1937-42: airforce on a budget

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pbehn said:
I was thinking more about if they ran out of steam before even thinking about the UK it may have stopped any idea of going into Russia.
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They ran out of steam in France in 1940. It was an Armistice, not a surrender. If the French had fought on, the Germans, at the end of their supply lines would have become bogged down. All the French had to do was to hold a Breton redoubt, and the Massif Central (Vichy France). It was feasible. So no invasion of the USSR.
 
Some aircraft that could provide useful service as fighters for time specified, while not breaking the budget:
- a fighter that uses fuselage of Gladiator, but has a new cantilever monoplane wing with retractable U/C, and 6 LMGs total (= an early, low-tech version of the F.5/34)
- fuselage of Hawker Fury, with new wing as proposed above, closed canopy, beard radiator; also with Dagger of 1000 HP (ducks for cover)
- Bf 109 with Kestrel, Mercury, HS 12Y, R-1830, G&R 14N, I-F Asso, Zuisei, Sakae, M-100/103/105, M88; up to 6 LMGs, or 2-4 HMGs + 2-0 LMGs, 1-2 cannons + 2 LMGs - a little something for everyone
- I-16 with non-Soviet engine and guns
- Fokker D.XXI with retractable U/C, as modified by Finland
- Grumman FF biplanes redesigned into monoplanes
- Ki-27 and A5M with retractable U/C, Zuisei engine and better firepower
- Hs 123 and CR-42 modified into monoplane with retractable U/C, enclosed cockpit
 
If its anything like Computing, you'd be better off designing a new fighter from scratch. Just start again.
 
The problem here is time.

An air force modern in 1937 is going to be poop in 1942. So plenty money down drain

So I can but Hurricanes in 1937 or Spitfire 9 in 1942. So not sure where my money goes.
 
Largely, a small country or a poorly industrialized one will have to buy aircraft already in service or at least ready for production.

Something like a Hawk 75K, with the R-2180 Twin Hornet, might be a good choice.
 
An air force or a navy cannot be wished into existence.

It would take at least 5 years or so and the idea of a relatively poor, relatively technical backward country having an air force on par with RAF or Luftwaffe is not happening.

There is absolutely no way you can build a budget air force or navy which can match a first rate nation

The very best you could hope for is some kind of deterrent factor which stop possible aggression so invading your nation would be not worth the losses.

Cheap aircraft maybe cheap but having airfields and pilots and maintenance and technicians is not cheap and so unless the infrastructure is in place to meet the ancillary needs then again pretty pointless.

Sweden is always a good example of a deterrent military plus the territory and harsh winter makes it a very difficult proposition for an invading army. Even a super power.
 
With the Netherlands, it was lots of AAA, a few planes, and defensive lines. Not everything went well for the Germans.
 
If say Romania builds an air force and the main enemy is Hungary then that's a deal done. It's possible a shoe string budget and limited technical resources can match the needs of facing the might of Hungary.

But you are not going to be Belgium or Greece facing the Luftwaffe and winning.

Netherlands lasted 5 days. On a sliding scale the Dutch came out worse.
 
Kevin J said:
Seriously mate, we used to look back at our past systems and think. To ourselves, boy what a pile of crap, but we did make lots out of all our cobbled together systems.
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Who the heck are 'we'?
 

Keeping a fuselage and designing new wings and landing gear doesn't really save a whole lot of money. You still need a good prop (fixed pitch won't do) you need radios, you need an instrument panel, all a lot more expensive per pound or kilogram than the fuselage framework and covering.


Sticking large diameter 9 cylinder radials on the 109 (or similar small airframe) doesn't save much either. Not without a time traveler to help design a low drag cowling.
Lets please remember that the P-36 has 22% more drag (and lost exhaust thrust?) than the early long nose P-40. And the P-36 used a 14 cylinder two row radial of medium diameter.

None of the Biplanes can be easily modified into monoplanes, You just can't leave the top wing off. I am not saying you said to do that but the Gladiator used two pretty much equal size wings. 323 sq ft, take one wing off and you have 161.5 square ft. except you have to either build a really heavy wing or make one using much thicker airfoil for strength. You can use a tapered wing with a longer cord near the fuselage to keep the thickness ratio down. You may want to use different attachment points from the spars to the fuselage than the Biplane used,

I would suggest that you check out the WIki entry on the Hawker Fury for an idea of the size of the market. Yugoslavia being the largest user of non British Furies. They bought 10 and built 40 under licence. However Yugoslavia had flown this in 1935 and built 12 more.

By 1938 they were flying this

but only ordered 12 more.

The market for 2nd rate fighters was going to be small, too small to really pay for extensive R&D to develop monoplanes using Biplane fuselages.
 
One possibility is to gamble by ordering an aircraft off the drawing boards. We know how that turned out for the Me 210 but Udet was correct that it could work. The example that occurs to me was the Renard R-38. A prototype with an HS 12Y, the R-36 flew on 5th November 1937 and after around a year of tests, 40 aircraft were ordered (I don't know if the production aircraft were to be powered by the HS 12Y or the Merlin). The first prototype crashed in January 1939 and Belgium cancelled production and ordered Hawker Hurricanes. According to Wikipedia, the crash may have occurred because radio equipment came loose in the cockpit, so the decision to abandon production seemed premature. The R-38 prototype with a Merlin II flew in August 1939 and also showed reasonable performance and characteristics with a maximum speed of 545 km/h (336 mph) at 6,000 m.

Now the R-38 was not a great aircraft. It had an all metal forward fuselage and wings but the structure behind the cockpit was fabric covered. However, it had a performance possibly better than the Hurricane and was apparently relatively easy to produce. If the Merlin powered version had been ordered shortly after the R-36 had flown, it seems plausible that more than a hundred aircraft would have opposed the Luftwaffe on May 10th 1940.

Almost all information online about these aircraft seems to come from Green & Swanborough, The Complete Book of Fighters, 1994. However, I did laugh at the suggestion from S.A.M. #31: The Belgian Alternative that when the Germans captured a version with a Rhone-Gnome 14N, a pilot flew it without realising that he was making that prototype's first flight.

A PDF file at http://www.fnar.be/avionsjpdecocq/Renard_R38pwd.pdf has pictures showing that the exhausts of the R-38 are much better designed than those of the R-36 (exhaust drag anyone?) shown in the blog.
 
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Too build a viable air force in 1937, I need 5 basic types.

Single engine trainer
Single engine fighter
Twin engine trainer/liaison/hack
Twin engine bomber
Transport DC-3 type

A small country is going to struggle affording such a big air fleet and buying will depend on alliances and political spheres. Of course I don't know war is coming in 1940 so good chance it will be too late and my air force could be obsolete before it even gets completed.

So I need Tiger Moth, Hurricane, Anson, Wellington and Dakota. And plenty of them. Plus Bombs and torpedo.

There was certainly indigenous aircraft industry such as in Poland and Netherlands but it didn't do them much good.

So Poland needed 6 trillion Hurricanes yesterday and so did every other country that was invaded. Not happening.

A squadron or two of Hurricanes is maybe a huge achievement for a small poor country but it ain't going to scratch the paint on the blitzkrieg.

So I got me couple of squadrons of fixed prop Hurricanes facing the Germans thinking they have Bf 109 Berthas or Claras and the have Friedrichs instead. That ain't fair.
 
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Perhaps, we should look at what Sweden had at the end of WW2 to determine what was ideally needed at the beginning.

Fighter. Vultee Vanguard.
Scout / dive bomber. Saab 17.
Bomber / Transport. Ju 86.
Trainer. NA Harvard.
Twin trainer / liason. Beechcraft Model 18.

List of military aircraft of Sweden - Wikipedia
 
Yeah but didn't Sweden have issues with American stuff where they got an embargo. So another issue is your supplier turning round and stopping sales.

They had Ju 86 at end of war? Wow. That's worthwhile. By 1945 the Ju 86 can only serve as gate guardian or exhibits in a museum. So much for air power.
 
Ju 86 got used as torpedo bombers and transports later. I agree though, Ju 86 is guaranteed to be shot from the skies. As for American kit, yes agreed, white man speaks with forked tongue.
 
The Basket said:
Sweden wasn't invaded and so can get away with Ju 86.
It's amazing what you can fly when it doesn't matter.

No such thing as a budget air force.
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It took the Nazis 3 months to take mainland Norway, and that's only because we withdrew our forces. Sweden is twice the size, just imagine the problems they would have had. Also half the Kriegsmarine's surface ships are either sunk or laid up.
 
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