Aircraft Sketch Details from WW2 Aviation Week
- Thread starter MIflyer
- Start date
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- Thread starter
- #2
MIflyer
1st Lieutenant
And here are a
few more
Snautzer01
Honourably banned
- 42,447
- Mar 26, 2007
Nice. Love those kind of drawings.
- Thread starter
- #4
MIflyer
1st Lieutenant
Relative to the drawing of the PBY tip float above, a guy I knew found out the hard way about a consequence of that design feature. He recovered a beautifully equipped civilian PBY that sunk circa 1970 off Catalina Island when they accidentally landed in the water with the landing gear down.
They raised the airplane and got it to Long Beach airport. where he fixed it up to the point it could fly to New Orleans to be rebuilt. They had recovered the floats; they had ripped off, and since he had no plans to do any water landings on the way back east he just put the floats and their struts in the aft fuselage. On takeoff he discovered that when you deprive a wing of its lower surface then it ain't a wing no more. He hauled back on the controls but the PBY refused to leave the ground, being deprived of a substantial portion of the lifting surface. Finally he got going fast enough to leave the ground and successfully made it back to NO.
They raised the airplane and got it to Long Beach airport. where he fixed it up to the point it could fly to New Orleans to be rebuilt. They had recovered the floats; they had ripped off, and since he had no plans to do any water landings on the way back east he just put the floats and their struts in the aft fuselage. On takeoff he discovered that when you deprive a wing of its lower surface then it ain't a wing no more. He hauled back on the controls but the PBY refused to leave the ground, being deprived of a substantial portion of the lifting surface. Finally he got going fast enough to leave the ground and successfully made it back to NO.
- Thread starter
- #5
MIflyer
1st Lieutenant
Here are a few more:
Crimea_River
Marshal
I've always loved technical illustrations. A dying (dead?) art.
larrymc
Recruit
Nice selection. I think I see a few that I don't have.
For background:
During the war years, McGraw-Hill as part of their war effort abstracted published material from Aviation magazine and printed it in what became a series of Aviation's Sketchbook of Design Detail looseleaf collections. Their stated intention was to make details of design and production techniques and details available to professionals in the aviation industry.
From the preface to the Third Editioin:
"In revising this popular Sketchbook for its third edition, Aviation's Editorial Staff have included only those sketches which present a fairly well-rounded picture of the construction details of most types of aircraft engines, armaments and structural parts.
With the continued pressure on the aviation industry for improved design, we feel that this book will be particularly welcome because its extraordinary reference value can easily result in the saving of many valuable hours."
I scanned and cleaned up the First and Third Editions. There are a couple of hundred pages between the two editions.
For background:
During the war years, McGraw-Hill as part of their war effort abstracted published material from Aviation magazine and printed it in what became a series of Aviation's Sketchbook of Design Detail looseleaf collections. Their stated intention was to make details of design and production techniques and details available to professionals in the aviation industry.
From the preface to the Third Editioin:
"In revising this popular Sketchbook for its third edition, Aviation's Editorial Staff have included only those sketches which present a fairly well-rounded picture of the construction details of most types of aircraft engines, armaments and structural parts.
With the continued pressure on the aviation industry for improved design, we feel that this book will be particularly welcome because its extraordinary reference value can easily result in the saving of many valuable hours."
I scanned and cleaned up the First and Third Editions. There are a couple of hundred pages between the two editions.
- Thread starter
- #8
MIflyer
1st Lieutenant
Note that the F4U makes use of not only conventional aluminum skin and stringer construction but spotwelding and fabric covering as well. And if that were not enough, the ailerons were made of wood.
Barrett
Senior Airman
TREMENDOUS contribution. Forwarding widely, especially among modelers.
Y'all might like this, there is a scanned version of the 3rd edition on reddit:
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/EngineeringPorn/comments/16t83w6/great_grandads_aviations_sketchbook_110_page_scan/
Of particular interest to me is the illustration on page 30 that depicts the B-26's main landing gear and doors. Or more accurately, a planned (and possibly tested) version of the assembly that was never implemented. It would have been fitted starting on the first B-26B-4 in Baltimore and implemented at some point during B-26C-5 production in Omaha, but was cancelled. Several authors have described this landing gear door configuration, incorrectly saying it was fitted starting with the models above. Mechanically operated main gear doors have always fascinated me and I find this configuration particularly interesting given the complex movements required. I haven't come across any documents about why it was dropped, my personal hypothesis would be that its complexity (and therefore chance of failure and added maintenance time) was not considered worthwhile when weighed against the already dropping B-26 accident rate.
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/EngineeringPorn/comments/16t83w6/great_grandads_aviations_sketchbook_110_page_scan/
Of particular interest to me is the illustration on page 30 that depicts the B-26's main landing gear and doors. Or more accurately, a planned (and possibly tested) version of the assembly that was never implemented. It would have been fitted starting on the first B-26B-4 in Baltimore and implemented at some point during B-26C-5 production in Omaha, but was cancelled. Several authors have described this landing gear door configuration, incorrectly saying it was fitted starting with the models above. Mechanically operated main gear doors have always fascinated me and I find this configuration particularly interesting given the complex movements required. I haven't come across any documents about why it was dropped, my personal hypothesis would be that its complexity (and therefore chance of failure and added maintenance time) was not considered worthwhile when weighed against the already dropping B-26 accident rate.
