Any worth in 'pusher' aircraft?

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tomo pauk

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Apr 3, 2008
'Pusher' aircraft, like the SAAB 21, or XP-54, or XP-55, or J7W etc, were pretty oddball as far as the ww2 goes, not a single of the designs making it into a regular squadron use, and a lot of them remained as paper projects. So let's give them some love - what air force/service might've benefited from such aircraft if they materialized early enough, and for what tasks? Benefits and limits of the layout? With extension shaft or as twin boom.
Pusher-only for this thread, no push-pull designs (like the Do 335).
 
Besides some of the small civilian homebuilt types (VariEze, etc.), there has been very few pusher designs ever put into "mass" production (with more than 50 produced) over the last 100 years of aviation. A few types in WW I when low HP and lots of drag made everything equal, but after that not much. Off the top of my head, B-36, Beech Starship, Piaggio P.166/Avanti.
 
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My aerodynamic knowledge is limited, so the advantages I can see are in the other fields:
- nose armament
- the better view forward and sideways
- additional protection of the pilot against the fire from 6 o'clock
Disadvantages:
- catapult seat is required
- problems with CG in long flights unless you place the fuel tank in the nose?
Above is about 1 engine aircraft.
 
Reading that well respected source of information wiki, it seems there are significant disadvantages to a pusher design, The fuselage in front of the prop reduces its efficiency and there are all sorts of problems with cooling when the plane isn't moving and how to arrange the rear control surfaces. Good for designs where you want a good all around view but a problem for combat planes.
 
The elephant in the room. The fact that light bulbs did not turn on in the minds of people designing military aircraft can be summed up in two words; 'Ejection Seat'. If a simple and effective Ejection seat had been available in the 1930s, the high performance capabilities of Pusher aircraft could have become a reality. From weapons to electronics to power/thrust to weight ratios, Pushers had clear advantages over tractor aircraft. The fact that there was no safe way to get out of a single prop pusher in an emergency is what held the design back.
 

Pilots were not in danger of hitting the aft prop anyway.
 
Quite a few pilots never wear parachutes, e.g., the ones who fly Staggerwing Beeches or Howard DGAs. The idea that the lack of ejection seats prevented aircraft in any non-combat role from being pushers is nonsense.

Pushers have a lot of disadvantages and few, if any, benefits.
 
One reason for leaving the acft is the engine has quit. A stationary prop blade is no more hazard than fin or stabilizer.
 
There are also disadvantages in prop efficiency, cooling on the ground, and all sorts of stuff, the issue isn't just about ejector seats.
 
Akuma said:
The point is that the people who built and flew aircraft 'believed' there was a real danger of the pilot being injured or killed by the Prop when leaving the aircraft.
Click to expand...
did they? They didnt care much for armour or serf sealing tanks until combat started and people realised the pilot was worth more than the machine he was in, no matter how expensive that machine was?
 

Advantages of Pushers of Tractor fighter aircraft. Weapons and ammunition can be clustered in the nose for straight ahead firing which removes problems with converging fire ranging and targeting. With radio, navigation and other Electronics forward of the engine, electrical interference from engine ignition degradation literally goes away. (This effect was reported time and again in aircraft with engines behind the cockpit. Bell P39 is the most well known of American fighters with this, but this freedom from 'electrical noise' was reported in all such aircraft. Cockpit is positioned closer to the nose of the aircraft giving a much better pilot view during all aspects of takeoff, landing and flight. Aircraft when so designed by engineers will normally have the engine moved further aft of the wing because of the weight leverage caused by moving the ordnance and cockpit forward. Another little known but surprising finding was that in the few pusher aircraft that were correctly designed, general performance in terms of speed to engine power/weight ratio was found to have a small but noticeable increase when compared to Tractor aircraft having the same engine power combinations. In short the advantages appear to have outweighed disadvantages. Aside from the perception that existed of danger to the pilot, it would be a valid point that aircraft designers and builders did not have experience in designing such aircraft and it would have taken a lengthy period to gain such.
 
pbehn said:
did they? They didnt care much for armour or serf sealing tanks until combat started and people realised the pilot was worth more than the machine he was in, no matter how expensive that machine was?
Click to expand...

Combat is a very harsh teacher. History is rife with nations and people that had to learn the hard way.
 
Akuma said:
Combat is a very harsh teacher. History is rife with nations and people that had to learn the hard way.
Click to expand...
There were also technical difficulties with pushers, like turbulent flow causing low efficiency and prop failure as well as low cooling on the ground and in climb
 
pbehn said:
There were also technical difficulties with pushers, like turbulent flow causing low efficiency and prop failure as well as low cooling on the ground and in climb
Click to expand...

Again perfectly true. It is a favorite saying among aviation engineers that "An airplane is a collection of compromises flying in formation". Yes there would have been difficulties the same as in any other airplane that was ever built and flown. I have yet to find a prototype aircraft that was so perfect that it did not need at least some modification to fulfill it's intended role. I have noticed a curious tendency where people will criticize a first design/build airplane and say it was no good without realizing that every airplane goes through a gestation process. Some require a shorter period while on others it takes longer before full potential can be realized. There are cases of airplanes which were considered acceptable, normal, designs that were just plain bad. The Dornier 335 still had some rear engine cooling problems in it's last iteration. But the airplane was such an excellent performer in most other aspects that I'm sure the designers could have come up with a satisfactory fix. Another plane considered a poor design was the Me-210. It's faults were corrected and the plane became good at what it was supposed to do but it's reputation was such that the Messerschmitt company told everyone they had dropped the design altogether. In fact they continued to produce it under the new designation of Me-410 where it served in the German air force until the end of the war.
 
The Japanese intended to produce the Kyushu J7W, but those pesky Allies interrupted their plans.

There was also the Bell YFM-1, which to be honest, was an interesting concept. I feel that if they deleted the two manned cannon (one in each nacelle) and focused on fixed weapons (.50MG, 20mm cannon), it may have been of better use.
 
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