1938: The Best Fighter. (1 Viewer)

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Fabric-winged Hurricanes could only be dived at 380 mph ASI, metal-winged at 450 mph ASI.
It wouldn't take much to exceed 380 mph when diving a WWII era fighter aircraft. How many Hurricane fighter aircraft lost their wings before they made the change?
 
Do you actually have any reports of a Hurricane loosing it's wings in a dive or is this just more un-founded British aircraft bashing?

380mph ASI is 418mph true at 5000ft, 456mph true at 10,000ft, 494mph true at 15,000 and 533mph true at 20,000ft. for an airplane that ran close to 220-230mph ASI in level flight and was not noted for fast acceleration in a dive it may mean that the plane could not be dived as steeply as they would have liked or perhaps for as long but that doesn't mean imminent structural failure or even loss of wing skinning. And, as we are finding out, the Hurricane is something of a PRE-WWII era fighter aircraft. A contemporary of the Seversky P-35. Only 76 P-35s were built, delivery being completed in August 1938.
 
I-16 Tip 10 had 4 7,62mm ShKAS mgs, which combined rof 7200rpm, fairly impressive, armoured seat, 750hp M-25B engine, max speed 448km/h, time to 5000m 6.7min
Ki-27b, no armour, 2 Type 89mgs, 780hp Nakajima Ha-Ib engine, max speed 468km/h, 5.3min to 5000m, extremely manoeuvrable.

Juha

on the conservative side, the rate of fire for the I-16 type 10's 4 7,62mm ShKAS mgs might be 6600-6840 rpm depending on how much the synchronized guns are slowed down. The Hurricanes 8 guns are worth 8800rpm even at 1100rpm apiece. The Russian gins were an outstanding achievement but do point out a bit of a problem with cowl mounted guns. Some took to being synchronized better than others.
 
on the conservative side, the rate of fire for the I-16 type 10's 4 7,62mm ShKAS mgs might be 6600-6840 rpm depending on how much the synchronized guns are slowed down. The Hurricanes 8 guns are worth 8800rpm even at 1100rpm apiece. The Russian gins were an outstanding achievement but do point out a bit of a problem with cowl mounted guns. Some took to being synchronized better than others.

You are most probaly right, I took the info Nedialkov's In the Skies of Nomonhan which I'm reading and noted the fact that he, a Romanian colonel and PhD, has simply multiplied 1800rpm by 4 without thinking the effect of synchronizing to the fuselage mgs but I didn't have time to dig out correct number but anyway I-16 Tip 10 had respectable firepower, some 75% of that of Hurri. I-16 was slower than Hurri but climbed well and was probably more manoeuvrable but on the other had was rather unforgivable plane, which Hurri wasn't.

Juha
 
On the I-16 only 2 of the guns were synchronized, 2 guns were in the wings.
But the I-16 wasn't a good gun platform. It had very sensitive controls, but the cables to the wings guns had a lot of friction. It took a lot of effort to trip the levers to fire the guns, which usually ended up in moving the stick, and disturbing your aim.
Some of the Russian pilots solution to this was getting so close it was hard to miss no matter how much your aim varied. Another solution was just ram them.
Since a lot of the ramming incidents had no survivors, it not really known if they were really delibrate rammings, or pilots trying to get so close they couldn't miss.
 
I figured 2 guns at 1800rpg each and 2 guns at 1500-1620rpg each. I-16 was also known to 'snake', lateral instability.

Performance for both planes is scanty, but the I-16s engine had a full throttle height 3-4000ft lower than the Hurricane which means at 10,000ft or so the performance may not be that far off. Hurricane does't have full power yet. At 15,000-20,000ft the Hurricane is at it's best while the I-16 is getting steadily worse.
 
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It wouldn't take much to exceed 380 mph when diving a WWII era fighter aircraft. How many Hurricane fighter aircraft lost their wings before they made the change?
Do love the anti-British dramatics, don't you? Give us a list of fabric-winged aircraft that could be dived at those sorts of speeds; having done that, check on how fabric covering was done.
1/. Fabric was held in place by thread, knotted at regular intervals; you might feel differently, but I doubt that it's entirely proof against a 400 mph gale.
2/. Fabric, at the flying surfaces trailing edges, has grommets sewn into place at regular intervals, to allow for moisture drainage; the airflow could (and did) enter through these grommets, and, at high speed, cause ballooning of the fabric, which at the very least would cause extra drag, or even tear the fabric clean off.
 
Been doing some research on this and I cant find any performance figures for the 109D apart from several sites which claim a top speed of 348 to 354mph which cant be right. I am assuming they are early E model speeds.
 
The D was, probably, the slower of early 109, the fastest was C. D get same engine of B and i think was heavier of B
 
Been doing some research on this and I cant find any performance figures for the 109D apart from several sites which claim a top speed of 348 to 354mph which cant be right. I am assuming they are early E model speeds.

A lot of websites are going off of old books which claim that the "D" model had the DB 600 engine or a very early DB 601. This has since been shown to be in error and the production "D"s had the Jumo 210 engine and so performance should be very close to the "B""C" models.
 
Thanks Vincenzo and Shortround6. Thought that might be the case I have averaged the speeds I can find for the B/C variants and it comes out at 294 mph which is still very respectable for an aircraft with a 630 to 700hp engine.
 
Performance info for pre war aircraft is very thin on the ground I have managed to find bits and pieces for the Hurricane 1. Rolls Royce Merlin II without ejector exhausts, Watts 2 blade prop and fabric covered wings. 316 mph, 11m 40s to 20,000 ft, altitude 33,400 ft

Has anyone got performance data for the Bf109 B/C/D
 
If difference in speed of B and D was few, (due to around 200 kg more heavier D and new propeller) the same engine give same shape of speed curve, the C with the new variant of Jumo 210 give a new shape and the max speed came from ~440 km/h at ~3 km to ~480 km/h at ~4.5km


this from HoHun calculation (commonly him rebuild curve from data point and max speed at FTH is commonly one data point)
 

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