# Frustated Projects



## gekho (May 6, 2011)

Douglas XB-42 Mixmaster

In 1943 the Douglas XB-42 project was designed to create a twin-engined bomber having a maximum speed in excess of 400 mph and capable of carrying a bombload of 2000 pounds to targets within a 2000-mile radius. This aircraft was envisaged to be an attack aircraft, but the USAAF changed its designation from XA-42 to XB-42 with the view that this bomber would be a potential substitute for the Boeing B-29 (if the Boeing project became hung up in development). The XB-42 bomber was unique in that both of its engines were located inside of the fuselage (turning a pair of contra-rotating propellers in the tail), which allowed the wing to have a clean unfettered design. The aircraft had a crew of three, and was armed with a turret contained two .50 caliber machine guns in the trailing edge of each wing. The first prototype flew in May 1944, and proved to have outstanding performance. Its top speed was over 400 mph, which was comparable to the fast British Mosquito, but the XB-42 carried twice the maximum bombload, and was better armed. Development continued until December 1945, at which time it was decided not to produce the B-42, due to the fact that jet-powered bombers were already on the drawing boards. The second prototype was modified to have turbojets under the wings for testing purposes, and was re-designated XB-42A. The project was finally canceled in 1948, with the sole-remaining example being turned over to the National Air and Space Museum in 1949. The final legacy of this project was a redesigned version with the jet engines placed inside of the fuselage, designated the XB-43.


----------



## gekho (May 6, 2011)

The development of this aircraft has already started in 1942 at the Messerschmitt and his original destination was to be airborne fighter for aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin, was based on the best Me 109 (hence the original designation sounded Bf 109ST - Spezial Trägerflugzeug). At the same time the RLM project required altitude fighter / reconnaissance aircraft. Because of these requirements and project Bf 109ST quite fit, they were adapted and original direction to an airborne fighter was gradually abandoned. This also corresponded to the new official name of the project, 155th Me
Project Bf 109ST Ausf. A (DB engine 605) has become airborne fighter Me 155A, Bf 109ST Ausf. B (DB 628 engine and two-stage compressor) altitude fighter Me 155B . Was used as the basis hull Bf 109G, which for ease of manufacture should also be taken as many other components, should be a new wing and undercarriage, kinking of the fuselage instead of the wing.
During 1943 he was stopped work on the ship the Graf Zeppelin, Me 155A project was then canceled. Because the Messerschmitt was heavily utilized by other projects, the project was ultimately Me 155, Bf 109 now compared with a significantly prolonged the long fuselage and a new wing, the designer sent Dr. Richard Vogt of Blohm und Voss company. Here at last the work moved forward as the new engine has been selected already available DB 603U were tested variants cannon armament. The result was a project BV 155A, still slightly reminiscent of the original stodevítku, but later replaced by a version of the BV 155B, based fully on the work of dr. Vogt. Finally, was the version C, with different engine and radiator location (under the fuselage, the B version in nacelles on the wings of some kind). Should be commenced at seven prototypes of the three versions of the B-0 and four C-0, before the war but they were built just unfinished prototypes V1 to V3 version of the B-0, and perhaps a mock-up version C.


----------



## gekho (May 6, 2011)

In early 1939, the Australian Government ordered large numbers of Bristol Beaufort bombers, to be built in railway workshops, and in doing so, by-passed the local aircraft company, Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation. CAC, under Sir Lawrence Wackett, began work on its own design, hoping to out-perform the Beaufort by building a machine that could serve as both a torpedo bomber and dive bomber. To keep down weight, Wackett dispensed with traditional self sealing fuel tanks and opted to make the wing cavities liquid-tight, and thus serve as fuel storage. The Australian Government was initially uninterested in the CAC design. However, in mid-1940, cut off from the supply of British-made components for the Beaufort program (thanks to a British embargo on the export of aviation products, due to the need to maximise British production during the Battle of Britain), the Australian Government ordered a prototype of the CAC design, even before the Royal Australian Air Force had expressed a view about the machine. This prototype CA-4 took to the air on 19 September 1941. The CA-4 was a low wing, twin-engined, multi-role bomber with a crew of three. It was armed with four nose-mounted .303 calibre machine guns and two remote-controlled twin machine-gun barbettes mounted at the rear of the engine nacelles. It could carry either 500 lb (230 kg) bombs, 250 lb (110 kg) bombs or two torpedoes. It was originally powered by two Pratt Whitney Twin Wasp R-1830-S3C3-G radials. Unfortunately, the novel fuel tanks never proved reliable, and in January 1943 the CA-4 prototype was completely destroyed in a mid-air explosion, probably due to a fuel leak. With a re-designed tail and rudder, and an improved nose armament of two 20 mm cannon and two .303 calibre machine guns, the CA-4 became the CA-11 Woomera.

Faced with the crisis caused by the Japanese entry into the war in December 1941, the RAAF accepted the design even before testing was complete, and ordered 105 examples of the CAC bomber on 8 March 1942. However, after the loss of the first CA4 prototype, the redesigned CA-11 did not fly until June 1944. By the time production was due to commence, the dive-bombing concept had fallen into disrepute, the RAAF was filling the light bomber/reconnaissance/strike role with British-designed Bristol Beaufighters (which were being made in Australia by the Department of Aircraft Production); US-made B-24 Liberator heavy bombers had also become available. Consequently, the original Woomera order was reduced from 105 to 20. After the first CA11 flew, the whole program was cancelled and the production capacity set aside for Woomeras at CAC was switched to P-51 Mustang fighters.

On 15 January 1943, the prototype CA-4, A23-1001, crashed on a test flight to assess powerplant performance and evaluate aerodynamic effects of a new fixed leading edge slat. During the return to the CAC airfield at Fisherman's Bend, the pilot, Squadron Leader Jim Harper, had detected a fuel leak in the port Pratt Whitney R-1830 engine. As the problem worsened he attempted to shut-down the engine, feathering the propeller; however, the actuation of the feathering switch caused an explosion and uncontrollable fire. The three man crew subsequently attempted evacuation at 1,000 feet (300 m), yet only Harper succeeded in parachuting free, while the CAC test pilot Jim Carter and power plant group engineer Lionel Dudgeon were both killed. The airframe subsequently impacted 3 miles (4.8 km) south-west of Kilmore, Victoria. The wreckage was recovered and used for components.


----------



## gekho (May 6, 2011)

One of Italy’s oldest flying schools, the Scuola di Aviazione Caproni was located at Vizzola Ticino near Varese. In the mid 1930’s, the school was modernized and expanded to a point that they could undertake production of components for other elements of the Caproni aircraft empire as well as continuing as a flying school. In 1937 this expansion program reached the stage that a design department was established under Ing. Fabrizi. The organization’s first design was extremely ambitious – a modern interceptor fighter that was schemed in both inline and radial engine forms as the F.4 and F.5 respectively. The airframe was common to both except for the forward fuselage sections where changes were required for the different engines, and was of mixed wood and metal construction.

The core of the structure was the fuselage that was of oval section and based on welded steel tube primary structure covered with Dural skin. The flying surface consisted of a Dural constructed tail unit with metal skinned fixed surfaces and fabric covered moving surfaces and a cantilever low set wing. The wing was of wooden construction with stressed plywood skinning and a slightly unusual planform with a curved leading edge and straight trailing edge. The two wing halves were attached at a slight dihedral angle to the stub roots built integral with the central fuselage section. The wings were tapered in thickness and chord and carried the standard trailing edge combination of outboard ailerons and inboard flaps. The airframe was completed with a high-set fully enclosed cockpit and the tailwheel landing gear with wide track main units.

The F.4 was to be powered by a 960 hp Isotta-Fraschini Asso 121 RC.40 Vee engine, but late in construction it was decided to replace that with a 1,175 hp Daimler Benz DB601A. This change delayed the F.4’s completion into 1940, but flight trials revealed the F.4 to possess good performance, excellent maneuverability and first class handling characteristics. No production followed however, for it was determined to terminate development of the F.4 for the F.6, essentially an F.4 powered by a 1,475 hp Fiat RA.1050 RC.58 Tifone, the license built Daimler Benz DB 605A. The delay meant that the F.5 was the first of Fabrizi’s related fighter designs to fly, an event that took place in early 1939. The F.5 was powered by a Fiat A.74 RC.38 radial engine in a trim circular cowling that fitted so closely around the cylinder heads that bulged fairings were necessary to accommodate the rocker arms. By Italian standards of the period, the F.5 was an advanced fighter. The prototype was followed by 14 production aircraft. The production aircraft were changed using a revised and enlarged vertical tail surface to provide better directional stability, provision for an auxiliary fuel tank in the rear fuselage, an altered cockpit canopy and a non-retractable tailwheel. No further production followed. The fighters were assigned to the 51st Stormo and the 8th Brigata Caccia Terrestre for the defense of Rome, first as night fighters and then as day fighters.


----------



## gekho (May 6, 2011)

At the end of March 1933, criticism of the gulled wing of the D 560 led Emile Dewoitine to replace this with a wing of classic parasol form and of marginally reduced span and area. Re-designated D 570, the modified prototype entered flight test on 27 November 1933, transferring from Francazal to the Centre d'Essais at Villacoublay early in December. It flew back to Francazal for minor modifications, and, on 21 December, while returning to Villacoublay, suffered an aileron failure and was destroyed.


----------



## Gnomey (May 6, 2011)

Good stuff!


----------



## T Bolt (May 6, 2011)

The Mix-master is one of my favorite 'What If?' aircraft. I wish someone would come out with a kit of it. There are plenty of Luftwaffe 46' kits out there. Why not a USAAF 46' kit


----------



## vikingBerserker (May 7, 2011)

Outstanding as always!

I think there is a B-42 in 1/72 scale, but it's a resin kit.


----------



## gekho (May 7, 2011)

In its original form this was the first of two Westland P.8 Lysander prototypes, and later it was brought to Mk.I standard. Thereafter it was fitted with two 20 mm (0.787 in) cannons, one mounted above each wheel fairing. In this form it was used in trials intended to attack German invasion barges.

As shown in the picture K6127 was extensively modified to another intended form of strafing power against ships or ground troops. The fuselage was shortened 1.45 m (4 ft 9 in) to 7.85 m (25 ft 9 in) and a tail turret mock-up (to carry four guns) was fitted. A second wing (de Lanne type) with full-span elevators and twin endplate fins and rudders, was fitted beneath the fuselage, just in front of the turret. This increased the wing area from 24.15 sq.m (260 sq.ft) to 36.46 sq.m (392 sq.ft). Flown by the company’s test pilot Harold Penrose it handled well, however none were ordered. The aircraft is also known as "Wendover" and "Tandem Wing".


----------



## gekho (May 7, 2011)

The X-5 was the world's first airplane to vary the sweepback of its wings in flight. It was built to prove the theory that by increasing the sweepback of an airplane's wings after takeoff, a higher maximum speed could be obtained while still retaining low takeoff and landing speed and higher rate of climb with the wings swept forward. The X-5 was based upon the design of a Messerschmitt P. 1101 airplane discovered in Germany at the end of World War II, although the P. 1101 could vary its sweep only on the ground.

The first X-5 flight was made on June 20, 1951. On the airplane's ninth flight, its wings were operated through the full sweep range of 20-60 degrees. Two X-5s were built and flown. One crashed and was destroyed on Oct. 13, 1953, when it failed to recover from a spin at 60 degrees sweepback. The other was delivered to the National Museum of the United States Air Force in March 1958.


----------



## gekho (May 7, 2011)

Experimental two-seat reconnaissance aircraft. The He 119 had a DB 606 or DB 610 'double' engine, buried in the fuselage, driving a propeller in front of the transparent, unstepped nose. To streamline the aircraft even more, it used surface radiator cooling instead of conventional radiators. It set a speed record before WWII; attempts to create a bomber from it were abandoned early in WWII. Eight were completed.


----------



## gekho (May 7, 2011)

The IMAM Ro.51 was an Italian fighter aircraft that first flew in 1937. It was designed for the 1936 new fighter contest for the Regia Aeronautica, with practically all the Italian aircraft builders involved. The aircraft, designed by the engineer Galasso, was a single-seat, monoplane fighter, of mixed construction (the wings were made of wood), and initially with a fixed undercarriage. The engine was standard for this generation of fighters, a 840 hp Fiat A.74 RC 38 radial powering a three-blade propeller. The fixed undercarriage, meant that the maximum speed was only 467 km/h. It was armed with two Breda-SAFAT 12.7 mm machine guns.

On June 1938 the first prototype, initially fitted with a very small tail, was tested and found inferior to the Macchi C.200 and Fiat G.50. It was overall a poor aircraft. The trials to re-engineer the wing came too late and no orders were made. The second prototype Ro.51/1, was converted into a fighter floatplane. Like the Ro.44 it had a large central float and two smaller ones under the wings. The maximum speed dropped to 430 km/h, but endurance was increased to 1,200 km. Unfortunately during a trial one of the wings suddenly sank in the water. The rest of the aircraft swiftly followed, and the loss of this prototype meant the end of the program. Although performance was apparently fairly good, the project was overall a failure, especially in the early aspects, even if it was not too different from the Fokker D.XXI. But with so many other superior machines also involved, waiting for the problems the Ro.51 had to be fixed was not an option.


----------



## gekho (May 7, 2011)

During 1934, the Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire amalgamated with the Societe Nieuport-Astra to result in the Groupement Aviation Loire-Nieuport. The two concerns maintained separate design offices which, at times, were to find themselves in competition, a case in point being the LN 161. This, like the Loire 250, was intended to meet the requirements of the 1934 Service Technique specification for a new single-seat fighter. Designed by engineers Mary and Dieudonne, it was of advanced structural concept with an all-metal monocoque fuselage and a metal stressed-skin wing. Armament comprised a 20mm engine-mounted cannon and two wing-mounted 7.5mm machine guns. Although designed for the 860hp Hispano-Suiza 12Ycrs engine, the non-availability of this power plant dictated installation of a 690hp HS 12Xcrs engine driving a twobladed fixed-pitch propeller. The prototype flew as the Nieuport 160 on 5 October 1935. In the following November, it was returned to the factory for various modifications and installation of the definitive engine, resuming flight test at the end of March 1936 as the Nieuport 161 fitted with a three-bladed two-pitch propeller. The prototype showed considerable promise and was the favoured contender for Armee de l'Air orders, three additional prototypes being contracted. The first prototype crashed on 22 September 1936, and the second prototype, temporarily designated SNCAO 161 (Loire-Nieuport having meanwhile been absorbed by the Societe Nationale de Constructions Aeronautiques de l'Ouest), did not enter flight test until 15 October 1937. The third prototype, bearing the definitive designation of Loire-Nieuport 161, followed in March 1938. During the next month, the second prototype was written off in a landing accident, but the results of testing were by then of purely academic interest as the Morane-Saulnier contender had been ordered into production. Consequently, the fourth prototype was not completed.


----------



## Wayne Little (May 7, 2011)

Some weird and wonderful birds among that lot...


----------



## vikingBerserker (May 7, 2011)

Awesome info!


----------



## gekho (May 8, 2011)

The SNCASE SE-400 was a prototype French twin-engined coastal patrol floatplane of the Second World War. A single example was flown, but development was abandoned in May 1940 owing to the German invasion of France. In 1937 the French Air Ministry issued specification A46 for a three-seat coastal reconnaissance seaplane to replace the obsolete CAMS 37 biplane flying boats of the French Navy. To meet this requirement, the 'Société Nationale des Constructions Aéronautiques du Sud-Est (SNCASE) designed a twin engined monoplane floatplane, the SE-400, work beginning on construction of two prototypes in March 1938. The SE.400 was of mixed construction, with a steel tube fuselage and wooden wings. It had a twin tail and was powered by two 655 hp (489 kW) Gnome-Rhône 14M radial engines. The aircraft's undercarriage consisted of two light alloy floats mounted beneath the engines.

The first prototype, the SE.400-01 made its maiden flight from Marignane on 31 December 1939. Flight testing showed that the SE-400 suffered from stability problems, and the aircraft had a new, larger, tail assembly fitted and its nose lengthened. These modifications resolved the aircraft's handling problems, but by this time the competing Breguet Nautilus had been ordered into production. The war situation and the continuing delays in the program resulted in the development of the SE-400 being abandoned on 24 May 1940, with the second prototype, a landplane powered by two 500 hp (373 kW) Lorraine 9N Algol engines, left incomplete.


----------



## gekho (May 8, 2011)

Envisaged originally as a high-altitude version of the B-25 Mitchell, the North American NA-63 (XB-28) emerged finally as an almost entirely different aircraft. With single vertical tail surfaces and a circular-section fuselage with a pressure cabin for the five-man crew, the XB-28 was powered by two 1491kW Pratt Whitney R-2800 radials and bomb bay capacity was 1814kg. Dorsal, ventral and tail turrets, each containing two 12.7mm machine-guns, were remotely controlled from the cockpit; three similar forward-firing weapons were also fitted. Of three prototypes ordered in February 1940, the first flew in April 1942, the second was cancelled and the third, with a reconnaissance camera installation, crashed during the test programme. Although the XB-28 achieved a maximum speed of 599km/h at 7620m and could carry a 272kg bomb load for 3283km, production orders were not placed.


----------



## gekho (May 8, 2011)

The design by Mitsubishi of a carrier-based fighter to supersede the A6M Zero-Sen had been planned by the Japanese navy as early as 1940, but was frustrated, by the company's involvement in urgent development and- production programmes. It was not until 1942 that design of the M-50 Reppu (hurricane) began, but the continuing pressure on Mitsubishi for developments of the ABM meant that it was not until 6 May 1944 that the first prototype, which by then had the company designation Mitsubishi A7M1, was flown for the first time. A cantilever low-wing monoplane with retractable tailwheel landing gear, the A7M1 soon revealed excellent flight characteristics, but as predicted by Mitsubishi the type's maximum speed on the power of the installed Nakajima NK9K Homare 22 engine was below specification. Further testing was abandoned until availability of the 1641kW Mitsubishi MK9A radial engine made it possible to build seven A7M2 prototype and service trials aircraft, the first prototype being flown on 13 October 1944. Clearly a potent fighter that could meet Allied opposition on equal terms, the Reppu had a maximum speed of 630km/h at optimum altitude and was ordered into production as the Navy Carrier Fighter Reppu Model 22. Unfortunately, by then it was too late for the Japanese navy, Allied air attacks and an earthquake limiting production to only one aircraft. Development of similar land-based fighters was planned under the designations A7M3 and A7M3-J, but neither was built before the war ended.


----------



## gekho (May 8, 2011)

The Reggiane Re.2003 was a development from the Reggiane Re.2002 fighter bomber that first flew on 29 June 1941. It was designed to replace the outdated IMAM Ro.37 used at the time. Unlike the Reggaine Re.2002, it had room for a second crewman who sat behind the pilot. It was equipped with onboard camera equipment. The Fiat A.74 RC.38 engine was intended to be used originally, but the Piaggio P. XI RC 40 Bis was chosen instead. Only one was ever produced, and production for a second started, but never finished. The Regia Aeronautica (Italian Air Force) made an order of 200, but cancelled the order as Allied bombing raids made the Air Force's focus switch to fighter aircraft.


----------



## gekho (May 8, 2011)

The Focke-wulf Aircraft Design Firm conceptualized The Ta 154 Moskito ("Mosquito") and delivered its prototypes to the German Air Ministry around August 1942. Because of some production issues, the Focke-Wulf Ta 154 Moskito got derailed. Only 10 aircrafts were produced and proved to have less impressive performance than the prototypes. Its design was amongst the first aircrafts which were classified as the night fighters. The reason Ta154 was developed was the invulnerability of the Night Bombers and their terror which had reigned for a long time.

The airframe was made of plywood bonded with special glue called Tego-Film, a quite unusual feature for a German frontline aircraft. This kind of glue usually caused some damage to nearby wood. Metal was used mainly in the pressurized cockpit only. The twin-engine fielded with Junkers Jumo 211F 12-cylinder inverted-Vee liquid-cooled engines were mounted in nacelles on the wing leading edges. They drove three-blade constant-speed propellers. The fuselage consists of a single rudder element in the tail section. The landing gear assembly used retractable tricycle landing gear. A pilot and a radio-operator to his rear were the only crew; the aircraft was capable of carrying. With twin 30mm MK108 cannons and twin 20mm MG151 cannons mounted on either side of the fuselage, made the armament not only impressive but the addition of a single 30mm cannon in the upper part of the fuselage of the MK108 variety made it tough to beat.

There was just one production plant for suitable glue, which was destroyed by a bombing raid. This was the main reason which hindered further production. The production was cancelled after 8 prototypes and 7 pre-serial planes. The bow-wheel landing gear, which caused crashes which was another reason. At least two German air groups operated this aircraft albeit in a severely limited capacity. Mosquito could have been historic had Germany been victorious which didn’t prove to be.


----------



## gekho (May 8, 2011)

Airspeed A.S.39 Fleet Shadower designed as a maritime patrol aircraft in 1939, never reached production. The AS 39 was developed under specifications S.23/27 for a slow, long-range patrol aircraft for ultimate service with the Royal Navy. Specification S.22/37 was written around Operational Requirement OR.52, the type of aircraft envisaged was a 3 seater capable of operating from an aircraft carrier flight deck. It was built to a requirement for an aircraft capable of shadowing enemy fleets at night, that demanded a slow-flying, silent aircraft with a long range. A high-wing aircraft with fixed landing gear, an obervation post in the nose, and four small engines distributed along the wing to generate lift. There were 5 companies interested in this specification, Percival, Short Bros, Fairey, General Aircraft and Airspeed.

The AS 39 was a high-wing monoplane of mixed construction with the wings of wooden construction with two spruce and plywood box spars, former ribs, and a plywood covering. Sections between the spars were watertight to provide buoyancy in the event of a forced-alighting at sea. Wing bracing struts each consist of two steel tubes arranged in Vee formation. The fuselage is of metal construction with a detachable forward observer's compartment. The undercarriage consisted of a conventual fixed type. The AS 39 was powered by four 130 hp Pobjoy Niagara V seven-cylinder radial air-cooled geared engines, each driving a two-blade fixed-pitch wooden airscrew 8 ft. in diameter. The crew of the AS 39 consisted of a Pilot, observer and radio-operator.

Two prototypes of the A.S.39 were ordered, N1323 and N1324, but only one was completed, N1323 being flown on 17/10/40, later than the GAL. 38 as it awaited the arrival of Niagara V's. In common with the GAL.38, the aircraft's performance during flight trials was disappointing due to aerodynamical problems, particularly when one engine was cut. In the end this aircraft like the GAL 38, no longer served a viable purpose.


----------



## Wildcat (May 8, 2011)

Thats one funny looking plane!


----------



## Gnomey (May 8, 2011)

That it is. Good stuff!


----------



## Aaron Brooks Wolters (May 8, 2011)

Excellent thread Gekho!!! Thank you for the great photos and information!


----------



## gekho (May 9, 2011)

In the summer of 1936, the Air Corps contracted for a single Lockheed Electra Model 10-A with extensive modifications. The plane, designated XC-35 by the Army, was intended for use as a high-altitude research and pressurized cabin test plane. As a result, the basic Electra fuselage was redesigned with a near circular cross section to better withstand the stresses of pressurization. Next, the large passenger windows were replaced with much smaller slit windows. The interior was split into two sections: the forward pressurized section had room for three crewmen and two passengers. The aft section, behind the pressure bulkhead had room for one additional passenger but could only be used at lower altitudes (below 12,000 feet). Besides the pilot and copilot, the XC-35 carried an engineer who controlled the pressurization and high altitude research equipment. The XC-35 was the world's first airplane specifically constructed with a pressure cabin. 

The XC-35 was fitted with a pair of Pratt Whitney XR-1340 radial engines. These 550-hp engines were turbo-supercharged to deliver the necessary high-altitude performance. The plane was designed to fly at altitudes above 30,000 feet. The aircraft was delivered to Wright Field, Ohio, in May 1937. It was used in an extensive flight test program, and as a result, the Air Corps was awarded the 1937 Collier Trophy for the most significant aircraft development of the year.


----------



## gekho (May 9, 2011)

The struggle of Regia Aeronautica to develop an effective bomber force was surprising for everyone, as in the pre-war period the Italian air force was highly rated and performed well during the Spanish Civil War and the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. But its performance in the first months of World War II was poor, even failing to reduce Malta with 1,000 bombers based less than 100 km (60 mi) away. One of the reasons was the lack of dive bombers and effective ground-attack aircraft; the Breda Ba.88 was a failure, and the Caproni Ca.310 was so ineffective that was replaced by the Fiat CR.32 fighter bomber. Another failure was the Savoia-Marchetti SM.85 dive bomber, phased out and replaced by the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka even before the evaluation of its successor the Savoia-Marchetti SM.86 was complete. In 1939, a new contest for a dive bomber was called, requiring a single-engine aircraft with a maximum speed of 500 km/h (310 mph), or 450 km/h (280 mph) if twin-engined, capable of carrying 500 kg (1,100 lb) bombs, with an endurance of 1,200 km (750 mi) with a single engine, or 2,400 km (1,490 mi) with two engines. There was only one twin-engine proposal, the Piaggio P.122, which despite its all-metal construction, dorsal-wing airbrakes, two Piaggio P.XI RC40 engines giving a total of 1,491 kW (2,000 hp), and the lack of competitors, was considered unfit for service. Single-engine types included the Caproni Ca.335 and the Breda Ba.201.

The Ba.201 was a single-engine dive bomber, all-metal in construction with a retractable undercarriage. It had a long fuselage, quite slim, with a high tail. The cockpit was set as far forward as possible. The wings had a distinct polyhedral "W" shape, like the Ju 87. The dive capabilities were found to be satisfactory, and the air brakes were highly effective, perhaps too effective - with the risk of slowing the aircraft down so much it became too easy a target. It was capable of carrying a single 500 kg (1,100 lb) bomb and was armed with two 12.7 mm (.5 in) Breda-SAFAT machine guns fixed in the wings. After such engines as the 895 kW (1,200 hp) Fiat A.38, the 716 kW (960 hp) Isotta-Fraschini IF L.121, and the powerful 839 kW (1,125 hp) Isotta-Fraschini Zetra, were evaluated, the Daimler-Benz DB 601 engine was chosen, because it was compact, and allowed free dives thanks to its direct injection system.

The prototype first flew on 3 July 1941, and was then sent to Guidonia for official testing. The aircraft showed that it had enough agility, once freed of its bombload, to hold its own against other Italian fighters. However speed was disappointing, only 460 km/h (290 mph) - slower than the requested for 500 km/h (310 mph) - and slightly slower than older front-line fighters. The aircraft was barely capable of defending itself against enemy fighters, and then only after releasing its bomb. It had very good forward visibility, but rear visibility was poor. In comparison the Junkers Ju-87D had a top speed of only 410 km/h (260 mph), but was armed with two new 7.92 mm (.312 in) MG 81z machine guns, with 3,200 rpm instead of 1,050. The Junkers rear-gunner gave it a greater defensive capability, while the Ba.201 pilot relied on himself alone. The Reggiane Re.2001 fighter bomber fitted with the same DB 601 engine was able to reach almost 550 km/h (342 mph), and carry 640 kg (1,411 lb) bombs. The first prototype MM.451 was followed by only one other before the programme was cancelled.


----------



## gekho (May 9, 2011)

Developed from mid 1938 by Dmitrii L Tomashevich (one of Polikarpov's deputies), the I-180 was originally conceived with an all-metal structure. Limited all-metal construction experience, however, led the Polikarpov OKB to adopt an essentially similar structure to that of the earlier I-16, with a wooden monocoque fuselage and a fabric-skinned metal wing. The first prototype, the I-180.1, was powered by a 1,100hp Tumansky M-88 14-cylinder two-row radial, intended armament being four 7.62mm guns. This aircraft was lost as a result of engine failure during its first flight on 15 December 1938. The second prototype, the I-180.2, differed primarily in having a 1,000hp Tumansky M-87A (later M-87B) 14-cylinder two-row radial and lengthened wing outer panels. These increased wing span from 9.00m to 10.05m and area from 14.68m2 to 16.11m2. First flown on 19 April 1939, the I-180.2 was lost on its 53rd flight. A third prototype, the I-180.3 flown on 10 February 1940, featured a redesigned and more advanced wing structure, a 1,100hp M-88R engine, a cockpit canopy and an armament of two 12.7mm and two 7.62mm guns concentrated in the fuselage. Flown with both wheel and ski undercarriages, the I-180.3 was lost in an accident during State Acceptance Trials. 

In the meantime, a pre-series of 10 aircraft based on the I-180.2 had been under construction as the I-180S (Seriyny or Series), the first three of these having been completed in December 1939. The I-180S was powered by the M-88R and carried an armament of two 12.7mm and two 7.62mm fuselage-mounted guns, and, like the I-180.3, featured an enclosed cockpit. The I-180S was cleared for service trials, but the results of these were somewhat academic as this fighter had been overtaken by the more advanced I-185. As a part of the I-185 development programme, one pre-series I-180S fighter had the dated triangulated pattern mainwheel legs replaced with legs of cantilever type, this aircraft being referred to as the I-180Sh, the suffix indicating Shassi (chassis). In the event, it was not completed and flown, the entire I-180 programme having meanwhile been abandoned.


----------



## gekho (May 9, 2011)

The aircraft that was eventually to be known as the Ki-77 was designed as a civilian long-distance record-breaking aircraft which would fly in the sub-stratosphere. It was hoped that its development would eventually lead to a future stratospheric transport aircraft. Work on the project began in March 1940, with further development being interrupted by the beginning of the Pacific War. Development resumed in the summer of 1942 under the designation of Ki-77, with the hopes that it could be used as a long-range communications aircraft that would help keep Japan in contact with the other Axis powers. Only two prototypes were completed, though they did achieve some unofficial speed records before the war's end.


----------



## gekho (May 9, 2011)

Developed by Kurt Tank in the mid-1930s, the Falcon was intended to compete against the Messerschmidt Bf 110. Originally intended to be powered by Daimler-Benz 600 series engines, the Falcon was nearly crippled by the RLM's requirement that the Junkers Jumo 210 series be used. Even so, during flight trials the Falcon showed itself to be 50 mph faster than the Bf 109B. Climb and Dive rates matched or exceeded the much-vaunted single-engine fighter with the Fw 187 being nearly twice the weight of the Messerschmidt fighter.

The Fw 187's initial role was to be a fast interceptor, however, requirements from the powers that be dictated that the Falcon be a destroyer. This dictated that a second crewman be added, this not occuring until the third prototype was built. Chronically underpowered, the addition of the second crewman as well as several other dictated changes caused the Falcon's performance began to suffer. Additionally, the Fw 187 did not mount a rear gun. This destroyer requirement doomed the Fw 187 and the RLM stuck with the Bf 110. The three production Falcons were used by Fock Wulf in thier factory defense squadrons, flown by test pilots, until Winter 1940 when they were sent to Norway. There they were unofficially evaluated by service pilots who preferred them to thier current Bf 110's. In 1943 the Fw 187 was considered for the night fighter role, but it's narrow fuselage did not allow the fitting of the necessary radar and equipment. Regardless, by this time Focke Wulf was engrossed with the development of the Ta 154 and the concept was shelved.


----------



## gekho (May 9, 2011)

The initial derivative of the VG 30, the VG 31, differed from its predecessor in having the radiator bath moved aft for CG reasons, and in having a smaller wing of 12.00m2. It was proposed to power this development with an 860hp Hispano-Suiza 12Y31 12- cylinder liquid-cooled engine, but the prototype was never assembled. The VG 32 reverted to the original wing and was powered by a 1,040hp Allison V-1710- C15 engine, but the prototype was captured by German forces at Villacoublay two weeks before its scheduled maiden flight in 1940. The first development of the basic design to fly was thus the VG 33, which commenced its test programme on 24 May 1939. A production contract for 220 examples was placed in September 1939, this contract eventually being increased to 1,000 machines, but only 19 had been completed by the Chantiers Aero-Maritimes de la Seine by the time France collapsed. The VG 33 carried an armament of one 20mm Hispano-Suiza 404 cannon and four 7.5mm MAC 1934 M39 machine guns, and was powered by an 860hp Hispano-Suiza 12Y31 engine.


----------



## gekho (May 9, 2011)

In October 1940, the British Air Ministry issued Specification S.12/40 to Supermarine and Fairey for a catapult-launched, amphibian, reconnaissance and spotter aircraft to replace the Supermarine Walrus and Supermarine Sea Otter. An order for three prototypes of Supermarine's aircraft was issued in April 1943. There was an interruption in design due to the necessity of moving the Supermarine design office, after the bombing of the facility at Woolston. Further delays were caused by the extensive wind tunnel testing that was needed and the change from a Rolls-Royce Merlin to the more powerful Rolls-Royce Griffon. Also, the design specification was changed in 1944 to a new requirement, S.14/44 (later S.14/44/2) - the role of the aircraft being changed from reconnaissance and gunnery spotting to Air-sea rescue. This change removed the four-gun turret the design had featured. The first prototype - Seagull serial PA143 - first took off on 14 July, 1948 from Southampton Water, flown by test pilot Mike Lithgow. The second aircraft - PA147 - flew in September 1949, and was used for carrier trials on HMS Ark Royal later in that year, during which it demonstrated the capability to carry five passengers.[3] Experiments were also carried out with rocket assisted take-offs. By the early 1950s, helicopters were taking over the air-sea rescue role. In 1952, the two completed prototypes and the partially built third aircraft, PA152, were scrapped.

The Seagull had an all-metal construction with a two spar parasol wing mounted on a pylon connecting it to the fuselage. The single engine, a Rolls-Royce Griffon drove contra-rotating propellers; radiators were mounted below the engine in the pylon. The rear of the pylon accommodated an observer's position with two windows. An eye bolt was fitted on the wing, behind the engine, so the aircraft could be easily lifted from the water by crane. The wings were fitted with slotted flaps and full length leading edge slats and could be folded for compact, ship-board stowage. They also had a variable angle of incidence, pivoting at the front spar and actuated by an electrically driven jackscrew attached to the rear spar. This arrangement reduced stalling speed and increased lift, allowing the aircraft to use a smaller wing – compactness being an important feature for a ship-borne aircraft. Supermarine had tested this arrangement in the Type 322 and its capability was demonstrated when test pilot Mike Lithgow flew a Seagull at only 35 miles per hour (56 km/h). In July 1950, a Seagull competing in the Air League Cup Race gained the air-speed record for amphibian aircraft over a 100-kilometre (62 mi) course, by flying at an average speed of 241.9 miles per hour (389.3 km/h).

The hull was a normal frame and longeron design with chines. The tailplane, carried on top of the fin, had a very large dihedral, with smaller fins mounted on its tips perpendicular to its surface. A third fin was later added to the centre after testing of the first prototype had revealed an instability in yaw. This was added to the second prototype while it was still being constructed. The undercarriage retracted into bays on either side of the fuselage and could be easily removed, saving 180 kilograms (400 lb) of weight when the aircraft was operating as a pure flying-boat. The Seagull was also fitted with an arrestor hook for carrier landings; mounting points for JATO rockets were located just above the wheel wells. The crew normally consisted of three. During air-sea rescue work, a Seagull would be able to accommodate a pilot, navigator and medic, plus up to seven survivors.


----------



## Gnomey (May 9, 2011)

Interesting shots!


----------



## vikingBerserker (May 9, 2011)

Awesome posts, well done!


----------



## gekho (May 10, 2011)

Beech Aircraft designed a high-performance tactical aircraft during the latter days of World War II. Outstanding performance held promise of a bright future for the aircraft, but lack of availability of engines delayed the program so that its single contribution was to enhance the reputation of Beech Aircraft. Designated the Beechcraft Model 28, the big, twin-tailed attack aircraft was known to the United States Army Air Force as the XA-38. It also was named the Destroyer and, more popularly, the Grizzly. The Beechcraft Model 28 combined the size of a medium bomber with the speed of the fastest propeller driven fighters of the day. It was highly maneuverable and could take off and land in an area considerably smaller than needed by other airplanes of a comparable size. 

The XA-38 was a departure in attack planes, being built around a 75mm automatic cannon, which extended from the nose of the ship, giving the plane a most distinctive appearance. The aircraft carried a pilot and gunner and mounted six .50 caliber machine guns in addition to the cannon. It was designed as an attack plane with a primary mission of attack and destruction of tanks, armored vehicles, light surface vessels, ground installations and submarines by gunfire. A secondary tactical mission of bombing and laying smoke screens could be performed by externally mounting bombs, depth charges and chemical tanks. Empty weight of this twin-engine all-metal mid-wing monoplane was 23,230 pounds with a design gross weight of 29,900 pounds; however, various combinations of fuel, oil, external bombs, external long range fuel tanks and smoke tanks could be carried at gross weights up to maximum alternate gross weight of 36,332 pounds. Length of the plane was 51.7 feet and wing span 67.08 feet. Outside maximum width of the fuselage was 56 inches and maximum fuselage height 92 inches. 

Every means possible was employed to decrease drag, including flush riveting of all exposed skin surfaces. A striking demonstration of the resultant speed was furnished the Army when it assigned one of its fastest fighters to pace the XA-38 for speed calibration tests and found the Beechcraft outdistancing the fighter. Despite these high speeds, the airplane at a gross weight of 31,250 pounds could land at low speed in a small area. The forward part of the fuselage had a steep slope downward permitting the pilot an excellent view downward and forward. Access to the pilot's compartment was through a hinged section of the cockpit enclosure and was reached from the upper surface of the wing. Cooling of the huge Wright Cyclone R-3350 engines was obtained from circular cowlings of the NACA type and careful design of the cowl entrance and exit, as well as by locating the exhaust stacks so that they augmented the flow of exiting air. Cooling was controlled by automatic cowl flaps operated by a control unit having a temperature element in the hottest engine cylinder. 

Propellers were three-bladed, constant speed and full feathering, Hamilton Standard, with a minimum blade angle of 16 degrees and a maximum blade angle of 82 degrees as measured at the 72-inch radius. Wing air foil section was derived from NACA-2300 series, 18.87 percent thick at the root chord and 12 percent at the tip chord. The wings were of conventional all-metal construction with an area of 625.9 square feet. Taper ratio was 3.07 to 1; incidence 4.39 degrees at the root and 1 degree at the tip; dihedral, measured at the quarter chord point, 5 degrees and aspect ratio 7.19. For flight in icing conditions, leading edges were heated through internal air ducts and the entire surfaces of the wings were warmed by air discharged from the leading edge ducts and passed through the wing to the trailing edges. 

The main spar was located at 25 percent of the wing chord and the rear spar at 75 percent of the wing chord. These spars were designed as the principal structural members resisting bending. Wing tips and outer panels were removable to facilitate fabrication and replacement. The center section was built in halves, joined together at the fuselage center line. Slotted type flaps extended over the span of the center section on each side, except for the portion enclosed in the fuselage. Ailerons extended from the outer panel joint to the removable tip. Control surfaces were conventional with ailerons, elevators and rudders aerodynamically, dynamically and statically balanced. Aileron area was 51.7 square feet, or 8.2 percent of the wing area with each aileron equipped with a balancing tab; the tab in the left aileron also acting as a trim tab controllable from the cockpit. 

The dual vertical tail was similar in design to the twin-engine Beechcraft Model 18 series. Fins had an area of 33 square feet. Rudders had an area of 36. 8 square feet and were constructed with a formed aluminum alloy frame. Metal covered over the nose section. The chord of this balance area was increased somewhat near the top to provide additional balance area. Area of the horizontal stabilizer was 115 square feet, with a span of 230 inches and a maximum chord of 81 inches. Stabilizers had an area of 64 square feet and construction was two spar, skin and stringer. The elevator area was 50.9 square feet and was constructed with a formed sheet metal aluminum alloy frame. Fabric covered over the portion aft of the elevator spar, with an aluminum alloy sheet covering over the nose section. 

Slotted-type flaps had a control system designed to prevent retracting the flaps at a rate rapid enough to cause the airplane to settle in a dangerous manner. Each flap had a span of 155.5 inches, and the plane had a total flap span of 372 inches. Average flap chord was 29.48 inches and area 63.8 square feet. Fuselage construction employed bulkhead rings and longitudinal stringers. Openings were reinforced by heavy stringers or box sections where extra rigidity was required. Fuselage construction was in four main sections to permit easy repair and replacement. The entire forward section of the nose was arranged on counterbalanced springs to open like the hood of an automobile and expose the 75mm cannon for servicing and replenishment of ammunition. The nose section, complete with cannon, could be removed and replaced with other nose sections equipped with other armament arrangements. 

The landing gear consisted of two large main wheels and a full swiveling tail wheel. Both main wheels and tail wheel were retracted and extended by hydraulic means, with separate and completely independent hydraulic and pneumatic emergency systems. The auxiliary systems were independent of the main system up to, but not including, the actuating cylinders. Shock struts were of the oleo-pneumatic type. Wheel doors were operated mechanically through linkage to the landing gear mechanism. Main wheel doors opened while the wheels were extending or retracting and closed when the wheels were fully down or fully up. This feature minimized damage to the door structure due to buffeting. Following its first flight May 7, 1944, the airplane was flown to Eglin Field, Fla., where it underwent extensive Army tests. In these tests it established outstanding records for availability, for flight and for efficiency.


----------



## gekho (May 10, 2011)

During WW2 Germany and Japan shared technology as demonstrated by a copy of the Daimler-Benz 601 inverted V engine showing up in the Ki-61 Tony. Other key items that were shared or attempted to be shared were pieces of turbo jet technology. At one point Germany tried to ship a complete Jumo 004 engine to Japan which fortunately never arrived. However a drawing and a few pictures of the BMW 003 turbojet engine did end up in Japanese hands. This was a crucial delivery. The Japanese military had not expressed any real interest in jet powered aircraft throughout most of the war until a Japanese emissary witnessed a demonstration of the Me-262 in Germany. This prompted development of a Japanese jet powered aircraft. 

In 1944 Nakajima designers Kazuo Ohno and Kenichi Matsumura were tasked with creating a reconnaissance aircraft that would seat three crew members. As design work progressed it was discovered that the Japanese jet engine prototypes would not produce enough thrust to achieve the performance parameters. Even after several design improvements the results were not acceptable however it was at this point that the BMW 003 information came into their hands. Japanese engineers were able to manufacture a turbojet engine based on the BMW information with an excess of 1000 pounds thrust. Designated the Ne-20 this engine gave the program a critical boost and was used for the single seat prototype. 

Three different versions of the aircraft were planned; a three place reccon aircraft, a two place bomber and a single seat day fighter with two 30mm cannons. All versions included folding wings to allow for concealment in caves. One single seat, unarmed prototype was completed and flown once before the end of the war. On its second attempt using RATOG bottles the take-off was aborted resulting in a crash that damaged the landing gear. Seems the technicians had not mounted the rocket bottles properly. It is a common misconception that the J9Y was a copy of the Me-262 but there is actually very little relationship other than they both had two turbojet engines slung under the wings and were jet aircraft. The J9Y was about 30% smaller than the 262 and did not have nearly the wing sweep. Ultimately Japanese turbo-jet technology had no effect on the war and simply became a historical curiosity. The single surviving example of the J9Y Orange Blossom is displayed at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.


----------



## gekho (May 10, 2011)

The Fiat G.56 was basically a Fiat G.55 with a German Daimler-Benz DB 603 engine. Two prototypes were built, flight tests starting in March 1944. On 30 March, Commander Valentino Cus reached speeds of 690/700 km/h (430/440 mph). Official maximum speed was 685 km/h (426 mph) and the aircraft was armed with three 20 mm MG 151/20s, one firing through the propeller hub, the other two installed in the wings. While performance was excellent, the aircraft proving superior to both the Bf 109K and Bf 109G and Fw 190A, outmanoeuvring all types in testing, production was not allowed by the German authorities.


----------



## gekho (May 10, 2011)

The Ar 197 had its origin in the requirement for a fighter capable of operating from the planned (but never completed) German aircraft carriers Graf Zeppelin and Peter Strasser. The Ar 68H had been the first Arado aircraft to have a fully-enclosed cockpit, and was selected as a base design for the Arado Ar 197. The first prototype of the Ar 197, the V1, was based on the Ar 68H and featured a fully-enclosed cockpit, Daimler-Benz DB 600A inline engine, and three-blade propeller, but was not fitted for naval operations. The second prototype, the Ar 197 V2, was similar to the V1, but was powered by a BMW 132Dc radial engine, and was fitted with naval equipment including an arrester hook and catapult spools. Both the Ar 197 V1 and V2 flew in the spring of 1937. In the summer of 1937 a third prototype, the V3, was built. Powered by a more powerful BMW radial engine and was the first prototype fitted with weapons, the Ar 197 V3 was armed with two 7.92 mm (.312 in) machine guns and one 20 mm cannon. The V3 was also fitted with racks under the fuselage which could carry four 50 kg (110 lb) bombs, an auxiliary fuel tank, or a smoke-laying canister.


----------



## gekho (May 10, 2011)

In 1927, the British Air Ministry, faced with the need to deal with increased bomber performance, issued Specification F.20/27 for a single seat interceptor. Unlike previous fighter Specifications, the resulting aircraft were intended to be short ranged (not intended to mount standing patrols), fast climbing high altitude aircraft, carrying a minimum of equipment. To meet this requirement, de Havilland developed as a Private Venture, the DH.77, designed by W.G. Carter, of Gloster Aircraft Company, in close collaboration with engine designer Frank Halford. The DH.77 was a small low-winged lightweight monoplane, of mixed metal and wood construction, powered by a 300 hp (224 kW) Napier Rapier air cooled H-engine, which offered very low frontal area to minimise drag. The wing was braced with distinctive bracing struts above the wing, while the aircraft had a wide track fixed tailwheel undercarriage. It was fitted with large span ailerons and a stabilator to give good control characteristics and spin recovery. Armament was the normal pair of synchronised Vickers machine guns, mounted on each side of the cockpit.

The single prototype first flew on 11 July 1929.Despite the low power of the Rapier (which gave only 60% of the power of the Rolls-Royce Kestrel which powered the competing Hawker Hornet), the DH.77 demonstrated excellent performance, reaching 204 mph (328 km/h). It was delivered to Martlesham Heath for evaluation by the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment on 12 December 1929. Although the prototype was purchased by the Air Ministry, no production followed, the orders going to the heavier and more powerful Hawker Fury, production version of the Hornet. The DH.77 continued in use at Martlesham until 1934.


----------



## gekho (May 10, 2011)

During the Second World War, the German Reich Army was known for constructing war machineries that were either the heaviest or the largest to have domination over the skies. One of these machineries is the Blohm Voss Bv 238 which was considered to be the largest aircraft ever to be produced by any of the Axis powers of World War Two. The BV 238 was designed as a floatplane and it was intended to be the so huge to provide the German Army with additional loading capacity during WW2. Weighing at 54,000 kilograms, this WW2 German aircraft used six 1750 HP piston engines that were produced by the Daimler-Benz company. The engines, which were face forwarding, were installed on a high monoplane wing design. Each wing was mounted with three engines each. 

The first prototype of the BV 238 saw flight in 1944 and had shown great potential as a floatplane. This WW2 aircraft showed excellent performance because it carried a large payload and had tremendous range and speed for an aircraft of that size. Had the BV 238 been produced in full-scale, the German Army would have had an excellent floatplane in their arsenal of aircrafts. However, only one BV 238 was ever completed during WW2 and this prototype was sunk while it was being docked and repaired on Lake Schaal in 1944. The planes responsible for the sinking of the only mammoth BV2 238 were three P-51 Mustangs belonging to Allied Forces and which were led by Lt. Urban Drew. It was later found out that the BV 238 was still undergoing flight testing when it was destroyed and sunk. Besides being the largest aircraft to be produced during WW2, the BV 238 is also recognized as being the largest aircraft to be destroyed by an Allied Force pilot.


----------



## gekho (May 10, 2011)

The Blériot 125 (or Bl-125) was a highly unusual French airliner of the early 1930s. Displayed at the 1930 Salon de l'Aéronautique in Paris, it featured accommodation for twelve passengers in two separate fuselage pods. Between them, these pods shared a tailplane and a high wing. The centre section of wing, which joined the fuselage pods also carried a nacelle that contained an engine at either end and the crew compartment in the middle. When actually flown the following year, it displayed very poor flight characteristics and although attempts to improve it continued on into 1933, certification could not be achieved and the sole prototype was scrapped the following year.


----------



## Airframes (May 10, 2011)

Some very interesting projects, thanks for posting.


----------



## vikingBerserker (May 10, 2011)

I agree!


----------



## Gnomey (May 10, 2011)

Interesting stuff!


----------



## gekho (May 11, 2011)

Similar in appearance to the Douglas B-18 Bolo, but intended to achieve significantly improved performance, the North American NA-21 bomber was developed at the company's Inglewood, California plant during 1935-3, the prototype being completed in March 1937. Powered by two 895kW Pratt Whitney R-218.0 Twin Hornet engines with F-10 turbo-superchargers, the XB-21 carried a six-man crew and armament comprised single 7.62mm machine-guns in nose and dorsal turrets, plus a similar weapon in each of the ventral and two waist positions. Short-range bomb load was 4536kg, reducing to 998kg over 3058km. 

The Army Air Corps found the performance of the XB-21 to have been favorable enough to order five pre-production aircraft, to be designated YB-21. However, soon after this contract was awarded, it was cancelled, and none of the YB-21s were ever built, leaving the XB-21 as the sole example of the type ever constructed. Operated by North American Aviation, the XB-21 served as a research aircraft until its retirement.


----------



## gekho (May 11, 2011)

Developed in 1936 as a mailplane for Deutsche Lufthansa, the Heinkel He 116 made use of design features of the He 70 and He 111, particularly the elliptical wing and tail surfaces. The aircraft was to have been powered originally by four 373kW Hirth engines, but these were not available in time and the 179kW Hirth HM 508 engine was substituted. Eight civil aircraft were built with the designation He 116A-0, the first making its maiden flight in the summer of 1937. Two of them were purchased by Manchurian Air Transport and made their 15,337km delivery flights from Berlin to Tokyo between 23 and 29 April 1938, in a time of 54 hours 17 minutes. Another was modified for record-breaking, with 179kW Hirth HM 508H engines, a wing of increased span and area and provision for rocket-assisted take-off equipment. Designated He 116R, it set a distance record of 10,000km in 48 hours 18 minutes, beginning on 30 June 1938. An He 116B long-range reconnaissance version was also developed, the last two civil aircraft serving as prototypes, and a total of six was built.


----------



## gekho (May 11, 2011)

The SR.A/1 was directly inspired by the (modest) successes experienced by the Imperial Japanese Navy with seaplane fighters such as the Nakajima A6M2-N (an adaptation of the Mitsubishi Zero) and the Kawanishi N1K. In theory, seaplanes were ideally suited to conditions in the Pacific theatre, and could turn any relatively calm area of coast into an airbase. Their main disadvantage came from the way in which the bulk of their floatation gear penalised their performance compared to other fighters. Saunders-Roe realised that the new turbojet engine presented an opportunity to overcome this drawback. Not requiring clearance for a propeller, the fuselage could sit lower in the water and utilise a flying boat-type hull. The company approached the Air Ministry with the idea then known as the SR.44, which led to specification E.6/44 and an accompanying development contract for three prototypes in May 1944.

The first prototype, piloted by Geoffrey Tyson, flew on July 16 1947, and while it and its two sisters proved to have good performance and handling, the need for such aircraft had completely evaporated with the end of the war. Furthermore, the success of the aircraft carrier in the Pacific had demonstrated a far more effective way to project airpower over the oceans. In addition, the cockpit canopy was small and heavily framed, giving the pilot a poor view outside the aircraft. A fundamental problem was that production of the Beryl engine had ceased when Metropolitan-Vickers had withdrawn from jet engine development, and only a limited number of engines were available. The project was suspended and the prototype put into store in 1950, but was briefly resurrected in November 1950 owing to the outbreak of the Korean War, before realisation of its obsolescence compared with land-based fighters and an inability to solve the engine problem forced a final cancellation, the prototype last flying in June 1951. Although the aircraft never received an official name, it was referred to by company workers as 'Squirt'.


----------



## gekho (May 11, 2011)

From 1937 Tachikawa produced a number of interesting designs which did not go into series production. These included the TS-1 single-seat ultra-light low-wing cabin monoplane; the R-38 two-seat parasol-wing monoplane primary trainer; the SS-1 twin-engined low-wing monoplane developed from the Lockheed 14 and intended for high-altitude research; the Ki-70 twin-engined high-speed reconnaissance monoplane; and the A-26, later redesignated Ki-77, a long-distance record aircraft with a remarkably slim fuselage and finely tapered wide-span monoplane wings. However, it was the Tachikawa Ki-74 monoplane which attracted the greatest official support. By 1941 the project had been confirmed as a long-range high-altitude bomber reconnaissance aircraft, and the first of the prototypes, powered by 1641kW turbocharged Ha-211-Ru radials, flew in March 1944. Thirteen pre-production machines followed, powered by more reliable 1491kW Ha-104 Ru engines, giving a maximum speed of 570km/h at 8500m. They carried 1000kg of bombs and were defended by a single remotely-controlled 12.7mm machine-gun in the tail. Although not used operationally, the Ki-74 received the Allied codename 'Patsy'.


----------



## gekho (May 11, 2011)

Displaying a close conceptual similarity to the Messerschmitt Me 262, the Su-9 single-seat fighter, also known as Samolet (Aircraft) K, entered flight test in the autumn of 1946. Of all-metal construction with a semi-monocoque, oval-section fuselage and single-spar wings, the Su-9 had an armament of one 37mm and two 23mm cannon, and was powered by two 900kg Junkers Jumo 004B turbojets (which had been copied for manufacture in the Soviet Union as the RD-10). The Su-9 embodied a number of innovatory features insofar as Soviet technology was concerned, these including hydraulically-boosted control surfaces, a cordite-fired ejection seat, a variable-incidence tailplane, provision for assisted take-off rockets and a braking parachute. Racks under the centre fuselage permitted carriage of one 500kg or two 250kg bombs. The Su-9 was shown publicly over Tushino on 3 August 1947, and with completion of State testing in the following December, series production was recommended. However, although possessing no more than a superficial resemblance to the Me 262, its configurational similarity to the German fighter was a stigma which led Yosif Stalin to reject the Su-9 out of hand.


----------



## gekho (May 11, 2011)

Designed by Alessandro Marchetti and flown for the first time on 31 January 1944 at Varese, the SM.93 was a fascinating aeroplane in several respects. Firstly, it was powered by a Daimler-Benz DB 605A 12-cylinder inverted-vee liquid-cooled engine rated at 1,475 hp at sea level and 1,250 hp at 5800 m which was installed beneath the pilot's cockpit; secondly, the pilot occupied a prone position with a gunner/observer occupying an orthodox aft-facing seat, and thirdly, it was entirely of wooden construction, which, unusual for combat aircraft at the time of the SM.93's debut, was unique among aircraft designed specifically for the dive bombing mission.

The SM.93 had a two-spar three-piece wooden wing with ply and fabric skinning and a wooden monocoque fuselage. Armament consisted of a 20-mm cannon with 150 rounds firing through the propeller hub, a 12,7-mm machine gun with 350 rounds in each wing and a similar weapon on a flexible mounting in the rear cockpit. A bomb load of 820 kg was intended to be carried on the fuselage centreline. The prototype had made 16 flights totalling 6 hrs 40 mm by 29 March 1944 -during these diving speeds of the order of 900 km/h had been achieved - but on that date the German Control Commission ordered the termination of flight testing.


----------



## gekho (May 11, 2011)

The HD.730 was constructed completely in metal, except the control areas which were finished in fabric. The wings were foldable for onboard storage. Undercarriage were twin floats. The twin vertical stabilizers carried rudders on the ends of the horizontal fins, and the crew of two was housed onder a long cabin roof made from transparent material. In March 1938, two prototypes were ordered, which received an inline engine of type Renault 6Q-03 for propulsion. In February 1940, the trial sample HD.730.01 took off for the first time from the Etang de Berre (a lake near the Mediterranean coast, very well known as many French seaplanes were operated there, RT). 

Testing this aircraft, and the HD.730.02 as well, showed that a stronger engine was necessary. For serial production, a Bearn-6D-piston engine delivering 258 kW (350 hp) was foreseen. When France surrendered, the trials of the HD.730 prototypes were temporarily stopped. Despite the surrender, a third, modified aircraft appeared, designated HD.731.02. Compared to the HD.730, it was smaller, and equipped with the Bearn-6D-engine provided for serial production. It flew for the first time on 11 March 1941. Lots of modifications were done, until it was found out, that a bigger wing area was necessary. Subsequently the further development was stopped. Meanwhile, also the both original prototypes became equipped wit the Bearn-6D, but only the HD.731.02 made it into the air. For five years, the aircraft flew in a begin-change-end-manner. A training variant, HD.732 with Renault 6Q engine, was not followed up with.


----------



## Gnomey (May 11, 2011)

The Saunders Roe SR.A/1 is a funny looking aircraft. More good stuff!


----------



## vikingBerserker (May 11, 2011)

Fascinating. This has quickly became my favorite thread.


----------



## gekho (May 12, 2011)

The Brewster XA-32 was developed in response to an Air Corps requirement for a large single-engine dive bomber/ground attack aircraft carrying just the pilot. The success of German dive bombers during the early Blitzkrieg campaigns in 1939 and 1940 convinced the United States of the need to develop and test dive bombers of its own. The development of the XA-32 was relatively slow and took more than a year to progress from mock up (spring/summer 1942) to first flight (spring 1943). 

The aircraft featured eight forward firing .50-cal. machine guns (four in each wing) and a 3,000-pound maximum bomb load. Each wing had a hardpoint capable of supporting one 1,000-pound bomb, and an internal bomb bay could handle up to 1,000 pounds of bombs. The aircraft was powered by a 2,100-hp Pratt Whitney Double Wasp radial engine, turning a large four blade propeller with a large spinner. The wing was mounted at mid-fuselage to allow room for the internal bomb bay. A wide stance inward retracting landing gear was also necessary because of the bomb bay, but resulted in good ground handling characteristics. The vertical stabilizer was relatively small and the horizontal stabilizer was mounted at the midpoint of the vertical stabilizer. The mock up had a more conventional tail assembly, but this was changed before the prototype was built. 

The XA-32 performed poorly in its flight evaluation. The aircraft was heavy and underpowered. The XA-32 had a cruising speed of less than 200 miles per hour and a small combat range of 500 miles. The North American A-36A Apache was selected by the Air Corps to fill the ground attack/dive bomber role and served adequately from mid-1943 into 1944, primarily in North Africa, the Mediterranean and India. The XA-32 never progressed past the prototype development phase; however, the second aircraft built was retrofitted with four 20mm cannons in place of the .50-cal. machine guns and tested as the XA-32A.


----------



## gekho (May 12, 2011)

The Manx (which appropriately shares the same name as a breed of vestigial-tailed cat) was built to participate in a flight research program investigating problems associated with tailless aircraft. The partially-swept wings supported the vertical stabilizers of a twin tail, with elevons for pitch and roll control. Construction of the prototype was subcontracted to Dart Aircraft of Dunstable. There were serious issues encountered early in the development phase that caused a delay in the testing program. After it was delivered in 1939, redesigns had to be made because the Manx was too heavy, and there were also structural integrity issues with the main spar. An unorthodox aspect of the Manx design incorporated into the aircraft was that the main undercarriage was retractable, while the nose gear remained fixed.

Taxi tests began in early 1940, but inspection revealed serious deterioration of the wing structures, which required extensive repair. These and further problems delayed the maiden flight until June 1943 (sources conflict as to whether it was 11 or 25 June.) The first flight was terminated early when the canopy was lost in mid-flight, but the pilot managed to land the plane safely. The Manx had only accumulated about 17 hours of flight time over approximately 30 flights when flight tests were finally terminated in April 1946. The sole example built was scrapped in 1952.


----------



## gekho (May 12, 2011)

The Ro.57 was preceded by another twin engine fighter design, the Ro.53, which never entered production. The Ro.57 consisted of an all-metal, semi-monocoque fuselage with a steel skeleton and Duralumin structure. The wings were also Duralumin. Powered by two 840 hp (630 kW) Fiat A.74 radial engines giving a maximum speed of 516 km/h, which in 1939 was better than that of the main Italian fighter, the Macchi C.200 (504 km/h). After testing at Guidonia it was proposed by IMAM for use as a dive bomber. This transformation, which involved the addition of dive brakes, provision for 500 kg bombs and an improved forward firing armament (adding two 20 mm cannon), took time and delayed production. The resulting aircraft was designated the Ro.57bis. Performance dropped to 457 km/h maximum speed and to 350 km/h at cruise speed. The Ro.57bis was ordered into production in 1942 and entered service with the 97° Gruppo in 1943. About 50-60 aircraft were delivered. It is said that the Ro.57 could have been the long range interceptor that Italy lacked throughout the war. It proved to be too costly for the limited weapons it carried and it never was assigned a clear role. A better-armed version with more powerful engines was developed as the Ro.58.


----------



## gekho (May 12, 2011)

These two aircraft, derived from the mass-produced Messerschmitt Bf 110, were quite similar, with only a slightly different glazed nose arrangement. The Bf 161 was intended to be a reconnaissance airplane and the Bf 162 a fast light bomber/ground attacker. They were powered with two 986-hp Daimler-Benz DB 601 A inverted-V-12 liquid-cooled engines; they had a maximum speed of 480 km/h (298 mph) and a range of 780 km (485 miles). Span was 17.16 m (56 ft 3.5 in), length was 12.75 m (41 ft 10 in), and empty weight was 4,400 kg (9,700 lbs). They had a crew of three. Proposed armament consisted of two MG 15 machine guns. The Bf 162 could carry ten 50- kg (110-lb) bombs and eventually two additional 250-kg (551-lb) bombs. First flown in 1937, they never made it, as the RLM preferred the Junkers Ju 88 because of the high production pressure on Messerschmitt (Bf 109 and Bf 110). Material for these airplanes were used in the Bf 110 production. Only three test prototypes were made in 1937 and 1938. Bf 162 prototype V1 was scrapped after trials. V2 and V3 were eventually later used for research.


----------



## gekho (May 12, 2011)

The I-190 was an experimental fighter prototype produced by the Soviet Polikarpov Design Bureau, which sought in the late 1930’s to enhance the performance of its I-153 biplane fighter. The I-153 was developed from the I-15, which had fought with distinction in the Spanish Civil War. The I-153 itself saw combat in a Soviet-Japanese border clash at Halhin Gol in Mongolia in 1939, proving itself a match for the Nakajima Ki-27, a state-of-the-art monoplane fighter with fixed landing gear. 

The I-190’s proponents at Polikarpov, encouraged by the brass in the Soviet VVS who believed biplanes would retain a role in the world’s air forces, sought to extend the I-153’s viability with improved performance in the face of a wave of new monoplane fighters introduced by the other major powers. Both the I-153 and the I-190 had a distinct look due to the inverted gull dihedral of the upper wing, a design aspect that was retained despite its unpopularity among pilots since it reduced their visibility. The I-190 had an enlarged double-row Shvetsov M88 radial engine of 1,100 horsepower, requiring a larger, longer, re-designed cowl. It also differed in appearance from the I-153 in having a spinner over the propeller, giving it a slightly more aerodynamic look.


----------



## gekho (May 12, 2011)

In January 1945 Nakajima was ordered by the Imperial Japanese Army to design and develop, as quickly as possible, a basic aircraft that could carry a bomb of up to 800kg weight for use in kamikaze attacks. The resulting Nakajima Ki-115 low-wing monoplane prototype was of mixed construction, powered by a Nakajima Ha-35 radial engine and had welded steel-tube main landing gear units, without any form of shock absorption, which were intended to be jettisoned after take-off on a kamikaze mission. Flight tests showed that ground handling was unacceptable in this configuration, leading to the introduction of main landing gear units with simple shock absorbers. In this form, and incorporating some minor modifications, the aircraft entered production as the Ki-115a Tsurugi (sabre). However, Nakajima had built only 104 production aircraft by the time the war ended, and none of these was used operationally


----------



## gekho (May 12, 2011)

During the course of 1937, the Service Technique de l'Aeronautique (STA) prepared a requirement for a T3 (Triplace de Travail) aircraft, a light three-seat twin intended to perform a variety of roles ranging from tactical reconnaissance and army co-operation to light-bombing and crew training. In the same time, due to the nationalization of the French aviation industry, Dewoitine had been amalgamated into the SNCAM (Société Nationale de Constructions Aéronautiques du Midi). To meet the STA requirement, the SNCAM began the design of the D.700 T3 in January 1938 and first metal was cut in May 1938, but shortly thereafter the STA altered the requirement stipulating the observer to be housed in the nose of the aircraft rather than in proposed ventral gondola. The aircraft was redesigned and the powerplants were switched from the intended two 220 hp Renault 6Q six-cylinder air-cooled inverted in-line engines to two 500 hp Renault 12R 00/01 twelve-cylinder air-cooled inverted V-engines, and the aircraft was redesignated D.720 T3.

Immediately aft of the co-pilot's seat was a mounting for an oblique F30 of F50 or ventral F70 camera. Alternatively, a Type F and two Type J racks for a total of twenty 22 lb (10 kg) bombs could be installed in this position. A single fixed forward-firing 0.3 in (7.5 mm) MAC 34 machinegun was to be installed for the pilot, while the radio-operator/gunner was to have two of these machineguns in a manually operated SAMMA B33 dorsal turret, and a single-one on a flexible mounting firing through a hatch in the floor. The prototype was first flown at Toulouse-Francazals by Marcel Doret on July 10, 1939, and after the completion of the manufacturer's flight test program, the aircraft was flown to the Centre d'Essais du Matériel Aérien (CEMA) at Orléans-Bricy on September 25, 1939, but by this time deliveries of the Potez 630 variants had begun to the Armée de l'Air, and as the crew training variant of this, the Potez 63.16 T3, was nearing completion, further development of the D.720 T3 seemed pointless, and the project was abandoned.


----------



## gekho (May 12, 2011)

The Praga E-210 was designed as a four-seat tourer or air-taxi. It seems to have appeared in public for the first time at the Paris Exhibition of late 1936, though it is not known whether it had made its first flight by then. It was a high wing cantilever monoplane, with an enclosed cabin for four ahead of the wing and in 1936 a conventional tailwheel fixed undercarriage and single fin. It was unusual in adopting a pusher configuration, with two engines close to the fuselage driving small propellers. Its layout was thus much like that of the Carden-Baynes Bee, its almost exact contemporary though a much smaller aircraft. The wing of the E-210 was made in a single piece, a wooden structure built around two spars and plywood covered. The leading edge was significantly swept, but the trailing edge was straight. The ailerons were steel framed and fabric covered. Between them and the engines were Schrenk type landing flaps. The 85/95 hp (63/71 kW) Walter Minor four cylinder inverted in line engines were cantilevered from the rear spar on steel frames, with fairings both above and below the wings.

The flat sided fuselage was built on a steel tube framework, narrowing to the rear. The rounded nose and the cabin were plywood skinned and the rest fabric covered. The spatted mainwheels were mounted on short cantilever struts, making only a shallow angle to the ground and with the shock absorbers inside the fuselage. On the original aircraft there was a small castorable tailwheel, but later this was supplanted by a spatted, steerable nose wheel with a faired leg. By mid-1937 the original single fin had been replaced by a twin endplate fin arrangement. The fixed surfaces were wooden framed and plywood covered, the tailplane attached to the top of the fuselage and braced externally from below. The split elevators were fabric covered over wood, with trim tabs and the horn balanced rudders were of fabric covered steel. The cabin was well forward of the leading edge, providing good visibility, and seated four in two rows, the front seats having dual control. There was a baggage compartment behind the rear seats, accessible from inside. Photographs show that access to the cabin was through a single, port side door.

The date of the first flight is not known, but by the July 1937 Prague Aero Show it had been flying long enough for the directional control problem implied by the revised empennage to have been both recognised and addressed. It is also not known when the undercarriage was altered. There is a report from March 1939which says that the E-210 was then in production, though March was also the month of the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, so it is not clear if any further aircraft were completed. If so, they or the prototype may have been used by the occupying forces as transports, or following Flight's suggestion, as Army Co-Operation machines.


----------



## Crimea_River (May 12, 2011)

Great stuff here!


----------



## gekho (May 13, 2011)

The Arado Ar 240 design was carefully planned. World War 2 was a time when technological advancements and improvements especially in the war machinery were made. War machineries such as airplanes needed to be upgraded and improved regularly to have the upper hand in the war. Such an upgrade was done in 1938, when the RLM or the German War Ministry decided to replace the already obsolete Messerschmitt BF 110 Zerstorer, which was a two-man crew, twin engine heavy fighter. In response to this needed change, two aircraft firms namely; the Arado Aircraft Firm and the Messerschmitt Aircraft Firm – decided to take on the task. Since the Messerschmitt Firm has more experienced in the manufacturing of the heavy fighter aircrafts, their new design was accepted and the new Messerschmitt Me 210 was immediately launched into service during the war. The design created by the Arado firm was considered to be more complicated however since it showed exceptional performance and capabilities, the RLM decided to order prototypes for the design which was to be known as the Arado Ar 240.

The Arado Ar 240 was a WW2 German aircraft that followed the traditional design of a twin-engine plane which has the capability of becoming a good heavy fighter and an excellent dive bomber plane because of the introduction of a dive braking system. The engines of this WW2 aircraft were located away from the fuselage and in the middle of the monoplane wing assembly. The Ar 240 can accommodate a two-man crew (pilot and navigator/gunner) inside a fully-pressurized cockpit. The Ar 240’s armaments included two barbettes (containing 2x7.92mm MG81 machine guns) which were attached to the fuselage and were controlled remotely by the navigator-gunner. Another two 7.92mm MG17 machine guns were also installed in a fixed position which can be controlled by the pilot. This WW2 German aircraft can also carry a total bomb-load of 3,968 pounds. The first Ar 240 prototype first became airborne in 1940. There were a total of 14 planes of this designed produced during the war.


----------



## gekho (May 13, 2011)

The Seversky XP-41 was a fighter aircraft built in the United States in 1939. A single prototype was modified from the last production Seversky P-35 by adding a new streamlined canopy, a Wright R-1830-19 engine with a two-speed supercharger, and revised landing gear. XP-41 first flew in March 1939. The aircraft was developed in parallel with the P-43 Lancer, and work was stopped when the USAAC showed a preference for the latter.


----------



## gekho (May 13, 2011)

The Wibault system of metal airframe construction, with which Vickers had gained experience in building the Type 121 Wibault Scout, was utilised for a low-powered shipboard fighter to Specification 17/25. Submitted to the Air Ministry on 15 December 1925, this type, to be named Vireo, was awarded a one-aircraft contract. Intended to use either wheel or float undercarriage, and suitable for launching from a catapult, the Vireo was powered by a 230hp supercharged Armstrong Siddeley Lynx IV seven-cylinder radial air-cooled engine and had provision for two wing-mounted 7.7mm machine guns firing outside the propeller disc. The structural design of the Vireo followed closely that of the Type 121, with the airframe virtually entirely covered by corrugated metal skinning. Flown early in March 1928 - flight testing having been delayed by extensive aerodynamic and structural tests undertaken at the Royal Aircraft Establishment - the Vireo was evaluated at Martlesham Heath in April and deck trials then took place aboard HMS Furious on 12 July. The Vireo was fitted with a twin-float undercarriage, but, in the event, seaplane trials that were to have taken place at the MAEE, Felixstowe, were not proceeded with. The speed performance of the Vireo was inevitably poor owing to the combination of low engine power and high drag resulting from the corrugated surfaces, and it suffered extremely unpleasant stalling characteristics. In consequence, development was terminated.


----------



## gekho (May 13, 2011)

The all metal Letov Š 50 was designed to a specification for a short-range reconnaissance bomber by a team of engineers under the supervision of Aloisem Šmolíkem. Lacking experience in construction metal aircraft, Letov sought and found assistance from Avia. In 1937 a full-size wooden mock-up was demonstrated at the Paris Air Show. The crew of three was seated in fully enclosed cockpits, The navigator-bombardier sat in the forward fuselage with improved glazing, the pilot sat above the wing, and the gunner operated the double 0.312 in (7.92 mm) machinegun in turret on top of the fuselage. A third 0.312 in (7.92 mm) machinegun was fitted in the left wing. A bomb load of up to 1,323 lb (600 kg) could be carried. The aircraft was powered by two 420 hp Avia Rk-17 nine-cylinder radial engines driving two-bladed fixed pitch propellers.

First flight was scheduled for early 1938, but it took till September before test pilot Kovanda took it to the air for the first time, from November it was test pilot Jezek who flew the aircraft. Performance of the Letov Š 50 proved to be modest, the top speed did not exceed 190 mph (305 kmh). Test flying was briefly suspended in March 1939, when after Czechoslovakia became occupied by Germany and the subsequent control takeover of the country's highly developed arms industry.

The aircraft was finished in a camouflage scheme and Czechoslovakian markings and flown again under German control, subsequently it was given the German registration D-OPCO and displayed at Brussels in German markings, whereafter it was transferred to the Rechlin test center. In 1940 it was severely demaged in a test flight and returned to the factory at Letnany, Prague, for repairs. However, this did not materialize and the sole example of the Letov Š 50 was scrapped.


----------



## rochie (May 13, 2011)

great pictures, anybody know why the Arado had open spinners ?


----------



## gekho (May 13, 2011)

Another heavy fighter/bomber based on the SM.88 was the SM.92. The SM.92 did away with the mid-wing crew nacelle. The crew of two sat in the left fuselage only. Two DB 605 engines were fitted. Armament consisted of three 20 mm MG 151 cannon, two in the mid-wing and one in the right fuselage, and three 12.7 mm machine guns, one under each engine, and one remotely-controlled in the tail. A bombload of up to 2,000 kg (4,400 lb) could be carried under the inner wing, and 160 kg (350 lb) bombs were carried under the outer wings.

The maximum speed was increased, but still did not meet that required. It had a complex and advanced structure which contributed to difficulties in producing a working prototype. The prototype MM.531 flew for the first time in October 1943 and logged over 21 hours of flight time. In March 1944 it was mistaken for a P-38 Lightning and attacked by a Macchi C.205. The aircraft survived by performing evasive manoeuvres, but it was so badly damaged that it was grounded for months. The SM.92 was destroyed by Allied bombing in 1944.


----------



## gekho (May 13, 2011)

Acceptance that the concept of the I-180 was outmoded coupled with the prospect of the availability of powerful 18-cylinder radial engines led the Polikarpov OKB to design the I-185 within an extraordinarily short period of time (25 January to 10 March 1940). Intended for the 1,750hp Shvetsov M-90 engine, the I-185 was of mixed construction, having a wooden monocoque fuselage mated with metal wings featuring automatic leadingedge slats a la Bf 109. Armament consisted of twin 12.7mm and twin 7.62mm guns, all fuselage-mounted. Development delays with the M-90 - which, by December 1940, was cleared only for restricted flight testing - resulted in dismantling of the first prototype unflown, this having been known as Samolet (Aircraft) R. A second prototype. Samolet RM, was completed with a Shvetsov M-81 18-cylinder two-row radial and a ducted propeller spinner. This was flown on 11 January 1941, but the M-81 was found to develop insufficient power and was replaced by the Shvetsov M-71 of 1,900hp in May 1941. A third prototype, Samolet I, was completed with a 14-cylinder Shvetsov M-82 engine rated at 1,330hp (later 1,400hp), the fuselage being lengthened for CG reasons from 7.68m to 8.10m, and fuselage-mounted armament being changed to three 20mm cannon. State Acceptance Tests were conducted successfully between 13 April and 5 July 1942. A fourth prototype reverted to the M-71 engine and this underwent operational evaluation on the Kalinin Front alongside Samolet I. A redesigned wing (of single- in place of two-spar construction) was featured by this aircraft, which was tested with both the four-machine gun and three-cannon armament arrangements. A pre-production prototype, the so-called I-185 Etalon (Standard), was flown on 10 June 1942. Regarded as the forerunner of the intended production derivative, the I-186, this standardised on the M-71 engine and three-cannon armament, and had a similarly lengthened fuselage to that of Samolet I. State Acceptance Testing was conducted between November 1942 and January 1943, the NIl VVS evaluation reports describing the I-185 Etalon as "superior to all contemporary fighters." In the event, it was found impracticable to manufacture the M-71 in large numbers and airframe production capacity was unavailable.


----------



## gekho (May 13, 2011)

The J8M took to the air for its first powered flight on 7 July 1945, with Lieutenant Commander Toyohiko Inuzuka at the controls; Inuzuka successfully jettisoned the dolly upon becoming airborne and began to gain speed, climbing skywards at a 45 degree angle. At an altitude of　1,300 ft, the engine stopped abruptly and the J8M1 stalled. Inuzuka managed to glide the aircraft back, but clipped a small building at the edge of the airfield while trying to land, causing the aircraft to burst into flames. Inuzuka died the next day. While Mitsubishi and naval technicians sought to find the cause of the accident, all future flights were grounded. The engine cutout had occurred because the angle of climb, coupled with the fuel tanks being half-filled for this first flight, caused a shifting of the fuel, which in turn caused an auto cutout device to activate because of an air lock in the fuel line


----------



## vikingBerserker (May 13, 2011)

rochie said:


> great pictures, anybody know why the Arado had open spinners ?


 
I think it had something to do with engine cooling.


----------



## Gnomey (May 13, 2011)

More interesting stuff, keep it coming!


----------



## Shortround6 (May 13, 2011)

On the XP-41 I believe it was a Pratt&Whitney R-1830-19, not Wright and the engine had a two stage supercharger not two speed. This was a predecessor of the engine used in the Wildcat. 

many books and web sites seem to get it wrong.

Many thanks for the effort you are putting into this thread.


----------



## gekho (May 17, 2011)

The aircraft flew for the first time on 1 April 1940. Engine cooling problems arose in the initial flights, resulting in modification to the oil cooling ducts. Further modifications were made to the prototype including reduction in the height of the cockpit canopy, revising the armament installation to four 0.5 in (12.7 mm) machine guns in place of the cannon, redesign of the engine nacelles, adding spinners to the propellers, and extending the fuselage forward of the wing. These changes were completed on 15 July 1941. Additional changes were needed after further flight tests that were not completed until 15 January 1942. In the meantime, Grumman began work on a more advanced twin-engine shipboard fighter, the XF7F-1, and further testing with the XF5F-1 supported the development of the newer design. The prototype continued to be used in various tests, although plagued by various landing gear problems, until it was struck from the list of active aircraft after it made a belly landing on 11 December 1944.


----------



## gekho (May 17, 2011)

The first flight of the unique Kyushu J7W Shinden (magnificent lightning), a canard-configuration single-seat fighter, was made on 3 August 1945, but the end of World War II later that month brought an end to development and production plans. Designed by a team under the leadership of Captain Masaoki Tsuruno of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the configuration of this aircraft had been effectively confirmed by the flight testing of three specially designed and built MXY6 gliders. The construction of two J7W1 prototypes followed, these each having a slender fuselage and mounting in a mid-position on the nose a short-span foreplane incorporating elevators at the trailing edge. The rear-mounted cantilever monoplane wing was set low on the fuselage, had moderately swept leading edges and conventional ailerons with, just inboard of these on each wing, a fin and rudder extending above and below the trailing edge. The landing gear was of retractable tricycle type; the pilot was accommodated in an enclosed cockpit, directly above the leading edge of the wing; and power was provided by a 1588kW Mitsubishi MK9D radial engine, mounted in the rear fuselage to drive a six-blade pusher propeller. By the end of the war the second prototype had been completed but not flown.


----------



## gekho (May 17, 2011)

More pics


----------



## gekho (May 17, 2011)

The SM.91 might be called the Italian P-38 as it was a twin-engined, twin-boom long-range escort fighter, but it differed from its American counterpart in having a crew of two. Designed in 1941 and competing with the Caproni Ca 380 Corsaro (also a twin-boom design) for production orders, the SM.91 flew for the first time on March 10, 1943, powered by 1475 h.p. Daimler-Benz DB 605A-l twelve-cylinder inverted vee engines. Only one prototype was finished. One of the few all-metal Savoia-Marchetti aircraft, it mounted three forward-firing 20-mm. Mauser MG 151 cannon in the central nacelle and two similar weapons in the wing roots. Four 220-lb. or 353-lb. bombs or a single 1100-lb. bomb (or 218-gal. drop-tank) could be carried externally on racks below the wings and central nacelle. Empty and loaded weights were 14,110 lb. and 19,600 lb. Maximum speed was 363 m.p.h. at 22,960 ft., cruising speed 320 m.p.h., service ceiling 36,090 ft., and range 994 miles. Climb to 19,680 ft. required 8 min. 30 sec. Dimensions were: span 64 ft. 7 1/2 in., length 43 ft. 5 3/4 in., height 12 ft. 7 1/2 in., and wing area 449.5 sq. ft.


----------



## gekho (May 17, 2011)

In August 1917, the Sopwith Aviation Company started design of a two-seat fighter reconnaissance aircraft intended to replace the Bristol F.2 Fighter, and received permission to build prototypes of the Sopwith FR.2. It was intended to power the FR.2 with a 200 hp (149 kW) Hispano-Suiza 8 water-cooled V-8 engine, but the Hispano was in great demand, and it was decided to switch to the new Clerget 11, an eleven-cylinder rotary engine, a change which led to the prospective design being redesignated 2FR.2. The Bulldog was a compact single-bay biplane resembling the first prototype Sopwith Snipe single-seat fighter. The pilot sat under the upper wing, with his head and shoulders protruding through a large gap in the centre section, while the observer's cockpit was aft of the trailing edge of the upper wing. Armament was two synchronised Vickers machine guns in a hump ahead of the pilot, while the observer/gunner was provided with two Lewis guns, one on a telescopic mounting forward of the observer's cockpit, and the second on a pillar mounting to give rearward defence.

The first prototype appeared early in 1918, but it was overweight and handled poorly. It was quickly rebuilt with much larger two-bay wings, which improved the handling, but the prototype's performance remained disappointing, not even matching that of the aircraft it was intended to replace. The poor performance was in part due to the Clerget engine's failure to provide the expected power, producing only 200 hp (149 kW) instead of the expected 260 hp (194 kW). The second prototype was fitted with a 360 hp (267 kW) ABC Dragonfly radial engine, becoming the Bulldog Mk.II, with the first prototype becoming the Bulldog Mk.I. However, although the Dragonfly gave much more power than the Clerget, it was hopelessly unreliable, with one test pilot stating that "... I never remember being able to get all cylinders to fire at the same time" and "I don't remember that we got a single successful performance with the engine." Work on a third prototype was abandoned because of the failure of the first two aircraft, although the second prototype continued in use until at least March 1919 carrying out test flights in futile attempts to solve the problems of the Dragonfly.


----------



## gekho (May 17, 2011)

The SK V6 experimental twin-boom light monoplane illustrated here was eventually adapted as the SK SL6 to /light test the control surface arrangement of 8lohm and Voss's proposed "Arrow Wing".


----------



## gekho (May 17, 2011)

The only bomber Breguet 460 Vultur was a prototype low-wing medium bomber with two Gnome-Rhône 14N engines of 950 ch. that rejected for production. This prototype was flown to Barcelona on November 20, 1936 and remained in Catalonia within the group Night Flight 11. Did not last long, until it crashed or was shot down by ground fire on March 7, 1937. It was probably the best plane camouflaged his time, rain boots units undoubtedly inspired his cryptic scheme, then some fashion. Neither was wearing or other distinguishing number, only the red stripes and the republican flag in the drift.


----------



## Gnomey (May 17, 2011)

Interesting stuff!


----------



## vikingBerserker (May 17, 2011)

Nice!


----------



## gekho (May 18, 2011)

It is perhaps surprising at first sight that, having been the second nation to fly an air-breathing jet-propelled aeroplane, Italy did not feature among the leading nations in this field of technology. But in truth the Caproni-Campini N.1 was no more than an ingenious freak which employed a conventional piston engine to drive a variable-pitch ducted-fan compressor with rudimentary afterburning. As such it did nothing to further gas turbine research, and was to all intents and purposes a technical dead-end. The engineer Secondo Campini had created a company in 1931 to pursue research into reaction propulsion and in 1939 persuaded Caproni to build an aircraft to accommodate the fruits of this work, namely the adaptation of an Isotta- Fraschini radial engine driving a ducted-fan compressor; the compressed air was exhausted through a variable-area nozzle in the aircraft's extreme tail, and additional fuel could be ignited in the tailpipe to increase thrust. The two-seat low-wing N.1 (sometimes referred to as the CC.2) was first flown at Taliedo on 28 August 1940 by Mario de Bernadi. A number of set-piece demonstration flights was undertaken, including one of 270km from Taliedo to Gindoma at an average speed of 209km/h, but it was clear from the outset that use of a three-stage fan compressor driven by a piston engine would limit further development, and the experiment was abandoned early in 1942 when Italy was faced with sterner priorities. The N.1 survives today in the Museo della Scienza Technica at Milan as a monument to ingenuity if not sophisticated technology.


----------



## gekho (May 18, 2011)

During the course of 1937, the Service Technique de l'Aeronautique (STA) prepared a requirement for a T3 (Triplace de Travail) aircraft, a light three-seat twin intended to perform a variety of roles ranging from tactical reconnaissance and army co-operation to light-bombing and crew training. In the same time, due to the nationalization of the French aviation industry, Dewoitine had been amalgamated into the SNCAM (Société Nationale de Constructions Aéronautiques du Midi).

To meet the STA requirement, the SNCAM began the design of the D.700 T3 in January 1938 and first metal was cut in May 1938, but shortly thereafter the STA altered the requirement stipulating the observer to be housed in the nose of the aircraft rather than in proposed ventral gondola. The aircraft was redesigned and the powerplants were switched from the intended two 220 hp Renault 6Q six-cylinder air-cooled inverted in-line engines to two 500 hp Renault 12R 00/01 twelve-cylinder air-cooled inverted V-engines, and the aircraft was redesignated D.720 T3. Immediately aft of the co-pilot's seat was a mounting for an oblique F30 of F50 or ventral F70 camera. Alternatively, a Type F and two Type J racks for a total of twenty 22 lb (10 kg) bombs could be installed in this position. A single fixed forward-firing 0.3 in (7.5 mm) MAC 34 machinegun was to be installed for the pilot, while the radio-operator/gunner was to have two of these machineguns in a manually operated SAMMA B33 dorsal turret, and a single-one on a flexible mounting firing through a hatch in the floor. The pictures prototype was first flown at Toulouse-Francazals by Marcel Doret on July 10, 1939, and after the completion of the manufacturer's flight test program, the aircraft was flown to the Centre d'Essais du Matériel Aérien (CEMA) at Orléans-Bricy on September 25, 1939, but by this time deliveries of the Potez 630 variants had begun to the Armée de l'Air, and as the crew training variant of this, the Potez 63.16 T3, was nearing completion, further development of the D.720 T3 seemed pointless, and the project was abandoned.


----------



## gekho (May 18, 2011)

One of the strangest Luftwaffe aircraft to ever claw it's way into the air was the Junkers Ju 287. Begun in early 1943, the Ju 287 incorporated many advanced aerodynamic concepts, the most striking being the swept forward wings. This design feature was deemed radical enough to warrent the construction of a testbed aircraft, pictured above. This testbed flew on August 16, 1944. The aircraft was a Frankenstien's monster, pieced together from several diffent aircraft. Included were the nosewheels from two B-24 Liberators, the fuselage of an He 177, mainwheels off a Ju 352, and the tail was constructed of Ju 388 parts. 17 test flights proved the concept to have excellent handling characteristics and would have proven a problem had not the allies overrun the testing airfield, capturing the the V1 and the nearly complete V2. The V2 was flown by the Soviet Union in 1947. The V3 failed to get off the drawing board and would have had several improvements.


----------



## gekho (May 18, 2011)

The Nakajima G5N Shinzan originated due to the Imperial Japanese Navy's interest in developing a long-range attack bomber capable of carrying heavy loads of bombs or torpedoes a minimum distance of 3,000 nmi (5,600 km; 3,500 mi). To meet this requirement, it became apparent a four-engine lay-out would be necessary. As Japanese aircraft manufacturers lacked experience in building such large complex aircraft, the Navy was forced to search for a suitable existing foreign-made model upon which to base the new design. It settled on the American Douglas DC-4E airliner. In 1939 the sole prototype of this airliner (previously rejected by American airline companies) was purchased by Nippon Koku K.K. (Japan Airlines Co) and clandestinely handed over to the Nakajima Aircraft Company for dismantling and inspection.

The design that emerged from this study was for an all-metal mid-wing monoplane with fabric-covered control surfaces and powered by four 1,870hp Nakajima NK7A Mamoru 11 air-cooled radial engines driving four-bladed propellers. Notable features included a long ventral bomb-bay, glazed nose and twin tailfins replacing the DC-4E's distinctive triple rudder. The DC-4E's retractable tricycle undercarriage was retained, as well as the original wing form and powerplant arrangement. Defensive armament comprised one 20mm Type 99 Model 1 cannon each in a power-operated dorsal and tail turret plus single-mount hand-operated 7.7mm Type 97 machine guns in the nose, ventral and beam positions.

The first prototype G5N1 made its maiden flight on 10 April 1941. Overall performance proved disappointingly poor however, due to a combination of excessive weight, the unreliablity of the Mamoru engines and the complexity of the design. Only three more prototypes were completed. In an attempt to salvage the project, two additional airframes were fitted with 1,530hp Mitsubishi MK4B 12 "Kasei" engines and redesignated G5N2s. Although the Mitsubishi engines were more reliable than the original Mamoru 11s, the aircraft was now even more hopelessly underpowered and further development of the type was halted.


----------



## gekho (May 18, 2011)

Fundamentally a redesigned and improved Type 151 Jockey and, indeed, initially known as the Jockey II, the Type 279, for which Vickers adopted the name Venom, was intended to meet the requirements of Specification F.5/34. Powered by a 625hp Bristol Aquila AE.3S nine-cylinder sleeve-valve radial engine enclosed by a long-chord NACA cowling, the Venom was a highly sophisticated aircraft, with a metal monocoque fuselage, its stressed skin being affixed by countersunk rivets. It was unique at the time it entered flight test, on 17 June 1936, in having 90°-deflection flaps. The Venom retained the sideways-hinging engine feature of the Type 151, and a battery of eight 7.7mm machine guns was mounted in the wings from the start of test flying. The Venom proved exceptionally manoeuvrable, with outstanding roll rate and turning radius, but it lacked the power to compete seriously with its Rolls-Royce liquid-cooled Vee-type-engined contemporaries, and, as no sufficiently compact British air-cooled radial of adequate power was available for installation, it was scrapped in 1939.


----------



## gekho (May 18, 2011)

Vultee had submitted a proposal in response to a U.S. Army Air Corps request for an unusual configuration. The Vultee design won the competition, beating the Curtiss XP-55 Ascender and the Northrop XP-56 Black Bullet. Vultee designated it Model 84, a descendant of their earlier Model 78. After completing preliminary engineering and wind tunnel tests, a contract for a prototype was awarded on 8 January 1941. A second prototype was ordered on 17 March 1942. Although it appeared to be a radical design, its actual performance was lackluster and the project was subsequently canceled.

The XP-54 was designed with a pusher engine in the aft part of the fuselage. The tail was mounted rearward between two mid-wing booms, with the 12-ft propeller between them. The design included a "ducted wing section" developed by the NACA that enabled installation of cooling radiators and intercoolers in the inverted gull wing. The Pratt Whitney X-1800 engine was initially proposed as the powerplant but after its development was discontinued, the liquid-cooled Lycoming XH-2470 was substituted. In September 1941, the XP-54 mission was changed from low altitude to high altitude interception. Consequently, a turbo-supercharger and heavier armor had to be added, and the estimated empty weight increased from 11,500 to 18,000 lb (5,200 to 8,200 kg).

The XP-54 was unique in numerous ways. The pressurized cockpit required a complex entry system: the pilot’s seat acted as an elevator for cockpit access from the ground. The pilot lowered the seat electrically, sat in it, and raised it into the cockpit. Bail-out procedure was complicated by the pressurization system and necessitated a downward ejection of the pilot and seat in order to clear the propeller arc. Also, the nose section could pivot through the vertical, three degrees up and six degrees down. In the nose, two 37 mm T-9 cannon were in rigid mounts while two .50 cal machine guns were in movable mounts. Movement of the nose and machine guns was controlled by a special compensating gun sight. Thus, the cannon trajectory could be elevated without altering the flight attitude of the airplane. The large nose section gave rise to its whimsical nickname, the Swoose Goose, inspired by a song about Alexander who was half swan and half goose: "Alexander was a swoose."

Flight tests of the first prototype, 41-1210, began on 15 January 1943. Initial trials showed performance substantially below guarantees. At the same time, development of the XH-2470 engine was discontinued and, although it appeared possible to substitute the Allison V-3420 engine without substantial airframe changes, the projected delay and costs resulted in a decision not to consider production buys. The prototypes continued to be used in an experimental program until problems with the Lycoming engines and lack of spare parts caused termination. The second prototype, 42-108994 (but mistakenly painted as 42-1211) equipped with an experimental GE supercharger, only made one flight before it was relegated to a "parts plane" in order to keep the first prototype in the air.


----------



## vikingBerserker (May 18, 2011)

Excellent posts!


----------



## gekho (May 19, 2011)

Although it looks similar to the Ar 96, it was in fact an all-new design that was intended to minimize the use of essential metals. Planning started in 1944, with the design work and production slated to take place at the SIPA works in Paris, France. Only twelve were finished before the war was over, one of which ended up in Czechoslovakia, where the German crosses were crudely overpainted with Czech roundels. After the war, SIPA in France continued producing the Ar 396 under the designation S-10, S-11, S-12, and S-121. The main difference between the German version and the French was the canopy, with the French example having a three-section center piece and the German one having a two-section one. The Arado Ar 396 had decent performance for the time, with a service ceiling of around 23,000ft and a maximum speed of 220mph.


----------



## gekho (May 19, 2011)

In 1935, the Czech aircraft company Avia produced a design for a small twin-engined bomber with a fixed undercarriage and powered by two 313 kW (420 hp) Avia Rk 17 radial engines. This design was abandoned in 1936, however, by a more powerful and advanced derivative, the Avia B-158, which was designed to meet a requirement from the Czechoslovak Ministry of National Defense (MNO) for a high performance medium bomber, capable of operation during both day and night, competing against Aero Vodochody's A.300.

In 1937, Avia started to build a single prototype of the B-158, a three-seat low-winged monoplane with inverted gull-wings, a retractable tailwheel undercarriage and 634 kW (850 hp) Hispano-Suiza 12Ydrs engines, making its maiden flight in mid-1938. It was fitted with a twin tail to give a better field of fire for the dorsal gun position. While the competing Aero A.300 gave superior performance, neither had entered into production by the time Germany occupied Bohemia and Moravia. After testing by the Luftwaffe at their test centre at Rechlin, the prototype B-158 was scrapped in 1940.


----------



## gekho (May 19, 2011)

The last design by Ing. Zappata before he left Cant for the Breda organization was the Z.1018 twin-engined medium bomber, probably the best bomber actually built in Italy during the war. Although the first six examples were built of wood, the production Z.1018 contrasted with all its Cant forebears by employing all-metal construction. A number of different prototypes were built, incorporating 1500 h.p. Piaggio P.XII R.C.35, 1400 h.p. Piaggio P.XV R.C.45, and 1400 h.p. Alia Romeo 135 R.C.32 radial engines, as well as one filled with 1475 h.p. FIAT R.A.I050 R.C.58 Tifone (Typhoon) liquid-cooled engines, which were license-built DB 605A-l units. The first prototype, employing four-bladed airscrews and twin fins and rudders, flew in 1940. Subsequent changes, in addition to the variety of engines tested, included three-bladed airscrews, a cockpit moved from behind the wing leading edge to a position ahead of the engines, and a single fin-and-rudder assembly.

So exceptional was the performance of the Z.1018 that 300 production machines were ordered in 1941, to be powered by 1320 h.p. Piaggio P.XII R.C.35 or 1350 h.p. Alfa Romeo 135 R.C.32 Tornado engines, both eighteen-cylinder radials. Given the name Leone (Lion), the Z.1018 carried a maximum bomb load of six 550-lb. bombs and defended itself with one 12.7-mm. machine gun in a dorsal Caproni Landani Delta F turret, one 12.7-mm. gun in a ventral position, and two 7.7-mm. guns firing from hatches in the sides of the fuselage. An offensive forward-firing 12.7-mm. weapon was mounted in the starboard wing near the root. By early 1943 a few Z.1018 bombers reached the Regia Aeronautica, equipping the 101 0 Gruppo of the 470 Stormo Bombardimento Terrestre, which was already operating Z.1007 bis Alciones. However, the Leone saw little action, the Italian surrender coming only a short time later.

Maximum speed was 323 m.p.h., range 700-1367 miles, and service ceiling 23,785 ft. The Z.1018 climbed to 6560 ft. in 3 min. 10 sec. Span was 73 ft. 93/4 in., length 57 ft. 9 in., height 19 ft. 1P/2 in., and wing area 679.2 sq. ft. Projected but never built were two additional variants, a heavy day fighter with seven 20-mm. 'MG 151 cannon in the nose and three 12.7-mm. defensive machine guns, and a night fighter with German Lichtenstein SN 2 radar mounted in the nose. Estimated maximum speed of both models was 385 m.p.h. The 1250 h.p. FIAT A.83 R.C.24 eighteen-cylinder radial engine was also considered for installation on the Z.1018.

The Cant Z.1018 was the first Italian bomber with performance and armament comparable to the best German and Allied types, and it was unfortunate for the Regia Aeronautica that the production models began to appear too late in the conflict to have any noticeable effect on the outcome.


----------



## gekho (May 19, 2011)

Evolved as a competitor for the SNCAO (Société Nationale de Constructions Aéronautiques de l'Ouest) C.A.O.600 in meeting the requirements of Programme Technique A47 which called for a twin-engined shipboard torpedo- and reconnaissance-bomber for use from the planned carriers Joffre and Painlevé, designed by the former Dewoitine team of the SNCAM (Société Nationale de Constructions Aéronautiques du Midi), employed a very similar configuration to that of the SNCAO contender for Ministère de la Marine orders. Two prototypes were ordered by the Ministère de l'Air on behalf of the Ministère de la Marine on July 26, 1939, these confirming with Edition No.3 of A47 issued on January 10, 1938, and construction was initiated at Toulouse. The fuselage housed either two or three crew members were in carried in conformity with the naval specification; pilot, navigator-bombardier and radio-operator/gunner being carried for the reconnaissance and level bombing missions but only pilot and radio-operator/gunner being carried for torpedo-bombing and smoke screen-laying missions.

Powerplants were two 500 hp Renault 12R 06/07 twelve-cylinder air-cooled inverted V-engines. Armament consisted of three 0.3 in (7.5 mm) Darne machine guns, one in a fixed forward firing position in the lower port side of the fuselage, and one on a flexible mounting in each of the upper and lower aft cabins. On a ventral rack an 1,433 lb (650 kg) torpedo could be carried, alternative loads were an 132 Imp gal (600 l) fuel tank, four 331 lb (150 kg) or two 496 lb (225 kg) bombs. The prototype was transported in parts to the Toulouse-Francazals airfield in early 1940, assembled and SNCAM’s chief test pilot, Marcel Doret, made the initial flight on May 6. Manufacturer’s flight trials were still in their early stages when the entire program was halted on June 25, 2943, the French-German Armistice. The first prototype was scrapped and the second abandoned before completion.


----------



## gekho (May 19, 2011)

The Hawker Henley was designed as a light bomber, and was closely related to the Hawker Hurricane. It had been designed by Hawker in response to Air Ministry Specification P.4/34 of February 1934 for a light bomber and close support aircraft, with high performance and a low bomb load. 

The resulting aircraft was very similar in appearance to the Hurricane, sharing most of the wing and the tail plane with that aircraft. The main difference between the two types was the cockpit, designed to carry a two man crew – pilot and observer/ air gunner. Work on the Henley progressed slowly. The prototype took two years to complete, finally taking to the air on 10 March 1937. The Henley performed well in tests, but three years after issuing the initial specification the air ministry decided it no longer needed a new light bomber. However rather than cancel the Henley it was decided to use the aircraft as a target tug. Somewhat ironically the Hawker Hurricane would later go on to perform a role very similar to that originally intended for the Henley, acting as a ground attack aircraft.

The Henley was not a great success as a target tug. The first modified Henley TT.III flew on 26 May 1938, and an order was placed for 200. In service it was discovered that the Merlin engine could not cope with high speed target towing. After a brief period towing large drogue targets, the Henley was retired in May 1942, in favour of the Boulton Paul Defiant, which was itself obsolescent as a front line aircraft (the Henley had also been developed into a turret, the Hawker Hotspur, but that never passed the prototype stage).


----------



## gekho (May 19, 2011)

Developed as the Experimental 18-Shi Heavy Bomber Renzan (Nakajima G8N1), this was a very advanced long-range bomber powered by four 1491kW Nakajima Homare 24 radials which gave it a maximum speed of 592km/h at 8000m. Maximum range was 7465km. Armament consisted of six 20mm cannon in twin power-operated dorsal, ventral and tail turrets, two 13mm machine-guns jn a power-operated nose turret, and single machine-guns of similar calibre in port and starboard beam positions. A maximum bombload of 4000kg could be carried over short ranges. Four prototypes were built up to June 1945, but the proposed production programme was disrupted by Allied bomb- ing and was abandoned when the navy's role became defensive rather than offensive. These prototypes were allocated the Allied codename 'Rita'.


----------



## gekho (May 19, 2011)

The XP-67 was a spectacular-looking single-seat twin, the only piston-engine airplane that McDonnell Aircraft ever produced. The company completed just one XP-67 before jets left props in the dust and the Army cancelled the program in 1944. McDonnell’s next airplane was the twin-jet FH-1 Phantom, followed by the F2H Banshee, F3H Demon, F-101 Voodoo, and F-4 Phantom II. But the XP-67, casually called Bat and Moonbat—―it didn’t live long enough to get an official name—was a futuristic design nonetheless. James McDonnell, a pilot and aeronautical engineer educated at Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, apparently became fascinated with the concept of making other airplane structures besides the wings into lifting surfaces. While he was the chief engineer for the Glenn Martin Aircraft Company, he sketched at least one never-flown blended-wing design. Today the blended-wing concept has been greatly refined to mean a tailless flying-wing design, but McDonnell, while at Martin—and then later at his own company with the XP-67—tried to maintain a constant airfoil section on a conventional airframe, from the fuselage centerline all the way out to the wingtips. He included in the blended airfoil the fuselage-to-wing junctures, the engine-nacelle-to-wing interfaces, and even the nacelles themselves. From the conventional tail forward, the Moonbat was all curves. It had the skirted look not of a bat but of a flying squirrel.

McDonnell doubtless was also intrigued by the possibility of decreasing the drag created by the sometimes awkward conjunction of a wing, with its own lifting airflow, and a fuselage—or nacelle—that had entirely different ideas about where the flow should go. The interface usually created turbulence, or interference drag. Most engineers found it easier to lessen such drag with gracefully curved wing fillets or straightforward 90-degree wing-to-fuselage interfaces, typically in the form of wings mounted on the midsection of the fuselage. In fact whatever interference-drag benefit McDonnell might have created was probably nullified by drag from the increased area exposed to airflow on what were essentially oversize fillets. The engines dated back to 1932, when the Army decided it needed light, compact, high-specific-power, high-revving “hyper” engines ideally configured to be installed, in the fashion du jour, inside future bomber wings or fighter fuselages. The IV-1430 was designed by the engineers at the Army’s Wright Field in Ohio, and Continental simply built what it was ordered to: a two-valve, small-displacement, low-frontal-area, inverted V-12 with separate cylinders (World War I technology) intentionally running its glycol coolant very hot. Intended to produce a competitive 1,600 horsepower, the IV-1430s (also used on the Lockheed XP-49, a modified P-38) never put out more than about 1,060, even after a turbocharger was bootstrapped onto the engine’s single-stage mechanical supercharger.

The Continental was the only true hyper engine to see a modicum of production (23 engines total), but by the time it finally flew, it would have been a nice little motor for the lightweight Air Corps pursuits of the 1930s. Long-range, heavyweight fighters and super-bombers needed a minimum of 2,000 hp per engine. But it was the engine that Jim McDonnell had been led to believe would be perfect for the buried mounts on the XP-67’s wings. When he discovered it to be troublesome, hot-running, and down on power, he agitated to have the XP-67 given new engines, either Allison or Merlin V-12s. Sorry, the Army said, work with what you have. What McDonnell had were engines so poorly cooled that during initial taxi tests, both caught fire.

The XP-67 first flew in January 1944. After all of six minutes, yet more engine problems forced an immediate landing. It didn’t matter; by then the Moonbat had lost its mission. Conceived in an era when America saw a need to repel long-range German attackers, it was intended to blast apart bomber formations, but by the mid-1940s, neither the Germans nor the Japanese had any effective bombers left. With an intended battery of six 37-mm cannon—never actually installed—the airplane probably could have sawed small ships in half or served as a tank-buster, but it certainly never would have succeeded as a dogfighter.


----------



## gekho (May 20, 2011)

The Focke-Wulf Fw 191 was one of the two primary finalists in the "Bomber B" program. Two prototypes were initially built, the V1 and V2. The V1 began its flight test program in early 1942. It was intended to use the Jumo 222 engines but as these were not yet ready for use so the prototypes were powered by BMW 801 air cooled radials as they were the most powerful engines available and were generally the same physical size as the Jumo 222. The most unusual feature of the 191 was the use of electric motors for every device that would have normally been actuated mechanically or hydraulically. This extensive use of electrics had been done at the request of the research department of the RLM despite protests from Focke-Wulf. The large amount of wiring involved and the motors themselves added an immense amount of additional weight. From the outset of flight testing the electrical systems proved to be a constant source of problems. Also the aircraft with the BMW 801's was seriously under powered. After 10 hours of flight-testing had been completed the flight test program was halted and further prototype construction was shelved pending the correction of the electrical problems and the availability of more powerful engines. Three additional prototypes had been ordered but it was obvious that the Jumo 222 engines would have a longer gestation period than had been foreseen and doubts were had that it would ever achieve production status. Focke-Wulf had made repeated applications to the RLM for permission to replace the more troublesome electrical systems with hydraulics systems and in late 1942 with the delivery of two flight cleared Jumo 222's the decision to complete the least advanced prototype, the V6 with hydraulic systems and the 222's. The V6 flew in the Spring of 1943 but the flight characteristics were still far from satisfactory. Shortly thereafter the RLM announced the termination of the entire "Bomber B" program and by the end of 1943 all work on the Fw 191 ceased.


----------



## gekho (May 20, 2011)

The specification by the Air Ministry from 17 August 1937 Included the creation of a three-men-crew bomber attack aircraft category AB3 (Assault-Bombardier) with Cannon Armament. One of the first of Which Firms Presented draft ITS WAS Dewoitine. It Was a twin-engine all-metal monoplane with a longitudinal placement of the crew. Starting in October 1938 the firm's engineers, Commissioned by the Air Force developed a snake Several options for a Ground Attacker, the most important theses Were Among the D.770 and D.771. 

The First Flight WAS done in June 26, 1939 would be a test driver Marc Dorette, WHO WAS dissatisfied with the flight performance of the new machine. Although the prototype snake good speed performance, It Was not sufficiently stable in flight. Tests of D.770.01 lasted for about 5 months, however, the Specialists of the firm fired Dewoitine achieve Significant improvements. At the end of 1939, D.770.01 WAS sent to the Research Center for wind tunnel tests. The results of theses tests only Proved Once Again That this aircraft WAS Far from being perfect and Will not Go to Mass Production. Program for Further testing WAS decided to Be Interrupted, Because That time at ground attackers Breguet Br.691 / 693 Were Produced in numbers, and for 1940, the Appearance of Large Quantities of the multi-purpose bomber Bloch MB.175 was expected. These Were aircraft carrying a large bomb load and much better snake Operational and Technical Performance.


----------



## gekho (May 20, 2011)

The Grumman G-34 proposal of 1938 for a single-seat twin-engined shipboard fighter anticipated the realisation of an operational production example of such a type by quite a few years. In fact, the proposal was then considered to be so advanced that it bordered on the revolutionary; yet only four years later, on 18 April 1942,16 North American B-25 twin-engined bombers were flown off the USS Hornet to attack Tokyo. 

Not only was the G-34 an advanced concept, in its original form it was a most unusual-looking aircraft, with the leading edge of its low-set monoplane wing forward of the fuselage nose. The tail unit had twin endplate fins and rudders, and the landing gear was of the retractable tailwheel type, with the main units retracting aft into the wing-mounted engine nacelles. Powerplant comprised two Wright R-1820 Cyclones, each with a three-bladed propeller, these being geared to counter-rotate to offset the effects of propeller torque. 

The US Navy was first to order a prototype, the XF5F-1, on 30 June 1938, which was flown for the first time on 1 April 1940. A number of modifications were introduced subsequently, the most noticeable being an extension of the fuselage nose so that it terminated forward of the wing. Although failing to win a production order, the XF5F-1 soldiered on until withdrawn from use in December 1944, having done some useful work as a development prototype for the more advanced Grumman F7F. A land-based version of Grumman's design interested the US Army Air Force, which ordered a single XP-50 prototype. Although generally similar to the naval version, it differed by having a lengthened nose to accommodate the nosewheel of the tricycle landing gear and had as powerplant two Wright R-1820-67/-69 turbocharged engines. First flown on 14 May 1941, the XP-50 was plagued with engine overheating problems and was eventually written off after suffering serious damage when a turbocharger exploded. No further examples of the XP-50 were built.


----------



## gekho (May 20, 2011)

Conceived as a successor to the Spitfire, the Type 371 was projected from November 1942, initially mating a laminar flow wing with a Griffon-engined Spitfire XIV and progressively embracing a new fuselage. Three prototypes were ordered to Specification F.1/43, which was written around the project, and the first of these flew on 30 June 1944. This prototype comprised a Spitfire XIV fuselage with the new wing, a 2,035hp Rolls-Royce Griffon 61 engine and an armament of four 20mm cannon. Named Spiteful, the second prototype flew on 8 January 1945 with the new fuselage, an all-round vision cockpit canopy and a 2,375hp Griffon 69 driving a five-bladed propeller. Production orders were placed for 188 Spitefuls, but only 16 were flown of 19 built or partially-completed (from April 1945) as the end of World War II and the advent of the jet fighter terminated plans for RAF use of the Spiteful. The designation F Mk 14 was applied to the Griffon 69-powered Spiteful; the proposed F Mk 15 had either the Griffon 89 or 90 with a six-bladed contraprop, and a single F Mk 16 had a Griffon 101 with a three-speed supercharger and five-bladed propeller.


----------



## Airframes (May 20, 2011)

Great stuff, keep them coming !


----------



## Gnomey (May 20, 2011)

Good stuff!


----------



## gekho (May 24, 2011)

The Heinkel He 280 was the first jet powered fighter aircraft to take to the skies, although it never entered mass production. The Heinkel He 178, the first aircraft to fly solely on jet power, had been powered by a single jet engine built into the fuselage, but the German Air Ministry believed that the fuselage mounted engine presented too many problems, and so work moved on twin-engined aircraft, with the engines mounted outside the fuselage, in most cases in nacelles carried below the wings. The Heinkel He 178 had been powered by the HeS 3 and HeS 6 engines, designed by Dr Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain. His next engine was the HeS 8, a centrifugal flow engine based on his earlier designed which was expected to produce 1,540lb of static thrust. He was now joined at Heinkel by Max A. Mueller, who was working on a axial flow engine, the HeS 30 of 1,760lb thrust. The two engines were also given official Air Ministry designations - 109-006 for the HeS 30 and 109-001 for the HeS 8. Heinkel intended to test both engines in the new He 280. A number of other companies were also working on jet engines, amongst them BMW, whose 109-003 would be suggested for production versions of the He 280. 

The new aircraft was an all metal mid-wing monoplane with a streamlined fuselage. The cockpit was mounted just in front of the wings, and was given a sliding canopy. The wing had a straight leading edge and curved trailing edge, a design that would limit the speed of the aircraft. A tricycle undercarriage was used, with the nose wheel retracting backwards into the fuselage and the main wheels retracting inwards. The tail carried twin rudders. One genuinely revolutionary aspect of the design was the inclusion of a compressed-air powered ejection seat, which would soon come into use. The aircraft was ready before the first of the new generation of Heinkel engines, and so its first test flight, on 22 September 1940, was an unpowered gliding test. The He 280 V1 was towed to altitude by a Heinkel He 111B, and then released. By March 1940 forty unpowered flights had been made, proving that the basic design of the aircraft was sound.

The first powered flight followed on 2 April 1941, and saw the V1 take to the air powered by two HeS 8 engines, each providing 1,102lb of static thrust, but with their cowling removed. This was followed by a demonstration flight in front of Luftwaffe and Air Ministry officials on 5 April, which led to approval being given for Heinkel to develop a new general of jet engines. The He 280 was in direct competition with the Me 262 for a production order. When powered by the same engines the smaller lighter He 280 was faster, had a faster rate of climb, and a higher maximum ceiling, but it suffered some problems with its tail, had a shorter range than the Me 262 (Heinkel had underestimated the fuel consumption of their engines, and as a result the fuel tanks were too small), and was under-armed compared to the Me 262. In 1943 work on developing the Heinkel design as a production fighter aircraft came to an end, although the aircraft continued to be used for development work and to test new engines.


----------



## gekho (May 24, 2011)

During the Second World War, one aircraft company, Bell, gained popularity by being a “different type” of aircraft maker. Bell’s design of the XFM-1 Airacuda, which even though did not make it through production, gave the company its reputation of being a revolutionary aircraft maker. The design of the Bell XFM-1 Airacuda to become a bomber destroyer was nothing but ambitious as compared to its late 1930’s contemporaries. It boasted of being able to accommodate a five-man crew, carry bombs while being able to field a variety of heavy caliber weaponry, and to provide considerable range, fire-power and speed as a bomber-destroyer of WW2. The new design and concept of the XFM-1 Airacuda would have made it comparable to none in the skies. However, the overly-ambitious design of this WW2 aircraft proved to be too good to be true and the XFM-1 eventually became a victim of its own ambition. 

The unique design concept of the XFM-1 Airacuda was that it used pusher-type engines, which means that the propellers of the engines were mounted to the rear of each nacelle and powered the plane by pushing it through the air. The pushing power of the XFM-1 was derived from two 1150 hp Allison V-1710-41 supercharged engines mounted to each nacelle within the aircraft’s wing span. The rationale behind the rear-mounted propellers was for the forward position of the nacelle to be equipped with heavy weaponry such as the M4 37mm cannon that can be manned by a crew member at each nacelle. Additional weaponry such as 2 x 12.7mm high caliber machine guns and 2 x 7.62mm machine guns were also installed making the Airacuda a formidable bomber. 

However, problems with the design and production of the XFM-1 Airacuda caused this system to fail and not enter into large scale production. The first problem in production was when the Air Corps decided to order and use the scaled-down Allison engine model because the supercharged engines were highly volatile and explosive during field testing. This decision ultimately cut down the flight performance of the Airacuda. Another problem of the design of this WW2 aircraft was the manned weaponries on each nacelle. In order to control these weapons, a crew member was placed inside each nacelle and this crew member will not have communications with his fellow crew members. Despite these imperfections in the design and production, the Airacuda revolutionized the way aircrafts landed by using the tricycle landing which became a Bell trademark. The Air Corps decided to field one squadron of XFM-1 Airacuda to the skies during 1938-1940 but soon decided to remove them to be used as ground trainers.


----------



## gekho (May 24, 2011)

From the very beginnings of the Luftwaffe in 1933, General Walther Wever, the chief of staff, realised the importance that strategic bombing would play in any future conflict. A Langstrecken-Grossbomber ("long-range big bomber") was needed to fulfill this role. Under the Ural bomber program, he began secret talks with two of Germany's leading aircraft manufacturers - Dornier and Junkers - requesting designs for a long-range bomber. The two companies responded with the Dornier Do 19 and the Junkers Ju 89 respectively, and the RLM (Reichsluftfahrtministerium, "Reich Aviation Ministry") ordered prototypes for both aircraft in 1935. It is reported that the RLM request asked for two prototypes and a prototype series of nine aircraft.

The Ju 89 and its competitor, the Dornier Do 19, both proved promising, but fell victim to a change of direction within the Luftwaffe. Wever was killed in a plane crash in 1936. His successors - Ernst Udet and Hans Jeschonnek - favoured smaller aircraft, since those did not require as much material and manpower. Also they were proponents of the dive bomber (Ju 87 Stuka) and the doctrine of close support and destruction of the opposing airforces on the 'battle-ground' rather than through attacking enemy industry. They convinced Hermann Göring initially in emphasizing instead the need for tactical bombers to act in an army support role. While Göring's beliefs seemed validated by Germany's early successes in the Blitzkrieg, the lack of strategic bombing capability severely hampered the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain.

On 11 April 1937, the Ju 89 prototype D-AFIT (V1, c/n 4911) was first flown by Hesselbach. Just 2½ weeks later, the first flight, on 29 April 1937 the further development of both strategic bombers was cancelled by the RLM. The reason for this step was the high fuel consumption of heavy bombers, as well as the fact that a large number of bombers could only be manufactured if these bombers were medium bombers, like the Ju 88.

Junkers completed the second Ju 89 prototype D-ALAT July 1937. Junkers used both prototypes for extensive flight tests to get experiences about the stability and flight controls of large aircraft. But the third prototype V3 was stopped after the program was cancelled. During these tests, the Ju 89s set two payload/altitude records, first by carrying 5,000 kg (11,000 lb) to 9,312 m (30,500 ft) and then 10,000 kg (22,000 lb) to 7,242 m (23,750 ft). On 4 June 1938, Junkers achieved a new Payload/Altitude World Record with the second prototype D-ALAT with 5,000 kg (11,000 lb) payload at an altitude of 9,312 m (30,500 ft). (4,000 m/13,120 ft more than a Short Stirling with the same payload) On 8 June 1938, D-ALAT reached an altitude of 7,242 m (23,750 ft) with 10,000 kg (22,000 lb). In late 1938, both aircraft were transferred to Luftwaffe, where they were used as heavy transport aircraft. Both Ju 89 prototypes seem to have been scrapped by the end of 1939, although some sources claim that they were still in use the following year in Norway. Both aircraft were later impressed into the Luftwaffe for use as heavy transports. During testing, Lufthansa expressed an interest in an airliner to be developed from the type, which led Junkers to rebuild the incomplete third prototype as the Ju 90.


----------



## gekho (May 24, 2011)

During the mid 'twenties, the Air Ministry accepted the philosophy that the primary concern of the RAF's fighter element should be interception of intruding enemy bombers. Accordingly, a specification was drawn up for a single-seat day interceptor capable of overtaking an enemy aircraft flying at 241km/h at 6100m. This specification, F.20/27, resulted in contending monoplanes being ordered from de Havilland, Vickers and Westland. The Vickers design, the Type 151, was constructed on Wibault principles, but the rear portion of the fuselage was fabric covered. Power was provided by a nine-cylinder Bristol Mercury IIA radial engine rated at 480hp at 3960m, provision was made for an armament of twin 7.7mm Vickers guns, and the manufacturer assigned the appellation of Jockey to the fighter. Among novel features embodied by the Type 151 was a sideways-hinging engine mounting to ease accessibility for maintenance, all controls, wiring and piping, and even the Constantinesco gun synchronisation equipment hinging without disconnection. 

Designed by Rex Pierson and J Bewsher, the Type 151 was flown in April 1930, but oscillation and inadequate torsional rigidity in the rear fuselage were encountered. Various palliatives were applied, such as wing root leading-edge slots to rectify the buffeting that was believed to create the problems, but these proved ineffectual, and in January 1932, when the Mercury IIA gave place to a 530hp Jupiter VIIF, structural redesign of the rear fuselage was undertaken. It was intended to re-engine the Type 151 once more, this time with a Mercury IVS2 supercharged power plant, but, in June 1932, before this change could be made, the fighter failed to recover from a flat spin while undergoing trials at Martlesham Heath. Progressive redesign of the Type 151 was subsequently undertaken as the Jockey II, which, in its definitive form, was submitted to meet Specification F.5/34 as the Venom.


----------



## gekho (May 24, 2011)

One of the most unusual aircraft ever designed for the U.S. Navy was the Chance Vought V-173, also known as the Zimmerman "Flying Pancake". It was a prototype "proof of concept" aircraft that lacked wings, instead relying on its flat circular body to provide the lifting surface. This multi-million dollar project nearly became the first V/STOL (vertical takeoff and landing) fighter. The V-173 blueprints were shown to the Navy in 1939, with wind tunnel tests on full scale models being done in 1940-41. In January 1942 BuAer requested the proposal for two prototype airplanes of an experimental version of the V-173, known as the VS-135. This version had more powerful engines and was given the military designation XF5U-1. Flight testing of the V-173 went on through 1942 and 1943, resulting in reports of "flying saucers" from surprised Connecticut locals. Mock-ups of the XF5U-1 were done in the summer of 1943, but due to Vought's preoccupation with the Corsair and Kingfisher, the program proceeded slowly during the war. The arrival of the jet age saw the cancellation of the XF5U-1 contract by the Navy in March 1947, despite the fact that the aircraft was due to take its first test flight later that year. The XF5U-1 prototype was scrapped, though the V-173 prototype was saved and was given to the Smithsonian. To this day the V-173 / XF5U-1 project remains one of the more interesting anecdotes in aviation history.


----------



## Gnomey (May 24, 2011)

Interesting stuff!


----------



## vikingBerserker (May 24, 2011)

I love this thread!


----------



## gekho (May 25, 2011)

The Bell XP-77, an all-wood light-weight fighter made from Sitka spruce, patterned after racers of the 1930s, and intended to operate from grass runways, was an astonishingly attractive machine. Yet when the first of two XP-77s flew on 1 April 1944 at Niagara Falls, New York, it was not unfitting that the date was April Fools' Day. Initially, the idea of a small, cheap, all-wood fighter built with few strategic materials had held high appeal. In early 1941, Larry Bell's upstate New York fighter team had begun work on a plane at first called the 'Tri-4', shorthand for an informal USAAF requirement for '400hp, 4,000lbs, 400mph'. On 16 May 1942, the USAAF ordered 25 'Tri-4' aircraft. Delays, technical problems with subcontracting on plywood construction, and disappointing wind-tunnel tests caused the manufacturer to suggest by early 1943 that the number of machines on order be reduced to six. In May 1943, the USAAF pared this figure to two, seeing the XP-77 as having no operational utility but as useful in lightweight fighter research. Beginning in July 1944, the second XP-77 was tested at Eglin Field, Florida. Spin problems led to a crash of this aircraft on 2 October 1944, which the pilot survived.


----------



## gekho (May 25, 2011)

In June of 1939, the first National Contest of Aeromodels with Combustion Engines took place at Leipzig-Mockau. Arthur Sack, who dreamed of a circular-winged aircraft, entered his AS-1 model, but unfortunately, it had to be launched by hand and had poor flying characteristics. Ernst Udet, who was at the time Germany's Air Minister, encouraged Arthur Sack to go on with his research. Sack built four additional models of increasing size, culminating with his first manned aircraft, the Sack AS-6. 

The AS-6 was constructed at the Mitteldeutsche Motorwerke company, with the final assembly taking place at the Flugplatz-Werkstatt workshops at the Brandis air base in early 1944. The AS-6 was a strange conglomeration from other planes, including the cockpit, seat and landing gear from an old, wrecked Messerschmitt Bf 109B and the Argus As 10C-3 240 horsepower engine from a Messerschmitt Bf 108 liaison aircraft. The wing assembly was new, with plywood forming both the ribs and covering. Ground taxiing tests were performed in February 1944, with the first test proving that the rudder was not strong enough and some structural damage ensuing. Five takeoff runs were made during the second test on the 1200 meter (3940') Brandis landing strip. During these tests, it was determined that the control surfaces were in the vacuum area behind the circular wing, and thus did not operate adequately. The right landing gear leg was also broken during the final attempt of the second test. It was thought that the problems arose due to the low power output of the engine, but because of a wartime shortage of more powerful engines, it was decided to change the incidence angle by moving the landing gear backwards by 20 cm (8"). Since the next wingspar was located 40 cm (16") farther aft, it was purposed to attach the landing gear here, but this introduced the problem of having the landing gear too far aft and thus the plane could tip forwards on takeoff, destroying the propeller. To compensate for this, brakes from a Ju 88 were installed, 70 kg (154 lbs) of ballast was added just ahead of wingspar number 3 and the tail control surfaces had 20 mm (3/4") of corrugated plate added. The third test took place on April 16, 1944 on the 700 meter (2300') Brandis landing strip. The plane traveled 500 meters (1640') without the tail lifting, although a small, brief hop was achieved. On the fourth and final test, the jump was longer, and the AS-6 became airborne, but an immediate bank to the left due to the torque of the engine became evident. The small span wings were too short to compensate for the engine's torque. The pilot recommended a more powerful engine and more wind tunnel tests, and Arthur Sack went back to the drawing board for the remainder of the war. 

During the summer of 1944, JG 400, who flew the rocket-powered Messerschmitt Me 163B "Komet", was moved to Brandis. They found the AS-6 there and tried to fly it, but the only attempt resulted in a collapsed landing gear leg. The AS-6 was damaged in a strafing attack during the winter of 1944-45, and was broken up to salvage the wood. All that was left was the miscelleneous metal parts, and these were thrown into the aircraft salvage area. In all probability, this is why American troops who entered the Brandis air base in April 1945 found no traces of the Sack AS-6.


----------



## gekho (May 25, 2011)

A contender to Specification 0.22/26 calling for a high-speed shipboard reconnaissance-fighter capable of being flown with either wheel or float undercarriage and suitable for catapult operation from cruisers and larger warships, the S.10 Gurnard was awarded a two-prototype contract. One of the prototypes, the Gurnard I, was to be powered by a 525hp Bristol Jupiter X nine-cylinder air-cooled radial engine, and the other, the Gurnard II, was to have a 525hp Rolls-Royce Kestrel IIS water-cooled 12-cylinder Vee-type engine. A single-bay biplane of metal construction with fabric skinning, the Gurnard had an armament of one fixed forward-firing 7.7mm machine gun and a similar-calibre weapon on a Scarff ring for the second crew member. The Gurnard II was the first to fly, on 16 April 1929, as a floatplane, the Gurnard I following in landplane form three weeks later, on 8 May. Both prototypes were tested at the A&AEE, but the Hawker Osprey was selected in preference and no production of the Gurnard was ordered. The Gurnard II was flown - commencing on 15 June 1931 - as an amphibian with a single main float.


----------



## gekho (May 25, 2011)

The Fokker XB-8 was a bomber built for the United States Army Air Corps in the 1920s, derived from the high-speed Fokker O-27 observation aircraft. During assembly, the second prototype XO-27 was converted to a bomber prototype, dubbed the XB-8. While the XB-8 was much faster than existing biplane bombers, it did not have the bomb capacity to be considered for production. Two YB-8s and 4 Y1B-8s were ordered, but these were changed mid-production to Y1O-27 configuration. The wing of the XB-8 and XO-27 was built entirely from wood, though the fuselage was constructed of steel tubes covered with fabric. They featured the first retractable landing gear ever fitted to an Army Air Corps bomber or observation craft. It competed against a design submitted by Douglas Aircraft Company, the Y1B-7/XO-36. Both promised to greatly exceed the performance of the large biplane bombers then used by the Army Air Corps. However, the Douglas XB-7 was markedly better in performance than the XB-8, and no further versions of Fokker's craft were built.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## gekho (May 25, 2011)

In 1937, Messerschmitt began Projekt P. 1064, a study for a long-range reconnaissance aircraft, and took basic design of the Bf 110 twin-engine heavy fighter as its basis. The P. 1064 had a long, slim fuselage with two wing-mounted engines. Planned from the outset as a record-breaking aircraft, after becoming convinced that the aircraft was capable of taking the world long-distance flight record, the Air Ministry approved the project and gave it the designation of 8-261.

The intended goal of the project was for a completed example of the aircraft to carry the Olympic Flame from Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany (site of the 1936 Winter Olympics) to Tokyo, Japan for the 1940 Summer Olympics in what would be a record-breaking nonstop flight (5870mi / 9445km). The plan captured the imagination of Adolf Hitler at an early stage in its design and in tribute, the aircraft carried the unofficial name: Adolfine. The Me 261 incorporated a number of features which were highly advanced for its day. The single-spar all-metal wing was designed to serve as a fuel tank and its depth at the wing root was only slightly less than the height of the fuselage. The fuselage itself was of virtually rectangular section, with space for five crew members, consisting of two pilots seated side-by-side with the radio operator, directly behind in the front compartment while a navigator and a flight engineer were housed in the rear fuselage under a stepped, glazed station.


----------



## Milos Sijacki (May 25, 2011)

Interesting airplane projects. I never heard about most of these. I really like the Heinkel He-119. Very interesting looking airplane that was.


----------



## rochie (May 25, 2011)

great thread, keep them coming


----------



## Gnomey (May 25, 2011)

vikingBerserker said:


> I love this thread!


 
Don't we all. Keep them coming.


----------



## vikingBerserker (May 26, 2011)

The Sack AS-6 was an interesting bird.


----------



## gekho (May 26, 2011)

Early service use of the Douglas SBD Dauntless had convinced the US Navy of its capability as a dive-bomber: its later wartime record, in such actions as the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 1942) and the Battle of Midway (June 1942), merely provided confirmation. Long before that date, however, the US Navy had initiated the procurement of a more advanced dive-bomber, leading to the development by Douglas of a two-seat aircraft in this category, of which two prototypes were ordered by the US Navy in June 1941. 

Designated Douglas XSB2D-1 Destroyer, the first prototype made its initial flight on 8 April 1943. But instead of being ordered into production, it was used as the basis of a new aircraft which the cut-and-thrust of war in the Pacific had shown to be more essential. As the XSB2D-1, the prototype was a clean and purposeful-looking two-seat dive-bomber, introducing an internal bomb bay and, for the first time for an aircraft to operate from an aircraft-carrier, retractable tricycle landing gear. The US Navy's new requirement was for a single-seat torpedo/dive-bomber, and the XSB2D-1 was modified for this new role by conversion to a single-seat cockpit, the addition of two wing-mounted 20mm cannon, enlargement of the bomb bay and the provision of increased fuel capacity. Airbrakes were installed in each side of the fuselage, and the big Wright Cyclone 18 engine of the XSB2D-1 was retained to give the requisite high performance. 

A contract on 31 August 1943 increased earlier orders for this aircraft, designated BTD-1 and retaining the name Destroyer, to 358. Deliveries of production aircraft began in June 1944, but only 28 had been delivered before contract cancellation was initiated soon after VJ-Day. The Destroyer's performance was disappointing and, so far as is known, the type was not used operationally. Two aircraft were provided experimentally with a mixed powerplant, a 680kg thrust Westinghouse WE-19XA turbojet being fitted in the rear fuselage and fed with air through a dorsal inlet aft of the cockpit. Thus designated XBTD-2, the aircraft were the first jet-powered machines of Douglas and the US Navy. A first flight was made in May 1945, but at speeds over 322km/h the downward-angled turbojet could not be used. The project was cancelled in late 1945.


----------



## gekho (May 26, 2011)

In response to an Air Corps request for twin-engine attack aircraft, the Stearman Co. designed and built the X-100. The Army specifications called for an aircraft capable of carrying 1,200 pounds of bombs for 1,200 miles at a speed of at least 200 mph. Five companies completed design studies: Bell, Douglas, North American, Martin and Stearman. The Bell design never got past the design phase, but the other four designs were built at company expense and submitted to the Army for flight testing. Besides the Stearman X-100, Douglas built its Model 7B, Martin built the Model 167F and North American built its Model NA-40. 

The Douglas 7B and North American NA-40 both crashed during testing -- the Douglas aircraft in January 1939 and the North American NA-40 in April of the same year. The Army wasn't satisfied with any of the other aircraft and requested new designs from all five companies. The Army Air Corps eventually bought the Stearman X-100 and designated it XA-21 with serial number 40-191.

The XA-21 was equipped with 1400-hp radial engines and carried a normal crew of three: pilot, bombardier and gunner/radio operator. The plane had nine .30-cal. machine guns for defense and carried a maximum bomb load of 2,700 pounds. The most unusual feature of the XA-21 was the large greenhouse cockpit enclosing both the pilot and bombardier's compartments. This design aided in streamlining but severely restricted the pilot's forward vision by making him look through the bombardier's compartment glass. The Air Corps tested the XA-21 with the original configuration, but ordered a change to a more conventional nose glass arrangement with separate glass for the pilot and bombardier.


----------



## gekho (May 26, 2011)

The Horton Ho IX twin-jet tailless fighter-bomber, of which two prototypes were flown before the end of the war, was of extremely advanced design, which benefited from considerable experience gained by the brothers Reimar and Walter Horten in the development of flying-wing aircraft, of which the majority were gliders. Designed by Sonderkommando 9, starting in 1942, the first prototype Ho IX VI was found to be unable to accommodate the two intended BMW 109-003-1 turbojets owing to an unforeseen increase in engine diameter, and it was therefore flown as a glider at Oranienburg during the summer of 1944. The redesigned Ho IX V2 was fitted with two Junkers 109-004B-1 turbojets and flown successfully at Oranienburg, demonstrating speeds of up to 960km/h before it was destroyed while making a single-engine landing. Such promise encouraged the RLM to instruct Gothaer Waggonfabrik to assume development of the design, and a third prototype, the Go 229 V3, was produced with 1000kg thrust Jumo 109- 004C turbojets, but was prevented from flying by the end of hostilities in May 1945. Work had also started on the two-seat Go 229 V4 and Go 229 V5 night-fighter prototypes, the Go 229 V6 armament test prototype, and the Go 229 V7 two-seat trainer, No progress had been made on 20 pre-production Go 229A-0 fighter-bombers, on order at the end of the war, that were intended to carry two 1000kg bombs and four 30mm MK 103 cannon.


----------



## gekho (May 26, 2011)

The origin of the Me 264 design came from Messerschmitt's long-range reconnaissance aircraft project, the P.1061, of the late 1930s. A variant on the P.1061 was the P.1062 of which three prototypes were built, with only two "engines" to the P.1061's four, but they were, in fact, the more powerful Daimler-Benz DB 606s, each comprising a pair of DB 601 inverted V-12 engines, themselves derided by Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering as "welded-together engines" in August 1942. In early 1941, six P.1061 prototypes were ordered from Messerschmitt, under the designation Me 264. This was later reduced to three prototypes.

The progress of these projects was initially slow, but after Germany had declared war on the United States, the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM) started a more serious programme for a very long range bomber, with the result that a larger, six-engine aircraft with a greater bomb load was called for. To meet this demand, proposals were put forward for the Junkers Ju 390, Focke-Wulf Ta 400 and a six-engine Messerschmitt Me 264B. As the Junkers Ju 390 could use components already in use for the Ju 290 this design was chosen. The Me 264 was not abandoned however as the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) separately demanded a long-range maritime patrol and attack aircraft to replace the converted Fw 200 Condor in this role. As a result, the two pending prototypes were ordered to be completed as development prototypes for the Me 264A ultra long-range reconnaissance aircraft.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## vikingBerserker (May 26, 2011)

I always loved the way that one looked.


----------



## Gnomey (May 26, 2011)

Reminds me a bit of the B-29.

Good stuff!


----------



## gekho (May 26, 2011)

The Cant z.511 Long Range Cargo Hydroplane was first designed by Fillipo Zappata. The first flight took place in Monfalcone (Trieste, north-eastern Italy) in October 1940. It’s first operational start took place in February 1942 (Italian territory). The phase of study for the construction of this huge four-engined, double-floated hydroplane (the largest of its category in the world) started at the end of September 1937, when the technical department of CRDA accepted the order of Compagnia Ala Littoria, who requested a long range hydroplane for mail, cargo and passengers link with Latin America. After two years of hard work, the project manager Filippo Zappata and his team were ready with the first prototype. This aircraft – strong and beautiful, able to carry (in theory) 16 passengers to a destination of more than 5.000 km away, flew in October 1940 giving good impressions in spite of its dimensions and its imperfect engines’ setting up (after he had tested some national engines, Zappata asked the High Command the permission to purchase six U.S. Wright Cyclone R-2600A propellers: due to the worsening of the diplomatic relationship between Rome and Washington, his request was not accepted).

The CANT Z.511 was then provided with four Piaggio P.XII RC.35 1500 hp engines, the only ones to guarantee acceptable performances on an aircraft weighing 34 tons. In April 1941, the prototype flew from Monfalcone to Grado (far from theunsafe Yugoslavian border) for other trials. On January 1942, the hydroplane had to be employed on different long range routes, as the war against the United States prevented the civil use of CANT Z.511 in the Atlantic area. The ideas were actually original and unusual. Among the projects taken into consideration, were plans to free fifty Italian soldiers and pilots imprisoned in Jeddah by Arab-English forces; to bomb some Russian ports on the Black Sea (Bathumi and Poti), on the Caspian Sea (Baku), or British bases on the Persian Gulf (Oil ports in Bahrein). Some had the odd idea of a spectacular mission (taking off from Bordeaux and twice supplying from German supply-submarines) in the skies of New York, launching one ton of tri-coloured leaflets. Some others thought about a non-stop Rome-Buenos Aires raid (8000 km!). None of these projects were carried out. And it was a real pity, since the test pilot, Mario Stoppani succeeded in taking off and landing fully loaded in very rough seas and 1.5 meter high waves with winds blowing at 55-65 kph during the last trials at the end of February – beginning of March 1942,


----------



## Airframes (May 26, 2011)

Good stuff, and some rather advanced-looking types for the period.


----------



## vikingBerserker (May 26, 2011)

Nice!!


----------



## gekho (May 27, 2011)

The Heinkel He 100 story starts in 1933 with the Reichsluftsfahrtministerium (Reich Air Ministry, or RLM) competition to produce the first modern fighter for the re-forming Luftwaffe. Four designs were submitted; Arado's Ar 80, Focke–Wulf's Fw 159, Heinkel's He 112 and the Messerschmitt Bf 109. All four planes were tested competitively in early 1936 with interim engines, and the Ar 80 and Fw 159 were quickly eliminated. Both the 112 and 109 were considered worthy of further testing, and orders were sent out for 15 additional aircraft from both companies. Although Heinkel was considered the favorite to win the contract, the more modern and better performing 109 won over the Flight Acceptance Commission. By late March of 1936 the 109 was considered the favorite. At that point Heinkel was allowed to redesign the 112, which resulted in the largely all–new 112B. The 112B was considerably improved and was as good or better than the 109, but the 109 won anyway. 

The 112 had a few problems that lost it the competition. The first was that the airframe was rather complex; it included a large number of compound curves and its elliptical wing was labor intensive. The RLM was looking to produced hundreds of planes, so cost in both dollars and manhours was a factor. The prototypes also suffered from a series of accidents, even if they weren't related to problems with the plane they still left a bad taste in the mouth. But the biggest problem for the 112 was that after learning that Supermarine had started series production of the Spitfire, the Luftwaffe was desperate to get a modern fighter into squadron hands. Heinkel might have won the competition had the B model been available in early 1936, but by the time they were ready in the second half of the year the 109 was already in series production. 

Nevertheless some small scale contracts for the plane were finally secured with a variety of air forces in Europe and Japan. Thirty were bought by Japan, but twelve of these were used briefly by the Luftwaffe during the Sudetenland Crisis. Another nineteen were then sold to Spain where they served long careers. Thirty were sold to Romania, they served in combat in 1941 but were quickly worn out. Finally three more B's were sold to Hungary as the vanguard of a license production series that never took place. By 1939 production of the He 112 ended, and it appeared that Heinkel was out of the fighter business. 

Even by early 1936 the RLM became interested in a new fighter that would leap beyond the performance of the Bf 109 as much as the 109 had over the biplanes it replaced. There was never an official project on the part of the RLM, but Roluf Lucht felt that new designs were important enough to ask both Focke–Wulf and Heinkel to provide "super–pursuit" designs for evaluation. Since the super–pursuit type was not an official recommendation, it was possible that Heinkel would be told to stop work on the project. Thus the work was kept secret, in a company Memo No.3657 on January 31st this was made clear; "The mockup is to be completed by us... as of the beginning of May... and be ready to present to the RLM... and prior to that no one at the RLMis to know of the existence of the mockup." 

Walter Günter —one of Heinkel's most talented designers— looked at the 112 and decided that nothing more could be done with it. He started over with a completely new design known as "Projekt 1035". Learning from past mistakes on the 112 project, the design was to be as easy to build as possible while still offering good performance. That good performance was set at an astounding 700km/h (435mph). Keep in mind that fighters with this sort of performance didn't appear on the battlefield until 1944. To ease production the new design had considerably fewer parts than the 112, and those that remained contained considerably few compound curves. In part count the 100 was made of 969 unique parts and was held together with 11543 rivets, in comparison the 112 had 2885 parts and 26864 rivets. The new straight-edged wing was a source of much of the savings, after building the first wings Otto Butter reported that the reduction in complexity and rivet count (along with the Butter brothers's own explosive rivet system) saved an astonishing 1150 man hours per wing. 

In order to get the promised performance out of the plane, the design included a number of drag reducing features. On the simple end was a well–faired cockpit, the absence of struts and other draggy supports on the tail, and fully retractable gear (including the tailwheel) which were completely enclosed in flight. These and similar changes applied to the 109 for the F model would boost performance of that plane 50km/h. The engine was mounted directly to a strong forward fuselage as opposed to internal struts, so the cowling was very tight fitting and as a result the plane has something of a slab sided appearance. The design used a shorter wing than the 109, trading altitude and turn performance for speed. In order to provide as much power as possible from the DB 601 engine, the 100 used exhaust ejectors for a small amount of additional thrust. In addition the supercharger inlet was moved from the normal position on the side of the cowling to a location in the leading edge of the left wing, where the clean airflow improved the ram-air effect and increased boost. 

For the rest of the designed performance increase, Walter turned to the risky method of cooling the engine via surface evaporation. Inside the engine the fluid is kept under pressure which stops it from boiling even though it's allowed to heat above its normal boiling point, the fluid is then run to cavity with lower pressure where it quickly starts to boil and releases steam. Since steam contains considerably more energy than the same temperature water, if you can remove the steam you can remove a lot of heat. The stream can be cooled by allowing it to condense in a series of pipes inside the plane. With no external openings at all, it's basically a zero-drag cooling system. On the down side the system is complex and hard to maintain. Worse, it greatly increases the chance of killing the engine in combat due to a "radiator hit" on the now much larger cooling system. Other designs would attempt to use the same sort of design, but invariably returned to conventional radiators due to the complexity. A number of people had already tried the system and given up on it, but Heinkel had good experiences with it on their He 119 high speed bomber project and decided to press ahead. 

In the Heinkel system —designed by Jahn and Jahnke— the engine was run at 110 Celsius and the superheated fluid was then sprayed into the interior of a centrifugal compressor, allowing the pressure to drop and steam to form. The water, being heavier, was forced to the outside of the pump by centrifugal force and returned to the engine. The weight of the water forced the steam into the only available space, the inside of the pump, where it was removed. The steam was then allowed to flow into a series of tubes running on the inside surface of the leading edges of the wings, where it would condense back into water and be pumped back to the engine. A number of pumping systems were tried, and eventually a system of no less than 22 small electric pumps (all with their own failure indicator lamp in the cockpit) was settled on.


----------



## gekho (May 27, 2011)

Unlike the cooling fluid, oil cannot be allowed to boil. This presents a particular problem with the DB 601 series of engines, because of a particular design technique that results in a considerable amount of heat being transfered to the oil as opposed to the coolant. To cool the oil a small semi-retractible radiator was fitted under the wing. This radiator was later replaced on some of the prototypes with a system in which the oil was sent to a heat exchanger where it boiled methyl alcohol to carry away the heat. The alcohol was then cooled in a similar fashion to the engine fluid, by running it to tubes on the top surface of the rear fuselage and leading edge of the vertical stabilizer. Walter was killed in a car accident on May 25th, 1937, and the design work was taken over by his twin brother Siegfried, who finished the final draft of the design later that year. The wing started out flat and then bent upwards about 1/3rd along the span, and the portions inboard of the bend were thicker to hold the wheels. The gear retracted inward and thus were wide set when opened, resulting in a significant improvement in ground handling over the 109. The rear of the fuselage sloped down to the tail from a point at about eye level at the rear of the cockpit, so while it didn't have the visibility of the 112's bubble, it was still significantly better than the 109. A small retractable radiator was added for running on the ground where the surface cooling system wouldn't work. The plane was small, slightly smaller than the 112 that spawned it, and considerably lighter. 

At the end of October the design was submitted to the RLM, complete with details on prototypes, delivery dates, and prices for three planes delivered to the Rechlin test center. At this point the plane was being referred to as the He 113, but the "13" in the name was apparently enough to prompt Ernst Heinkel to ask for it to be changed to the He 100 (even though it had previously been given to Feiseler). In November Messerschmitt took the speed record for landplanes in a modified 109. In response Ernst Heinkel made plans to use the He 100 design as a record setting plane (less serious plans for this appear to have been in the works all along). Much of the fuselage was as smooth as it could get, so the modifications were limited to the canopy and a newer set of much shorter wings. The racing version would need another airframe, so a fourth prototype was added to the series. In a December meeting at the Heinkel factory with Ernst Udet and Roluf Lucht the plans were changed slightly. V1 through V3 were to be used for testing and record attempts, V3 sporting the clipped wings. V4 was to a testbed for series production. The RLM went ahead with the plan, due in no small part to Udet's (Generalluftzeugmeister, Minister for Aircraft Production in the RLM) plans to fly the plane in a series of record attempts. 

Throughout the prototype period the various models were given series designations (as noted above), and presented to the RLM as the basis for series production. The Luftwaffe never took them up on the offer. Heinkel had decided to build a total of 25 of the planes one way or the other, so with 10 down there were another 15 of the latest model to go. In keeping with general practice, any series production is started with a limited run of "zero-series" machines, and this resulted in the He 100D-0. The D-0 was similar to the earlier C models, with a few notable changes. Primary among these was a larger vertical tail in order to finally solve the stability issues. In addition the cockpit and canopy were slightly redesigned, with the pilot sitting high in a large canopy with excellent vision in all directions. The armament was reduced from the C model to one 20mm MG/FF-M in the engine V firing through the propeller spinner, and two 7.92mm MG17's in the wings close to the fuselage. The three D-0 planes were completed by the summer of 1939 and stayed at the Heinkel Marienehe plant for testing.

The final evolution of the short He 100 history is the D-1 model. As the name suggests the design was supposed to be very similar to the pre-production D-0's, the main planned change was to enlarge the horizontal stabilizer. But the big change was the eventual abandonment of the surface cooling system, which proved to be too complex and failure prone. Instead an even larger version of the retractable radiator was installed, and this appeared to completely cure the problems. The radiator was inserted in a "plug" below the cockpit, and as a result the wings were widened slightly. While the plane didn't match it's design goal of 700km/h once it was loaded down with weapons, the larger canopy and the radiator, it was still capable of speeds in the 400mph range. A low drag airframe is good for both speed and range, and as a result the He 100 had a combat radius between 900 and 1000km compared to the 109's 600km. While not in the same league as the later escort fighters, this was at the time a superb range and may have offset the need for the 110 to some degree. By this point the war was underway, and as the Luftwaffe would not purchase the plane in its current form, the production line was shut down.


----------



## gekho (May 27, 2011)

On 22 November 1941, the Army Air Corps signed the development contract for an XB-35; the contract included an option for a second aircraft, which was exercised on 2 January 1942. The first was to be delivered in November 1943, the second in April of the next year. Detailed engineering began in early 1942. A fuselage-like crew cabin was to be embedded inside the wing; it included a tail cone protruding from the trailing edge. This tail cone would contain the remote sighting stations for the gunners in the production model. In the rear of the cabin, there were folding bunks for off-duty crew on long missions. The aircraft's bombload was to be carried in six small bomb bays, three in each wing. This design precluded the carrying of large bombs, including early atomic bombs. Production aircraft would have defensive armament of 20 .5 in (12.7 mm) machine guns or 20 mm cannon, carried in seven turrets, three on the aircraft's centreline and four above and below the outer wings. The B-35 would take advantage of a new aluminium alloy devised by Alcoa; it was considerably stronger than any alloy used previously.

In June 1946, the XB-35 made her first flight, a 45-minute trip from Hawthorne, California to Muroc Dry Lake, with no problems. The XB-35's engines and propellers were Army Air Force property, and had not been tested for engine-propeller Compatibility by either Pratt Whitney, Hamilton Standard, or by the AAF which bought them at Wright Field without testing them or assuring reliability, and then shipped them to Northrop. Microfilmed records of reports and correspondence of the XB-35 program relate that after three or four flights powerplant-propeller vibrations increased, and the very efficient countra-rotating propellers began failing with frustrating frequency. Meetings were called by Northrop, of the AAF, Pratt Whitney and Hamilton Standard where no one would take responsibility for correcting the AAF's engines and propellers. In addition the AAF failed to supply the AC electrical alternator, insisting on Northrop using an automotive engine powered unit which limited the high-altitude, high-speed XB-35 to test flights below 15,000 feet. The AAF also refused to allow Northrop proposed modification of the bomb bays to carry the standard Mk 3 atomic bomb, while at the same time declaring the AF would not buy the bomber unless it could carry the A-bomb. Northrop reluctantly agreed to try a single-rotation propeller which slightly increased takeoff distance and reduced rate of climb and maximum speed.

Problems with the driveline continued until finally Jack Northrop himself grounded the XB-35s until the government would fix their propulsion system. Concurrently, the AAF ordered Northrop to modify two of the YB-35 airframes into YB-49s, essentially just substituting eight jet engines in place of four reciprocating engines, and the airframe promptly flew to more than 40,000 feet and topped 520 mph in flight tests, verifying the XB-35 airframe's aerodynamics, but at the price of range. The prop-version had a design range capable of reaching targets 4,000-miles away, but the jet-engine version's range was cut in half. The new version disqualified it for the Air Force's top priority mission as a strategic bomber, which at that time meant striking at the USSR's industrial and military complexes in the Ural Mountains. The Air Force, itself involved in a confusion of rank and job changes, eventually cancelled the XB-35 project, while continuing testing the B-35 airframe in the YB-49, even ordering 30 of the jet-powered airframes after the first YB -49 crashed. The first and second XB-35s were scrapped on 23 and 19 August 1949, respectively.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## vikingBerserker (May 27, 2011)

Interesting read on the B-35


----------



## Gnomey (May 27, 2011)

Good stuff!


----------



## gekho (May 29, 2011)

The Fairey Spearfish was a 1940s British torpedo bomber designed and built by Fairey Aviation for the Fleet Air Arm. It was one of the largest single-engine aircraft to ever operate from a British aircraft carrier. The Spearfish was designed by Fairey Aviation to Admiralty Specification O.5/43. Having learned the lessons of the Barracuda, the Spearfish had a much more powerful engine and an integral ASV anti-submarine radar (the external installation on the Barracuda caused problems with longitudinal stability). Problems with the Bristol Centaurus engine delayed the first flight until 5 July 1945.

Only five aircraft were built before victory over Japan in August. After the end of the war and the proposal for a more advanced turboprop anti-submarine aircraft (which became the Gannet), further work on the project was stopped and an order for 152 production aircraft cancelled. The Admiralty refused to accept the Spearfish for service use. The aircraft had such heavy controls that in bad weather a pilot circling a carrier while waiting to land was forced to fly such a wide circuit that he could not keep the carrier in sight.


----------



## Gnomey (May 29, 2011)

Nice shots!


----------



## vikingBerserker (May 29, 2011)

Wow, that must have been like trying to fly a bus.


----------



## gekho (May 30, 2011)

The Atlantic Aircraft Corporation of Teterboro, New Jersey was the American subsidiary of the Holland-based Fokker aircraft manufacturing company. It manufactured some Fokker-designed commercial airliners in the United States. Among these were Fokker's series of pioneering high-winged monoplane airliners. Atlantic submitted a monoplane design in response to a 1927 Army competition for a successor to the Martin-designed NBS-1 bomber. A single prototype was ordered under the designation XLB-2. The serial number was 26-210. The XLB-2 was developed from the Fokker series of monoplane transports, and had the distinction of being the first USAAC bomber designed as a monoplane. It was powered by a pair of 410hp Pratt Whitney R-1340 Wasp radials suspended underneath the high cantilever wing. A crew of five was carried. The bombardier position was housed inside a glazed area in the lower nose. A pair of 0.5-inch machine guns were mounted in each of two open defensive gunner positions, one situated in the extreme nose and the other in a dorsal position on the upper rear fuselage. A single gun could be fired through a position in the lower rear fuselage. A 2050 pound load of bombs could be carried. The aircraft was later fitted with a pair of 525 hp R-1690-1 radials, which raised the maximum speed from 116 mph to 123 mph. However, the performance of the XLB-2 was not much better than that of existing Army biplane bombers. In addition, the Army was quite reluctant to consider such radical innovations as cantilever monoplane designs, and the XLB-2 was not ordered into production.


----------



## gekho (May 30, 2011)

Just one week before the outbreak of World War II, Germany flew the world's first jet aircraft. That plane was the Heinkel He-178 which, had its development been pushed, might have altered the course of history. The first successful flights of the world's first turbojet-propelled airplane took place over a German forest on August 24 and 27, 1939, with Luftwaffe Captain Erich Warsitz at the controls. The tiny Heinkel HeS38 jet engine that powered the He-178 produced only 838 pounds of static thrust. But that was enough to push small single-seat monoplane to a speed of well over 400 miles per hour. Thus, even in its earliest test flights this remarkable aircraft demonstrated performance superior to that of many operational fighters.

The Heinkel jet engine was the brainchild of a brilliant young German scientist named Pabst von Ohain, who was only 25 years old when the He-178 made aviation history. The aircraft itself was designed by Heinkel engineers, working under the personal direction of Ernst Heinkel, head of the Heinkel aircraft manufacturing company. That firm financed the development of the He-178 without either the knowledge or financial support of the Nazi government. The 4,400-pound Heinkel He-178 was literally built around the Ohain engine. It had a barrel shaped 24½-foot-long metal fuselage,with stubby 23½-foot wooden wings mounted high on its sides. The aircraft utilized the conventional three-point retractable landing gear, rather than tricycle configuration which was later adopted for other jets.

Despite the He-178's spectacular performance, the German Air Force at first showed scant interest in the plane. It wasn't until October 1939 that high-ranking air force officers agreed to inspect it, and although the He-178 clearly had great potential, it was never produced in quantity. Slow to push development work, the German Air Force didn't have an operational jet fighter plane until August 1944, too late to have a decisive effect on the outcome of World War II. Nevertheless. through the foresight of Ernst Heinkel and the brilliant engineering of Pabst von Ohain, the He-178 ushered in the jet age.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## gekho (May 30, 2011)

The Republic XP-72 was an American prototype interceptor fighter developed as a progression of the P-47 Thunderbolt design. The XP-72 was designed around the Pratt Whitney R-4360 twenty-eight cylinder radial air-cooled engine with a supercharger mounted behind the pilot and driven by an extension shaft from the engine. The armament consisted of six 0.5 in wing-mounted machine guns and underwing racks for two 1,000 lb bombs. The XP-72 development paralleled that of another Republic design, the XP-69 that was to be powered by an experimental forty-two cylinder Wright R-2160 radial engine mounted behind the pilot and driving contra-rotating propellers through an extension shaft. The XP-69 was intended for high altitude operations and featured a pressurized cockpit and armament of two 37 mm cannon and four 0.5 in machine guns. As the XP-72 displayed greater promise than the XP-69, the XP-69 was canceled on 11 May 1943 and an order for two XP-72 prototypes was placed on 18 June 1943.

The XP-72 flew for the first time on 2 February 1944, equipped with a four-bladed propeller. The second prototype was completed on 26 June 1944 and was equipped with an Aero-Products contra-rotating propeller. As the XP-72 displayed exceptional performance during flight tests an order for 100 production aircraft was awarded. The order included an alternate armament configuration of four 37 mm cannon. By this time the war had progressed to where the need was for long-range escort fighters and not high-speed interceptors. Also, the advent of the new turbojet-powered interceptors showed greater promise for the interceptor role. Thus, the production order for the P-72 was cancelled.


----------



## gekho (May 30, 2011)

Two prototypes were created by attaching an extra pair of inner-wing segments onto the wings of basic Ju 90 and Ju 290 airframes, and adding new sections to lengthen the fuselages. The first prototype, the V1, (bearing Stammkennzeichen code of GH+UK), was modified from a Junkers Ju 90V6 airframe (werke number J4918, civil registration D-AOKD) from July 1940 to April 1941, then to the Luftwaffe as KH+XC, from April 1941 through April 1942, then returned to Junkers and used for Ju 390 V1 construction). It made its maiden flight on 20 October 1943 and performed well, resulting in an order for 26 aircraft, to be designated Ju 390 A-1. None of these were actually built by the time that the project was cancelled (along with Ju 290 production) in mid-1944.

The second prototype, the V2 (RC+DA), was longer than the V1 because it was constructed from a Ju 290 airframe (using the fuselage of Ju 290A1 werke number J900155). The maritime reconnaissance and long-range bomber versions were to be designated the Ju 390 B and Ju 390 C, respectively. It has been suggested that the bomber could have carried the Messerschmitt Me 328 parasite fighter for self-defense, and some test flights are believed to have been performed by a Ju 390 prototype equipped with the anti-shipping PC 1400 Fritz X guided glide bomb.


----------



## gekho (May 30, 2011)

The Curtiss XP-62 was the final propeller-driven fighter built by its manufacturer and the second largest single-seat fighter of orthodox layout developed during World War II, its dimensions being exceeded only by the Boeing XF8B naval fighter. The XP-62 was ordered by the USAAF on 27 June 1941 as a vehicle for the 1715kW Wright R-3350 radial engine. Initial plans called for delivery of one XP-62 and one XP-62A and later for 100 production P-62 fighters, but it was clear almost from the beginning that the design was overweight, underpowered, and an uneconomical alternative to continued Curtiss production of the P-47G Thunderbolt. Because it would be an effective testbed for dual-rotation propellers and a pressurized cabin, it was decided on 18 July 1942 to proceed with a sole airframe, the remaining machines on order being cancelled. 

Development of the XP-62's cabin pressurisation system was delayed and the aircraft did not fly until early 1944. By then even the XP-62's value as a test ship was marginal and the programme was terminated after a few hours' flying time. Though the unbuilt XP-71 and the jet XF-87 still lay ahead, the great days of Curtiss as a leading fighter manufacturer were now to become history.


----------



## vikingBerserker (May 30, 2011)

Great info!


----------



## ThunderThud (May 30, 2011)

Very interesting thread, Thanks for sharing with us!


----------



## Airframes (May 30, 2011)

I agree, keep it coming !


----------



## gekho (May 31, 2011)

The result of talks between Junkers and Lufthansa in December 1938, the Ju 252 (EF 77) was eventually to replace the Ju 52/3m. After a somewhat protracted development, due mainly to changes made by Lufthansa, the V1 flew in October 1941. The V1 was a 35 passnger pressurized airliner with exceptional performance, however this aircraft was ordered into production by the RLM as an armed transport. Junkers had some difficulty integrating armrament into the design but eventually managed to do so. Even though this aircraft was a substantial improvement over the Ju 52, it's production order was cancelled. Only a fifteen or so airframes that were in production at the time of the cancellation were completed. Junkers was ordered to adapt the design to use non strategic materials and the result was the Ju 352.


----------



## gekho (May 31, 2011)

The end of World War II, together with orders placed for the competing Convair B-36, sealed the fate of the piston-engine B-35, but foreseeing this possibility Northrop received approval from the USAF to modify two of the YB-35s to jet power. Redesignated YB-49, the first of these flew on 21 October 1947 with eight 1814kg thrust Allison J35 engines; the second had six 2540kg thrust Allison engines, four buried in the wings and two in underslung pods. Many complimentary reports on the YB-49 were filed by air force officers, and the service was convinced of the advantages of the all-wing configuration, but in June 1948 the second YB-49 was destroyed with the loss of its five man crew in a crash attributed to structural failure. 

In spite of this the US Air Force ordered 30 modified RB-49A aircraft, one of which was to be built by Northrop and, because of that company's other commitments, 29 by Consolidated Vultee, but this order was later cancelled to provide extra funds for the B-36. The YB-35 programme continued for a while with various test airframes, but in October 1949 the whole programme was cancelled and the aircraft were scrapped. Sole survivor was the six-jet YB-49A, but just four years later this was broken up.


----------



## gekho (May 31, 2011)

The Siebel Si 201 was a German air observation post and army co-operation aircraft designed and built by Siebel. Evaluated against other types the Si 201 did not enter production and only two prototypes were built. Designed to meet a requirement for an air observation post and army co-operation aircraft the Si 201 first flew in 1938. Evaluated against the Fieseler Fi 156 and Messerschmitt Bf 163. The Fi 156 was ordered into production and only the two prototype 201s were built. The Si 201 was a high-wing braced monoplane with a tail-wheel landing gear. Powered by an Argus As 10C mounted above the wing and driving a pusher propeller. It had a boxy, fully glazed forward fuselage with room for a pilot and observer in tandem.


----------



## gekho (May 31, 2011)

No information found


----------



## gekho (May 31, 2011)

During the late spring of 1942, the Junkers-Dessau project office was instructed by the Reich Air Ministry (RLM) to investigate the possibility of redesigning the structure of the Junkers Ju 252 transport to make maximum use of non-strategic materials,[2] replacing the Junkers Jumo 211F engines of the Ju 252 with Bramo 323R radial engines. The result followed closely the aerodynamic design of the Ju 252 but was an entirely new aircraft. The wing of the Ju 352 was similar in outline to that of the Ju 252 but, mounted further aft on the fuselage, was entirely of wooden construction. The Ju 352 also had a similar Trapoklappe (rear loading ramp) to that of the Ju 252. The ramp allowed the loading of vehicles or freight into the cargo hold while holding the fuselage level.

In general, the Ju 352 was considered a major improvement over the original Junkers Ju 52 but noticeably inferior to the Junkers Ju 252. Deliveries of the Ju 352 had only just begun to get into their stride when, during the summer of 1944, the worsening war situation resulted in the decision to abandon the further production of transport aircraft, and in September the last two Ju 352A's rolled off the assembly line, 10 pre-production Ju 352's and 33 production Ju 352's having been manufactured. Several developments of the basic design were proposed before production was halted, these including the Ju 352B with more powerful engines and increased defensive armament.


----------



## gekho (Jun 1, 2011)

The XP-42 was a modification of the fourth production P-36A (S/N 38-004) and tested the use of streamlined engine cowling to reduce the drag of a radial engine. The long tapered cowling had a cooling air scoop under the engine and carburetor air scoops on top. An extension shaft was necessary to drive the propeller which had a large spinner to further reduce drag. The cowling didn't significantly reduce drag and the engine had continuing cooling problems even though numerous cowlings were tested. The XP-42, late in its test life, was fitted with a moveable horizontal stabilizer similar to a modern jet's stabilator and flown to gather test data on the modification.


----------



## gekho (Jun 1, 2011)

In 1942, John K. Northrop conceived the XP-79 as a high-speed rocket-powered flying-wing fighter aircraft. In January 1943, a contract for three prototypes designation XP-79 was issued by the United States Army Air Forces. To test the radical design, glider prototypes were built. One designated MX-324 was towed into the air on 5 July 1944 by a P-38 making it the first rocket-powered aircraft built by America to fly. Originally, it was planned to use a 2,000 lbf (9 kN) thrust XCALR-2000A-1 "rotojet" rocket motor supplied by Aerojet that used monoethyl aniline and red fuming nitric acid; because of the corrosive and toxic nature of the liquids, the XP-79 was built using a welded magnesium alloy monocoque structure (to protect the pilot if the plane was damaged in combat) with a ⅛ in (3 mm) skin thickness at the trailing edge and a ¾ in (19 mm) thickness at the leading edge. However, the rocket motor using canted rockets to drive the turbopumps was unsatisfactory and the aircraft was fitted with two Westinghouse 19-B (J30) turbojets instead. This led to changing the designation to XP-79B. After the failure of the rocket motor, the first two prototypes were canceled. The pilot controlled the XP-79 through a tiller bar and rudders mounted below; intakes mounted at the wingtips supplied air for the unusual bellows-boosted ailerons.

The XP-79B (after delays because of bursting tires and brake problems on taxiing trials on the Muroc dry lake) was lost on its first flight 12 September 1945. While performing a slow roll 15 minutes into the flight, control was lost for unknown reasons. The nose dropped and the roll continued with the aircraft impacting in a vertical spin. Test pilot Harry Crosby attempted to bail out but was struck by the aircraft and fell to his death. Shortly thereafter, the project was canceled.


----------



## gekho (Jun 1, 2011)

The Curtiss XP-55 Ascender is perhaps best known of the three pusher fighters built for a 1941 competition in response to US Army 'Request for Data R40-C' dated 20 February 1940 (the others being the Vultee XP-54 and Northrop XP-56). A flying wing in most respects, albeit with a small fuselage and a canard foreplane (with only the horizontal portion of this surface forward of the wing), the XP-55 went through numerous design changes at Curtiss's St Louis, Missouri, plant and, like its competitors, was long-delayed getting into the air although it eventually carried out a test programme which involved four airframes. Curtiss built a full-scale flying testbed, the company Model CW-24B, powered by an 633kW Menasco C65-5 engine. The fabric-covered CW-24B went to a new US Army test site, the ultra-secret airfield at Muroc Dry Lake, California, for 1942 tests. These revealed serious stability problems which were only partly resolved by moving its vertical fins farther out from their initial mid-way position on the swept-back wing. 

The full-sized XP-55 fighter was ordered in fiscal year 1942, based on the proven 1100kW Allison V-1710-F23R engine being used for the first time as a pusher. The XP-55 used a single rotation, three-bladed propeller instead of the co-axial, contra-rotating type which had been planned and which was, in fact, employed with the parallel Northrop XP-56. The first of three XP-55 aircraft was delivered on 13 July 1943 and underwent early flights at Scott Field, Illinois. It was found that excessive speed was required in the take-off run before the nose-mounted elevator could become effective. Before this problem could be addressed, the first machine was lost during spin tests at St Louis on 15 November 1943, the pilot parachuting to safety. 

The second XP-55 was flown in St Louis on 9 January 1944. The third followed on 25 April 1944 and, soon after, went to Eglin Field, Florida, for tests of its nose-mounted 12.7mm machine-guns. The XP-55 had the advantage of being constructed largely from non-strategic materials and for a time a jet version, the company Model CW-24C, was contemplated. But lingering problems, including generally poor stability, remained unsolved when the third XP-55 was returned to Wright Field, Ohio, for further tests continuing into 1945. On 27 May 1945, at a Wright Field air show and bond rally attracting a crowd of more than 100,000, the third XP-55 took off to give a public flying display. Captain William C. Glascow flew across the field leading five other fighters in formation. Glascow made one roll before the crowd, began another, and suddenly dived into the ground inverted. The pilot was thrown from the wreckage but suffered mortal injuries, while a nearby motorist was also killed. Few aircraft contributed more to advancing technology while remaining trouble-plagued and failing to reach production. The second XP-55 has survived and is among numerous historically valuable air-frames held by the Smithsonian Institue's National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.


----------



## vikingBerserker (Jun 1, 2011)

Very cool. The Ju 252/352 always looked really odd to me.


----------



## Gnomey (Jun 1, 2011)

Cool stuff!


----------



## N4521U (Jun 1, 2011)

gekho said:


> The Curtiss XP-55 Ascender is perhaps best known of the three pusher fighters built for a 1941 competition in response to US Army 'Request for Data R40-C' dated 20 February 1940 (the others being the Vultee XP-54 and Northrop XP-56). A flying wing in most respects, albeit with a small fuselage and a canard foreplane (with only the horizontal portion of this surface forward of the wing), the XP-55 went through numerous design changes at Curtiss's St Louis, Missouri, plant and, like its competitors, was long-delayed getting into the air although it eventually carried out a test programme which involved four airframes.
> 
> So what's so amazing about the Rutan designs??? Just the fact he made them to stay in the air?? I did the graphics on a Long Easy many years ago, and got to fly in it and take the controls. WOW>


----------



## gekho (Jun 2, 2011)

he Pegas (Pegasus) was conceived as a light bomber and strike aircraft for use against enemy tank and mechanized infantry units, Tectinobgicai simplicity and low cost allowing mass production were the main requirements. Hence the aircraft was made of wood, plywood and cheap high-carbon steel. Designed under the leadership of Maj. Gen. Dmitny L Tomashevich, the prototype was completed in January 1943 at aircraft factory No 288. State acceptance trials were completed in June 1943 and showed that Hie aircraft had poor maneuverability, low survivabiiity and took more than average pilot to master it. Hence, logically enough, It was not recommended for production. 

There is an anecdote on how one of the test pilots took it out for a flight, saw a column of German armor, and actually destroyed a Tiger tank using the Pegas. He was about to be reprimanded for it, until reports from the front line came in describing in detail what had happened.


----------



## gekho (Jun 2, 2011)

James Martin, broadly responding to Specification F.5/34 for a fighter using an air-cooled engine for hot climates, designed a fighter using the simple basic structure employed and developed in his earlier MB1. Constructed of steel tubing, the MB2 incorporated many detailed improvements which further simplified production as well as repair and maintenance. Powered by a special Napier Dagger III HIM 24-cylinder H-type engine of 805 nominal bhp, but capable of operation at 13 lb boost to give over 1,000 hp for takeoff, driving a fixed-pitch, two-blade propeller, the MB2 was capable of 300+ mph speeds "on paper." The undercarriage was fixed but cleanly faired in two trouser-type fairings, the port one carrying the oil-cooler. A retractable undercarriage to improve performance was "in the works" when the design was abandoned. The fuselage lines were square cut and exceptionally clean, with almost constant depth from nose to tail. An unusual feature, at that time, was that the fuselage was slightly longer than the span of 34 ft 6 in, a feature retained in later Martin-Baker designs, which contributed to good stability and control in yaw. The MB2 was the first British fighter to carry eight wing-mounted .303 Browning machine guns.

One of the hallmarks of Martin-Baker designs was the simple but efficient installation of main systems. The clean and orderly cockpit was set well back, allowing a good view downwards behind the wing. A crash post was fitted, which automatically extended to minimise structure damage and injury to the pilot in the event of a nose-over landing. A small, tapered tailplane was mounted on the top of the fuselage well forward of the stern post, while the fin and rudder combination was roughly triangular in side elevation. This arrangement placed most of the effective rudder area below the tailplane, thus providing an adequate balance to the keel surface and assuring good recovery from spins. In initial MB2 configurations, there was no fin and the rudder was mounted on the fuselage but lateral stability was unsatisfactory, with the fixed fin added later.

The MB2 was first flown by Captain Valentine Baker at Harwell on 3 August 1938 and initially tested with markings M-B-1 (G-AEZD not carried). "The Aeroplane" stated, "in spite of its fixed undercarriage, the MB2 had a performance as good as that of contemporary fighters and a capacity for quick and cheap production by the simplicity of its structure and easy assembly". Repair and maintenance were also simple, and these factors might have influenced the authorities towards putting the MB2 into production when the country's fighter strength was disproportionately low. The MB.2 was subsequently acquired by the Air Ministry in June 1939 as P9594 and returned to A&AEE for a second assessment after modifications were made to tail control surfaces. The MB2 also spent some time at the AFDU, RAF Northolt, before returning to Martin-Baker late in 1939, where it still survived in December 1941, although probably flown little or not at all after the outbreak of war.

Around this time Martin was considering various other ideas, both for complete aircraft and for certain components. The aircraft designs included a twin-engined 12-gun fighter and a twin-engined multi-seat transport, both featuring the finless layout of the early MB2 airframe. In the fighter design, the trailing edge of the engine nacelles provided additional vertical control surfaces, and also incorporated the patented ducting system evolved by Martin to reduce drag caused by the engine exhaust. The most promising of the concepts became the MB3 which would eventually spawn the superlative MB 5 prototype.


----------



## vikingBerserker (Jun 2, 2011)

Excellent info.


----------



## Gnomey (Jun 2, 2011)

Nice stuff!


----------



## Airframes (Jun 2, 2011)

Keep 'em coming !


----------



## Crimea_River (Jun 3, 2011)

I agree. That MB sure won't win any beauty contests.


----------



## gekho (Jun 3, 2011)

This exciting float plane was actually a follower of the previous type with which the airplane was Cannot Z.501. Chief Engineer Factory CRDA Filippo Zappa, was inspired by seaplane design B-5190 Bleriot, a French production, and built an airplane very similar to just this machine. The first test flight of the prototype took place on the 17th November 1936 and test pilot flew the machine Mario Stoppani. This prototype has been designated civil registration number I-VECC. During zalétávání Regia Aeronautica ordered production of the three machines that were identified by production numbers (MM322, MM323, MM324). Since July 1937 the Army conducted another test in Vigna di Valle and successfully ended 20th December 1937. Immediately afterwards, the Regia Aeronautica include machines manufactured in its state. All three machines manufactured, used between 1937 and 1938 in the state 171.squadriglie, stationed at the base of La Spezia. In 1939, the machine přemístněny school in Taranto marine survey during 1940 and gradually phased out.

The aircraft was having three Cannot Z.508 monoplane of mixed construction, the wing struts placed at the top of the fuselage was wood and the rest of the structure was a mixture of metal and duralumin. The plane had two floats, placed on the wing struts. Driven by a trio of inline engines dvanáctiválcových Isotta Fraschini Asso XI RC.40 performance of 860 hp. Armament consisted of two mobile Breda-Safat machine guns 12.7 mm machine guns and two floating Breda-Safat caliber 7.7 mm. Machine guns were placed in the dorsal turret and a tower placed in the middle of diesel engine nacelle on the wing.


----------



## vikingBerserker (Jun 3, 2011)

I will say the Italians made some beautiful flying boats.


----------



## Gnomey (Jun 8, 2011)

That they did...


----------



## gekho (Jun 13, 2011)

On 17 May, 1946, Bell Aircraft announced that 'experimentation with the use of sweptback wings in an effort to reach the ultimate goal of man-carrying flight beyond the speeds of sound has passed from the high-speed wind-tunnel stage to the use of full-scale aircraft'. This announcement marked the first stage development of the US Navy research swept-back wing experimental programme. To do so, two P-63 airframes were diverted for modification: one was an XP-63N with 379 hours of flight time and received the model designation L-39-1; the other was a P-63A-9-BE and received the model designation L-39-2. The main modification consisted of mounting P-63E-like outer wing panels with 35 degrees sweep-back. The main undercarriage was not retractable but the nose wheel was still retractable. To modify the centre of gravity position, ballast was installed in the rear fuselage. But it was later discovered that this ballast was insufficient and it was decided to change the four-blade propeller for a lighter three-blade one (from a P-39Q). After further tests, the fuselage was lengthened by four feet, a large ventral fin was added and wing slots installed in the wing leading-edges.

The maiden flight of the L-39-1 was made on 23 April, 1946, at Niagara Falls Airport with A M 'Tex' Johnston, Bell test pilot, at the controls. After several other test flights, the aircraft was ferried to NACA Langley Research Center on 22 August, 1946, by L W Grey. Meanwhile the L-39-2 had been flown by Johnston. This aeroplane was equipped with an automatic fuel equalizer designed to maintain a constant position of centre of gravity during flight. Both aircraft were used to correlate previous wind-tunnel experiments and were also used for various other experiments. For example, in August 1946, L-39-2 was fitted with a circular arc aerofoil developed for the future Grumman XS-2F Tracker. All tests were halted on 26 August, 1946, and the entire programme was withdrawn. L-39-2 was sent to Langley on 11 December, 1946, and both aircraft were transferred to NACA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, on 12 December, 1949. The two airframes were eventually sold as scrap in 1955.

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## gekho (Jun 13, 2011)

The Consolidated TBY-2 Sea Wolf was the production version of the XTBU-1 torpedo bomber developed by Vought at the same time as the Grumman Avenger. The XTBU-1 was very similar to the Avenger, although with a less 'chunky' appearance. The first prototype flew on 22 December 1941, and was delivered to NAS Anacostia in March 1942. This placed it several months behind the Avenger, which had made its maiden flight in August 1941, and a first production order had been placed as early as December 1940.

Although the XTBU-1 was 30mph faster than the Grumman design it suffered from several disadvantages. The first was that the Avenger was already in production by the time the prototype XTBU-1 reached Anacostia. With their wings folded the XTBU-1 took up more space than the Avenger, reducing the number that could be carried on each carrier. Finally Vought's own production facilities were fully occupied building F4U Corsairs. The Navy sat on the XTBU-1 for well over a year, before deciding to put it into production after all. In September 1943 Consolidated Vultee received an order to built 1,100 of the redesignated TBY-2 Sea Wolf at their new factory at Allentwon, Pennsylvania.

The TBY-2 carried more guns than the XTBU-1, gaining two more fixed 0.50in guns for a total of three, to go with the 0.30in ventral gun and the 0.50in gun in the powered dorsal turret. It could carry bombs or a torpedo in its internal bomb bay, and was equipped with four zero-length stubs for 5-inch rockets under each wing. Search radar was carried, with the antenna housed in a radome on the leading edge of the right wing. Production of the new aircraft was slow. The first Sea Wolf didn't make its maiden flight until 20 August 1944, eleven months after the contract was placed, while the first delivery to the navy didn't come until 7 November 1944. After only 180 aircraft had been completed production was cancelled. None of the existing aircraft were used in combat, instead being allocated to training units based in the United States.


----------



## Gnomey (Jun 13, 2011)

Interesting stuff!


----------



## vikingBerserker (Jun 14, 2011)

I agree!


----------



## gekho (Jun 16, 2011)

The plane was specified by S.28/43 requiring single-board single-attack fighter. The aircraft followed the previous ones Firebrand , which was subsequently replaced. From his predecessor, he left almost unchanged aft fuselage, underwent modifications to the cab area and got a new airplane wing, broken in W, which was equipped with air brakes for dive. The first flight carried out the first prototype RT651 April 1947. He was then still standing VF172 third prototype, second prototype was completed RT656. The aircraft is then extensively tested and formed another airplane project, driven by different engines. But it was decided to give priority to airplanes with turbine engines, such as the Westland Wyvern , none of them realized. Both prototypes were abolished in 1950.


----------



## gekho (Jun 16, 2011)

he Curtiss XBTC-1 (Model 96) was a low-wing monoplane with retractable tailwheel landing gear which used a 2,200 hp (1,641 kW) Wright R-3350 radial engine. It was entered in a 1943 United States Navy competition against the Douglas XBTD-1 Destroyer II, Martin XBTM-1 Mauler, and Kaiser-Fleetwings XBTK-1. The BTC-2 should have used the Pratt Whitney R-4360 engine, but problems with the Wright engine led to the further development of the BTC-2. Despite its power and "first-class performance and weapon-carrying capacity", it lost to the XBT2D-1 (redesignated as the AD-1 Skyraider) and the BTM-1 (similarly redesignated AM-1) Mauler, which were already building. Two VBTC-2s were built, each having a different wing. The "Model A" had a standard wing and flaps; the "Model B" featured a full span Duplex flap wing with a straight trailing edge and a swept-back leading edge. Both had the 3,000 hp (2,237 kW) Pratt Whitney XR-4360-8A equipped with contrarotating propellers. The planes were delivered to the Naval Air Test Center at Patuxent River, Maryland (USA), in July 1946. One plane crashed in February 1947 the other in August 1947. The United States Army Air Force assigned the designation A-40 to a proposed 'de-navalised' version of the XBTC; however, the USAAF decided not to acquire any further single-engine attack aircraft and the project was cancelled.


----------



## Gnomey (Jun 16, 2011)

Good stuff!


----------



## vikingBerserker (Jun 17, 2011)

I agree, keep them coming.


----------



## Wayne Little (Jun 17, 2011)

Interesting....


----------



## Airframes (Jun 17, 2011)

Great stuff !


----------



## imalko (Jun 17, 2011)

Agree with all, some really interesting stuff in this thread. I had some pictures of indigenous Yugoslav aircraft (both pre- and post-war) which never made it beyond prototype stage (or were only experimental aircraft) and would fit to this thread I think, but due to my recent computer hard disc crash I lost all of it. If I compile and/or scan some new ones I'll post them here.


----------



## gekho (Jul 17, 2011)

The Gallaudet DB-1 was designed as a day bomber and was the only Air Service aircraft to be assigned a DB (Day Bombardment) Type XI designation. Two aircraft were built for testing; the first was delivered in late 1921. Ground tests revealed problems with the flight control system and serious structural problems with the wings. Adding to the DB-1's problems was its excessive weight -- more than a ton over its design gross weight. The aircraft never advanced past the ground test phase and never flew. The DB-1B was a redesign of the basic DB-1, lighter and more structurally sound. The DB-1B flew a few times beginning on Aug. 1, 1923.

The DB-1, although unsuccessful, was quite advanced for its time. The wing had no external bracing -- wires or struts -- but structural design knowledge at the time was not sufficiently advanced to prevent problems like skin buckling from the stress of control surface movements. The single wing bomber design would not be tried again for about five years and not used on a production aircraft for another 10 years. The design speed of 144 mph would have made the DB-1 as fast as the pursuit aircraft in service at the time.


----------



## gekho (Jul 17, 2011)

In early 1942 the U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics (BuAer) was planning the replacements for the Curtiss SB2C Helldiver dive bomber and the Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bomber. The aircraft was to carry the torpedo in an internal bomb bay. By late 1943 it became obvious that the proposed VBT design like the Douglas SB2D had drastically increased in size and weight. Therefore the U.S. Navy was initiating a smaller dive bomber design. The BuAer recognized the engineering workload for the major wartime programs and therefore assigned the design to companies without a major wartime production. BuAer selected Fleetwings at Bristol, Pennsylvania (USA), which was acquired by Henry J. Kaiser in 1943.

The XBK dive bomber program was initiated in February 1944 with a contract for two prototypes. To keep the airplane size down it was decided that all stores would be carried externally. A radar could be carried underneath the left wing. The dive brakes were of the lower and upper picket fence type at the inboard wing trailing edge. The horizontal tail was mounted on the tail fin above the fuselage. This feature avoided empennage buffet when the dive brakes were open. Unusual was the placement of the engine exhausts almost aft of the cockpit. It was hoped that this feature would significantly decrease drag.

A mockup inspection without engine was carried out in April 1944 while the engine was installed in May 1944, with completion of the first prototype scheduled for November 1944. To speed up later production the U.S. Navy even constructed a new airfield at the Fleetwing plant. In early 1945 BuAer requested that the plane would be able to carry a torpedo. The weapon was fitted to a new centreline station and the designation was changed to XBTK. The first XBTK-1 was finally completed in March 1945, making its first flight on 12 April 1945.

The flight testing revealed inadequate engine cooling and severe fuselage vibration. Resolution of these problems and the replacement of the R-2800-22W engine, which was already out of production, by the -34 delayed restart of flight trials until July 1945. The aircraft was delivered to the the US Navy Naval Air Test Center (NATC) at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland (USA), in August 1945 for evaluation. After the end of the Second World War the US Navy cut orders from 20 to 10 aircraft. NATC recommended replacement of the novel exhaust system with a more normal system, as the cockpit temperature was very high and cockpit egress and access after an engine shutdown was extremely difficult. It also noted that stall performance was poor, particularly with power off. It was noted, however, that diving characteristics were superior to any dive-bomber in service or under development. The plane was transported back to Fleetwings where redesign began. The second production aircraft first flew in March 1946 and featured built-in leading edge slots which greatly improved the stall performance of the aircraft. However, by early 1946 procurement of new planes was drastically cut down and the BTK found its role already filled by the Douglas AD Skyraider and Martin AM Mauler. In May 1946 it was decided to complete five airframes already in production. Continued testing revealed problems when the aircraft was spun, and the US Navy finally terminated the contract on 3 September 1946, as there was no need for the aircraft anymore. The five prototypes were scrapped.


----------



## gekho (Jul 17, 2011)

Among the many Italian aircraft manufacturers, during World War II, the majority (such as Savoia-Marchetti and Caproni) designed and built mixed-construction aircraft, or, in the case of CANT, completely made of wood. While Fiat and Macchi built more advanced aircraft, they still tended to have conventional, often obsolete structures, even if of all-metal construction. Only Reggiane and Piaggio mastered advanced, all-metal structures. Of them, Piaggio tended to explore the innovative concepts. The Piaggio P.119 was one of the best examples of these projects. The '5' series fighters are well known, especially the Fiat G.55 and the Macchi C.205, but there were two other fighters on the same level, the Caproni-Vizzola F.6 and the Piaggio P.119, both of which did not enter production.

The P.119 was designed (in 1939), to minimise drag by fitting the engine in mid-fuselage in a similar layout to the P-39 Airacobra. It was hoped to improve maneuverability by positioning the engine near the aircraft's centre of gravity, which would also allow a heavy nose-mounted armament. In 1940, Piaggio still had to solve three major issues: contra-rotating propellers, power transmission, and engine cooling.Giovanni Casiraghi, chief designer of Piaggio, tried to solve the first issue with the P.118 fighter, but without success. It was intended to be powered by two Piaggio P.XI RC 40 engines, each connected to a propeller, but it was not built. The P.119 was built instead and first flew at the end of 1942. Three different configurations were studied before one was chosen.

The machine was flight tested, but it was found that firing all the weapons produced excessive vibration. A landing accident slightly damaged one wing on 2 August 1943. One month later, the armistice brought an end to the project. All in all, the P.119 was an interesting and somewhat mysterious aircraft, for many years it was totally unknown to the public. It was not sent to Guidonia for official evaluation. Performance could have been very good. The engine and the weapons were built under foreign license, but they could have been called 'authentic' in respect to the German DB 605 engine and 20 mm MG 151 guns mounted in the '5' series fighters. Performance was good enough to compete with other Italian fighters - endurance was much better. However, the aircraft was not ready until eight months after the other '5' fighters, and this was catastrophic for the program. Apparently, this machine was not rated officially by the Regia Aeronautica, and MM.496 was the only one built. Apart from this, the range, endurance and overall visibility were superior, and the performance and weaponry were not so different. But the P.119, with its technical problems, would never have been in a condition to show any capability as an operational aircraft, the only Axis mid-fuselage engined fighter was swiftly forgotten.


----------



## gekho (Jul 17, 2011)

With an airframe fundamentally similar to that of the R-36, the R-37 differed primarily in having a closecowled 1100hp Gnome-Rhone 14N-21 14-cylinder radial engine. Cooling air reached the engine via a narrow annulus, was mixed with exhaust gases and ejected through two groups of nozzles to provide some thrust augmentation. The proposed armament consisted of four 7.7mm or two 13.2mm machine guns mounted in the wings. Although the R-37 was displayed statically at the Salon de Bruxelles in July 1939, no attempt had been made to fly this prototype before the German occupation of Belgium in May 1940. The R-37 was discovered at Evere by the occupation forces and a Luftwaffe pilot - possibly unaware that the aircraft had not previously been flown - flew the aircraft to Beauvechain. There is no record of any subsequent flight testing, although it is known that the R-37 was taken to Germany. Prior to the German occupation, Alfred Renard had prepared a project for a two-seat version, the R-37B, for use as a ground attack aircraft.


----------



## gekho (Jul 22, 2011)

In November 1940, Nikolai Polikarpov proposed a heavy cannon-armed fighter for bomber escort duties and ground attack missions. The new ITP was designed around either the 1,230 kW (1,650 hp) Klimov M-107P or the Mikulin AM-37 inline engines. Two armament configurations were planned. The first consisted of a 37-millimetre (1.5 in) cannon firing through the propeller hub and two synchronized 20-millimetre (0.79 in) ShVAK cannon mounted on each side of the fuselage nose. The 37 mm cannon was provided with 50 rounds and the ShVAK had 200 rounds each. The second configuration substituted an additional ShVAK with 200 rounds for the 37 mm cannon. It had racks for eight unguided RS-82 rockets underneath the wings.

The ITP was a low-wing, mixed construction monoplane with a wooden monocoque fuselage made from 'shpon', molded birch plywood. The two-spar metal wing was built in three sections with automatic leading edge slats. The engine radiators were built into the wing center section with intakes in the wing roots while the oil cooler was located under the engine. The curved, one-piece windshield lacked a flat front panel which gave the pilot a rather distorted view. The conventional undercarriage, including the tailwheel, was fully retractable. It carried 624 litres (137 imp gal; 165 US gal) of fuel in tanks between the spars of the wing center section. The rear fuselage, cockpit and tail resembled that of the Polikarpov I-185. The first ITP prototype (M-1) was completed in October 1941 with a 1,300-horsepower (970 kW) M-107P engine. Due to German attacks, the aircraft was evacuated to Novosibirsk and did not make its first flight until 23 February 1942. The M-107P engine proved unreliable and was changed to a M-107A in late 1942. The 37 mm gun was deleted in exchange for another 20 mm gun mounted on the side of the fuselage. Flight testing was not completed because the airframe was used for ground static testing, but the estimated maximum speed at 6,300 metres (20,669 ft) was 655 km/h (407 mph) with a time to 5,000 metres (16,404 ft) of 5.9 minutes. The second ITP prototype (M-2) was built in 1942 and fitted with a Mikulin AM-37 engine which also proved unreliable and was replaced with a 1,345 kW (1,800 hp) Mikulin AM-39 that December. It first flew on 23 November 1943 but the manufacturer's flight tests were not completed until June 1944. Since several other aircraft with about the same level of performance were already available, it was not placed into production.


----------



## Gnomey (Jul 28, 2011)

Good stuff!


----------



## gekho (Jul 31, 2011)

The Koolhoven F.K.49 was a photographic survey aircraft built in the Netherlands in 1935. It was a high-wing cantilever monoplane of conventional design with twin engines carried in nacelles on the leading edges. Usually fitted with fixed, tailwheel undercarriage, a floatplane version was also developed. The aircraft carried an onboard darkroom. Three examples were purchased by the Dutch Army, but only one of these was ever delivered, the other two were destroyed before completion when the Koolhoven factory was bombed by Germany on 10 May 1940. Others were purchased in small numbers by Turkey, Hungary, and Finland.

The sole example delivered to the Dutch Army was eventually used as a general utility type, serving as an air ambulance, parachute trainer, and general transport. The Turkish F.K.49A, powered by Fairchild Ranger engines, had a short service life before the engines caught fire in flight, resulting in a fatal crash. The Finnish Coast Guard (Merivartiolaitos) ordered two examples with floats and powered by Hirth engines. The first of these was delivered via Sweden in 1940, and gave continuous engine trouble; it was withdrawn from service after only 18 hours of flight time, and the second one ordered was never delivered.


----------



## vikingBerserker (Jul 31, 2011)

That is one I've never heard of, excellent!


----------



## Gnomey (Jul 31, 2011)

Good stuff!


----------



## gekho (Sep 12, 2011)

On November 8, 1938 the U.S. Navy placed a contract with the Bell Aircraft Corporation for a single prototype of the company's Model 12 fighter (which was developed for the Army Air Corps as the XP-39). The Navy was not yet ready to consider the use of aircraft with tricycle-landing gear (such as was found on the XP-39) on its aircraft carriers, and the prototype (designated the XFL-1) was therefore to have a tailwheel undercarriage. Other changes included the use of underwing radiators, installation of an arrestor hook, enlarged vertical surfaces and restressing of the airframe for carrier operations. First flight of the XFL-1 took place on May 13, 1940. Problems with the Allison engine delayed delivery of the Airabonita to the U.S. Navy until February 1941, and then undercarriage trouble caused the aircraft to fail its carrier qualification trials. By December 1941, the XFL-1 was back with Bell in New York for modifications, but Navy interest in the type waned quickly after the start of the war and further development of the type was cancelled.


----------



## herman1rg (Sep 12, 2011)

Good stuff


----------



## Gnomey (Sep 13, 2011)

Interesting stuff!


----------



## gekho (Oct 31, 2011)

The Vultee engineering team decided early in the design process to build the XA-41 (company Model 90) around the 3,000 hp Pratt Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major four-row, 28-cylinder radial engine. The Model 90's large wing resembled the earlier A-31 Vengeance wing, with its straight leading edge, forward-tapered trailing edge and pronounced dihedral on the outer wing panels. Designed to carry both a large internal load and external stores, the XA-41 was large for a single-engine aircraft. The single-place cockpit, set in line with the wing root, was 15 ft (4.6 m) off the ground when the airplane was parked. As operational priorities shifted during its development phase, the original order for two XA-41 prototypes was cancelled, although the USAAF pressed for the completion of one prototype as an engine testbed for the R-4360 (the same engine used by the Boeing B-50).

Flying for the first time on 11 February 1944, the sole XA-41 (S/N 43-35124) proved to have good performance with a maximum speed of 354 mph reached in testing and "superb maneuverability, being able to out-turn a P-51B Mustang." However, with the reduction in military orders due to the approaching end of the war, no production contract was placed, and the aircraft was used as an engine testbed for the USAAF as well as being evaluated by the U.S. Navy in comparison with other contemporary attack aircraft, especially the Douglas AD-1 Skyraider and Martin AM-1 Mauler. After its Navy trials, the XA-41, bearing civil registration NX60373N, was consigned to the Pratt Whitney division of United Aircraft to continue engine tests. These continued until 1950 before the XA-41 was scrapped.


----------



## gekho (Oct 31, 2011)

The Fiat BGA (Bombardamento Genio Aeronautico) was an airplane designed by Aldo Guglielmetti of the Italian Air Force. It was built at Pisa by the Fiat subisdary Costruzioni Meccaniche Aeronautiche SA (CMASA), hence it was also called the CMASA BGA. It was not ordered into production and only one was built. Designed by Aldo Guglielmetti to meet a 1934 Italian Air Force requirement for a medium bomber it first flew in 1936 powered by two Fiat A.80 radial engines. It had a retractable tailwheel landing gear with the main gear retracting into the engine nacelles.[1] It had twin elliptical fins and rudders and had a cut-down fuselage to the rear of a ventral and dorsal gun positions. It did nor perform well during testing and was removed from the contest with only the prototype being built.


----------



## gekho (Oct 31, 2011)

The AUT.18 was a prototype fighter aircraft developed in Italy by Aeronautica Umbra shortly before the outbreak of World War II. It was designed in 1934 by Ing Felice Trojani, who at that time was collaborating with Umberto Nobile on the Arctic flights of the airships Norge and Italia. The aircraft's designation came from initials of the manufacturer, the surname of the designer, and the aircraft's wing area (18 m²), the sole prototype receiving the serial no. M.M.363. The fighter had an all-metal structure, covered in duralumin. It featured inwardly-retracting undercarriage, and a retractable tailwheel. Unlike other Italian fighters of the period, its two machine guns were mounted in the wings, rather than in the fuselage. The aircraft made its first flight, un-painted, on 22 April 1939 and was then transferred to Guidonia to participate in comparative tests with other fighters built to the Progetto R ("Project R") specification. On 20 February 1940, the aircraft was returned to Foligno for modifications, including a more streamlined cowling for the radial engine, returning to Guidonia on 21 June. The AUT.18 had in fact embodied the aims of Progetto R - the modernisation (riammodernamento) of the Regia Aeronautica. However, due to bureaucratic delays in the delivery of the aircraft (the Macchi MC.200 had already completed its first flight in 1937), the fact that the fighter did not offer performance significantly greater than others already available, and above all, for political reasons, the Regia Aeronautica did not order the aircraft into series production when the prototype was delivered to them on 5 November. Of the destiny of the prototype, little is known. Trojani thought that it had been transferred to Germany for evaluation trials after the Armistice, but it is believed more likely that it was destroyed in a raid after its transfer to Orvieto. Others think that it was captured by the Allies for study. It is noted that the British Royal Air Force were already aware of the aircraft in 1936 and numbered it amongst known Italian types.


----------



## Gnomey (Oct 31, 2011)

Good stuff!


----------



## vikingBerserker (Nov 1, 2011)

I agree!


----------



## gekho (Nov 4, 2011)

Almost certainly the first aircraft built specifically as an engine test bed. Folland, General Aircraft and Percival submitted proposals to the Air Ministry complying with Specification 43/37, Folland won the contract and 12 aircraft were produced in 1940, s/n P1774 to P1785. A pilot and two observers were accommodated in a large cabin with complete instrumentation for monitoring engine performance in flight.

Nicknamed the "Folland Frightful" the test beds were fitted with a vast range of high-powered engines, including the 24-cylinder Napier Sabre, the 14-cylinder Bristol Hercules (pictured here), the 18-cylinder Bristol Centaurus, the 12-cylinder Rolls-Royce Griffon, and their sub-versions. Five aircraft were lost between April 28, and September 18, 1944, while the last surviving aircraft was struck off charge on March 17, 1945. 

Source: Folland 43/37 - engine testbed Folland Fo.108


----------



## herman1rg (Nov 5, 2011)

Thats would be a good one to build models of!


----------



## midget77 (Nov 6, 2011)

Thank you. You share lots of interesting information.


----------



## gekho (Dec 8, 2011)

The Curtiss A-18 Shrike was the service-test version of the XA-14 twin-engined ground attack aircraft. Like the XA-14 it was of all-metal construction apart from fabric covers on the movable control surfaces and the rear of the wing. The two crewmen were carried in rather widely separated cockpits. On the XA-14 part of the reason for the gap had been to make space for the internal fuselage bomb bay, but on the A-18 the bombs were carried in two bomb bays in the wings, each capable of carrying 200lb of bombs, while more bombs could be carried under the wings. The main change made to the A-18 was the use of Wright Cyclone R-1820-47 engines and three-bladed propellers. The more powerful engines compensated for an increase in gross weight of over 1,000lb and gave the A-18 a top speed of 247mph, 4mph faster than the XA-14.

The US Army placed an order for thirteen Y1A-18 service test machines on 23 July 1936 (Y1 indicating the use of F-1 funding to pay for the aircraft). These aircraft were delivered in July-October 1937, and were tested by the 8th Attack Squadron of the Third Attack Group. In tests against the single-engined Northrop A-17 the A-18 proved to be slightly faster and have a higher service ceiling, but lacked the range of the A-17, and so did not receive a production contract. The existing Y1A-18s were transferred to the Third Bombardment Group in 1940, to be used for operational training, and as the service test period was over were redesignated as plain A-18s. They remained in use until 1940. Although the A-18 Shrike was not a success itself, the concept of a twin-engined attack aircraft had impressed the Air Corps, and late in 1937 they invited companies to submit designs for an aircraft with twice the range and bomb load of the A-18. Out of this contest came the Martin Maryland, Douglas A-20 Havoc/ Boston and the North American B-25 Mitchell.


----------



## Wayne Little (Dec 9, 2011)

Mmmm...interesting!


----------



## gekho (Dec 17, 2011)

The FR-1 "Fireball" was designed in early 1943 for the US Navy, from a proposal by Admiral J McCain for a composite powered fighter in December 1942. At the time this was seen as the way ahead for the US Navy as early the jet engines had sluggish acceleration which required a long take off run, which was fine on dry land, but understandably gave rise to some concern when using aircraft from carriers. On the 1/2/1943 The Ryan Aeronautical Company was awarded a contract for three prototypes and one static airframe for testing. The first aircraft was ready for it's maiden flight on the 25/6/1944, however it was only powered by it's piston engine for the first two flights with the General Electric I-16 turbojet engine being fitted a few days later. The XFR-1 had excellent performance from it's first flight, with few serious problems being encountered at first. But a shadow fell over the aircraft when on the 13/10/1944 the first prototype disintegrated in midair, when in it's final phase of testing. The problem was traced to the wing rivets, this was over come by doubling the amount of rivets. But the other two prototypes also crashed in testing before they could be modified. On the 2/12/1943 the US Navy ordered 100 FR-1" Fireballs" and later in 1944 ordered an additional 600 aircraft, but after VJ day after only 66 aircraft had been made the order was canceled. Before that and due to the urgency of the Pacific war and the planned invasion of Japan in 1946. On the 1/1/1945 a new squadron was formed VF-66 of carefully selected personnel headed by Lt.Comdr J.F. Gray, with the aim of working up the new FR-1 to operational status ASP for the fleet. Three FR-1s were hoisted aboard the carrier USS Ranger on the 1/5/1945 for tests and by July 1945 the squadron was making preparations for deployment to the Pacific combat zone, this was put on hold when on the 15/8/1945 the war ended. The Navy officially unveiled the Ryan FR-1 to the public on the 26/9/1945.With the end of the war and the cancellation of the order for the FR-1, the Navy continued to test the "Fireball" and Ryan went on to improve the design with the XFR-4, this was done by fitting of a in place of the GE I-16 and reallocating the air intakes from the wing roots to the fuselage sides, just in front of the cockpit, the outcome of this was an increase of around 100 mph in the top speed, only one prototype was made and the Navy were not interested.

Ryan however were not easily put off and started work on the XF2R-1 "Dark Shark" replacing the piston engine with the General Electric XT-31 turboprop engine but keeping the General Electric I-16 in the tail, this made the aircraft around 5' longer than the "Fireball", with it's new nose and increased tail surface the XF2R-1 looks very different from the FR-1, but in essence it was a modified FR-1. The XF2R-1 took to the air in November 1946, it was soon apparent that the g new turboprop engine and 8' Hamilton propellers made a huge differences in performance for carrier operations, but once again the Navy were not interested, having decided by that time that pure jet power would fulfill there needs for the late 1940's and beyond. The USAAF were impressed by the testing of the "Darkshark" at Muroc Dry Lake air base in late 1946, seeing that it could possibly fulfill the specifications for the Convair XP-81, which was then under going evaluation testing at Muroc Dry Lake. The Army asked Ryan to build a aircraft based on the XF2R-1 but with an Westinghouse J-34 turbojet engine instead of the General Electric I-16. The aircraft Ryan designed, the XF2R-2 was a major redesign of the "Darkshark" incorporating the intakes from the XFR-4

Considered by many to be the pinnacle of the mixed-power concept, over coming all the problems with the use of two different types of engine. The XF2R-2 had long range, good performance and a large ordnance capacity it however along with the other American mixed powered aircraft such as the Convair XP-81, Grumman,s XTB3F-1 "Guardian" and the Curtiss XF-15, it would end up being an evolutionary dead end.

Source: Ryan


----------



## gekho (Dec 17, 2011)

The Short Shetland was a British high-speed, long-range, four-engined flying-boat built by Short Brothers at Rochester, Kent for use in the Second World War. It was designed to meet an Air Ministry requirement (defined in Specification R.14/40) for a very-long range reconnaissance flying boat. The design used the company's experience with large scale production of the Short Sunderland. The end of WWII prevented the Shetland from entering production, though it does have the distinction of being the first aircraft designed with a 110 Volt electrical system. Specification R.14/40 replaced an earlier specification R.5/39 which was an up-armed revision of specification R.3/38 for a faster flying boat than the Short Sunderland. Shorts, among others, had tendered a design for R.5/39 but the Ministry had changed their minds about the need for an immediate replacement for the Sunderland. R.5/39 had considered a maximum weight up to 84,000 lb (38,102 kg) - R.14/40 allowed for a maximum takeoff of nearly 100,000 lb (45,359 kg) with a bomb load of 20,000 lb (9,072 kg). The projected engines were the Bristol Centaurus radial or the Napier Sabre inline. Shorts and the other British manufacturer of big flying boats, Saunders-Roe (Saro), were involved in the competitive tender for R.14/40; Saro proposed the Saunders-Roe S.41. Rather than selecting either company's design, the Air Ministry asked the companies to submit a combined project, stipulating the terms under which the work was to be shared between them. The detailed design was performed by Saro, their experience with the "Shrimp" contributing to the hull shape, as well as building the wing. Shorts built the hull and tail and did the final assembly.

The first prototype and what was to be the only Shetland I (Serial Number DX166) first flew on 14 December 1944, piloted by Shorts' Chief Test Pilot John Lankester Parker as captain and Geoffrey Tyson as co-pilot. The aircraft flew without gun turrets (its role having been revised to that of unarmed transport before its maiden flight; it was delivered to the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment (MAEE) at Felixstowe in October 1945. Testing indicated satisfactory water handling but the stabilising floats were mounted too low and did not offer sufficient clearance for takeoffs with maximum load. Flight testing revealed problems with the harmonization of controls and marginal longitudinal stability. Before the trials were complete, the aircraft burnt out at its moorings on 28 January 1946 as a result of a galley fire. With the end of the war, the second prototype (Serial Number DX171) was completed as a civil transport and designated Shetland II. It was designed to carry 70 passengers but only 40 seats were fitted. Registered "G-AGVD," the Shetland Mk.II's first flight took place on 17 September 1947. After trials, it was delivered to Short's factory at Belfast, but no orders were forthcoming and it performed only limited flight trials before being scrapped in 1951.

Source: Short Shetland Flying Boats - Dieselpunks


----------



## herman1rg (Dec 17, 2011)

I found some plans online of both craft built

http://www.seawings.co.uk/shetplanpage.htm


----------



## gekho (Dec 18, 2011)

The Fl 282 Kolibri was an improved version of the Flettner Fl 265 announced in July 1940 which had the same intermeshing rotor configuration as the earlier helicopter. It had a Siemens-Halske Sh 14 radial engine of 150-160 hp mounted in the center of the fuselage, with a transmission mounted on the front of the engine from which a driveshaft ran to an upper gearbox which then split the power to a pair of opposite driveshafts to turn the rotors. The Sh 14 engine was a tried and tested design with a proven track record which only required servicing every 400 hours as opposed to the Focke Achgelis Fa 223 which needed maintenance every 25 hours. The Fl 282's fuselage was constructed from steel tube covered with doped fabric, and it was fitted with a fixed undercarriage.

The German Navy was impressed with the Kolibri and wanted to evaluate it for submarine spotting duties, ordering an initial 15 examples to be followed by 30 production models. Flight testing of the first two prototypes was carried out through 1941, including repeated takeoffs and landings from a pad mounted on the German cruiser Köln. The first two "A" series prototypes had enclosed cockpits; all subsequent examples had open cockpits and were designated "B" series. In case of an engine failure, the switch from helicopter to autorotation was automatic. Three-bladed rotors were installed on a test bed and found smoother than the vibrating 2-bladed, but the concept was not pursued further.

Intended roles of Fl 282 included ferrying items between ships and reconnaissance. However, as the war progressed, the Luftwaffe began considering converting the Fl 282 for battlefield use. Until this time the craft had been flown by a single pilot, but now a position for an observer was added at the very rear of the craft, resulting in the B-2 version.[3] The B-2 proved a useful artillery spotting aircraft and an observation unit was established in 1944 comprising three Fl 282 and three Fa 223 helicopters. Good handling in bad weather led the German Air Ministry to issue a contract in 1944 to BMW to produce 1,000 units. However, the company's Munich plant was destroyed by Allied bombing raids after producing just 24 machines. Towards the end of World War II most of the surviving Fl 282s were stationed at Rangsdorf, in their role as artillery spotters, but gradually fell victim to Soviet fighters and anti-aircraft fire.

Source: Flettner Fl 282 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


----------



## gekho (Dec 18, 2011)

After designing the S.38 four-engined patrol flying-boat to Specification R.5/39, Saro built, as a private venture, a half-scale model as the Saro A.37, often called the Shrimp. The R.5/39 programme did not go ahead, but the Saro A.37 was completed in time to make its first flight in October 1939. Powered by four 63kW Pobjoy Niagara III engines, it was later modified to have a single fin and rudder, and other features representative of the Shetland flying-boat jointly developed by Shorts and Saro. In this guise, it acquired the serial TK580, and was tested from early 1944 until after the war had ended. 

Source: Saunders-Roe A.37 - flying boat


----------



## gekho (Dec 18, 2011)

The Short S.14 Sarafand was a British biplane flying boat built by Short Brothers. It was planned as a general reconnaissance aircraft for military service. When it was built in 1932 it was the largest aircraft that had been built in the United Kingdom. The Sarafand was first proposed by Oswald Short in 1928 as an enlarged development of the Singapore II, to provide transatlantic range capabilitity. Short managed to persuade first his chief designer Arthur Gouge and then the Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Hugh Trenchard (later Viscount Trenchard) of the feasibility of such a large aircraft and Air Ministry specification R.6/28 was drawn up to define the project. It was conducted as a public/private joint venture, the Air Ministry funding it with £60,000 and Short Brothers providing the rest. The aircraft was originally designated the Short R6/28 before being named the Sarafand.

The Sarafand was a six-engined biplane flying boat with equal span wings. Due to the high wing end loads, Gouge specified corrugated steel spars for both upper and lower wings. The six engines, in tractor/pusher pairs, were housed in monocoque nacelles mounted between the wings on integral girders; the central nacelle was further supported by two pairs of splayed struts to the lower wing-roots. The hull, largely constructed of anodised Alclad, had a stainless-steel planing bottom. It had a monoplane tail unit with one large fin and two small auxiliary fins on the tailplane.

Source: Short Sarafand - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


----------



## gekho (Dec 19, 2011)

A helicopter with extremely advanced capabilities for its time, the Fa 223 was fundamentally an extension of the concept which had produced the smaller Fw 61 and employed a generally similar arrangement of twin counter-rotating rotors mounted on outriggers from the main airframe and driven by a fuselage-mounted radial engine. In the case of the Fa 223, however, the engine was installed amidships in the fabric-covered steel-tube fuselage to the rear of the 4-seat passenger compartment. The forward part of this cabin was a multiple-panelled enclosure made up of flat Plexiglas panels, and the aircraft was fitted with a tricycle undercarriage. Usual powerplant was a 1000hp Bramo 323Q3 radial engine.

The Fa 223 actually originated as the Fa 266, ordered in 1938 as a feeder transport helicopter for Deutsche Lufthansa, but by the time the prototype (D-OCEB) was completed in autumn 1939 a new designation confirmed its adoption instead for a military role. Manufacturer's trials with the Fa 223V1 revealed slight instability at the lower end of the speed range, but the helicopter's general handling and controllability were excellent and on 28 October 1940 D-OCEB was flown to a record height of 7100m. Official acceptance trials early in 1942 were followed by an order for one hundred Fa 223E production helicopters; by July a second prototype (D-OCEW) had flown but the ten other Fa 223's completed that year were destroyed by Allied air attack. Further raids in July 1944 destroyed six of the eight additional aircraft then completed and flown, together with all others under assembly. The only other example to be built was one completed at a new Berlin factory set up to build Fa 223's at the rate of four hundred per month for the German armed forces, and by VE-day only three airworthy Fa 223's survived. One of these, flown in September 1945 to the Airborne Forces Experimental Establishment in southern England, became the first helicopter to fly the English Channel, exactly seventeen years after the first rotorcraft crossing by the Cierva C.8L autogiro. Unfortunately, on only its third test flight in Britain, it was written off when it crashed from 18m after a vertical take-off.

Three known examples were completed after the end of World War 2, all from captured or salvaged components. One of these was built, with the assistance of Doktor Heinrich Focke, by the SNCA du Sud-Est in France with the designation SE.3000 and flown on 23 October 1948. The other pair, designated VR-1, were built at the Ceskoslovenske Zavody Letecke (formerly Avia) factory in Czechoslovakia. Uncompleted German wartime projects included proposals to produce a 4-rotor helicopter by joining two Fa 223's together in tandem with a new fuselage centre-section; and the much larger Fa 284 crane helicopter to be powered by two 1600 or 2000hp BMW engines and capable in the latter form of lifting a 7000kg payload.

Source: Focke-Achgelis Fa 223 "Drache" helicopter - development history, photos, technical data


----------



## gekho (Dec 21, 2011)

As a class of vehicle the helicopter had no single inventor, any more than the fixed-wing aeroplane did. Much of the credit for the modern helicopter goes, deservedly, to Igor Sikorsky; but in Britain, France, Italy, Germany and the U.S.S.R. contemporaries of Sikorsky all produced significant designs well before the historic VS-300 had left the ground. High on the short list of helicopter pioneers must come the name of Doktor Heinrich Karl Johann Focke, whose Fw 61 made its first free flight, lasting 28 seconds, on 26 June 1936. This was, coincidentally, exactly one year after the less-publicised flight of the Breguet-Dorand machine, which can thus claim to have been the first really practical helicopter to have flown in Europe. But the Fw 61, once it had begun to fly, rapidly proved itself a much superior machine to the Breguet, not only as regards performance but as a practical basic design capable of much further development. The Focke-Achgelis GmbH was an offshoot of the Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau, established after Focke had been dismissed from the latter company by the Nazis as a political embarrassment. Focke's first experience of rotorcraft construction and operation was gained from building the Cierva C.19 and C.30 autogiros under licence, and then in 1934 he built and flew successfully a scale model helicopter that rose to a height of some 18m. There followed a period of research into, and testing of, rotor and transmission systems before, in 1936, the Fw 61 prototype made its appearance.

Registered D-EBVU, the Fw 61V1 utilised the fuselage and Sh.14A engine of a Focke-Wulf Fw 44 Stieglitz basic trainer, with the tailplane mounted on top of the fin and the propeller cut down to the diameter of the engine cylinders to serve purely as a cooling fan. It gave no assistance to the aircraft in forward flight, though its presence may have led the Hungarian engineer von Asboth to believe that the Fw 61 was really an autogyro, for he vehemently challenged the helicopter records set up by the German machine. Focke confirmed, however, that not only were these all genuine helicopter flights, but that every landing was made vertically. The twin rotors, mounted on steel-tube outriggers on either side of the cabin, were fully-articulated 3-blade assemblies whose blade angle could be increased or decreased so as to provide lateral movement of the aeroplane by creating a lift differential between one side and the other. In May 1937, some months before a similar feat was accomplished by the Breguet-Dorand helicopter, the Fw 61 made its first landing using autorotation, and in February 1938 the aircraft's controllability was convincingly demonstrated by Germany's celebrated aviatrix Hanna Reitsch, who flew the machine inside the Deutsch-landhalle sports stadium in Berlin. Meanwhile a second prototype, D-EKRA, had been completed, and from mid-1937 the Fw 61 established the following list of FAI world records for helicopters:

25/26 June 1937 (pilot Ewald Rohlfs): 2439m altitude; 1 hr. 20 min. 49 sec. endurance; 80.604km distance in a straight line; 122.553km distance over a closed circuit; 16.40km/h speed over a closed circuit.

25 October 1937 (pilot Hanna Reitsch): 108.974km distance in a straight line.

20 June 1938 (pilot Karl Bode): 230.348km distance in a straight line.

29January 1939 (pilot Karl Bode): 3.427m altitude.

The obvious promise in the Fw 61's basic design led to a development contract for a 6-passenger feeder transport, the Fa 266 for Deutsche Lufthansa, and a prototype of this aircraft (D-OCEB) was completed during the early part of 1939. War intervened, however, before this machine could be flown, and it was subsequently developed for a military role with the type number Fa 223. Using as a starting point the experience gained from 1932 by Prof Heinrich Karl Focke in the licence building of Cierva Autogiros, the Focke Achgelis company began a series of helicopter experiments and model tests which culminated in the design of the Fa 61. Although a helicopter, the Fa 61 showed signs of having been influenced by the Cierva C.19 Autogiro, but its most strikingly obvious difference was its twin rotors mounted side by side. This layout of the rotors was to prove so successful in the helicopter field that Focke pursued it throughout the war (during which time nations such as Britain, the USA, and the USSR also produced helicopters with similar rotor mountings), and his rotor designs were further characterized by their exceptionally high disc loadings for the time.

The fuselage of the Fa 61 was no more than that of a conventional light aircraft with horizontal stabilizer attached to the top of the fin and rudder, a single open cockpit, a nose-mounted 160hp Bramo Sh 14A radial engine with a small two-blade cooling propeller, and a tail-sitting undercarriage. To prevent nosing-over, there was a small wheel fitted beneath the nose. Extending from either side of the forward part of the fuselage were two tubular-steel outrigger structures, which terminated in the rotor heads. A system of gears and shafts transmitted the engine power out to the two rotors, which revolved in opposite directions, each rotor having three articulated and tapered blades with cyclic pitch for longitudinal and directional control. Differential operation of the cyclic pitch gave lateral control by inducing asymmetric rotor lift.

With the test pilot Ewald Rohlfs at the controls, the Fa 61 made its first flight, of 28 seconds, on 26 June, 1936, and made its first autorotative landing in May the following year. Once developed, the great success of the machine was demonstrated by the series of new FAI world rotorcraft records it established until the start of the war, when official recording became impossible. On 25 June, 1937, with Rohlfs at the controls, the Fa 61 established an altitude record of 2,439m and an endurance record of 1 hr 20 min 49 sec. The following day, the same pilot and machine established a straight-line distance record of 16.4km, a closed-circuit distance record of 80.604km and a straight-line speed record of 122.553km/h over a 20km course. On 25 October, 1937, the straight line distance record was broken by Hanna Reitsch, who flew the Fa 61 helicopter 108.974km between Bremen and Berlin, and she also flew the machine indoors in the Deutschlandhalle, Berlin, in February 1938 to demonstrate the Fa 61's ease of control and sensitivity. The straight-line distance record was broken yet again by the Fa 61 on 20 June, 1938, when Karl Bode flew it 230.348km, and he established a new altitude record of 3,427m with the machine on 29 January, 1939, this being the last official record obtained by a German rotorcraft of pre-1945 vintage. Despite the great success of the Fa 61 and the large amount of publicity its noteworthy flights received, it was in reality no more than an experimental machine to put Prof Focke's ideas to the test. There was, however, to have been a two-seat sports version of the Fa 61, designated Fa 224, which would have had performance augmented by use of the more powerful 270hp Argus As 10C engine, but this was shelved with the advent of war. By 1938, design was already under way of a far more ambitious and useful helicopter, the Fa 266 (otherwise Fa 223). 

Heinrich Focke's rotary-wing experience was gained initially from licence production of Cierva C.19 and C.30 autogyros, leading to development of the Focke-Wulf Fw 61 helicopter. The fuselage was similar to that of a light fixed-wing aircraft with a 119kW Bramo Sh. 14A radial engine mounted in the nose, the primary purpose of this power-plant being to drive two outrigger-mounted three-bladed counter-rotating rotors; it also turned a small-diameter conventional propeller for engine cooling purposes. The rotors were fully articulated and control was achieved by the use of cyclic pitch, differential pitch and differential collective pitch in the longitudinal, directional and lateral axes respectively. Vertical control was achieved by varying rotor revolutions through the use of the throttle, in contrast to the present method of maintaining reasonably constant rotor speed and altering the pitch of the blades.

Following a maiden flight on 26 June 1936, one that is usually reported as lasting for 28 seconds, but which is recorded in Heinrich Focke's log book as 45 seconds, the Fw 61 prototype completed its initial development programme and then established a number of world rotorcraft records. On 25 June 1937 Ewald Rohlfs flew it to a height of 2440m and remained airborne for 1 hour 20 minutes 49 seconds. Next day he set a straight-line distance record of 16.40km, a closed-circuit speed record of 122.55km/h and a closed-circuit distance record of 80.6km. Perhaps the most publicised flight was that made by Hanna Reitsch in the Deutschlandhalle during February 1938. Such achievements encouraged Deutsche Lufthansa to order a passenger-carrying development of this helicopter, leading to the Fa 223 and Fa 266. By then Heinrich Focke had formed the new company Focke-Achgelis Co. GmbH to concentrate on his interest in rotary-wing aircraft, this explaining the redesignation of the Fw 61 as the Fa 61. 

Source: Focke-Wulf Fw 61 helicopter - development history, photos, technical data

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## Gnomey (Dec 21, 2011)

Interesting stuff!


----------



## vikingBerserker (Dec 21, 2011)

I agree, well done!


----------



## gekho (Jan 6, 2012)

Attempting to regain its position as a supplier of fighter aircraft to the U.S. Navy (a position then dominated by Grumman Aircraft), Curtiss proposed in early 1941 the development of a high-performance, heavily armed fighter designed around a liquid-cooled engine. At that time the Navy was dedicated to air-cooled engines, but Curtiss' experience with the P-40 gave the company good grounds for its faith in a liquid-cooled unit, and on June 30, 1941 it received a contract for two prototypes, to be designated XF14C-1. The Lycoming XH-2470-4 engine in the first prototype failed to deliver the expected performance during wind tunnel testing, and the Navy eventually concluded that the performance of the XF14C-1 would be inadequate by the time it could be ready to enter service, and the program was cancelled in December 1943. Because the first airframe was virtually complete, the Navy suggested that it be flown with the Wright XR-3350-16 Cyclone engine, driving six-blade contra rotating propellers. In this configuration the aircraft was redesigned XF14C-2 and the first flight was made in July 1944. Performance again fell below expectations, and the R-3350 engine continued to suffer teething problems. The progress of the war in the Pacific made further development of the XF14C-2 unnecessary, and the program was cancelled in the early months of 1945. This history taken from the Unicraft website.


----------



## gekho (Jan 6, 2012)

The Dewoitine D.33 was a single-engine low-wing monoplane aircraft built by the Dewoitine Company. It is remembered for setting a long-distance record on its first flight in 1930. Little is documented on the specifics and the basic model of the D.33, other than the fact that it had a fixed undercarriage, and was a low-wing cantilever monoplane. There were three documented variations to the model, each of which was designed as a separate aircraft. This line of aircraft were regarded highly commercially before World War II, and they were influential in the establishment of the Dewoitine Company.


----------



## Gnomey (Jan 6, 2012)

Good stuff!


----------



## Wayne Little (Jan 7, 2012)

Agreed!


----------



## rochie (Jan 7, 2012)

nice stuff but some fugly birds in that selection


----------



## vikingBerserker (Jan 7, 2012)

Interesting bird that is.


----------



## gekho (Jan 19, 2012)

At the end of March 1933, criticism of the gulled wing of the D 560 led Emile Dewoitine to replace this with a wing of classic parasol form and of marginally reduced span and area. Re-designated D 570, the modified prototype entered flight test on 27 November 1933, transferring from Francazal to the Centre d'Essais at Villacoublay early in December. It flew back to Francazal for minor modifications, and, on 21 December, while returning to Villacoublay, suffered an aileron failure and was destroyed. 

Source: Dewoitine D 570 - fighter


----------



## gekho (Jan 22, 2012)

In August 1933 the French Ministry of Aviation published a program to build new military aircraft multi-role "BCR" (Bomber, Combat, and Reconnaissance). The SAB AB-80 was built for the task. The first flight of the single prototype took place at Mérignac on June 13th 1934 piloted by Mr. Descamps. The early flight testing was never fully completed as the company was taken over by Potez-Bloch and it was also up against 6 other aircraft for the task: The Amiot 144, Breguet 460, Bloch 130, Dewoitine 420, Farman 420 and Potez 541. The AB-80 was powered by two Hispano-suiza 860hp engines. Its defensive armament consisted of three planes 7.5-mm machine guns located on movable turrets. To bomb strikes plane could carry up to 2,000 pounds of conventional bombs (weighing from 10 to 500 kg) and 4 30 kg of flares. For ground attack it had a 25mm gun and flare could also be fired. To conduct reconnaissance flights mounted cameras were fitted.

Source: THE AVIATION ANORAK: Societe Aerienne Bordelaise AB-80


----------



## gekho (Jan 23, 2012)

Conceived as a means of applying the promised advantages of jet propulsion to a single-seat fighter flying boat for use in the Pacific, the SR.44 was proposed by Saunders-Roe (Saro) during 1943. This proposal led to a contract for three prototypes being placed in May 1944 to Specification E.6/44. To be designated SR.A/1 before first flight, the fighter was of light alloy construction throughout, power being provided by two Metropolitan Vickers F2/4 Beryl turbojets and provision being made for an armament of four 20mm cannon grouped in the forward hull above the air intake. The first SR.A/1 did not fly until 16 July 1947, its Beryl turbojets each being rated at 1465kg. The second flew on 30 April 1948 with 1587kg Beryls and the third followed on 17 August of that year with fully rated Beryls of 1746kg. As no operational requirement remained for a fighter flying boat, official interest waned, and, after a brief revival of interest during the Korean War, the last surviving SR.A/1 was retired in June 1951. 

Source: Saunders-Roe SR.A/1 - flying boat - fighter


----------



## Wayne Little (Jan 23, 2012)

Interesting!


----------



## gekho (Jan 28, 2012)

While the Wapiti and Wallace biplanes were yet giving good service with the Royal Air Force, thoughts were turning towards a successor capable of carrying a still greater load, and, in 1931, the Air Ministry issued a new General Purpose Specification - No. G.4/31 - from which the Westland team produced a pleasing two-seat high-wing monoplane design, known as the P.V.7. This machine, which was a further link in the Westland high-wing monoplane line, was capable of fulfilling all the standard general-purpose requirements and could, alternatively, be used as a torpedo-bomber, carrying an externally slung 450kg torpedo or an equivalent bomb load. The preliminary test-flights at Yeovil, in the hands of Mr. H. J. Penrose, produced extremely satisfactory results and there were high hopes that the machine would have a long production run. However, while undergoing extended official trials at Martlesham Heath, the P.V.7 was unfortunately wrecked.

Mr. Penrose, who was flying the machine solo at the time, was engaged in making a series of dives under overload conditions and, while travelling at high speed in rough air, the port rear outrigger strut failed under an unexpected down-load. The resulting fracture brought about the collapse of the complete wing structure and, as it broke away from the machine, it severed the empennage. The pilot made what must be one of the first parachute escapes from an enclosed-cockpit military aeroplane, emerging through one of the small side doors of the coupe and eventually landing unhurt some distance from the wreckage. The inevitable delay caused by the necessary investigation into the cause of the accident rendered the risk of building a further Private Venture too great, and the type, despite its great promise, was dropped. However, it paved the way for the next design, the Lysander, with results that are now a matter of world history. 

Source: Westland PV.7 - general purpose, torpedo bomber


----------



## WolfManSpecial (Jan 29, 2012)

Hola:
muy bueno TODO


----------



## gekho (Jan 29, 2012)

WolfManSpecial said:


> Hola:
> muy bueno TODO



Gracias, NO HAY DE QUE


----------



## Gnomey (Jan 29, 2012)

Good stuff!


----------



## vikingBerserker (Jan 29, 2012)

I agree, excellent info.


----------



## gekho (Jan 30, 2012)

In 1939, Douglas designers, Ed Heinemann and Bob Donovan began work on a VTB Proposal to replace the TBD Devastator torpedo bomber. In 1942, the team led by Heinemann and Donovan began work on a new project named the "Devastator II". On 31 October 1943, just four days after the new Midway class aircraft carriers were ordered into production, Douglas received a contract for two prototypes, designated TB2D, receiving the official name: "Skypirate". The TB2D was powered by a Pratt Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major driving contra-rotating propellers. Four torpedoes or an equivalent bomb load could be carried on underwing pylons. Defensive armament consisted of two 20 mm (.79 in) cannon in the wings and .50 in (12.7 mm) machine guns mounted in a power-operated dorsal turret. Very large for a single-engined aircraft, the TB2D would have been the largest piston-engined carrierborne aircraft at the time if it had been deployed. It could carry four times the weapon load of the TBF Avenger and was larger, heavier and faster than a B-25 Mitchell bomber. With only limited support from the US Navy, and facing a recommendation for cancellation on 20 May 1944 due to the aircraft being designed only for the CVB and CV9 carriers, the TB2B project was in peril even at the design and mock-up stage.

The two "Skypirate" prototypes, BuNo 36933 and 36934 were ready for flight trials in 1945 with the first prototype XTB2D-1 flying on 13 March 1945. The second example had a 58 cm increase in the length of the fuselage, and flew later in summer 1945. Both prototypes were test flown without any armament. Despite the flying trials proceeding on schedule, the collapse of the Japanese forces in the Pacific along with delays in the Midway class, eliminated the need for the type and the 23 pre-production aircraft on order were subsequently cancelled. The flight trials were suspended and the two prototypes were eventually reduced to scrap in 1948.

Source: Douglas XTB2D Skypirate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


----------



## gekho (Jan 30, 2012)

The first Me 209 was a completely new aircraft designed only to break speed records whose designation was used by Messerschmitt as a propaganda tool. Although the aircraft was a "single purpose" high-speed experimental prototype, it was hoped that its name would associate it and its world-beating performance with the Bf 109 already in combat service. The Me 209 was constructed in 1937 and shared only its Daimler-Benz DB 601 engine with the Bf 109. Willy Messerschmitt designed the small aircraft with a cockpit placed far back along the fuselage just in front of its unique cross-shaped tail section. Unlike the Bf 109, the Me 209 featured a broad-track, inwardly-retracting undercarriage mounted in the wing section.

The idea of adapting the Me 209 racer to the fighter role gained momentum when, during the Battle of Britain, the Bf 109 failed to gain superiority over the RAF Supermarine Spitfires. The little record-setter, however, was not up to the task of air combat. Its wings were almost completely occupied by the engine's liquid cooling system and therefore prohibited conventional installation of armament. The aircraft also proved difficult to fly and extremely hard to control on the ground. Nevertheless, the Messerschmitt team made several attempts to improve the aircraft's performance by giving it longer wings, a taller vertical stabilizer, and installing two 7.92 mm (.312 in) MG 17 machine guns in the engine cowling. Its various modifications, however, added so much weight that the Me 209 ended up slower than the contemporary Bf 109E. This first Me 209 project was soon cancelled, and though it never went into wide-scale production, Messerschmitt's design did make its mark with its impressive speed record, which was not officially broken by another piston-engined aircraft until 16 August 1969, by Darryl Greenamyer's highly modified Conquest I F8F Bearcat, now at the Smithsonian's NASM]. In 1939, the speed record achievement of the Me-209 was used for a propaganda disinformation campaign, wherein the aircraft was given the designation of Me 109R. This disinformation was naturally designed to give an aura of invincibility to the Bf 109, an aura not dispelled until the conclusion of the Battle of Britain.

Source: Messerschmitt Me 209 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://www.aer.ita.br/~bmattos/mundo/ww2/messersschmitt_me209.htm


----------



## gekho (Jan 31, 2012)

The Luftwaffe's first Chief of Staff, Generalleutnant Walther Wever, was a keen advocate of the long-range stra-o tegic bomber and, largely as a result of his promptings, the RLM's Technische Amt issued a specification for a four-engined heavy bomber of this category. Both Dornier and Junkers completed preliminary studies for such an aircraft, and each received in late 1935 an order for three prototypes under the respective designations Dornier Do 19 and Ju 89.

A mid-wing cantilever monoplane, largely of metal construction, the Do 19 had a rectangular-section fuselage; a tail unit with braced twin fins and rudders mounted on the upper surface of the tail-plane, at approximately mid-span on each side; tailwheel landing gear, with all three units retracting; and powerplant comprising four Bramo 322H-2 radial engines, mounted in nacelles at the wing leading edges. Accommodation was provided for a crew of nine, consisting of pilot, co-pilot/navigator, bomb-aimer, radio operator and five gunners.

The Do 19 V1 prototype flew for the first time on 28 October 1936, but by then an event had occurred which was to bring development of the long-range strategic bombers to an end. On 3 June 1936 Generalleutnant Wever had lost his life in an aircraft crash and his successor, o Generalleutnant Albert Kesselring, concluded that the Luftwaffe's more urgent requirements were increased numbers of fighters and tactical bombers of greater capability. The Do 19 V2, which was almost ready to fly, and the incomplete Do 19 V3 were both scrapped; the Do 19 V1 saw limited use as a military transport following conversion for such a role during 1939. 

Source: Dornier Do 19 - experimental bomber


----------



## gekho (Feb 6, 2012)

The P-60 designation applies to a family of widely different Curtiss fighters, each reflecting the urgency of the builder's unsuccessful effort to develop a P-40 replacement. Though only four airframes carried out the P-60 programme, no fewer than nine designations were involved: XP-60, XP-60A, YP-60A, P-60A, XP-60B, XP-60C, XP-60D, XP-60E and YP-60E. The programme ran from early 1941 to December 1944 and was Curtiss's last gasp in the propeller-driven fighter field, an ambitious but unfocussed effort which involved several engines, propellers, and canopy configurations.

The XP-60 was a low-wing, conventional-gear fighter developed from the uncompleted XP-53 but powered by a 969kW Packard V-1560-1 licence-built Merlin, belatedly determined by the USAAF to be the best engine available in 1941. This airframe flew on 18 September 1941. With all Merlin-related resources soon committed to the P-51 Mustang programme, the USAAF then decided to employ the ubiquitous 1062kW Allison V-1710-75 in planned production-model P-60s. On 31 October 1941, 1,950 such fighters were ordered. Soon, however, it became evident that Curtiss' Buffalo, New York, plant could be more usefully employed building P-47G Thunderbolts and the contract was cancelled. Three XP-60A airframes were tested with the Allison powerplant before being re-engined. The proposed YP-60A, which would have had a 1491kW Pratt Whitney R-2800-10 radial, was another variation which did not result in a finished airframe. The XP-60B was to have been the original machine with a shift from Merlin to Allison power but apparently this change was never made.

The XP-60C, converted in 1943 from one of the three Allison test ships, employed the R-2800 radial. This was the sole example tested with Curtiss Electric contra-rotating propellers. The XP-60D was the original machine retaining its Merlin but with enlarged tail surfaces and other minor changes. The XP-60E was another R-2800 radial-powered variant. Last in the series was the YP-60E, another conversion, again R-2800 radial-powered but now uncamouflaged and with bubble canopy, the result being formidable competition to the Curtiss P-40Q for the claim of most beautiful fighter ever built. In November 1942, the US Army ordered 500 Pratt Whitney-powered P-60 fighters but the production contract was soon set aside in favour of other priorities. The P-60 programme ended by mid-1944, the last airframe being scrapped on 22 December 1944.


----------



## gekho (Feb 6, 2012)

In 1944, the Army accepted a modified version of the C-46A and designated it as XC-46B. The aircraft was converted from the first C-46A built at the Curtiss plant in St. Louis, Mo. (S/N 43-46953). The plane featured two major changes. First, the nose section was redesigned. The windshield was changed from a streamlined version to a stepped design. The stepped windshield was tested because it was the standard design used on most cargo and bomber aircraft and it was thought the plane might be easier to fly for pilot trainees. After flight tests, it was determined that the windshield posed no significant problems for pilots, and visibility was essentially the same as the original design. The stepped windshield design was incorporated into the C-46E design but only 17 aircraft were completed at the Curtiss St. Louis plant. The nose section design of the XC-46B increased the plane's overall length to 77 feet, 8 inches more than the A model. The second major design change was the installation of water injected Pratt Whitney Double Wasp engines. The water-injected version of the engine had 100 horsepower more than the model used on the C-46A and was installed primarily to improve take-off performance with larger loads. The B model had a gross weight of 51,000 pounds -- 1,400 pounds more than the A model. The performance of the XB-46B was basically the same as the C-46A and the design changes were not adopted for production aircraft.


----------



## gekho (Feb 6, 2012)

The Curtiss XP-42, a conversion of a P-36A Mohawk airframe, was employed as a testbed at Wright Field, Ohio, beginning in March 1939 to determine whether stream-lining could reduce drag in a radial-powered fighter and make it competitive with more advanced fighters employing inline engines. This concept was seen as an alternative to adapting the P-36A airframe to an inline powerplant, as had been done with the prototype P-40 Warhawk. Delivered to the Army in March 1939, the XP-42 was powered by a 783kW Pratt Whitney R-1830-31 Twin Wasp radial enclosed by a bullet-shaped, sheet-metal cowling extended forward to culminate in a large, pointed spinner. An airscoop below the spinner provided cooling air, while smaller intakes above the engine provided air to the carburettor. It was immediately clear that this sleek, long-nosed configuration offered none of the advantages of the inline engine employed not only by the P-40 but also by such types as the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and North American Mustang. The aerodynamic nose shape provided almost no reduction in drag, and cooling problems proved almost insurmountable. While the XP-42 was marginally faster than the open-cowl P-36A, its performance did not compare favourably with the P-40 or with other, newer fighters of the immediate pre-war period.

A variety of nose configurations was tried on the XP-42, altering its fuselage length with each change, but none vindicated the enclosed radial engine and Curtiss's production facilities, in the event, were taken up with the inline-powered P-40. When hostilities began, the XP-42 had been ruled out as a possible production aircraft but continued to aid in research. In 1942, the XP-42 tested an all-flying stabilizer, similar to the stabilator found on modern jets. The XP-42 had begun flying in natural metal finish and was camouflaged during one of its minor rebuilds. The airframe, which contributed knowledge to designers and engineers, was eventually taken out of service as other wartime priorities beckoned. Curtiss would continue to explore new fighter ideas with XP-46, XP-60 and XF-87, but the company's predominant role in the fighter field was fast becoming history.


----------



## gekho (Feb 6, 2012)

The XP-46 of 1939 was a late attempt by Curtiss to capitalize on lessons from early fighting in Europe and to develop a fighter powered by an inline engine which could succeed the P-40 Warhawk on production lines. The lacklustre performance of the Curtiss XP-37 and XP-42 designs was yet to become fully apparent on 29 September 1939, when this most promising of the three Curtiss designs was ordered in prototype form. The US Army ordered one XP-46 and one XP-46A, the latter without armament to expedite the testing programme. Both were powered by the 857kW Allison V-1710-39 inline engine, which promised to be readily available if production materialized, being the powerplant for the P-40D already on factory lines. The XP-46A flew first on 15 February 1941 and both machines were being tested by the time of Pearl Harbor. The XP-46 and XP-46A had moderately good performance except for their limited range of 523km. They were heavier and costlier than the P-40D, however, and seemed to lack 'stretching' potential for further development. The two airframes were markedly different from each other in detail, especially in cockpit layout, the XP-46 being viewed by pilots as cramped and uncomfortable, a 'sweatbox'. Clearly the two machines added knowledge, but a production order eluded them.


----------



## gekho (Feb 6, 2012)

In May 1944, Curtiss indicated to the AAF that it wished to abandon further work on the P-60 series fighters because of the disappointing results achieved with the XP-60C and XP-60E. Earlier, the P-60 had been eliminated from the production schedules, the number of aircraft on contract having been reduced to two. However, the AAF insisted on completion of one of the two aircraft still on order. These, originally ordered as YP-60As, had been redesignated as YP-60Es because the design modifications incorporated were most directly descended from the XP-60E. The YP-60E differed principally in having a 2,100hp R-2800-18 engine, a deeper cowling incorporating the ventral cooler intake, a cut-down rear fuselage and a bubble-type cockpit canopy. The sole YP-60E completed was flown on 13 July 1944, but only one further flight was made before the aircraft was transferred to Wright Field where it was eventually disposed of without further testing. Armament comprised six wing-mounted 12.7mm machine guns.


----------



## gekho (Feb 7, 2012)

In the early 1930s, the Northrop Corporation had produced the Gamma 2C, a company-financed prototype for a two-seat attack aircraft. The Gamma 2C was based on the Gamma 2A and 2B research aircraft. It retained the wings and trousered undercarriage of the previous two Gamma aircraft, but differed from them in having a new fuselage with a new two-seat enclosed cockpit. The cockpit was moved much further forward, with the pilot now sitting slightly behind the wing leading edge. The Gamma 2C was powered by a 735 hp Wright SR-1820-F2 nine-cylinder air-cooled radial driving a two-bladed propeller. The Gamma 2C was armed with four wing-mounted 0.30-inch machine guns and one flexible 0.30-inch machine gun firing either upward from the rear cockpit or downward through a ventral hatch underneath the fuselage. It was able to carry up to 1100 pounds of bombs externally between its trousered main undercarriage units. The Army purchased the Gamma 2C under the designation YA-13 on June 28, 1934. The serial number 34-27 was applied.

Flight tests of the YA-13 indicated that the installation of an engine of greater power would result in substantially increased performance. In addition, the large diameter of the Wright SR-1820 radial engine of the YA-13 obscured the pilot's forward view. In order to improve the performance and the pilot's forward visibility, the YA-13 aircraft was returned to Northrop in January of 1935 to be re-engined with the smaller diameter but more powerful 950 hp Pratt Whitney R-1830-7 Twin Wasp fourteen-cylinder air-cooled radial. This engine change resulted in the YA-13 being redesignated YA-16. The XA-16 flew for the first time in March of 1935. Flight tests indicated that the XA-16 was now over-powered, and that if the aircraft ever went into production it should either have a smaller engine or else have larger tail surfaces. The Gamma 2F, another private venture project of Northrop, already featured a smaller engine and this version was ordered into production as the A-17, so no further work was carried out on the XA-16. The XA-16 was later fitted with a 950 hp R-1830-9 engine. It ended its life at an aircraft mechanics' school at Roosevelt Field. 

Source: Northrop XA-16


----------



## gekho (Feb 8, 2012)

The SAB AB-20 was a four engine night bomber development of the three engine Dyle et Bacalan DB-70 airliner. The change of manufacturer's name was the result of the financial failure of Dyle et Bacalan in 1929, followed by its immediate reappearance as SAB, who took over DB-70 development. The latter was built around a thick, wide chord airfoil centre section which provided generous internal space for passengers. The engines were mounted on this structure as were twin fuselages to carry the tail. Outer wings of normal thickness and chord, the cockpit and the under carriage were also attached to the centre section. The generous intra-wing volume equally offered crew, fuel and bomb room for military purposes. Initially the AB-20 was intended to have three engines like its forebear, but during the design phase there was a military request for a bombardier's position and a gunner's cockpit in the nose, which required the removal of the centre engine and its replacement by two extra engines wing mounted outboard of the centre section.Apart from the extra engines and the very different crew compartment, together with the removal of passenger accommodation, the AB-20 and DB-70 had much in common: the thick centre section and high mounted outer wings, twin fuselages carrying a long horizontal stabilizer and twin fins and rudders. Both aircraft had conventional undercarriages with pairs of mainwheels widely separated on V-struts attached to the lower longerons of the centre section.

The new central crew pod was flat sided and tapered forwards to a complicated cylindrical nose, formed of a simple lower part with an overhanging, windowed cabin for the navigator/bombardier and an open gunner's cockpit, fitted with a machine gun ring, directly above. The nose also carried a long, conical probe with fine extensions, possibly pressure sensors. Further aft there was an enclosed pilot's cabin. A second gunner was stationed rearwards, on top of the centre section and a third fired from a ventral turret.


----------



## gekho (Feb 8, 2012)

Evolved by Ingenieur-General Vernisse and M Badie, the VB 10 was an all-metal single-seat fighter powered by engines mounted in tandem fore and aft of the pilot's cockpit and driving contra-rotating co-axial propellers. Thirty VG 10s were ordered off the drawing board in May 1940, and work continued under the Vichy government. The first prototype with two 860hp Hispano- Suiza 12Y31 12-cylinder liquid-cooled engines was flown on 7 July 1945. The second prototype with 1150hp HS 12Z12/13 engines and an armament of four 20mm Hispano-Suiza cannon and six 12.7mm Browning machine guns flew on 21 September 1946. A contract for 200 aircraft had been placed on 22 December 1945 (this later being cut back to 50 aircraft), and the first production VB 10 flew on 3 November 1947 with 1150hp HS 12Z Ars 15/16 engines and an armament of four 20mm cannon. Production was cancelled on 21 September 1948 after completion and testing of four series aircraft.


----------



## gekho (Feb 9, 2012)

In May 1937, the French Air Ministry placed an order with Société des Avions Marcel Bloch for two prototype floatplanes intended to fulfill a French Navy requirement for a twin-engined torpedo-bomber/reconnaissance floatplane. Bloch's design, the Bloch MB.480 was a low-winged monoplane that closely resembled the earlier Bloch MB.131 reconnaissance/bomber landplane. It was powered by two 1,060 hp (791 kW) Gnome-Rhône 14N radial engines and carried a crew of five. Defensive armament was a 7.5 mm Darne machine gun in the nose and a ventral bath, while a 20 mm cannon was fitted in a powered dorsal mounting. A heavy load of bombs, torpedoes or auxiliary fuel tanks could be carried in an internal bomb bay. The first prototype made its maiden flight from Étang de Berre in June 1939. The aircraft's twin tail was raised to avoid spray on take-off and landing, and the tail fins were cropped to restore a good field of fire for the dorsal cannon after the tail assembly had been raised. The second prototype flew in October 1939.

Although testing was relatively successful, the French Navy had meanwhile decided that the torpedo-bomber reconnaissance role could be better met by landplanes, with the much faster Lioré et Olivier LeO 451, already on order as a medium bomber for the French Air Force being chosen. On 9 September 1939, Bloch was told to suspend development trials, while on 10 December it was officially announced that no orders would be placed for either the MB.480 or its two competitors, the SNCAC NC-410 and the Loire-Nieuport 10. The first prototype was destroyed after colliding with a pier on Étang de Thau on 23 June 1940, while the second prototype was placed into storage in July, and was not flown again.


----------



## herman1rg (Feb 9, 2012)

gekho said:


> The SAB AB-20 was a four engine night bomber development of the three engine Dyle et Bacalan DB-70 airliner. The change of manufacturer's name was the result of the financial failure of Dyle et Bacalan in 1929, followed by its immediate reappearance as SAB, who took over DB-70 development. The latter was built around a thick, wide chord airfoil centre section which provided generous internal space for passengers. The engines were mounted on this structure as were twin fuselages to carry the tail. Outer wings of normal thickness and chord, the cockpit and the under carriage were also attached to the centre section. The generous intra-wing volume equally offered crew, fuel and bomb room for military purposes. Initially the AB-20 was intended to have three engines like its forebear, but during the design phase there was a military request for a bombardier's position and a gunner's cockpit in the nose, which required the removal of the centre engine and its replacement by two extra engines wing mounted outboard of the centre section.Apart from the extra engines and the very different crew compartment, together with the removal of passenger accommodation, the AB-20 and DB-70 had much in common: the thick centre section and high mounted outer wings, twin fuselages carrying a long horizontal stabilizer and twin fins and rudders. Both aircraft had conventional undercarriages with pairs of mainwheels widely separated on V-struts attached to the lower longerons of the centre section.
> 
> The new central crew pod was flat sided and tapered forwards to a complicated cylindrical nose, formed of a simple lower part with an overhanging, windowed cabin for the navigator/bombardier and an open gunner's cockpit, fitted with a machine gun ring, directly above. The nose also carried a long, conical probe with fine extensions, possibly pressure sensors. Further aft there was an enclosed pilot's cabin. A second gunner was stationed rearwards, on top of the centre section and a third fired from a ventral turret.



That is one ugly plane.


----------



## gekho (Feb 9, 2012)

herman1rg said:


> That is one ugly plane.



It´s french; what did you expect??


----------



## deltadart31 (Feb 17, 2012)

René RIOUT Aircraft experimental butterfly aircraft from 1937.


----------



## johnbr (Feb 17, 2012)

What are the odds it flow.


----------



## michaelmaltby (Feb 17, 2012)

Ornithopter .... 

Ornithopter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

MM


----------



## gekho (Mar 17, 2012)

The aircraft was designed by the racing driver (and world land speed record holder) Sir Henry Segrave as a twin-engine four-seat touring monoplane. A wooden prototype, designated Saro Segrave Meteor I was built by Saunders Roe at Cowes. The prototype (registered G-AAXP) first flew on 28 May 1930. Development was delayed by the death of the designer on 13 June 1930 in a speedboat accident. The aircraft was demonstrated in Rome to the Italian Air Ministry, and a licence agreement was signed to produce the aircraft as the Piaggio P.12, although only two appear to have been made. With lack of space at Cowes and with the decision to build a metal version, two aircraft were built by Blackburn Aircraft at Brough Aerodrome with the designation Blackburn CA.18 Segrave. Blackburn changed the designation system, and the aircraft became the Blackburn B.1 Segrave. Despite sales tours around Europe, the aircraft was not ordered, and only one further example was built. This was completed by Blackburn as the Blackburn CA.20 Segrave II to test a new single-spar wing.


----------



## Wayne Little (Mar 17, 2012)

Not seen that one before....


----------



## gekho (Mar 18, 2012)

The aircraft designer Filippo Zappata developed a four-engined civil transport for operation over both European and transatlantic routes. Construction of the Breda-Zappata B.Z.308 was started during 1946 at Breda's Sesto San Giovanni works. The allied control commission halted the work, which was not resumed until January 1947. Further delays in the delivery of Bristol Centaurus engines delayed the first flight, which was on the 27th August 1948, piloted by Mario Stoppani. The B.Z.308 was a large low-wing monoplane of all-metal construction, the fuselage had an oval cross-section. It had a large tailplane with endplate fins and rudders, retractable landing gear. Powered by four Bristol Centaurus radial engines driving five-bladded propellers. It was designed for a flightcrew of five, and 55 passengers in two cabins, a high-density model was planned with seats for 80. Although flight testing went well, financial problems and the realisation that competition from American-built airliners would take a major share of the post-war airliner market, along with the pressures to close down the Aeronautical section of the Breda industries as requested by the Marshall plan, led to the project being abandoned. Breda stopped producing airplanes subsequently.

The prototype B.Z.308 was acquired by the Italian Air Force in 1949 as a transport aircraft. Despite orders in 1950 from India, Argentina and Persia, only the prototype was built, allegedly also due to pressure from the allies for Italy to refrain from competing in civilian aircraft manufacture after the war. On the 27th August 1948 the Bz 308 made its maiden flight, in front of civil and military authorities, politicians and the Italian President. The prototype, which passed to the Italian Air Force in 1950 and was used to fly between Rome and Mogadishu until one day, following damage during a poor landing, it was abandoned in a field in Somalia before being broken up in 1954. It was also the first Italian transatlantic aircraft, and the first aircraft to fly into the new Malpensa airport in 1948. The aircraft is also clearly visible in the airport scene of the film Roman Holiday.


----------



## wheelsup_cavu (Mar 28, 2012)

I will have to look for that on in the movie Roman Holiday.


Wheels


----------



## gekho (May 1, 2012)

The Polikarpov I-180 was designed in an attempt to improve on the I-16, but all three prototypes were lost in crashes, and the type was abandoned after ten pre-production aircraft had been built. The I-180 is variously described as a expanded 'super I-16' or a lightened version of the Polikarpov Ivanov reconnaissance aircraft of 1936-38. Although the Ivanov was a similar looking aircraft to the I-180 (a low wing monoplane with a basically circular fuselage) it was an all-metal aircraft, while the I-180 retained the largely wooden structure of the I-16. The first design for the I-180 used the M-87A air-cooled radial engine, but this wasn't powerful enough to provide the expected increase in performance. Unfortunately the only real alternative, the M-88, was still at an early stage in its development, and the early prototypes barely offered any increase in power. Later versions of the engine were more powerful, but by then the I-180 project was effectively over. The first prototype I-180, the I-180-1, was powered by a prototype M-88 engine constructed using parts from the M-87A engine. The new larger engine forced a major redesign of the aircraft, which needed a longer stronger fuselage and a modified wing, with a straight leading edge and swept-forward trailing edge.

The I-180-1 made its maiden flight on 15 December 1938 with the famous test pilot Valery Chkalov at the controls. He made several circuits of the test airfield, but as he was preparing to land the engine seized and the aircraft crashed into some storage facilities. Chkalov suffered fatal injuries in the crash. Almost inevitable in the paranoid atmosphere of the time the crash was blamed on sabotage. A number of people involved in the project were arrested, amongst them Polikarpov's deputy. Polikarpov probably only escaped arrest himself because he hadn’t approved the test flight. The second prototype used a standard M-87A engine. Its maiden flight was more successful, although the lower power meant that its performance wasn't as good as hoped, and it had a top speed of 335mph. This aircraft made more than 50 test flights before it two was destroyed in an accident. This time the cause was more obvious - the oil cooler was destroyed during a high altitude test and the aircraft dived into the ground from 10,000ft. Once again the test pilot was killed.

The third prototype was powered by a 1,000hp M-88R engine (M-88P in some sources). This prototype was armed with two ShKAS and two 12.7mm UBS machine guns, had a modified undercarriage and a new oil cooler. Flight tests ran from February to May 1940. Top speed rose to 357mph at 22,600ft and the service ceiling and rate of climb also improved. The third prototype survived its factory trials and was sent for its State Acceptance Tests, but on 5 July the aircraft's control froze while it was upside down. The test pilot was able to escape safely but the aircraft was lost. Despite these three failures the I-180 was ordered into production at zavod 21 in Gor'kiy. Three of these aircraft took part in the Red Square May Day parade on 1 May 1940, but later in the same month the second production aircraft was written off after a minor crash. In July Polikarpov was present at a meeting in which alterations to the production aircraft were planned, but in October 1940 zavod 21 was ordered to concentrate on the I-16 and the new LaGG-3, and work on the I-180 was abandoned. Polikarpov, now in total command of a smaller design team, moved on to work on the I-185.


----------



## gekho (May 1, 2012)

The Polikarpov I-185 was a high performance fighter that almost entered production, before problems with its engine caused the project to be cancelled. The entire project was dogged by engine problems. After the cancellation of the I-180 Polikarpov decided to develop a new fighter using the most powerful experiment engine he could find, in this case the Nazarov M-90. This was a radial engine that was hoped to produce 2,000hp, but in practise it failed to reach this level of power. The I-185 was a low-wing monoplane, similar in appearance to the I-180, but with a small thin all-metal two-spar wing covered with a duralumin stressed skin. 

The first prototype was developed during 1940. It was originally powered by the developmental M-90 engine, and was to be armed with two 7.62mm and two 12.7mm machine guns. It was expected to reach 444mph at 24,000ft, but taxiing trials reveals that the engine didn’t even have enough power to get the aircraft off the ground. Another new engine, the Shvetsov M-81, was installed instead, but this too was under-powered, and after a single flight on 11 January 1941 this aircraft was grounded. In May of the same year development of the M-81 engine itself was also cancelled.

Late in 1940 Polikarpov began work on a second prototype, this time powered by the 1,700hp Shvetsov M-82A, which had a smaller diameter than either of the earlier engines. This reduced drag, and this improved the aircrafts speed. This second prototype was armed with three 20mm ShVAK cannon, all mounted in the nose. Flight tests began in May 1941. Although this aircraft never entered production, it did provide valuable data for the development of the La-5 and a version of the Yak-7 powered by the same engine. A third prototype soon followed, this time powered by the Shvetsov M-71 engine, a 2,000hp 18-cylinder radial engine. The tests on this version were interrupted by the German invasion in the summer of 1941, which forced Polikarpov and zavod 51 to move east, but they were successful enough to justify further work, and to see the first prototype re-engined with the M-71. This model performed very well in tests, with a top speed at 20,250ft of 391mph, and was judged to be equal or better than every current production fighter.

In the spring of 1942 it was decided to place the I-185 M-71 into production. A production standard prototype was produced, and went to state trials on 18 November. This coincided with the start of service trials with the 728th IAP of the 3rd Air Army. The I-185 was very popular with this unit's pilots, but once again the engine would prove to be its weakest point. The trials had to be halted between mid December 1942 and mid-January 1943 until a new engine arrived, and this failed after only 24 hours of running. A few days, on 27 January 1943, a test pilot was killed while attempting to land after yet another engine failure, and the first prototype was destroyed in a crash on 5 April. It was clear that the M-71 engine was not yet ready for front line service, while the only valid alternative, the M-82, was needed for the La-5. As a result production of the I-185 was cancelled.


----------



## gekho (May 1, 2012)

I-190 - last fighter - biplane repeating I-153, but with engine M-88 and with some design improvements. The airplane was intended for air fight, at a high manoeuvrability in a combination to high-speed fighters. Design I-190 began only in the spring of 1939. The airplane was under construction in duplicate and structurally represented the further development of an airplane "Seagull" with use of its many units and aggregates. Changes in a forward part have been called by application of a new perspective two-row radial engine of the greater length. The fabric covering of wings has been replaced plywood. The form{shape} of wings and the stabilizer has changed.

Armament: four synchronous machine guns ShKAS with possible replacement on large-caliber BS, bombing loading of 200 kg. The airplane has shown speed of 450 km/h at the altitude 7050 m and a ceiling of 12400 m. I-190 last fighter - biplane with possible perfection, but already hopelessly out-of-date and not capable to compete to a fighter - monoplane. 

Source: I-190, Last fighter - biplane of Polikarpov


----------



## Capt. Vick (May 1, 2012)

What's with the stamp on the photos? Did you sneak into the Kremlin to get these pictures?


----------



## gekho (Jul 12, 2012)

The Piaggio P.50 was an Italian prototype heavy bomber designed and built by Piaggio for the Regia Aeronautica (Italian Royal Air Force). The P.50 was the first design by Giovanni Casiraghi -- following an outline for the project laid out by Piaggio designer Ing Giovanni Pegna -- for the Piaggio company. The first model, the P.50-I, was a four-engine shoulder-wing monoplane with a single large tail fin and rudder. It was powered by four 544-kilowatt (730-horsepower) Isotta-Fraschini Asso XI.RC V12 engines mounted in tandem pairs on the wings, with each engine driving one three-bladed propeller; two of the propellers were mounted in a pusher and two in a tractor configuration. For defense, the P.50-I had three machine gun positions, including a nose turret. Piaggio built two P.50-I prototypes, the first of which -- MM369 -- flew in 1937. The second -- MM370 -- was damaged in accident while landing at Malpensa airfield in 1938. No production order for the P.50-I materialized.

A new model of the P.50, the P.50-II, appeared in 1938. It was re-engined with four 746-kilowatt (1,001-horsepower) Piaggio P.XI RC.40 radial engines, each driving a three-bladed propeller, and dispensed with the tandem-engine, pusher-puller configuration of the P.50-I, instead mounting the engines separately with all four propellers as tractors. Its defensive armament was upgraded to five 12.7-millimeter (0.5-inch) machine guns. Piaggio produced a single P.50-II prototype designated MM371. No production ordered resulted for the P.50-II, but Piaggio later applied the experience it gained from the design and construction of the three P.50 prototypes to the development of the Piaggio P.108 heavy bomber of World War II.
Variants


----------



## Wayne Little (Jul 12, 2012)

That first one looks a bit odd with the prop arrangement...


----------



## Shortround6 (Jul 12, 2012)

actually a pretty standard arrangement in the 20s and early 30s. Claims of Dornier patents and German superiority aside.


----------



## gekho (Aug 24, 2012)

Development of the Hs 130 began with two Hs 128 prototypes, which first flew on 11 April 1939, with the second prototype flying on 20 February 1940. Both prototypes were research aircraft, used for testing pressurized cabins, engine superchargers, and cantilever wings. Different engines powered the two prototypes; the V1 by Daimler-Benz DB 601s and the V2 by Junkers Jumo 210s. Both had fixed landing gear. While trials of the two prototypes were not successful, the potential of a high altitude aircraft caught the attention of Theodor Rowehl, commander of the Luftwaffe's special reconnaissance unit. Rowehl's interest in the Hs 128's potential for high-altitude reconnaissance missions led Reich Air Ministry to instruct Henschel to continue development of the Hs 128 as a reconnaissance aircraft under the designation Hs 130A.
Three prototype aircraft Hs 130 As were built, the first flying on 23 May 1940. Five pre-production Hs 130A-0's followed, being delivered in early 1941, and featured DB 601R engines, a single-stage supercharger, retractable landing gear, and a bay in the rear to house two Rb75/30 cameras for reconnaissance. The five Hs 130A-0s subsequently underwent trials and testing, which revealed significant problems with the aircraft performance, and reliability problems which prevented operational use.

Two further modified Hs 130A-0s was produced under the designation Hs 130A-0/U6 and featured a greater wingspan, DB 605B engines, Hirth superchargers, GM-1 nitrous oxide power boosting, and under-wing drop tanks, and being ready for flight testing in November 1943,[4] demonstrating an absolute ceiling of 15,500 m (50,570 ft). The Hs 130A-0/U6 variant as well as the other Hs 130A-0s proved unsatisfactory and were never flown operationally. Further development of the Hs 130 led to bomber variants. The planned Hs 130B was almost the same as the Hs 130A, but with a bomb bay in place of the camera bay, but was never built. The Hs 130C was built as a competitor for the "Bomber B" project, and was very different from the Hs 130A, featuring a shorter wing span, remotely-controlled defensive armament, a more extensively glazed (but still pressurized) cabin and up to 4,000 kg (8,800 lb) of bombs. Three prototypes, V1, V2, and V3 were built, with V1 and V2 were powered by BMW 801 radials, and V3, featuring full armament by DB 603A engines. Further development of the Hs 130 as a reconnaissance aircraft continued with the Hs 130D, which was planned to have DB 605 engines and a complex two-stage supercharger, but was again unbuilt.

The Hs 130E was a re-working of the Hs 130A with the Höhen Zentrale (HZ)-Anlage system in place of conventional superchargers. HZ-Anlage installed a third engine in the fuselage, a DB 605, the only purpose of which was to power a large supercharger to supply air to the wing-mounted DB 603B engines. Such a system had first been tried some twenty-five years previously, on the R.30/16 example of the Zeppelin-Staaken R.VI bomber. Another difference from the Hs 130A was the nose, which was extended forward to offset the weight of the HZ-Anlage engine in the fuselage. Also underwing fuel tanks could be fitted to provide fuel for three engines, and air scoops were fitted under the fuselage to supply the fuselage engine. Three prototype Hs 130Es were built; Hs 130E V1 first flew in September 1942, and could reach 12,500 m (41,010 ft) when HZ-Anlage was employed. Hs 130E V2, first flown in November 1942, was lost on its seventh flight due to an engine fire; V3 was built to replace it.[8] An order for seven pre-production Hs 130E-0s followed, first flying in May 1943, together with a production order was placed for 100 Hs 130E-1s which were to have a remotely controlled defensive armament and provisions for underwing bombs. The order was cancelled due to continuing problems suffered by the Hs 130E-0's HZ-Anlange system. An Hs 130F was planned, which was hoped to solve the problems with HZ-Anlage, by using four supercharged BMW 801 engines, but was never built.


----------



## Gnomey (Sep 2, 2012)

Good stuff!


----------



## airforceone (Nov 12, 2012)

Awesome job Gekho..


----------



## Capt. Vick (Nov 13, 2012)

The remains of a Hs 130 were found at Brandis after the war. There are at least two pictures showing the rear fuselage and tail in the Stephen Ransom books about the Me 163. Do a Google search. Interesting...


----------



## gekho (Feb 17, 2013)

The attempts of aeronautical developments in postwar Spain were some kind of an utopian dream, more loaded with good intentions and enthusiasm of their creators, that economic and industrial real potential of the country. But if something does available Spain, however, was of great national and international designers, like the German Willy Messerschmitt, and the Frenchman Emile Dewoitine. Both worked with the Hispano Aviacion in Seville.

In this sense, to provide the fledgling Air Force of a modern fighter aircraft (what was in the 40 did not stop being the remains of the Civil War, whose outdated aircraft would be the only valid model Bf109) seems to be presented two possibilities. Or build under license the Messerschmitt 109, but Hispano Suiza engine equipped with the inability to produce or import your original Daimler Benz 600 series, or opt for a new model, coded as HS-50 or Dewoitine D 600, which would be an evolution of the great French designer D.520. Is this aircraft which we are concerned.

After the German occupation of France, Emile Dewoitine exiles in Spain and comes into contact with the leading fighter aircraft of the time, which is none other than the Hispano. The idea here is to develop the D.600: the Hispano agrees and starts working on it for the 40-41, under the local name of HS-50. Sketches are outlined and established the basic features of the project: Single-engine monoplane fighter, low-wing, retractable landing gear and closed cockpit. Equipped with four 7.5 mm machine guns in the wings and a 20mm cannon mounted on the engine, which shoot through the propeller hub. The engine would be the Hispano Suiza 12-Z, although locally manufactured French design in the company's facilities in Barcelona.

During this period, work performed on a mock-up, which is completely finished and can appreciate the sleek lines of the model. However, the project would be canceled in 1943. The reasons for such cancellation are obvious: 

1.- it was an untested prototype, which probably would require considerable development and tuning to be fully operational. 2.- Conditions of economic hardship and industrial discouraged when embarking on adventures of this magnitude
3.- Finally the German license to manufacture the highly proven and excellent Bf109 model was achieved, which also served as many different units in the Air Force squadrons.

Therefore, especially getting to manufacture under license the Messerschmitt fighter, the beautiful HS-50 did not go beyond that single model manufactured in San Jacinto. Motors Hispano Suiza 12-Z were finally used in constructed cells Bf109G-2, resulting in the Hispano Aviacion 1112K1L, but the unreliability of the power plant that would have to be replaced by the magnificent Rolls Royce Merlin 500, with that would be born Buchón, a classic of our skies.

Sources: AERONET GCE / IBERONET: Dewoitine 600 - Hispano Suiza
el jagdtiger: Caza Hispano Aviación HS-50
Años 40 (I): Renace una industria | Fundación Hélice
http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5975.0
Hispano Aviación HS 50


----------



## subkraft (Mar 28, 2013)

....that has been easily one of most interesting threads I've read in years. What is it about the interwar French, they have to be ugliest aircraft ever. But I think its the 'Folland Frightful' that takes the cake for a name. Maybe second is the Ryan "Fireball"....I'm imagining the test pilot climbing into the cockpit of the "fireball"
All fascinating...thanks.


----------



## Gnomey (Mar 28, 2013)

Nice stuff!


----------



## planb (Mar 28, 2013)

where did you get all this info?


----------



## gekho (Mar 29, 2013)

planb said:


> where did you get all this info?



Sailing in internet


----------



## planb (Apr 1, 2013)

That is alot of sailing,thanks for sharing


----------



## vikingBerserker (Apr 1, 2013)

I totally agree, another outstanding thread!


----------



## gekho (Nov 2, 2013)

On 8 September 1943, instructions were issued to redesign the Nakajima Ki-84 Hayate all-metal single-seat fighter (which see) for wooden construction because of the increasingly critical light alloy supply situation. The task of redesigning the airframe was assigned to the Tachikawa Hikoki which was to collaborate with the Army Aerotechnical Research Institute at Tachikawa. Assigned the designation Ki-106, the wooden fighter was intended to utilise a high proportion of semi-skilled labour in its construction and to be broken down into components to be built by small wood-working shops grouped around designated assembly points. Prototype construction was sub-contracted to Ohjo Koku, but the first of three prototypes was not flown until July 1945. The external characteristics of the Ki-84 were faithfully retained by the Ki-106, apart from some minor revision of the vertical tail, the first prototype being powered by the 2,000 hp Nakajima Ha-45-21 engine and carrying an armament of four 20-mm cannon. Appreciably heavier than the standard Ki-84, the Ki-106 was subjected to various weight saving measures, one of these being a reduction in the armament to two 20-mm cannon, and the second prototype flew with this armament during the last week of the war. Max speed, 385mph (620km/h) at 21,325ft (6 500m). Time to 16,405ft (5 000m), 7.85min. Normal range, 497mis (800 km)plus 1.5 hrs. Empty weight, 6,499 lb (2 948 kg). Loaded weight, 8,5981b (3 900 kg). Dimensions as for Ki-84 apart from height of 11 ft 9VA in (3,59 m).


----------



## vikingBerserker (Nov 2, 2013)

Beautiful plane, but I wonder how it would have done.


----------



## contaxrts (Oct 3, 2014)

I think P51H and P47N have to be here


----------



## snowmobileman (Oct 5, 2014)

I don't think these count as frustrated projects, since both made it into service in numbers; the P-47N even entered service in WW2.


----------



## johnbr (Oct 22, 2017)

*Douglas XB-42A Mixmaster*

Reactions: Informative Informative:
1 | Like List reactions


----------



## johnbr (Oct 22, 2017)

Benjamin S. Kelsey is shown in flight gear by left main landing gear of a Curtiss P-36A, circa 1940. Three-quarter left front near view of the second production P-36A.


----------



## Wurger (Oct 22, 2017)




----------

