cockpit (how easy is it to get to and use the various gauges and switches)
6) Ease of handling the powerplant (easy to set for good power without much thought or time)
7) Gunsight (+ or -)
8) Convergent or nonconvergent armament (guns in nose or wings)
9) Selectable or non-selectable armament (cannons, MG, or both)
10) Cockpit comfort (heater at high altitudes, fresh air inlets, seat ergonomics)
11) Landing gear issues (tippy or rolley on ground … see Bf 109: very rolley, will NOT nose over, and Spitfire, not very rolley, but noses over easily ... Griffon unit)
12) Flap and gear speeds (can you deploy them almost anytime, or have to slow way down)
13) Ram air or not (Hellcat did not have it, Corsair did. MANY Corsairs went in around carrier from carb ice in cooler weather, no Hellcats did)
14) Reliable powerplant or not

There are more, to be sure, but the various placings in here can make a plane a joy to fly or something to be avoided. I have spoken to NOBODY who flies warbirds that doesn’t LOVE the Hellcat and Wildcat (except landing on pavement in wind). Seems Grumman had a thing for “handling around the carrier” and their planes fly exceptionally well at pattern speeds and when slow, and it doesn’t affect their handling when fast.

Everyone likes a P-51, too … unless you stall it. Then, they’d ALL rather be in a Hellcat. The P-51 stall can be mild or wild, and you can't tell which is about to happen. POH says don't stall it below 10,000 feet AGL! Now THAT's a stall warning!

As far as I can tell, it's in the pilot's corner as to what he (or she) is comfortable with. Delmar Benjamin was comfortable with a Gee Bee R-2 after many hours in it! NOBODY else was.

Reactions: Like Like:
6 | Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## michael rauls (Oct 15, 2018)

GregP said:


> As far as handling characteristics go, we can make comments about:
> 
> 1) Handling around stall (F6F and Bf 109 excelled at this, ailerons remained effective through the stall)
> 2) Linearity of control forces (twice the pull or push gives twice the pitch or roll)
> ...


I really enjoyed reading your post. Just the kind of thing I was hoping this thread would generate. Wanted to rate it informative but my rating bar has been absent all day( don't no if everyone else is having the same issue right now or if it's something with my phone).
I've read the same things about the handling of the F6F and p51. Putting 2 and 2 together I'm guessing when I read pilots say "the trick to flying the p51 was to keep it moving" they are saying it's great as long as you don't stall it? Or just that its handling didn't deteriorate at higher speeds as much as other planes so this gave it an advantage at said higher speeds? Or perhaps a little of both.


----------



## GregP (Oct 15, 2018)

Hi Michael Rauls,

I volunteer at the planes of Fame and see and talk with many warbird pilots. My "take" on it, if you will, is that time in the cockpit breeds familiarity with the beast. 

A new P-51 pilot is a bit scared of it most of the time. Seasoned P-51 pilots known what it will do and avoid the areas where it may bite, so they don't even THINK about it biting anymore because they KNOW what to do in it in a given situation. For the low-time warbird pilot, the F6F is VERY forgiving, as is an A6M Zero and a few others. Other warbirds are not necessarily unforgiving, but you needs to know what to avoid in order to not get into trouble.

One universal piece of advice is to not fly it at all unless you KNOW your emergency procedures by heart, blindfolded. One local warbird pilot declared an emergency for a rough engine in a Tigercat where another one took it in stride when a major flight control emergency happened and landed basically with trim tabs, without fanfare. Experience tends to breed competency, if only through exposure.

That said, the most experienced warbird pilot I know, Steve Hinton, hasn't met a military airplane he didn't like, from WWI through Korean War jets. I think it comes with experience and familiarity with warbirds in general. Think about it, most of the WWII warbirds have similar performance numbers with 1,000 to 2,500 HP and greatly-varying weights and wing loading. Flying them regularly tends to cement your competence at doing it. Flying one weekend a month will make you a bit apprehensive of warbirds forever through lack of cockpit time and enough time for your meager skills to get rusty between flights.

Cheers.

Reactions: Like Like:
3 | Winner Winner:
1 | Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## michael rauls (Oct 15, 2018)

GregP said:


> Hi Michael Rauls,
> 
> I volunteer at the planes of Fame and see and talk with many warbird pilots. My "take" on it, if you will, is that time in the cockpit breeds familiarity with the beast.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the reply. I have been out to Planes of fame in Chino quite a few times( although the last time was about 2 years ago). It's only about 30 minutes from my house.
Always take the opportunity to talk to all the guys there so I'm thinking we may have met at some point. Got to get out there again soon. Been thinking about it lately. 
Hopefully I'll bump into you next time I'm out there.


----------



## Kevin J (Oct 16, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> I thought a discussion of some of the less tangible qualities of an aircraft that made it effective in general or perhaps great just for a specific mission might be interesting.
> The example of this that comes to my mind is the F6F. If you look at the performance stats, while certainly not bad, were not spectacular. Top speed 375, rate of climb about 3000 ft per minute if I recall. Reasonably maneuverable but not astoundingly so( at least as is my impression from what I have read). All descent stats but not outstanding in any one area.
> So it seems its marked success must have come from less tangible qualities. In the case of the Hellcat I have read quotes from many pilots citing" docile handling characteristics"( or some variation of that) as a main reason the loved the plane. I believe it was Cambell who said" i love this plane so much if I could I would marry it".
> I'm left to conclude( I hope rightfully so) that " docile handling characteristics" which I'm assuming means a plane that for example you can push a little more because you don't have to worry so much about getting it into a spin for example while not showing up in performance stats are worth quite a bit in actual combat.
> ...


The attributes that I always think are missing are:-
1. Dive speed. The ability to disengage at will.
2. Roll rate. The ability to change direction quickly in a dog fight.
3. Turning circle. Useful when engaging in a dogfight with an opponent much faster than yourself, but a defensive measure only.
Maximum speed is useful to know, but the Russian experience in WW2 was that a 20 to 25 mph speed difference was no big deal so long as you are fast enough to engage your enemies bombers and ground attack aircraft.They were using the Hurricane successfully in the VVS in 1942 and PVO in 1943. Their naval aviation were using Warhawks until the end of the war, likewise the Australians in the East Indies, their Kittyhawks scoring more victories than their higher performing Spitfires in the last two years of the war there.
So range, the ability to take the war to your enemy. In the East Indies both the RAAF's Beaufighters and Kittyhawks scored more aerial victories than their Spitfires in the last two years of the war there. Meanwhile the RNZAF having converted from the Kittyhawk to the Corsair scored no more aerial victories.

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Elmas (Oct 16, 2018)

GregP said:


> Everyone likes a P-51, too … unless you stall it. Then, they’d ALL rather be in a Hellcat. The P-51 stall can be mild or wild, and you can't tell which is about to happen. POH says don't stall it below 10,000 feet AGL! Now THAT's a stall warning!



A Friend of mine, Ten. Alberto Scano, was among the Pilots to fly in the last Operational Training Unit on piston fighters in the early ’60.
Here his memories.

Memorie di un pilota: le immagini e i ricordi del Tenente Alberto Scano - Aviation Report

Alberto told me several times that while G-59s had a wonderful stall behaviour, that of P-51 as awful.

He also told me that in the last flight of his Course, that was a special demonstration and in wich many aerial aerobatics were planned, his P-51 stalled, and he was unable to restore the proper flight pattern, so he undid his seat belts and prepared to throw himself outside, just realizing that the plane was too low. Fortunately for him, the airplane returned by itself to its proper position only a few tens of meters from the ground, so he was able to return inside the cabin and he managed to land the airplane normally.
He told me that the terror ( and the fortune he had…) in that occasion were remarkable.

Reactions: Bacon Bacon:
1 | Like Like:
4 | Like List reactions


----------



## michael rauls (Oct 16, 2018)

Elmas said:


> A Friend of mine, Ten. Alberto Scano, was among the Pilots to fly in the last Operational Training Unit on piston fighters in the early ’60.
> Here his memories.
> 
> Memorie di un pilota: le immagini e i ricordi del Tenente Alberto Scano - Aviation Report
> ...


Fascinating stuff. That's one of the things thats always attracted me to planes like the F6F and p38 and made me apprehensive about planes like the p51 and 39.
One of the important qualities of combat aircraft that I think often gets overlooked is how dangerous they are to there own pilots. With the F6F and p38 seems it was verry hard to make those things fall out of the sky( unless you dive one of the early models(pre dive flap) of the latter from high altitude too fast).
With the p51 and 39 by contrast seems like even experienced pilots sometimes got into trouble like in the example you gave, sometimes with fatal consequences.
This is the impression I have got from what I've read over the years. Not an expert on this so I'm certainly receptive to corection if my impressions are wrong.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Oct 16, 2018)

For a fairly long time the fuel injection system on the Bf109 gave it an advantage over the Spitfire and Hurricane in negative G manoeuvres.


----------



## Elmas (Oct 16, 2018)

_View: https://youtu.be/d_0E5XB2-io_


Here some impressions about P-51 from Italian Pilots.
_“Mustang, if it went in reverse flight, had the nasty habit of spitting oil eveywhere”_ one of those Pilots says _“so, when I once amused myself a little bit, after landing I was asked by the Commanding Officer if I did perform some unauthorized aerobatics.”
“No, Sir!”_ was my reply.
_“Well, this evening you will pay to drink to all the Officers in the Mess...”_ was his.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## GregP (Oct 17, 2018)

The F6F had only 270 losses to enemy aircraft in air combat, and many people tout that. But they forget the 553 losses to AA and the 340 operational losses in combat ... and the nearly identical numbers for losses on non-combat flights. In total, it had a 1.75% loss rate per sortie. The F4U Corsair had a 1.20% loss rate per sortie overall, and the FM Wildcat had a 1.18% loss rate per sortie overall. Let's recall that Navy fighters don't generally have a place to land if something happens, they land in the water and sink. Also, the Corsair wasn't deployed to carriers until much later. It flew from land for half or more of it's career.

So why did the F4F Wildcat have a 9.55% loss rate per sortie overall? I don't know, but I suspect the F4F was there at the start, when we were figuring out carrier air combat. My guess is many guys simply ran out of fuel. They only flew 1/6 of the sorties the FM did and 1/30 the sorties of the F6F, and did it very early in the US WWII timeframe.

The highest loss rate per sortie in the USAAF was the P-38 at 1.35%. The P-51 was at 1.18%, just under the P-38. The P-39 Airacobra, contrary to what you might believe, had a loss rate per sortie of only 0.35%! The P-47 Thunderbolt was the most complex fighter in the USAAF and flew more than twice as many sorties as any other fighter. It's loss rate per sorties was 0.73%, making flying one almost twice as safe as flying a P-51. The safest fighter in the USAAF was the P-39!

Many people look at the kill-to-loss rate in air-to-air combat as a good metric, and I somewhat agree. The F6F was the best, hands down at 19 : 1. But a better metric is kill-to-all-losses ratio, including operational and non-combat losses. The P-51 is at 3.6. The P-47 is at 2.0. All Wildcats together are at 3.3. The F4U is at 2.8. And the winnrer, hands down, is the F6F at 4.4 kill for every loss of any kind. So, by kill-to-combat-loss or kill-to-any-loss, the F6F is a hands-down winner.

The P-51, overall, had more kills at 9,081 including air and ground than the F6F at 5,163 that were mostly in the air, but it had to fly 3.2 times the number of sorties (213,873 versus 66,530) in a comparatively target-rich environment to do it. By comparatively target-rich, I mean there were far more German fighters around to be found than there were Japanese fighters around and, in the ETO, there was ground-based radar to help you find them. Not so in the PTO, except for comparatively local flights around the carriers.

Just some numbers to look at from Ray Wagner's American Combat Planes and the 1946 Naval Combat Statistics of WWII.

The numbers very clearly point out the F6F as a great aircraft in air-to-air combat, and that does not take anything from the P-51, which did a great job, too.

Reactions: Bacon Bacon:
1 | Like Like:
4 | Agree Agree:
1 | Winner Winner:
1 | Informative Informative:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## michael rauls (Oct 17, 2018)

GregP said:


> The F6F had only 270 losses to enemy aircraft in air combat, and many people tout that. But they forget the 553 losses to AA and the 340 operational losses in combat ... and the nearly identical numbers for losses on non-combat flights. In total, it had a 1.75% loss rate per sortie. The F4U Corsair had a 1.20% loss rate per sortie overall, and the FM Wildcat had a 1.18% loss rate per sortie overall. Let's recall that Navy fighters don't generally have a place to land if something happens, they land in the water and sink. Also, the Corsair wasn't deployed to carriers until much later. It flew from land for half or more of it's career.
> 
> So why did the F4F Wildcat have a 9.55% loss rate per sortie overall? I don't know, but I suspect the F4F was there at the start, when we were figuring out carrier air combat. My guess is many guys simply ran out of fuel. They only flew 1/6 of the sorties the FM did and 1/30 the sorties of the F6F, and did it very early in the US WWII timeframe.
> 
> ...


Great post with some really surprising information. I like your idea about a kill to losses of all causes ratio as it takes into account how safe an aircraft was for its own pilots. Only thing is it seems like that ratio would skew against planes that did alot of ground attack work like the p47. Alot of extra losses there with little oportunity for kills. Maybe kills to all losses ratio on missions not ground attack? Although that may be impossible to sort out at this point.


----------



## parsifal (Oct 17, 2018)

The length of time between scheduled maintenance periods is a biggie. Me 262 needed new engine overhauls every 10 hours, which effectively makes it an operational non-starter. Somewhere ive read the F6F could fly for up to 100 hours before major over haul was needed, maybe more

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Oct 17, 2018)

GregP said:


> So why did the F4F Wildcat have a 9.55% loss rate per sortie overall? I don't know, but I suspect the F4F was there at the start, when we were figuring out carrier air combat. My guess is many guys simply ran out of fuel. They only flew 1/6 of the sorties the FM did and 1/30 the sorties of the F6F, and did it very early in the US WWII timeframe.


The F4F3 was a pretty primitive machine with hand crank landing gear and hand pump flaps, and was flown into combat by green pilots with inappropriate training for the opposition they encountered: combat experienced veterans flying possibly the best fighter of its time. The -3s and -4s served mostly when America was on the defensive and the quality of the opposition was at its greatest. And as Greg mentioned, a lot of them went in the drink for want of a deck to set down on. The FMs, on the other hand, had many improvements incorporated, were more mechanically reliable, and were used to a great extent in anti-submarine warfare off jeep carriers, a generally less risky proposition. Their pilots were trained by combat-experienced instructors, and any aerial opposition they came up against tended to be second string.
The F6F sat in the sweet spot: the right airplane at the right place, at the right time, and in the right circumstances. Rugged, reliable, honest and forgiving, and an impressive performer to boot, it showed up with superbly trained pilots just as the quality of Japanese replacement pilots was deteriorating. No wonder its combat statistics were spectacular.
Cheers,
Wes

Reactions: Like Like:
3 | Agree Agree:
4 | Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## michael rauls (Oct 17, 2018)

parsifal said:


> The length of time between scheduled maintenance periods is a biggie. Me 262 needed new engine overhauls every 10 hours, which effectively makes it an operational non-starter. Somewhere ive read the F6F could fly for up to 100 hours before major over haul was needed, maybe more


Yes the availability percentage( I believe that's the right term). Another very important factor that doesn't show up in performance stats.
I once read a quote by a pilot that had flown both the corsair and the F6F.
The quote was " the coursair was a better plane two days a week" which I took to mean, yes the corsair had better performance sats but it's availability was so much lower that collectively they were better off with the Hellcat.
I've read the availability of the F4u was about 60% and the Hellcat was in the 90%s. Don't know if those figures are acurate or not. It was one of those things I read in one artical one time so not sure. If true that would make quite a difference though.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Oct 17, 2018)

jetcal1 said:


> In being, easy to build, easy to fly. Has any country actually had a such a critter at the beginning of a war?


A6M2

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
1 | Disagree Disagree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Oct 17, 2018)

jetcal1 said:


> It was fun folding my 73" frame into an A-4 to do an engine run.


How about my 77" frame into the back seat of a TA-4F and trying to fit my helmet under the face curtain handles? Pulling G's with my spine scrunched over gave me a backache for a whole week.
Cheers,
Wes

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Funny Funny:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## jetcal1 (Oct 17, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> A6M2


I thought about the A6M as well. But, the combined construction of the fuselage/wing center section took it out of the running for ease of production.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Ascent (Oct 17, 2018)

Something about the spitfire you see in just about every pilot's accounts is that it was a joy to fly, like strapping on a pair of wings.

Surely the confidence it gave to new pilot's must be worth something even if it can't be quantified.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## Kevin J (Oct 17, 2018)

Ascent said:


> Something about the spitfire you see in just about every pilot's accounts is that it was a joy to fly, like strapping on a pair of wings.
> 
> Surely the confidence it gave to new pilot's must be worth something even if it can't be quantified.[/QUOTE
> I think you'll find the Hurricane shot down more enemy aircraft than the Spitfire, it was more rugged, cheaper and easier to learn to fly. I wouldn't want a Spitfire until the marks Vc, VIII and IX/XVI came along


----------



## Ascent (Oct 17, 2018)

I'm well aware of those facts yet, as has been discussed on this forum recently, spitfire pilot's in general survived longer.

The hurricane got more kills simply because there was more of them when the fighting was at its fiercest.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Oct 17, 2018)

jetcal1 said:


> I thought about the A6M as well. But, the combined construction of the fuselage/wing center section took it out of the running for ease of production.


I don't quite buy that. True, that one piece wing would have been awkward on a Henry Ford style moving production line, but that's not how the Japanese operated. They assembled each plane in place, craftsman style, as their working traditions dictated.
At GE we built Vulcan cannons the same way, as the plant (a WWII vintage Bell Aircraft facility, BTW) was not laid out that way. I trundled racks and bins of parts from the various machining areas to the assembly shops, where the guns were assembled on roll around work benches. I can't imagine the efficiencies of a production line being worth the cost and disruption of reconfiguring the entire plant.
Cheers,
Wes

Reactions: Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## GregP (Oct 17, 2018)

Hi Michael Rauls, Regarding post #4, I supposed you are correct, kills-to-any-loss does tend to penalize the ground attackers. If they were ground attackers, then they had some tonnage of bombs delivered on target. We could arbitrarily look at the fighter with the best kill-to-whatever-loss record (I am looking only at USA planes because the data for other nation's planes is so hard to find) and we could look at the plane with the most bombs delivered on target, and come up with an equivalent kill-per-X-loss to tons-bombs-on-target equality ratio.

It's worth some thought. The kills part also penalizes planes that weren't assigned to active sectors, so maybe we could come up with an adjustment. I need to think on that one.

I appreciate the comments that make us all THINK!

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## Vic Nighthorse (Oct 17, 2018)

GregP said:


> The highest loss rate per sortie in the USAAF was the P-38 at 1.35%. The P-51 was at 1.18%, just under the P-38. The P-39 Airacobra, contrary to what you might believe, had a loss rate per sortie of only 0.35%! The P-47 Thunderbolt was the most complex fighter in the USAAF and flew more than twice as many sorties as any other fighter. It's loss rate per sorties was 0.73%, making flying one almost twice as safe as flying a P-51. The safest fighter in the USAAF was the P-39!


I found this fascinating but want to make sure I got it right. These numbers are for overall?


----------



## pbehn (Oct 17, 2018)

Vic Nighthorse said:


> I found this fascinating but want to make sure I got it right. These numbers are for overall?


Statistics are statistics there is always a story, the loss rate of the P51 climbed as it was used to attack airfields, I believe that even on escort missions most losses were to ground fire over the course of the war.


----------



## Glider (Oct 17, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> A6M2


I would add Hurricane which in 1939 was a formidable foe. My initial thought was Spitfire but it wasn't easy to build.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## jetcal1 (Oct 17, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> They assembled each plane in place, craftsman style, as their working traditions dictated.


(Let's preface this with, I know there were pilot shortages later. And, even if they doubled their production it would have been only a fraction of US production.)

That one piece setup hurt production, future redesign, and heavy maintenance/rebuild in the field. IMHO, if the airplane is not available to make it to the fight, its missing an important quality of greatness. I would rate the F4F higher than the A6M on the great airplane intangibles as it was more adaptable.


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Oct 17, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> Great post with some really surprising information. I like your idea about a kill to losses of all causes ratio as it takes into account how safe an aircraft was for its own pilots. Only thing is it seems like that ratio would skew against planes that did alot of ground attack work like the p47. Alot of extra losses there with little oportunity for kills. Maybe kills to all losses ratio on missions not ground attack? Although that may be impossible to sort out at this point.



I was thinking pretty much the same thing: What happens if the evaluation is between an aircraft which flies mostly ground attack missions and doesn't normally get any opportunity for aerial kills versus another that flies mostly escort and air superiority missions?
Oops. Just saw that this has been addressed to an extent.



jetcal1 said:


> In being, easy to build, easy to fly. Has any country actually had a such a critter at the beginning of a war? The Hawker Hurricane is the closest thing I can think of. (I would also add easy to fix!)



If it is just easy to build and easy to fly, then many countries have had that kind of aeroplane. (Think Biplanes.) When one adds the quality of being competitive in performance, the field narrows.
Along with the Hurricane, would you consider the Ki 43 Hayabusa a candidate?

I agree with you that the A6M didn't qualify because of the great complexity in its construction.
I don't believe the on piece wing was the big killer. (The Brewster Buffalo also had that method of construction.)
Instead, I believe the issue was the extraordinary measures taken to reduce weight by drilling holes and removing material that was not absolutely required for the level of strength they were looking for.

- Ivan.


----------



## eagledad (Oct 17, 2018)

Vic

I believe the loss rates (P-38, P-51 etc) are for the ETO/MTO only. As stated , stats are stats. The P-39 flew many missions where the chance of meeting any opponents was slim (Coastal patrols in North Africa for example). Thus many sorties, few losses and victories. The P-51 and P-38 flew longer missions and thus had more chances to be attacked and to attack. Add to the fact that many of the missions were deep into enemy airspace and it makes sense that their loss rates were greater.

Just my two cents.

Eagledad

Reactions: Agree Agree:
3 | Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## CORSNING (Oct 17, 2018)

Michael,
Thanks man for starting this thread. It has given me ideas of
what areas of performance to expand on in the future.

Greg, 
Thank you man, as always, you have great input.

Kevin,
In your *Post #28 *you listed *dive speed*. That one is going
to be a rough one because maximum allowable indicated
changed with altitude.
*Roll rate *I have tried to list when given.
*Turning circle *is a delicate thing that changes with speed
and altitude. That is why I list* turn times *at 1,000 m. and 
have put together a fair amount of turn times at 4,000 m.
also (for future postings).

Swampyankee mentioned *dynamic behavior *which if good,
is a big attribute as in the qualities of the Yak-3. The one
big performance feature that has not been mentioned yet 
(at least I did not see it listed) is* combat speed *capabilities
of fighter aircraft.

Nikolay Gerasimovich Golodnikov in his interview describes it
best.
*Combat Speed *is a range of maximum possible speeds that
an aircraft can develop for the conduct of active maneuver
aerial battle, and at which all forms of maneuver attendant to 
that battle can be executed.
*
Maximum combat speed* is what made the Yak-3, P-51 and
many other high speed maneuvering aircraft so dangerous.
There is no way the Yak-3 could maneuver with an A6M2
at 200 mph. It did not have to. It could dance all over this
version of the Zero at the Mitsubishi's maximum speeds at
all altitudes up to 7,000 m.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## michael rauls (Oct 17, 2018)

GregP said:


> Hi Michael Rauls, Regarding post #4, I supposed you are correct, kills-to-any-loss does tend to penalize the ground attackers. If they were ground attackers, then they had some tonnage of bombs delivered on target. We could arbitrarily look at the fighter with the best kill-to-whatever-loss record (I am looking only at USA planes because the data for other nation's planes is so hard to find) and we could look at the plane with the most bombs delivered on target, and come up with an equivalent kill-per-X-loss to tons-bombs-on-target equality ratio.
> 
> It's worth some thought. The kills part also penalizes planes that weren't assigned to active sectors, so maybe we could come up with an adjustment. I need to think on that one.
> 
> I appreciate the comments that make us all THINK!


If it is possible to remove missions where any bombs were delivered that would render( i think, posible im missing something here) a mostly air to air mission inventory from which a reasonably fair kills to losses to all causes could be extracted.
Don't know if existing records are detailed enough to allow this analysis but that's the most even parameters I can think of for comparison.


----------



## jetcal1 (Oct 17, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> If it is just easy to build and easy to fly, then many countries have had that kind of aeroplane. (Think Biplanes.) When one adds the quality of being competitive in performance, the field narrows.
> Along with the Hurricane, would you consider the Ki 43 Hayabusa a candidate?
> - Ivan.



Don't know enough about the airplane.


----------



## CORSNING (Oct 17, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> If it is just easy to build and easy to fly, then many countries have had that kind of aeroplane. (Think Biplanes.) When one adds the quality of being competitive in performance, the field narrows.
> Along with the Hurricane, would you consider the Ki 43 Hayabusa a candidate?
> - Ivan.



*Absolutely, the Ki 43-II could out accelerate (at low speeds), out roll and out turn the 
A6M2 or A6M3. Its armament was light, but it had the ability to bring it to bear quicker.
The Ki 43-II climbed to 6,000 meters slightly quicker than the A6M2, but their overall
climb rates were about equal. The Zero had an edge in zoom climb.*

Reactions: Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## GregP (Oct 17, 2018)

Hi Vic, Yes. If you Google "Naval Combat Statistics, WWII" you can find a good pdf of the 1946 report. The tables are there and you only need dig into them to get all the naval data you can handle. But they do NOT save the same data as the USAAF did. I got some of the USAAF data from Ray Wagner's American Combat Planes. There are several tables in there that are worth the price of the book alone. That assumes Ray got the data right; I have yet to find better data. The only USAAF report on aerial victories of WWII I can find is Report 85. It is scanned in and the pages were done on a 9-dot-high line printer way back when they weren't all that good, making OCR almost impossible. So, while Report 85 is there, the format is useless in the extreme, which seems to be the way the government wants it.

The USAAF tracks air kills and ground kills, but only in the ETO as far as I can tell. The Navy lumps them together, but the kills are very much largely air-to-air since that's what they encountered, by far, the most. Still ... if they don't track that data (I think they DO ... they just won't publish it) they can't really break it out for you.

Would be VERY NICE to see the primary documents, but I have yet to see my first primary source except for Frank Olynyk. I have his book, but it is, again, in useless format for electronic analysis in Excel or similar application. I'd have to scan every page and pick through it. Still, I can look someone up by name and rank, etc. and have a good number pretty quickly.

The real issue is NOT being able to find the record for some unit. It is finding the records for every unit of every service in the war, and then making a coherent summary of same.

Cheers.


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Oct 17, 2018)

CORSNING said:


> *Absolutely, the Ki 43-II could out accelerate (at low speeds), out roll and out turn the
> A6M2 or A6M3. Its armament was light, but it had the ability to bring it to bear quicker.
> The Ki 43-II climbed to 6,000 meters slightly quicker than the A6M2, but their overall
> climb rates were about equal. The Zero had an edge in zoom climb.*



The only problem with this idea is that at the beginning of the war, it would have been the Ki 43-I that was being produced and that was even slower and more lightly armed (and structurally weak).

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Kevin J (Oct 18, 2018)

Ascent said:


> I'm well aware of those facts yet, as has been discussed on this forum recently, spitfire pilot's in general survived longer.
> 
> The hurricane got more kills simply because there was more of them when the fighting was at its fiercest.


I think you'll find that the Soviets found far more use for them than their Spitfires in combat over the Eastern Front, they even had aces if you count their shared victories. It was in use in their VVS in 1942 and PVO until 1945, dates when our RAF Fighter Command considered them obsolete in 1942/43. It was the Spitfire that they didn't rate. Of course, we needed fast fighters to stop the German raids on our infrastructure and industry.


----------



## fliger747 (Oct 18, 2018)

Yes the harmonization of the controls is important to the pilots transition of input to exit as an envisioned maneuver. Typically stick force wise about 10 lbs pull per G was considered about optimum, breakout forces in the control systems and friction considered bad for precision. In the WWII era stability as a gun platform would be important for accurate shooting. And of course one had to be able to land the thing. A high number of Bf 109's were destroyed in landing accidents. The Seafire also didn't have a really successful career as a carrier aircraft due to landing issues. Roll rates, quite important to transitional maneuverability, different than sustained maneuverability. 

I once read the Spitfire compared to a "light and fiery horse", wasn't till I owned such a beast that I fully understood what that meant. Just think and he would go within an inch of where you wanted... Just don't sneeze.


----------



## tomo pauk (Oct 18, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> I think you'll find that the Soviets found far more use for them than their Spitfires in combat over the Eastern Front, they even had aces if you count their shared victories. It was in use in their VVS in 1942 and PVO until 1945, dates when our RAF Fighter Command considered them obsolete in 1942/43. It was the Spitfire that they didn't rate. Of course, we needed fast fighters to stop the German raids on our infrastructure and industry.



Wow.
Soviets, as well as other people that used both Hurricanes and Spitfires rated the Spitfire as a better fighter. Stalin complained that WAllies were giving them Hurricanes and P-40s in abundance, but not Spitfires and P-39s. The latest being probably the most preferred Western type the Soviets used.
RAF was very much using Hurricanes in 1942, despite considering them obslolete. Not using Hurricanes in 1942 means RAF is using Gladiators and Mohawks. Similar is with Soviets - no Hurricanes in 1942 means they still use I-16s and I-153s in fighter units. Usage of Hurricane in PVO means one thing - it was relegated to the duties of glorified AAA, to kill bombers without a danger of encountering German fighters.
Other countries also needed fast fighters - duh.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## jetcal1 (Oct 18, 2018)

I once read the Spitfire compared to a "light and fiery horse" said:


> Which is all good until you're tired, wounded, or just got caught IFR with no experience under the hood. Everything comes as a compromise or at a cost.


----------



## Schweik (Oct 18, 2018)

eagledad said:


> Vic
> 
> I believe the loss rates (P-38, P-51 etc) are for the ETO/MTO only. As stated , stats are stats. The P-39 flew many missions where the chance of meeting any opponents was slim (Coastal patrols in North Africa for example). Thus many sorties, few losses and victories. The P-51 and P-38 flew longer missions and thus had more chances to be attacked and to attack. Add to the fact that many of the missions were deep into enemy airspace and it makes sense that their loss rates were greater.
> 
> ...



That would explain a lot - in the Med P-39s were relegated to flying mostly out over the Med and rarely even had enemy contact. On the few occasions they were used in the combat areas over the desert they suffered unacceptable casualties.

Did they show the sortie to loss rate for P-40s or American Spitfires?

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 18, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> Wow.
> Soviets, as well as other people that used both Hurricanes and Spitfires rated the Spitfire as a better fighter. Stalin complained that WAllies were giving them Hurricanes and P-40s in abundance, but not Spitfires and P-39s. The latest being probably the most preferred Western type the Soviets used.
> RAF was very much using Hurricanes in 1942, despite considering them obslolete. Not using Hurricanes in 1942 means RAF is using Gladiators and Mohawks. Similar is with Soviets - no Hurricanes in 1942 means they still use I-16s and I-153s in fighter units. Usage of Hurricane in PVO means one thing - it was relegated to the duties of glorified AAA, to kill bombers without a danger of encountering German fighters.
> Other countries also needed fast fighters - duh.



The Soviets got many, many more victories with their P-40s (both verified and claimed) than with Spits or Hurricanes and had far more aces with the P-40. Their favorite and most successful Lend Lease fighter though was certainly the P-39 which they received in the greatest abundance.

The best Spitfires (Mk IX) were used for PVO "glorified AAA' but it was an important mission, as they needed to ensure the safety of certain rear area targets from German intruders and long range bombers which had caused major damage in the early years of the war (for example blowing up the factory which was on the verge of producing the Yak-3 two years early)

S

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## tomo pauk (Oct 18, 2018)

Schweik said:


> The best Spitfires (Mk IX) were used for PVO "glorified AAA' but it was an important mission, as they needed to ensure the safety of certain rear area targets from German intruders and long range bombers which had caused major damage in the early years of the war (for example blowing up the factory which was on the verge of producing the Yak-3 two years early)
> 
> S



Soviets were also supposedly using the P-47s for PVO. An excellent fighter, though, in 1944, nothing special for the altitudes the bulk of the VVS fought - sea level to 15000 ft. I have no doubt that PVO is/was important, relegating Hurricanes for that service was a way to put them out of harm's way, while still having the use for them.
I'd love to see how any Soviet factory is on the verge of producing the Yak-3 (= the real Yak-3, with thinner and smaller wing, improved cooler layout and the VK-105PF2 engine, not the I-30 with M-105) in early 1942, since the prototype of Yak-3 was from mid-1943.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 18, 2018)

In my opinion the key factors that are less quantifiable are:

*Combat Speed* per Golodnikov, as already mentioned. This is a subtle issue as it is also dependent on the nature of the battle. The nature of the battle often depends on the bombers. If dive bombers or tactical ground attack aircraft are being used (fighter bombers, SBD, D3A, Sturmovik, Stuka) then combat speed means speed at low altitude. If it's escorting or intercepting two engine medium bombers it's another (medium-high) altitude, if it's four engine heavy bombers then it's very high. As we all know pretty well now from various other discussions here, different engines perform better or worse at different altitudes.

Beyond that, more generally combat speed is determined by acceleration (which can be measured as power to weight ratios), drag (which can also be measured but is harder to find), dive acceleration (as diving is the most common way to pick up speed) and also what the *cruising speed *is (which can vary and depend on circumstances such as if escorting slower bombers).

Aircraft with large / big wings generally have better overall performance and better speed at higher altitude while shorter and smaller wings are better at lower altitude. So a plane with a top speed of 400 mph operating in a low altitude Theater may never exceed 290 mph down at Sea Level where most of the fighting is, whereas another plane with a top speed of 330 mph might be able to make 310 mph at Sea Level making it zippier in the Theater. Top speed is going to usually be at higher altitude even for an aircraft with engines that perform better down low.

From what I understand the A6M (A6M2 power to mass 0.18), Ki-43 (Ki-43 IIb power to mass 0.20), Bf 109 (Bf 109G6 power to mass 0.21), Spitfire (Spit VB power to mass 0.22) and Yak series fighters (Yak 1b power-mass 0.19) all had good combat speed, which were among the less tangible characteristics that made them effective in combat.

Weight I believe could also sometimes _help_ an aircraft retain speed, this is why the Fw 190 (power to mass between 0.18 - 0.21) anecdotally seemed to have a higher combat speed than the lighter and zippier Bf 109 which depending on the model almost always looks faster on paper.

*Cruising Speed* as I said mainly because it affects Combat Speed, but also time in the air and time in the danger area.

*Landing Gear and ground handling* though of relatively little interest to aviation enthusiasts this is one of the most important thing for pilots. Losses during takeoff and landing were often higher than combat losses

*Serviceability- *already discussed. Very important!

*Suitability to the Theater -* A given aircraft could be terrible in one Theater and excellent in another. A good example is the P-39 in the Med vs. the Russian Front. Aside from training and cultural issues, a combination of things like the typical altitudes being fought at, suitability for cold or hot weather (one thing I've learned in this forum is how widely different performance and handling can be in different climates), serviceability in front line or primitive fields, over or near the sea vs. over land and so on. Suitability to the Theater sometimes also required either versatility or specialization. In the BoB, the Spitfire which was specialized as a high speed interceptor, was ideal. Carrier aircraft did a job that land based planes couldn't, and some fighters were better suited for carrier operations than others (the F6F excelled in this area for example). The A6M was specialized for carrier operations and long range but was also versatile enough to fight from land, be great as an interceptor and could easily contend with short range interceptors itself. In other Theaters sometimes versatility was needed most because seasons changed wildly, missions changed, and combat could move from low to high altitude and back again, or naval or land based targets. A fighters mission could shift from escort to interceptor to fighter bombers multiple times over in a matter of weeks.

*Ability to Disengage -* this depends both on the Theater and also on the characteristics of the enemy aircraft. One of the main things that made P-38s useful in the Pacific was their ability to disengage from Zeros or Ki-43s by going into a shallow high-speed climb. Bf 109s used similar strategies against Hurricanes, P-40s and sometimes Spitfires. P-40's disengaged by diving and relying on good high speed (roll and turn) maneuverability. Mustangs could disengage thanks to their high combat speed.

*Ammunition capacity *- one of the best things about the Mustang was that it had so many rounds per gun. Thus for a lot longer time could answer back when attacked. I think this is one of the greatest flaws of many of the Soviet planes they had very few rounds per gun, sometimes as few as 40 or 50 rounds per gun for cannon or 100 rounds for HMG. Early Zeros and Spits too with their 60 rounds per cannon. This means they are basically out of the fight already when they may still in a combat area. It also means they are going to me much more hesitant to strafe targets of opportunity and so on.

*Accuracy of the guns / gunsights. *Another well known thing about the Mustang is how much combat success rates improved with the addition of the new gyro gunsight. I know this is controversial but from hundreds of anecdotes from pilots I also believe very generally speaking nose mounted guns were more accurate than wing mounted, at least for closer range. Easier to aim. This helps account for example why the comparatively light armed Bf 109F was not considered at any disadvantage against RAF fighters.

*Radios. *I think this is one of the biggest ones. It's really suprising how many early war aircraft on all sides (including for example the Japanese and the British / Commonwealth in the early war years) either lacked radios altogether or had radios which were barely functional, sometimes for simple things like being properly grounded, sometimes because the radios were of foreign make and spare parts were not available, sometimes because the radios had to be constantly fiddled with. If the radios were working properly it could be a huge advantage, I think this was one of the main advantages the Germans had in Russia early on.

Reactions: Bacon Bacon:
1 | Like Like:
1 | Winner Winner:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 18, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> Soviets were also supposedly using the P-47s for PVO. An excellent fighter, though, in 1944, nothing special for the altitudes the bulk of the VVS fought - sea level to 15000 ft. I have no doubt that PVO is/was important, relegating Hurricanes for that service was a way to put them out of harm's way, while still having the use for them.
> I'd love to see how any Soviet factory is on the verge of producing the Yak-3 (= the real Yak-3, with thinner and smaller wing, improved cooler layout and the VK-105PF2 engine, not the I-30 with M-105) in early 1942, since the prototype of Yak-3 was from mid-1943.



I am talking about the I-30 / Yak 3, not quite the beast that the Yak-1M / Yak 3 would be but I believe certainly an improvement over the existing 1941 version of the Yak 1


----------



## Schweik (Oct 18, 2018)

Most of the above counts for fighters, but for bombers in particular I'd say cruising speed and *bombing accuracy* are very important. The latter being the main thing that made the Stuka, the D3A and the SBD excel. It was also part of what was good about the Mosquito (to a lesser extent). Most WW2 bombers had terrible bombing accuracy.


----------



## Kevin J (Oct 18, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> Wow.
> Soviets, as well as other people that used both Hurricanes and Spitfires rated the Spitfire as a better fighter. Stalin complained that WAllies were giving them Hurricanes and P-40s in abundance, but not Spitfires and P-39s. The latest being probably the most preferred Western type the Soviets used.
> RAF was very much using Hurricanes in 1942, despite considering them obslolete. Not using Hurricanes in 1942 means RAF is using Gladiators and Mohawks. Similar is with Soviets - no Hurricanes in 1942 means they still use I-16s and I-153s in fighter units. Usage of Hurricane in PVO means one thing - it was relegated to the duties of glorified AAA, to kill bombers without a danger of encountering German fighters.
> Other countries also needed fast fighters - duh.


I think you'll find that the Russians weren't that impressed with the Spitfire Vb TROP that they employed in the Kuban in 1943 and relegated all Spitfire L IXe's to the PVO. They didn't 'rate' it compared to their own fighters. I didn't make that comparison specifically to the Hurricane. Also, I specifically mentioned the Hurricane in the context of RAF Fighter Command, not the MTO or the CBI.


----------



## tomo pauk (Oct 18, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> I think you'll find that the Russians weren't that impressed with the Spitfire Vb TROP that they employed in the Kuban in 1943 and relegated all Spitfire L IXe's to the PVO. They didn't 'rate' it compared to their own fighters. I didn't make that comparison specifically to the Hurricane. Also, I specifically mentioned the Hurricane in the context of RAF Fighter Command, not the MTO or the CBI.



Whatever it might be the case, it looks to me as you are trying to find and post tidbits where Spitfire didn't shine, in order to prove the agenda of how just great Hurricane was.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Kevin J (Oct 18, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> Whatever it might be the case, it looks to me as you are trying to find and post tidbits where Spitfire didn't shine, in order to prove the agenda of how just great Hurricane was.


Never, the biggest flaw the Hurricane had was that Sydney Camm designed the Typhoon/Tempest series of fighters which were better. The Spitfire, well 'saucepans for Spitfires' was a catchy phrase so I guess that's why it got all the glory. Maybe the Air Ministry could have done a 'whores for Hurricanes' campaign and everything would have been different.


----------



## tomo pauk (Oct 18, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> Never, the biggest flaw the Hurricane had was that Sydney Camm designed the Typhoon/Tempest series of fighters which were better. The Spitfire, well 'saucepans for Spitfires' was a catchy phrase so I guess that's why it got all the glory. Maybe the Air Ministry could have done a 'whores for Hurricanes' campaign and everything would have been different.



I don't think that I'd be bothering debating with you here, at least not in this thread.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
4 | Funny Funny:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 18, 2018)

I don't think there is any doubt that the Spitfire was better than the P-40 or the Hurricane - or the Yak -1. But it's also true that it's record was not equally excellent in all Theaters, including the Russian Front, Stalins statement notwithstanding. I think perhaps we can agree that the Soviets actually preferred the P-39 over all other Lend Lease fighters. And we know that they were almost unique in liking it (Stalin was arguably the savior of Bell aircraft!)

On the one hand everyone has their favorite aircraft (or nations) in WW2, and some few clearly have axes to grind. I'm a fan of certain types I think got bad reputations unfairly. But only to a point - I'm only really interested in what really happened. Sometimes taking a mildly revisionist angle like that can be a way to expose new data that does seem to keep emerging even now almost 80 years after the War.

More generally we seem to struggle with the issue of whether all aircraft shared equally good or bad qualities in every Theater, or over the entire course of the war. There was a period and a place, basically the Channel in much of 1942, in the Kuban, or over Australia, where Spitfires were on the losing end of many or most of the fights they got in. There were different reasons in each different Theater. Most anywhere else they fought they did very well or dominated the opposition.

Do we disagree fundamentally with the notion that different aircraft in WW2 performed better or worse in different Theaters and during different campaigns?

S

Reactions: Agree Agree:
3 | Like List reactions


----------



## eagledad (Oct 18, 2018)

Schweik,

Attached is a spreadsheet made with data from Ray Wagner's American Combat Planes that has the loss rate for most fighter aircraft used by the US in the European Theater. Note that there is no data for the Mosquito.

Eagledad

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Informative Informative:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## nuuumannn (Oct 18, 2018)

The problem with the Spitfire and Hurricane debate is that both aircraft had their strengths and weaknesses and the fact was that when it counted, i.e. during the Battle of Britain, both were available in numbers, with the strengths and weaknesses they had. The Hurricane comes out as a greater ace maker because it was simply available in larger numbers, not because of some mystical snake oil that made it better at killing German aircraft than the Spitfire. When the Air Ministry ordered Hurricanes, the order was pretty quick off the mark and was the largest order of any single type placed at one time by the British. 600 were ordered. It went into production earlier than the Spitfire, therefore was available in larger numbers when it mattered.

As for the Spitfire's alleged difficulty in manufacture - that's entirely relative. The Spitfire was an all metal stressed skin aeroplane; Supermarine had never built an aeroplane like that on the production line in the numbers required before. The Hurricane however had one foot in the past, steel tube covered in fixed panels, with wooden stringers aft of the cockpit and covered in fabric, with in the early Mk.Is a wooden wing. Easier to build by established building methods. Today the story is quite different. Any restorer will tell you that Hurricanes are far harder to restore because of the skill and tooling required to manufacture them is just not readily available in the aviation industry, whereas the Spitfire, being just like other aeroplanes still built today is 'easier' to build than the Hurri - and the Typhoon and Tempest for that matter.

The Hurricane was always going to be left behind because it had one foot in the past, that's because it is the product of early 1930s norms. The Spitfire, Bf 109 et al were trailblazers because of their method of construction. By 1941 the Hurricane was becoming obsolescent as a fighter interceptor (not obsolete, but not able to catch the newer Bf 109 variants such as the Friedrich) and required a serious power injection to enable it to perform. The Spitfire got that in the form of the 60 series Merlin in 1942 and the Griffon in 1943/44 to match what the Germans were doing. It wasn't worth investing in the Hurricane's development, even though one was fitted with a high altitude Merlin, because of the Typhoon and Tempest, which offered superior performance.

That the Russians liked it and it became a good can opener in N Africa is reflective of its assets as much as the lack of British airframes to throw into other theatres - but again, this is tempered by the fact that there were lots of Hurricanes around, partly because the Typhoon wasn't meeting expectations (and breaking its tail off) as a suitable replacement and Spitfires were being used as the RAF's premier frontline interceptor. Demand for Spitfires was high and final production numbers reflect this (over 22,750). More Spitfires were built than any other British aeroplane. It was the only British fighter that was in production before and after the war.

Propaganda does play a part in the Spitfire's career among the lesser informed public, but that is only natural. The Spitfire 'looks' the part and while that might not have any rational bearing on how we (as informed enthusiasts) might view the situation, it goes a long way in the public's eye to immortalise something. In a competition held by the BBC in early 2004, a quest was launched to find the best and most recognised British Icon. The Concorde won, followed in no particular order by the Spitfire, E Type Jaguar and London Tube map. All of these things have aesthetic, but also represent much more. The Concorde won, I suspect because it was retired in 2003, so there were emotional scenes at airports round the country months earlier as it made its farewell flights, so that would have helped its cause.

Nevertheless, that isn't to decry the appearance of the Hurri - it had rugged functionality, but the point was clear; put it simply, in the eyes of the public, the Hurricane was a workhorse and the Spitfire a thoroughbred.

The Hurricane was definitely a great fighter, no doubt, but it was never going to last as long as the Spitfire because of that aircraft's latent potential, as well as the fact that Hawker always intended on replacing it with the Tornado, or Typhoon or Tempest. The ability to put the two different engines and a combination of armament gave the Spitfire new lease of life and guaranteed its longevity as a frontline fighter.

Reactions: Like Like:
3 | Like List reactions


----------



## KiwiBiggles (Oct 18, 2018)

Well said, Nuumannn, and I agree completely. Unfortunately, the continual low-level snarking at the Spitfire will continue on this site. It's just an agenda some members have.


----------



## nuuumannn (Oct 18, 2018)

Thanks KiwiBiggles.


----------



## Schweik (Oct 18, 2018)

I hope that "low level sniping" comment was not directed at me, I think the Spitfire was an excellent fighter, probably the best overall on the Allied side. I just do also recognize it wasn't ideal in every situation or at all times. Discovering a more nuanced and realistic historical reality behind wartime legends isn't the same thing as destroying a good reputation of a great plane out of vindictive pettiness or something. Cartoons are for kids. You should be able to appreciate something even if it does have a few flaws.

As for the Hurricane, I think it was formidable in 1940 but it was a 1930's design that peaked early in the war, and as far as I know the Russians actually did not appreciate it very much. I'd like to see evidence that they did as it would change my understanding of the history.

I think the issue for the Hurricane boiled down to speed, that airframe was just limited in how fast it could fly in level flight and how fast it could dive. As the typical combat speed steadily increased, the Hurricane hit a wall and was left behind. Before that point though it was a deadly fighter.

I think it's another major problem people have is that they seem to expect a given aircraft design to never run it's course. If a plane wasn't good enough to hold it's own in 1945 then it's junk. If that were true nearly all WW2 fighters were junk because Jets were taking over the fight.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 18, 2018)

eagledad said:


> Schweik,
> 
> Attached is a spreadsheet made with data from Ray Wagner's American Combat Planes that has the loss rate for most fighter aircraft used by the US in the European Theater. Note that there is no data for the Mosquito.
> 
> Eagledad



Thanks much appreciated! From the numbers I assume this includes Italy but not North Africa?


----------



## KiwiBiggles (Oct 18, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I hope that "low level sniping" comment was not directed at me, I think the Spitfire was an excellent fighter, probably the best overall on the Allied side. I just do also recognize it wasn't ideal in every situation or at all times. Discovering a more nuanced and realistic historical reality behind wartime legends isn't the same thing as destroying a good reputation of a great plane out of vindictive pettiness or something. Cartoons are for kids. You should be able to appreciate something even if it does have a few flaws.
> 
> As for the Hurricane, I think it was formidable in 1940 but it was a 1930's design that peaked early in the war, and as far as I know the Russians actually did not appreciate it very much. I'd like to see evidence that they did as it would change my understanding of the history.
> 
> ...


Not at all aimed at you. I find your comments useful and interesting, and I have changed my opinion of the P-40 based pretty much only on your comments.

I meant stuff like:


Kevin J said:


> The Spitfire, well 'saucepans for Spitfires' was a catchy phrase so I guess that's why it got all the glory

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Dislike Dislike:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 18, 2018)

Maybe we shouldn't assume that was meant maliciously. Spitfire was a glorious fighter, so was the Hurricane in it's day. The Spitfire also got much better press. And lets face it, it's a damn good looking plane.







Hurricanes are pretty impressive too. i finally saw one in real life last year, I was really struck by how tough it looked.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Kevin J (Oct 19, 2018)

KiwiBiggles said:


> Not at all aimed at you. I find your comments useful and interesting, and I have changed my opinion of the P-40 based pretty much only on your comments.
> 
> I meant stuff like:


Listen mate, Cobber, you need to live over here to realise just how biased everything on the TV is towards the Spitfire, which is grossly unfair towards the Hurricane. Even comments on the forums that I've come across that suggested that the Hurricane was obsolete in 1939, whereas in reality the Air Ministry was considering stopping further production of the Spitfire in 1939 in favour of Beaufighter production.


----------



## swampyankee (Oct 19, 2018)

The Hurricane was about a half-generation older than the Spitfire; it was going to be inferior in some regards.

That said, the Hurricane was easier to repair, so it was able to demonstrate a greater availability rate than the Spitfire, especially in the first year or so of the war, and it had adequate performance to be competitive, albeit not superior, to its Axis opposition.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## eagledad (Oct 19, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Thanks much appreciated! From the numbers I assume this includes Italy but not North Africa?



I have always considered the data included North Africa. However, there is nothing in the book that says it does or does not. It is somewhat easy to guess the data includes the MTO because the A-36 was not used in Northern Europe. I do not believe that the P-38 kills would be at the level stated in the table if North Africa were excluded.
FWIW

Eagledad


----------



## Ascent (Oct 19, 2018)

Granted the media does prefer the Spitfire but you do the Hurricane no favours by trying to suggest it was a better aircraft. It has plenty of good points without trying to over do it

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Kevin J (Oct 19, 2018)

Ascent said:


> Granted the media does prefer the Spitfire but you do the Hurricane no favours by trying to suggest it was a better aircraft. It has plenty of good points without trying to over do it


What I said is that it scored more victories. By the time all the issues had been sorted out with the Spitfire in 1942 with the Vc/IXc the war had begun to switch to a deep penetration war in the ETO for which the Spitfire was unsuitable.The I/II/Va/b were good in the hands of a good pilot, but I don't believe that there a lot of them in any air force. For the average pilot in a ground hugging war or as a bomber interceptor before mid 1942, the Hurricane was better than the Spitfire and of course the P-40 series even better still. Given a choice between a Tomahawk IIa/b and a Spitfire Va/b overseas, I'd go with the Tomahawk, although for purely interception duties at overseas naval bases, then I would chose the Spitfire Vb Trop. Given a choice between a Hurricane II and a Spitfire II overseas, I'd go with the Hurricane as the performance difference is marginal. After mid-1942 then that's a different issue, its clearly the Spitfire.


----------



## Shortround6 (Oct 19, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> Listen mate, Cobber, you need to live over here to realise just how biased everything on the TV is towards the Spitfire, which is grossly unfair towards the Hurricane. Even comments on the forums that I've come across that suggested that the Hurricane was obsolete in 1939, whereas in reality the Air Ministry was considering stopping further production of the Spitfire in 1939 in favour of Beaufighter production.



And the soon to be produced wonder airplane the Hawker T_______. 
But let's get a few things straight. Supermarine was making a hash of getting the Spitfire into production with delivers running from late to very late making selecting it as the standard fighter rather dubious. Fighters on order but not delivered, no matter how good, don't shoot down anything. The initial performance estimates for the Beaufighter were off by 30-40mph in top speed, a problem created by lack of good wind tunnels in Britain at the the time. WHich also affected the Hawker T series fighters. While the British tried to cover their bets with the Hawker T series by ordering prototypes with 3 different engines, all three engines ran into problems and failed to make it into production in a timely fashion. 
Factoring into this mess was that nobody expected the Merlin engine to improve the way it did. in 1939 nobody really knew what sort of improvements that 100 octane and then 100/130 fuel could/would bring. Stanley Hooker started at Rolls Royce in Jan 1938 and was told to look at anything that caught his fancy. He started looking at superchargers. Between the better fuel and Hooker's modified supercharger the Merlin gained over 30% in power (and added several thousand feet to it's altitude) at little or no increase in weight. 

The Hurricane was obsolescent in 1939. Which is why Hawker was building the T series. Obsolescent is not quite the same as obsolete. 
The Hurricane benefited quite a bit from the improved Merlins. Getting the Merlin XX engine instead of the Merlin XII that the Spitfire II got was a major advantage. It was even an advantage over the Merlin 45 that the Spitfire V got. 

Had the Air Ministry actually stopped production of the Spitfire in 1939 the British would have been in world of hurt in 1940 and later.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## Kevin J (Oct 19, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> And the soon to be produced wonder airplane the Hawker T_______.
> But let's get a few things straight. Supermarine was making a hash of getting the Spitfire into production with delivers running from late to very late making selecting it as the standard fighter rather dubious. Fighters on order but not delivered, no matter how good, don't shoot down anything. The initial performance estimates for the Beaufighter were off by 30-40mph in top speed, a problem created by lack of good wind tunnels in Britain at the the time. WHich also affected the Hawker T series fighters. While the British tried to cover their bets with the Hawker T series by ordering prototypes with 3 different engines, all three engines ran into problems and failed to make it into production in a timely fashion.
> Factoring into this mess was that nobody expected the Merlin engine to improve the way it did. in 1939 nobody really knew what sort of improvements that 100 octane and then 100/130 fuel could/would bring. Stanley Hooker started at Rolls Royce in Jan 1938 and was told to look at anything that caught his fancy. He started looking at superchargers. Between the better fuel and Hooker's modified supercharger the Merlin gained over 30% in power (and added several thousand feet to it's altitude) at little or no increase in weight.
> 
> ...


The best engine went into the best bomber interceptor. For the Spitfire, the best engine to engage the high flying recce aircraft and fighter bombers.


----------



## Schweik (Oct 19, 2018)

eagledad said:


> I have always considered the data included North Africa. However, there is nothing in the book that says it does or does not. It is somewhat easy to guess the data includes the MTO because the A-36 was not used in Northern Europe. I do not believe that the P-38 kills would be at the level stated in the table if North Africa were excluded.
> FWIW
> 
> Eagledad



If that is the case the numbers are a little off. For example American flown P-40's had 592 claims in the MTO. See:

Warbirds and Airshows- WWII US Aircraft Victories

Those numbers also match the Osprey books, though they aren't definitive.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 19, 2018)

Ascent said:


> Granted the media does prefer the Spitfire but you do the Hurricane no favours by trying to suggest it was a better aircraft. It has plenty of good points without trying to over do it



I wouldn't say the Hurricane was better... though they were probably closer in effectiveness in 1940 than 1941 or 1942


----------



## Shortround6 (Oct 19, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> The best engine went into the best bomber interceptor. For the Spitfire, the best engine to engage the high flying recce aircraft and fighter bombers.




No,
The best engine went into the plane that was being produced in the greatest numbers in order to keep total production of viable fighters high. 
The Spitfire could be viable fighter plane with 2nd best engine. The Hurricane could not.
The Merlin XX had better high altitude performance by far than the Merlin XII and slightly better than the Merlin 45 

The idea that Spitfires could/would handle the German fighters while the Hurricanes shot down the bombers was a nice theory that seldom worked out in practice and was not the way Downing handled the intercepts.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Kevin J (Oct 19, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> No,
> The best engine went into the plane that was being produced in the greatest numbers in order to keep total production of viable fighters high.
> The Spitfire could be viable fighter plane with 2nd best engine. The Hurricane could not.
> The Merlin XX had better high altitude performance by far than the Merlin XII and slightly better than the Merlin 45
> ...


The Merlin XX was meant to go into the Spitfire III which would have meant changes on the production line in 1941 and no doubt fewer fighters produced at a critical moment in time. Some Spitfire III changes were introduced into the 'c' wing of 1942. You need the Merlin 46 of 1942 to get the performance of the XX of 1940/41. The first casualty of war is not just the truth but the battle plan, so yes, the intention was to use the Spitfire to take on the fighters while the Hurricane took on the bombers although it didn't always work out that way.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 19, 2018)

Wow... I didn't realize that they put stronger / more powerful engines in the Hurricanes before they put them in Spitfires. That's interesting.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Oct 19, 2018)

I cant think of any significant area the Hurricane was superior to the Spitfire from Sept 1939 apart from ease of production and landing due to the track of the undercarriage.


----------



## Schweik (Oct 19, 2018)

It could turn a little tighter right? The Spit was better in roll, dive, acceleration and climb though. Firepower is the same until the Hurricane Mk II but after that the IIb and IIc have more firepower.

How did handling compare between the two fighters?


----------



## Schweik (Oct 19, 2018)

Just anecdotally Hurricanes do seem to be particularly devastating against bombers for some reason.


----------



## pbehn (Oct 19, 2018)

Instantaneous turn may have been higher, limited by the pilot sustained turn was lower, the Spitfire was faster too, and less likely to burn its pilot when hit.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Kevin J (Oct 19, 2018)

pbehn said:


> I cant think of any significant area the Hurricane was superior to the Spitfire from Sept 1939 apart from ease of production and landing due to the track of the undercarriage.


Cost price, easier to learn how to fly, and of course land, availability as opposed to Supermarine still struggling to manufacture a complex aircraft. The plane needed to be made simpler to produce, plus the mods to make it combat worthy. I think you'll find that when Beaverbrook took over the Castle Bromwich factory he sorted it out. The IIa/b was meant to do about 385/387 mph, it did 30 mph less. The Ia started off at 365/7 mph and ended up 10 mph less. It wasn't until 1942 that Spitfire exceeded Hurricane production. To give you a clue of the difference in performance between a Hurricane and Spitfire, take the Sea Hurricane IIc (Merlin XX) of 1942 which did 342 mph and the Seafire IIc (Merlin 46) of 1942 which did 342 mph when both equipped with four 20 mm cannon. The difference between them was that the Sea Hurricane didn't have catapult spools, so what's that, 7 to 12 mph loss in speed depending on height? You'll probably find that the Hurricane I had a better roll rate and turning circle to the Spitfire I, although dive speed with fabric covered wings, about 100 mph less, reducing to 60 mph with metal wings. From what I've read about the BoB, combat resulted in a lot of Spitfires with bent wings so clearly a problem there. Also the twin banks of Brownings were more effective than the spread out layout of the Spitfire Ia/IIa/Va guns which had a shotgun effect.To me, it makes sense for the Air Ministry to put the Merlin XX into the Hurricane II when it did until all the Spitfire's deficiencies were sorted out. So the Hurricane II is 10 mph slower, big deal.


----------



## GregP (Oct 19, 2018)

I believe the table from Ray Wagner above via Eagledad is for ETO only, but Ray just published the tables in his book and gives overall references. I have no idea where the data came from specifically. My copy of his book doesn't give me the table references. It is labeled as ETO-only. The ETO was broken out for US ground forces as Europe, north of Italy and the Mediterranean.

So, Italy was considered as MTO along with North Africa by the people who defined the US Theaters of Operations. The Navy also didn't have a PTO (and didn't save the same data as the USAAF in any case). They had Central Pacific and Southwest Pacific. The Northeast Pacific was considered as part of the Alaska Theater of Operations.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 19, 2018)

The thing about the Hurricane having a better roll rate is really baffling, the idea that the Hurricane rolled well - let alone better than the Spitfire, goes against all the anecdotatal comments by pilots. It was one of the main complaints / criticisms of the Hurricane. What am I missing here?


----------



## Schweik (Oct 19, 2018)

GregP said:


> I believe the table from Ray Wagner above via Eagledad is for ETO only, but Ray just published the tables in his book and gives overall references. I have no idea where the data came from specifically. My copy of his book doesn't give me the table references. It is labeled as ETO-only. The ETO was broken out for US ground forces as Europe, north of Italy and the Mediterranean.
> 
> So, Italy was considered as MTO along with North Africa by the people who defined the US Theaters of Operations. They also didn't have a PTO. The Navy also didn't have a PTO (and didn't save the same data as the USAAF in any case). They had Central Pacific and Southwest Pacific. The Northeast Pacific was considered as part of the Alaska Theater of Operations.




Well the Osprey books (and the aggregated numbers on the "Warbirds and Airshows" page linked above) are pretty well documented on their numbers for claims. Actual real verified victories of course is another matter. But the numbers for several aircraft types between Osprey and Wagner vary by about 20%. So I thought maybe they were distinguishing between claims in North Africa vs. claims in Italy (including Sicily, Sardania and Lampedusa / Pantelleria) which is technically Europe, whereas Tunisia is not. Those Islands in particular are where a lot of the USAAF victories were scored in the Med, and in Italy in fairly intense air combat up to the time of Anzio. By comparison USAAF was only fighting in North Africa for a few months and most of that in limited numbers.

P-38 European + MTO claims should be 1928 (1431 Med and 497 ETO) vs. 1,758 in the Ray Wagner numbers (spreadsheet)
P-40 European + MTO claims should be 592 (all Med) vs. 481 in the spreadsheet
P-39 European + MTO claims should be 27 (25 Med and 2 ETO) vs. 14 in the spreadsheet
US Spitfire European + MTO claims should be 379 (364 Med, 15 ETO) vs. 256 on the spreadsheet
P-47 European + MTO claims should be 2,948 (263 Med + 2685 ETO) vs. 3,082 on the spreadsheet
P-51 Eurpopean + MTO claims (including A-36) should be 5,302 (1,063 Med + 4,239 ETO) vs. 5,034 on the spreadsheet (P-51 + A-36)
P-61 European + MTO just about matches 59 vs. 58

P-47 and P-51 seem to be pretty close - they only fought in Italy not really in North Africa (a few A-36 sorties but i don't think any claims there)


----------



## pbehn (Oct 19, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> Cost price, easier to learn how to fly, and of course land, availability as opposed to Supermarine still struggling to manufacture a complex aircraft. The plane needed to be made simpler to produce, plus the mods to make it combat worthy. I think you'll find that when Beaverbrook took over the Castle Bromwich factory he sorted it out. The IIa/b was meant to do about 385/387 mph, it did 30 mph less. The Ia started off at 365/7 mph and ended up 10 mph less. It wasn't until 1942 that Spitfire exceeded Hurricane production. To give you a clue of the difference in performance between a Hurricane and Spitfire, take the Sea Hurricane IIc (Merlin XX) of 1942 which did 342 mph and the Seafire IIc (Merlin 46) of 1942 which did 342 mph when both equipped with four 20 mm cannon. The difference between them was that the Sea Hurricane didn't have catapult spools, so what's that, 7 to 12 mph loss in speed depending on height? You'll probably find that the Hurricane I had a better roll rate and turning circle to the Spitfire I, although dive speed with fabric covered wings, about 100 mph less, reducing to 60 mph with metal wings. From what I've read about the BoB, combat resulted in a lot of Spitfires with bent wings so clearly a problem there. Also the twin banks of Brownings were more effective than the spread out layout of the Spitfire Ia/IIa/Va guns which had a shotgun effect.To me, it makes sense for the Air Ministry to put the Merlin XX into the Hurricane II when it did until all the Spitfire's deficiencies were sorted out. So the Hurricane II is 10 mph slower, big deal.


I already stated that the chief advantage of the Hurricane was its ease of production, the Spitfire was always faster with the same engine than the Hurricane which started with doped canvas wings and ended with metal skinned. The XX was put first into the Hurricane to keep the Hurricane in the game. What were the Spitfires "deficiencies".


----------



## Schweik (Oct 19, 2018)

Apparently the source for most of the data on that website I linked is "Victory Roll! The American Fighter Pilot and Aircraft in WWII by William Wolf "


----------



## michael rauls (Oct 19, 2018)

To me the Hurricane and Spitfire were the perfect combination the Brits needed for the BOB. The Spitfire with its outstanding performance and the Hurricane with it's ease of manufacture and maintenance(two of those qualities that make a great aircraft that don't show up in performance stats) that allowed the needed numbers of aircraft to be available.
My personal feeling is that they still probably would have won the BOB with only one of the two types, whichever that might have been but it would have been by a much thinner margin.

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 19, 2018)

I think you can't underestimate the prestige factor of the Spitfire. Given the nature of the German regime, and their propaganda - and a war of propaganda which the British were very much engaged in, being able to credibly claim to have a superior aircraft, even one whose potential was not yet fully realized, was of immense value. It supported pride and hope among the British military and civilians, among Commonwealth and foreign allies, and also among the ranks of at least some of the enemy. Certainly reading German and Italian pilot interviews their regard for the Spitfire was very high in most cases, maybe even higher than merited. The Spitfire inspired fear.

I understand the frustration of some of the guys who love the Hurricane as it seems clear, the divergence in performance and capability between the two types was not nearly as stark in the BoB in 1940 as it would later rapidly become and the Hurricane did play a major and not fully acknowledged role in that most important of all battles for England. The Spit was early in it's design and production cycle - which meant great promise for the future but also things to be ironed out both in terms of production and design. The Hurricane was toward the end of it's cycle - that meant great pilot and ground crew familiarity, probably better developed tactics etc. Even as somebody who is familiar with the history of the war I was surprised to see how many high scoring Hurricane aces there were. Maybe part of the issue is that the RAF did not seem to indulge in the tradition of putting a long row of victory markers on the side of the cockpit, which can serve as a visual a reminder how formidable that fighter still was at that crucial moment.







But the Spitfire represented kind of aspirational hope of victory. It wasn't almost as good, it was at least as good as the best fighters in the world, and you could make an argument that it was better. That it looked great also helped- just like with some other fighters, it's part of the mystique.

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Oct 19, 2018)

When the Hurricane first appeared it got all the adulation of the British public, then the Spitfire appeared and, well, you don't have to like aeroplanes to like its lines, it was not only faster it was pretty too.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## GregP (Oct 19, 2018)

Reference post #100, Schweik.

You say the claims should be ... and then numbers. What are you basing your "should be" numbers on, precisely? The lists and tables I have seen ALL disagree with one another, and I don't know anyone with a 100% reliable OCR file of USAAF Report 85. I took a stab at it, and Bill Marshall (Drgondog) says my numbers are off by several, but I can't find where. Bill has a very good file for the 8th AF and is working on claims for other theaters (MTO at present, I think), but I have not seen any published numbers as yet.

So, I was wondering about your "should be" numbers. I am not sniping at you, I am curious. I have extensive files in Excel for most worldwide claims, approved victories for U.S.A., losses, accidents, etc. The thing is ... none of the files agree with one another to the last number. 

And then we have the revisionists who knocked Boyington's total down so Joe Foss could be elevated. But ... they didn't look at ANYONE ELSE. I reject that out of hand. Yes Boyington had some 22 in US military service, but his AVG planes were built here, were funded and supplied by the USA and should count the same. So, I still have him at 28 (22 + 6), especially since ground claims were later approved and routinely used in totals.

It might be good to discuss this in a separate thread.

Cheers.

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## windswords (Oct 19, 2018)

I don't know if this has been convered here already, but pilot comfort can be important. Especially if you are in the air for long range escort or penetration missions. The last P-47 model, the N had auto pilot, folding rudder pedals and arm rests. The cockpit was already very roomy going back to the C model. The USAAF's last "ace in a day", Oscar Perdromo (sp?) who shot down 4 Ki-84 fighters and a bibplane trainer had been in the air 8 hours and 20 minutes when he landed. That much time in the air in tighter confines would get you a trip to the chiropractor. Not to mention the affect on your ability to perform in combat. I read that Spitfire recon pilots who flew 4.5 hour (or more) missions had to be pulled out of there cockpits by ground crew.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 19, 2018)

GregP said:


> Reference post #100, Schweik.
> 
> You say the claims should be ... and then numbers. What are you basing your "should be" numbers on, precisely? The lists and tables I have seen ALL disagree with one another, and I don't know anyone with a 100% reliable OCR file of USAAF Report 85. I took a stab at it, and Bill Marshall (Drgondog) says my numbers are off by several, but I can't find where. Bill has a very good file for the 8th AF and is working on claims for other theaters (MTO at present, I think), but I have not seen any published numbers as yet.
> 
> ...




I was basing it on this chart, which is apparently derived from "Victory Roll! The American Fighter Pilot and Aircraft in WWII by William Wolf " (see Posts 88 and 102 upthread) which I just ordered from Amazon. But I was buying into it since the first time someone posted it in another thread in this forum a couple of months back,. because several of the numbers match the totals in my little collection of Osprey books and some of my other (granted, secondary or tertiary) sources - specifically for the P-40 and the P-38 in the Med, Pacific and CBI.

The number for P-40 victories in the Med for example matches page 69 in Cal Molesworth's Osprey (2011) book P-40 Warhawk vs. Me 109 at 592 victory claims.

That's claims though not 'verified' victories.

I definitely have not developed anything even close to accurate counts for verified claims, I think that is very hard to do though there are some sources you can start to use now for example for Axis losses on a given day in a given area.

Ground kills being counted for victory totals... how common is that?

S


----------



## Schweik (Oct 19, 2018)

I just wish I had similar claims lists for the Russians and British / Commonwealth for the whole war (particularly for the Med)


----------



## GregP (Oct 19, 2018)

PM me and I can send you some files.

Ground kills started being accepted by the USAAF after they got into the war a bit. Don't know why, but getting a ground kill at a German airfield was fraught with danger, probably more dangerous than a dogfight since there were literally hundreds of guns shooting at you.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 19, 2018)

I understand ground kills being counted separately, and I do understand German flak and AAA was very dangerous. But were they mixing in the number with the air to air victories? It's a very different thing, seems to me. Did anyone else do that?


----------



## michael rauls (Oct 19, 2018)

GregP said:


> PM me and I can send you some files.
> 
> Ground kills started being accepted by the USAAF after they got into the war a bit. Don't know why, but getting a ground kill at a German airfield was fraught with danger, probably more dangerous than a dogfight since there were literally hundreds of guns shooting at you.


I read about a year ago that ground kills were counted by the 8th air force but by no other in the USAAF. I've read conflicting things about this over the years so truly don't know. Did ground kills eventually become accepted throughout the USAAF?


----------



## GregP (Oct 19, 2018)

Hi Schweik,

I emailed you a couple of files that should prove interesting to you. Not the "complete answer to everything," but a good starting spot.

About ground kills, they generally show up in ETO claims lists, and they DO show up in US Navy / Marines lists since the USN/MC do not break out the various types of kills. Most USN/MC claims are air-to-air since they mostly fought over water and hence there were no ground targets in the form of parked airplanes. But, they DID get some airplane on the ground when attacking enemy airfields, and these got counted for some units, possibly not all.

If you Google "US Naval Aerial Combat Statistic, WWII" and look up front in the first 10 pages or so, they give definition of the numbers in the tables. Seems like air and ground and "on-carrier" kills wee all lumped together. Google for the PDF file and check for yourself.

I have been looking for a comprehensive list of US military WWII (and other wars) aerial kills for many years. The files I have are in pursuit of that end goal, but are not complete. I DO have a pretty good list of German east and West claims in one Excel file, but going through it is painful since I don't read German.

I'll offer again, as I have in the past: if anyone wants to swap files and try to work together to build up a good list of WWII aerial victories, I'd be happy to participate and swap some data. That means SWAP data, not supply all my files for nothing in return.

Hi Michael Rauls, I wish I knew if EVERYONE counted ground kills, too. Unfortunately, finding information, particularly GOOD information, on this subject is not simple. I was hoping to correspond with the USAFHRA, but they have been closed on hiatus for many years now, due to our national inability to agree on military budgets.

Cheers.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Oct 19, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I understand ground kills being counted separately, and I do understand German flak and AAA was very dangerous. But were they mixing in the number with the air to air victories? It's a very different thing, seems to me. Did anyone else do that?


Air war started as observation, the notification of awards and the title "ace" came later as a form of motivation and propaganda on the home front. When taking on the LW after big week the US needed to destroy/damage planes on the ground. To motivate pilots to attack heavily defended airfields in single engine aircraft hundreds of miles from home then allowing a ground kill as a "victory" is a small concession, historically more planes were lost attacking airfields than in air to air combat at the time.

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## Shortround6 (Oct 19, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> The Merlin XX was meant to go into the Spitfire III which would have meant changes on the production line in 1941 and no doubt fewer fighters produced at a critical moment in time. Some Spitfire III changes were introduced into the 'c' wing of 1942. You need the_ Merlin 46 of 1942 to get the performance of the XX of 1940/41._ The first casualty of war is not just the truth but the battle plan, so yes, the intention was to use the Spitfire to take on the fighters while the Hurricane took on the bombers although it didn't always work out that way.



The Idea of sticking the Merlin XX into the Hurricane was proposed in Feb 1940 (at the time making 1185HP?) but the first aircraft fitted was P3269 which flew June 11th 1940. Production status was reached in August and first planes reached the squadrons Sept 4th 1940. By this time the Melrin XX was good for 1280hp and had a number of changes from the Merlin III (70/30% water/glycol coolant instead of 100% glycol for one). 
The Spitfire II had entered production in May of 1940 with the Merlin XII which also changed the coolant system and which used a slightly higher gear ratio (9.089) on the supercharger than the Merlin III. 
The Merlin XX was the first Merlin to use the improved supercharger inlet as designed/developed by Stanley Hooker. It used 8.1516 low gear and 9.49 high gear.
The First Spitfire V with a Merlin 45 was flown in Feb 1941. This is the same basic engine as the XII/XX but has the single speed supercharger drive of the XII (with the same gear ratio) but the improved Hooker supercharger. 
The Merlin 46 used a new larger diameter impeller and new inlet guide vanes. 

As it turned out, too few Hurricane IIs joined the fighter squadrons before the Luftwaffe turned to night bombing to get a good idea of how they would have fared. Over the winter the Luftwaffe was not sitting on their hands either and not only stuck more powerful versions of the DB601 into late production 109Es but introduced the 109F which, due to significantly lower drag, offered a considerable increase in performance over the 109E and pretty much outclassed the Hurricane II. 

In the summer/fall of 1940 the Spitfire II with the Merlin XII was still a viable fighter against the Germans. The Hurricane needed all the help it could get.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## jetcal1 (Oct 19, 2018)

pbehn said:


> I cant think of any significant area the Hurricane was superior to the Spitfire from Sept 1939 apart from ease of production and landing due to the track of the undercarriage.


Great factors when flying 3-4 sorties a day and trying to repair damaged machines. All that means is more pilots and machines on the scene when needed.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 20, 2018)

Pben said:


> Air war started as observation, the notification of awards and the title "ace" came later as a form of motivation and propaganda on the home front. When taking on the LW after big week the US needed to destroy/damage planes on the ground to motivate pilots to attack heavily defended airfields in single engine aircraft hundreds of miles from home then allowing a ground kill as a "victory" is a small concession, historically more planes were lost attacking airfields than in air to air combat at the time.



I understand all that, and the safest milk run in WW2 is more dangerous than anything I've ever done. I get it's dangerous to strafe ground targets, so is going on a bombing mission. But there is a reason they put little bombs on the nose or the side of the cockpit for each bombing sortie flown instead of little enemy flags. It's different. Different risks, different techniques involved - different type of mission, even if a single sortie includes both types of activity.

So far most of the records I've looked at closely make it clear what is an air to air victory and what is a destroyed aircraft on the ground, and regardless of what they may have done in wartime I don't see any reason to mix the two together in any modern analysis, even for somebody I like as much as Greg Boyington.

Definitely making a mental note of this though in case I need to account for it to untangle something later down the road where there is scope for confusion on that issue.


----------



## fliger747 (Oct 20, 2018)

Years ago I worked with an explosives expert on the Alaska North Slope (we were blowing things up) and he had been a P47 driver in the ETO. He liked the Jug a lot and mostly was doing low level ground attack missions. Very satisfying he said to witness the steam explosion from a locomotive, but the Germans had 37 mm FLAK mounted on the flat cars and they would shoot back at you, tracers like glowing tennis balls going by. Very comforting to have that big R2800 out in front of you! He gets back to the base and pulls up on the hardstand and is met by the crew chief, "Sarge will you take a look rather, she's missing". 5 mins later having a cup over at the mess tent sarge comes back "Missing? Missing a jug!" 

Transient maneuverability (high speed roll rates), durability, reliability, good visibility and handling, all things that help the pilot do his job and return for another day. I suggest if you can find a copy, the notes from the 1944 Fighter Conference are very interesting in evaluating strengths and weaknesses of Allied and Axis fighters and discussion about what the direction of future development should be. The Bearcat came about after Leroy Grumman (fair test pilot in his own right) flew the FW190. "This is the plane we should have built".

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## Stig1207 (Oct 20, 2018)

GregP said:


> I believe the table from Ray Wagner above via Eagledad is for ETO only, but Ray just published the tables in his book and gives overall references. I have no idea where the data came from specifically. My copy of his book doesn't give me the table references. It is labeled as ETO-only. The ETO was broken out for US ground forces as Europe, north of Italy and the Mediterranean.
> 
> So, Italy was considered as MTO along with North Africa by the people who defined the US Theaters of Operations. The Navy also didn't have a PTO (and didn't save the same data as the USAAF in any case). They had Central Pacific and Southwest Pacific. The Northeast Pacific was considered as part of the Alaska Theater of Operations.



Wagner's figures match (pretty much) the combined totals for the ETO and MTO as provided by the USAAF Statistical Digest; but all fighters are lumped together, not specified by type as in Wagner's data.


----------



## GregP (Oct 20, 2018)

Hey Schweik, Did you get the files I sent? Just checking.


----------



## Schweik (Oct 20, 2018)

No I didn't Greg, did you get a bounce? Maybe double check the email addy? When I get it I have some (a little bit!) stuff to send you as well.

EDIT: Nevermind! Found it in my spam folder, thanks I'll look these over!


----------



## GregP (Oct 20, 2018)

OK Schweik, those files will give you some interesting reading and the sources are shown on most places that I have added data in the last 10 years or so.

Best regards, - Greg


----------



## Kevin J (Oct 21, 2018)

pbehn said:


> I already stated that the chief advantage of the Hurricane was its ease of production, the Spitfire was always faster with the same engine than the Hurricane which started with doped canvas wings and ended with metal skinned. The XX was put first into the Hurricane to keep the Hurricane in the game. What were the Spitfires "deficiencies".


Biggest deficiency that I recall is that the eight m/g's were spread out across the wings so there was a shotgun effect when fired as opposed to the razor blade effect of the Hurricane's banks of m/g's that could slice the tail off of a Stuka. Bent wings after combat. When fitted with 2 20 mm cannon, bulges and protruding guns that cost you 10 mph, same with the 'c' wing. Only 60 rpg with the 'b' wing cannon. The Hurricane IIc with four cannon only lost 6 mph compared with the IIa. It was more likely that a Spitfire had to be returned to a maintenance for a fix after combat damage than a Hurricane. Yes, the early Spitfire was 20 to 25 mph faster, but that's not a significant speed difference in combat.


----------



## pbehn (Oct 21, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> Yes, the early Spitfire was 20 to 25 mph faster, but that's not a significant speed difference in combat.


The Spitfire was not in combat with the Hurricane, it was in combat with the Bf109 which was faster than a spitfire at some altitudes, being over 30MPH faster than a Hurricane was significant. I think the wrinkling of wings was when used as a dive bomber, I cant remember it being an issue in the BoB, and in any case it is preferable to a wing coming off.


----------



## Kevin J (Oct 21, 2018)

pbehn said:


> The Spitfire was not in combat with the Hurricane, it was in combat with the Bf109 which was faster than a spitfire at some altitudes, being over 30MPH faster than a Hurricane was significant. I think the wrinkling of wings was when used as a dive bomber, I cant remember it being an issue in the BoB, and in any case it is preferable to a wing coming off.


Bent wings were an issue all the way up the Spitfire Vb which could carry the first slipper tanks. I'm not aware of any problems after the Vc. Compared with the Bf 109E, the Hurricane I with boost could keep up with the Bf 109E performance wise below 15000 feet thanks to 12 lbs boost which it could hold for 5 minutes, the Bf 109E only for 1 minute with the radiator closed. So at bomber interception height in the BoB the Hurricane had the edge on it in sustained speed, roll rate and turning circle, the Bf 109E could dive away, not sure about climb though and they can't dive away without abandoning their bombers. After the BoB when the Luftwaffe sent in high altitude fighter bomber raids only the Spitfire I/II could cope with them, providing they were at 25000 / 30000 feet on patrol when they came in. IIRC.


----------



## pbehn (Oct 21, 2018)

Its been discussed at length.

Aviation myths that will not die

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Oct 21, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> Bent wings were an issue all the way up the Spitfire Vb which could carry the first slipper tanks. I'm not aware of any problems after the Vc. Compared with the Bf 109E, the Hurricane I with boost could keep up with the Bf 109E performance wise below 15000 feet thanks to 12 lbs boost which it could hold for 5 minutes, the Bf 109E only for 1 minute with the radiator closed. So at bomber interception height in the BoB the Hurricane had the edge on it in sustained speed, roll rate and turning circle, the Bf 109E could dive away, not sure about climb though and they can't dive away without abandoning their bombers. After the BoB when the Luftwaffe sent in high altitude fighter bomber raids only the Spitfire I/II could cope with them, providing they were at 25000 / 30000 feet on patrol when they came in. IIRC.


Any boost applied to the Hurricane can be applied to the Spitfire, I don't believe the Hurricane had the edge over the Bf109 in anything except instantaneous turn, certainly not rate of roll, the biggest frustration of Hurricane pilots was they couldn't break off an engagement but the Bf 109 could. The Bf 109F started being introduced in late 1940BTW.


----------



## Kevin J (Oct 21, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Any boost applied to the Hurricane can be applied to the Spitfire, I don't believe the Hurricane had the edge over the Bf109 in anything except instantaneous turn, certainly not rate of roll, the biggest frustration of Hurricane pilots was they couldn't break off an engagement but the Bf 109 could. The Bf 109F started being introduced in late 1940BTW.


According to Daimler-Benz there were only 5 Db 601N's in service in January 1941, well according to Kurfurst. So lets see, about 200 Bf 109F-1's produced by then. So what happened to them? Wings broke off in flight? The Hurricane I must have been pretty good to have shot down so many Luftwaffe aircraft by the end of the BoB. Yes the Spitfire I was faster, I'm not disputing that, what I'm saying is that the Hurricane I's speed was more than adequate for the tasks that it was asked to perform. As for rate of roll, the Hurricane II was worse than the I, the Bf 109F better than the E and better than the II, but it was a new wing that initially had structural integrity problems.


----------



## slaterat (Oct 21, 2018)

The Hurricane has many qualities that fall into this category. I_t was tough, well armoured,easy to repair and reliable. It also had good handling traits of being easy to land and take off as well good harmony of controls and was easy to trim. It also had low pilot workload with automatic boost control and constant speed prop as well as hydraulic flaps and undercarriage. The pilot sat up high with a very good view over the nose. If one trait seems to stand out from what I have read of Hurricane pilots, they all seem to mention about what a steady gun platform the hurricane was. In flight tests the Hurricane MkI proved far superior in handling to the 109E with the 109 owning the raw performance numbers of climb,dive and level speed. IMO the Huricanes traits were almost perfect for the summer of 1940 when fighting a defensive action against a large opposing bombing force._

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## Reluctant Poster (Oct 21, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> Cost price, easier to learn how to fly, and of course land, availability as opposed to Supermarine still struggling to manufacture a complex aircraft. The plane needed to be made simpler to produce, plus the mods to make it combat worthy. I think you'll find that when Beaverbrook took over the Castle Bromwich factory he sorted it out. The IIa/b was meant to do about 385/387 mph, it did 30 mph less. The Ia started off at 365/7 mph and ended up 10 mph less. It wasn't until 1942 that Spitfire exceeded Hurricane production. To give you a clue of the difference in performance between a Hurricane and Spitfire, take the Sea Hurricane IIc (Merlin XX) of 1942 which did 342 mph and the Seafire IIc (Merlin 46) of 1942 which did 342 mph when both equipped with four 20 mm cannon. The difference between them was that the Sea Hurricane didn't have catapult spools, so what's that, 7 to 12 mph loss in speed depending on height? You'll probably find that the Hurricane I had a better roll rate and turning circle to the Spitfire I, although dive speed with fabric covered wings, about 100 mph less, reducing to 60 mph with metal wings. From what I've read about the BoB, combat resulted in a lot of Spitfires with bent wings so clearly a problem there. Also the twin banks of Brownings were more effective than the spread out layout of the Spitfire Ia/IIa/Va guns which had a shotgun effect.To me, it makes sense for the Air Ministry to put the Merlin XX into the Hurricane II when it did until all the Spitfire's deficiencies were sorted out. So the Hurricane II is 10 mph slower, big deal.


" I think you'll find that when Beaverbrook took over the Castle Bromwich factory he sorted it out. "
Beaverbrook didn't sort anything out, he turned production over to Supermarine and their parent company Vickers who did the sorting.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Oct 21, 2018)

Reluctant Poster said:


> " I think you'll find that when Beaverbrook took over the Castle Bromwich factory he sorted it out. "
> Beaverbrook didn't sort anything out, he turned production over to Supermarine and their parent company Vickers who did the sorting.


Beaverbrook had much more effect in Southampton where he insisted on dispersing production, it needs a politician with clout to do that not a businessman. Supermarine/Vickers problems with the Spitfire were not limited to the aircraft but the location of the factory on the south coast and those nasty Germans bombing and killing employees.


----------



## GregP (Oct 21, 2018)

The Bf 109F didn't have weak wings and didn't have an issue with wings breaking EVER as long as they were undamaged by combat hits. The attach points were always a weak point because only 3 attach points were used. Damage to one attach point COULD cause loss of a wing.

The Bf 109F eliminated the bracing strut for the horizontal tail, and a couple broke off in flight early and caused some concern in the fighter community before Messerschmitt reinforced the horizontal stab and put in a production line stab modification to handle the extra stress. The Bf 109 was always a decent roller at low to medium speeds (180 mph - 280 mph) and got to be a very slow roller after that due to increasing stick forces required for roll. Above 320 mph the average pilot could only get about half-deflection and above 400 mph the stick, in roll AND pitch, seemed frozen in concrete.

The rudder lacked trim in all variants, and made for tired right legs in the Bf 109 pilot community after a mission. The cockpit was narrow and there was no good way to get decent leverage on the stick sideways. Hence, Bf 109 pilots usually had good arm muscles.

Hence, the Bf 109 pilot was always trying to lure Allied fighter pilots into a dogfight, where the Bf 109 had better control surface response. A dogfight ALWAYS slowed down from initial combat contact. The wise Allied pilot refused to be lured, stayed fast, and used HIS plane's strengths against the Bf 109.

The above flight characteristics, true for ALL variants of the Bf 109 are why the Bf 109K was not really a danger if it was going fast. if it was at 450 mph, it was going TO or FROM a fight, but it wasn't dogfighting. At 450 mph, it was at a speed where the airframe was VERY stable in a straight line and greatly reluctant to be coaxed from that line to any great degree. To dogfight, it needed to be slower, which usually meant in a steep climb. They tended to be firing at bombers going down through the formation and then maybe dogfight with fighters, if required, when going back up at slower speeds for another pounce. If not, they did the next pounce from the high perch.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
1 | Informative Informative:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 23, 2018)

While I understand your point, I think this may be a bit of an oversimplification. Certainly in Russia and in the Med, where I've been reading a lot of pilot accounts, Bf 109 pilots, and for that matter all German fighter pilots, basically _avoided_ dogfighting with most enemy fighters both by doctrine and individual learned tactics. I am not as well versed in the BoB but I gather it was a similar situation there as well.

I guess it depends what you mean by a "dogfight", but certainly a Bf 109 pilot would want to avoid getting into a turning fight with a Hurricane, a Tomahawk, Kittyhawk, Spitfire or Yak. Let alone something like a Gladiator or an I-153. The Bf 109 had lighter more responsive controls at lower speeds, and later models had the functional leading edge slats, combat flap settings and so on, but in most cases they could still not out-turn Allied fighters at least in the horizontal.

German fighter tactics in the early to mid war periods seemed to be based on very specific techniques, not precisely boom and zoom but a more nuanced hit and run technique, mainly attack from above or below using superior speed / energy, shoot and disengage usually by climbing and often in a climbing turn. Sometimes they also disengaged in a high speed dive. Rolling scissors was one technique mentioned by pilots in postwar interviews and wartime letters as a method the Germans used to evade being hit while disengaging or if they had insufficient E to extend quickly enough. They also clearly relied a lot on vertical turns, chandelles, immelmans, split S etc. It was also a favorite tactic of a Rotte to split and allow one pair to be pursued while the other pair swooped around to attack the 'chasers' (this is described in detail by some Finnish pilots as well).

When more powerful engines became available to Allied fighter pilots, including via overboosting techniques (mainly at low altitude), US, Commonwealth and Soviet pilots would sometimes catch Luftwaffe pilots in their climbing turns and hit them. This seemed to be particularly common with .50 caliber machine guns using 'spray and pray' and deflection shooting. This was a bit of a problem for the Luftwaffe and resulted in further refinement of tactics. The game for the Germans was to keep sufficient separation to avoid being hit, but to get close enough to line up shots without losing too much speed so as to become a target. For the Allies the challenge was usually to keep speed up while taking advantage of opportunities to attack, without exposing onesself to a bounce. Unfortunately for them they often scotched this by getting into defensive circles and so on. Spitfires and P-40s (and in Russia, P-39s) could disengage by diving, at least sometimes - or more specifically diving while rolling and turning. Hurricanes and most Russian fighters had limitations on their dive speed, as did P-38s.

As for the way the controls locked up and were generally so stiff on the Bf 109, I always wondered if this was in part a safety feature - could stiffer controls make it less likely to pull too many G in a high speed turn and thereby black out? I know this was a frequent problem for pilots of later model kittyhawks. Not good to be asleep while moving 400 mph in a combat zone...

S

Reactions: Informative Informative:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Oct 23, 2018)

Schweik said:


> As for the way the controls locked up and were generally so stiff on the Bf 109, I always wondered if this was in part a safety feature - could stiffer controls make it less likely to pull too many G in a high speed turn and thereby black out?


Do you think Willy in the mid 30s, while strengthening his 108 for more G's and more horsepower, had any idea his creation would ever see the power and speed it eventually did? I suspect he designed the structure and controls to get the most maneuverability and high AOA controllability at the speeds that he envisioned for it, which were in themselves a quantum leap forward at the time. Do you think he could foresee that horsepower would triple and speed gain over 100 mph from the prototype? And what do you think he knew about compressibility back then?
Cheers,
Wes

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## GregP (Oct 23, 2018)

Hi Schweik,

What I mean by "dogfight" is a turning or looping fight with ONE airplane or ONE pair of airplanes, for several complete turns or loops. If you were concentrating on the buy or guys in front of you, then you were ripe for ambush by almost anyone else. No fighter pilot minded a quarter or half-turn with someone trying for a shot, but to continue tracking that one bogey would leave you VERY open to ambush by the bogey's friends.

You can ask Biff, but I'm pretty sure he'd tell us that anyone who was atill turning with an enemy for 2 - 3 turns was doing it wrong, and probably was not long for the world.

The typical German tactic was to get above the bombers, dive down through the formation while shooting at specific bombers, and then zoom back up for another attack if they were not being pursued hotly. The escorts usually had difficulty following because they were probably cruising into combat at 285 - 350 mph while the diving Bf 109s were probably at 380 - 440 mph and accelerating as they were diving through the formation. So, the escorts would try to follow if possible and then roll when they were out of range so they could pull up a bit toward the direction the bombers were going ... because THAT is where the Bf 109s would be climbing back up to high perch. In other words, the escorts would follow the Bf 109s and catch them when they tried to go back up for another attack.

Those tactics tended to draw escorts away from the bomber stream, leaving them open to other Bf 109s. Allied escorts had to be disciplined NOT to follow too far away from the bombers they were escorting once the German tactic was understood. They stuck around for another round of snap shots at the attacking Bf 109s after the initial experiences were analyzed and new tactics were developed.

Probably everyone would dogfight one-on-one, but VERY few fights were one-on-one. Everybody had a wingman and a second pair of fighters in the flight at minimum. They usually patrolled, attacked, and defended in formations of four (two pair). Nothing new in there, huh?

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## michael rauls (Oct 23, 2018)

Wasn't sure where to put this post so decided to put it here as it seems to be a popular thread and therefore most would see it.
I just stumbled across the function that allowes you to see all the rattings you have ever given out and to my surprise and embarrassment it said I have given out 2 old ratings, 2 dumbs, and 2 bad spellings. To whomever was the unfortunate recipients of these ,my apologies. They were all fat finger goofs that I didn't catch. The 2 bad spelling rattings are particularly humorous as there is nobody who has any less buisness criticising peoples spelling than I.

Reactions: Funny Funny:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 24, 2018)

GregP said:


> Hi Schweik,
> to continue tracking that one bogey would leave you VERY open to ambush by the bogey's friends.



I think this kind of ambush was exactly what German tactics hinged upon. The Bf 109 and Fw 190 were both very good at keeping speed up and higher speed made it easier to come up behind an enemy fighter intent on chasing your mate, and the speed of the 'bait' bought them more time to stretch out the pursuit. The fact that the Germans seem to have had pretty good radio gear made this type of coordination between bait and bounce even more effective.



> You can ask Biff, but I'm pretty sure he'd tell us that anyone who was atill turning with an enemy for 2 - 3 turns was doing it wrong, and probably was not long for the world.



In theory this is absolutely true but in practice they often clearly did get into extended turning and looping fights as you put it, sometimes just a few or even a pair of fighters alone, (at least for a while) and sometimes in a big cluster of planes (what they called a hairball - a greatly feared situation) and sometimes in mixed 'luffberry' of aircraft chasing each other in circles. Anecdotally all of these things happened routinely.



> The typical German tactic was to get above the bombers, dive down through the formation while shooting at specific bombers, and then zoom back up for another attack if they were not being pursued hotly.



I suspect maybe this is part of the confusion - I think you are talking about the fighting between heavy Strategic bomber escorts at high altitude a bit later in the war, whereas I am referring to fighting in more of a Tactical context such as Russia or North Africa / Italy.



> Probably everyone would dogfight one-on-one, but VERY few fights were one-on-one. Everybody had a wingman and a second pair of fighters in the flight at minimum. They usually patrolled, attacked, and defended in formations of four (two pair). Nothing new in there, huh?



Again, in theory I agree though in practice, it seems like after an initial coordinated fight, combats did seem to routinely break out into individual and small group fights where wingmen were left behind and nobody even knew where the other aircraft were. Certainly the American and Commonwealth pilots described this type of situation repeatedly. There seemed to be a lot of confusion - but many one on one fights did take place regardless of doctrine.

From reading multiple accounts of combat between Allied and Axis aircraft it seems like strict formation flying was critical to surviving or executing the initial bounce, and the formations made a big difference on which side 'won' the initial contact (often resulting in a plane or three shot down by the losing side). Then there was a phase where the squadrons broke down into rotte and pairs of wingmen, and then if the fight lasted long enough even that broke down. It seemed very common for pilots to lose track of their wingmen by the end of say a 10 or 20 minute fight. And those were not as rare as you might expect.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Oct 24, 2018)

In the Battle of Britain and most conflict both sides were looking for a "bounce", an attack with tactical superiority, of height speed sun etc. This led to a staircase effect with each wanting to be higher than the other. Whenever some tactical advantage was had loses could be inflicted, where both sides were equal and a mass engagement took place loses were about even and indecisive. In a mass engagement the chances of shooting anything down was reduced because you were surrounded by so many enemy to keep an eye on and the chances of hitting someone on your own side increased as you could fly across fire aimed by some one you hadn't seen at someone you also hadn't seen.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Informative Informative:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Oct 24, 2018)

pbehn said:


> In the Battle of Britain and most conflict both sides were looking for a "bounce", an attack with tactical superiority, of height speed sun etc. This led to a staircase effect with each wanting to be higher than the other. Whenever some tactical advantage was had loses could be inflicted, where both sides were equal and a mass engagement took place loses were about even and indecisive. In a mass engagement the chances of shooting anything down was reduced because you were surrounded by so many enemy to keep an eye on and the chances of hitting someone on your own side increased as you could fly across fire aimed by some one you hadn't seen at someone you also hadn't seen.


This post is of course a massive generalisation. In "The Most Dangerous Enemy" S Bungay he went into some detail studying this in the BoB. The Defiant when used well in favourable conditions did reasonably well, in other conditions it got hammered. The Me110 could hold its own at times but when things were against it, it got hammered. Between the single engine/seat fighters Spitfire Hurricane and Bf109, the Spitfire and 109 were about equal statistically given the problems a SE fighter has over enemy territory, this was reversed when the RAF tried attacking Northern France. The deficiencies of the Hurricane, though quite small in many areas of performance overall produced a statistically noticeable superiority for the Spitfire over the Hurricane. Being slightly slower, less agile, and more likely to burn made the Hurricane overall less effective. It was the ease of production that meant for a short time it took plane numbers out of the game and the RAFs problem was solely producing enough good pilots to fly them.


----------



## parsifal (Oct 24, 2018)

Another suggestion I would make is availability of materials and the ease those alternative materials could be worked. In this case one size does not fit all situations.
The case in point that im thinking of are the Soviets. They suffered some huge technical obstacles that they solved in very unique ways. They were one of the biggest producers of smelted aluminium, but because they needed to divert most of that vital strategic resource to tank engine production (the T-34 used aluminium engine blocks) there was an overall shortage of this vital raw material for aircraft production. Added to that, the skilled labour needed to work this ,etal was in acute short supply in wartime Russia. Not so their skilled workers in woodworking. There were plenty of peasants able to work in wood that could not work in light alloys like Duralumin.
So, the Soviets accepted the performance penalties and reduced strength inherent in using wood, all in the interests of numbers. They could churn out wooden framed fighters like hot cakes, which they proceed to do
The elephant in the room with this is the IL-2 sturmovik. It was an aircraft described as being of “mixed construction”, which includes steel components to the subframe, some aluminium and some wooden construction. Exactly what proportions ive no idea.
So at some point, from all this is the salient point of “strategic availability”. Forget the cost per unit…..that is a minor component of cost in putting the aircraft into service anyway. Its how “produceable” the type is given the available raw materials and the skillset of the workforce to build that aircraft


----------



## Shortround6 (Oct 24, 2018)

I am not sure the idea of peasant woodworkers really holds up. The Lagg's were constructed in large part with some pretty heavy duty "wood" components. From Wiki so usual disclaimer. 
"Its airframe was partially made of wood _delta-veneer_ (a resin-wood multi-ply veneer composed of very thin, 0.35 to 0.55 mm, wood veneer and phenol formaldehyde resin, baked at high temperature and pressure) used for the *crucial parts*."

I bolded the crucial parts. I am sure there were a number of not so crucial parts that were made out of ordinary wood. 
Much like with the Mosquito the idea that WW II 350mph aircraft made of "wood" were closely related to the wooden aircraft of WW I needs to be thrown in the rubbish bin.


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Oct 24, 2018)

GregP said:


> The rudder lacked trim in all variants, and made for tired right legs in the Bf 109 pilot community after a mission. The cockpit was narrow and there was no good way to get decent leverage on the stick sideways. Hence, Bf 109 pilots usually had good arm muscles.
> .......
> The above flight characteristics, true for ALL variants of the Bf 109 are why the Bf 109K was not really a danger if it was going fast. if it was at 450 mph, it was going TO or FROM a fight, but it wasn't dogfighting. At 450 mph, it was at a speed where the airframe was VERY stable in a straight line and greatly reluctant to be coaxed from that line to any great degree. To dogfight, it needed to be slower, which usually meant in a steep climb. They tended to be firing at bombers going down through the formation and then maybe dogfight with fighters, if required, when going back up at slower speeds for another pounce. If not, they did the next pounce from the high perch.



Some versions of the Me 109K series appear to have a movable rudder tab along with a couple fixed ground adjustable tabs.
I suppose this would really be a balance tab rather than a trim tab?

Regarding dogfights all being at low speeds, there is also the possibility of vertical maneuvers which might take the speed up to 400 or 450 MPH pretty quickly..



Shortround6 said:


> I am not sure the idea of peasant woodworkers really holds up. The Lagg's were constructed in large part with some pretty heavy duty "wood" components. From Wiki so usual disclaimer.
> "Its airframe was partially made of wood _delta-veneer_ (a resin-wood multi-ply veneer composed of very thin, 0.35 to 0.55 mm, wood veneer and phenol formaldehyde resin, baked at high temperature and pressure) used for the *crucial parts*."
> 
> I bolded the crucial parts. I am sure there were a number of not so crucial parts that were made out of ordinary wood.
> Much like with the Mosquito the idea that WW II 350mph aircraft made of "wood" were closely related to the wooden aircraft of WW I needs to be thrown in the rubbish bin.



There is no question that the wooden aircraft were built of something more than just rough wooden planks, but sometimes the material did not quite live up to its intended design. There were plenty of quality problems which resulted in the Delta wood material delaminating or otherwise failing. Also, just because the material was high tech does not mean that the labour doing the manufacturing was up to the same standard.
There were plenty of quality control problems there as well.
Lastly, the wooden structures were not nearly as strong as comparable weight all-metal structures but their strength degraded with time so that by end of the war, early aircraft that had miraculously survived for that long may not have been safe to fly. At the time of manufacture, this was not a great concern since the life span of the aircraft in service was averaged no more than a few weeks.

- Ivan.


----------



## Schweik (Oct 24, 2018)

Shortround said:


> "Its airframe was partially made of wood _delta-veneer_ (a resin-wood multi-ply veneer composed of very thin, 0.35 to 0.55 mm, wood veneer and phenol formaldehyde resin, baked at high temperature and pressure) used for the *crucial parts*."



Phenol-formaldyhide resin is a standard component of a lot of types of plywood, which us usually made under pressure and heat. In fact what you are describing is just a pretty standard way of making plywood though they had their own methods.

https://www3.epa.gov/ttn/chief/ap42/ch10/final/c10s05.pdf



> When the veneers have been dried to their specified moisture content, they are conveyed to a
> layup operation, where a thermosetting resin is spread on the veneers. The two main types of resins are
> phenol-formaldehyde, which is used for softwood plywood and exterior grades of hardwood plywood, and
> urea-formaldehyde, which is used to glue interior grades of hardwood plywood. The resins are applied by
> ...



The Russians did have a very long history of using certain types of wood for sophisticated purposes going back centuries. Birch in particular. To this day they specialize in their own distinct types of birch plywood. One thing you have in Siberia is a lot of trees.

If you want to get into something slightly more exotic they were incorporating bakelite into the bodies of Yak-9s by late 1943...


----------



## parsifal (Oct 24, 2018)

This line of thinking doesn’t take into account the unique and dangerous situation the soviets faced. Far from the comfortable perception that the Soviets outgunned the german economy and was a modern economy with a good supply of skilled workers and ample factory space, virtually every aspect of these assumptions about Soviet industry in 1940-45 was nothing like the reality they faced.

Soviet war industries even before the war broke out were hard pressed to meet even peacetime demands. According to “_The Industrialization of Soviet Russia in the First Half Century_”; John P. Hardt & Carl Modig ((http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/698197.pdf), as an index of world out put and using 1913 as the reference point, soviet steel production fell from a baseline index of 100 in 1913, to 88.4 in 1940. Relative to its world position, despite the hype of the vaunted 5 year plans, soviet industrial self sufficiency in that period was sharply falling, and in 1913 it was insufficient. . I do not have figures for aluminium, but it would seem reasonable to assume a similar extrapolation

Factory spaces were similarly falling. Using 1913 as the baseline index, we now know that factory capacity had fallen to 89.4% of that figure in 1940. Sure, the 5 year plans had seen great steps forward, but only from the perspective that soviet industry in 1928 had come to a virtual standstill. It was recovering, but nowhere was soviet industry sufficient to meet wartime output requirements. The german invasion of 1941 made things even worse, reducing available factory spaces by more than 35% compared to the 1938 levels.

The numbers of skilled workers is a direct correlation to the available factory spaces. Hardt and Modig point this aspect out, and repeatedly mention the wartime reliance on unskilled labour. So the comfortable assumption that soviet industry was somehow akin to western methods just does not stand up to any level of even cursory examination

A later, more defence specific article “_The Soviet Defense Industry Complex in World War II*, _Mark Harrison (university Of Warwick); https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/mharrison/public/dfc1994postprint.pdf reinforces this position

At the core of the prewar defense industry lay the big assembly plants permanently specialized in producing finished tanks, guns, aircraft, and ammunition. But hundreds of smaller factories were also part-time or occasional producers of final defense products they were being drawn from civilian industry into the defense industry by the pace of prewar rearmament, which far exceeded the capacity of the big permanent defense producers. Surrounding the assembly plants lay the 
subcontracting system.
This paper points out that the specialised skilled workforce working in the defence sector amounted to 1.4 million people (in 1940), however at that time the total numbers working in defence related industries included a further 9 million unskilled workers and peasants 9it had increased to over 14 million in 1942). The proportions of workers to peasants is not shown, but neither is it critical. With only 1 in 6 workers with any skill, soviet aircraft were indeed relying on WWI style production methods and skills, and that meant using guys versed in building wagons and such in the production of aircraft frames.

Recruitment into the defence industry was a problem, but nowhere was it more pronounced than in the aircraft construction sector. According to Harrison, of the nearly 2 million workers employed in the sector all but 215000 were unskilled or semi skilled in 1941. Since more than 60% of workers were press ganged peasants, it becomes unassailable that the majority of the workforce were ex-peasants. Later in the war, this massive imbalance between skilled and unskilled was partially redressed, with Gosplan reporting 1 in 5 of the annual intake of 800000 workers being in the skilled category.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
4 | Like List reactions


----------



## fliger747 (Oct 25, 2018)

As I write this I happen to be in Siberia. In a local newspaper handout, the cover was a Babushka (old woman) dressed in factory overalls adjusting a heavy duty lathe. From her age I would guess a "Rosie the machinist". My Mom graduated from HS at 15 and was a "Rosie the spot welder" building cowlings for B-24 and B-17's. One can be trained to do a specific task, it's how the military functions and always has functioned in wartime with it's plethora of teenagers. In the South Pacific Captain Gatch, standing on South Dakota's bridge, surveying the scene below remarked to another officer about his mostly teen age crew. 

Yes, the plywood wonders didn't hold up well and weren't expected to. Even the lightweight alloys used in some Japanese aircraft have crystallized over the years and a considerable headache for museum preservation types. 

When one looks at the fine workmanship of USA made aircraft, it was apparent this was still a luxury operation. 

I am a few blocks from the amazing Opera House her sin Novosibirsk, the Russians do this sort of thing very well, The most amazing part about it? Finished in April 1945, as if they weren't otherwise busy?

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Dimlee (Oct 25, 2018)

parsifal said:


> Added to that, the skilled labour needed to work this ,etal was in acute short supply in wartime Russia. Not so their skilled workers in woodworking. There were plenty of peasants able to work in wood that could not work in light alloys like Duralumin



This is interesting idea. But I don't find the evidence. 
Skills were in deficit in USSR (not Russia) across all industries and problem of _"brak"_ (defect) was common and persistent everywhere. Aircraft of wooden/mixed construction were not better built then all metal ones. Yak-1s were "famous" for numerous defects as well as Il-2s. 
And no, peasants were not employed at aircraft factories. They remained in collective/state farms until being conscripted.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Oct 25, 2018)

Dimlee said:


> Skills were in deficit in USSR (not Russia) across all industries and problem of _"brak"_ (defect) was common and persistent everywhere.


There must have been tremendous competition for bodies between conscription and production.


----------



## swampyankee (Oct 25, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> There must have been tremendous competition for bodies between conscription and production.



That was a problem in other countries, too, and was a problem in several countries in WWI, including Germany, where conscription caused shortages of factory and agricultural labor, the latter contributing to poor harvests and food shortages, and France, where it adversely affected defense production.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Dimlee (Oct 25, 2018)

parsifal said:


> According to Harrison, of the nearly 2 million workers employed in the sector all but 215000 were unskilled or semi skilled in 1941. Since more than 60% of workers were press ganged peasants, it becomes unassailable that the majority of the workforce were ex-peasants. Later in the war, this massive imbalance between skilled and unskilled was partially redressed, with Gosplan reporting 1 in 5 of the annual intake of 800000 workers being in the skilled category.



"...and statistics".

According to Gennady Kostyrchenko who has assisted Mark Harrison:
Jan 01, 1941- total workforce in aviation industry 466400, including 174361 workers at aircraft and engine building factories.
Jan 01 1942 - total 610300.
Jan 01 1944 - total 640213 and 435385 workers overall (factories and elsewhere).
Jan 01 1945 - total n/a (presumably about 620000), 273100 workers at aircraft and engine building factories.
Above numbers are taken from the works of Kostyrchenko published in various years, for example:
http://www.airpages.ru/dc/ww2_1.shtml

"*60% of workers were press ganged peasants*" - sorry, but this is not about aviation industry certainly. And I doubt this is about USSR military industry in 1940s at all.


----------



## Dimlee (Oct 25, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> There must have been tremendous competition for bodies between conscription and production.



There have been this competition indeed, especially in 1941-1942 after territories/population loss and evacuation and redeployment of hundreds of factories. Still, some sectors of economy and some factories were better protected than others. A lot of internal politics, quarrels between military and civilian top brass, etc.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Kevin J (Oct 25, 2018)

Dimlee said:


> "...and statistics".
> 
> According to Gennady Kostyrchenko who has assisted Mark Harrison:
> Jan 01, 1941- total workforce in aviation industry 466400, including 174361 workers at aircraft and engine building factories.
> ...


I think you'll find there were a lot of early teens working maybe even younger. When someone's trying to exterminate you all, you're not going to need pressure to go and help wherever you can. Every family in the USSR lost someone in that war.


----------



## GregP (Oct 25, 2018)

Hi KevinJ,

About post #128, I show 350 Bf 109Bs produced by the end of 1937, 400 Bf 109C's by the end of 1938, 750 Bf 109Ds by the end of 1939, and 2,700 Bf 109Es by the end of 1940. I show the Bf 109F starting in 1939 and, by the end of 1940, I show 4,1280 Bf 109Fs produced by the end of 1941, with F production total being 5,460, all delivered by the end of 1942. The Bf 109G started in 1942 and, by war's end, 24,931 were delivered. There were 8 Bf 109Hs built along with 1,593 Bf 109Ks, 70 Bf 109Ts, and 1 Bf 109Z. Total was 36,263 from 20 years of searching. 

Wartime total estimates range from 26,210 (Wiki, sorry) to 29,155 (Baumbach), with the balance being built post-WWII, exclusive of the Ha-1112.

I have also seen the Bf 109E with totals as low as 3,497 and the Bf 109F with totals as low as 3,448, but it is generally agreed that the Bf 109F-1 and F-2 were in service in the first half of 1941 with either the DB 601N (1,159 hp) or the BD 601E (1,332 hp). Those numbers are horsepower, not ps or cv.

Whatever the source (except I don't use Kurfurst), the DB 601N was definitely in quantity service by mid-1941. By then, the DB 603 and 605 were looming over the DB 601 engine, and it's production run was to be very short after mid-1941, goinf mainly to DB 605s.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## Shortround6 (Oct 25, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> There is no question that the wooden aircraft were built of something more than just rough wooden planks, but sometimes the material did not quite live up to its intended design. There were plenty of quality problems which resulted in the Delta wood material delaminating or otherwise failing. Also, just because the material was high tech does not mean that the labour doing the manufacturing was up to the same standard.
> There were plenty of quality control problems there as well.
> Lastly, the wooden structures were not nearly as strong as comparable weight all-metal structures but their strength degraded with time so that by end of the war, early aircraft that had miraculously survived for that long may not have been safe to fly. At the time of manufacture, this was not a great concern since the life span of the aircraft in service was averaged no more than a few weeks.
> 
> - Ivan.






Schweik said:


> Phenol-formaldyhide resin is a standard component of a lot of types of plywood, which us usually made under pressure and heat. In fact what you are describing is just a pretty standard way of making plywood though they had their own methods.
> 
> The Russians did have a very long history of using certain types of wood for sophisticated purposes going back centuries. Birch in particular. To this day they specialize in their own distinct types of birch plywood. One thing you have in Siberia is a lot of trees.
> 
> If you want to get into something slightly more exotic they were incorporating bakelite into the bodies of Yak-9s by late 1943...




There is a lot of difference between house construction grade plywood and aircraft plywood, one being the thickness of the plies. The Russian _delta-veneer_ used very thin sheets of wood. Think 4-6 typing paper thin. Yes furniture factories used veneers that thin but factories using veneered finishes are not found in rural peasant villages even if said village has a saw mill. 

Some of those peasants could be very skilled wood carvers or skilled at fitting together small solid pieces of wood into small objects or pieces of furniture but that is not venner work or high production aircraft work. 

Phenol-formaldehyde is closely related to bakelite if not component of bakelite. 
By using very thin layers you wind up with a material in which the resin has soaked into the wood more (a higher percentage of the wood has been impregnated with resin) than when using thicker sheets. 

The Russians did have a lot of trouble with quality control, and yes, the _delta-veneer _did not stand up to weather as well as initial testing suggested (US was building some training planes using similar methods and had problems too). But part of that may be due to fit/finish quality control. If joints are not sealed well (or surface well sealed) moisture can get in an degrade either the glue or the wood. 

Some Russian fighters were carrying several scores of pounds of extra weight due to excess glue at the joints of some components. 

Point is that planes that had to fly at 350mph could NOT use the same wood working techniques as planes that fly at 100-150mph and suggestions that certain countries (or companies) selected wooden construction instead of metal in order to use untrained labor is highly suspect.


----------



## Schweik (Oct 25, 2018)

GregP said:


> Hi KevinJ,
> 
> . I show the Bf 109F starting in 1939 and, by the end of 1940, I show 4,1280 Bf 109Fs produced by the end of 1941, with F production total being 5,460, all delivered by the end of 1942. .



Wow! they were producing the 109F in 1939? How many did they produce in 1940? 1941 and 1940 seem to be mixed together in the sentance above...

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 25, 2018)

My point on the plywood is that even though yes I certainly understand that aircraft plywood is much more demanding in terms of skill and precision than household 3/8" sheet I can get at Home Depot, working with wood is still much less skill intensive (in the sense that you need fewer people with high skill) than running an aluminum smelter or crafting machines made of stressed skin sheets of duralimin, which is quite a tricky type of material requiring extreme care because it too can become corroded among other reasons.

While 'peasants' or common burghers of course lacked experience with aircraft there was a well developed ship- and boat-building industry in certain parts of what was in 1940 the Soviet Union - particularly in the Baltic states, certain towns like Veliky Novgorod, Tver and Pskov, and in Ukraine particularly down the Dnieper toward Crimea. In general around the Black Sea, Caspian Sea and Sea of Azov. This was done in a fairly sophisticated manner which went back centuries and relied on a significant level of what you might call automation (e.g. water-powered sawmills and so on) going back at least 500 years.

In fact in the Baltic region they still plant trees specially grown for ship building.







Certain traditional boat-building methods which go back several centuries in the Baltic region may be surprising in their sophistication

Sewn boat - Wikipedia

.... and there were well developed traditional industries for making both seafaring and riverine ships and boats for fishing and mercantile purposes right up to the 1920's.

Methods similar to plywood (cross hatching and gluing of very thin sheets of wood veneer or bark) were used not only for boats and ships but also for things like shields going back to Varangian times. Birch bark in particular was so cheap and common it was also famously used as a writing material quite late in Russia. This too required special processing.

Czarist Russia was incidentally one of the earliest pioneers in developing modern type plywood.

In boat building, very thin wood veneers are typically used. I happen to know if you are looking for high quality wood veneers today you get it from maritime supply companies. So I wouldn't entirely discount the traditional angle, though I am not sure if i would go so far as to say it was more suitable for unskilled labor, as others have pointed out they had at least as many production problems with wooden aircraft as with metal, but it's more closely linked to traditional_ skilled _labor, from peasants and townfolk who are distinct from serfs. Millions of former serfs in the Soviet Union really were still unskilled in 1940, if by no means all of them. But there was also another layer of people in the Soviet Union who were what you might call either 'traditionally skilled' or 'semi-skilled' and these are the types you could tap for management or supervisory jobs in an aircraft plant or special wood production factory. In other words, they were tapping into something with some depth in terms of woodworking, and not just crude carving or making doors or roof shingles type of thing.

Most of the production processes could be done by unskilled labor (trained to do specific jobs) while a certain number of people involved had to know what they were doing.

Working with wood also requires less power and of course, uses material like birch which is ubiquitous in Russia.

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Shortround6 (Oct 25, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Wow! they were producing the 109F in 1939? How many did they produce in 1940? 1941 and 1940 seem to be mixed together in the sentance above...


Design work _may_ have started in 1939. The V 21, V 22, V 23, and V 24 don't fly until the summer of 1940? An early production schedule called for 133 109F-1s to produced from July of 1940 until Dec 1940. But plans don't always work out. In any case some sources claim the first 109F-1 showed up in Stab/JG 51 by Oct 6th 1940 when Werner Molders flew it. He did fly it on a combat sortie until Oct 25th. By the beginning of Nov 1940 several other units had gotten 1 or more F-1s, first combat loss was Nov 11th. (Oblt. Greorg Claus) 

Production totals are bit confused, Mtt Reg is supposed to have built 157 aircraft in the period between 08/40 and 02/41 but that may include the V number machines and a few F-2s
WNF is supposed to have built 47 aircraft from 11/40 to 01/41. 
Further confusing things is that the F-2 was built in 5 factories in 7 production blocks and one of them started in Nov 1940. AGO built 378 F-2s from Nov 1940 through June of 1941. 
One doubts that the Nov/Dec production was very high.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 25, 2018)

That is interesting thank you, I still find it amazing that they were producing 109F's in 1940, such a sophisticated design for that early on. It really is remarkable.


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Oct 25, 2018)

fliger747 said:


> As I write this I happen to be in Siberia. In a local newspaper handout, the cover was a Babushka (old woman) dressed in factory overalls adjusting a heavy duty lathe. From her age I would guess a "Rosie the machinist". My Mom graduated from HS at 15 and was a "Rosie the spot welder" building cowlings for B-24 and B-17's. One can be trained to do a specific task, it's how the military functions and always has functioned in wartime with it's plethora of teenagers. In the South Pacific Captain Gatch, standing on South Dakota's bridge, surveying the scene below remarked to another officer about his mostly teen age crew.
> 
> Yes, the plywood wonders didn't hold up well and weren't expected to. Even the lightweight alloys used in some Japanese aircraft have crystallized over the years and a considerable headache for museum preservation types.
> 
> ...



Hello fliger747,
My Wife just got back from Moscow about a week ago. It was fun helping her go through her receipts to figure out what they corresponded to.
While she was over there she got kind of annoyed that when she wanted a bottle of water, what she bought was carbonated. I asked her to text me a photograph of the label which said: "чистая газированная вода".... Babushka just means "Grandmother" but I think they use it like we do here for referring to any old lady.

There is a big difference between an airframe that becomes structurally weak in a couple decades versus one that becomes unsafe in a couple years. The war may not be over in a couple years and one has to wonder how much the strength had deteriorated even during the time when the aeroplane was still considered "safe" to fly.

- Ivan.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## tomo pauk (Oct 25, 2018)

Schweik said:


> That is interesting thank you, I still find it amazing that they were producing 109F's in 1940, such a sophisticated design for that early on. It really is remarkable.



I'm not sure that Bf 109F was _that_ sophisticated for 1940.


----------



## Schweik (Oct 25, 2018)

Well I'd say it was miles ahead of most of the aircraft _available_ in 1940, maybe not those _designed_ in 1940.

Lets explore it a bit...

Bf 109F is arguably more sophisticated, if not actually _better_, than a Spitfire Mk I or II, (were any Mark V in combat units in 1940? I would have guessed 1941). 109F is certainly better than a Hurricane II, or a Hawk-75, or a Yak-1. Arguably better than a Ki-43 (especially the early models which still had some bugs). Let alone the older 1930's designs still in combat units like the Hurricane I, F2A Buffalo, Fairey Fulmar, Gloster Gladiator, P-11 / P-24, I-153, I-16, Cr 42, MC 200, G. 50, Ki -27, MS. 406, Bloch 152 and so on.

The leading edge slats, combat flap settings, excellent streamlining, fuel injected engine, multi speed supercharger, excellent radios, advanced gunsight, good instrumentation, pilot armor and self-sealing tanks, reliable (albeit small) cannon, electrically controlled constant-speed propeller (with a manual override), low drag thermostat regulated cooling system - all these factors make the 109F very sophisticated IMO for 1940.

I don't think P-40B / C got into combat until early 1941 (with RAF units) and that design, while still competitive, was certainly a step behind the 109F for sure, a closer match for the older 109E. F4F Wildcat may be close in some measures of sophistication, partly because it's a carrier aircraft, but is clearly a step behind as well (though again, still competitive). Same for the LaGG-3 which was maybe two steps behind, and the MiG 3 which was probably 3 steps behind. Spit V much closer to parity but surely it too was a bit ahead of it's time. And even the Spit V still has the gravity aspirated carb and doesn't have combat maneuver flaps and a few other features you see in the Franz.

Maybe the only plane I can think of which is comparable in sophistication in terms of design, other than arguably the Spitfire, would be the A6M Zero which was amazingly in production (just prototypes) in 1939, and the A6M2 in 1940. Dewoitine D.520 is in the ball park but I'd say a step or two behind.

The A6M2 may have been as effective and certainly innovative as a design, but it was not as sophisticated in terms of all of it's features since it lacked armor and in many cases, a radio, and didn't have as good of high altitude performance.


----------



## Schweik (Oct 25, 2018)

The problem for the 109F was that it had to hold the fort for a bit too long - pretty much all of 1941 and well into 1942 (109G being introduced in small numbers initially- in June 1942 in North Africa, and I think it first appeared in September 1942 in Russia). I would argue that the Bf 109F series was substantially ahead of all Allied designs in 1940, but Allied fighters were coming closer to parity by the end of 1941 and were challenging Luftwaffe supremacy by mid or late 1942.

Of course Franz were upgraded steadily to the F-4 standard which was certainly much improved over the F-1 or F-2. But by mid 1942 it is contending with Spit Vc, P-38s, merlin engined P-40F/L, souped up P-40K, and Yak-1B and the La-5... in the fall you also saw Yak-9s and La 5 FN coming online, Spit IX at least over England. The gap was surely closing.

Meanwhile the G series, or most of them anyway, were really more optimized for the high altitude fight over Northern Europe and destroying bombers. I know people would debate this but I'm not sure a 109G-6 is actually better against fighters, especially at low altitude, than a 109F-4. The Fw 190 owned the Spit V but that advantage disappeared with the Spit IX.


----------



## Dimlee (Oct 25, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> I think you'll find there were a lot of early teens working maybe even younger. When someone's trying to exterminate you all, you're not going to need pressure to go and help wherever you can. Every family in the USSR lost someone in that war.



Yes, teenagers under 18 y.o. represented 13% of the aviation industry labour in 1945. And women - about 40% average and over 50% on some factories.

No, not *every* family in the USSR lost someone in that war. Many and probably most (if we include cousins and uncles, etc.). Just not every one.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Dimlee (Oct 25, 2018)

fliger747 said:


> am a few blocks from the amazing Opera House her sin Novosibirsk, the Russians do this sort of thing very well, The most amazing part about it? Finished in April 1945, as if they weren't otherwise busy?



The building itself was completed before the war. Very interesting piece of architecture indeed.


----------



## Kevin J (Oct 25, 2018)

Dimlee said:


> Yes, teenagers under 18 y.o. represented 13% of the aviation industry labour in 1945. And women - about 40% average and over 50% on some factories.
> 
> No, not *every* family in the USSR lost someone in that war. Many and probably most (if we include cousins and uncles, etc.). Just not every one.


There is no word for cousin in the Russian language, your cousins are your brothers and sisters.


----------



## pbehn (Oct 25, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> There is no word for cousin in the Russian language, your cousins are your brothers and sisters.


That's Norfolk I believe.

Reactions: Funny Funny:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## Kevin J (Oct 25, 2018)

pbehn said:


> That's Norfolk I believe.


There too.


----------



## Shortround6 (Oct 25, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Well I'd say it was miles ahead of most of the aircraft _available_ in 1940, maybe not those _designed_ in 1940.
> 
> Lets explore it a bit...
> 
> ...



In regards to the bolded items, these items were hardly unique or advanced in 1940 or are not really applicable to the 109. Items in italics are also debatable. 
1. Many people go on and on about 109s leading edge slats, crediting them capabilities that would require a set of blue long johns, a big yellow s on the bottom the plane and a red cape. 
They helped maintain aileron control near the stall, that is it, end of story, period. 
2. Excellent streamlining? compared to a 109E yes, Compared to a Spitfire or P-40? not really, It shouldn't be that hard to get a small plane to go fast with a big engine. Getting bigger heavier planes to go just about as fast on the same power is superior streamlining. 
3. The fuel injection on the DB601 was a double edged sword. It helped in something's and hurt in others. Please note that not all carburetor equipped engines cut out under negative Gs.
4. The multi speed supercharger eliminated the "notch" in the power curve of a two speed supercharger, It didn't really add anything to to hight. Please note that at least two engines were used on the "F"s and the one used in 1940 wasn't that great at altitude. 1175PS at 16,100ft ? and that was for one minute and not 5 minutes (or longer) It's 30 minute rating probably wan't much different than the Merlin XII
5. Not sure the 109 had _better_ instruments than western planes although it had better than Russian planes, Italian and Japanese planes could go either way? 
6. American and British planes were getting armour and self-sealing tanks in 1940, fits changed. The I-16 had had pilot armor for years. 
7. Not sure why the German propeller makes it so advanced? By late 1940 the British had given up their fetish for two pitch props and were fitting constant speed. The Americans had been using constant speed for years and not that half way thing used on the 109E. You can have a controllable pitch prop but that does not mean it is constant speed. Having to constantly futz with the prop pitch while in combat was not a good idea.

as for this. "Spit V still has the gravity aspirated carb and doesn't have _*combat maneuver flaps*_ and a few other features you see in the Franz"

If the Spitfire V will out turn the _Franz _without using combat flaps then fitting them is a waste of time and money. Adding trick features just so you can say you have them is not good engineering. I would also note that *anytime* these aerodynamic aids are used they increase drag. Or in the case of leading edge slats means you are pulling an angle of attack near stall and creating a heck of alot of drag that way.


----------



## swampyankee (Oct 25, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Well I'd say it was miles ahead of most of the aircraft _available_ in 1940, maybe not those _designed_ in 1940.
> 
> Lets explore it a bit...
> 
> ...




Excellent streamlining?

No. The Bf109 had a zero-lift drag coefficient of higher than the majority single-engined, ww2 monoplane fighters. I wouldn't be surprised if it had, for example, significant separation around the canopy.


----------



## GregP (Oct 25, 2018)

I show the Bf 109F development beginning in 1939, with F-model bits on earlier Bf 109E airframes. There were plenty of Bf 109Fs flying in 1940, but they didn't start being deployed in combat until early 1941. The Bf 109 V21, V22, V23, and V24 were Bf 109F development models. The Bf 109F-0 was in production and ready in 1940, but was delayed when a few tail sections were lost in-flight.

They had to investigate that (with Bf 109 F-0 airframes and test pilots), and they had to propose, make, and verify a new, stronger tail repair and production fix before they could be released en masse for combat. Naturally, that took some time, even in wartime. The production"fix" turned into the Bf 109F-1, released for use in early 1941, and the F-0 units were refitted with the "fix" and were released a bit later. The early Bf 109Fs had the DB 601E engine.

I seem to recall the Bf 109 F-2 was the first variant with the DB 601N engine, and the F-0 and F-1 had the DB 601E ... mostly. I'm sure some "Ns" crept in there along the way. The Bf 109F-3 was a Bf 109F-2 with the DB 601E engine. The Bf 109 F-4 introduce the 20 mm cannon. The F-5 was a recon variant. The F-6 was an F-5 with better cameras.

Here's a link to the Bf 109 V-23, which was an "E" model with some "F" model features:

https://discourse-cdn-sjc1.com/infi...0b9126d9093812a99f44e1bbc17778e_1_690x284.jpg

So, yes, they were flying the F model in 1940. But no, it was released to units until early 1941.

The Bf 109 has a legitimate claim to "the war's best fighter," especially if you look at enemy aircraft shot down as a variable in the equation for that title, and it wasn't "too late" for the war, like models such as the P-51H which flew during the war, but not in combat (and so has no kills). Naturally, the Brits would say "Spitfire," with some serious justification. But even they won't likely claim it shot down as many enemies as the Bf 109 series did. Well, not if they want to be truthful, anyway. The F model was the ONLY Bf 109 variant after the initial A/B units that had a serious issue when initially built. But it WAS flying in mid 1940, and was being flown in modified prototype forms in 1939. When it was released, it "upped" the "best fighter" ante considerably, and took that title away from the Spitfires for awhile.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 25, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> In regards to the bolded items, these items were hardly unique or advanced in 1940 or are not really applicable to the 109. Items in italics are also debatable.
> 1. Many people go on and on about 109s leading edge slats, crediting them capabilities that would require a set of blue long johns, a big yellow s on the bottom the plane and a red cape.
> They helped maintain aileron control near the stall, that is it, end of story, period.



Frankly this seems like a rather weak, not to mention unnecessary rebuttal.

I never did claim that all or for that matter _any_ of the traits I listed were unique. Some of them were rare, all of them were pretty advanced for 1940. I think what made the Bf109F rather outstanding for as early as it was- was that it had all these traits. Many other aircraft had one or two, some had several, I can't think of any others that had all of them though.

But I don't really want to descend into the weeds over it. I stand by what I said.



> If the Spitfire V will out turn the _Franz _without using combat flaps then fitting them is a waste of time and money. Adding trick features just so you can say you have them is not good engineering. I would also note that *anytime* these aerodynamic aids are used they increase drag. Or in the case of leading edge slats means you are pulling an angle of attack near stall and creating a heck of alot of drag that way.



Here... I would say you aren't thinking from the point of view of a fighter pilot. The Ki-43 could almost certainly out-turn a Bf 109 before they added combat flap settings, and yet they did anyway. There were probably reasons why they kept the flaps the way they were on the Spit, with just 'full up' and 'full down' settings, but the fact is most fighters, including very maneuverable ones, either had combat flap settings or the equivalent.

Automatic maneuvering flaps like on the N1K2 were more rare of course.

The carb on the Spit definitely caused problems, and cost lives. Are you really arguing that it didn't?


As for the Bf 109 more generally, I think it's kind of meaningless to talk about a best aircraft of the war. It was certainly an excellent fighter design, and in many ways ahead of it's time, but the head-start that this design specifically and the German aircraft in general diminished rapidly from the 'tipping point' in the war. It's impressive that the Bf 109 was still "in the game" so to speak by say 1943, but I don't think you can really say that by then it's the best fighter in the world any more if it ever really was. It had a lot of excellent qualities but so did many of the other top fighters flying around by then.

S


----------



## pbehn (Oct 26, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> 1. Many people go on and on about 109s leading edge slats, crediting them capabilities that would require a set of blue long johns, a big yellow s on the bottom the plane and a red cape.
> They helped maintain aileron control near the stall, that is it, end of story, period.
> .


As I read "stuff" on the Bf109 wing, it wasn't a leap forward in technology to gain an advantage in aerodynamics and performance, it was an engineering compromise to maintain control at stall and be easy to produce. It was certainly better than the thick wings of the Hurricane in terms of speed, whether it was or wasn't better than the Spitfire is a debate that has been held many times. What is not debatable is that the Bf109 wing was easier to produce and also it couldn't contain weapons within it, which is what the engineering compromises and solutions were all about.

Reactions: Like Like:
3 | Like List reactions


----------



## Shortround6 (Oct 26, 2018)

The 109 could hold a weapon in the wing, just not a big one or more than one (two 7.9s maybe????) 
I just get tired of hearing about how advanced the 109 wing was because of the slats (which were licenced from Handley Page) while the British had stuck them on a crap load of aircraft and were in fact turning away from them in the very late 30s and early 40s. 






Claims that the British didn't know about them or didn't know how to fly planes equipped with them are nonsense. The above Westland was hardly the first British plane with slats.It certainly wasn't the last.


----------



## pbehn (Oct 26, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Claims that the British didn't know about them or didn't know how to fly planes equipped with them are nonsense. The above Westland was hardly the first British plane with slats.It certainly wasn't the last.


Hey, if you get rid of the top wing and all that wire and undercarriage stuff that baby could have been a winner, just like a Spitfire in a low light lol.


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Oct 26, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Hey, if you get rid of the top wing and all that wire and undercarriage stuff that baby could have been a winner, just like a Spitfire in a low light lol.


From the location of the exhaust stacks it looks like the engine is back there aways, which means there must be an extension drive shaft with the pilot sitting above and forward of it. Remind you of any other popular fighter, offhand? A definite improvement; no long spindly nose gear strut to shimmy or break.
Cheers,
Wes

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Funny Funny:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Oct 26, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> From the location of the exhaust stacks it looks like the engine is back there aways, which means there must be an extension drive shaft with the pilot sitting above and forward of it. Remind you of any other popular fighter, offhand? A definite improvement; no long spindly nose gear strut to shimmy or break.
> Cheers,
> Wes


Seems like Westland had things sorted, a pity they were swamped with all their other winning designs like the Lysander and Whirlwind.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Oct 26, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Seems like Westland had things sorted, a pity they were swamped with all their other winning designs like the Lysander and Whirlwind.


Well, you can't have winners without losers, can you?

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## GregP (Oct 26, 2018)

Claims that the Bf 109 wing could not hold decent weapons turn out to be incorrect. 

The Planes of Fame has one nearing completion of restoration, and we also have the drawings. The Hispano Ha.1112 is EXACTLY a Bf 109 G-2 from the firewall aft with the exception of the wing. The wing has exactly three modifications in it that are different from the standard Bf 109 G-2:

1) There are holes in the spar for two 20 mm Hispano-Suiza 404/408 cannons, mounts for same, with provision for ammunition.
2) It has an outer-wing fuel tank that cut into the spar, and the tank provided the outer spar strength.
3) The fin is airfoiled for the Hiapano-Suiza engine, which turns opposite from the Merlin and DB 600 series engines ... which accounts for all the horror tales of handling on takeoff from paved runways.

So, the wing could EASILY hold two 20 mm cannons because it DID.

Of course, the lower cowling is different, but that is forward of the firewall ...

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Shortround6 (Oct 26, 2018)

GregP said:


> Claims that the Bf 109 wing could not hold decent weapons turn out to be incorrect.
> 
> The Planes of Fame has one nearing completion of restoration, and we also have the drawings. The Hispano Ha.1112 is EXACTLY a Bf 109 G-2 from the firewall aft with the exception of the wing. The wing has exactly three modifications in it that are different from the standard Bf 109 G-2:
> 
> ...



Thank you, We have no idea why the Germans didn't use internal wing guns on the post E 109s. even though they would use under wing guns.
The Spanish were forced into fitting wing guns when their initial engine choice fell through and the choice of propeller supplier didn't make a prop suitable for a hub gun. (The Hispano powered Ha. 1111s used a DeHavilland prop and the Merlin powered used Rotol)


----------



## GrauGeist (Oct 26, 2018)

The 109 starting from the "E" onward was able to mount cannon in the wing, just outboard of the maingear bay.
The original design called for the MG FF.

This is Speyer's Bf109E-1 of 6./JG52 and if you look to the right of the maingear bay, you'll see a hole in the leading edge of the wing. This was for the cannon, although it appears to have been removed. The bulge seen on the underwing was for the rotary magazine.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## Shortround6 (Oct 27, 2018)

The Germans could fit a machine gun into the wings of the early Jumo 210 powered 109s. I don't know if they had room enough for two guns in each wing but perhaps with only 700hp (give or take) they didn't want the the weight of 6 guns total.

The Es with 20mm cannon in the wing tipped the magazine into what had been the machine gun bay on the earlier aircraft Or so it appears, actual photos/drawings are hard to come by. 
There may have also been an air bottle for the pneumatic charging system used on the guns in the rear of the old machine gun bay. 

The Fs and Gs with under wing guns held part/most of the ammo in a magazine/container inside the wing in the area of the old guns bay/s.

Just because late planes didn't have a hole through the spar/s (possibly because of production reasons?) doesn't mean one could not have been put in at the factory should it have been wanted. 

The Spanish built fighters are real can of worms. Yes they figured out how to put a Hispano cannon in each wing. On the other hand by the time they got the planes built and flying they were totally obsolete as fighters and the Spanish intended them for use as ground attack machines even while under construction. Spanish industry was in such bad shape in the late 40s and early 50s that many parts could not be produced in Spain and had to be purchased in some cases from Switzerland (landing gear forgings/casting) and in other cases they had to wait for the original german companies to be rebuilt to supply the needed parts (like wiring harnesses). 

I have no idea if the Spanish built versions were intended for the same ultimate load factors as the German planes or not or if the Spanish were willing to accept lower performance or changes in roll response that the Germans in WW II were not. Speculation on my part. 

The book "Hispano Suiza in Aeronautics" by Manual Lage makes no mention one way or the other but goes into more detail on the production problems and explains the switch to the Merlin engine.


----------



## Schweik (Oct 27, 2018)

The slats were needed because it was a small, thin 32' wing with only 173 square feet of wing area. The small thin wing is part of the streamlining - what allows it to fly so fast, accelerate so well, retain it's speed so well. As we all know the slats allowed it to turn reasonably well _in spite_ of the low drag wing, unlike many other small fast planes. If it had a 40' wing span it wouldn't have needed them (though it may have needed some aileron boost).

Again it's not that it was particularly unusual to have this or that specific feature, but to have the combination of so many was remarkable. I'm not at all surprised to see some clunky old prototype in England with leading edge slats, but I think properly _working_ leading edge slats on a fighter in 1940, along with a good highly functional radio, an engine / supercharger combo which performs well from Sea Level to 25,000 feet, constant speed prop, fuel injection, and the overall high dive speed _and_ excellent rate of climb, is pretty impressive.

I'm not some Luftwaffe fanboy pretending the Bf 109 was magical unbeatable 'uber-thing', nor have I ever stinted on praise of the Spitfire. I'm just saying the 109F, the Franz was unusually advanced for when it came out. I don't think the Spitfire needed leading edge slats because of the amazing wing it had, but many other fighters of the era could have used them. Certainly the ability to set the flaps at various settings including for combat was also a useful feature which was all but universal in fighters by the end of the war.

Of course many of the technologies in wide use in the 1940's were developed in the 1930's or even back in the 20's or during WW I (like superchargers or the alluminum alloy skin used by almost all warplanes put into production after 1940). The thing is, many of them were still struggling to realize their potential in the pre-war era, and all to often during the war itself. Some of the features of the Franz didn't work quite right in the Emil as we know, including specifically the leading edge slats.

What makes the Franz impressive to me (especially for as early as it was available) is that it had so many advanced features in the same very small, nicely streamlined package and in good working order. This gave the German pilots a lot of tools to use.

I think it's also worth pointing out how lightly armed the plane was. More proof that you didn't need huge guns or tons of guns to shoot down enemy planes, precision and flying characteristics mattered at least as much if not more. Thinking of the Ki-43 and many of the Russian and Italian fighters here.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## swampyankee (Oct 27, 2018)

Schweik said:


> The slats were needed because it was a small, thin 32' wing with only 173 square feet of wing area. The small thin wing is part of the streamlining - what allows it to fly so fast, accelerate so well, retain it's speed so well. As we all know the slats allowed it to turn reasonably well _in spite_ of the low drag wing, unlike many other small fast planes. If it had a 40' wing span it wouldn't have needed them (though it may have needed some aileron boost).
> 
> Again it's not that it was particularly unusual to have this or that specific feature, but to have the combination of so many was remarkable. I'm not at all surprised to see some clunky old prototype in England with leading edge slats, but I think properly _working_ leading edge slats on a fighter in 1940, along with a good highly functional radio, an engine / supercharger combo which performs well from Sea Level to 25,000 feet, constant speed prop, fuel injection, and the overall high dive speed _and_ excellent rate of climb, is pretty impressive.
> 
> ...



Oh, I won't argue that the Bf109 wasn't a good fighter --- possibly the best of its generation, which was the same generation as the Hurricane -- but automatic leading edge slats were not only far from unique to the Bf109, but the fact that no other fighter designer found them necessary may be indicative of an initial poor wing design, with the outer portion of the wing stalling before the root. Automatic LE slats have been used, and removed, from other fighters, with one example being the Saber. 

Automatic LE slats were actually used on quite a few production aircraft before WW2, not just "some clunky old prototype." The thing is that slats improve lift coefficient by increasing the angle of attack at which the wing stalls (so do leading edge flaps), but this frequently makes visibility on landing more problematic, especially with the relatively long nose of fighter aircraft. It also means that the high lift isn't necessarily available on landing, when one tends to want the main gear to take landing loads, not the tail wheel.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## tomo pauk (Oct 27, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> ...
> 
> The Spanish built fighters are real can of worms. Yes they figured out how to put a Hispano cannon in each wing. On the other hand by the time they got the planes built and flying they were totally obsolete as fighters and the Spanish intended them for use as ground attack machines even while under construction. Spanish industry was in such bad shape in the late 40s and early 50s that many parts could not be produced in Spain and had to be purchased in some cases from Switzerland (landing gear forgings/casting) and in other cases they had to wait for the original german companies to be rebuilt to supply the needed parts (like wiring harnesses).
> 
> ...



Spanish did two things in order to fit the big Hispano cannon and still retain stenght of the wing. They introduced a short, auxilary spar, located between the main spar and the leading edge, and made a hole in the main spar. Greg posted the pic many months ago: link.

But then, a Bf 109 with MG FFM with 90 rd drum in the wings, or, even better, with belt-fed MG FFM, would've gave a good service IMO.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 27, 2018)

As far as the slats go, I'm thinking more of their value for combat maneuvering than for landing approach. The Bf 109 was a high speed plane, relied on speed in air to air combat, but sometimes the speed wasn't enough. When they are in their rolling scissors or forced to turn fight, the slats could make the difference between survival and doom. The same could have helped with many other aircraft with a higher wing loading.


----------



## swampyankee (Oct 27, 2018)

Schweik said:


> As far as the slats go, I'm thinking more of their value for combat maneuvering than for landing approach. The Bf 109 was a high speed plane, relied on speed in air to air combat, but sometimes the speed wasn't enough. When they are in their rolling scissors or forced to turn fight, the slats could make the difference between survival and doom. The same could have helped with many other aircraft with a higher wing loading.




It may not have been wing loading, _per se_, but unacceptable departure characteristics without slats.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Shortround6 (Oct 27, 2018)

It is this instance that the slats helped maneuverability (helped decrease turn radius) that is what I find in error. 











the slats do nothing, sip, bupkus, nada, zero until the angle of attack exceeds about 13 degrees and if your wing is inclined 13 degrees or more from the direction of travel you are generating a huge amount of drag. 

And the 109 fans seem to confuse effects of full span slats (as used on the Fi 156, the Westland Lysander and others) with partial span slats. The slats on the 109 affected around 33-40% of the wing *area *even if they covered a bit more span*. *Sorry, a 10-20% increase in lift (or even 33%) over 40% of your wing doesn't really help if the rest of the wing has stalled (providing no lift) 
What they did do was give warning of an approaching stall, which helped the pilot fly closer to the edge, and if one or both wings stalled they helped maintain aileron control so the pilot was better able to keep the plane from flicking into a spin. Many green or inexperienced pilots never came close to reaching the limits of the aircraft in a turn do to both fear of stalling/spinning and lack of experience in high G maneuvers. Try telling the difference between 4 1/2 Gs and 5 1/2 Gs by the seat of your pants or how close to blacking out you are.


----------



## Shortround6 (Oct 27, 2018)

I would also note that the 109 was *designed *as a 2000-2200kg aircraft with a 700hp (or under) engine. Wing loading would have 27lb/sq/ft or under in initial design. 

Claiming it was advanced because they shoehorned a much bigger engine into it rather than design a new airplane may be giving it too much credit.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
3 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Oct 27, 2018)

I don't think you can discount the need for these slats for landing, I would think that's where they were needed most of all.


----------



## Schweik (Oct 27, 2018)

Don't the slats effectively lower the stall speed?


----------



## pbehn (Oct 27, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Don't the slats effectively lower the stall speed?


Yes.


----------



## Schweik (Oct 27, 2018)

pbehn said:


> I don't think you can discount the need for these slats for landing, I would think that's where they were needed most of all.



I'm not discounting that need by any means, but I know they were very helpful in combat. Landing characteristics were more critical for less experienced and less well trained pilots. In 1940 German pilot quality was quite good, on average. I think slats helped with landing but due to the other characteristics of the Bf 109, were more necessary for combat. Not every combat of course. But perhaps analogous to pilot armor or even a pilot parachute. It was a very important feature for emergency situations, such as are routine in fighter combat.

Landing characteristics, even marginally more difficult ones, were certainly important though. Without a doubt they led to huge numbers of accidents, lost aircraft and pilot deaths on the Allied side mainly due to pilots with insufficient aircraft familiarization training on the type of plane they were flying.


----------



## Schweik (Oct 27, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> I would also note that the 109 was *designed *as a 2000-2200kg aircraft with a 700hp (or under) engine. Wing loading would have 27lb/sq/ft or under in initial design.
> 
> Claiming it was advanced because they shoehorned a much bigger engine into it rather than design a new airplane may be giving it too much credit.



If the design didn't allow for dramatic improvements to things like engines, increased fuel capacity, armor, more weapons and various other factors, it wasn't such a good design. That is one of the main traits that defined a good aircraft in WW2.

In fact per the thread title, it's probably one of the less obvious but most important traits of a good warplane - the capacity for improvement and modification, as a subset of overall versatility. That is the difference between a lot of the other 1930's designs like the Curtiss Hawk, I-16, MS. 406 and the Hurricane: they were pretty good in their day, and remained formidable for a few years, but ultimately didn't have room for the dramatic improvements needed for the rapidly accelerating pace of aircraft design and the swiftly soaring requirements for an expanded flight envelope for the ever more dangerous combat environment of WW2.


----------



## Schweik (Oct 27, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> It is this instance that the slats helped maneuverability (helped decrease turn radius) that is what I find in error.



I know 'maneuverability' is a slippery term but it does mean more than just turn radius..



> What they did do was give warning of an approaching stall, which helped the pilot fly closer to the edge, and if one or both wings stalled they helped maintain aileron control so the pilot was better able to keep the plane from flicking into a spin. Many green or inexperienced pilots never came close to reaching the limits of the aircraft in a turn do to both fear of stalling/spinning and lack of experience in high G maneuvers. Try telling the difference between 4 1/2 Gs and 5 1/2 Gs by the seat of your pants or how close to blacking out you are.



Riding a stall is critical in a low-speed dogfight, especially when using common Luftwaffe tactics like a rolling scissors. Low speed dogfight was of course not the optimal situation for them but being able to ride the stall was very helpful. Also when in a vertical climb (such as used when shooting an enemy aircraft from below) it helped manage the stall at the peak of the climb and allow the pilot to control his descent without going into a spin.

Normally, in a low speed turning fight they would not be pulling a lot of G's.

S


----------



## pbehn (Oct 27, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I'm not discounting that need by any means, but I know they were very helpful in combat. Landing characteristics were more critical for less experienced and less well trained pilots. In 1940 German pilot quality was quite good, on average. I think slats helped with landing but due to the other characteristics of the Bf 109, were more necessary for combat. Not every combat of course. But perhaps analogous to pilot armor or even a pilot parachute. It was a very important feature for emergency situations, such as are routine in fighter combat.
> 
> Landing characteristics, even marginally more difficult ones, were certainly important though. Without a doubt they led to huge numbers of accidents, lost aircraft and pilot deaths on the Allied side mainly due to pilots with insufficient aircraft familiarization training on the type of plane they were flying.


Without the LE slats the landing speed is increased because the stall speed is increased.


----------



## Schweik (Oct 27, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Without the LE slats the landing speed is increased because the stall speed is increased.



Yes I'm well aware - but given that the slats didn't work well or always in the (similar and sometimes heavier) 109E, I assume the higher landing speed was within the capabilities of most of the pilots & on most of the fields they were using. Is that an incorrect assmuption?


----------



## Dimlee (Oct 27, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> There is no word for cousin in the Russian language, your cousins are your brothers and sisters.



Well...
I'm Russian and now I have to learn something new about my mother tongue. Should I go back to grade school...

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Funny Funny:
3 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Oct 27, 2018)

Dimlee said:


> Well...
> I'm Russian and now I have to learn something new about my mother tongue. Should I go back to grade school...


There was speculation that the word "cousin" would disappear from Chinese due to the single child policy.


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Oct 27, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> The thing is that slats improve lift coefficient by increasing the angle of attack at which the wing stalls


If they're full span automatic slats. In a BF-109 style installation, all they do is make sure the wing center section stalls before the tips, a function served in other aircraft (perhaps less efficiently) by wing twist.
Cheers,
Wes


----------



## pbehn (Oct 27, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Yes I'm well aware - but given that the slats didn't work well or always in the (similar and sometimes heavier) 109E, I assume the higher landing speed was within the capabilities of most of the pilots & on most of the fields they were using. Is that an incorrect assmuption?


In my opinion, especially with the Bf109 the lower the landing speed the better things are. The 109 was best landed in a three point landing, so slower the better as I see it


----------



## swampyankee (Oct 27, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> It is this instance that the slats helped maneuverability (helped decrease turn radius) that is what I find in error.
> 
> View attachment 514597
> 
> ...



The slats kept the ailerons operational by forcing the root section to stall before the tips; this can be (and usually is) done by twist or camber changes, _e.g._, leading edge droop. In general, one wants to have the roots stall first, but for a tapered wing without twist, the tips tend to be both more highly loaded and will stall before the root, and that stall will make the ailerons less effective, or even completely ineffective. I've not been able to find the polars of the airfoil used by the Bf109 (
NACA 2R1 14.2 tapering to NACA 2R1 11.35; see The Incomplete Guide to Airfoil Usage). As an aside, airfoils and wings continue to produce lift after stall. They just tend to do so while creating very large amounts of drag and also tend to have the amount of lift fall off as angle of attack increases. 

.


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Oct 27, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Normally, in a low speed turning fight they would not be pulling a lot of G's.


They'd be pulling as much G as their power available could sustain. That's how you pull lead on your opponent. All this talk of wing loading and wing area and CsubL and slats misses the point. It's all a function of the effective thrust of your powerplant AT A NEAR STALL AOA compared to the L/D of your entire airframe AT THAT AOA that determines your performance in a turning fight.
The elliptical (Spitfire) wing approaches the ideal in this respect as its L/D is better at high AOA than just about any other wing shape. Add to that a slender fuselage with a sexy curvaceous bottom and its parasite drag rise with high AOA is less than most of the competition.
A plane of the same weight with a high aspect ratio straight taper wing (think 109) and comparable airfoil is going to need more effective thrust to match it in a turning fight, if both pilots are equally brave about nibbling at the edge of a stall, and both have comparable G tolerance. Now if one aircraft has automatic slats, that might effect the bravery balance.
Cheers.
Wes
PS: Note, I did not say engine HP. There's a lot more that goes into effective thrust, such as propeller efficiency, P factor effects, thrust line displacement with AOA, intake ram air reduction with AOA, etc.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 27, 2018)

My point is that if you are going say 150 mph and turning tightly (such as while pulling lead), you are more likely to stall (and probably spin) before you build up very high G loads. I'm not a pilot and didn't fight in WW2. All I can do to learn about this experience is read a lot of first hand combat accounts, as I'm sure you have, and almost all of the reports of blacking out from high G load are from when turning tightly at_ high speed_, such as while diving.

And I'm sorry, I don't agree. Wing loading _does _affect your turn rate, regardless.



Pben said:


> In my opinion, especially with the Bf109 the lower the landing speed the better things are. The 109 was best landed in a three point landing, so slower the better as I see it



No doubt, better - but necessary? Like I said, I think they were landing the 109E's ok. I'm not even sure what we are debating at this point so I'll reiterate my claim - the slats helped in combat and I think that mattered significantly. I don't think they were just for landing in other words.

S


----------



## pbehn (Oct 27, 2018)

Schweik said:


> No doubt, better - but necessary? Like I said, I think they were landing the 109E's ok. I'm not even sure what we are debating at this point so I'll reiterate my claim - the slats helped in combat and I think that mattered significantly. I don't think they were just for landing in other words.
> 
> S


In the interwar years there was a debate about what was the best way forward with monoplane design. Thin wings were known to stall easily but were obviously lower drag than thicker wings. The official line in UK was that thicker wings were best and Hawkers followed this, Mitchell at Supermarine had other ideas he produced a thin elliptical wing with washout. Willy produced his design which was a thin straight wing with slats and no washout. from wiki …..A fighter was designed primarily for high-speed flight. A smaller wing area was optimal for achieving high speed, but low-speed flight would suffer, as the smaller wing would require more airflow to generate enough lift to maintain flight. To compensate for this, the Bf 109 included advanced high-lift devices on the wings, including automatically-opening leading edge slats, and fairly large camber-changing flaps on the trailing edge. The slats increased the lift of the wing considerably when deployed, greatly improving the horizontal maneuverability of the aircraft, as several Luftwaffe veterans, such as Erwin Leykauf, attest.[24][25] Messerschmitt also included ailerons that "drooped" when the flaps were lowered (F series and later the lower radiator flap operated as part of the flap system), thereby increasing the effective flap area . When deployed, these devices effectively increased the wings' coefficient of lift. ………….. The 109 gained weight considerably during its life, it needed lift devices to cope with its increased weight. The 109 was the frontline fighter of the LW from the mid 1930s, the tactics and maneuvers that they used as routine were developed in the 109.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## GregP (Oct 27, 2018)

Regarding post #181 about the Bf 109 slats, they do NOT allow the Bf 109 to turn more tightly. 

The slats are almost exactly 1/3 of the wing span distance, and they are located right in front of the ailerons. Their function is to keep the airflow over alierons attached and effective through the stall. Sure, the very small increase in lift will help a little in a turn, but hardly at all. On the other hand, you can have the main wing full-stalled in a Bf 109 and throw the stick back and forth, and the wings will follow the stick ... unless you keep pulling back harder, then everything stalls. 

It makes firing from a Bf 109 at the ragged edge of stall a pretty good bet for some hits, since stalling the main wings does NOT mean the stab, elevator, and rudder are stalled.

Go measure the wingspan and then go measure the slats. It will become immediately obvious to the causal aerodynamicist. The wing flaps, however, could easily and quickly lowered as maneuvering flaps. All you had to do was to grab both of the adjuster-wheels (flap and elevator trim) and turn them as a unit, you got partial flaps and a complete elevator retrim, all in one easy to use package. Ingenious.

Would it bleed speed off using flaps? Yes. But it could also get you into or out of position to be fired upon or to fire on someone in an enemy aircraft.

If only they would have tweaked it to be a real 400+ mph fighter! Instead, it was a medium-speed fighter with the ability to go fast in relatively straight lines when the need arose.

Reactions: Bacon Bacon:
1 | Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
2 | Winner Winner:
1 | Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Shortround6 (Oct 27, 2018)

Schweik said:


> If the design didn't allow for dramatic improvements to things like engines, increased fuel capacity, armor, more weapons and various other factors, it wasn't such a good design. That is one of the main traits that defined a good aircraft in WW2.
> 
> In fact per the thread title, it's probably one of the less obvious but most important traits of a good warplane - the capacity for improvement and modification, as a subset of overall versatility. That is the difference between a lot of the other 1930's designs like the* Curtiss Hawk, I-16, MS. 406 and the Hurricane:* they were pretty good in their day, and remained formidable for a few years, but ultimately didn't have room for the dramatic improvements needed for the rapidly accelerating pace of aircraft design and the swiftly soaring requirements for an expanded flight envelope for the ever more dangerous combat environment of WW2.



The Curtiss Hawk was better than the other other three at being developed. It also shows a bit of the difference that just being a bit bigger can bring. 
The I-16 was the first monoplane fighter with retracting landing gear and there was only so far it was going to go. It's first flight was nearly two years before the 109 so they are not really contemporaries. Installed power more than doubled over it's life but adding another 10-20% more power to it in 1941/42 wouldn't have changed much. 

The Hawk on the other hand did pretty good for a plane that flew over 6 months before the 109 (in May 1935), unfortunately it was saddled with a prototype engine that went nowhere and Curtiss began a mad scramble to get a good engine for it. It started life at a bit over 4800lbs but that might not include guns and the P-40Qs hit 9000lbs so it certainly exhibited quite a bit of stretch. It was up against newer planes in way the 109 wasn't. The US aircraft industry came up with more and better replacements than the German aircraft industry could. In large part just due to the shear size of the US industry. But that meant the US could stop production of the Hawk in 1944 because it had better planes in large scale production. Had the US been facing a similar situation to Germany perhaps more work would have gone into fitting better engines in the last year or two of the Hawks life. 
The 109 lasted as long as it did for several reasons, one was that the intended replacements didn't work. See 209-II and 309. Another was that in 1943/44 Germany could not afford the loss in production that switching to a new fighter type would entail. Another was the type of combat had changed. While the US (and the British) were finding short ranged fighters a bit of an embarrassment in the type of missions being flown in late 1943 and 44 a short ranged/short endurance fighter was still very useful to the Germans as the allies were delivering targets (bombers) practically to the German fighter fields doorsteps.
The 109 was still a dangerous opponent to the allies and useful to the luftwaffe but it was no longer in front ranks of fighter design. 

A bigger plane allows changes to be made in an easier manner. Adding 100lb of pilot armor to a 4400hp plane means a bigger impact to performance that adding 100lbs of pilot armour to a 5500lb plane for instance. double in the weight of guns and ammo on plane with a 230sq ft wing is easier than doubling the weight of armament on plane with with 170-185sq ft of wing. 


A number of planes used slats and a number of planes used fixed slots which perform essentially the same function to maintain aileron control at near stalling speeds. 





notice fixed slot behind wing leading edge in line with the front of the blue circle of the national insignia. Lockheed 14s/Hudson's/Venturas and even some B-24s used such slots. 
as did the Douglas SBD





Some STOL aircraft use a full span fixed slot. Please note that neither the slots or slats _increase _wing lift on their own. They allow the wing to generate more lift by increasing the angle of attack without stalling. If the wing never exceeds an angle of attack of around 12-14 degrees (depending on airfoil and other things) a slot or slat does nothing except add a bit of weight and/or drag. 

The use of slats/slots was a very common practice in the late 30s and early 40s but it was hardly an example of advanced thinking or design.

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Oct 27, 2018)

Can I point out that while eking out the last drops of the 109s capabilities, Messerschmidt did have alongside it the Me262 which from June 1944 was the DBs of aviation at the time.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Oct 27, 2018)

Schweik said:


> My point is that if you are going say 150 mph and turning tightly (such as while pulling lead), you are more likely to stall (and probably spin) before you build up very high G loads.


If you're down to 150 and still haven't pulled enough lead to get a shot, it's time to bug out. A turning fight is not a steady state affair. Usually entered at a relatively high speed, it is generally a matter of diminishing airspeed and altitude as it progresses. If you haven't gained any nose to tail separation by two turns, it's time to go.


Schweik said:


> And I'm sorry, I don't agree. Wing loading _does _affect your turn rate, regardless.


Of course it does. It affects both the Lift side and the Drag side of your high AOA turning airplane, and consequently your turning radius. It's just not the sole determining factor some folks like to imply.
Cheers,
Wes

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Kevin J (Oct 27, 2018)

pbehn said:


> As I read "stuff" on the Bf109 wing, it wasn't a leap forward in technology to gain an advantage in aerodynamics and performance, it was an engineering compromise to maintain control at stall and be easy to produce. It was certainly better than the thick wings of the Hurricane in terms of speed, whether it was or wasn't better than the Spitfire is a debate that has been held many times. What is not debatable is that the Bf109 wing was easier to produce and also it couldn't contain weapons within it, which is what the engineering compromises and solutions were all about.





Dimlee said:


> Well...
> I'm Russian and now I have to learn something new about my mother tongue. Should I go back to grade school...


Did I get that wrong or was it that my woman was Chuvasha?


----------



## pbehn (Oct 27, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> Did I get that wrong or was it that my woman was Chuvasha?


No idea what your point is but the translation of brother sister and cousin are not the same in Russian, and Bf109 wings were easier to produce by a country mile than the spitfires were.


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Oct 27, 2018)

pbehn said:


> and Bf109 wings were easier to produce by a country mile than the spitfires were.


And how! Just ask any Experimental Aircraft Association homebuilder who's tried to build a replica Spit. That ellipse is a fussbudget job to build.
Cheers,
Wes


----------



## GrauGeist (Oct 27, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> There is no word for cousin in the Russian language, your cousins are your brothers and sisters.


Interesting...

Even in Bulgarian, they have a word for cousin.
Actualy one for male cousin (Братовчед) and one for female cousin (Братовчедка).


----------



## Schweik (Oct 28, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> If you're down to 150 and still haven't pulled enough lead to get a shot, it's time to bug out. A turning fight is not a steady state affair. Usually entered at a relatively high speed, it is generally a matter of diminishing airspeed and altitude as it progresses. If you haven't gained any nose to tail separation by two turns, it's time to go.



Yes well, we aren't talking about F-18s here, getting down to 150 wasn't exactly uncommon in a WW2 dogfight, and you could only 'bug out' if your opponent(s) let you. Turning tail and running is the best way to line up an ideal target... for your enemy, or his wingman etc. 

Doctrine, like plans, rarely survive contact with the enemy, and while it may be ideal to go after two turns, it routinely was not an option, as described by dozens of pilots on all sides in many different combat Theaters in WW2.

The other characteristic of WW2 propeller driven aircraft generally speaking is that they don't accelerate like modern jets on afterburner either, especially if a running fight has already ended up with aircraft down on the deck. So achieving separation could be tricky, even when desired ... sometimes they had to keep fighting until either victory or until all aircraft involved were low enough on fuel to be willing to let each other go.



The point being (to circle back to where we started) a low speed dogfight of the type where the slats could come into play did not necessarily result in pulling high G loads, as Shortround implied.

S


----------



## Schweik (Oct 28, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> The Curtiss Hawk was better than the other other three at being developed. It also shows a bit of the difference that just being a bit bigger can bring.
> ...
> The Hawk on the other hand did pretty good for a plane that flew over 6 months before the 109 (in May 1935), unfortunately it was saddled with a prototype engine that went nowhere and Curtiss began a mad scramble to get a good engine for it. It started life at a bit over 4800lbs but that might not include guns and the P-40Qs hit 9000lbs so it certainly exhibited quite a bit of stretch..



I think it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that the P-36 and the P-40 were the same aircraft. Certainly they were _related_, but it's rather similar to saying the Blenheim, Beaufort and the Beaufighter are the same (despite similar dimensions and sharing many of the same jigs and so on, I would say they were at best cousins) or the LaGG -3 to the La 5 / La 7, and so on. Same lineage surely, but different aircraft.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Oct 28, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I think it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that the P-36 and the P-40 were the same aircraft.


Early P-40s were little more than Allison equipped P-36s. Brothers if not clones. Certainly closer than cousins.
Cheers,
Wes

Reactions: Agree Agree:
3 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 28, 2018)

You can call them 'brothers' or 'cousins' but they aren't the same aircraft, sorry. If there is one thing i know pretty well it's the P-40.


----------



## GrauGeist (Oct 28, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I think it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that the P-36 and the P-40 were the same aircraft. Certainly they were _related_, but it's rather similar to saying the Blenheim, Beaufort and the Beaufighter are the same (despite similar dimensions and sharing many of the same jigs and so on, I would say they were at best cousins) or the LaGG -3 to the La 5 / La 7, and so on. Same lineage surely, but different aircraft.


The P-40 was literally a P-36 with a V-12 mounted in it's nose. The XP-40 was the 10th P-36 off the production line that had it's radial removed and an Allison faired in.

In the case of the La-5, it was also literally a Lagg-3 with a Su-2's nose grafted on, complete with the Shvetsov ASh-82. Doing this also most likely saved Lavochkin's life, as he was not popular with Uncle Joe...

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Agree Agree:
3 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 28, 2018)

Still not the same plane, in either case. By a long shot.

In terms of the P-40 especially when you are talking about actual combat variants, not transitional experimental aircraft.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## GrauGeist (Oct 28, 2018)

Perhaps it's time to revisit your literature?

Curtiss refined the XP-40 but made no real changed to the P-36 airframe tooling. The difference in wingspan between the P-36 and the P-40 was literally fractions of an inch. There was no significant between the P-36 and the P-40 from the firewall back.

So what "long shot" are we talking about?

Of course, from the firewall forward, there will be considerable differences, as the Allison required additional sheet metal and plumbing. But aside from that, there was no discernible difference. And this was in Curtiss' favor as they didn't need to stop production and retool for a new aircraft.

Lavochkin did the exact same thing with his La-5.

What happened with the later variants doesn't apply, were talking direct transitions from one type to the next at it's inception.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## michael rauls (Oct 28, 2018)

I always thought the p40b and c were almost identical to p36 from the firewall back. I've sure read that a few times( yes I known that doesn't nescesarily make it true). They do sure look the same .


----------



## Schweik (Oct 28, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> Perhaps it's time to revisit your literature?
> 
> Curtiss refined the XP-40 but made no real changed to the P-36 airframe tooling. The difference in wingspan between the P-36 and the P-40 was literally fractions of an inch. There was no significant between the P-36 and the P-40 from the firewall back.
> 
> ...



There is just a lot more in going from a radial to an inline engine aircraft than simply slapping another engine on, it changes the CoG, handling, you have the new cooling systems with all that plumbing, and all the many incremental changes needed for a wartime aircraft of that later era like more fuel tanks, armor, gunsights, radios, more & bigger guns etc.

It's 3 feet longer, 1,000 lbs heavier, 40 mph faster- much higher wing loading (31 vs 24 lbs / sq ft) and there is a reason they gave it a different designation. The P-36 had reached the end of it's cycle, the P-40 was the reinvention of the line.

Same with the La 5 / 5 FN / 7 / 9 ... different beast altogether from the LaGG 3

Of course in both cases the engine was the most important change - and the one that made the most difference, but it wasn't the only one.


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Oct 28, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> I always thought the p40b and c were almost identical to p36 from the firewall back. I've sure read that a few times( yes I known that doesn't nescesarily make it true). They do sure look the same .


And the changes to come up with Schweik's "combat variants" were the same evolutionary things (armor, self sealing tanks, etc) that would have been applied to the P-36 if it had been selected for further development.
Cheers,
Wes

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 28, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> And the changes to come up with Schweik's "combat variants" were the same evolutionary things (armor, self sealing tanks, etc) that would have been applied to the P-36 if it had been selected for further development.
> Cheers,
> Wes



Which the P-36 couldn't handle because it was barely making 300 mph with what little it had. Hence the redesign and the new version.

Look, I'm Ok with any number of you claiming that the P-36 is the same aircraft as the P-40, for whatever reason, it's just divorced from reality. I know you have some of your own little cliques in here and your own particular opinions unique to this forum, but that doesn't necessarily make it so.


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Oct 28, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Which the P-36 couldn't handle because it was barely making 300 mph with what little it had.


IIRC, the P-36 was stuck with a particularly low powered radial engine, while other round engine aircraft of about the time of P-36 - P-40 conversion were getting higher powered radials installed.
Cheers,
Wes


----------



## pbehn (Oct 28, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> And how! Just ask any Experimental Aircraft Association homebuilder who's tried to build a replica Spit. That ellipse is a fussbudget job to build.
> Cheers,
> Wes


I believe in man hours the Spitfire wing took twice as many as the 109. Numbers matter, until the new factory opened in 1940 the Spitfire was losing the numbers game.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Shortround6 (Oct 28, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Which the P-36 couldn't handle because it was barely making 300 mph with what little it had. Hence the redesign and the new version.
> 
> Look, I'm Ok with any number of you claiming that the P-36 is the same aircraft as the P-40, for whatever reason, it's just divorced from reality. I know you have some of your own little cliques in here and your own particular opinions unique to this forum, but that doesn't necessarily make it so.



The reality is that, as has been stated, the XP-40 was the 10th production P-36. Yes, as development continued the wing gained weight (was beefed up) to handle the higher weights but the planform was not changed, the airfoil was not changed. Gun bays were. Yes, they did lengthen the rear fuselage of later P-40s, bu not until thousands of short fuselage P-40s were built. (and the distance between the horizontal stabilizers and the wing was changed very little, if at all) 

The P-36 had about 22% more drag than an early P-40. Or perhaps it is a combination of drag and lack of exhaust thrust. Not all P-40s are quite the same either. Try taking a P-40B airframe (wing) and turning it into a P-40K capable of handling around 1500lbs high gross weight, 

And how about we flip your theory/point of view? 

How many 109s were there? One design that went from 1935/36 to 1945 (and beyond if we count the Spanish ones) or were there two, pre Friedrich on post Friedrich?
Or three 109s? Jumo 210 powered version, 109E and then the 109F and up? Lots of luck trying to turn a 109D into a 109G. It is going to take more than DB 605 engine, some new radiators and sheet metal. 

Spitfire went through a number of wings and that was before you get to the MK 21 and up. Are they Spitfires or different designs? Vertical fins and rudders changed too.

How many changes or how big do they have to be before it is a NEW design? 

So, how about some actual proof that the P-40 was a different design than the P-36/Hawk 75 and not just your opinion or the opinion of some other forum?

Reactions: Like Like:
3 | Agree Agree:
1 | Winner Winner:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## michael rauls (Oct 28, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> And the changes to come up with Schweik's "combat variants" were the same evolutionary things (armor, self sealing tanks, etc) that would have been applied to the P-36 if it had been selected for further development.
> Cheers,
> Wes


In your opinion would it be wrong to say that in a way they did further develop the p36 by slapping an Alison on it and giving it new nomenclature( p 40).
I've always thought of p36 to p40 as continuing development of a design much the same as the Fw 190D is still a Fw190 dispite having a very different engine.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## GrauGeist (Oct 28, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> In your opinion would it be wrong to say that in a way they did further develop the p36 by slapping an Alison on it and giving it new nomenclature( p 40).
> I've always thought of p36 to p40 as continuing development of a design much the same as the Fw 190D is still a Fw190 dispite having a very different engine.


The US had quite a few "types" that carried their own designations even though the airframe essentially remained the same, just different engines, armament or other modifications.
The P-36 is a classic case of this: YP-37, P-40 and XP-42.
P-38: XP-49.
P-39: XFL, P-400, P-63.
P-40: XP-46, XP-53, XP-60A/B/D and YP-60E.
B-17: XB-38, YB-40 and C-108.
B-24: XB-41.
B-29: XB-39, XB-44 and B-50.

There's more, but you get the idea...

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## slaterat (Oct 28, 2018)

The P-40 is a derivative fighter, meaning that it was created by modifying a previously existing fighter, in this case the P-36. The Hurricane is also a derivative fighter, spawning from the Fury Biplane. The disadavantage of a derivative fighter is that you may not get as good of a plane as a fresh design, think Spit and 109 here, but you can usually ramp up production very quickly, as much of the tooling and production facilities will already be in place. This is exactly the case for the P-40 and Hurricane as they were the backbone of the Allies air force for the first half of the war, when the numbers of Spitfires, P-38s ect, just weren't enough.


----------



## Shortround6 (Oct 28, 2018)

USAAF designations were all over the place in the late 30s and early 40s (and sometimes after that)

The original Hawk 75 factory demonstrator was rebuilt/re-engined a number of times and ended up as the XP-37






the 4th production P-36A (serial number 38-4) was completed as the XP-42 (company designation Hawk 75S)





The XP-40 had a company designation of Hawk 75P
When they substituted the Allison V-1710-33 for the Allison V-1710-19 the company changed the designation to Hawk 81. 

Even Hawks with fixed landing gear kept the *75* model number although the letter designation changed with customer/engine. 




All of these planes and all production P-40s used the same wingspan, the same wing area and nowhere that I have seen, is there any creditable evidence that different airfoils were used. 
The often repeated claim that the XP-40Qs used a laminar flow airfoil is in dispute. 

Please note that the P-39C was originally called the P-45 so changes in designation from one number to another often applied to somewhat minor changes and not new designs.


----------



## tomo pauk (Oct 28, 2018)

slaterat said:


> The P-40 is a derivative fighter, meaning that it was created by modifying a previously existing fighter, in this case the P-36. The Hurricane is also a derivative fighter, spawning from the Fury Biplane. The disadavantage of a derivative fighter is that you may not get as good of a plane as a fresh design, think Spit and 109 here, but you can usually ramp up production very quickly, as much of the tooling and production facilities will already be in place. This is exactly the case for the P-40 and Hurricane as they were the backbone of the Allies air force for the first half of the war, when the numbers of Spitfires, P-38s ect, just weren't enough.



P-40 was an off-spring from P-36, where early models of the P-40 shared many components & systems of the P-36, like basic fuselage, wing, control surfaces etc. Same with Bf 109E, that shared many components and systems from the Jumo-powered 109s.
On the other hand, what Fury and Hurricane basically have in common is the name of company making them - Hurricane was not just an off-spring of Fury, but a whole new aircraft.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## michael rauls (Oct 28, 2018)

I was thinking alot of this depends on how much change one wants to say constitutes a new design. To me a new type of engine and maybe a few minor changes to the airframe does not constitute a new design but a whole new airframe would.
Not saying this is the "proper" definition but just the way I see it.


----------



## GrauGeist (Oct 28, 2018)

Technically speaking, nearly half the of the US fighters in WWII were descendants of previous designs.
The P-38, P-39, P-51 and F4U are exceptions to this.

The P-40 has just been discussed at length.
The F6F came from the F4F, which came from the F3F, which came from the F2F.
The P-47 came from the P-43, which came from the P-35, which came from the SEV-3 (SEV-1XP/SEV-7).

Another good example, while not a fighter, would be the C-47, which was developed from the DC-3, which was developed from the DC-2, which was developed from the DC-1.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## GregP (Oct 28, 2018)

The "3 feet longer" part comes from the engine being longer, not the P-36 airframe being stretched. What they did was to move the firewall back so the CG would be close to the same. When I have spoken with pilots who flew both the P-36 (mid 1935) and the P-40 (mid 1938), they universally preferred the P-36 ... with the sole exception of top speed.

When you get them down to cases, it was mostly a case of how the two engines work. Radials usually cruised at low power, and the controls were light and pleasant due to being at low speeds. Most of the radial fighters in the Pacific cruised at something like 185 mph to save conserve fuel. At those speeds they handled beautifully. At combat speeds, the angular momentum of the fuselage and engine could turn (pitch) more quickly than the inline engine's longer-coupled airframe.

So, the radial P-36 was slightly more maneuverable than the inline P-40. But it wasn't by all that much. The P-40 cruised and generally flew a bit faster than the P-36, and the handling was a bit stiffer due to the speed difference. Both were very good relative to other early-to-mid 1930s US and Allied designs, but both were suffering a bit relative to the mid-to-late 1930s Bf 109 (1936) , Spitfire (1936), A6M (1939), and Ki-43 (1939). The P-36 was a product of 1933 - 1934 design and the P-40 was just a re-engine of the same airframe, with the "engineering" part of it being the powerplant, not the airframe.

From real-world events, the people at Curtiss generally pissed off Don Berlin (designer) and weren't paying much, if any, attention to fighter developments that were going on around the world. Witness the P-46 and P-53 (nothing much). The P-60 was a good-handling fighter with very-predictably mediocre speed. There wasn't a "winner" that came from Curtiss-Wright after the P-36 / P-40 series or aircraft, including their last try at it with the XF-87 Blackhawk jet. They had the much-later IBM philosophy of thinking they were the Gold standard and their thinking was "right" and everyone should just know that.

All who fail to continue to innovate will suffer the same fate with time. What is "state-of-the-art" today is outdated in 10 years. The timeframe was even shorter in the WWII fighter business. We went into WWII flying rag-wing biplanes and came out flying pressurized jets in a span of about 6 years. The P-40 was "good enough" in 1941 and was obsolete in 1944. The only bright spot in the Curtiss lineup was the XP-40Q, and it could have been a good fighter. It was a quantum leap over the P-40, to be sure, but was not a quantum leap over the then-in-service P-51. Again, Curtiss didn't look past their own lineup for a comparison standard to out-perform and, as a result, built a good-but-not-innovative offering.

About re-engined fighters in general, the P-40 wasn't the only one with radial-to-inline or vice versa. The "good" Ki-61 became the "very good" Ki-100. The "Great" Fw 190" became the "wonder plane" Ta-152. The D4Y1 and 2 became the D4Y-3 "Judy." The XB-38 ws a liquid-cooled adaption of the B-17 and the XB-39 was an inline adaption of the B-39. Both performed better than their radial-powered counterparts, but were not adopted for service. No particular point here, just saying the P-36-to-P-40 was not unusual at the time.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## GregP (Oct 28, 2018)

Oops ... double-post ...


----------



## Schweik (Oct 28, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> IIRC, the P-36 was stuck with a particularly low powered radial engine, while other round engine aircraft of about the time of P-36 - P-40 conversion were getting higher powered radials installed.
> Cheers,
> Wes



They put in a series of radial engines in them including up to 1200 hp (though low alt rated) but it never really improved performance sufficiently for further development. That is what I mean when I say it hit a wall.


----------



## Schweik (Oct 28, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> Technically speaking, nearly half the of the US fighters in WWII were descendants of previous designs.
> The P-38, P-39, P-51 and F4U are exceptions to this.
> 
> The P-40 has just been discussed at length.
> ...



This is basically my point - another classic example which I previously mentioned being Blenheim, Beaufort and Beaufighter. Blenheim and Beaufighter shared many of the same jigs and so on, but they were really quite different - night and day in terms of capabilities and versatility. Same with LaGG-3 / La 5 family.

However it is also true that sometimes within the same designation a given aircraft can change enormously. I really don't think the Fw 190D is the same aircraft as the 190A, nor the Spit XXI to the Spit I. It is somewhat subjective, which always seems to get us in trouble around here.

My point about the P-36 vs. P-40, is that the older design, the P-36, had already reached it's peak of performance before the war. It basically hit a wall both in terms of speed and carrying capacity. The difference did indeed boil down mainly to the engine but that change happened to dramatically change the aircraft.

It had a wright 1670 engine 900 hp, an early Wright 1820 Cyclone (950 hp), Pratt and Whitney 1830 Twin Wasp (900 hp, 1100 or 1200 hp depending on the subvariant), and the later model Wright Cyclone R-1820 G 205 (1200 hp) but it never made it past about 320 mph. It had a relatively slow dive acceleration though good high speed handling which showed hope for the design family so to speak. They experimented with some modern combat features like armor and heavier guns but it was limited in the weight capacity it could carry. Most were underarmed with 4 or 6 .30 caliber guns.

The P-40 started at 1000 hp (and was already 40 mph faster than the P-36) and went up to 1350 or 1500 hp (in official max boost rating) and speed went from 340 mph to 370 mph in mid 1942. By the end of 1941 variants with 6 heavy machine guns were standard.

*The P-36 had 5 victory claims for the US, 269 for France* (mainly in the Battle of France - with 7 aces- and another five or ten in Vichy use mainly at Morocco) and about two dozen with the RAF mainly in the CBI. *Total victory claims definitely less than 300.*

By contrast* P-40 pilots made 2,225 victory claims for the US alone*, making it the 5th ranked fighter in US use (ahead of the Wildcat and Corsair) with at least 80 USAAF Aces flying the type, it had about 130 claims for the RAAF and 100 for RNZAF just in the Pacific, and a large but unknown (to me) number by the RAF / Commonwealth in the Med where it was in heavy use for four years and was the main air superiority fighter for the most crucial period (at least several hundred claims and they had 46 Aces flying P-40s) or USSR (again, at least several hundred claims and they too had about 40 Aces flying the P-40 and multiple VVS units made 'guards' status while equipped with that aircraft). As a fighter bomber of course it also famously helped fill the CAS gap where existing Allied light, dive and medium bombers failed.

The Hawk hit a wall in terms of it's speed and carrying capacity in the 1930s. It couldn't have done what the Tomahawk and Kittyhawk did. Like the Hurricane the P-36 could survive in 1940 but would suffer in 1941 or 1942 in the same kind of areas, let alone 1943. You wouldn't be flying fighter sweeps or escort missions over enemy airfields in P-36s in 1943 I'll put it that way. They were certainly of the same DNA and very closely related, but I stand by my claim that the P-40 was a different aircraft. If we really have to I can start enumerating the specific features and design elements (Shortound already pointed out some of the changes to the wing) but ultimately it's a subjective opinion so I know some people will never change their minds on it. I doubt I will either as I've done enough research on the type to be pretty confident of my opinion on this. But I'm willing to be surprised by new evidence I hadn't considered.


----------



## GrauGeist (Oct 28, 2018)

Comparing the P-36's combat tally to the P-40's is not realistic.

The P-36 in U.S. service saw combat against enemy elements only once: 7 December 1941, and in that battle, the P-36 drew first blood, downing two A6Ms by American pilots who not only had no previous combat experiance, but were wearing pajamas.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 28, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> Comparing the P-36's combat tally to the P-40's is not realistic.
> 
> The P-36 in U.S. service saw combat against enemy elements only once: 7 December 1941, and in that battle, the P-36 drew first blood, downing two A6Ms by American pilots who not only had no previous combat experience, but were wearing pajamas.



It's a fair point - the record of the plane in the Battle of France was certainly good, but they were still available to the RAF / Commonwealth in some quantity (about 200 initially then as many as 500 by around 1942, partly from license production in China and India) in 1940 - 43, but they were consigned to Tertiary Theaters (basically India) where they saw little combat. The US had some (I think about 150) too - and needed fighters, but kept them out of the combat zones.

I think I left out the Finns who had some (as they did with nearly every interesting early war fighter) about 40 of them with which they scored 190 claims. They liked it but they marked it as too slow. Still I'll admit those 190 claims bumps it up to close to 500 victory claims in the war which is pretty decent for an obsolescent plane.

To be honest I suspect the P-36 would have probably been more useful in the Pacific than the F2A or P-400s they did send, but I do also think it had already reached it's limit and they were right to save the freighter space for the P-40s and later eventually, P-38s, P-47s etc. They did well at Pearl Harbor admittedly but I think P-36 pilots would have trouble with Zeros in 1942 or later. And I don't think the P-36 could have held it's own in the Med against Bf 109Fs in 1941 or 1942, let alone 109Gs.


----------



## pbehn (Oct 28, 2018)

Isnt part of this company marketing, they want to continue association with a successful line and forget about the clunkers?

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## GrauGeist (Oct 28, 2018)

My great-Uncle, who missed making history because his P-36 had no ammunition that morning, insisted that he would have happily flown the P-36 into battle instead of the P-39 (which he hated with a passion) or his P-38.
He and other pilots liked the P-36's handling and performance - it's only shortcomings were it's light armament and lack of armor and self sealing tanks.
Bottom line, is that it was a magnificent fighter *for it's time,* but that time had come and gone, as with most things.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
4 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 28, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> My great-Uncle, who missed making history because his P-36 had no ammunition that morning, insisted that he would have happily flown the P-36 into battle instead of the P-39 (which he hated with a passion) or his P-38.
> He and other pilots liked the P-36's handling and performance - it's only shortcomings were it's light armament and lack of armor and self sealing tanks.
> Bottom line, is that it was a magnificent fighter *for it's time,* but that time had come and gone, as with most things.



I agree, I am a fan of the P-36. It's excellent maneuverability plus good high speed handling (and high terminal dive speed) made it an unusually good fighter for it's time. These traits came over to some extent to the P-40 of course, which is why that plane did so well in spite of some serious flaws. And why it was so often liked by (many, if not all) pilots even when disliked by higher ranking officers and war-planners.

I do also think that we need to consider aircraft within their own times. The A6M was an excellent fighter in 1941 and 1942, it was dated by 1943 and obsolescent in 1944 or 1945. But that doesn't make it a bad fighter.

For that most WW2 fighters were shoved down a notch with the appearance of Jet fighters in some numbers in 1944, even with all of their flaws and limitations. That doesn't make the P-51 or Spitfire or Fw 190 bad planes - even if they had built 10,000 Me 262s instead of just 1400.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
3 | Like List reactions


----------



## Shortround6 (Oct 28, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> The US had quite a few "types" that carried their own designations even though the airframe essentially remained the same, just different engines, armament or other modifications.
> The P-36 is a classic case of this: YP-37, P-40 and XP-42.
> P-38: XP-49.
> P-39: XFL, P-400, P-63.
> ...



nice list but the P-39: *XFL*, P-400, *P-63. *
is bit mixed up. The P-39 and P-400 are the same airplane. The XFL is sort of a sibling, same fuselage but larger wing and tail wheel landing gear which required a different cooling system. P-63 just looks the same, no interchangeable parts much bigger than fasteners. A cousin? different wing span, different area and most important, different airfoil and different construction in the wing (different location of spars and other stuff) 

*P-40: XP-46, XP-53, XP-60A/B/D and YP-60E.*

this gets a bit weird. The XP-46 was a plane/design all on it's own. Smaller than the P-36/P-40. the XP-53 kept the P-40 fuselage but used a larger (almost 40 sq ft) laminar flow wing and as it progressed though a number of engine changes the tail/rear fuselage diverted further and the further from the P-40 and finally even the cockpit area changed.

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Agree Agree:
3 | Like List reactions


----------



## GrauGeist (Oct 28, 2018)

Thanks for catching those - I was going off the top of my head and intended to ammend the list when I got home (as usual, I forgot about it).

Although in the case of the XFL, it does hold in keeping with the conversation, as it was essentially a P-39 converted to a Tail-dragger with an arresting hook added and renegotiated engine cooling.

View attachment 514749


----------



## Shortround6 (Oct 28, 2018)

Schweik said:


> The Hawk hit a wall in terms of it's speed and carrying capacity in the 1930s. It couldn't have done what the Tomahawk and Kittyhawk did. Like the Hurricane the P-36 could survive in 1940 but would suffer in 1941 or 1942 in the same kind of areas, let alone 1943. You wouldn't be flying fighter sweeps or escort missions over enemy airfields in P-36s in 1943 I'll put it that way. They were certainly of the same DNA and very closely related, but I stand by my claim that the P-40 was a different aircraft. If we really have to I can start enumerating the specific features and design elements (Shortound already pointed out some of the changes to the wing) but ultimately it's a subjective opinion so I know some people will never change their minds on it. I doubt I will either as I've done enough research on the type to be pretty confident of my opinion on this. But I'm willing to be surprised by new evidence I hadn't considered.



There were probably more changes between the Kittyhawk and the Tomahawk than between the Tomahawk and the Mohawk.

The Hawk had not_ hit a wall in terms of it's speed and carrying capacity in the 1930s, _or the Tomahawk could not have done what it did.
You may be confusing cause and effect. The radial engine Hawk had a (compared to later aircraft) crappy engine installation, both P & W and Wright that was high drag and made little or no use of exhaust thrust. Neither radial made quite as much crankshaft HP at 13-14,000ft as the Allison V-1710-33.
The company Brochure for the Hawk 75 lists possible bomb loads of 800-850lbs. a 500lb under the fuselage and various loads like six 50lb bombs or ten 30 bombs under the wings.
The P-36G (30 Norwegian Hawk 75s taken over by the US on the fall of Norway and later given to Peru)) was armed with a pair of .50 cal guns in the cowl and four .30 cal guns in the wings.
Engineering had already been done, customers may not have taken up the offer/s.

The Hawker Hurricane had hit the wall in terms of speed due to it's thick wing, not it's engine installation. As seen when the same Merlin engine fitted to the Hawk airframe/wing was over 20mph faster. (and that is the eight gun Hurricane II) despite being well over 1000lbs heavier.

It took until Summer/early fall of 1942 but P & W got a early P-40 (no letter) airframe (no armor, self sealing tanks or guns) up to 382-386mph at around 22,000ft using a version of the engine used in the F4F-4 Wildcat. One source claims only 8% more drag than a P-40 (type not specified) so again it does not look like it was the Hawk 75/P-36 airframe/wing holding the 
performance back in 1938/39/40.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
1 | Informative Informative:
4 | Like List reactions


----------



## Kevin J (Oct 29, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> There were probably more changes between the Kittyhawk and the Tomahawk than between the Tomahawk and the Mohawk.
> 
> The Hawk had not_ hit a wall in terms of it's speed and carrying capacity in the 1930s, _or the Tomahawk could not have done what it did.
> You may be confusing cause and effect. The radial engine Hawk had a (compared to later aircraft) crappy engine installation, both P & W and Wright that was high drag and made little or no use of exhaust thrust. Neither radial made quite as much crankshaft HP at 13-14,000ft as the Allison V-1710-33.
> ...


382 to 386 mph sounds good, but putting back in armour, self sealing tanks, guns and ammunition no doubt resulted in a 20 mph loss of speed, then you probably want a belly tank shackle and sway brace, rear view mirror, maybe snow guard or in the desert dust filters so at least another 10 mph. It all adds up to the P-40F/L Warhawk with the Merlin engine being a much better plane. Then there's the P-40K with overboost, my guess would be the same speed as an A-36A Apache since it didn't have the wing pylons and dive brakes to spoil its streamlining.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## GregP (Oct 29, 2018)

Hi Schweik,

Regarding post # 241, you say 1,400 like you think they USED 1,400 Me 262s during the war. You don't think that, do you? According to Adolph Galland, who should have known for sure, they never had more than about 150 operational at any one time. They did pretty well, considering the low numbers of flying jets.

It's like the Ta 152 in many ways. They actually built about 150 Ta 152 total airframes. But only about 43 can be confirmed as being delivered to actual units. Of these, there were never more than about 20 flying at any single point in time, and there were no spare parts at all.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Oct 29, 2018)

GregP said:


> Hi Schweik,
> 
> Regarding post # 241, you say 1,400 like you think they USED 1,400 Me 262s during the war. You don't think that, do you? According to Adolph Galland, who should have known for sure, they never had more than about 150 operational at any one time. They did pretty well, considering the low numbers of flying jets.
> 
> It's like the Ta 152 in many ways. They actually built about 150 Ta 152 total airframes. But only about 43 can be confirmed as being delivered to actual units. Of these, there were never more than about 20 flying at any single point in time, and there were no spare parts at all.


Pretty much par for the course in that era. When war was declared the RAF had circa 130 Spitfires but Supermarine had produced 300. Through the BoB single engine fighters were being produced at upto 1000 per month but front line strength only rose from 500 to 700.


----------



## Kevin J (Oct 29, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Pretty much par for the course in that era. When war was declared the RAF had circa 130 Spitfires but Supermarine had produced 300. Through the BoB single engine fighters were being produced at upto 1000 per month but front line strength only rose from 500 to 700.


Correction, about 300 Hurricanes and 150 Spitfires pcm in the BoB. At the start the numbers in service were almost one to one with only slightly more Hurricanes, by the end it was almost 2 Hurricanes to every 1 Spitfire.The problem was the pilot supply so having all those Poles on board that just wanted to kill Germans saved us all.


----------



## pbehn (Oct 29, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> Correction, about 300 Hurricanes and 150 Spitfires pcm in the BoB. At the start the numbers in service were almost one to one with only slightly more Hurricanes, by the end it was almost 2 Hurricanes to every 1 Spitfire.


At the start numbers were about equal because no Spitfires were sent to France, the higher number of Hurricanes reflects it being easier to produce.
Document-42: Aircraft production during the Battle of Britain


----------



## Kevin J (Oct 29, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> Correction, about 300 Hurricanes and 150 Spitfires pcm in the BoB. At the start the numbers in service were almost one to one with only slightly more Hurricanes, by the end it was almost 2 Hurricanes to every 1 Spitfire.





pbehn said:


> At the start numbers were about equal because no Spitfires were sent to France, the higher number of Hurricanes reflects it being easier to produce.
> Document-42: Aircraft production during the Battle of Britain


I think your 1000 pcm includes damaged, fixed and returned to service. LOL.


----------



## Shortround6 (Oct 29, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> 382 to 386 mph sounds good, but putting back in armour, self sealing tanks, guns and ammunition no doubt resulted in a 20 mph loss of speed, then you probably want a belly tank shackle and sway brace, rear view mirror, maybe snow guard or in the desert dust filters so at least another 10 mph. It all adds up to the P-40F/L Warhawk with the Merlin engine being a much better plane. Then there's the P-40K with overboost, my guess would be the same speed as an A-36A Apache since it didn't have the wing pylons and dive brakes to spoil its streamlining.



You are quite right, a combat ready version would probably have been 20mph slower, just pointing out that the basic airframe had not topped out at just over 300mph in the late 30s'





And it is considerably faster than the F4F Wildcat which may be damning with faint praise against the 109F.

However I wouldn't put much stock in a P-40K being as fast as an A-36 if the A-36 was running at a similar power level. The engine in the A-36A could make 1500hp at 5200ft using 52in of boost. 

The P-40Q experiments showed that the Hawk had reached it's limits but that limit was over 400mph. It needed much more power than the Merlin P-51s to go the same speed. 
It was also the first Hawk to change the wing and that was merely a short clip of each wing tip.
However one of the XP-60s, using the same engine as the P-40F was faster than the P-40Feven with a 275sq ft wing due to the new airfoil showing that the Hawk airframe/wing was reaching it's limit.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Oct 29, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> I think your 1000 pcm includes damaged, fixed and returned to service. LOL.


It does, but the point is still the same. Despite the thousands of Spitfires produced the RAF rarely had more than 1000 in front line service. Same for most other air forces.


----------



## Kevin J (Oct 29, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> You are quite right, a combat ready version would probably have been 20mph slower, just pointing out that the basic airframe had not topped out at just over 300mph in the late 30s'
> View attachment 514885
> 
> And it is considerably faster than the F4F Wildcat which may be damning with faint praise against the 109F.
> ...


I think you'll find that putting 8 British rockets under a Mustang knocked about 80 mph off its speed. It was quite substantial. Maybe the Apache would have been slightly faster, but not by much.


----------



## Schweik (Oct 29, 2018)

Apaches - and the British Mustang I & II were pretty fast, that was their role, they couldn't do very much else since the ailerons didn't work very well, but they could keep up a high speed down very low. One of the few aircraft that could fly those complex Northern European day-intruder missions planned out by the RAF and survive.

But aside from that, Kevin I think you are spot on.

I have no doubt that given enough time they could have figured out a way to make a radial engined P-36 fly faster, and I'll admit, I don't fully understand why they hit that wall, but they clearly did. They needed at least 350 mph _with _combat equipment. At the time they were trying to develop that fighter they tried multiple (radial) aircraft engines, between 4 and 10 versions depending on how you differentiate them, with HP ranging from 900 to 1200, and they really couldn't improve the speed sufficiently for 1940's service in an Allied Air Force in Europe or the Med. If it had self sealing tanks and armor it probably would have been Ok at that ~310 mph speed a little longer in the Pacific, but I don't think they made any variants that did (I could be wrong on that). Aircraft development in wartime was always a matter of getting things done under a brutal time limit, and they clearly weren't going to get there in time with the original P-36 design.

If you start out with an 8% drag deficit between the P-36 and the P-40, that right correlates roughly to about 25 mph potentially with knock on effects on acceleration and speed retention. And the inline engine clearly had a lot more room for rapid improvement in terms of cleaning up obstructions and streamlining, when you compare a P-36 hawk to an early 1941 P-40 to a mid 1942 one you can see the difference. I suspect the drag difference between a P-36 and a P-40L is a bit more than 8%.
















The pace, the speed , and the intensity of the war just increased very rapidly, particularly in Europe. The aircraft that were fighting the Germans were a whole different beast and had to maintain a much higher combat speed to survive. The P-36 was competitive in the Battle of France in 1940, but by the battle of Britain a few months later (partly due to the nature of the fighting at higher altitude) it was no longer considered viable for the battlefield, even sufficiently to be sent to North Africa and the Middle East. Luckily for the Allies the shift to the inline engine had already got them past the wall and enabled a series of other changes that kept the new P-40 Tomahawk and Kittyhawk design in the game 3 years after the decline of the original Hawk and it's relegation to Tertiary Theaters.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Winner Winner:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 29, 2018)

Helpful side by side comparison of two beautiful Warbirds. You can see both the similarities and the differences. 310 mph vs. 370 mph

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Shortround6 (Oct 29, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Apaches - and the British Mustang I & II were pretty fast, that was their role, they couldn't do very much else since the ailerons didn't work very well, but they could keep up a high speed down very low. One of the few aircraft that could fly those complex Northern European day-intruder missions planned out by the RAF and survive.



The Apache was not a Mustang I, the British got few, if any, A-36s. 



> If you start out with an 8% drag deficit between the P-36 and the P-40, that right there is about 25 mph potentially. And the inline engine clearly had a lot more room for rapid improvement in terms of cleaning up obstructions and streamlining, when you compare a P-36 hawk to an early 1941 P-40 to a mid 1942 one you can see the difference. I suspect the drag difference between a P-36 and a P-40L is a bit more than 8%.



You don't have suspect, it was more than 8%, as has already been mentioned it was 22% between the P-36A (much like the Mohawk in your first photo and the early P-40 like in the 2nd photo. But that difference had nothing to do with the wings or from the firewall back and everything to do with the engine installation. There may be some confusion as to amount of exhaust thrust was counted or not counted in each plane. But *nobodies *radial engine installations were very good in 1938-39-40. A lot of work was being done and the Germans were first with a significant change with the fw 190. P & W got the difference down to 8% with that P-40 test hack. From then on many radials got much closer to the liquid cooled engines in terms of drag. 





> The pace, the speed , and the intensity of the war just increased very rapidly, particularly in Europe. The aircraft that were fighting the Germans were a whole different beast and had to maintain a much higher combat speed to survive. The P-36 was competitive in the Battle of France in 1940, but by the battle of Britain a few months later (partly due to the nature of the fighting at higher altitude) it was no longer considered viable for the battlefield, even sufficiently to be sent to North Africa and the Middle East. The shift to the inline engine enabled a series of other changes that kept the new P-40 Tomahawk and Kittyhawk design 3 years after the original Hawk had already hit that wall.



Even sticking a V-12 on the nose of the P-36 wasn't enough to keep it competitive in Europe as the available V-12 didn't have enough power _at altitude _ for the weight of the P-40. 
Please note that in the fall of 1940 the DB 601 didn't offer much more power, it just had a much lighter airplane to haul around, you could have swapped engines and gotten pretty much the same results. 

Curtiss was in the business of building airplanes. The more planes you could build to the same basic design the more profit you could make. Many designs were adapted to take different engines to suit the customers preference. 




XP-31 as originally built and as modified. 




note full span leading edge slats.
Curtiss could also go the other way, A-8 Shrike




A-12 Shrike




Some earlier Curtiss biplane fighters were sometimes fitted with radials for overseas customers instead of the water cooled V-12 engines.

This was done by a lot more companies than Curtiss. Hawker in England built both V-12 powered Fury biplanes and radial engined versions as well as Hart light bombers and variants with both types of engine. 

Boeing tried the B-9 bomber with both types of engine.Changing engines doesn't change the design of the airframe.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 29, 2018)

I'm well aware of the differences great and small between the A-36, P-51A and Mustang I & II, and which were deployed where. We discussed this at length in another thread here and I own a couple of books on this plane. In this case though despite the different designations and some different equipment (like dive brakes on the A-36) I do think they were fundamentally the same aircraft.

Changing engines doesn't _have to_ change the design of the airframe but especially later on in the war it often did. I'm well aware some aircraft were made with both inline and radial engines, including some production aircraft during the war (Beaufighter F. II, D4Y -1 vs D4Y-3 and so on). Each aircraft is different and engines weren't plug and play replaceable parts necessarily. In several cases, including a few already mentioned (like the LaGG-3 / La 5), the difference was dramatic, either in outcome or necessary engineering or (typically) both.

The P-36 was just a different aircraft than the P-40 in both respects. .


----------



## GrauGeist (Oct 29, 2018)

If we go by that definition of "different", than the P-51/P-51A was different than the P-51B/C and the P-51B/C was different than the P-51D/K.
Same goes for the P-40A/B/C/D being different than the P-40F/L, then...

Reactions: Winner Winner:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 29, 2018)

Like I said, there is some subjectivity in this which is why we will probably never agree. And yes I do think an aircraft is actually a new design sometimes _within _a specific aircraft model type. Personally (as I said already) I'd say Fw 190D is different from the A for example, or the Spit I from the Spit XXI, and the Allison Mustang from the Merlin ones, but I wouldn't insist on it.

I guess I would draw the line when it's both substantially different in terms of capabilities and performance, _and_ has a different official designation. Admittedly somewhat arbitrary.

Defining exactly what makes a truly different aircraft when they are clearly of the same development lineage is tricky and I don't think there is any "official" criteria we would all necessarily agree on. I would argue it was usually a combination of factors, some dramatic (new type of engine, changes in the number of crew or a substantially changed wing), some more incremental like changes in armament, pilot or fuel system protection, fuel capacity, landing gear, modified control surfaces, and so on.

In the case of the P-36 / P-40 it's the combination of substantially increased performance (esp. top speed and dive acceleration) and overall carrying capacity. At the risk of repeating myself I believe the P-36 hit a wall in the 30's.


----------



## Shortround6 (Oct 29, 2018)

Then tell us how the P-40 and P-36 differed.

Different wing construction, airfoil, shape/size?
Different size/shape of tail surfaces? 
Different fuselage construction? 
Different length of fuselage (aside from what was needed to mount the engine/s) 
Different armament possibilities? And remember that export Hawks had 4 gun wings before the P-40B did. 
Different fuel capacities? We know the P-36 and export Hawks could carry 162 gallons (give or take a gallon) in three tanks laid out just like the P-40 tanks) they were not self sealing but changing from unprotected tanks to protected was common at this time and was hardly a "new" aircraft. 
Different strength requirements? For the export Hawks with Cyclone engines the ultimate load factor was 12 while the Twin Wasp had an ultimate load factor of 11.5 but could be brought up to the 12 rating with an increase in weight and price. 

If you are not aware of it an online version of the sales brochure for the Hawk 75 can be found here.
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/P-36/Curtiss_Hawk_75-A_Detail_Specifications.pdf


----------



## Shortround6 (Oct 29, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Like I said, there is some subjectivity in this which is why we will probably never agree. And yes I do think an aircraft is actually a new design sometimes _within _a specific aircraft model type. Personally (as I said already) I'd say Fw 190D is different from the A for example, or the Spit I from the Spit XXI, and the Allison Mustang from the Merlin ones, but I wouldn't insist on it.
> 
> I guess I would draw the line when it's both substantially different in terms of capabilities and performance, _and_ has a different official designation. Admittedly somewhat arbitrary.
> 
> ...



I think most of us would agree that the Spitfire XXI is different than a Spitfire I. You do have a different wing in addition to the different engine and the somewhat different tail. Early Spitfires used three different wing tips but they were interchangeable from the last rib station out, no change to rest of the wing.
With the change from an Allison powered Mustang to a Merlin powered one things are only slightly more difficult. Pretty much the same wing but the fuselage got a splice put in it so you can't really take a P-51A airframe a put a Merlin V-1650-3 in it and get a real P-51B. 
P-47D to P-47N gets a little tough. They extended the wing root area but kept the same airfoil and cord to accommodate fuel tanks. Then clipped the wing tips to reduce the wingspan to near original





_New_ design or??????. 

The basic difference between a P-36/Mohawk and a P-40/Tomahawk is the engine and the drag reduction/increased speed it provided. It came a cost in weight which affected maneuverability a bit. The majority of the plane was unchanged except to accommodate the increased weight.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## ktank (Oct 30, 2018)

Elmas said:


> A Friend of mine, Ten. Alberto Scano, was among the Pilots to fly in the last Operational Training Unit on piston fighters in the early ’60.
> Here his memories.
> 
> Memorie di un pilota: le immagini e i ricordi del Tenente Alberto Scano - Aviation Report
> ...



I'm wondering if the poor stall behaviour of the P-51 was due to the laminar flow wing. IIRC the Supermarine Spiteful/Seafang which were also laminar flow had vicious stall characteristics.


----------



## Elmas (Oct 30, 2018)

_“You can’t have a drunk wife and a full barrel”_ says a proverb of my own Country.
An aeroplane is a result of a lot of compromises and, if some parameters are stretched, the blanket becomes a little bit short somewhere.
So, using a profile with less resistance at high speeds (I should not say exactly “laminar”, for various reasons) had as a result poor performances at stall. With computers today that could be sufficiently predictable, but Schmued and his Team, considered they had just a slide rule in their hands, made certainly the right choice at the right time.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
2 | Funny Funny:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 30, 2018)

Elmas said:


> _“You can’t have a drunk wife and a full barrel”_ says a proverb of my own Country.
> An aeroplane is a result of a lot of compromises and, if some parameters are stretched, the blanket becomes a little bit short somewhere.
> So, using a profile with less resistance at high speeds (I should not say exactly “laminar”, for various reasons) had as a result poor performances at stall. With computers today that could be sufficiently predictable, but Schmued and his Team, considered they had just a slide rule in their hands, made certainly the right choice at the right time.



I think part of the idea of Laminar flow wings was to get simultaneously a large wingspan and low drag - presumably the big wing still providing benefits of lift and thereby, maneuverability. But the effect seems to be mainly for low drag and not much else. For the size of the wing it usually seems to end up somewhat lacking in lift. Of the few examples I know of which seems to have possibly succeeded in threading that needle were the elliptical Spitfire wing and the semi-elliptical wing of the Re 2005, also from the same country as that hilarious proverb.


----------



## pbehn (Oct 30, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I think part of the idea of Laminar flow wings was to get simultaneously a large wingspan and low drag - presumably the big wing still providing benefits of lift and thereby, maneuverability. But the effect seems to be mainly for low drag and not much else. For the size of the wing it usually seems to end up somewhat lacking in lift. Of the few examples I know of which seems to have possibly succeeded in threading that needle were the elliptical Spitfire wing and the semi-elliptical wing of the Re 2005, also from the same country as that hilarious proverb.


In the Mustangs defence I would point out that it was faster than the Spitfire by circa 30MPH. With additional tanks in the rear and on the wings it was possible for a P-51 to go into combat at 30,000ft with full main tanks. Also I believe the use of a small amount of flap improved turn performance. For much of a Mustang mission on escort it was grossly overloaded compared to its original design.


----------



## Schweik (Oct 30, 2018)

Of course - the tradeoff in speed (and cruise efficiency) was worth it at that point in the war, especially since Luftwaffe planes were mostly of high wing loading too and in the Pacific Theater, most Japanese aircraft were so much slower by then as to be at a marked disadvantage. Speed is life for fighters.

But if I know I was going to get into a dogfight and range wasn't an issue I might have preferred to be in a Spit IX or XIV personally. Not that that matters much.


----------



## pbehn (Oct 30, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Of course - the tradeoff in speed (and cruise efficiency) was worth it at that point in the war, especially since Luftwaffe planes were mostly of high wing loading too and in the Pacific Theater, most Japanese aircraft were so much slower by then as to be at a marked disadvantage. Speed is life for fighters.
> 
> But if I know I was going to get into a dogfight and range wasn't an issue I might have preferred to be in a Spit IX or XIV personally. Not that that matters much.


It was pure serendipity that the P-51 could take huge amounts of internal and external fuel and that it could fit a Merlin engine, it was just designed as a fighter and generally US fighters had longer range than their European counterparts.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## GrauGeist (Oct 30, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Of course - the tradeoff in speed (and cruise efficiency) was worth it at that point in the war, especially since Luftwaffe planes were mostly of high wing loading too and in the Pacific Theater, *most Japanese aircraft were so much slower by then as to be at a marked disadvantage*. Speed is life for fighters.


The late-war Japanese fighters were anything but slow and were on a par with anything the Allies had.
KI-84, KI-100, N1K and J2M were all dangerous adversaries.

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Agree Agree:
5 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Oct 30, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> The late-war Japanese fighters were anything but slow and were on a par with anything the Allies had.
> KI-84, KI-100, N1K and J2M were all dangerous adversaries.



In theory yeah. But from what I have read, those weren't the planes encountered for the most part. Built in relatively low numbers and mostly grounded due to mechanical problems, spare parts shortages and fuel shortages. And none of them were apparently very good at high altitude. Only the Ki-84 and the (very rare) J2M were really competitive in terms of speed. The main issue though is that from what i understand most enemy fighters encountered in 1943 & 1944 were still Ki-43 or A6M, with a few Ki-61 and Ki-44 and the occasional hapless twin-engined Ki-45. The ones you list above could be very dangerous when encountered but seemed to be pretty rare in the field.

I agree though those were very good designs, particularly the N1K and Ki-84. So were some of their later make Naval bombers like the Aichi B7A (352 mph, two 20mm cannon and supposedly more maneuverable than a Zero), Yokosuka D4Y (342 mph) and Nakajima B6N though they were a bit too fragile for the real world and didn't get to reach their full potential.

There was also declining pilot quality to contend with. Somebody posted a thread here a while back showing some Japanese statistics for air combat in Burma and Ki-84 squadrons apparently came out on the losing end against late model P-40s a couple of times.


----------



## Schweik (Oct 30, 2018)

I wonder how good of a fighter the B7A might have made. If it could manage 352 mph _with_ a tail gunner and bomb handling gear, one would imagine it might have been a pretty good land based fighter. It doesn't seem to have been used much because it was meant for very large aircraft carriers which didn't become available (the only one big enough- the Taiho, was sunk in 1944). It probably came out too late to make much of a difference regardless.


----------



## swampyankee (Oct 30, 2018)

ktank said:


> I'm wondering if the poor stall behaviour of the P-51 was due to the laminar flow wing. IIRC the Supermarine Spiteful/Seafang which were also laminar flow had vicious stall characteristics.



No. Airfoil behavior—despite Riblett — is not well-corrrelated to wing stall. Check out the stall of the 23012 airfoil, used on the Bonanza, which does not have a vicious stall, by any standard.


----------



## Elmas (Oct 30, 2018)

How to compare the P-51 (390 mph) airfoil

P-51D ROOT (BL17.5) AIRFOIL (p51droot-il)

Airfoil database list(P) p51droot-il to pw98mod-pw

with that of the Beech Bonanza (180 ktas)?

NACA 23012 12% (naca23012-il)

Quite two different profiles, aren’t they?

And of course it is not a matter of “just” wing profile, being involved (very important) wing incidence and specially “wash-out”, interferences between wing, tailplane and fin, etc.

And, probably, the flight envelope of P-51 was quite different ( and probably more demanding) from that of Bonanza.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## swampyankee (Oct 30, 2018)

Elmas said:


> How to compare the P-51 (390 mph) airfoil
> 
> P-51D ROOT (BL17.5) AIRFOIL (p51droot-il)
> 
> ...




Nonetheless, stall properties of wings are not strictly determined by the stall properties of the airfoil. There were numerous high performance fighters with decent stall properties. Also, many laminar flow airfoils have fairly benign stall.


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Oct 30, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> Nonetheless, stall properties of wings are not strictly determined by the stall properties of the airfoil. There were numerous high performance fighters with decent stall properties. Also, many laminar flow airfoils have fairly benign stall.


Stall behavior is a property of the entire airframe, not just the wing, and varies with the G acceleration at which it occurs. A Bonanza with an entire Mustang replica wing would not likely acquire a nasty stall reputation simply because it would seldom if ever be stalled at high speed and high G.
Let's face it, most "nasty stall behaviour" results from asymmetric stalling resulting in some variety of a snap maneuver. This is exacerbated if the lift/drag deterioration is very sudden (this IS a function of the wing's airfoil and planform), and further worsened by elevator and rudder blanking in the disorganised airflow.
A plane with a "docile" wing (lots of tips-down wing twist and a relatively "thick" cambered airfoil), and tailfeathers clear of the high AOA wing downwash will give you a smooth controllable stall, even at high speed and high G. Trouble is, such a plane is not going to give you best speed, maximum cruise efficiency, or best ACM maneuverability on the available power. It WILL, however, help you keep your nugget aviators alive outside of combat situations. As you've probably guessed, I've been describing my sweetheart here, the T-34, the ultimate Walter Mitty fighter-Bonanza.
Another factor to consider is pilot behavior. Most relatively inexperienced pilots have a tendency to reflexively "steer" the airplane with ailerons at high AOA, no matter how much they've been barked at by their instructors. Any aileron deflection on the verge of a stall will almost certainly induce an asymmetric stall opposite the direction of the control input. Low, slow, and dirty in a snappy machine like the P-51, this will likely lead to fatal consequences.
This scenario brings up another facet of the stall/spin phenomenon, getting behind the power curve. For a heavy, high performance plane like the Mustang there yawns below safe approach speed a deep, dark abyss called the back side of the power curve. It starts when you get a little slow and your sink rate picks up. Deck angle stays the same, so you don't notice, but your increasing vertical velocity is causing your AOA to increase significantly. This increases drag, and you slow still further, AOA increases more and you're still fat dumb and happy until you notice the ground rushing up, dump the nose to gain speed, drastically reducing lift, so sink rate and AOA increase yet again, and you are on the verge of a stall. There are three alternative endings to this episode.
1) You realize you're too slow to add power which would induce a "torque roll", so you ride it into the mangroves short of the runway.
2) You try to stretch your glide to the runway, remembering your instructor's admonitions to be gentle on the rudder when slow, so you steer with the ailerons, snap inverted and arrive at the same spot in the mangroves somewhat more spectacularly.
3) You realize you desperately need power, cob the throttle, the torque roll takes over despite full opposite aileron and rudder, and you arrive at the same spot in the mangroves even more spectacularly.
Speed is life.
Cheers,
Wes

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Winner Winner:
1 | Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Elmas (Oct 31, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> Nonetheless, stall properties of wings are not strictly determined by the stall properties of the airfoil. There were numerous high performance fighters with decent stall properties. Also, many laminar flow airfoils have fairly benign stall.



But of course. As I said before (or, better, as Ten. Alberto Scano said to me) stall of G.59 was a piece of cake in comparison to that of P-51.


----------



## pbehn (Oct 31, 2018)

I used to believe the Spitfire had a poor rate of roll until someone put a chart on the forum. The Spitfire had its wings clipped to improve rate of roll, but that doesn't mean it was poor, the Spitfires problem was it usually came across the Fw 190 and that was about as good as it gets in WW2 roll rate. The issue is whether you are making a judgement or a comparison. The performance of aircraft was increasing all the time and compromises were made, if this compromise resulted in a plane that stalled in level flight at 100MPH then don't try to fly at 90MPH, much of it is an issue of pilot training. In combat the Fw 190 would stall so quickly it would sometimes tumble, much worse than the more benign Hurricane, that doesn't mean that any pilot would prefer the Hurricane. From the war years to present day pilots have flown both the Spitfire and the Mustang, are they making a judgement on the Mustang or a comparison with the Spitfire because the Spitfire was 30MPH slower with the same engine and most would choose speed over stall characteristics. The P-51 maybe wasn't the best in turn and stall performance, I am sure the designers were aware that it wouldn't be, there isn't a free lunch in engineering, however there wouldnt be so many flying today if it was intrinsically dangerous.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## GregP (Nov 1, 2018)

A P-51 is NOT dangerous unless it is the first high-performance aircraft you have ever flown. Then it is a downright killer. 

But so is ANY 1,300+ hp WWII fighter. Fighter pilots required primary, basic, and advanced training before being strapped into a worn-out P-40 for fighter transition. If you put a new, baby P-51 pilot into a B-29 with no transition training, he would not survive for very long, either.

Reactions: Like Like:
3 | Like List reactions


----------



## Elmas (Nov 1, 2018)

GregP said:


> A P-51 is NOT dangerous unless it is the first high-performance aircraft you have ever flown. Then it is a downright killer.
> 
> But so is ANY 1,300+ hp WWII fighter. Fighter pilots required primary, basic, and advanced training before being strapped into a worn-out P-40 for fighter transition. If you put a new, baby P-51 pilot into a B-29 with no transition training, he would not survive for very long, either.



Of course. My Friend Ten. Alberto Scano went from T-6 to G-59 two seater, then to G-59 single seater and then to P-51.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Nov 1, 2018)

GregP said:


> A P-51 is NOT dangerous unless it is the first high-performance aircraft you have ever flown. Then it is a downright killer.
> 
> But so is ANY 1,300+ hp WWII fighter. Fighter pilots required primary, basic, and advanced training before being strapped into a worn-out P-40 for fighter transition. If you put a new, baby P-51 pilot into a B-29 with no transition training, he would not survive for very long, either.


It reminds me of a Tommy Cooper joke, Tommy goes to the doctor and puts his arm behind his back.
Tommy : Doctor every time I do this it hurts.
Doctor : Well stop doing it then!

Reactions: Winner Winner:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Fighterguy (Nov 1, 2018)

One major factor beyond performance stats, is the ability to keep them flying. Wars are not won by the best airplane, tank, or rifle, but through logistics. Having equipment that is robust, simple to maintain, in large quantity, operator friendly, with well trained crews, pays greater dividends than individual performance characteristics. Great example, the Tiger and Panther tanks. Compared to allied tanks, T-34 and M4 Sherman for example, they were regarded as the better vehicles. But when looked at through the logistics lens, they failed miserably. Harder to produce, highly technical and complex, difficult to maintain (without adequate spare parts), not in great enough quantity, and a host of other factors, reduced their combat effectiveness.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Dimlee (Nov 2, 2018)

Fighterguy said:


> One major factor beyond performance stats, is the ability to keep them flying. Wars are not won by the best airplane, tank, or rifle, but through logistics. Having equipment that is robust, simple to maintain, in large quantity, operator friendly, with well trained crews, pays greater dividends than individual performance characteristics. Great example, the Tiger and Panther tanks. Compared to allied tanks, T-34 and M4 Sherman for example, they were regarded as the better vehicles. But when looked at through the logistics lens, they failed miserably. Harder to produce, highly technical and complex, difficult to maintain (without adequate spare parts), not in great enough quantity, and a host of other factors, reduced their combat effectiveness.



But Tiger Panzer is a cool machine and logistics is a subject so boring.
My favourite one:
_I don’t know what the hell this ‘logistics’ is that Marshall is always talking about, but I want some of it. 
(E.J.King_)

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Funny Funny:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 2, 2018)

Dimlee said:


> My favourite one:
> _I don’t know what the hell this ‘logistics’ is that Marshall is always talking about, but I want some of it.
> (E.J.King_)


And this from the man whose empire included the Military Sea Transportation Service, the Seabees, and the greatest amphibious warfare fleet the world has ever seen!
Cheers,
Wes

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## swampyankee (Nov 2, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> And this from the man whose empire included the Military Sea Transportation Service, the Seabees, and the greatest amphibious warfare fleet the world has ever seen!
> Cheers,
> Wes



...and the greatest ability to support modern warships at sea, without bases.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Nov 2, 2018)

That's very interesting about the Ki 100 it does sound like a perfect candidate for this thread. Reading the wiki I was surprised to learn that part of the weight saving from ki-61 was from removing a lead counterweight that had been put in to preserve the CG!

Ki 100 also sounds like a good example of plane with not the highest top speed but a good "combat speed" and a diving ability that apparently made a significant difference in combat.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Nov 2, 2018)

Dimlee said:


> But Tiger Panzer is a cool machine and logistics is a subject so boring.
> My favourite one:
> _I don’t know what the hell this ‘logistics’ is that Marshall is always talking about, but I want some of it.
> (E.J.King_)


Logistics is something you don't have but you can not have, when it is minus 40C and all your troops are in summer clothes you don't have logistics.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Nov 2, 2018)

Anology might be a 'pretty good' aircraft built for local conditions, capable of being fitted with skis, to run on 'inferior" fuel and made with drain plugs to drain out all the fluids every night, so that they are actually available for Combat in say, February in Ukraine instead of 'uber' plane that is grounded with a frozen battery and congealed oil...

Reactions: Like Like:
3 | Like List reactions


----------



## fliger747 (Nov 2, 2018)

Logistics, actually boring but important. It's why the great Blue Fleet that came to stay was as relentless as the tide. US Grant might have gotten ripped once in a while, but he never went away. 

Grumman was so busy making planes that the spare parts just weren't available. The Navy stepped in and halted production to get some spares. Need some new tires for your F6F? Push it overboard and get a new one...

Reactions: Agree Agree:
2 | Funny Funny:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 2, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Logistics is something you don't have but you can not have, when it is minus 40C and all your troops are in summer clothes you don't have logistics.


"But Herr Marshall, der Fuhrer said we would conquer Russia before winter! We haven't conquered Russia yet, so it can't be winter."
Cheers,
Wes

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Funny Funny:
3 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 2, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> ...and the greatest ability to support modern warships at sea, without bases.


UNREP, the ultimate force multiplier.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Nov 2, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> "But Herr Marshall, der Fuhrer said we would conquer Russia before winter! We haven't conquered Russia yet, so it can't be winter."
> Cheers,
> Wes


Our spies confirm that V1s are hitting central London, so forget all that scientific measurement malarkey.


----------



## fliger747 (Nov 2, 2018)

To be way off topic, the real reason the Whermacht stalled? Lack of Winter Horse Shoes...

If you have every tried to ride a horse in the winter shod with regular shoes, you will immediately understand.


----------



## pbehn (Nov 2, 2018)

fliger747 said:


> To be way off topic, the real reason the Whermacht stalled? Lack of Winter Horse Shoes...
> 
> If you have every tried to ride a horse in the winter shod with regular shoes, you will immediately understand.


Well that would be a shortage of 3.2 million horse shoes, since they started with 800,000 horses, in truth they were short of a lot of things but no shortage of hot air in Berlin.


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 2, 2018)

pbehn said:


> In truth they were short of a lot of things but no shortage of hot air in Berlin.


Logistical problem: How do you transport that hot air to the front, which has a huge shortage? Maybe it would make Tante Ju a little more buoyant and extend her range? Now there's a quality that doesn't show up in the stats!

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Nov 2, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Logistical problem: How do you transport that hot air to the front, which has a huge shortage? Maybe it would make Tante Ju a little more buoyant and extend her range?[/QUOTE
> Quite simple, on a broad gauge railway of course.


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 2, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Quite simple, on a broad gauge railway of course.


"Til Stonelev's cavalry came and tore up the tracks again. It was December of forty one, we were desperate, the war had just begun."


----------



## pbehn (Nov 2, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> "Til Stonelev's cavalry came and tore up the tracks again."


I was referring to a story I read years ago about 1000 people being involved in the design of a pan Europe broad gauge railway up until days before Berlin fell. Hard to tell fantasy from reality.


----------



## fliger747 (Nov 3, 2018)

Russia still runs a broad gauge. Allegedly the "Standard Gauge" dates back to the track width of Roman Chariots which translated down to horse drawn wagons etc in England. Winter horse shoes usually have cleats built up on them by welding much like grousers on cat tracks.


----------



## pbehn (Nov 3, 2018)

fliger747 said:


> Russia still runs a broad gauge. Allegedly the "Standard Gauge" dates back to the track width of Roman Chariots which translated down to horse drawn wagons etc in England. Winter horse shoes usually have cleats built up on them by welding much like grousers on cat tracks.


The proposed broad gauge railway was 3m wide more than twice "standard gauge".


----------



## Reluctant Poster (Nov 3, 2018)

pbehn said:


> At the start numbers were about equal because no Spitfires were sent to France, the higher number of Hurricanes reflects it being easier to produce.
> Document-42: Aircraft production during the Battle of Britain


I have to say that essay must have been written by Beaverbrook's PR department. Plans to build the Merlin in the US were well underway before long before Beaverbrook was appointed Minister of Aircraft Production.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Nov 3, 2018)

pbehn said:


> The proposed broad gauge railway was 3m wide more than twice "standard gauge".



I suspect it does go far back, before the locomotive and the steam engine. The legally required width for a road established within the medieval Holy Roman Empire and its neighboring polities was about 3 meters, a 'lances width' .

Hellweg - Wikipedia

The goal was for the roads to be wide enough for two carts or coaches to pass by each other.

Not all roads by any means had to have such a width but these were all the big protected roads that the princes and Free Cities maintained peaceful travel by force if travellers, especially merchants, were molested on them. They appointed a Justice of the Peace of the roads and sent out little armies to arrest and punish anybody that molested those using these roads. These included the regional and local salt roads & trade routes like the Amber Road and of course the major thoroughfares like the Via Reggie and Via Imperia.


Via Regia - Wikipedia


----------



## pbehn (Nov 3, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I suspect it does go far back, before the locomotive and the steam engine. The legally required width for a road established within the medieval Holy Roman Empire and its neighboring polities was about 3 meters, a 'lances width' .
> 
> Hellweg - Wikipedia
> 
> ...


No it was a 3m wide railway, complete madness. Breitspurbahn - Wikipedia


----------



## Schweik (Nov 3, 2018)

pbehn said:


> No it was a 3m wide railway, complete madness. Breitspurbahn - Wikipedia



My point is the 3 meter wide guideline goes back many centuries.


----------



## pbehn (Nov 3, 2018)

Schweik said:


> My point is the 3 meter wide guideline goes back many centuries.


No it doesn't, the meter as a measure dates to Napoleon, to try to construct a modern railway on a 3 meter gauge is madness, especially on the scale that was planned. The tunnels curves and marshalling yards would be huge. Standard gauge was actually 4ft 8in, they added a half inch just to allow curves and smooth running straight away. A 3m wide railway is a fantasy, possibly useful on a steel plant but of no use at all cross country.


----------



## Schweik (Nov 3, 2018)

pbehn said:


> No it doesn't, the meter as a measure dates to Napoleon, to try to construct a modern railway on a 3 meter gauge is madness, especially on the scale that was planned. The tunnels curves and marshalling yards would be huge. Standard gauge was actually 4ft 8in, they added a half inch just to allow curves and smooth running straight away. A 3m wide railway is a fantasy, possibly useful on a steel plant but of no use at all cross country.



Yes it does - the distance is the same no matter how you measure it. 3 meters is still 3 meters even if you measure in feet or ells or any other way.

The Nazi fantasies and delusions are layered on top of a much older culture which long predated the German State in any form (or Napoleon)


----------



## pbehn (Nov 3, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Yes it does - the distance is the same no matter how you measure it. 3 meters is still 3 meters even if you measure in feet or ells or any other way.
> 
> The Nazi fantasies and delusions are layered on top of a much older culture which long predated the German State in any form (or Napoleon)


Oh for crying out loud, I was born and raised in Stockton on Tees, the first passenger railway terminated within a few hundred yards of where I was born. Whatever some ancient mystic thought about things they never had anything to do with putting and operating rolling stock on a track. You need to explore the mathematics of it, I am certainly not going to stat teaching you.


----------



## Schweik (Nov 3, 2018)

Railways were typically built on existing roadways and trade routes. I was talking about those amd their traditional width. I was not talking about nor did I ever mention any mystics. Nor could I care less where you were born.


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 4, 2018)

Boys, boys, boys! Tsk, tsk, let's not get our backs up! If you're going to wear spiked shoes and stomp on each other's testosterone, you're not enhancing the civility for which this site is renowned. End of lecture.
Wes

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Funny Funny:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Dimlee (Nov 4, 2018)

My head is spinning... What size of rail track will make an aircraft great again? (Looking at the thread's header).

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## Shortround6 (Nov 4, 2018)

Dimlee said:


> My head is spinning... What size of rail track will make an aircraft great again? (Looking at the thread's header).




Well, it is certainly easier to move planes by train if the tunnels and bridges are bigger.

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## swampyankee (Nov 4, 2018)

Schweik said:


> My point is the 3 meter wide guideline goes back many centuries.




I think you may be conflating the width of a road with the distance between the wheels. For a train, the distance between the wheels -- the track gauge -- is about half the width of the locomotives and cars. See, for example, A Word on Loading Gauges.. Hitler's 3-meter track gauge railroad would have a loading gauge large enough to permit 6-meter wide, 7-meter high cars and locomotives.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## fliger747 (Nov 4, 2018)

The 747 fuselage was constructed of pieces limited in size to ones that could be transported from California to Paine Field in Washington by rail. By comparison the mostly composite 787 comes in rather large modules. The wings for instance are produced by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Nagoya, in one piece. They fit as a pair in the cargo area of the 747-Dreamlifter. We would also go to Taranto Italy for some fuselage sections as well as shuffling bits and pieces around the lower 48. 

Obviously transport of assemblies from sub contractors can assume some importance. The Germans due to the bombing campaign dispersed much of their aircraft manufacture. In Nagoya, the Japanese moved Zero-sen's for final assembly from the factory (not near the airfield) through the narrow streets via horse drawn cart. 

All these considerations go into the design of an aircraft. Production ease, ease of repair, security of the plant all reflect on a plane's numbers and service reliability percentages.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 4, 2018)

Ref: posts 297 thru 306, this thread. Lesson learned: Before combining an engineer and a historian in the same space, remove all potential sources of ignition and assure at least 15 AC/H ventilation!

Reactions: Funny Funny:
2 | Winner Winner:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Nov 4, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> I think you may be conflating the width of a road with the distance between the wheels. For a train, the distance between the wheels -- the track gauge -- is about half the width of the locomotives and cars. See, for example, A Word on Loading Gauges.. Hitler's 3-meter track gauge railroad would have a loading gauge large enough to permit 6-meter wide, 7-meter high cars and locomotives.


No I was discussing the concept. as you state you have 6 meter wide cars and 7 meters high. They are absolutely enormous. But they still just have two rails of track to take the weight, the loco that pulls it is similarly enormous. As the gauge increases and the weight increases how do you support the weight? More wheels. closer wheels? As the gauge increases its ability to make a turn becomes less and less. It is the flanges that take the force of a turn to change direction, as you state the rolling stock would be 6m wide and 7m high. We havnt even discussed the bridges and tunnels needed for these monsters.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Elmas (Nov 5, 2018)

That could be an interesting thread: _"Could a 3 m gauge railway technically feasible?"_


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 5, 2018)

Elmas said:


> "Could a 3 m gauge railway be technically feasible?"


Or maybe more to the point, "Could a 3 meter gauge railway (or an SR71 bizjet) be economically practical?"
Cheers,
Wes

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 5, 2018)

pbehn said:


> We havnt even discussed the bridges and tunnels needed for these monsters.


I was ten years old growing up in a rural state famed for its narrow, steep, twisty roads when the first plans for the Interstate Highway System were published, and we had the same concerns.
Busses carried 36 pax max, tractor trailers were single drive axle, single trailer axle, the longest trailers were 36 feet, and sleeper cabs were unheard of. Detroit cars were just starting to grow, "I love 57 Chevies, I think they do it up right!" Old Angie Barofio, my dad's mechanic, would roll over in his grave if he saw the monsters that prowl the Interstate today.
Cheers,
Wes


----------



## Elmas (Nov 5, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Or maybe more to the point, "Could a 3 meter gauge railway (or an SR71 bizjet) be economically practical?"
> Cheers,
> Wes



Someone is thinking that this is commercially feasible






so a SR71 Bizjet seems a very reasonable idea...


----------



## Shortround6 (Nov 5, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> I was ten years old growing up in a rural state famed for its narrow, steep, twisty roads when the first plans for the Interstate Highway System were published, and we had the same concerns.
> Busses carried 36 pax max, tractor trailers were single drive axle, single trailer axle, the longest trailers were 36 feet, and sleeper cabs were unheard of. Detroit cars were just starting to grow, "I love 57 Chevies, I think they do it up right!" Old Angie Barofio, my dad's mechanic, would roll over in his grave if he saw the monsters that prowl the Interstate today.
> Cheers,
> Wes




difference is that while the length and height of modern trucks/busses have increased the width has not (at least not much) anybody want to see that rural 2 lane (or 1 1/2 lane) steep. twisty road rebuilt to take 20-24 foot wide tractor trailers, even if short? 

Even in California once you get up into the hills (not mountains) of the old gold country the length of trailers or the over all length of the rig is still restricted due to the sharp turns and trailer dump trucks are prefered to tri-axle dump trucks.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 5, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Even in California once you get up into the hills (not mountains) of the old gold country the length of trailers or the over all length of the rig is still restricted due to the sharp turns and trailer dump trucks are prefered to tri-axle dump trucks.


Yup. Brother in law lived in Sutter Creek, and the roads around there reminded me of home, though the scenery was mighty different. They moved to Texas a year before that neighborhood was ravaged by a wildfire.
Cheers,
Wes


----------



## pbehn (Nov 5, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> I was ten years old growing up in a rural state famed for its narrow, steep, twisty roads when the first plans for the Interstate Highway System were published, and we had the same concerns.
> Busses carried 36 pax max, tractor trailers were single drive axle, single trailer axle, the longest trailers were 36 feet, and sleeper cabs were unheard of. Detroit cars were just starting to grow, "I love 57 Chevies, I think they do it up right!" Old Angie Barofio, my dad's mechanic, would roll over in his grave if he saw the monsters that prowl the Interstate today.
> Cheers,
> Wes


There are all sorts of things that conspire against it. As the gauge increases the curves must be more gentle. The wagons must be longer and have more wheels to take the weight, the loco must be bigger and produce more power but that gets harder to transmit and though the weight may increase by two to our times you still only have two rails so how wide can the rail be made? The whole thing would be much more than twice the weight per meter which means when it crosses a bridge you have a massive asymmetric load all on one side and then all on the other.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## wuzak (Nov 7, 2018)

GregP said:


> From real-world events, the people at Curtiss generally pissed off Don Berlin (designer) and weren't paying much, if any, attention to fighter developments that were going on around the world. Witness the P-46 and P-53 (nothing much). The P-60 was a good-handling fighter with very-predictably mediocre speed. There wasn't a "winner" that came from Curtiss-Wright after the P-36 / P-40 series or aircraft, including their last try at it with the XF-87 Blackhawk jet. They had the much-later IBM philosophy of thinking they were the Gold standard and their thinking was "right" and everyone should just know that.



The XP-53 was completed as the XP-60. 

The XP-53 was based on a P-40 fuselage with the laminar flow wing and the Continental I-1430 engine. 

With the Packard V-1650-1 entering production, the USAAC was keen to combine that engine with the laminar flow wing of teh XP-53. So Curtiss proposed to convert the 2nd XP-53 airframe to the V-1650-1 engine. This would be designated XP-60.

When it was clear the I-1430 wasn't going to be ready for some time, the XP-53 was cancelled. 

As Packard was just getting into V-1650-1 production, none were available for the XP-60 to start with, so a Merlin 28 was put in its place instead.The performance was not up to expectations (387mph top speed), so the project did not reach production.

XP-60A and XP-60B were to be V-1710 powered, each with a turbocharger - the A had the GE B series and the B had a Wright turbo. 

The XP-60A was built, but had problems with the engine installation (it caught fire in ground running).

The XP-60B was under construction when testing of the XP-60A proved disappointing. The XP-60B was fitted with an R-2800 and single rotation propeller and designated XP-60E. Estimated top speed was about 405mph.

The XP-60C was originally to use the Chrysler IV-2220, but was built with an R-2800 and contra-props.

The XP-60D was the XP-60 fitted with the V-1650-3. I haven't seen any performance numbers for that model.


----------



## wuzak (Nov 7, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> The US had quite a few "types" that carried their own designations even though the airframe essentially remained the same, just different engines, armament or other modifications.
> The P-36 is a classic case of this: YP-37, P-40 and XP-42.
> P-38: XP-49.
> P-39: XFL, P-400, P-63.
> ...



The P-39C was originally designated P-45.


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Nov 15, 2018)

I have been reading along in this thread for a while and there seems to be a big difference in opinion as to what constitutes a "different" aircraft and what is just considered just a simple model change.
To be honest, I don't know what my own opinion is on some aircraft.

As mentioned in earlier posts:
We have the Spitfire Mk.I as compared to a Spitfire Mk.24.
The Wing is different, the Fuselage is different, the Tail is different, the Engine is different.
There are some obvious similarities in line but without knowing the history of the models in between, it is pretty hard to follow the evolution of one from the other.

The Messerschmitt 109E and earlier as compared to the 109F and subsequent models is another.
Other than basic construction techniques, many features were changed to be different enough in shape and function that if the designation had changed, I doubt anyone would have argued the point.

The Soviet Yakovlev fighters are also a good example of a family of aircraft that all share some common characteristics and shapes, but it is a bit hard to argue that the two seat heavy Yak-7 and the lightweight Yak-3 are really the same aircraft.

Some aircraft such as the Macchi C.202 and C.205 are pretty obviously the same aircraft; Some C.202 were rebuilt to C.205 standard post war (minus the troublesome retractable tail wheel). It was just a matter of swapping out Engine, Oil Coolers, and Armament.

A similar argument can be made for the Lavochkin La-5 to La-7 evolution.

The case of the wing modification of the P-47N from the P-47D/M was also mentioned.
With those two models, the rest of the aircraft was almost entirely the same, but what if we had compared the early P-47B to a P-47N?
There are still similarities, but without all the models in between, would we still come to the same conclusion that they were the same aircraft?

There was also a mention that the F6F Hellcat came from the F4F Wildcat and in that case, one has to determine what "came from" really means..
There is no doubt that the mission and environment are the same and some of the construction techniques are the same, but that seems to be just the way that Grumman built aeroplanes at the time. It would be pretty similar to saying that the P-63 came from the P-39 when the only pieces that they have in common are the doors.

So what is this all leading to?

I believe the P-40 is undoubtedly derived from the P-36 but a bit more than just a simple engine swap.
There is no argument that the prototype P-37 / P-40 were conversions of P-36 airframes.
To understand how I came to this conclusion, it helps to know how the P-40 / P-36 series is put together.
There is obviously the Engine (and Radiators and Oil Coolers) ahead of the Firewall which is the most obvious difference.
The Fuselage behind the Firewall should actually be considered as two distinct pieces.
There is an Upper Fuselage and Lower Fuselage which are joined together at a horizontal seam.
This is the Fuselage Reference Line (FRL).
The P-40 up through the P-40C actually has the same lower fuselage below the FRL as the short tail P-40D and later models.
At least with the earlier long nose P-40 and short nose P-40, they had the same kind of engine.
With the P-36 to P-40, the engine is obviously different, and there are some obvious external differences in the lower fuselage.
What is not so obvious is that the upper fuselage is also a bit different. At least it appears that way from a comparison of drawings I have been able to find, so of the three major fuselage sections, none of them are really the same. Internal arrangements of equipment also appears different.
Therefore as I see it, the P-36 and P-40 are definitely different aircraft with a common ancestry and common construction techniques and a bunch of common pieces such as the wing and tail surfaces.

- Ivan.

Reactions: Bacon Bacon:
1 | Like Like:
1 | Winner Winner:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 16, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> I have been reading along in this thread for a while and there seems to be a big difference in opinion as to what constitutes a "different" aircraft and what is just considered just a simple model change.
> To be honest, I don't know what my own opinion is on some aircraft.


To be honest, I don't know either. But I do know this discussion is beginning to sound like medieval theologians coming to blows over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Cheers,
Wes

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Winner Winner:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Nov 16, 2018)

My understanding is that though they did make an early XP-40 out of the tenth P-36, performance wasn't so great (top speed barely over 300 mph) and they ended up later on sending the design to NACA for a full workup to sort out aerodynamics before they got the speed up to what they were looking for (closer to 350 mph). So it was clearly a bit more than slapping on a new engine.

The other point though is probably more salient - with or without new name designations some aircraft designs clearly did change so much over time (Spit 1 to Spit 24 say) that it's clearly a new model. While conversely sometimes they changed a model name or number for what was still the same plane.

But it's also ultimately subjective and there is no simple way to define precisely when the change happened. I'd base it on operational and tactical capabilities as anything else. But that is just one way to look at it, the subjectivity (and the refusal of some people to acknowledge that you can slice it up different ways) is what makes the debate descend into the quasi theological, as happens so often on forums.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## Greyman (Nov 16, 2018)

For what it's worth - from the NACA report on the P-40:

_Introduction__._
_The flying qualities of the Curtiss P-40 pursuit airplane have been investigated at the request of the Army Air Corps, Material Division. The tests were conducted at Langley Field, Virginia. Approximately 22 hours of flying time were required to complete the tests, which included measurements of static and dynamic longitudinal stability, dynamic lateral stability, sideslip characteristics, controllability, stalling characteristics, and maneuverability. The P-40 is the third pursuit airplane whose flying qualities have been measured. The former tests were made on the P-36 and the P-36A airplanes. A comparison between the results of the measurements obtained on the P-36A and on the P-40 should prove interesting, inasmuch as these airplanes are practically identical except for their engine installations._

Reactions: Like Like:
3 | Like List reactions


----------



## jetcal1 (Nov 16, 2018)

Greyman said:


> For what it's worth - from the NACA report on the P-40:
> 
> _Introduction__._
> _"...........A comparison between the results of the measurements obtained on the P-36A and on the P-40 should prove interesting, inasmuch as these airplanes are practically identical except for their engine installations._



Yet how much is left of the P-36 in the XP-40Q?

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Nov 16, 2018)

Greyman said:


> For what it's worth - from the NACA report on the P-40:
> 
> _Introduction__._
> _The flying qualities of the Curtiss P-40 pursuit airplane have been investigated at the request of the Army Air Corps, Material Division. The tests were conducted at Langley Field, Virginia. Approximately 22 hours of flying time were required to complete the tests, which included measurements of static and dynamic longitudinal stability, dynamic lateral stability, sideslip characteristics, controllability, stalling characteristics, and maneuverability. The P-40 is the third pursuit airplane whose flying qualities have been measured. The former tests were made on the P-36 and the P-36A airplanes. A comparison between the results of the measurements obtained on the P-36A and on the P-40 should prove interesting, inasmuch as these airplanes are practically identical except for their engine installations._



Identical before or after they made all the changes to get it 50 mph faster?

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Greyman (Nov 16, 2018)

The report was on P-40 No.39-160 so I'll assume after.


----------



## pbehn (Nov 16, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> As mentioned in earlier posts:
> We have the Spitfire Mk.I as compared to a Spitfire Mk.24.
> The Wing is different, the Fuselage is different, the Tail is different, the Engine is different.
> There are some obvious similarities in line but without knowing the history of the models in between, it is pretty hard to follow the evolution of one from the other.
> ...


With the Spitfire and 109 it is quite simple, they all look like Spitfires and 109s despite everything almost being changed, they still look very similar on the ground and in the air.. A Tempest looked like a Typhoon, but the name "Typhoon" had no kudos at all.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Nov 16, 2018)

pbehn said:


> With the Spitfire and 109 it is quite simple, they all look like Spitfires and 109s despite everything almost being changed, they still look very similar on the ground and in the air.. A Tempest looked like a Typhoon, but the name "Typhoon" had no kudos at all.



Hello PBehn,
I suppose they should have called them all Tornado and been done with it?

If you think about it, the P-63 looks about as close to the P-39 and in development, some of the features of the King Cobra were first tested on prototypes based on the Airacobra airframe.

We can go on with this discussion of what is the same and what is different pretty much forever but my point which XBe02Drvr and Schweik seem to recognize is that it all comes down to a matter of opinion and isn't really worth an argument.

Hello XBe02Drvr,
The Angels on the head of a pin reminds me of the discussions on philosophy from back in college. Are we in agreement that if we can get the Angels to just stand instead of dance, we can get more of them on the head of a pin?

- Ivan.

Reactions: Like Like:
3 | Like List reactions


----------



## michael rauls (Nov 16, 2018)

Schweik said:


> My understanding is that though they did make an early XP-40 out of the tenth P-36, performance wasn't so great (top speed barely over 300 mph) and they ended up later on sending the design to NACA for a full workup to sort out aerodynamics before they got the speed up to what they were looking for (closer to 350 mph). So it was clearly a bit more than slapping on a new engine.
> 
> The other point though is probably more salient - with or without new name designations some aircraft designs clearly did change so much over time (Spit 1 to Spit 24 say) that it's clearly a new model. While conversely sometimes they changed a model name or number for what was still the same plane.
> 
> But it's also ultimately subjective and there is no simple way to define precisely when the change happened. I'd base it on operational and tactical capabilities as anything else. But that is just one way to look at it, the subjectivity (and the refusal of some people to acknowledge that you can slice it up different ways) is what makes the debate descend into the quasi theological, as happens so often on forums.


I couldn't agree more. Unless one is talking the extremes( obviously a p51 is a different type than a f6f for example) there is no right or wrong here. Everyone has there own criteria for what constitutes a distinct type.
To me if the fuselage and wings are majority the same even with some modification then it is still the same plane but I certainly respect that others may have different criteria.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 16, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> The Angels on the head of a pin reminds me of the discussions on philosophy from back in college. Are we in agreement that if we can get the Angels to just stand instead of dance, we can get more of them on the head off a pin?


AHA! A fellow philosopher wannabe!
Well, to employ an analogy, do you suppose a nucleus of an atom could be induced to support more electrons if they could be coerced into sitting still instead of dancing madly about? I think not!
Cheers,
Wes


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 16, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> To be honest, I don't know what my own opinion is on some aircra





Schweik said:


> But it's also ultimately subjective and there is no simple way to define precisely





XBe02Drvr said:


> To be honest, I don't know either.





michael rauls said:


> I couldn't agree more. Unless one is talking the extremes( obviously a p51 is a different type than a f6f for example) there is no right or wrong here. Everyone has there own criteria for what constitutes a distinct type.


I LOVE IT! The negative wave amplitude seems to be decaying, and we seem to be drifting into congruent orbits.
Cheers,
Wes


----------



## GrauGeist (Nov 17, 2018)

OK, so...

Should the Germans have created a new designation for the Bf109 after the Emil?
And should the Americans have redesignated the P-51 after it got the got the Merlin?
Then there was the A6M: should the IJN have created a new designation for every change made?
That would have been quite a few new types to keep rack of, since there were 10 variations from the A6M1 Type 0.

Or should we quit being rivet counters and go with the historical flow in airframe identification conventions that the Governments had in place?

None of this has a thing to do with the thread topic, either...if anyone can remember what it was.

Reactions: Winner Winner:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## CORSNING (Nov 17, 2018)

.....................................................................


----------



## swampyankee (Nov 17, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> OK, so...
> 
> Should the Germans have created a new designation for the Bf109 after the Emil?
> And should the Americans have redesignated the P-51 after it got the got the Merlin?
> ...




Biology faces the same sort of issue: where's the boundary between species? Taxonomy considers dogs, wolves, and coyotes to be distinct species, but they can all interbreed with no problems. Similarly, domestic cattle and bison can interbreed, but are both considered distinct species.

The cutoff is arbitrary. In the US case, at least, it's made as much by budget hacking as by any form of consistent reasoning. Two good jet-age examples could be the USN's F9F Panther/Cougar and the USAF's F84 swept-wing vs straight-wing variants and, possibly, the F-80/T-33.


----------



## Elmas (Nov 17, 2018)

This is a Ford Fiesta









and this is a Ford Fiesta

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## CORSNING (Nov 17, 2018)

Elmas, you read my mind. I was thinking a little more dramatically though.

This is a corvette,






and this is a Corvette.


----------



## CORSNING (Nov 17, 2018)

If you pull the old " we are talking about only five years", then it looks
more like this.

Early





Late

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Nov 17, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> Hello PBehn,
> I suppose they should have called them all Tornado and been done with it?
> .


Sadly the poor Tornado was a Typhoon without an engine, it was to have been the Vulture engine version. I think Hawker ran out of weather related names after Tempest. From wiki


----------



## Reluctant Poster (Nov 18, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> As mentioned in earlier posts:
> We have the Spitfire Mk.I as compared to a Spitfire Mk.24.
> The Wing is different, the Fuselage is different, the Tail is different, the Engine is different.
> There are some obvious similarities in line but without knowing the history of the models in between, it is pretty hard to follow the evolution of one from the other.


The Mk 21 was originally to be called the Victor but cooler heads prevailed and the iconic name was retained (They must have learned their lesson after the morale sapping name change from Fighter Command to Air Defense Great Britain).
The difference between a Mk I and a PR XIX isn't really that great, from firewall to empennage its basically the same, as is the wing with some internal differences of course. The F 21 is more of a departure with a redesigned wing and longer undercarriage to support a larger diameter propeller.
Strangely the production Spiteful was the MK XIV skipping Mks I through XIII. It is speculated that this was because it was a laminar winged version of the Spitfire Mk XIV.

On the other hand the Lancaster was originally called the Manchester III, but obviously that's not a name to perpetuate

Reactions: Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## DarrenW (Nov 18, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> There was also a mention that the F6F Hellcat came from the F4F Wildcat and in that case, one has to determine what "came from" really means..
> There is no doubt that the mission and environment are the same and some of the construction techniques are the same, but that seems to be just the way that Grumman built aeroplanes at the time. It would be pretty similar to saying that the P-63 came from the P-39 when the only pieces that they have in common are the doors.



I couldn't agree more with this statement. There are sources out there still that try to convey that the Hellcat was merely a further development of the Wildcat and nothing could be further from the truth. It was a totally new design for Grumman, but who could fault them for "borrowing" certain engineering concepts found in the Wildcat that didn't require a complete redesign? The Hellcat was therefore evolutionary rather than revolutionary, which in turn gave it enough family resemblance to be called the Wildcat's "bigger brother".


----------



## swampyankee (Nov 18, 2018)

CORSNING said:


> If you pull the old " we are talking about only five years", then it looks
> more like this.
> 
> Early
> ...



What's funny is that they were all named after this:

Reactions: Like Like:
3 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Nov 18, 2018)

As usual its the Europeans to blame, the Dutch called a small boat a Corf and so the French made a smaller version of it, a corvette is smaller than a small boat.


----------



## Reluctant Poster (Nov 18, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Sadly the poor Tornado was a Typhoon without an engine, it was to have been the Vulture engine version. I think Hawker ran out of weather related names after Tempest. From wiki
> 
> 
> 
> ...


One was also built with an early Centaurus

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## swampyankee (Nov 18, 2018)

pbehn said:


> As usual its the Europeans to blame, the Dutch called a small boat a Corf and so the French made a smaller version of it, a corvette is smaller than a small boat.


Yeah. English really got messed up by that French conquest in 1066

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 18, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> Yeah. English really got messed up by that French conquest in 1066


No, French got contaminated and debased by 1066!

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Nov 18, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> Yeah. English really got messed up by that French conquest in 1066


I find such things interesting, it was a Norman French invasion so they already spoke a mix of French (vulgar Latin) and Norse which is Germanic.


----------



## GrauGeist (Nov 18, 2018)

Sorry guys, but the G-50 (XF6F) was started in 1938 as a successor to the F4F. As the design matured, several changes were made, but it started life as a follow-on.

Several design changes occurred as the design matured between 1938 and 1941: Low mounted wings, wider-track maingear, R-2800 instead of R-2600, hydraulic undercarriage, self-sealing tanks, higher cockpit, etc.

By the time the XF6F-3 flew on 30 July 1942, it looked a great deal different than it's original concept four years earlier.

The F8F was a clean sheet design, the F6F was not.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Nov 18, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> No, French got contaminated and debased by 1066!


Until the era of Napoleon only 10% of the population spoke what would be recognised as French, on of the things he standardised was the French language itself.


----------



## swampyankee (Nov 18, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Until the era of Napoleon only 10% of the population spoke what would be recognised as French, on of the things he standardised was the French language itself.



The larger European countries are far less homogeneous than some suppose, and this may be more true of France than some others: as late as the First World War, fewer than half the native-born citizens of France spoke French as their first language (iTunesU; John Merriman). There were also disconnects between the language of the rulers and that of the people. In the case of England, until the 14th Century, the court and nobility of England spoke French; laws were written in French and Latin, not English. Scotland was split between English-speaking and Gaelic-speaking regions. Until the 19th Century, the court language of Austria was Italian The court language of Piedmont-Sardinia, the dynastic homeland of the Italian monarchy, the House of Savoy, was French.

Guillaume le Conquerant could probably speak comfortably with his liege lords, Henri I (King of France 1031 to 1060) and Philip I, and some of the aristocrats in France, at least those that weren't trying to kill him.

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Nov 18, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> The larger European countries are far less homogeneous than some suppose, and this may be more true of France than some others: as late as the First World War, fewer than half the native-born citizens of France spoke French as their first language (iTunesU; John Merriman). There were also disconnects between the language of the rulers and that of the people. In the case of England, until the 14th Century, the court and nobility of England spoke French; laws were written in French and Latin, not English. Scotland was split between English-speaking and Gaelic-speaking regions. Until the 19th Century, the court language of Austria was Italian The court language of Piedmont-Sardinia, the dynastic homeland of the Italian monarchy, the House of Savoy, was French.
> 
> Guillaume le Conquerant could probably speak comfortably with his liege lords, Henri I (King of France 1031 to 1060) and Philip I, and some of the aristocrats in France, at least those that weren't trying to kill him.


Languages change with interaction, until the age of the train people didn't move very much unless there was something like a war. In England the 100years war was a kind of war of independence or at least a settlement, at the start all laws were in French at the end they were in English. I read somewhere that William Wallace wrote letters in Latin which remained in use widely in printed for until the 15th century. Young William isn't presented as a Latin scholar in Braveheart in fact he spoke quite good English.


----------



## swampyankee (Nov 18, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Languages change with interaction, until the age of the train people didn't move very much unless there was something like a war. In England the 100years war was a kind of war of independence or at least a settlement, at the start all laws were in French at the end they were in English. I read somewhere that William Wallace wrote letters in Latin which remained in use widely in printed for until the 15th century. Young William isn't presented as a Latin scholar in Braveheart in fact he spoke quite good English.



I've read somewhere that the average people during the pre-railroad age tended to travel fewer than 20 miles from their home village. It wouldn't have helped that many countries -- including England -- limited the travel of people of the laboring classes for many years.

Certainly, until the Reformation, educated persons would be expected to read and write Latin. Indeed, this is something that complicates study of literacy during this time frame: a person who could, for example, only read and write English (to keep, say, business accounts) may not have been considered to be literate. Wallace was also, if I remember, from the part of Scotland where the first language of most people was English.


----------



## pbehn (Nov 18, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> I've read somewhere that the average people during the pre-railroad age tended to travel fewer than 20 miles from their home village. It wouldn't have helped that many countries -- including England -- limited the travel of people of the laboring classes for many years.
> 
> Certainly, until the Reformation, educated persons would be expected to read and write Latin. Indeed, this is something that complicates study of literacy during this time frame: a person who could, for example, only read and write English (to keep, say, business accounts) may not have been considered to be literate. Wallace was also, if I remember, from the part of Scotland where the first language of most people was English.


In the post railroad age it wasn't much different, neither of my grandmothers went further than 50 miles from where they were born, same for most of their family excluding the world wars and those who worked on ships people didn't move a great deal. Middlesbrough close to where I live grew during industrial revolution, a huge number of Irish people moved there but then they were Middlesbrough residents, they didn't travel back and forth.


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Nov 18, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> Sorry guys, but the G-50 (XF6F) was started in 1938 as a successor to the F4F. As the design matured, several changes were made, but it started life as a follow-on.



Hello GrauGeist,
To design a Successor to the F4F seems like a prudent thing to do at a time when technology was changing so quickly, but to call it even close to the same aircraft is a bit silly. A lot of paper designs get tossed about but when a real live prototype was constructed, it didn't look much like a Wildcat.



GrauGeist said:


> Several design changes occurred as the design matured between 1938 and 1941: Low mounted wings, wider-track maingear, R-2800 instead of R-2600, hydraulic undercarriage, self-sealing tanks, higher cockpit, etc.



I believe the R-2600 was retained with the XF6F-1 1941 prototype.



GrauGeist said:


> By the time the XF6F-3 flew on 30 July 1942, it looked a great deal different than it's original concept four years earlier.



The XF6F-3 looked pretty darn close to the XF6F-1 for shape and dimensions.



GrauGeist said:


> The F8F was a clean sheet design, the F6F was not.



The F8F wasn't really designed for the same mission as its two older brothers.

- Ivan.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## GrauGeist (Nov 18, 2018)

As I said before, the F8F was a cleansheet design and it's development started in 1943, a year AFTER the F6F went into production.

The G-50 (Grumman designation for what would eventually be the XF6F) design process started in 1938, two years BEFORE the F4F went into production.

What started out in the planning stage was refined considerably over the years before the XF6F-1 was actually built (the contract for the Hellcat was signed in 1941). So what you see in the -1 (or -3) is not what was originally on the drawing board.
This should come as no surprise, really, as several successful types looked nothing like their early concepts - there were six proposed concepts for the P-38.

In regards to the evolution of the F6F's engine:
XF6F-1 - Wright R-2600-10
XF6F-2 - Wright R-2600-16
XF6F-3 - P&W R-2800-10
XF6F-4 - P&W R-2800-27
XF6F-5 - P&W R-2800-18W
XF6F-6 - P&W R-2800-18W
Final production:
F6F-3 - P&W R-2800-10
F6F-5 - P&W R-2800-10W

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Kevin J (Nov 19, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> Yeah. English really got messed up by that French conquest in 1066


Correction, Norman and Breton conquest, we then spent the next 500 years fighting the French, that is we, the Bretons and the Normans, Brittany and Normandy now both being part of France, except the the Channel Islands or Isles Anglo-Norman as the French call them.


----------



## tomo pauk (Nov 19, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> Sorry guys, but the G-50 (XF6F) was started in 1938 as a successor to the F4F. As the design matured, several changes were made, but it started life as a follow-on.
> 
> Several design changes occurred as the design matured between 1938 and 1941: Low mounted wings, wider-track maingear, R-2800 instead of R-2600, hydraulic undercarriage, self-sealing tanks, higher cockpit, etc.
> 
> ...



Then again, F6F was not just a better version for the F4F, but a whole new A/C.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## DarrenW (Nov 19, 2018)

While Grumman was always looking forward and had many "irons in the fire" so to speak (like all aircraft manufactures of the time), from the sources I have it would seem that during early 1941 they were mainly focused on the production of the F4F. At this time the Wildcat was still considered a first-rate carrier fighter, until certain weaknesses came to light after meeting the A6M in combat later that year. So when the US Navy asked Grumman to create an improved version of the Wildcat during the middle of 1941 they were fully on board with doing so. Leroy Grumman and William Schwendler were about to make this a reality when they received requirements from the Bureau of Aeronautics that proved to be too much for the basic Wildcat airframe and thus they scrapped this idea in it's entirety. After designing a completely different aircraft to meet these new requirements, Grumman Design Number 50 became the XF6F-1 and the US Navy bought the contract with little hesitation.

Source: _Hellcat: the F6F in World War II _(Tillman)

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## wuzak (Nov 19, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> Correction, Norman and Breton conquest, we then spent the next 500 years fighting the French, that is we, the Bretons and the Normans, Brittany and Normandy now both being part of France, except the the Channel Islands or Isles Anglo-Norman as the French call them.



Sure there weren't some Britons and Anglo-Saxons involved as well?


----------



## Shortround6 (Nov 19, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Identical before or after they made all the changes to get it 50 mph faster?



Some of these _drastic _changes were things like relocating the radiator from the belly under/behind the pilot to under the engine in the nose.





Note early and not very good carb intake. Note shrouded exhausts (poor exhaust thrust). and this picture might not be the original form of the XP-40. 

XP-40 in the wind tunnel.




Please note the _almost total _lack of a carburetor inlet. A few descriptions claim they were using the space around the .50 cal gun barrels as the carb inlets. 

Most, if not all, of the changes that turned the under 300mph XP-40 into the 330-342mph XP-40 had to do with the engine and the associated parts Radiators/oil cooler/ intake scoops/ducts and exhaust. 

Unless someone can come up with a good source of changes to the airframe (new airfoil, major change in wing area, major change in tail arrangement. etc) that would significantly reduce drag I think we can take the accounts of the time as true and the P-40 (at east through the"C") was little different than than P-36. 
And since most good sources discount the claim that the P-40Q used a different airfoil than the early P-40s (the wings were clipped) then even the P-40Q used pretty much the same wing as the P-36 with suitable structural modifications to handle the increased load/stress.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
2 | Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 20, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> So when the US Navy asked Grumman to create an improved version of the Wildcat during the middle of 1941 they were fully on board with doing so. Leroy Grumman and William Schwendler were about to make this a reality when they received requirements from the Bureau of Aeronautics that proved to be too much for the basic Wildcat airframe and thus they scrapped this idea in it's entirety. After designing a completely different aircraft to meet these new requirements, Grumman Design Number 50 became the XF6F-1


Whoa, this is getting a little confusing! According to GreyGhost, Leroy's boys had been playing around with a G-50 paper airplane since '38, yet Darren here is implying that they cooked it up from scratch in '41 to meet BuAer's new requirements. Barrett, you listening? Can you weigh in on this and clarify the issue? Thanks.
Cheers,
Wes

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 20, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Sure there weren't some Britons and Anglo-Saxons involved as well?


Sorry guy, losers don't get to define history.

Reactions: Winner Winner:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## GrauGeist (Nov 20, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Whoa, this is getting a little confusing! According to GreyGhost, Leroy's boys had been playing around with a G-50 paper airplane since '38, yet Darren here is implying that they cooked it up from scratch in '41 to meet BuAer's new requirements. Barrett, you listening? Can you weigh in on this and clarify the issue? Thanks.
> Cheers,
> Wes


Yeah, that's an interesting take on the development, to be sure.
Interestingly enough, if we look at Grumman's Naval fighter development between 1931 and 1945, we'll see that there was only one lapse, and that was between the F6F and the F8F.

The issues that Grumman encountered were that the Wright R-2600 would be too much torque for the airframe, the mainwing could be lower on the fuselage because Grumman was incorporating a hydraulic undercarriage (the manual gear caused far too many issues) and a host of other points.
So in the end, yes, the G-50/XF6F became a different aircraft BUT it was the intended successor to the F4F before the F4F ever saw combat.


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 20, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> the Wright R-2600 would be too much torque for the airframe


Wait, they were going to stick a 2600 on an F4F? Why not just stick a tail hook on a GeeBee R-2 and call it done? Oh, but I guess they did eventually do just that, and called it a Bearcat, right?


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 20, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> the manual gear caused far too many issues


Like smashing Lew Slagle's fore arm when he lost hold of the crank as he was lifting off from Henderson Field under fire from strafing Zeros. Which left him low, slow, and dirty in a perforated Wildcat with a useless left arm and a sky full of the Emperor's finest.
Cheers,
Wes


----------



## yulzari (Nov 20, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Until the era of Napoleon only 10% of the population spoke what would be recognised as French, on of the things he standardised was the French language itself.


The 1870 War found that only 1/3 of French soldiers could readily understand or speak French. Most spoke the local patois which could be very different. Or Breton, Basque, Catalan, Alsatian German, Italian etc. Post war there was a huge investment in education with a national curriculum and for it to be in French. Well Government French i.e. Ile de France French. Even now in French schools there is a an official 'English' which catches out native English speakers who have their English work continually corrected.

But then good English is only spoken by middle class Scots, Swedes, Danes and Dutch.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Nov 20, 2018)

yulzari said:


> The 1870 War found that only 1/3 of French soldiers could readily understand or speak French. Most spoke the local patois which could be very different. Or Breton, Basque, Catalan, Alsatian German, Italian etc. Post war there was a huge investment in education with a national curriculum and for it to be in French. Well Government French i.e. Ile de France French. Even now in French schools there is a an official 'English' which catches out native English speakers who have their English work continually corrected.
> 
> But then good English is only spoken by middle class Scots, Swedes, Danes and Dutch.


Along with that they cultivated the idea that not speaking the official standard French is a sign of poor education, this is a major obstacle to the French learning other languages as they fear making a mistake is a sign of being stupid. The notion that good English is spoken by middle class Scots was another invention of middle class Scots. Though around Inverness they do speak with almost perfect "BBC" English, devoid of any accent at all.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Nov 20, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Some of these _drastic _changes were things like relocating the radiator from the belly under/behind the pilot to under the engine in the nose.
> 
> Note early and not very good carb intake. Note shrouded exhausts (poor exhaust thrust). and this picture might not be the original form of the XP-40
> 
> ...



Ok rather than just go round and round and round and round with this very long sidetrack, I'm going to try to raise the signal to noise ratio a little.


My understanding of the story is a bit more convoluted. According to Don Berlin himself, before they came up with the P-40, they had passed through another unsuccessful stage, the turbocharged YP-37. A rather more radical departure from the original P-36 design, of which 11 were manufactured. It managed to go 340 mph at 20,000 feet, which is decent performance for the time, but only when the turbo-supercharger was working. Which was intermittent at best.





This too has the same wings. But is it a P-36?

The added length was due to an experimental turbo-supercharger. Don Berlin... we all know who he is right? Said of the plane that_ "The YP-37 was a nice looking ship, but they were not reliable. The _[turbo]_ supercharger was simply not working, and we didn't have time to develop that too."_

But it was just on the edge of a wild success for Curtiss, and he saw the potential with the in-line engines:_"The Allisons on the XP/YP-37's were designed as sea level engines, with altitude power to be obtained by use of the turbo-supercharger. So, in the urgency of the times, I talked the Allison people into giving us an estimate of the altitude power which could be obtained with the V-1710 if they were to step up the diffuser _[blower]_ rpm', using it for obtaining rated power at some altitude. They replied that, at 10,000 feet, this would give 1050 hp. Inasmuch as Air Corps' specifications at that time called for performance at 10,000 feet, this was great."_

Thus the birth of the XP-40 you show above, with the oddly placed radiator scoop and lack of supercharger intakes. Don Berlin wrote the materials division at Wright Field a letter estimating performance of 350 mph at 15,000 feet, with an additional cost of $19,394.75 to install the new engine, plus larger wheels, longer struts, a modified oil tank and changes to the wing structure which would cost a further $4,502.25 per unit.

This roughly _doubled _the unit cost from the P-36 at $23,000 to the new P-40 at ~$46,000, though that cost would go down somewhat during the long production run of the P-40. Please note this cost increase is before the NACA testing and further subsequent changes.

Shortly afterward, in a performance competition at Wright Field on February 25 1939 against the P-35, Seversky AP-4, XP-39, XP-38, and the Hawk-75-R and XP-37. The XP-40 outperformed the others sufficiently of the new aircraft design was sufficient for the Army Air Corps to order a $12 million contract. I think it's significant toward this (petty, extremely drawn out) debate that Curtiss fielded both the Hawk 75 and the YP-37.

By this time, Berlin had already had the radiator on the XP-40 moved to the front, improving speed though it was still apparently not quite ready for prime time. The second series of changes which created the actual P-40 was initiated by none other than Hap Arnold. Again, per Don Berlin:

"General H.H. Arnold, Chief of the Army Air Corps, called Curtiss Vice-Prsident Burdette Wright and me to Washington for a meeting. He told us that he was not going to release the contract to us until we told him what we were going to do to meet our performance guarantees. Our guarantee of high speed as given for the competition was 360 mph at 15,000 feet."

_"...he told us that Dr. George Lewis, head of NACA at Langley, had suggested that the XP-40 be sent to NACA for tests of how to get the desired performance. Now, sending an aircraft into a government facility to test on their own schedule and ideas of change, can be disastrous for the manufacturer who has a contract delivery schedule to meet. So, I got off a letter to Captain Ben Kelsey who was then project officer on pursuit aircraft, and outlined the tests I had contemplated. Kelsey in turn wrote to NACA setting forth these tests as desired by the Materiel Division. That was on March 29, 1939, and that is how we were able to move so rapidly."_

Berlin goes on to describe how he actually supervised the NACA tests, which were completed in a month, and was so pleased with the improvements he brazenly increased the high speed guarantee to 365 mph in the process. Which was a goal they wouldn't achieve in level flight for wartime P-40s until 1942. But it was enough to impress Hap Arnold who immediately released the contract.

The changes may appear incremental to those who wish to perceive them that way, but they doubled the production cost, substantially improved speed while increasing wing-loading and handling (thus changing the tactical profile of the aircraft) changed the dimensions substantially, and were classified as a different aircraft by Curtiss, by the designer Don Berlin, and by the US government. The engine change was substantial, the subsequent tweaking while incremental, also added up to major changes to the fuselage of the aircraft and to it's performance envelope. It was of the Hawk family, and had clear and substantial lineage to the P-36, but in my opinion it was clearly a different plane.

Your mileage may vary.

S

Reactions: Like Like:
3 | Agree Agree:
1 | Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Nov 20, 2018)

pbehn said:


> *Languages change with interaction, until the age of the train people didn't move very much unless there was something like a war*. In England the 100years war was a kind of war of independence or at least a settlement, at the start all laws were in French at the end they were in English. I read somewhere that William Wallace wrote letters in Latin which remained in use widely in printed for until the 15th century. Young William isn't presented as a Latin scholar in Braveheart in fact he spoke quite good English.



This is of course yet another segue but at the risk of delving too far into a subject definitely very distinct from aircraft, this is my field and I feel the need to chime in. Feel free to ignore the rest of this post if you have zero interest in medieval history. For those who do (some posts in the thread seem to indicate a few might) here is a free primer on travel in the medieval and Early Modern world in Europe.

First let me be clear that I definitely agree with the main point the two of you were making, per Swampyankee that "_The larger European countries are far less homogeneous than some suppose_". This is definitely the case, it was very hard (and in detail, quite ugly) work forcing a large kingdom to become a truly centralized State and linguistically, if not culturally, homogeneous. This process is a bit further along in places like England, Spain and France where powerful monarchs, with the help of vast overseas wealth, were hard at work trying to consolidate it for many centuries, than in for example Germany or Italy which weren't even unified until the third quarter of the 19th Century.

And the second point - there were and still are many many regional dialects is also very true. Really it wasn't until radio, television and now the internet started homogenizing accents that we really began to see true flattening of regional dialects into one consistent national language, ala BBC English or RAI Italian. But the notion that people didn't move around much until the age of the railroad is patently false, at least for most of Continental Europe.

*Travel in the pre-industrial world*
I really can't speak for England (though more on that in a second) since that is not my area of research, but in Italy, and Central and Northern Europe, you would be really surprised how much at least some people did in fact move around. The three most mobile estates in pre-Industrial Europe were the Church, the aristocracy, and the burghers. Nobles moved for marriages, wars, fosterage / family alliances, for pilgrimages, due to exile and for diplomacy (for example as representative of a princes court). Church men moved for work, to go to schools and universities, due to being assigned to this or that bishopric or abbey, to meet in ecumenical council and synods, as diplomats, and for pilgrimages. But of the three the burghers are the least known but probably the most important.

Certain parts of Europe were surprisingly urbanized going quite far back. By the time of plate armor and stone castles, roughly 40% of the population of Lombardy and 35% of Tuscany were considered 'urbanized' either in the large City States like Milan, Florence, Venice, Sienna, Brescia, Genoa, Padua etc. etc., or in smaller market towns (really villages with markets) that surrounded them. The same was true in the Rhineland, in the foothills of the Alps, in Flanders, in the towns of Catalonia and the Dalmatian coast, along the northern fringe of Europe on the southern Baltic coastline (the Hanseatic League), in the part of northern Poland then called Prussia, and in the Czech / Slovak areas of Bohemia.





Portrait of Oswald Krel, of the Grand Ravensburg Brotherhood, flanked by the wildman or woodwose, sort of a medieval "bigfoot" character symbolic of the perils of the open road. The Grand Ravensburg company was a late medieval trading company encompassing 20 cities in Spain, France, Italy, Burgundy and the Holy Roman Empire by the 1450's.

*Roaming merchants*
In the towns and market villages, the two main sources of mobility were mercantile activity and the craft guilds. Merchants traveled very far and wide indeed and most medium sized towns had commercial embassies or 'factories' in far off lands. The Italian city-states like Genoa, Venice and Florence had permanent bases in Turkey, Egypt, the Crimea, Syria, Persia and China where 14th Century Genoese cemeteries were found in the 1950s. Italian merchants published books like the pratica della mercatura which outlined all the perils of traveling on the Silk Road from Italy to China, down to the tare weights charged in Persia to the riddles one might be challenged with on the road. If you click that link you'll notice the book also includes a glossary of words in several languages. The merchants of this period also had maps which pretty accurately showed the entire route such as the Catalan Atlas of 1375.






Nor was this confined to Italy, German Hanseatic towns had permanent trading posts from Lisbon in Portugal to Veliky Novgorod in Russia. And to hold on to these lucrative outposts they had to be able to project force at these long distances when necessary. When the King of England dared to try to loot the warehouses of the Hanseatic of quarter in London in the 1460's, the (at the time) German Free Cities of Danzig, Hamburg and Lübeck declared war, imposed a blockade, and forced the English to capitulate and restore their rights, which aside from numerous trade monopolies included control of an entire district and the management of one of the gates into the city of London and in Boston and a couple of other towns.

*Roaming craftsmen *
An even bigger source of circulation of people movement though was from the working classes - the craftsmen. In Central Europe, in Italy, in Flanders and most of the other urbanized zones, after an apprenticeship a craftsman (or in some cases, woman) had to leave town and roam the roads for a fixed period, from either a year and a day to three years and a day. This was called the "waltz", or _*Wanderjahre*_ in German. Academics in English call it "Journeyman years". It was the way that the printing press spread so rapidly from 1450 to 1500, and how many other minor but important innovations like the vice, the draw plate, the water powered paper mill, the water-powered trip hammer and bellows and so on. More pertinent to the discussion this lead hundreds of thousands of young men, and a few women, to roam very widely indeed. German and Czech journeymen were recorded as far away from home as Portugal, Sicily, Finland and Russia, and not a few hired on to Mamluk and Ottoman rulers for temporary contracts, as certain crafts like masons were in high demand. It's also where a lot of personal relationships were forged, Albrecht Dürer's_* Wanderjahre*_ lasted four years and took him from his home in Nuremberg as far away as Strasbourg and Amsterdam.

This contributed to a rather heavy demographic churn in urban populations. One study showed that 75% of the citizens of Vienna in 1500 (about half of the population were citizens) were born outside of Austria. Even small territorial (as in, not independent) towns like Munich had as much as 25% foreign populations around the same time.





An early 17th Century map of Warsaw, depicting raft and boat traffic on the Vistula. From the fantastic Braun and Hogenberg Atlas.

*Peasants and Englishmen*
Even peasants traveled more than you might think, at least the free ones. Local and regional fairs like the famous Champagne fairs in France brought people from all over to their markets, usually and especially via the interior rivers and canals, which were by far the easiest way to move heavy goods like crops. For example in Poland it was routine every year for peasants as far away as the Krakow region to take their rye or wheat by raft all the way (roughly 600 km) down the Vistula river to Danzig / Gdansk where it would be sold, processed and / or shipped overseas. They had a kind of rowdy race along the way as the first rafts to arrive got the best prices for their crop. Peasants also traveled as fishermen and miners, and for the usual reasons of war, pilgrimage, exile and marriage.

And finally, though I should again stipulate I have really have never studied England or the British Isles, given the large number of Hanseatic regulations, meeting minutes and letters complaining about roaming English and Scotish merchants and itinerant peddlers in the Baltic, and the two wars the Hanse fought trying to keep them out of the region in the 15th Century, plus the substantial presense of English mercenaries as far away as Portugal and Italy, and the existence of corporations such as the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London (chartered officially in 1407 by mentioned in documents as early as 1305), I would guess that at least some of the English were traveling far and wide as well.

The first *TL : DR* is that people traveled quite restlessly in pre-industrial times. It's almost a constant, going back to the Bronze Age and before. Periods where they did not are actually the outliers. In the medieval period it was a very important way that technology - including military technologies- circulated.

*Local, regional and international languages*
The reality of languages is just one of those contradictory things - they were both parochial and cosmopolitan. They had local dialects a plenty, and those became increasingly important with the elevation of the vernacular into a literary written language especially again in the 14th Century (with folks like Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, the so called Three Fountains of Italy, but also equivalents in many other countries including Chaucer in England) . But the Church and to a slightly lesser extent, the nobility had Latin as an international language. They also developed regional and international trade languages. Along the North Sea and the Baltic, they used a dialect called Low German, which sounds a bit like some early forms of English as Eddie Izzard tried to prove with mixed success. Further south, the Imperial Chancery of the Holy Roman Empire adopted High German as a trade language for trans-alpine commerce and trade throughout Eastern Europe. Meanwhile the Rhine had it's own trade dialect which combined elements of French and Dutch and so on, which all the mighty trading towns on that river spoke, even as they also spoke French, Alsatian, and their own dialect, like *Kölsch* which is a private language of Cologne, still spoken today.

On a larger scale they had the mediterranean pidgin language or trade dilaect called "Mediterranean Lingua Franca" by academics today but known more commonly as Sabir when it was still in wide use. Derived of a combination of mainly French, Berber, Greek, Spanish and Arabic, it fell out of use in the 19th Century.

So the second *TL : DR* is that most people spoke one of thousands of different local dialects, but a lot of them _also_ spoke at least some of a second language, in many cases that was a regional or international trade dialect. Some of these later became national languages when a true State finally did get hammered into shape, such as High German for the German Empire.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Nov 20, 2018)

Couple of links I forgot to drop in, Alsatian dialect

Alsatian dialect - Wikipedia

this is a pretty decent Wiki on Sabir, the Mediterranean Trade Language

Mediterranean Lingua Franca - Wikipedia

Eddie Izzard tries to buy a cow in Oold English from a native Frisian (Low German) speaker

Eddie Izzard buys a cow in Old English


----------



## Schweik (Nov 20, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Along with that they cultivated the idea that not speaking the official standard French is a sign of poor education, this is a major obstacle to the French learning other languages as they fear making a mistake is a sign of being stupid. The notion that good English is spoken by middle class Scots was another invention of middle class Scots. Though around Inverness they do speak with almost perfect "BBC" English, devoid of any accent at all.



I think it's also a major barrier for the spread of the influence of the French language, which is very important to French people (at least - those known personally to me who are a fairly large number). They are so hyper-critical of the dialects of French Canadians, Franco-Belgians, French-Swiss, Franco-Carribean, and French speaking Africans that they alienate them.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 20, 2018)

Schweik said:


> They are so hyper-critical of the dialects of French Canadians, Franco-Belgians, French-Swiss, Franco-Carribean, and French speaking Africans that they alienate them.


Living forty miles from the Quebec border, I've observed an interesting shift in the language over the last five decades. In their increasing confidence in the strength of their culture and pride in their "Frenchness", our neighbors to the north seem to be drifting away from the Quebecois dialect I remember from my youth and closer to the Parisian French I was taught in school.
In the early 60s I was told I had to learn French as it was the lingua franca of international trade, diplomacy, and academia. My aunt and uncle in the foreign service made themselves understood in French in Taipei, Jakarta, Karachi, and Rangoon. Seems not to be so anymore.
Cheers,
Wes

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 20, 2018)

Schweik said:


> in my opinion it was clearly a different plane.


C'mon, we've bucked this rivet so long the head is splitting, the dimple is collapsing inward, and stress cracks are appearing in the underlying structure.
Cheers,
Wes


----------



## Schweik (Nov 20, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> C'mon, we've bucked this rivet so long the head is splitting, the dimple is collapsing inward, and stress cracks are appearing in the underlying structure.
> Cheers,
> Wes



I agree, I just noticed it came up yet again - but I'm emphasizing the word opinion, on the basis of which I tried to contextualize it earlier. Some (other) people don't seem to think you are allowed to have one.

I really do also think P-51B and P-51A are different planes too! But it's just my opinion.


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 20, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I agree, I just noticed it came up yet again - but I'm emphasizing the word opinion, on the basis of which I tried to contextualize it earlier. Some (other) people don't seem to think you are allowed to have one.


What's the difference between a scholar and a fanatic? My history professor said it was the insistence on unconditional surrender.
Cheers,
Wes

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Funny Funny:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Nov 20, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I think it's also a major barrier for the spread of the influence of the French language, which is very important to French people (at least - those known personally to me who are a fairly large number). They are so hyper-critical of the dialects of French Canadians, Franco-Belgians, French-Swiss, Franco-Carribean, and French speaking Africans that they alienate them.


On my last job in France I worked with a coordinator, she was a young charming and enthusiastic young woman. She said she wanted to learn English which is easier to say than to do. She had learned English and Italian but since I spoke French she never felt confident enough to speak in English. So one day for a laugh I started speaking Italian which I speak enough to get by but nowhere near as good as hers, after a few days of messing about in Italian she lost her fear of making mistakes herself. In the next three months her English came on in leaps and bounds, not only in conversation but I could fill in the technical an industry specific words that no course can teach. She never did grasp the concept that there are many different versions of English and provided the are understood and unambiguous they can all be correct.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 20, 2018)

pbehn said:


> She never did grasp the concept that there are many different versions of English and provided the are understood and unambiguous they can all be correct.


She would have been confounded by my boot camp company. Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Downeast Maine, with voices from Gospel Hollow NC, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Philly, Duluth, Laramie, San Jose, and SanFran Chinatown. We all learned to speak Nav intelligibly.
Cheers,
Wes


----------



## pbehn (Nov 20, 2018)

Schweik said:


> This is of course yet another segue but at the risk of delving too far into a subject definitely very distinct from aircraft, this is my field and I feel the need to chime in. Feel free to ignore the rest of this post if you have zero interest in medieval history. For those who do (some posts in the thread seem to indicate a few might) here is a free primer on travel in the medieval and Early Modern world in Europe.
> 
> First let me be clear that I definitely agree with the main point the two of you were making, per Swampyankee that "_The larger European countries are far less homogeneous than some suppose_". This is definitely the case, it was very hard (and in detail, quite ugly) work forcing a large kingdom to become a truly centralized State and linguistically, if not culturally, homogeneous. This process is a bit further along in places like England, Spain and France where powerful monarchs, with the help of vast overseas wealth, were hard at work trying to consolidate it for many centuries, than in for example Germany or Italy which weren't even unified until the third quarter of the 19th Century.
> 
> ...


I think what I meant to say that the numbers increased massively with the railways and the industry that grew up after they were built. Of course people have always moved but it is generally the young and mainly young men, once women have children it became much more difficult. There were always people left who kept the dialect in a village and town alive. Generally you need a migrant population of over 10% to have any cultural effect on a population, the new arrivals pic up the local dialect. Two places I know were affected differently by human migration in the UK. Middlesbrough was built from scratch with people from all over Europe mainly GB and Ireland, it has its own distinctive dialect Corby in the midlands had a steelworks built by A Scottish company in the 1930s which brought its own workers, to this day Glaswegian Scots with all its idioms is used widely in the town.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## wuzak (Nov 20, 2018)

Schweik said:


> My understanding of the story is a bit more convoluted. According to Don Berlin himself, before they came up with the P-40, they had passed through another unsuccessful stage, the turbocharged YP-37. A rather more radical departure from the original P-36 design, of which 11 were manufactured. It managed to go 340 mph at 20,000 feet, which is decent performance for the time, but only when the turbo-supercharger was working. Which was intermittent at best.
> 
> View attachment 518549
> 
> ...



The extra length was not due to the turbo, which was located beneath the engine, and which can be seen in the image you have posted. The wastegate exhaust is pointing down just ahead of the wing leading edge, about level with the front of the wing fillet where it meets the fuselage..

Instead, the extra length was due to the coolers (engine coolant radiator and intercooler), oil tank and fuel tank being mounted in the area behind the engine. The slots on top of the cowling, about level with the wing tips in the above picture, were for the discharge of air from the coolers. 

The turbo was experimental in as much as they all were at that point. The XP-37 used the original style turbo, where the intake air for the compressor was taken through the area between the compressor and turbine, an attempt to keep the centre bearing cool. But this was woefully unreliable.

The YP-37 used the new style turbo where the compressor was reversed (the back of the compressor was on the turbine side), so that its intake came in directly. It was still unreliable. About that time the General Electric turbo was redesignated as B-1. Some YP-37s may have been fitted with the upgraded B-2. These were the first of the B-series turbos that would feature on the P-38, B-17 and B-24.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## wuzak (Nov 20, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Thus the birth of the XP-40 you show above, with the oddly placed radiator scoop and lack of supercharger intakes.



The placement of the radiator scoop wasn't that odd, as other aircraft had tried the same. Notably the Hurricane (though it was further forward).

The engine intake is on top of the cowl, just aft of the point where the nose stops tapering, or just ahead of where the exhaust outlet is.

All Allison powered P-40s had some form of intake scoop on top of the cowl, as the V-1710 was fed by a downdraft carburettor. 




Schweik said:


> By this time, Berlin had already had the radiator on the XP-40 moved to the front, improving speed though it was still apparently not quite ready for prime time.



The radiator was moved forward because it didn't work well and, probably, created excessive drag.

The Hawker Tornado went through a similar issue, where it originally had a Hurricane style radiator, but that was found to not work. The radiator was moved forward into the airstream which was not compromised by boundary layer, boundary layer separation and turbulence.


----------



## Shortround6 (Nov 20, 2018)

Schweik said:


> This roughly _doubled _the unit cost from the P-36 at $23,000 to the new P-40 at ~$46,000




Please make sure you are comparing apples to apples. Many times contracts are quoted (usually for the low numbers) for the airframe _only._
The high numbers are for the complete aircraft but that takes some good accounting as such things as (but not limited to)
Engines.
Propellers.
Radios
Oxygen equipment.
Some instruments.
Guns. 

were supplied by the government. and were paid for by the government under separate contract. 
The Allisons that went into the P-40s in that April of 1939 contract were paid for by the government and supplied to Curtiss by the government at no cost to Curtiss. 

Engine prices are all over the place. 
The initial order for Allisons for the P-40 contract was for 393 engines (not enough for the contracted airframes) but this was soon changed to 837 engines of various models for $15,000,000 (more than Curtiss was getting for 524 airframes). However the contract was later changed to 969 engines for the same price. 
Unless someone has a copy of the contract this also does not spell out the quantity of spare parts to accompany the engines. Another detail that can confuse contract prices 
Allison prices were all over the place before/during WW II, in part due to the number of engines produced in a given year/contract. 
In 1935/36 and Allison V-1710-3 cost $27,500 but they were only making 2/3 engines per year. 1939 saw the average price drop to $26,283 with 48 engines made. 1940 average price was $22,860 with 1,153 engines. 1944 saw $9,500 an engine with over 20,000 made but by 1946 the price hit $13,500 per engine due to small numbers (and two stage superchargers?) 

Prototype work was expensive. Allison in the late 30s wanted over $7,000 to change an existing engine into a prototype for a new model. 

For the P-40 one source says the April 1939 contract was for 560 aircraft at $12,872,398.00 at a unit price of $22,929.30. 
This was subdivided into 524 complete aircraft, the equivalent of 36 aircraft as spare parts, one "skeleton" aircraft ($19,489.92), drawings, parts list (15 cents per sq ft), complete stress analysis and weight information. various manuals, handbooks and parts catalogs. 

It may have cost $46,000 for the XP-40 or it may cost that amount to turn an existing P-36 into the XP-40 but the above figures show that the production P-40 airframes were nowhere near $40,000 dollars. 
Curtiss billing records show that the 2nd P-40 (MSN 13034) was about $1900 more expensive than the 1st P-40 (MSN 13033) and that the XP-40 was number MSN 12424.


----------



## Schweik (Nov 21, 2018)

According to the Air Force digest, the unit cost of a P-40 started ~$60,000 in 1939 (presumably with the engine), and gradually dropped down to ~$44,000 by 1944. I've seen other quotes between $40 and $57 thousand. I've never seen a unit cost estimate as low as $20 thousand for the P-40. I'm sure you can quibble with this source, but it's enough for me.

It's an interesting chart - the initial unit cost of a P61 is more than a B-17 or B-24. 

But more importantly to me, it also matches what I have in a couple of my books on the P-40.

And this says unit cost of a P-36 was ~$23,000 which seems to be about average of several estimates I've seen for various different versions.

So I stand by what I said earlier. The design change for the P-40, consisting mostly of adding the new engine and associated hardware, as well as more incremental changes of streamlining, tweaking cooling systems strengthening the wing and rearranging fuel and oil storage and so on, roughly doubled the cost from the older P-36 design.


----------



## tomo pauk (Nov 21, 2018)

Prior 1941, USAAC was paying for each R-1830 almost 15000 US$; each P-36 used one:

Reactions: Informative Informative:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## yulzari (Nov 21, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Living forty miles from the Quebec border, I've observed an interesting shift in the language over the last five decades. In their increasing confidence in the strength of their culture and pride in their "Frenchness", our neighbors to the north seem to be drifting away from the Quebecois dialect I remember from my youth and closer to the Parisian French I was taught in school.
> In the early 60s I was told I had to learn French as it was the lingua franca of international trade, diplomacy, and academia. My aunt and uncle in the foreign service made themselves understood in French in Taipei, Jakarta, Karachi, and Rangoon. Seems not to be so anymore.
> Cheers,
> Wes


Continuing to fearlessly pursue this digression: my neighbours speak the Poitevine patois which is an origin of Quebecois as the peasants emigrated from here to New France. At least they speak it when they don't want me to understand them. Borderline Occitan.

Also, echoing Pben above, when I was in the Territorial Army in England we had signallers from Corby. Their Scottish accent was sufficient security for plain speech messages as no one else other than the 'Corby Highlanders' could understand them.

Never mind. Most of the English spoke Brythonic Welsh until it became cool to speak German and then were infected with French grammar to create what we now call English. I except the likes of Saint Patrick and 'King Arthur' who were well brought up upper class Romano Britons who spoke Latin amongst themselves and Welsh to the peasants.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Reluctant Poster (Nov 21, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> Prior 1941, USAAC was paying for each R-1830 almost 15000 US$; each P-36 used one:
> 
> View attachment 518646


I’m surprised at how much more expensive the R2800 is compared to the R2600


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 21, 2018)

Reluctant Poster said:


> I’m surprised at how much more expensive the R2800 is compared to the R2600


It's a lot more engine, more than the extra 200 cubic inches would lead you to suspect. It had the supercharging and the cooling capacity to handle higher power at higher altitudes, and was more durable when it came to abuse and combat damage as well as higher reliability and longer Time Before Overhaul. Building this kind of extra quality into an engine doesn't come cheap. (Why does a Rolls Royce auto engine cost more than a Chevy of the same displacement?) There's a reason for the saying: "Faith in God and Pratt and Whitney"!
Cheers,
Wes

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 21, 2018)

yulzari said:


> Most of the English spoke Brythonic Welsh until it became cool to speak German


Did it "become cool", or was it imposed by Anglo and Saxon invaders?


----------



## tomo pauk (Nov 21, 2018)

Reluctant Poster said:


> I’m surprised at how much more expensive the R2800 is compared to the R2600



18 vs. 14 cylinders mostly.
To me it is the R-2000 where price went too much up, for an engine that was supposed be just a bit better R-1830. But then, R-2000 was never produced in tens of thousands, where effects of mass production drive the price down.



XBe02Drvr said:


> It's a lot more engine, more than the extra 200 cubic inches would lead you to suspect. It had the supercharging and the cooling capacity to handle higher power at higher altitudes, and was more durable when it came to abuse and combat damage as well as higher reliability and longer Time Before Overhaul. Building this kind of extra quality into an engine doesn't come cheap. (Why does a Rolls Royce auto engine cost more than a Chevy of the same displacement?) There's a reason for the saying: "Faith in God and Pratt and Whitney"!
> Cheers,
> Wes



Army was mostly buying 1-stage R-2800s (predominantly for B-26s, P-47s and C-46s ), so the supercharging type was same as with R-2600s.
Turbos (add-ons for engines, like it was the case with P-47's R-2800) were purchased separately.


----------



## Schweik (Nov 21, 2018)

It makes sense the engines were the most expensive part of the plane by far. Really puts into perspective when you read the nonchallant way they would burn them out in a few weeks.


----------



## tomo pauk (Nov 21, 2018)

Schweik said:


> It makes sense the engines were the most expensive part of the plane by far. Really puts into perspective when you read the nonchallant way they would burn them out in a few weeks.



It also makes sense that a P-36 that supposedly cost 23000 US$ will never fly, since it lacks the engine that costs another 14900 US$, if not also a prop, guns and radios.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Reluctant Poster (Nov 21, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> 18 vs. 14 cylinders mostly.
> To me it is the R-2000 where price went too much up, for an engine that was supposed be just a bit better R-1830. But then, R-2000 was never produced in tens of thousands, where effects of mass production drive the price down.
> 
> 
> ...


I’m not so sure the price difference is due to the number of cylinders. The R 1830 and R 1820 are very similar in price.


----------



## Reluctant Poster (Nov 21, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> I've read somewhere that the average people during the pre-railroad age tended to travel fewer than 20 miles from their home village. It wouldn't have helped that many countries -- including England -- limited the travel of people of the laboring classes for many years.
> 
> Certainly, until the Reformation, educated persons would be expected to read and write Latin. Indeed, this is something that complicates study of literacy during this time frame: a person who could, for example, only read and write English (to keep, say, business accounts) may not have been considered to be literate. Wallace was also, if I remember, from the part of Scotland where the first language of most people was English.


Supposedly being able to travel more than 20 miles marked the end of the village idiot.


----------



## tomo pauk (Nov 21, 2018)

Reluctant Poster said:


> I’m not so sure the price difference is due to the number of cylinders. The R 1830 and R 1820 are very similar in price.



Certainly, there is much moe to the price of en engine than just a number of cylinders. Whether the engine is mass-produced, how much of extras engine is supposed to have (supercharging type - Army didn't used much of 2-stage R-1830s, does it have a generator or not, fuel distribution type), how much some legacy tech or part can be used, engine displacement etc. The R-1830 barely got any improvement from some time 1942 on, while R-1820 did, and development costs money. Part of the price difference might stem from fact that P&W was more relaxed towards license-production, where prevoius automobile factories were converted to make engines, while Wright preferred it's own factories?

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Schweik (Nov 21, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> It also makes sense that a P-36 that supposedly cost 23000 US$ will never fly, since it lacks the engine that costs another 14900 US$, if not also a prop, guns and radios.



Yeah I think you are right.

I got that number from the Wiki, but I went and cracked some books and I think you are correct. It looks like the cost was ~17k without an engine and around ~30k with an engine, to as much as $37k for some of the foreign contracts. So I hereby retract my theory about the price. And I have another reminder not to trust Wikipedia...

Reactions: Friendly Friendly:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Nov 21, 2018)

yulzari said:


> Continuing to fearlessly pursue this digression: my neighbours speak the Poitevine patois which is an origin of Quebecois as the peasants emigrated from here to New France. At least they speak it when they don't want me to understand them. Borderline Occitan.
> 
> Also, echoing Pben above, when I was in the Territorial Army in England we had signallers from Corby. Their Scottish accent was sufficient security for plain speech messages as no one else other than the 'Corby Highlanders' could understand them.
> 
> Never mind. Most of the English spoke Brythonic Welsh until it became cool to speak German and then were infected with French grammar to create what we now call English. I except the likes of Saint Patrick and 'King Arthur' who were well brought up upper class Romano Britons who spoke Latin amongst themselves and Welsh to the peasants.


I live on one of the fault lines of English language dialects, the river Tees at one time formed the informal English Scottish border. To the north for a long time was a type of no mans land between the two where the dialect is like Geordie based on Norse. To the south over the moors is the vale of York rich and guarded farmland which was also the Danelaw before the Normans. One word that makes me laugh is "Skelp", in North East England and Scottish slang it means to hit, "give it a skelp" or "he skelped me", but it is also a technical term in pipe and gun making for the raw material that pipes and guns are made (I presume from the smith industries of forging and hammering). Within a week of arriving in Saudi Arabia I was presented by a Japanese welding engineer the new "Skelp end weld repair procedure for 56" pipes".


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 21, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> Army was mostly buying 1-stage R-2800s (predominantly for B-26s, P-47s and C-46s ), so the supercharging type was same as with R-2600s.


That is so, but even with the single stage charger, Pratt's altitude performance was better.
Cheers,
Wes


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Nov 22, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> Part of the price difference might stem from fact that P&W was more relaxed towards license-production, where prevoius automobile factories were converted to make engines, while Wright preferred it's own factories?


P&W had confidence not only in their own design and build quality, but also in their ability to induct a bunch of tin lizzie constructors into the arcane art of high performance aircraft engines. Wright either couldn't be bothered or didn't have faith they could pull it off. Like the original Wrights, they were control freaks.
Cheers,
Wes


----------



## yulzari (Nov 22, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Did it "become cool", or was it imposed by Anglo and Saxon invaders?


If we look at the later French invasion, French became the posh language but the peasants kept to their German, gradually assimilating French loan words and grammar until the invaders went over to the new hybrid too 200 years later. 'English' has scarcely any of Brythonic in it and vanishingly small Brythonic place names persisting in England. The mechanism for the change is much argued over in academic circles but the rapid assimilation of German dress, building habits, land use and countless other things suggest that the new 'English' were not just top dogs but were also working down at the coal face with the local peasants. Hence the French were acting as the managers so the workers had little day to day contact but the English were at foreman and artisan level too so worked with the peasants every day. It is sometimes also argued that the Germans had been emigrating to Britain for generations before the Romans left. What is now agreed is that the English did not invade in vast numbers and drive the Britons out. The English were only a part of the population but got the best bits and ran the show. So many modern villages have names that basically say 'this is the settlement of (_insert German name_)'.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## tomo pauk (Nov 22, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> That is so, but even with the single stage charger, Pratt's altitude performance was better.
> Cheers,
> Wes



The 1942-44 vintage R-2800 was making 100 rpm more, and had 200 cu in more, so yes, it is normal to have more HP all-around. Above 13500 ft, some 15% more - at 15000 ft, it was ~1550 HP for the R-2800 and ~1310 for the R-2600; all for 1-stage engines, military power.


----------



## Schweik (Nov 22, 2018)

I don't know much about the earlier invasion of Saxons and Angles but the followup to the Norman invasion was quite brutal, thorough and harsh - more so than tends to be discussed in the popular versions of the history. The Normans were not nearly as 'easy going' as the Norse settlers had been by comparison. And the courts (legal and courtier) were still largely speaking French 200 years later.

Speaking of which there is also the intervening layer of the Norse, as another thing which seems to get glossed over was the Danelaw in the north centered on York and then later the_ total_ conquest of England and reign of the mighty but little known Canute the Great which lasted from 1018 until 1035. There were various warlords contesting who would be top dog after that, and certainly some were Saxons, but the Normans were in part taking over from a Anglo-Norse ruling class in 1066.

One other thing, I'm not sure who deserves credit for it, but England had undergone a certain amount of proto- industrialization prior to the Norman invasion. Their survey of assets a few years after Hastings, the domesday book (completed under orders of William the Conquerer by 1085) indicated something like 5,000 water mills around the country which was pretty good for that time. 

But for whatever reason, maybe due to the rule of the Normans, England seems to have fallen behind in terms of mechanization and industrialization by around the 12th Century, and remained in catch up mode for most of the middle ages, exporting huge amounts of raw wool and having to import most of their technologically advanced goods like metal tools, armor and ship fittings, textiles and so forth, from Flanders, Italy or Germany. Internal and external wars (100 yrs wr and War of the Roses) pre-occupied the English monarchs for much of the Late Medieval period and it really wasn't until the reign of Henry VIII that their textile industries caught up.


----------



## fliger747 (Nov 23, 2018)

Harkening back to a primarily agriculture period might be a bit "far afield" from the original topic?


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Nov 23, 2018)

Reluctant Poster said:


> Supposedly being able to travel more than 20 miles marked the end of the village idiot.



....Because the fellow now becomes the regional idiot?

Reactions: Funny Funny:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## KiwiBiggles (Nov 24, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> ....Because the fellow now becomes the regional idiot?


No, he becomes the Member of Parliament.

Reactions: Funny Funny:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## GrauGeist (Nov 24, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I don't know much about the earlier invasion of Saxons and Angles but the followup to the Norman invasion was quite brutal, thorough and harsh - more so than tends to be discussed in the popular versions of the history. The Normans were not nearly as 'easy going' as the Norse settlers had been by comparison. And the courts (legal and courtier) were still largely speaking French 200 years later...


For what it's worth, my Saxon ancestors were against the Normans and more particularly, my ancestor Henry Lilley fought alongside King Harold at Hastings.


----------



## swampyankee (Nov 24, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> ....Because the fellow now becomes the regional idiot?


The Internet and Twitter have facilitated the creation of the Global Idiot.

Reactions: Bacon Bacon:
2 | Winner Winner:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## Zipper730 (Dec 1, 2018)

I was thinking since this topic didn't explicitly cover just fighters, but all aircraft (or at least combat aircraft), it seems that there are traits that are good for all aircraft, as well as traits that are specifically good for fighters, dive-bombers, level-bombers/torpedo-bombers, correct?

For any aircraft, I assume useful traits would include

Properly equipped for the mission at hand
Ease of handling
Aircraft
Control forces should not be too heavy or light
Control forces should be harmonized so that if the elevators are light, so too should the ailerons and rudders
Control forces should be easily modulated, so a pilot can very easily achieve the desired g-load, and roll-rate for a given speed.

Engine
Easy to adjust settings without too much effort


Human-factors/ergonomics
Basically, everything should be laid out in a fashion that is intuitive, and easy to find and access: Things should not be put in odd locations that nobody would think to look.

Maintainability
The aircraft should not be difficult to maintain
It should be able to be maintained quickly allowing good readiness


BTW: I would normally quote things but everytime I do, 

 fubar57
loses his cool and leaves the thread, so I'll just try and keep it on topic

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## tyrodtom (Dec 2, 2018)

The topic is Qualities that make for a great aircraft that doesn't show up in performance stats, not useful traits in a aircraft.

If the aircraft is too sensitive to fly except by the most skilled, that will certainly be remarked on in the stats. If it's too sluggish that will also be noted.

If it's not equipped for it's intended mission, someone will take note also.

Etc. etc.


----------



## Zipper730 (Dec 2, 2018)

tyrodtom said:


> The topic is Qualities that make for a great aircraft that doesn't show up in performance stats, not useful traits in a aircraft.


Under the criteria, you listed -- there would be no traits that would not be listed.

The fact is, at the start of the thread -- and I have read it from start to finish (with a bit of glaze-over in the middle) -- and the F6F was cited as an example. It's performance didn't look too extraordinary, but it was an amazing aircraft.

The reasons were that

Handling qualities were easy to master compared to the F4U
Stall characteristics were docile and aileron control was retained through much of the stall and lead-up
I would also add that

Many carrier planes were naturally at a disadvantage when it came to speed because of the need to handle well at low-speeds; it performed better than many of the opposing naval aircraft it was sent-up against.
The plane was stressed for extremely high g-loads (13.5 ultimate) and had maneuvering flaps that allowed a wide range of extension to help tighten the turning arc (it could stay with a A6M all the way down to 205 mph, instead of around 240-300 like the F4F owing to this)
Turning arc was probably pretty good against land-based aircraft -- seemingly similar to the Spitfire and Hurricane

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Agree Agree:
1 | Useful Useful:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Zipper730 (Dec 2, 2018)

pbehn said:


> I thought docile handling was the ease at which a plane could be flown especially in adverse conditions.


That's a pretty good description.


> With regard to a carrier borne aircraft it may or may not be in combat with the enemy, it always has to be landed back on the carrier. Over the course of naval combat with carriers I believe more planes have been destroyed by the ship that carried them than the enemy in carrier operations


Or the ocean...



swampyankee said:


> In general three things aren’t readily found in performance statistics:
> 
> Control harmonization. An aircraft with disparate forces required for pitch, yaw, and roll will be less pleasant and more tiring to fly
> Departure characteristics. An aircraft that gives a predictable warning near stall and can be recovered quickly will be easier to fly in combat.
> Dynamic behavior, that is how quickly the aircraft accelerates in roll (especially), pitch, and yaw


I know I might get into splitting hairs, but to be clear -- with dynamic behavior -- you mean how quickly it takes for a plane to build up a pitch-rate/g-load; a roll-rate, and yaw-rate?



Ivan1GFP said:


> Along the same lines, ideally, one would want a very high peak Coefficient of Lift for lower stall speeds, and very little migration of the center of lift so that the aeroplane behaves in a predictable fashion.


Some aircraft have more of a shift in the center of pressure during stalls?


> I believe also that "control modulation" or the relationship of aircraft response to control inputs is a factor that is very important but also not often mentioned. Certain aircraft can be held at a certain G-Load without difficulty while others are much less precise and will constantly overshoot or undershoot the target.
> 
> Along with control forces, there is also the relationship of the movement of the stick to the response of the aircraft.


These two kind of go hand in hand and has to do with both predictable inputs to maneuvers, and muscle memory...


> Control coupling also tends to result in less than predictable behaviour but only tends to get mentioned with more modern high performance aircraft.


From what I remember there was roll/yaw coupling and that occurred at higher AoA with aircraft that had short wings, a long fuselage, and a lot of mass in the middle right?



jetcal1 said:


> "predictable behaviour" must surely count as an intangible when you're fatigued and or wounded.


Agreed



GregP said:


> Handling around stall (F6F and Bf 109 excelled at this, ailerons remained effective through the stall)


Good point, and I'd also put the ability to recover quickly from a stall...


> Sensitivity in trim to speed changes (most WWII fighters were VERY speed sensitive, not the Fw 190)


I'm confused -- thought that was a good trait in the Fw-190?


> 5) Ergonomics of cockpit (how easy is it to get to and use the various gauges and switches)


The P-51 was very good in that regard -- the cockpit was laid out in an intuitive manner that was easy to use. The F-15 was also well regarded in this role (though one that flew a great deal later), the F-105 had some areas that left a lot to be desired (though also a design well after WWII, though before the F-15), when it came to switching the gunsight from air-to-ground to air-to-air.


> Ease of handling the powerplant (easy to set for good power without much thought or time)


Yeah the LaGG-5 had a whole bunch of levers that were needed to fine tune the engine. The Fw-190 used some kind of electro-mechanical computer. On a more simple level, some aircraft had automatic boost control, and others didn't.


> Gunsight (+ or -)


Actually there were many types of gunsights. The ring-n-bead, the reflector, and there was the lead-computing optical sight. I'm not sure if any fighters had (early on) a gunsight that was like a scope...


> Convergent or nonconvergent armament (guns in nose or wings)


That gave the P-38 a great advantage at range.


> Cockpit comfort (heater at high altitudes, fresh air inlets, seat ergonomics)


Fresh-air inlets avoid recycling the air, right? I'd also think variables such as raising the pilots feet to increase g-tolerance as a useful trait.


> 11) Landing gear issues (tippy or rolley on ground … see Bf 109: very rolley, will NOT nose over, and Spitfire, not very rolley, but noses over easily ... Griffon unit)


Wheelbarrowing...


> Ram air or not (Hellcat did not have it, Corsair did. MANY Corsairs went in around carrier from carb ice in cooler weather, no Hellcats did)


It can be an advantage and disadvantage. No ram-air reduces the odds of ice-forming in the intake, but high ram-compression also provides you with a greatly increased aircraft critical altitude.


> Reliable powerplant or not


I'd have placed that up with the ease of handling the powerplant.



CORSNING said:


> *dive speed*. That one is going
> to be a rough one because maximum allowable indicated
> changed with altitude.


At higher altitudes the limit is often that of mach number and compressibility effects; at lower altitudes the airspeed limit becomes more serious of a matter. I would also consider dive-acceleration to be a trait that could be good or bad.

Good: I can dive away from somebody real fast, even if he has the same maximum airspeed and maximum mach number as me; like wise if the situation is reversed, I can run him down effectively.

Bad: If I have a lower mach limit, and I accelerate really fast, I can quickly end up in mach-tuck territory, and find myself unable to get out of a dive.


> *Combat Speed *is a range of maximum possible speeds that an aircraft can develop for the conduct of active maneuver aerial battle, and at which all forms of maneuver attendant to that battle can be executed.


Is this connected to corner-velocity?

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 2, 2018)

Zipper730 said:


> The plane was stressed for extremely high g-loads (13.5 ultimate) and had maneuvering flaps that allowed a wide range of extension to help tighten the turning arc (it could stay with a A6M all the way down to 205 mph, instead of around 240-300 like the F4F owing to this)



Great stuff Zipper but I have to tweak your comments a bit regarding the Hellcat's Max G-loading and flap usage. According to the pilot's manual the F6F's airframe is rated for +7.0G/-3.0G below 320 knots IAS and +5.5G/-2.5G above this airspeed. I have read action reports where pilots have stressed the Hellcat to above +8G but this was considered an "Over G" condition and the airplane needed to be inspected after it returned from it's mission if this occurred. And then there were various G load ratings at different altitudes between these limits while performing diving maneuvers.

For "unlimited use of ailerons" and use of "Maneuver Flaps" the aircraft was rated for +5.0G/2.0G. Now, the flaps on the Hellcat were either up or down so there was no intermediate settings like with the Corsair. This is not to say that Hellcat pilots didn't deploy these flaps in such a fashion but drag increased so much that this tactic was prohibitive if it bled off too much airspeed after the turn and ended up leaving the pilot at a tactical disadvantage.


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Dec 2, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> According to the pilot's manual the F6F's airframe is rated for +7.0G/-3.0G below 320 knots IAS


Grumman set out to build a "baby buggy" easy to fly, hard to break fighter, and possibly they rated it for a greater safety margin than the customary "limit x 1.5 = ultimate"? Perhaps as a concession to the inevitable combat weight "inflation" that seems to beset all military aircraft. Between limit G and destruction G there's an intermediate value which is deflection or deformation G beyond which a structure bent or deflected under load doesn't return to its original form when load is removed. (Think "bent" Sabres returning from Migfights in Korea.) Do you suppose Grumman selected this value to apply their 2/3 safety margin to?



DarrenW said:


> Now, the flaps on the Hellcat were either up or down so there was no intermediate settings like with the Corsair.


Which model Hellcat are you talking about here? I remember reading in my younger days of the Hellcat having a "Combat" position for its flaps between "Up" and "Landing". Perhaps on the second (-5?) model?
Cheers,
Wes


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 2, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Do you suppose Grumman selected this value to apply their 2/3 safety margin to?



Sounds about right. The F4U-1 was rated for a max G of +7.5/-5.5 and I think both aircraft could be safely flown to greater limits than those posted in flight manuals. Without knowing the structural differences (if there were that many) between the F4U-1 and -4 I really can't determine why the latter version was rated up to +9G/-4G. We'll need someone with greater knowledge of the Vought bird to clarify this for us.



XBe02Drvr said:


> Which model Hellcat are you talking about here? I remember reading in my younger days of the Hellcat having a "Combat" position for its flaps between "Up" and "Landing". Perhaps on the second (-5?) model?
> Cheers,
> Wes



Both the -3 and -5 had similar flaps, very simple to use with an "Flaps Up/Flaps Down" switch next to the power plant controls and there was also a hand pump that the pilot could use to raise/lower them in an emergency situation as well, such as with an hydraulic pump failure. Now _maybe_ the pilot could partially extend/retract the flaps with this procedure (35 double strokes were required for extension and 25 for retraction) but it obviously wasn't something a pilot would use in a normal flight situation and certainly not in the heat of combat if the system was operating properly.

Maybe you are confusing it with the Corsair????


----------



## Zipper730 (Dec 2, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> Great stuff Zipper but I have to tweak your comments a bit regarding the Hellcat's Max G-loading and flap usage. According to the pilot's manual the F6F's airframe is rated for +7.0G/-3.0G below 320 knots IAS and +5.5G/-2.5G above this airspeed.


+10.5g/-4.5g ultimate below 320; +8.25g/-3.75g above 320


> For "unlimited use of ailerons" and use of "Maneuver Flaps" the aircraft was rated for +5.0G/2.0G.


+7.5/-3 ultimate, which is might actually be quite good..


> Now, the flaps on the Hellcat were either up or down so there was no intermediate settings like with the Corsair.


Oh, I thought they both had it?



XBe02Drvr said:


> Grumman set out to build a "baby buggy" easy to fly, hard to break fighter, and possibly they rated it for a greater safety margin than the customary "limit x 1.5 = ultimate"?


Possible...


> I remember reading in my younger days of the Hellcat having a "Combat" position for its flaps between "Up" and "Landing". Perhaps on the second (-5?) model?


I thought they had a maneuvering setting too...


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Dec 2, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> Both the -3 and -5 had similar flaps, very simple to use with an "Flaps Up/Flaps Down" switch next to the power plant controls and there was also a hand pump that the pilot could use to raise/lower them in an emergency situation as well, such as with an hydraulic pump failure. Now _maybe_ the pilot could partially extend/retract the flaps with this procedure (35 double strokes were required for extension and 25 for retraction) but it obviously wasn't something a pilot would use in a normal flight situation and certainly not in the heat of combat if the system was operating properly.
> 
> Maybe you are confusing it with the Corsair????



Hello DarrenW,
If I remember correctly, the Flaps on the Hellcats would only extend as far as the aerodynamic loads permitted.
Thus if the pilot were to select "Flaps Down", if the airspeed were high enough, the flaps would not deploy completely and perhaps that might still be useful in combat.

- Ivan.


----------



## GregP (Dec 3, 2018)

In no way could the F6F stay with an A6M. In another thread we were treated to three Air Combat documents from the war. One specifically addressed the Hellcat versus the A6M and it was plainly stated that the F6F would never dogfight with an A6M and in no way matched maneuverability with one. 

What it COULD do was out-climb and out-accelerate the A6M, and was also faster. Add to that the ability to stay with the A6M for long enough (90° or less) to get in a deflection shot and then climb away, and the ability to take punishment that would blow an A6M apart, and you have a winner IF the pilot accepts the correct methods of air combat with the more maneuverable but more delicate foe. Most did, as the "Ace maker" made plain by war's end. The "Ensign Eliminator," (F4U) did well, too, but the F6F decided the contest outcome in the Pacific, at least coupled with a lucky Naval engagement or two.

They COULD have done without the Corsair, but the converse is not true. In the end, the Corsair was a great fighter, too, possibly better than the Hellcat. But not so in the beginning. It almost got cancelled, and the Hellcat would have won anyway had that happened. We MIGHT have had the F6F-6 and follow-ons but they decided to develop the F8F instead. So, it was limited to two prototypes. We KNOW they would have fitted a more powerful engine because they did in production aircraft. I suspect they would also have fixed the roll rate and made more improvements, but the war was winding down anyway by then.

Reactions: Bacon Bacon:
1 | Like Like:
2 | Useful Useful:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Dec 3, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> Thus if the pilot were to select "Flaps Down", if the airspeed were high enough, the flaps would not deploy completely and perhaps that might still be useful in combat.


VERY interesting. Thinking from a mechanic's perspective, did it have some sort of an "overload shutoff" that would turn off the actuating system when flap extension stalled due to aerodynamic overload? That would make sense to save wear and tear on a critical system that's already subject to hard usage.
Now from the pilot think perspective, this would be the best of both worlds; an infinitely variable "combat flap" that would give you the best boost to your turning ability possible at the ambient speed and G load. As you approach firing range, start rolling left, keeping your gunsight on target with rudder (you know Saburo is not going to roll right, and when he goes left, he'll out-roll you), then when he goes, bang down the flap switch and honk on the Gs. After 90° of turn, if you haven't got a shot and aren't gaining any lead (or if he fooled you and rolled right), it's flaps up and reach for the sky, keeping an eye out for a possible re-attack on him from overhead. Don't forget to check six for his top cover, who are likely trying to close out your account!
Cheers,
Wes


----------



## tomo pauk (Dec 3, 2018)

GregP said:


> ...
> The "Ensign Eliminator," (F4U) did well, too, but the F6F decided the contest outcome in the Pacific, at least coupled with a lucky Naval engagement or two.
> 
> They COULD have done without the Corsair, but the converse is not true. In the end, the Corsair was a great fighter, too, possibly better than the Hellcat. But not so in the beginning. It almost got cancelled, and the Hellcat would have won anyway had that happened. We MIGHT have had the F6F-6 and follow-ons but they decided to develop the F8F instead. So, it was limited to two prototypes. We KNOW they would have fitted a more powerful engine because they did in production aircraft. I suspect they would also have fixed the roll rate and made more improvements, but the war was winding down anyway by then.



I'm afraid that several claims don't match well with history. For example, F6F didn't decided outcome in Pacific, that was decided far earlier than F6F ever fired it's guns in anger. 
Corsair was never in danger of being cancelled. Neither F6F nor F4U were in the ww2 beginning, not even of beginning of Pacific war.


----------



## GregP (Dec 3, 2018)

Well, Tomo, we'll just have to disagree. But, that's OK, no worries.

I think the Hellcat DID make the difference. The histories I have read were pretty clear that the Corsair was in real danger of never being deployed on a US carrier, and there were voices who wanted it gone. If fell to the British to embarrass the USN and deploy them on carriers first. After that, it was hard to argue they weren't suitable for carrier deployment. My post above in no way diminishes my liking for the F4U. I think of it as one of the best of the radial fighters. But, it wasn't at the start of its career, and the Hellcat was always a winner, at least after it was fitted with the R-2800, which was VERY early. Second airplane, if I recall.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## tomo pauk (Dec 3, 2018)

GregP said:


> Well, Tomo, we'll just have to disagree. But, that's OK, no worries.



There ain't much fun in that, either 



> I think the Hellcat DID make the difference. The histories I have read were pretty clear that the Corsair was in real danger of never being deployed on a US carrier, and there were voices who wanted it gone. If fell to the British to embarrass the USN and deploy them on carriers first. After that, it was hard to argue they weren't suitable for carrier deployment. My post above in no way diminishes my liking for the F4U. I think of it as one of the best of the radial fighters. But, it wasn't at the start of its career, and the Hellcat was always a winner, at least after it was fitted with the R-2800, which was VERY early. Second airplane, if I recall.



Hellcat did make a difference - Allies have received an useful fighter with it. But there is a lot of difference between 'useful fighter' and 'it decided the outcome', that Hellcat did not.
'Very early' for R-2800 was 1940, when Corsair and B-26 flew with it. If we'd go with deployment dates, September of 1943 was not an early date for ww2, even not if we just consider the post-Pearl Harbor era.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Dec 3, 2018)

GregP said:


> I think the Hellcat DID make the difference.





tomo pauk said:


> there is a lot of difference between 'useful fighter' and 'it decided the outcome', that Hellcat did not.


I think you're both right...to a point. We Airedales are patting ourselves on the back a bit much to think that the outcome of the war was decided entirely on our turf. Even after the loss of the "big four" at Midway, there was still a lot of fight left in the Empire, though victory for them was somewhat less probable than before.
Still a Hellcat-less war would have been a pretty grim proposition for us with the Wildcat bearing the brunt of the over-sea battle until the Brits bailed us out of our bentwing dilemma. The attrition of Japan's "best" and "better" pilots would have taken much longer and cost us much more in pilots, aircraft, and ships.
And let's face it, Japan's shipping losses due to submarines, was more a cause of the demise of the Empire than any single air weapon. (Except maybe Fat Man and Little Boy.)
Cheers,
Wes

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Dec 3, 2018)

GregP said:


> In no way could the F6F stay with an A6M. In another thread we were treated to three Air Combat documents from the war. One specifically addressed the Hellcat versus the A6M and it was plainly stated that the F6F would never dogfight with an A6M and in no way matched maneuverability with one.
> 
> What it COULD do was out-climb and out-accelerate the A6M, and was also faster. Add to that the ability to stay with the A6M for long enough (90° or less) to get in a deflection shot and then climb away, and the ability to take punishment that would blow an A6M apart, and you have a winner IF the pilot accepts the correct methods of air combat with the more maneuverable but more delicate foe. Most did, as the "Ace maker" made plain by war's end. The "Ensign Eliminator," (F4U) did well, too, but the F6F decided the contest outcome in the Pacific, at least coupled with a lucky Naval engagement or two.
> 
> They COULD have done without the Corsair, but the converse is not true. In the end, the Corsair was a great fighter, too, possibly better than the Hellcat. But not so in the beginning. It almost got cancelled, and the Hellcat would have won anyway had that happened. We MIGHT have had the F6F-6 and follow-ons but they decided to develop the F8F instead. So, it was limited to two prototypes. We KNOW they would have fitted a more powerful engine because they did in production aircraft. I suspect they would also have fixed the roll rate and made more improvements, but the war was winding down anyway by then.



Hello GregP,
I would have to agree with Tomo Pauk that by the time the Hellcat arrived, the war had been decided.
By that time, the F4F had a reasonable exchange rate with A6M even if performance was inferior and Japanese pilot quality was declining as were their numbers. It would have been a harder fight, but even with later models of A6M, there wasn't enough of a performance difference to make any real tactical difference.

As for performance differences, the sustained climb rate of A6M should be pretty close to that of the Hellcat especially at low altitude and the acceleration as I have seen described is actually better at low speeds as is the roll rate.
The roll rate of the Hellcat was "improved" between the F6F-3 and F6F-5 with spring tab ailerons. There was some loss in low speed roll rate but high speed roll was significantly better though still not close to the Corsair.

The F6F-6 and F4U-4 had the same engine but the Hellcat gained much less performance with the engine change which is probably why they did not pursue it.

- Ivan.


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Dec 3, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> VERY interesting. Thinking from a mechanic's perspective, did it have some sort of an "overload shutoff" that would turn off the actuating system when flap extension stalled due to aerodynamic overload? That would make sense to save wear and tear on a critical system that's already subject to hard usage.
> Now from the pilot think perspective, this would be the best of both worlds; an infinitely variable "combat flap" that would give you the best boost to your turning ability possible at the ambient speed and G load. As you approach firing range, start rolling left, keeping your gunsight on target with rudder (you know Saburo is not going to roll right, and when he goes left, he'll out-roll you), then when he goes, bang down the flap switch and honk on the Gs. After 90° of turn, if you haven't got a shot and aren't gaining any lead (or if he fooled you and rolled right), it's flaps up and reach for the sky, keeping an eye out for a possible re-attack on him from overhead. Don't forget to check six for his top cover, who are likely trying to close out your account!
> Cheers,
> Wes



Hello XBe02Drvr,
I was going to look for my electronic copy of the Hellcat Flight Manual, but a quick search found a sufficient description from the same source:

Question re F6F Hellcat's Wing-Flap Operation

This sounds like a pretty sophisticated setup.
What is really amusing is that I found this link early this morning through a Google search using Safari on an iPad, but could not find the same link using Internet Explorer from my PC.

- Ivan.


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Dec 3, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> This sounds like a pretty sophisticated setup.


Yes, and it answers the question of whether the F6F had a "combat" flap. It didn't. Any Hellcat dogfighting a Zero at <170 Kts is dog meat already, but this sure points to this bird as an "Ensign Saver" as far as aircraft handling is concerned. Also makes it a poor stepping stone to the Corsair, as it can encourage bad habits.
Thanks, Ivan!
Cheers,
Wes


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 3, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> Hello DarrenW,
> If I remember correctly, the Flaps on the Hellcats would only extend as far as the aerodynamic loads permitted.
> Thus if the pilot were to select "Flaps Down", if the airspeed were high enough, the flaps would not deploy completely and perhaps that might still be useful in combat.





XBe02Drvr said:


> did it have some sort of an "overload shutoff" that would turn off the actuating system when flap extension stalled due to aerodynamic overload?



Hi guys,

All of this seems plausible to me, according to the pilot's manuals there was an airspeed switch that controlled how far the flaps would stay in a lowered condition, regardless of cockpit control setting. The flaps would automatically "blow up" (or retract) 50 degrees at 90 knots IAS, 15 degrees at 150 knots IAS, and be fully retracted at 170 knot IAS or more. This could definitely be helpful in dogfights I guess where there was a lot of low speed twisting and turning. But we must remember that the flaps COULD NOT be deployed at speeds over 170 knots IAS. They have to already be in the down position before the pilot could possibly take advantage of this built in feature during combat. I believe that most pilots preferred to keep their speed up and use "hit and run" tactics, rather than put themselves at a disadvantage by flying at speeds of less than 200 mph. That seems very risky to me, especially when going toe-to-toe with the more nimble Japanese fighters. 

So to make it clear once again, there was no "combat" setting for the flaps as with the Corsair!


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 3, 2018)

LOL looks like you guys already figure things out and I wasted my time posting after the fact!


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 3, 2018)

While I believe that the Japanese would have been eventually defeated, it would have taken far longer and cost the Allies many more lives if the F6F Hellcat never existed. The Battle of the Philippine Sea (aka "Marianna's Turkey Shoot") was a good example. Here the Japanese Navy _could_ have inflicted much heavier losses on the US fleet if the US Navy was still relying totally on the Wildcat as it's fleet defense fighter. It just didn't have the performance to overwhelm the enemy as was demonstrated by the Hellcat, and I believe the outcome wouldn't have been so one-sided. 

Just my opinion of course, and most everyone has one on the subject.


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 3, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> As for performance differences, the sustained climb rate of A6M should be pretty close to that of the Hellcat especially at low altitude and the acceleration as I have seen described is actually better at low speeds as is the roll rate.



I guess it depends where you are getting your information. The US Navy conducted tests between the F6F-5 and A6M5 and found that the roll rates were equal at speeds below 200 knots but above that the F6F was superior. This was primarily due to the high stick forces encountered with the Japanese fighter. The report also stated that while there was some disadvantage in climb below 14,000 feet, above that the Hellcat was superior.

And what type of acceleration are we discussing here? In a dive the US Navy found that the initial acceleration of the two were about equal, but after that the F6F-5 was "far superior".


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Dec 3, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> the sustained climb rate of A6M should be pretty close to that of the Hellcat especially at low altitude and the acceleration as I have seen described is actually better at low speeds as is the roll rate.


Makes sense. The F6F was heavier and draggier, so despite its greater power, it's level flight acceleration would likely suffer compared to the lightweight, sleek A6M, especially at lower speeds where the Hellcat would be flying at higher AOA. Downhill with gravity helping is a different story, with advantage going to power and mass.
And in the climb, the Zero's power to weight ratio and lower drag would rule until the Hellcat's superior supercharging began to tell with altitude.
Roll rate, as mentioned earlier, would be entirely speed dependent, with the Zero suffering as speeds advanced beyond the slower speed agility regime it was designed for.
"Boom and zoom", and "speed is life" are the watchwords of this sort of combat.
Cheers,
Wes

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Dec 3, 2018)

Hello DarrenW,
I believe those tests of the F6F-5 against a captured A6M5 are not necessarily representative of what the types were capable of.
The F6F-5 seemed to be performing quite a bit better than a typical example and the A6M5 seemed to no better than the A6M2 tested a couple years before and did not achieve the speeds normally expected.

Regarding Climb Rates, we are in agreement. Remember I did say at low altitudes because the critical altitude of the A6M5 and especially the A6M2 is much lower than the F6F. The A6M2 is hitting its maximum speed at only about 15,000 feet.

Regarding Roll Rates, keep in mind that there was probably a reason why the A6M series had such large ailerons. Videos of currently flying exampleswhen timed with a stopwatch show a very high roll rate that is well beyond that of the Hellcat though the exact airspeed is not known. Video interviews of modern pilots who have flown both types of aircraft confirm this.
Above 200 or 250 knots, the situation is reversed because heavy control forces.
At lower airspeeds, the F6F-3 also rolled faster than the F6F-5 but not at higher airspeeds.

Regarding acceleration, I am discussing level flight at low airspeeds perhaps 100 MPH to 150 or 200 MPH.
The source is a book by Mike Spick that I was reading many years ago. It is supported by the low airspeed at which the A6M achieves its best climb rate. I suspect that the A6M2 is much better than the A6M5 in this respect because of propeller pitch ranges but have no test data to back up that belief.
Note that in tests of US fighters against Koga's A6M2, the tests showing US aircraft being superior were at medium to relatively high speeds.
As for Dive Acceleration, the maximum diving speed of just about every model of the A6M is pretty low and limited by structural strength issues. I believe the range from early to late models goes from about 400 MPH IAS to 460 MPH IAS.

- Ivan.

Reactions: Useful Useful:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## GregP (Dec 3, 2018)

Well, I do not think the war had been decided when the Hellcat arrived. Perhaps the war in Europe had been, but the Pacific was still underway, despite the Battle of the Coral Sea in the summer of 1942. Without the Hellcat, the war could have dragged on a long time, and despite the relatively great performance of the FM-2 in a cleanup role (great kill ratio when not pitted against much opposition), it was not the fighter to go with for the rest of the war. And the Corsair would not have been pressed into service any sooner than it was. It took the British deployment to carriers to make that one happen.

Let's say that without the Hellcat, the war might have been a LOT worse than it was. I doubt seriously the Hellcat's not being produced would have impacted the A-bomb, so it may have ended at the same place and time anyway, but I think not. We would not have been in anywhere near the same position in 1945 had the Hellcat not come along, as good as it was, and when it did.

Of course, we MAY have simply developed an alternative fighter that was as good or better than the Hellcat, but I think that alternate program was not there. That is, there was no alternative in the works other than the F4U, and it did what it did, when it did it. There was no fallback fighter developed as with the B-29 / B-32. The alternate outcome is a "what if," and I really don't want to argue that because there is no real answer since only the way it really happened actually did happen ... everything else is supposition.

In a pinch, some might suggest we produce one of the Skyraider alternates, such as the Fleetwings XBTK. But it wasn't flying until 1945, so I don't think so. And I doubt it would have been developed earlier, either.

Tomo has very good points, as usual, but the Hellcat was the main producer in the Pacific from the time it deployed in numbers, as far as combat goes. The Wildcat was not the plane the Hellcat was in any way. So, I'll stick to my guns here. No doubt a few alternate history buffs can suggest an outcome that is just as feasible without the Hellcat. Who knows? Maybe any alternative is possible given the correct change to what really happened. Cheers.

Reactions: Like Like:
3 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## GregP (Dec 3, 2018)

Combat reports from none other than Saburo Sakai say otherwise about the F6F's acceleration. In his talk, he was astounded at the F6F's acceleration and speed relative to his own A6M. In his words, the Hellcats "closed at will." I heard that talk in person in the 1980s at the old Champlin Fighter Museum in Mesa, Arizona, U.S.A., and Saburo Sakai was a gentleman throughout, and went for a ride in a P-51 later. I bought a print and he signed it (still have it). He praised the F6F and said the only reason he survived was the U.S. pilots all flew like they were trained. He snap-rolled away from every attack and they carried through as trained and never tried to anticipate his snap-roll, which would have ended his day and maybe life had they done so. What impressed him the most was the F6Fs acceleration and speed relative to the A6M.

He did not say it was particularly maneuverable, only that it was fast and accelerated quickly in combat.

Not saying anyone is wrong here, but I believed and still believe Japan's 3rd-ranking ace over anyone else. At the time, the Planes of Fame Zero had not yet been restored.

Reactions: Bacon Bacon:
1 | Winner Winner:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Dec 3, 2018)

GregP said:


> .....The alternate outcome is a "what if," and I really don't want to argue that because there is no real answer since only the way it really happened actually did happen ... everything else is supposition.



Hello GregP,
I agree with you completely on this one point, but you do realise that everything we have been discussing is really supposition.
Most of your post is supposition.
WHAT IF the Hellcat had not been produced is the premise and apparently we are not all coming to the same conclusion as to what the alternative history would have been.

Some of us are sticking closer to the idea that the same paths must be followed and some of us are not.
It is much like the idea of wonder what would happen if a right-handed man were to lose his right arm.
Some of us would assume that the need to eat and function the best he could would mean he would learn to use his left hand to do the same things even if he were more clumsy and less successful. Others might stick to the idea that he would starve to death because he never learned to eat with his left hand. I believe people and organisations will adapt as much as they can.

The Navy's refusal to use the Corsair from carriers was not because the Navy did not believe the Corsair was a good fighter. Land based units used it and it was used by the Marines. If given a choice of sticking to the Wildcat as the primary shipboard fighter and the Corsair as an alternative without the Hellcat already in service, I believe the Corsair would have reached the US carriers much sooner even without the British example.

As for whether the war's outcome was determined, one should look at the replacement pilot quality and numbers for both sides. The USN pilot quality didn't seem to drop but the Japanese quality did as can be seen by the number of aces that finished their training during the war as compared to those who were trained before the war. Even with Japanese pilot quality at its highest at the Battle of Midway, US pilots in Wildcats had a pretty fair exchange rate and things were not getting better than that for the Japanese.
Another good measure is the number of flight decks on each side at various stages of the war and ship construction is not something that would be affected by the presence of the Hellcat or not. 
Besides carriers, the sheer number of other ships that were completed was not something the Japanese had any hope of matching and so far this is only a discussion of the match up of some of the naval forces.

- Ivan.

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 3, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> The F6F was heavier and draggier



What data supports the notion that the Hellcat was "draggier" than the Zeke? Was it really a "sleeker" aircraft as you say?



Ivan1GFP said:


> I believe those tests of the F6F-5 against a captured A6M5 are not necessarily representative of what the types were capable of.
> The F6F-5 seemed to be performing quite a bit better than a typical example and the A6M5 seemed to no better than the A6M2 tested a couple years before and did not achieve the speeds normally expected.



I guess it depends on you interpretation of what was a "typical" example of these two aircraft. Knowing that the Japanese were having severe difficulties with maintaining their aircraft as the war progressed, I feel it was quite representative of an average in-service A6M5 at the time of the tests (latter half of 1944) and IMHO indicative of what was being encountered in combat at this stage of the war. And while I'm in agreement that Hellcat under test may have been a very well-maintained example of the type, no one can argue that the US Navy wasn't vastly superior to the Japanese army or navy at keeping the performance of their aircraft as close as possible to factory numbers. If we add in the little improvements made by Grumman to the F6F along the way I am quite certain that the Hellcat was a true 400 mph airplane by the time that these tests were conducted. 

I am in agreement though with the majority of the other points you make in post #431.


----------



## wuzak (Dec 3, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> While I believe that the Japanese would have been eventually defeated, it would have taken far longer and cost the Allies many more lives if the F6F Hellcat never existed. The Battle of the Philippine Sea (aka "Marianna's Turkey Shoot") was a good example. Here the Japanese Navy _could_ have inflicted much heavier losses on the US fleet if the US Navy was still relying totally on the Wildcat as it's fleet defense fighter. It just didn't have the performance to overwhelm the enemy as was demonstrated by the Hellcat, and I believe the outcome wouldn't have been so one-sided.



The fact that it has been labelled the "Marianas Turkey Shoot" suggests that the battle was not won with the quality of the equipment, but rather the quality of the pilots, tactics, etc.

If it was the F4F instead of the F6F it may not have been so one-sided, but it would still have been one-sided nonetheless.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 3, 2018)

wuzak said:


> The fact that it has been labelled the "Marianas Turkey Shoot" suggests that the battle was not won with the quality of the equipment, but rather the quality of the pilots, tactics, etc....



Not totally in disagreement here but why couldn't the "quality of the equipment" be a factor in the lop-sided US victory too?


----------



## pinehilljoe (Dec 3, 2018)

With a 13-1 Claimed kill ratio over the Zero, I would pick the Hellcat.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## wuzak (Dec 3, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> Not disagreeing here but why couldn't the "quality of the equipment" be a factor in the lop-sided US victory too?



I worded it poorly.

I should have said it was not the determining factor. And probably not a major factor.


----------



## GregP (Dec 3, 2018)

Hi Ivan1GFP. Yah, I realize it is a supposition. I mostly avoid "what ifs," but jumped in for this one case.

Perhaps I should not have, but the Hellcat fared so much better than other fighters in the Pacific that it had something over the rest. It's kill ratio was the best of the war since I count FM-2s right in there with F4Fs. The basic difference between then was just the engine dash number, and they were flying "mop up" missions after the fleet had bypassed some Japanese holdings. You donlt see anyone breaking out P-51B kills from P-51D kills, but they try to say the FM-2 was a different airplane from the F4F.

Bunk. They take largely the same parts. Ergo, some series of fighters.

The Navy's refusal to put Corsairs on carriers was a direct result of U.S. carrier trials. They did not believe it was a bad fighter, but they believed it was a bad carrier fighter. It's fairly well documented. They didn't call it "hose nose" for nothing. Having sat in several including an F4U1a, I can tell you visibility over the nose is nonexistent when the tail is low. It had other issues, such as carb icing around the ship in colder weather due to ram air, which the F6F didn't have as the F6F didn't use ram air. But the Corsair DID prove to be a good carrier fighter once it got there, albeit with a few losses in the process. My take is the Corsair would have gotten to carriers regardless of the F6F, but it would NOT have gotten there any sooner than it did. The Corsair's carrier qualification was independent of F6F history and stands on it's own timeline.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## michael rauls (Dec 3, 2018)

I'll throw in my 2 cents worth. I think had the F6f not come along and we had only the Fm2 and later some Corsairs for carrier fighters we still would have won the Pacific war but it would have been more costly. How much more is hard to say but my guess is substantially so.
If you have a positive kill ratio with an oponent and you are massively out producing them then the outcome is inevitable. Heck if you are massively out producing an oponent and are exchanging one for one with them the outcome is still inevitable.
I think the F6F made a huge difference however being, at least in my mind, an exceptional airplane for alot of reasons as we've already discussed at length that don't nescesarily show up in performance stats.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## GrauGeist (Dec 4, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> I'll throw in my 2 cents worth. I think had the F6f not come along and we had only the Fm2 and later some Corsairs for carrier fighters we still would have won the Pacific war but it would have been more costly. How much more is hard to say but my guess is substantially so.
> If you have a positive kill ratio with an oponent and you are massively out producing them then the outcome is inevitable. Heck if you are massively out producing an oponent and are exchanging one for one with them the outcome is still inevitable.
> I think the F6F made a huge difference however being, at least in my mind, an exceptional airplane for alot of reasons as we've already discussed at length that don't nescesarily show up in performance stats.


The F6F could have made it to production a bit sooner, but for delays.
An interesting side note, is that the USN was also looking at a navalized P-51 (several versions), but the F6F and F4U negated any serious consideration beyond testing.

An interesting "what if" to toss out there, would be if for some reason, Grumman didn't get the F6F into production (for whatever reason), the P-51 *may* have taken it's place. Key word here: *may have*.

The USN was looking at the P-51 early on, so if the F6F failed to deliver, there would have been time to maturate a navalized P-51 along the natural timeline.

Here's the USN's P-51 (41-37426) - not to be confused with the later P-51D or P-51H trials.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Dec 4, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> What data supports the notion that the Hellcat was "draggier" than the Zeke? Was it really a "sleeker" aircraft as you say?



Rudimentary calculations are actually pretty simple in this case.
Determine the maximum speeds and altitudes (for air density) and Horsepower required to achieve that speed.
Horsepower can be converted to force * speed.
When speed is substituted, what you get is force required to drive that carcass through the air.
This ignores propeller efficiency, but it is reasonably fair since you are doing it for both aircraft and the numbers are only for comparison purposes rather than an actual measurement.



DarrenW said:


> I guess it depends on you interpretation of what was a "typical" example of these two aircraft. Knowing that the Japanese were having severe difficulties with maintaining their aircraft as the war progressed, I feel it was quite representative of an average in-service A6M5 at the time of the tests (latter half of 1944) and IMHO indicative of what was being encountered in combat at this stage of the war. And while I'm in agreement that Hellcat under test may have been a very well-maintained example of the type, no one can argue that the US Navy wasn't vastly superior to the Japanese army or navy at keeping the performance of their aircraft as close as possible to factory numbers. If we add in the little improvements made by Grumman to the F6F along the way I am quite certain that the Hellcat was a true 400 mph airplane by the time that these tests were conducted.



If I recall correctly, the F6F-5 achieved 409 MPH and the A6M5 achieved 335 MPH.
Regardless of the results achieved by those two particular aircraft on that particular day, those numbers are about 25-30 MPH higher than the typically quoted speeds for the F6F-5 and about 15-20 MPH lower than the typically quoted speeds for the A6M5.

If the typical F6F-5 really were that fast, then one has to wonder why the new engine and propeller on the F6F-6 prototype did not improve speeds much at all (417 MPH) and why the Standard Aircraft Characteristics sheet lists maximum speed as 330 Kts.

- Ivan.


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Dec 4, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> What data supports the notion that the Hellcat was "draggier" than the Zeke? Was it really a "sleeker" aircraft as you say


The mark 8 eyeball provides all the data you need. It's bigger, it's fatter, it's heavier, its cowling is less streamlined and its larger, more powerful engine has way more cooling drag. The difference in frontal area is greater than the difference in horsepower. I'm sure you could dig up the data, but it would say the same thing.


GregP said:


> I count FM-2s right in there with F4Fs. The basic difference between then was just the engine dash number


I think the change from a 14 cylinder Pratt to a 9 cylinder Wright might be a bit more than just a dash number change.
Cheers,
Wes


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 4, 2018)

wuzak said:


> I worded it poorly.
> 
> I should have said it was not the determining factor. And probably not a major factor.



Point well taken. I believe that the same could be said of the Spitfire during the BoB. The Hurricane had more than an adequate performance to take on anything the Luftwaffe could throw at it, and with the use of RADAR it could always be expected to be in the right place at the right time. Add in the huge tactical blunders made by the German High Command along with the superiority of the average British pilot and there's no reason to ever imagine any other possible outcome of the battle.


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 4, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> Rudimentary calculations are actually pretty simple in this case.
> Determine the maximum speeds and altitudes (for air density) and Horsepower required to achieve that speed.
> Horsepower can be converted to force * speed.
> When speed is substituted, what you get is force required to drive that carcass through the air.
> This ignores propeller efficiency, but it is reasonably fair since you are doing it for both aircraft and the numbers are only for comparison purposes rather than an actual measurement.



Using that mentality the Zero was actually less streamlined than any mark of the Bf 109 and we all know how dirty of a bird it was.



XBe02Drvr said:


> The mark 8 eyeball provides all the data you need. It's bigger, it's fatter, it's heavier, its cowling is less streamlined and its larger, more powerful engine has way more cooling drag. The difference in frontal area is greater than the difference in horsepower. I'm sure you could dig up the data, but it would say the same thing.



Looks can be very deceiving when discussing aerodynamic drag. We are talking science here and not just casual observations. Do you have any wind tunnel tests to back up your claims of aerodynamic superiority? Just take a look at all the gaps and protuberances of the A6M cowling and you might change your mind.

And the size difference of the two aircraft wasn't a factor here because the power to weight ratios of the A6M5 and F6F-5 were nearly identical at sea level and as altitude rose the Hellcat's ability to maintain a greater percentage of it's horsepower eventually gave it an edge here as well. That's why it's performance totally astounded many Japanese pilots, including the more seasoned veterans such as Sakai, Tanimizu, Komachi, Saito, and others.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 4, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> If I recall correctly, the F6F-5 achieved 409 MPH and the A6M5 achieved 335 MPH.
> Regardless of the results achieved by those two particular aircraft on that particular day, those numbers are about 25-30 MPH higher than the typically quoted speeds for the F6F-5 and about 15-20 MPH lower than the typically quoted speeds for the A6M5.



I admit that 409 mph was on the outer limits of the F6F's maximum level speed ability but it does show that under certain circumstances it was able to go much faster than the oft quoted speeds one has seen in published works over the years. But without knowing the condition of the aircraft under test, such as it's configuration (racks/no racks), and how "cleaned up" the surface was it's impossible to determine what factors allowed for this. I have several sources which put the maximum level speed of the -5 at or near 400 mph so I'm not totally surprised by the test results as you seem to be.

And do you honestly believe that the average A6M5 in the field could manage 350 mph?


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 4, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> think the change from a 14 cylinder Pratt to a 9 cylinder Wright might be a bit more than just a dash number change.
> Cheers,
> Wes



Should we call a Spitfire with a Griffon engine a different aircraft than one with a Merlin engine installed? And what about a P-51A as opposed to the B/C/D models? In your view should the installation of the Packard make it a totally different aircraft?


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 4, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> If the typical F6F-5 really were that fast, then one has to wonder why the new engine and propeller on the F6F-6 prototype did not improve speeds much at all (417 MPH) and why the Standard Aircraft Characteristics sheet lists maximum speed as 330 Kts.



I have a source putting the maximum level speed of the -6 at 425 mph @25,000 feet. With the same engine and propeller the F4U-4 was faster than the latest F4U-1D version by about 25 mph so using this increase as a guideline we can safely put the F6F-5 max speed at around 400 mph. 

And it really depends on which BuAer document you are looking at. I have one dated 1 Jul 1944 which puts the maximum speed of the -5N using WEP at 391 mph - this with a drag invoking radome on the starboard wing (which obviously reduced it's maximum possible speed).

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## eagledad (Dec 4, 2018)

Gentlemen,

The attached report gives the tested weights of the A6M5 and F6F-5. Just my 2 cents,wouldn't the high number of F6F kills be due to the fact that in the engagements where they were used, the F6Fs were usually provided a "target rich" environment? Obviously for the F6F to be successful, it had to have well trained pilots and outstanding performance versus its competition.

FWIW

Eagledad

Reactions: Like Like:
3 | Like List reactions


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 4, 2018)

eagledad said:


> The attached report gives the tested weights of the A6M5 and F6F-5. Just my 2 cents,wouldn't the high number of F6F kills be due to the fact that in the engagements where they were used, the F6Fs were usually provided a "target rich" environment? Obviously for the F6F to be successful, it had to have well trained pilots and outstanding performance versus its competition.



Thank you eagledad for providing this important document. The detractors of the Hellcat's merits often dismiss the findings here and in other reports which happen to shed a favorable light on it's performance when being compared to it's adversaries.


----------



## Barrett (Dec 4, 2018)

Late to this party--have not seen recent issues of this excellent site.

The F6F's primary virtues were an extremely rugged airframe mated to a superb engine with potent armament and excellent range. Beyond that, the "docile" flight characteristics meant unexcelled carrier suitability. A friend who was among the youngest USN aces said "It was a good old man's airplane."

Speaking of aces: the "I'd marry it" quote was from Gene Valencia, certainly a colorful personality.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Dec 4, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> I think the change from a 14 cylinder Pratt to a 9 cylinder Wright might be a bit more than just a dash number change.



Hello XBe02Drvr,
The FM-2 or F4F-8 wasn't the first Wildcat equipped with a Wright R-1820. Earlier export versions to the British and French also had the R-1820.



DarrenW said:


> Using that mentality the Zero was actually less streamlined than any mark of the Bf 109 and we all know how dirty of a bird it was.
> .......
> Looks can be very deceiving when discussing aerodynamic drag. We are talking science here and not just casual observations. Do you have any wind tunnel tests to back up your claims of aerodynamic superiority? Just take a look at all the gaps and protuberances of the A6M cowling and you might change your mind.



Hello DarrenW, 
It really depends on what you mean by "Draggy" and "Streamlined".
I am referring to absolute drag or the amount of power it takes to drive an aircraft at a particular speed.
The aerodynamic term would be "Equivalent Flat Plate Area".
We have had this discussion before.
This is the only number that makes sense when discussing aircraft of significantly different size but performing the same mission.
By this measurement, the Me 109 has an advantage because although its form drag (Coefficient of Drag) is fairly high, its size is very small and it requires less power to drive it through the air. The A6M is significantly bigger and the Hellcat is huge by comparison.



DarrenW said:


> And the size difference of the two aircraft wasn't a factor here because the power to weight ratios of the A6M5 and F6F-5 were nearly identical at sea level and as altitude rose the Hellcat's ability to maintain a greater percentage of it's horsepower eventually gave it an edge here as well. That's why it's performance totally astounded many Japanese pilots, including the more seasoned veterans such as Sakai, Tanimizu, Komachi, Saito, and others.



Keep in mind that the 343 Kokutai pilots thought the Hellcat was an easy kill, so opinions differ.
I don't disagree with what you are saying about power to weight, but the discussion here is about drag and not about power loading.
The number that you seem to like is Coefficient of Drag and by that measurement, the Hellcat does well.
Perhaps we should look at WHY the Hellcat does so well with such a measurement.
The Coefficient of Drag is calculated by measuring the amount of actual drag and dividing by the reference area for the aircraft.
For typical calculations, the reference area that is used is the Wing Area.
The Hellcat had a Wing Area of 340 feet^2
The A6M5 had a Wing Area of 229 feet^2
The A6M2 had a Wing Area of 241.5 feet^2
The Me109G had a Wing Area of 173 feet^2

Note that the wing of the Hellcat is about twice the area of the Me 109.
In order for the Hellcat to have a better Coefficient of Drag that the Me 109 would require that the actual airframe drag be LESS THAN TWICE that of the Me 109. That number isn't difficult to achieve.
The problem though is that it is the actual drag of the aircraft that determines the amount of power needed to achieve a certain speed.
If one aircraft needs twice the power, then it certainly needs significantly more fuel to accomplish the same objective.

One can of course argue that the aircraft have different capabilities, but for the simple discussion of drag, the measurements really are that simple.

The reason I threw in the example of the A6M2 is that if one does a calculation of Coefficient of Drag in comparing the A6M2 to A6M5, the reduced wing area of the A6M5 puts it at a disadvantage and would suggest that it is the "less streamlined" aircraft, but is this REALLY the case?



DarrenW said:


> I admit that 409 mph was on the outer limits of the F6F's maximum level speed ability but it does show that under certain circumstances it was able to go much faster than the oft quoted speeds one has seen in published works over the years. But without knowing the condition of the aircraft under test, such as it's configuration (racks/no racks), and how "cleaned up" the surface was it's impossible to determine what factors allowed for this. I have several sources which put the maximum level speed of the -5 at or near 400 mph so I'm not totally surprised by the test results as you seem to be.
> 
> And do you honestly believe that the average A6M5 in the field could manage 350 mph?



While I do believe that the Hellcat may have been significantly faster than the typically quoted 370-380 MPH, I believe there was something strange going on for the test aircraft to hit 409 MPH on that day.
Japanese manufacturing quality and maintenance was certainly not good by this stage of the war but I do not believe this particular A6M5's performance was a fair representation of the capabilities of the type.

- Ivan.


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Dec 4, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> The FM-2 or F4F-8 wasn't the first Wildcat equipped with a Wright R-1820. Earlier export versions to the British and French also had the R-1820.


Were the Martlet and other export Wildcats true FM2 "prototypes" with all the airframe as well as engine changes, or were they just F4Fs with a different engine?
Part of the reason I picked on Greg's "dash number" comment was its use in lumping the F4F and FM2 together in discussing kill-loss and sortie-loss ratios. While a Wildcat is a Wildcat is a Wildcat, the two aircraft had significant differences and were used in different combat scenarios. The F4F had to do the heavy lifting, which was mostly over by the time the FM2 showed up, and a large portion of the FM2 fleet was assigned to ASW duty, a generally less risky proposition.
Cheers,
Wes

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 4, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> Keep in mind that the 343 Kokutai pilots thought the Hellcat was an easy kill, so opinions differ.



Firstly that unit was primarily equipped with the N1K1-2, a much more advanced and potent fighter than the A6M, and was almost entirely comprised of elite aces. But even still, according to official US Navy records they never stood out as anything special (F6F kill/loss ratio found in NACS for the type equates to 28/0).




Ivan1GFP said:


> The Coefficient of Drag is calculated by measuring the amount of actual drag and dividing by the reference area for the aircraft.



I do appreciate what you are trying to explain about drag and how wing area is part of the equation that makes up the CD0. But remarks that the cowling of the F6F was larger which automatically made it less aerodynamically efficient than that of the A6M is not based on any sound scientific principals. In fact just looking at area alone the cowling of the Zeke at it's largest diameter _is not_ less than half that of the Hellcat's cowling, as alluded to in a previous post (it's more like 2/3 according to cross-sectional diagrams). This includes the chin cooling intakes of both aircraft. The statement that the "the difference in frontal area is greater than the difference in horsepower" just doesn't hold water when one compares the power of the R-2800 to the Sakae 21 engine and then looks at the cross-sectional diagrams.

And you are absolutely right that I shouldn't have brought up power to weight ratios when discussing drag. There was reference made that the A6M5 somehow had a superior ratio at lower altitudes and this comment again is without merit. But I do need to be better at organizing my thoughts going forward. Thank you for pointing that out to me.



Ivan1GFP said:


> The reason I threw in the example of the A6M2 is that if one does a calculation of Coefficient of Drag in comparing the A6M2 to A6M5, the reduced wing area of the A6M5 puts it at a disadvantage and would suggest that it is the "less streamlined" aircraft, but is this REALLY the case?



I really don't know. The exhaust stacks and larger inlet of the A6M5 cowling look like they could be a large component of additional parasitic drag, plus there was a 180 horsepower increase with the new model which should have had an effect on overall speed and thus effect the CD0 accordingly as well. Point being, wing area does affect drag but there are additional components that are important to consider as well.


----------



## GrauGeist (Dec 4, 2018)

The FM-2 also had a taller tail to compensate for the higher horsepower rating of the R-1820-56 (1,350 hp).

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## XBe02Drvr (Dec 4, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> The exhaust stacks and larger inlet of the A6M5 cowling look like they could be a large component of additional parasitic drag


I have an apology to make. When I made that half asleep, bleary eyed "Mark 8 Eyeball" remark I was conveniently forgetting that the topic was A6M5, and I had A6M2 on the brain, which did have a smoother, sleeker cowling/prop spinner profile than the M5, IIRC. As I recall the parameter under discussion was initial acceleration from slower ("dogfighting") speeds in level flight and in a dive. A speed right in the middle of the Zero's optimum dogfighting range would be almost bordering on slow flight for a clean Hellcat. The 'cat would be flying at an elevated AOA, imposing both an induced and a parasite drag penalty on the initial acceleration until it developed enough speed to flatten out. The Zero, OTOH, with its lighter wing loading and closer to the center of its speed range, would already be "flattened out".
Cheers,
Wes

Reactions: Friendly Friendly:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Dec 4, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Were the Martlet and other export Wildcats true FM2 "prototypes" with all the airframe as well as engine changes, or were they just F4Fs with a different engine?
> Part of the reason I picked on Greg's "dash number" comment was its use in lumping the F4F and FM2 together in discussing kill-loss and sortie-loss ratios. While a Wildcat is a Wildcat is a Wildcat, the two aircraft had significant differences and were used in different combat scenarios. The F4F had to do the heavy lifting, which was mostly over by the time the FM2 showed up, and a large portion of the FM2 fleet was assigned to ASW duty, a generally less risky proposition.
> Cheers,
> Wes



Hello XBe02Drvr,
I would have to say that regardless of whether they were the same aircraft, the fact that they performed different missions is enough to justify your distinction. I didn't quite understand your point originally but am in agreement now.

- Ivan.


----------



## fliger747 (Dec 4, 2018)

The F4U-4 was a Very different aircraft and the "C" model R2800 engine a very different engine than any "B" model. Greater HP, higher max RPM, four bladed prop. The internal modification of the oil scavenging system alone gained several hundred HP. 

330 Knots is 380 mph. This seems a reasonable number for the F6-F. Whether this was a dry or a wet power speed is open to question. The streamlining between the Zeke and the Hellcat and several other mentioned aircraft isn't as important as the drag associated with wing loading. The light wing loading had penalties in maximum speed, the Zeke was by definition an "angles" fighter.


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Dec 4, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> Firstly that unit was primarily equipped with the N1K1-2, a much more advanced and potent fighter than the A6M, and was almost entirely comprised of elite aces. But even still, according to official US Navy records they never stood out as anything special (F6F kill/loss ratio found in NACS for the type equates to 28/0).



Hello DarrenW,
This is very interesting. The 343 had more than the average number of elite pilots, but it also had quite a few inexperienced pilots.
The "never stood out as anything special" is not in agreement with the combat reports from the US pilots encountering them and 28/0 is also interesting because of what it implies: that Hellcats never suffered any losses to the N1K and of course that 343 Kokutai never killed a Hellcat....



DarrenW said:


> I do appreciate what you are trying to explain about drag and how wing area is part of the equation that makes up the CD0. But remarks that the cowling of the F6F was larger which automatically made it less aerodynamically efficient than that of the A6M is not based on any sound scientific principals. In fact just looking at area alone the cowling of the Zeke at it's largest diameter _is not_ less than half that of the Hellcat's cowling, as alluded to in a previous post (it's more like 2/3 according to cross-sectional diagrams). This includes the chin cooling intakes of both aircraft. The statement that the "the difference in frontal area is greater than the difference in horsepower" just doesn't hold water when one compares the power of the R-2800 to the Sakae 21 engine and then looks at the cross-sectional diagrams.



You are actually responding to an argument that I did not make. The only mention I had about size differences between A6M and F6F was in Wing Area. The same applies to Cowl Diameters and cross sectional area and relative power of their engines. These were not my arguments.
My argument is for actual drag force which is described by Equivalent Flat Plate Area.
This sounds like a size measurement but it is not. As an example, an actual Flat Plate has an equivalent flat plate area of about 1.3 times its actual cross sectional area.



DarrenW said:


> I really don't know. The exhaust stacks and larger inlet of the A6M5 cowling look like they could be a large component of additional parasitic drag, plus there was a 180 horsepower increase with the new model which should have had an effect on overall speed and thus effect the CD0 accordingly as well. Point being, wing area does affect drag but there are additional components that are important to consider as well.



By my Mark I Mod 0 Eyeball, the A6M5 is a bit more aerodynamic than the A6M2 for the following reasons:
The cowling is more tapered in at the front.
This is probably due to the longer reduction gear housing for the Sakae 21 vs Sakae 12.
The carb scoop under the cowl is replaced by an inlet integrated into the upper lip of the cowl opening.
The consequence is that the upper edge of the cowl is higher but it is still not higher than the fuselage ahead of the cockpit.
The gun troughs are gone.
The cowl is longer but that should make no significant difference in drag.
The ejector exhausts do stand above the fuselage line but whatever drag this adds is more than offset by the exhaust thrust as can be seen when comparing the A6M3 and A6M5 which have otherwise identical engines.

Although a comparison of Take-Off power 950 HP to 1130 HP would seem to show a great superiority to the later aircraft, the actual power available at altitude is much closer. At some altitudes it is no more than 50 HP. This fact surprised me when I plotted the power graphs between the two engines. The later engine just has a bit more altitude performance because of a two speed supercharger.

- Ivan.


----------



## wuzak (Dec 4, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> Point well taken. I believe that the same could be said of the Spitfire during the BoB. The Hurricane had more than an adequate performance to take on anything the Luftwaffe could throw at it, and with the use of RADAR it could always be expected to be in the right place at the right time. Add in the huge tactical blunders made by the German High Command along with the superiority of the average British pilot and there's no reason to ever imagine any other possible outcome of the battle.



The Hurricane was out-classed by the Bf 109 in the BoB. 

British pilots were not superior to German pilots in the BoB. British pilots didn't have much training or experience at the time, while many (most?) of the Luftwaffe's pilots had combat experience - in the battle for France, Belgium, etc, in the invasion of Poland and some had experience from the Spanish Civil War.

Tactically the British had some advantages - such as radar warning, and the fact that pilots that bailed out and survived landed on home soil. But they also employed some questionable tactics, such as the "big wing", which took so long to form up that when they were able to engage, the enemy had already dropped their bombs and headed for home.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## GrauGeist (Dec 4, 2018)

The 343rd Air Group was assigned the A6M5a Model 52, N1K1-J Type 11, N1K2-J Type 21 and the C6N1.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## GregP (Dec 4, 2018)

Hi ExBE02Drvr. Yes, I know. The FM-1 still had a Pratt and the FM-2 went to a Wright. It's still a Wildcat.

The P-51A went from Allison to Merlin and they don't break out the P-51A kills from P-51D kills. DC-3s went back and forth between Pratt and Wright and nobody mentions it. The Corsair went from R-2800 to R-4360, but nobody seems to want to reclassify it as something other than a Corsair. The later Spitfires are still thought of as Spitfires even though they sport a Griffon instead of a Merlin, and it turns the other way to boot. The Typhoon went between engines but is still a Typhoon.

So, I don't see the Wildcat as something extra-special that needs to be re-identified because of a minor engine change and a whopping 250 or so extra horsepower. But, hey, that's just me. Your opinion may vary, and that's OK. Cheers.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## GrauGeist (Dec 4, 2018)

Don't forget the F4U - FG-1


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Dec 4, 2018)

wuzak said:


> The Hurricane was out-classed by the Bf 109 in the BoB.
> 
> British pilots were not superior to German pilots in the BoB. British pilots didn't have much training or experience at the time, while many (most?) of the Luftwaffe's pilots had combat experience - in the battle for France, Belgium, etc, in the invasion of Poland and some had experience from the Spanish Civil War.
> 
> Tactically the British had some advantages - such as radar warning, and the fact that pilots that bailed out and survived landed on home soil. But they also employed some questionable tactics, such as the "big wing", which took so long to form up that when they were able to engage, the enemy had already dropped their bombs and headed for home.



Hello Wuzak,
The other important thing to note is that even with Hurricanes AND Spitfires, it can be argued that the British never had a particularly favourable exchange rate versus the Germans during the BoB. There were the kills that were reported for public consumption but those were quite inflated.



GregP said:


> Hi ExBE02Drvr. Yes, I know. The FM-1 still had a Pratt and the FM-2 went to a Wright. It's still a Wildcat.
> 
> The P-51A went from Allison to Merlin and they don't break out the P-51A kills from P-51D kills. DC-3s went back and forth between Pratt and Wright and nobody mentions it. The Corsair went from R-2800 to R-4360, but nobody seems to want to reclassify it as something other than a Corsair. The later Spitfires are still thought of as Spitfires even though they sport a Griffon instead of a Merlin, and it turns the other way to boot. The Typhoon went between engines but is still a Typhoon.
> 
> So, I don't see the Wildcat as something extra-special that needs to be re-identified because of a minor engine change and a whopping 250 or so extra horsepower. But, hey, that's just me. Your opinion may vary, and that's OK. Cheers.



Hello GregP,
While I believe you are technically correct, I believe the point was really that the Wildcat was no longer a front line fighter by the time the FM-2 came around. Its mission had changed and even if it were the same aircraft, it was operating in a much less dangerous environment.
I see this as similar to a comparison of the Short Stirling during the time it served as a night bomber to its later role as a glider tug and transport. It may be the same aircraft, but it isn't flying in the same environment or against the same opposition.

- Ivan.


----------



## swampyankee (Dec 5, 2018)

Production F4U Corsairs never used the R-4360; that engine was used by the Goodyear F2G, was which never entered service as only about a dozen were built.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 5, 2018)

wuzak said:


> The Hurricane was out-classed by the Bf 109 in the BoB.
> 
> British pilots were not superior to German pilots in the BoB. British pilots didn't have much training or experience at the time, while many (most?) of the Luftwaffe's pilots had combat experience - in the battle for France, Belgium, etc, in the invasion of Poland and some had experience from the Spanish Civil War.
> 
> Tactically the British had some advantages - such as radar warning, and the fact that pilots that bailed out and survived landed on home soil. But they also employed some questionable tactics, such as the "big wing", which took so long to form up that when they were able to engage, the enemy had already dropped their bombs and headed for home.



Sorry wuzak now it's my turn to apologize. I was baiting you into a discussion about the BoB because I knew it would trigger an emotional response, and it did. My post had an air of sarcasm to it that obviously went un-noticed. I promise to never do that to you again.  And while I agree with everything that you stated above, we will just have to continue to agree to disagree concerning the merits of the F6F and it's value to the naval air war in the Pacific. 

Peace.


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 5, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> that Hellcats never suffered any losses to the N1K



Well "officially" they didn't.



Ivan1GFP said:


> You are actually responding to an argument that I did not make.



That is true, you just seemed to be watching XBe02DrVr's back concerning the drag issue so I was just responding to the both of you in kind.



Ivan1GFP said:


> By my Mark I Mod 0 Eyeball, the A6M5 is a bit more aerodynamic than the A6M2



I'll have to closely examine what you presented in your post and get back to you on this one.


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 5, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> While I believe you are technically correct, I believe the point was really that the Wildcat was no longer a front line fighter by the time the FM-2 came around.



How an aircraft is utilized has nothing to do with it's official designation. If the U.S. Navy referred to it as a Wildcat then this implies that it was still part of the original Wildcat family. The only difference was that the General Motors Corporation was building them under license, due primarily to Grumman's total involvement in the manufacture of Hellcats. I really don't see what the issue is here.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Dec 5, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> How an aircraft is utilized has nothing to do with it's official designation. If the U.S. Navy referred to it as a Wildcat then this implies that it was still part of the original Wildcat family. The only difference was that the General Motors Corporation was building them under license, due primarily to Grumman's total involvement in the manufacture of Hellcats. I really don't see what the issue is here.



Hello DarrenW,
I believe you are missing the point that the two gentlemen were arguing about as I did initially.
GregP was counting FM-2 statistics along with those for the earlier Wildcats while XBe02Drvr believed that the statistics should be separated because the FM-2 was flying a distinctly different mission. I believe both arguments have their merits but from a meaningful statistics point of view, I would have to agree with XBe02Drvr. I don't think the argument was that the F4F-8 / FM-2 was not a Wildcat.

- Ivan.


----------



## fliger747 (Dec 5, 2018)

10 F2G model Corsairs were produced, five in the land version and five sea going aircraft. Additionally an experimental test F4U-1 Corsair was equipped with the 4360 and variously a counter rotating prop. One of the surviving F2G aircraft is displayed at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.


----------



## GregP (Dec 6, 2018)

Hi SwampYankee. Actually, they made 10. Considering how few were built, it is amazing to me the number that survived. At least one is still flying ... the red one. Bob Odegaard was killed in the blue one. It is an occasional visitor at the Planes of Fame.


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 6, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> Hello DarrenW,
> I believe you are missing the point that the two gentlemen were arguing about as I did initially.
> GregP was counting FM-2 statistics along with those for the earlier Wildcats while XBe02Drvr believed that the statistics should be separated because the FM-2 was flying a distinctly different mission. I believe both arguments have their merits but from a meaningful statistics point of view, I would have to agree with XBe02Drvr. I don't think the argument was that the F4F-8 / FM-2 was not a Wildcat.
> 
> - Ivan.



Thanks for the clarification Ivan. I think this separation of the two as "different" aircraft types began with the way the statistical analysis is layed out in NACS. While the various designations of the Corsair and Avenger manufactured by the different companies can be found statistically grouped together there, the F4F and FM-2 were separated into two distinct categories. This was probably due to the fact that the F4F and FM-2 were in service at different periods of the war and therefore did not fly missions simultaneously (unlike different manufactured Corsair and Avenger). For example, in 1944 and 1945 only the FM-2 is listed as flying operations from either carriers or land bases, as the F4F was no longer in service. If no sorties were flown by the F4F version, it would have been meaningless to list them together because no action reports would have included that particular designation. Conversely, there were no FM-2s listed in action reports before 1944, so only the F4F designation was used up to that point.

Therefore both designations of the Wildcat received their own unique statistics, rather than being lumped together like the other types. If they both operated from carriers or from land bases at the same period of the war, we would most likely have seen them statistically grouped together in the analysis, just like the other types.

I guess when we are talking about which aircraft type did what, people need to be clear if they are talking about it's designation or the nickname that it was given. I personally think that grouping aircraft together by their original or parent airframe type is the best way to understand a particular design's overall military value (and not by the various modifications that came along during it's existence). The nickname of the aircraft would therefore be the best way to achieve this goal. But hey, that's just me and everyone deserves to have an opinion.

Just my take on things.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Dec 6, 2018)

Hello DarrenW,
I am not really disagreeing with you, but do the statistics split out the FM-1 from the F4F or distinguish between F4F-3, F4F-3A and F4F-4?
Production of the FM-1 started off pretty early and was basically a Wildcat with F4F-3/3A armament but otherwise configured as the F4F-4 for wing folding and other equipment.

The point I am wondering about is whether the FM-1 statistics would be counted with the F4F or with the FM-2.
Its manufacturer is obviously General Motors, but its configuration and typical missions are identical to other F4F types.

- Ivan.


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 6, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> The point I am wondering about is whether the FM-1 statistics would be counted with the F4F or with the FM-2.



Most of the discussion here has been about the FM-2 so I failed to make clear that the actual designation listed in the NACS was "FM" and this most likely included both the -1 and -2 models.


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 6, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> I'll have to closely examine what you presented in your post and get back to you on this one.



Hi Ivan,
Rather than hijack this awesome thread I decided to start a new one in order to further discuss the drag qualities of the Zero fighter:

Aerodynamic Drag Properties of the A6M

See you there....


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 7, 2018)

fliger747 said:


> The streamlining between the Zeke and the Hellcat and several other mentioned aircraft isn't as important as the drag associated with wing loading. The light wing loading had penalties in maximum speed, the Zeke was by definition an "angles" fighter.



Hi Fliger747, could you expound on this further? It's very intriguing to me....


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Dec 7, 2018)

fliger747 said:


> The streamlining between the Zeke and the Hellcat and several other mentioned aircraft isn't as important as the drag associated with wing loading. The light wing loading had penalties in maximum speed, the Zeke was by definition an "angles" fighter.



Hello Fliger747,
What kind of penalties in maximum speed does a light wing loading have? 
Are you suggesting that the same aircraft carrying more weight would be faster?
I would have thought that something like the Lavochkin La-5FN or the FW 190 or Yak-3 was a better example of an "angles" fighter.

- Ivan.


----------



## pbehn (Dec 7, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> Hello Fliger747,
> What kind of penalties in maximum speed does a light wing loading have?
> Are you suggesting that the same aircraft carrying more weight would be faster?
> I would have thought that something like the Lavochkin La-5FN or the FW 190 or Yak-3 was a better example of an "angles" fighter.
> ...


I didn't see it as carrying more weight but having less wing than needed, meaning less wing would do.


----------



## Ivan1GFP (Dec 7, 2018)

pbehn said:


> I didn't see it as carrying more weight but having MORE wing than needed, meaning less wing would do.



Hello PBehn,
With that minor correction, I agree with you completely, but that is really stating that a smaller wing has less drag and not that a lighter wing loading has a penalty. THAT is why I asked what I did.
If you think an aircraft has too much wing area, you cut the size of the wing.
If you think the aircraft has too little wing loading, you add some weight to the aircraft.
I figure one tries to keep all the other factors the same.

- Ivan.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## fliger747 (Dec 8, 2018)

An example of some aircraft with both full and clipped wing versions, the clipped wing aircraft have a slightly higher speed and usually a better roll rate. The down side is a higher stall speed and reduced turning maneuverability at a given weight. For a given lift requirement at a given speed the heavier loaded wing will require a higher AOA and resulting increased induced drag. 

Take the same basic plane with X wing area and a given weight Y, it will have a defined wing loading. Do nothing but increase of decrease the wing area, and at the same weight, the wing loading will change in proportion to the change in area. 

Certainly in maneuvering flight the lightly loaded wing can develop more maneuvering lift, at the expense of greatly increased drag. How useful this is is somewhat dependent on power loading. 

Wings have a large surface area and even at very low (cruising) AOA values still retain a large degree of friction drag and some form drag. More "wetted area" yields more resistance (drag) at high speeds. Of course things are a bit more complicated as wing planform (aspect ratio etc), profile thickness, airfoil section etc all come into play as they differ amongst aircraft.


----------



## michael rauls (Dec 8, 2018)

I don't know a huge amount about aerodynamics but it makes sense to me that all other things being equal that a plane with lower wing loading( more lift) would be slower than one with a higher wing loading as lift is pushing upward as the propulsion of the aircraft is pushing forward thus creating more of an opposing force to the forward movement of the aircraft not to mention the extra drag of the front surface of the extra wing area ( wich would varry with wing design of course but all other things being equal).
Not sure this is whats at play but would be interested to hear the opinions of those with more aerodynamic knowledge than myself on this.


----------



## fliger747 (Dec 8, 2018)

Maximum speed is only one of the parameters for which an aircraft might be optimized. Change one thing and it changes another. Depending on the mission profile, a low landing speed or being able to operate off of short unimproved strips might assume some importance, Rate of climb and maneuverability might be important, structural strength and "toughness" might be important, heavy firepower, great range, a high service ceiling, speed at Sl and whatnot. Almost all of these items work at some contradiction. 

Any aircraft is a compromise of many of the above factors. The great ones were good enough at enough criteria to be tactically employed to some advantage. Add another factor, ultimately numbers, the producibility and maintainability count for points as well. 

As far as maximum speed and wing area goes, airfoil section and planform enter in, but think in this way, the wing will create drag in two basic ways, from induced drag which is a function of generating lift. The other is via form and surface friction drag. At a zero lift AOA, the wing still created a great deal of drag. The bigger the wing the more drag. At max speed a very small AOA will be employed, much more lift is potentially available than is being utilized. The wing will have some crossover point where the drag from generating lift will be smaller than the form/friction drag. Above this point a smaller wing would be optimal for max speed. 

Of course the smaller winged aircraft might not be good at all at other tasks that might be found in a fighter mission...

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Zipper730 (Dec 16, 2018)

Okay, rather than bickering over the finer details of the F6F's cowling, can we get back to the primary topic at hand: Qualities that are not often listed but nonetheless give an aircraft advantages?


----------



## fliger747 (Dec 17, 2018)

Strategic and tactical application. Pilot training and experience, none of these items show up in specs. The Roman short sword was only a great weapon in how it was used en mass. Being able to utilize an aircraft such that takes advantage of it's strengths and minimizing exposure to it's weaknesses. Example, use of the less obvious energy tactics against the more apparent angles tactics.


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 17, 2018)

Zipper730 said:


> Okay, rather than bickering over the finer details of the F6F's cowling, can we get back to the primary topic at hand: Qualities that are not often listed but nonetheless give an aircraft advantages?



...but do we really have too? 


Probably mentioned before but I'll say it again. An aircraft's ability to absorb punishment and still remain in the fight is something that's harder to quantify but most assuredly an ingredient that makes for a great combat machine.

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## KiwiBiggles (Dec 17, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> Probably mentioned before but I'll say it again. An aircraft's ability to absorb punishment and still remain in the fight is something that's harder to quantify


And I've said it before but I'll say it again. Staying in the fight after taking significant damage is not a survival strategy. An airframe that can absorb damage and still get back to base is a great way to keep your pilots alive. Encouragnig them to ignore airframe damage and stay in the fight is not.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## DarrenW (Dec 17, 2018)

KiwiBiggles said:


> And I've said it before but I'll say it again. Staying in the fight after taking significant damage is not a survival strategy. An airframe that can absorb damage and still get back to base is a great way to keep your pilots alive. Encouragnig them to ignore airframe damage and stay in the fight is not.



You totally missed my point Mr. bigglesworth, but that's nothing new. There are just as many reasons to remain in the fight as there are to leave it. Sometimes it's not your choice due to tactical reasons (safety in numbers), and other times you may be unaware that your aircraft has sustained damage in the first place (because it's handling as expected). Then there are those that are trying to escape and would love to have the added insurance of extra armor plating surrounding them to get them safely home from perusing fighters (case in point, Robert S. Johnson).

When would you tuck tail and run, as soon as you sustain a grazing shot and your aircraft is no longer factory fresh and smelling clean? Please....

No one is suggesting to fly an aircraft till it's wings fall off, but if you cannot see any intrinsic value in structural integrity than I suggest you take another look at the IJN/IJAAF and how lightly constructed/poorly protected aircraft became their proverbial Achilles' heel.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Zipper730 (Dec 18, 2018)

fliger747 said:


> Strategic and tactical application. Pilot training and experience, none of these items show up in specs. The Roman short sword was only a great weapon in how it was used en mass. Being able to utilize an aircraft such that takes advantage of it's strengths and minimizing exposure to it's weaknesses. Example, use of the less obvious energy tactics against the more apparent angles tactics.


Pilot training is a crucial factor, but I think this was more of an aircraft issue.


----------



## GrauGeist (Dec 19, 2018)

KiwiBiggles said:


> And I've said it before but I'll say it again. Staying in the fight after taking significant damage is not a survival strategy. An airframe that can absorb damage and still get back to base is a great way to keep your pilots alive. Encouragnig them to ignore airframe damage and stay in the fight is not.


And how many pilots were injured in a brawl and stayed with their aircraft?

I personally knew an SBD pilot (the Sheriff of a local county) who was seriously injured by an A6M's 7.7mm and still held his line, delivering a bomb strike on a Japanese carrier at Midway.

This is just one of countless examples of pilots who took damage or injuries and yet stayed in the fight - I can't think of any orders or dispatches that insisted they do it. It was their own choice and some survived the decision and some did not - but it was their to make.

Reactions: Like Like:
3 | Like List reactions


----------



## Shortround6 (Dec 19, 2018)

Kind of depends on the situation. 
naval battles are weird compared to land battles because they happen so rarely, months (many of them) could go by without a major battle between opposing carrier groups. 
Sinking (or just damaging) an enemy carrier could affect the balance of power for months/years to come. 
Even a destroyer takes hundreds if not thousands of workers (counting engines & weapons) 1 1/2 to 2 years to build. Large ships took 3-4 years. 

Taking out one of a hundred pillboxes, tanks, gun pits or even a single enemy aircraft is NOT going to affect much in the way of the overall scheme of things even if important to the people/troops involved.


----------



## fliger747 (Jan 1, 2019)

One can for instance read specs for armor, such as that behind the pilot and draw some sort of idea about it's effectiveness. However many US aircraft placed the radio gear behind this plate. As it turns out the radio gear was quite important in the performance of the armor as a round going through the radio equipment would tumble, completely destroying it's armor piercing capabilities. 

Ok, bit in the weeds...

Reactions: Informative Informative:
3 | Like List reactions


----------



## jetcal1 (Jan 1, 2019)

fliger747 said:


> One can for instance read specs for armor, such as that behind the pilot and draw some sort of idea about it's effectiveness. However many US aircraft placed the radio gear behind this plate. As it turns out the radio gear was quite important in the performance of the armor as a round going through the radio equipment would tumble, completely destroying it's armor piercing capabilities.
> 
> Ok, bit in the weeds...



To me, if that was intentional it was excellent engineering and should be included as an example of out of the box engineering. The same effectiveness as thicker armor without the weight penalty?

Reactions: Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## Zipper730 (Jan 2, 2019)

fliger747 said:


> One can for instance read specs for armor, such as that behind the pilot and draw some sort of idea about it's effectiveness. However many US aircraft placed the radio gear behind this plate. As it turns out the radio gear was quite important in the performance of the armor as a round going through the radio equipment would tumble, completely destroying it's armor piercing capabilities.


So in some cases the armor wasn't the only thing protecting the pilot -- other objects that happened to be in the path of the projectile...


----------



## Laurelix (Jan 12, 2019)

Ki-100 
580km/h at 6000m at military power, you’re looking at 595km/h with war emergency power.

It had 17 seconds turn time which made it better turner than Yak-3 and it could keep up with Spitfire IX in turn.

It’s climb rate was also pretty decent.
One of the biggest strengths was its maximum dive rate. It’s airframe could withstand higher dive speeds than P-51D


----------



## Elmas (Jan 12, 2019)

An efficient Radar chain and Ground Control...

Reactions: Agree Agree:
3 | Like List reactions


----------



## Elmas (Jan 12, 2019)

... abundance of avgas, spare parts, trained mechanics... and, of course, planes and pilots...

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## fliger747 (Jan 22, 2019)

As a pilot, the interaction between the controls and the aircraft maneuverability can assume significant importance. Generally it was found that about 10 lbs/G generated by the elevators was about optimal. Similar effort for aileron and rudder through the speed range would also be beneficial. Trimability would also be a boon for longer missions, as well as smaller need for trim changes with speed. However some of these items may be in opposition to each other. 

Being able to fly the plane well, having a good feel to it with sufficient buffet before the stall and the presence of it being a stable gun platform are all helpful qualities. Some planes such as the F9F Panther had a tendency to snake at high speed and also had a fairly strong "breakout" force on the controls. Not fatal flaws but the kind of thing that pilots had to learn to "manage".

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## Frankenerd (Apr 6, 2019)

Shortround6 said:


> The Apache was not a Mustang I, the British got few, if any, A-36s.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Well actually, the small engined GeeBee Racers of the mid '30s had significantly better CD than other radial engined planes of the time and even later into the early 40s.


----------



## BiffF15 (Apr 6, 2019)

Frankenerd said:


> Well actually, the small engined GeeBee Racers of the mid '30s had significantly better CD than other radial engined planes of the time and even later into the early 40s.



Gorgeous planes they were! However they were built for racing, not for war. All the go to war equipment adds weight and drag (a constant battle still fought today).

Cheers,
Biff


----------



## Zipper730 (Apr 6, 2019)

GrauGeist said:


> And how many pilots were injured in a brawl and stayed with their aircraft?


Damage resistance is definitely a criteria which is a function of the armor, and the placement of equipment and structural components. In some cases, they weren't necessarily designed to absorb damage, but did it really good.



Laurelix said:


> Ki-100
> 580km/h at 6000m at military power, you’re looking at 595km/h with war emergency power.


360.4 mph and 369.7 mph.


> It had 17 seconds turn time which made it better turner than Yak-3 and it could keep up with Spitfire IX in turn.


I know it could turn well at altitude, though I never knew the turning time. The F4F was around 17-19 secs right?


> One of the biggest strengths was its maximum dive rate. It’s airframe could withstand higher dive speeds than P-51D


Do you have figures for that?


----------



## Frankenerd (Apr 6, 2019)

Schweik said:


> I think part of the idea of Laminar flow wings was to get simultaneously a large wingspan and low drag - presumably the big wing still providing benefits of lift and thereby, maneuverability. But the effect seems to be mainly for low drag and not much else. For the size of the wing it usually seems to end up somewhat lacking in lift. Of the few examples I know of which seems to have possibly succeeded in threading that needle were the elliptical Spitfire wing and the semi-elliptical wing of the Re 2005, also from the same country as that hilarious proverb.


Many mistakes. The rectilinear Mustang wing gave more total lift than the larger elliptical Spitfire wing! The thinner Spit wing had a lower CL and more wash out that greatly reduced the total lift. But the Spit was more than a ton (2?) lighter and thus had a lower wing loading. If you look at the stall speeds at weights you get the idea. In addition, it was the wing twist under load near the tips combined with the wash out that gave the Spit the gentile stall and "Great" Handling early models were famous for. Later models acquired defects with the greater weight and larger props until the Mk-XIV was nearly un-usable for the first year of it's service. (Note the year long time between service entry and first kill!) Those "Snaking" problems persisted until the adoption of larger tails and were only completely fixed with the much larger "Spiteful" tail later on. But they built over a thousand Mk-XIVs because they were so desperate they had no choice. It was their only true 400 MPH plane. The Mk-IX does not count because of said defects which were unfixed! The Snaking in the Mk-XIV was so bad and major defect in a dog fight, but only a minor problem chasing a doodle bug. Watch A2A gunnery film to see the snaking and what it did to gunnery for your self. The Mustang had the exact same problem with the larger chord prop on the P-51H and had to add 8", or was it 18" to the top of the rudder and stretch the fuse more than a little to get a longer lever arm to fix it. All planes go through that type of thing, where mods are required to fix unk defects only found later in combat service. The P-38 was just about the only plane of that era that they found the defects before service, but because it was the only 400 MPH plane in existence at the time, they bought it any way! And do not be fooled by the published 414 MPH placard speed published in all the books. Do you think adding almost 700 HP would not change the actual, but un-tested speed? Just swapping props gave 450 MPH in one un-built but tested type.


----------



## Frankenerd (Apr 6, 2019)

pbehn said:


> No it doesn't, the meter as a measure dates to Napoleon, to try to construct a modern railway on a 3 meter gauge is madness, especially on the scale that was planned. The tunnels curves and marshalling yards would be huge. Standard gauge was actually 4ft 8in, they added a half inch just to allow curves and smooth running straight away. A 3m wide railway is a fantasy, possibly useful on a steel plant but of no use at all cross country.


Not true at all. All of the things you mention have to do with car design, not gage. There were plans way back in the 1840-50s to make the gage 3.2 M for all the right reasons but one, cost of conversion. So it got shelved. Put any current car on a set of 3.2 Meter trucks and it can go MORE places than the same car on Standard Gage trucks because the roof will be closer to the ground. Curves are based on the length between truck pivot points, not the gage. Everything else is built around the outside dimensions of the cars, not the Gage. It was time to change the original Roman era Gage when they first started building rail roads in 1825, but they were not very good engineers and went with historical data, thus screwing all of us now.


----------



## Frankenerd (Apr 6, 2019)

pbehn said:


> Oh for crying out loud, I was born and raised in Stockton on Tees, the first passenger railway terminated within a few hundred yards of where I was born. Whatever some ancient mystic thought about things they never had anything to do with putting and operating rolling stock on a track. You need to explore the mathematics of it, I am certainly not going to stat teaching you.


Had nothing to do with "Ancient Mystics" but everything to do with the minimum width of a two man, two horse chariot's axel and wheels!


----------



## Frankenerd (Apr 6, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> Damage resistance is definitely a criteria which is a function of the armor, and the placement of equipment and structural components. In some cases, they weren't necessarily designed to absorb damage, but did it really good.
> 
> 360.4 mph and 369.7 mph.
> I know it could turn well at altitude, though I never knew the turning time. The F4F was around 17-19 secs right?
> Do you have figures for that?


Damage resistance is a function of only two major items! How thick the aircraft skin is and whether or not it has an air cooled engine! All other aspects of damage resistance are insignificant in comparison to either of those two factors! American Aircraft were made with thicker and stronger alloys making them more tolerant of damage and heavier. The P-47 was made of much thicker and stronger alloy and was thus the most damage resistant single engined plane of WW-II. All other aircraft of all other Nations were made of thinner and weaker aluminum sheets. Armor was a secondary concern as it only protected a small aria of the total plane. The Il-2 Sturmovic with over a tonne of armor was easy to shoot down, if you knew how. Read EBH's book. The armor only gave partial protection to certain parts and only to RCMGs and some smaller shell fragments. (Rifle Caliber Machine Guns) That made the Il-2 harder to shoot down from the ground, but a single bullet in any radiator brought the plane down with absolute certainty. On the Russian front, that slow leak might get you home, or might not, but the mission was over at that point of impact and the pilot's only mission was to survive and RTB!


----------



## Schweik (Apr 6, 2019)

Frankenerd said:


> Many mistakes. The rectilinear Mustang wing gave more total lift than the larger elliptical Spitfire wing! The thinner Spit wing had a lower CL and more wash out that greatly reduced the total lift. But the Spit was more than a ton (2?) lighter and thus had a lower wing loading. If you look at the stall speeds at weights you get the idea. In addition, it was the wing twist under load near the tips combined with the wash out that gave the Spit the gentile stall and "Great" Handling early models were famous for. Later models acquired defects with the greater weight and larger props until the Mk-XIV was nearly un-usable for the first year of it's service. (Note the year long time between service entry and first kill!) Those "Snaking" problems persisted until the adoption of larger tails and were only completely fixed with the much larger "Spiteful" tail later on. But they built over a thousand Mk-XIVs because they were so desperate they had no choice. It was their only true 400 MPH plane. The Mk-IX does not count because of said defects which were unfixed! The Snaking in the Mk-XIV was so bad and major defect in a dog fight, but only a minor problem chasing a doodle bug. Watch A2A gunnery film to see the snaking and what it did to gunnery for your self. The Mustang had the exact same problem with the larger chord prop on the P-51H and had to add 8", or was it 18" to the top of the rudder and stretch the fuse more than a little to get a longer lever arm to fix it. All planes go through that type of thing, where mods are required to fix unk defects only found later in combat service. The P-38 was just about the only plane of that era that they found the defects before service, but because it was the only 400 MPH plane in existence at the time, they bought it any way! And do not be fooled by the published 414 MPH placard speed published in all the books. Do you think adding almost 700 HP would not change the actual, but un-tested speed? Just swapping props gave 450 MPH in one un-built but tested type.



Spit IX may have had problems but it had an excellent combat record. against German and Italian fighters and other aircraft. It was a game changer in the Med. Mustangs at that time (Allison Engined) barely recorded any kills at all.


----------



## Frankenerd (Apr 6, 2019)

GrauGeist said:


> OK, so...
> 
> Should the Germans have created a new designation for the Bf109 after the Emil?
> And should the Americans have redesignated the P-51 after it got the got the Merlin?
> ...


Except that the 109 was identical from the firewall back through most of the models. I think it had the absolute highest parts through put between models of any plane in the war. The new mods had different numbers, but some had significant carry over of major sections. This can not be said of the Grumman's, Mustangs, or etc...


----------



## Frankenerd (Apr 6, 2019)

Schweik said:


> Spit IX may have had problems but it had an excellent combat record. against German and Italian fighters and other aircraft. It was a game changer in the Med. Mustangs at that time (Allison Engined) barely recorded any kills at all.


I dispute your claim that the Spit-IX had an "Excellent" combat record. In "Circuses" type fighter sweeps over France it got it's butt handed to it's pilots at a horrific rate with many more losses than wins, which was never made public until many years after the war and then not widely!
However, this has little to do with the planes defects and everything to do with the mission parameters requiring long periods of slow cruising speeds to get to and from the targets, IF one was to do the mission and RTB! Running out of gas over Europe is a certain shoot down and loss of both plane and pilot!


----------



## Frankenerd (Apr 6, 2019)

Reluctant Poster said:


> The Mk 21 was originally to be called the Victor but cooler heads prevailed and the iconic name was retained (They must have learned their lesson after the morale sapping name change from Fighter Command to Air Defense Great Britain).
> The difference between a Mk I and a PR XIX isn't really that great, from firewall to empennage its basically the same, as is the wing with some internal differences of course. The F 21 is more of a departure with a redesigned wing and longer undercarriage to support a larger diameter propeller.
> Strangely the production Spiteful was the MK XIV skipping Mks I through XIII. It is speculated that this was because it was a laminar winged version of the Spitfire Mk XIV.
> 
> On the other hand the Lancaster was originally called the Manchester III, but obviously that's not a name to perpetuate


Not quite right. The Spiteful had an entirely new and larger tail.


----------



## Schweik (Apr 6, 2019)

Frankenerd said:


> I dispute your claim that the Spit-IX had an "Excellent" combat record. In "Circuses" type fighter sweeps over France it got it's butt handed to it's pilots at a horrific rate with many more losses than wins, which was never made public until many years after the war and then not widely!
> However, this has little to do with the planes defects and everything to do with the mission parameters requiring long periods of slow cruising speeds to get to and from the targets, IF one was to do the mission and RTB! Running out of gas over Europe is a certain shoot down and loss of both plane and pilot!



You seem to be making the assumption that the NW European front was the only place where the Spit IX fought - that was a static, low-intensity front and most of the losses on the ill-considered 'Rhubarb' and 'Circus' etc. sweeps and raids were largely to flak anyway. Even there however, the Spit IX could take on the Fw 190 which the Spit V couldn't do.

However the Spit IX was also very active in the Med where it was a critical component of, and the best fighter available to the Anglo-American forces. Spit IX squadrons shot down a vast number of Axis aircraft, helped secure Malta (though much of the burden there was carried by the Hurricane and the Mk V), contributed heavily to the breaking of JG 27 and the destruction of Axis forces in Tunisia, to the conquest of Sicily and Southern Italy and the collapse of the Italian Fascist regime. In the MTO Theater in 1943, the Spit IX had _by far_ the best record of any Allied aircraft against the top German and Italian fighter aircraft and their best pilots. Far better than P-51, P-47, P-38 or P-40 units, and obviously better than Hurricane or Spit V units etc.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Shortround6 (Apr 6, 2019)

Frankenerd said:


> Well actually, the small engined GeeBee Racers of the mid '30s had significantly better CD than other radial engined planes of the time and even later into the early 40s.



They may have been better than a lot of radial engine planes but there were a few that were better.

As Biff has noted, the addition of military equipment can make some significant changes. 

This book 






Amazon product

goes into quite a bit of detail about a proposal to convert the Wedell Model 44 into a pursuit plane. 





This went as far as the Proposal being designated the XP-34 but it never went past the paper stage. 

One set of figures shows the weight climb with military equipment added to the racer and keeping the same sized wing, another set of figures shows the weight gain and size wing needed to keep the same wing loading as the racer. The proposals are also compared to the Boeing P-26. The P-26 was a pretty dirty airplane. 

Now please note that the airplane in the picture may have had a 103 sq ft wing. The GB R1 had a 75 sq ft wing. (The R2 got a bigger wing later?) 
In order to operate as pursuit aircraft both planes would need substantially bigger wings in order to get the wing loading down, if only for take-off and landing. The larger wings would play havoc with the drag.

I don't know about the GB planes but the information sent to Wright field for the Wedell racer lists a limit load factor of 5.43 Gs and a design load factor if 8.15. 
The Army standard at the time was a limit load factor of 8.5 so the racer would need considerable beefing up to meet the Army strength requirements.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## taly01 (Apr 6, 2019)

> Ki-100
> 580km/h at 6000m at military power, you’re looking at 595km/h with war emergency power.
> It had 17 seconds turn time which made it better turner than Yak-3 and it could keep up with Spitfire IX in turn.
> It’s climb rate was also pretty decent.
> One of the biggest strengths was its maximum dive rate. It’s airframe could withstand higher dive speeds than P-51D



Ki-100 is good example for a plane that has unimpressive stats (for 1945) but was highly regarded by its pilots. Veterans said it was easy for a new pilot to learn to fight well in it in a short time, and was mechanically reliable.

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## tomo pauk (Apr 7, 2019)

Frankenerd said:


> Many mistakes. The rectilinear Mustang wing gave more total lift than the larger elliptical Spitfire wing! The thinner Spit wing had a lower CL and more wash out that greatly reduced the total lift. But the Spit was more than a ton (2?) lighter and thus had a lower wing loading. If you look at the stall speeds at weights you get the idea. In addition, it was the wing twist under load near the tips combined with the wash out that gave the Spit the gentile stall and "Great" Handling early models were famous for. Later models acquired defects with the greater weight and larger props until the Mk-XIV was nearly un-usable for the first year of it's service. (Note the year long time between service entry and first kill!) Those "Snaking" problems persisted until the adoption of larger tails and were only completely fixed with the much larger "Spiteful" tail later on. But they built over a thousand Mk-XIVs because they were so desperate they had no choice. It was their only true 400 MPH plane. The Mk-IX does not count because of said defects which were unfixed! The Snaking in the Mk-XIV was so bad and major defect in a dog fight, but only a minor problem chasing a doodle bug. Watch A2A gunnery film to see the snaking and what it did to gunnery for your self. The Mustang had the exact same problem with the larger chord prop on the P-51H and had to add 8", or was it 18" to the top of the rudder and stretch the fuse more than a little to get a longer lever arm to fix it. All planes go through that type of thing, where mods are required to fix unk defects only found later in combat service. The P-38 was just about the only plane of that era that they found the defects before service, but because it was the only 400 MPH plane in existence at the time, they bought it any way! And do not be fooled by the published 414 MPH placard speed published in all the books. Do you think adding almost 700 HP would not change the actual, but un-tested speed? Just swapping props gave 450 MPH in one un-built but tested type.



Don't know where to start from.
How about posting the figures of lift for Spitfire and P-51 to prove your point? Handling was great, not "great" on Spitfires. British were not desperate by the time Spitfire XIV was being designed. Spitfire VII, VIII, IX and Typhoon were 400 mph planes. What deity said that Spitfire IX does not count as such? What P-38 managed 450 mph just due to change in props?



Frankenerd said:


> Damage resistance is a function of only two major items! How thick the aircraft skin is and whether or not it has an air cooled engine! All other aspects of damage resistance are insignificant in comparison to either of those two factors! American Aircraft were made with thicker and stronger alloys making them more tolerant of damage and heavier. The P-47 was made of much thicker and stronger alloy and was thus the most damage resistant single engined plane of WW-II. All other aircraft of all other Nations were made of thinner and weaker aluminum sheets.



Surce for all of this?
Flood of exclamation marks does not make one's post gain credibility.



> Armor was a secondary concern as it only protected a small aria of the total plane. The Il-2 Sturmovic with over a tonne of armor was easy to shoot down, if you knew how. Read EBH's book. The armor only gave partial protection to certain parts and only to RCMGs and some smaller shell fragments. (Rifle Caliber Machine Guns) That made the Il-2 harder to shoot down from the ground, but a single bullet in any radiator brought the plane down with absolute certainty. On the Russian front, that slow leak might get you home, or might not, but the mission was over at that point of impact and the pilot's only mission was to survive and RTB!



Armor was protecting that small, minor, insignificant thing - pilot. We all know that dead pilot will RTB anyway, so it can be resurrected. 
EBH's capabilities were not universaly applied for the LW pilot cadre, and even him will not be able to puncture coolant radiator, even if he might puncture oil radiator.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Agree Agree:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Greyman (Apr 7, 2019)

tomo pauk said:


> Don't know where to start from.



Spidey sense tells me this won't be worth it.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Apr 7, 2019)

Frankenerd said:


> It was time to change the original Roman era Gage when they first started building rail roads in 1825, but they were not very good engineers and went with historical data, thus screwing all of us now.


There are many gauges other than standard gauge and many new railways have been made which are single use with custom stock high speed lines, non have been made with a gauge anywhere near 3 meters so obviously todays engineers are not as well versed in these things as you are.


----------



## pbehn (Apr 7, 2019)

Frankenerd said:


> Many mistakes. The rectilinear Mustang wing gave more total lift than the larger elliptical Spitfire wing! The thinner Spit wing had a lower CL and more wash out that greatly reduced the total lift. .


Is this why the P-51 had a much better rate of climb than the Spitfire?

Reactions: Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## FLYBOYJ (Apr 7, 2019)

Frankenerd said:


> Damage resistance is a function of only two major items! *How thick the aircraft skin is *and whether or not it has an air cooled engine! All other aspects of damage resistance are insignificant in comparison to either of those two factors! American Aircraft were made with thicker and stronger alloys making them more tolerant of damage and heavier. The P-47 was made of much thicker and stronger alloy and was thus the most damage resistant single engined plane of WW-II. All other aircraft of all other Nations were made of thinner and weaker aluminum sheets. Armor was a secondary concern as it only protected a small aria of the total plane. The Il-2 Sturmovic with over a tonne of armor was easy to shoot down, if you knew how. Read EBH's book. The armor only gave partial protection to certain parts and only to RCMGs and some smaller shell fragments. (Rifle Caliber Machine Guns) That made the Il-2 harder to shoot down from the ground, but a single bullet in any radiator brought the plane down with absolute certainty. On the Russian front, that slow leak might get you home, or might not, but the mission was over at that point of impact and the pilot's only mission was to survive and RTB!



Not entirely true and in some cases false. Many aircraft (to include US) had portions of their skins between .020 and .030 but some aircraft like the P-47 and F4U had skins over .050 and in some cases layered structure up to .125 thick. Additionally what is commonly missed missed is that some aircraft had skin that was riveted to corrugated structure and then on to internal framework. 

http://legendsintheirowntime.com/LiTOT/P38/P38_redo.pdf 






Here's an old discussion:

Which fighters were "thick skinned?" 

Skin thickness is only one part of the equation, one must consider what's underneath. 

The aircooled/ liquid cooled argument has been beat to death.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## pbehn (Apr 7, 2019)

The strength of a structure isn't determined by the thickness of its surface covering. Survivability is more about built in redundancy than strength itself.

Reactions: Bacon Bacon:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## michael rauls (Apr 7, 2019)

Frankenerd said:


> Many mistakes. The rectilinear Mustang wing gave more total lift than the larger elliptical Spitfire wing! The thinner Spit wing had a lower CL and more wash out that greatly reduced the total lift. But the Spit was more than a ton (2?) lighter and thus had a lower wing loading. If you look at the stall speeds at weights you get the idea. In addition, it was the wing twist under load near the tips combined with the wash out that gave the Spit the gentile stall and "Great" Handling early models were famous for. Later models acquired defects with the greater weight and larger props until the Mk-XIV was nearly un-usable for the first year of it's service. (Note the year long time between service entry and first kill!) Those "Snaking" problems persisted until the adoption of larger tails and were only completely fixed with the much larger "Spiteful" tail later on. But they built over a thousand Mk-XIVs because they were so desperate they had no choice. It was their only true 400 MPH plane. The Mk-IX does not count because of said defects which were unfixed! The Snaking in the Mk-XIV was so bad and major defect in a dog fight, but only a minor problem chasing a doodle bug. Watch A2A gunnery film to see the snaking and what it did to gunnery for your self. The Mustang had the exact same problem with the larger chord prop on the P-51H and had to add 8", or was it 18" to the top of the rudder and stretch the fuse more than a little to get a longer lever arm to fix it. All planes go through that type of thing, where mods are required to fix unk defects only found later in combat service. The P-38 was just about the only plane of that era that they found the defects before service, but because it was the only 400 MPH plane in existence at the time, they bought it any way! And do not be fooled by the published 414 MPH placard speed published in all the books. Do you think adding almost 700 HP would not change the actual, but un-tested speed? Just swapping props gave 450 MPH in one un-built but tested type.


By that time( late 42/ early 43) to the best of my recollection the Brits had a boatload of 400 mph fighters either in service or about to arive in a few months so I don't know why they would be desperate in that regard. The ones that come to mind are the Typhoon, the Spitfire mks 8 and 9, the p51b, and in the not to distant pipeline the Tempest.


----------



## pbehn (Apr 7, 2019)

michael rauls said:


> By that time( late 42/ early 43) to the best of my recollection the Brits had a boatload of 400 mph fighters either in service or about to arive in a few months so I don't know why they would be desperate in that regard. The ones that come to mind are the Typhoon, the Spitfire mks 8 and 9, the p51b, and in the not to distant pipeline the Tempest.


Production line for the Tempest was being set up early 1943.


----------



## Reluctant Poster (Apr 22, 2019)

Frankenerd said:


> Not quite right. The Spiteful had an entirely new and larger tail.


I should have said it was intended to be the laminar flow version of the XIV (the initial prototype was a converted Spitfire XIV). In fact the fuselage itself ended up being quite a bit different with a raised cockpit to improve the pilots view. The enlarged tail was added after initial testing and was also added to the final Spitfire models


----------



## TheMadPenguin (May 18, 2019)

Kevin J said:


> There is no word for cousin in the Russian language, your cousins are your brothers and sisters.


Please translate to English the following Russian (compound) words:
кузен 
кузина 
двоюродный брат
двоюродная сестра

Google translate is not hard to use.
Russian is easier for non-Russians to understand than Politics is for non-politicians to understand.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Kevin J (May 18, 2019)

TheMadPenguin said:


> Please translate to English the following Russian (compound) words:
> кузен
> кузина
> двоюродный брат
> ...



The girlfriend was half Chuvash, half Russian. That's why I misunderstood.


----------



## Zipper730 (May 20, 2019)

Elmas said:


> P-51D ROOT (BL17.5) AIRFOIL (p51droot-il)


16.5% thickness at 38.9 chord?


----------



## XBe02Drvr (May 21, 2019)

pbehn said:


> The strength of a structure isn't determined by the thickness of its surface covering.


Except, in the case of a stressed skin monocoque structure it is entirely determined by the strength (thickness, material tensile strength, and shape) of its skin. Ever see the aft fuselage of an Ercoupe after it's been removed from the plane? It's little more than tin foil shaped into a cone (sorry, Miflyer!). I've picked one up, tailfeathers and linkages attached, with one hand. And I'm no Charles Atlas.
Cheers,
Wes


----------



## Elmas (May 21, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> 16.5% thickness at 38.9 chord?



Exactly:
(p51droot-il) P-51D ROOT (BL17.5) AIRFOIL
P-51D root (BL17.5) airfoil
Max thickness 16.5% at 38.9% chord.
Max camber 1.3% at 68.3% chord


----------



## Zipper730 (May 21, 2019)

Elmas said:


> (p51droot-il) P-51D ROOT (BL17.5) AIRFOIL
> P-51D root (BL17.5) airfoil
> Max thickness 16.5% at 38.9% chord.
> Max camber 1.3% at 68.3% chord


Is the any significance in the P-51B/C wing?


----------



## Elmas (May 22, 2019)

I think that P-51 B/C had exactly the same wing profile the P-5D had, while P-51H had a modified one.

NACA 66 (p51hroot-il)

NACA 66 (p51htip-il)

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Zipper730 (Jul 13, 2019)

I'm not sure if I said this earlier: The F4U was stressed for 9g normal/13.5g ultimate


----------



## stug3 (Aug 6, 2019)

From this article: 
Why the U.S. Air Force did not use the F-47 Thunderbolt in the Korean War

_The F-47 had internal crash skids installed in the bottom of the fuselage to help maintain structural integrity during wheels-up landings._

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## drgondog (Aug 6, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> I'm not sure if I said this earlier: The F4U was stressed for 9g normal/13.5g ultimate



What is your source for that G limit/Ultimate load - and a.) at what GW, b.) which load conditions (i.e. AoA loading, Landing loads, ??)


----------



## drgondog (Aug 6, 2019)

Elmas said:


> Exactly:
> (p51droot-il) P-51D ROOT (BL17.5) AIRFOIL
> P-51D root (BL17.5) airfoil
> Max thickness 16.5% at 38.9% chord.
> Max camber 1.3% at 68.3% chord



This is included in my book:


*The NAA Team E. Horkey, I.L. Ashkenas, C.L. Davis and H.J. Hoge published NAA Report nA-5041 “Aerodynamic Load Calculations for NA-73 Airplane”, dated 3-3-41, documents the aerodynamic characteristics of the wing.*
*The Master Dimensions Specification MD-102-100 for P-51B/D*
*Tip Chord WS = 225, Chord = 50”; Tip location = WS 233.*
*Root Chord at WS= 0, Chord = 103.988 (NA-73 through P-51D/K)*
*¼ chord WS 0 to WS 215 Constant at FS 99 (Perpendicular to Fuselage Plane)*
*0 degree sweep of 25% Chord.*
*Geometric Twist – Total - 1 degree, 53 minutes, 6.43 seconds*
*+0 degree 59 minutes, 56.46 seconds at WS=0*
*-0 degree, 53 minutes, 9.97 seconds at WS=215*
*At Centerline WS (0), Max Thickness =16.13 % of local chord and at 37.21% from LE of the Root Chord.*
*At Tip WS (215), Max Thickness = 11.46% of local chord and at 48.01 % from the LE of the Tip Chord.*
*Max Camber and Leading-Edge Radius*
*WS = 0, 1.29%*
*WS = 215, 1.34%*
*LE radius @ WS =0, 2.09% of Root Chord*
*LE radius @ WS =215, 0.60% of Tip Chord*
From NAA first, then NACA later.

Same airfoil for X73, NA-73, NA-83, NA-91, NA-97, NA-99, NA-101, NA-102, NA-103, NA-104, NA-106, NA-109, NA-110, NA-111, NA-122, NA-124.

Reactions: Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Zipper730 (Aug 6, 2019)

drgondog said:


> What is your source for that G limit/Ultimate load - and a.) at what GW, b.) which load conditions (i.e. AoA loading, Landing loads, ??)




His knowledge of maneuvering tactics leaves a bit to be desired, but the data he has includes documentation and reports in the video.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Shortround6 (Aug 6, 2019)

The Navy played fast and loose with some of those specifications. 

We can find documents that claim 13.5 ultimate load factor (9G service load?) for the Hellcat too, so the same for the F4U is certainly believable on that score.

Unfortunately the F6F is for a "designed" weight of 11,000lbs and the chances of any F6F operating anywhere near 11,000lbs (unless at the end of a ferry flight or about to land on the carrier running on fumes) is pretty low.

example of fast and loose is an early Spec for an F4U-1 in "standard" configuration and in "Overload"

Standard was 11,142lbs while overload was 12,656lbs. 
Standard only included 178 gallons of fuel and 1200rounds of ammo (200rpg) and I doubt very many were ever flown that way, at least at the start of a mission.

Overload was 2350r rounds of ammo (about 344lbs more ammo) and 363 gallons of fuel (outer wing tanks full. no drop tanks) 
So one can see that the 13.5 load factor (9 G service) was something of an illusion. Full internal fuel and full ammo would bring the Service load down to about 7.9 which is still very strong.

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Agree Agree:
1 | Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Freebird (Aug 7, 2019)

TheMadPenguin said:


> Please translate to English the following Russian (compound) words:
> кузен
> кузина
> двоюродный брат
> ...


? Is that on the interweb thingy? 

Yes, Russians have a word/expression for cousin....


----------

