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Those PROC pilots were probably US trained. In the latter part of WWII, Chiang Kai-Shek sent hundreds of "loyal Nationalist" young men to be trained ab initio as fighter pilots. I've spoken with some of their instructors. These guys were in danger of losing their draft deferments due to the scaling back of the massive contract flight training program. It seems air combat losses were lower than forecast, while infantry losses were much higher, and there was a desperate need for cannon fodder. Well along comes this Lend-Lease Chinese training program to save the day.Zipper730, where did you get the information that the A-1 could get inside the La5 or La7 ?
The only recorded incidents of A-1/ La incidents i'm aware of that resulted in shoot downs occured after the Korean war, and the A-1s came out on top mainly because the La-5, 7, or 9 were badly flown. Probably low time PROC pilots verses veteran Navy pilots.
I fail to see what Mr McNamara has to do with any of this discussion, but who am I to judge?
One thing when comparing the AD vs WW2-era fighters, like the La-7, is that piston-engined aircraft were probably quite close to the absolute limits on possible performance: a light AD Skyraider would be closer in performance to an La-7 than the "attack" vs "fighter" classification would show: it may have been a bomb truck, but that meant that it had a big wing and a lot of surplus power at light weight. It also had all those landing on carrier concerns, so it probably has quite good behavior at high angles of attack. If the La-7 pilots are trying to get into a turning fight, this would probably not be a good plan.
And the MiG-15/MiG-17 drivers who got shot down by ADs should just go to their commanders and volunteer for duty cleaning latrines.
I wonder how in the test they performed back in the WW2 era how they determined the diameter of the circles the aircraft turned in, they assigned values sometimes in feet, yards, or meters. They had no GPS on anything of that sort, and at the altitudes most test were performed, they'd have no way to equate it to a circle on the ground.
Was it just a WAG?
They could tell how a certain aircraft, equipped a certain way , at a certain altitude, with a certain pilot flying , could compare to another aircraft at that time under the same variables.
But to assign a definite fixed value to the tests ? Was it just BS to help morale ?
It was mentioned in this thread...Zipper730, where did you get the information that the A-1 could get inside the La5 or La7 ?
That makes enough senseThe only recorded incidents of A-1/ La incidents i'm aware of that resulted in shoot downs occured after the Korean war, and the A-1s came out on top mainly because the La-5, 7, or 9 were badly flown.
OkayFor general rules of thumb - If you want the actual design Limit loads for any aircraft, you need to see the structural analysis. The Structural analysis report will state the +/- G for a specific weight condition and - as a rule of thumb - will be based on maximum AoA loads imposed usually in a pull out from a dive.
And I assume the math for this is quite massive?The structural analysis begins with the Specification statements regarding mission and design Limit loading for the extreme 'Normal' (Dive pull out, carrier landing loads for a non-combat aircraft (COD, rudder loads due to low speed/high propeller torque, etc., etc.) where the Forces are applied to a rigid airframe conceptual model and the Force vectors are applied about the theoretical Center of Gravity and Bending moments are also calculated about the CG. The essential outcome is a Force and Moment balance about the X, Y, Z axis.
Of courseThe initial work proceeds with Preliminary Design and is iterated during the Development process as detail design considerations are balanced with practical design approaches for such structure as wing spars, bulkheads, etc., manufacturing processes, etc. During this process issues are always uncovered with matching design to the desired Spec and compromises are developed and implemented.
Now that's interesting: I thought it was 7.33 x 1.5 (not sure where that came from).For WWII spec framework for US aircraft the fighters were all (to my knowledge, except for P-51H) framed around 8G Limit and 12G Ultimate in which the design limit loads were analyzed part by part to achieve (STRESS ALLOWABLE)/(STRESS ACTUAL)-1 >.01 for the material properties of the part(s).
GotchaBombers and transports were generally designed to +3G/-1.5G for a Design/Spec Gross Mission Weight. Not overload or Maximum Gross weight, but design mission Gross weight for fuel, ammo and payload.
LogicalI suspect but do not know that Dive Bombers were designed to fighter specs.
Due to the twisting of the wings?Perhaps pertinent to the wanderings regarding "turn rate" and "turn radius", it is perhaps important to re-state two or three facts about airframes with big engines in asymmetric/high Angle of Attack flight.
Airframes and wing are flexible - some more than others, When aerodynamic loads are combined with inertia loads, wings twist which affect the actual AoA achievable before a CLmax (other than theoretical airfoil and wind tunnel results for symmetric flight (no yaw for example. The aerodynamic pressure distributions are altered significantly.
Wait, I thought propellers worked better at low-speeds?Engine/Prop systems at low speeds - are a.) less efficient
Not to mention torque and p-factor...b.) promote more significant gyroscopic loads, proportionally, which control surfaces must offset (a reason why that a/c turns better in one direction).
Because of greater amounts of lift produced by pulling higher g-loads, as well as variables such as flexing of wings?Drag - The Parasite drag increases due to increases in CL are Significant and must be accounted for in developing the forces applied to the airframe to derive 'turn performance'.
To allow accurate predictionIn the airframe biz for conventional aircraft, the methodology for high Aoa (climb/Turn) pointed to developing the analytics to calculate Power Available and Power Required.
And cooling dragThe reason is that the vagaries of precise calculation for Thrust (engine/prop + exhaust) is tougher.
So in a turn, the CLmax is less in a level stall than a turn?IThe equations developed to calculate Turn as a function of CL, GW, Wing Area, Density and Velocity fall apart when one tries to insert Theoretical CLmax for level stall. Actual CLmax is significantly less for all the reasons outlined.
That would explain things..Those PROC pilots were probably US trained. In the latter part of WWII, Chiang Kai-Shek sent hundreds of "loyal Nationalist" young men to be trained ab initio as fighter pilots. I've spoken with some of their instructors. These guys were in danger of losing their draft deferments due to the scaling back of the massive contract flight training program. It seems air combat losses were lower than forecast, while infantry losses were much higher, and there was a desperate need for cannon fodder. Well along comes this Lend-Lease Chinese training program to save the day.
They said these Chinese kids were challenging to teach, as most had been yanked right out of ox-cart culture into the twentieth century. It was especially hard to get them to think in the vertical dimension.
So they were undertrained...Well, long story short, the majority of them eventually wound up flying for Mao, albeit in aircraft and culture vastly different than their training (most didn't get to take their Mustangs or Thunderbolts with them). Also, most were grounded while they went through lengthy "political reeducation", so, far from current at flying, then subjected to a radically different aviation culture in radically different aircraft by Russian instructors who were as racially and culturally contemptuous of them as the Americans had been. Then they were issued life-limited airframes that didn't allow enough monthly flying time to achieve and maintain proficiency.
Never thought about thatThe same almost-starvation monthly rationing of caloric intake that applied to the population as a whole applied to fighter pilots, too, so their G tolerance probably was far from optimum, not to mention their mental alertness and visual acuity.
NoUp against combat veteran Navy pilots in agile, well armed Skyraiders, not much of a fair fight.
I simply brought up the La-7 because it was mentioned earlier. I see your points though.In this context, theoretical tightest turning radius of an LA-7 is hardly relevant to anything.
Some truth to thata light AD Skyraider would be closer in performance to an La-7 than the "attack" vs "fighter" classification would show: it may have been a bomb truck, but that meant that it had a big wing and a lot of surplus power at light weight. It also had all those landing on carrier concerns, so it probably has quite good behavior at high angles of attack. If the La-7 pilots are trying to get into a turning fight, this would probably not be a good plan.
I suspect Zipper equates a kill with getting inside your victim. "Can't have one without the other!" Someday he'll learn.Zipper730, i'm the one who brought up the fact that A1's had shot down some Lavochkins AFTER the Korean war, exactly what model Lavochkin nobody knew at the time. La5, 7, 9 11, ?
I'm the one that brought La? verses A1 up, me or no one else in this thread has suggested that a A1 could turn inside a Lavochkin of any model, other than you.
Zipper has earned the callsign "McNamara" for his obsession with mathematizing everything.I fail to see what Mr McNamara has to do with any of this discussion, but who am I to judge?
One thing when comparing the AD vs WW2-era fighters, like the La-7, is that piston-engined aircraft were probably quite close to the absolute limits on possible performance: a light AD Skyraider would be closer in performance to an La-7 than the "attack" vs "fighter" classification would show: it may have been a bomb truck, but that meant that it had a big wing and a lot of surplus power at light weight. It also had all those landing on carrier concerns, so it probably has quite good behavior at high angles of attack. If the La-7 pilots are trying to get into a turning fight, this would probably not be a good plan.
And the MiG-15/MiG-17 drivers who got shot down by ADs should just go to their commanders and volunteer for duty cleaning latrines.
Wait, I thought propellers worked better at low-speeds?
Plus the slower the airspeed the more angle of attack it takes to stay up, so the more the thrust line diverges from the flight path. Only the flight path component of the thrust vector is useful propulsion.Compared to a jet engine yes.
But a prop plane in a turn (if the turn lasts very long) is going slower than full speed, perhaps a lot slower and no propeller is equally efficient at all speeds. A reason that bombers and transport planes used bigger diameter propellers than fighters even if they used the same engine.
Jees, man, get a clue! DrGondog knows his stuff and explained it in plain English, then you turn it around and get it back-to-front!So CLmax is less in a level stall than a turn?
So they were undertrained...
I wonder how in the test they performed back in the WW2 era how they determined the diameter of the circles the aircraft turned in, they assigned values sometimes in feet, yards, or meters. They had no GPS on anything of that sort, and at the altitudes most test were performed, they'd have no way to equate it to a circle on the ground.
Was it just a WAG?
They could tell how a certain aircraft, equipped a certain way , at a certain altitude, with a certain pilot flying , could compare to another aircraft at that time under the same variables.
But to assign a definite fixed value to the tests ? Was it just BS to help morale ?
It could be as simple as standing next to a very visible marker in a field with a stop watch. The pilot/test a/c flies over and pulls G's keeping note of the airspeed until he comes back to the marker. Repeat process, and do not stall out. When he stalls out - the prior time rules. Get another pilot, repeat - but in opposite direction. Prior to test, report on load out and any treatment of external drag items (like covering gun ports, sanding surface with fine grit, etc).I wonder how in the test they performed back in the WW2 era how they determined the diameter of the circles the aircraft turned in, they assigned values sometimes in feet, yards, or meters. They had no GPS on anything of that sort, and at the altitudes most test were performed, they'd have no way to equate it to a circle on the ground.
Was it just a WAG?
They could tell how a certain aircraft, equipped a certain way , at a certain altitude, with a certain pilot flying , could compare to another aircraft at that time under the same variables.
But to assign a definite fixed value to the tests ? Was it just BS to help morale ?
It could be as simple as standing next to a very visible marker in a field with a stop watch. The pilot/test a/c flies over and pulls G's keeping note of the airspeed until he comes back to the marker. Repeat process, and do not stall out. When he stalls out - the prior time rules. Get another pilot, repeat - but in opposite direction. Prior to test, report on load out and any treatment of external drag items (like covering gun ports, sanding surface with fine grit, etc).
It could be as simple as standing next to a very visible marker in a field with a stop watch. The pilot/test a/c flies over and pulls G's keeping note of the airspeed until he comes back to the marker. Repeat process, and do not stall out. When he stalls out - the prior time rules. Get another pilot, repeat - but in opposite direction. Prior to test, report on load out and any treatment of external drag items (like covering gun ports, sanding surface with fine grit, etc).
Zipper has earned the callsign "McNamara" for his obsession with mathematizing everything.
As for the Skyraider's Mig victims, they should go punch their intelligence officer in the nose for not warning them of the rattlesnake nature of their opponent. "Know thine enemy!"
Cheers,
Wes