Best Non-Strategic Material?

Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules

I always say "Wrap your ass in fiberglass". Fiberglass was actually invented long before WWII. It was used in boats in the 1930s. I guess no one thought of using it in aircraft until after the war. Fiberglass is made from silica (sand). I think everyone had a lot of that during the war.
The Brits developed viable polyester resins in the 1930s. It wasn't until the 1960s that aircraft parts were produced with fiberglass. We now call it "composites". Now, lots of aircraft are made using composite structural materials.
Talk about non strategic. You can literally build an airplane with a pair of scissors and a paint brush.
 

Most planes pretty quickly disappeared after the war, metal and wood alike, most AC that served post war were built post war or towards the end. Over 1000 mossies were built post war.

A mossie IX holds the record for most sorties flown by any bomber during ww2 so what ever its airframe life was it was suffient for the task.
 
drgondog said:
The wood laminate is excellent strength to weight ratio (like aluminum) and trades off bonding/glue for drill/rivet construction. The wood weighs more than the aluminum, the glue/bonding less than rivets.
Click to expand...
By all accounts the M.20 worked fine and I think that American (Hughes/Fairchild) Duramold Plywood would have made for a refinement of the design. Plus I think I would have added retractable landing gear and made it compatible with a power egg from both the V-1710 and the V-1650 (even if I had to put a weight in the tail to re-center the 200lb weight difference).
 
HellToupee said:
Over 1000 mossies were built post war.
Click to expand...

De Havilland persisted with wood products and a bonding technique utilising "Redux Adhesive"...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redux_(adhesive)



Anyone know if the Sea Hornet experienced wood problems similar to the Mosquito? The Sea hornet had the same criss-cross wood technique applied to the fuselage as the Mosquito but used redux...



(Clay, have you had a look at the wooden French Caudron and Italian Ambrossini lightweight fighters of WWII?)
 
HellToupee said:
Most planes pretty quickly disappeared after the war, metal and wood alike, most AC that served post war were built post war or towards the end. Over 1000 mossies were built post war.
Click to expand...
Many of the aircraft that disappeared after the war were scrapped because their operators didn't need them and they cost money to maintain and operate.
HellToupee said:
A mossie IX holds the record for most sorties flown by any bomber during ww2 so what ever its airframe life was it was suffient for the task.
Click to expand...
How many hours on the airframe does that equate to? Sorties mean squat for maintenance purposes unless you're tracking cycles on the landing gear for take offs and landings or engine starts and shut downs, more common with turbo-prop aircraft. As far as I know neither was required to be tracked on the Mossie.

You're talking one airframe. Generally most WW2 aircraft including the Mossie lasted about 500 hours.

"The Anglo-Belgian agreement of November 18th, 1946 regarding the delivery of aircraft and equipment by the United Kingdom to Belgium also included the formation of one nightfighter squadron equipped with 22 Mosquito NF30 fighters. The aircraft were delivered from november 1947 onwards with an additional two aircraft for use as instructional airframes. The nightfighter Mosquitos saw service with Nrs 10 and 11 Squadron and operated from Beauvechain. In 1953 two additional Mosquito NF30 were delivered. Build mainly out of balsa wood the service life of a Mosquito was limited and all operational aircraft were struck of charge by 1956 and scrapped."

De Havilland DH.98 Mosquito NF.30. - Belgian Military Aircraft
 

I would prefer stretching fuselage and playing with extra fuel capacity aft of cockpit to offset extra engine weight than adding ballast. Should give you more to play with re: pitch stability and would not be an issue with parasite drag - particularly aft of the wing.
 
After I posted that I remembered the Fw 109 Dora had a little spacer to recenter it after the switch to the Junkers engine.
 

Here some more info on Redux which is now a brand name owned by Hexcel. I've seen this stuff on a few airplanes with honey comb structures.

Hexcel.com - Adhesives Data Sheets
 
I just realized that if we had been building some kind of Mosquito clone under license here, maybe with 6x.50 in the nose, we could have had a long-range escort in 1942!
 
Metal wood;
I have been interested in some of the aircraft types, the Spitfire and the Lancaster for instance, had wooden parts such as plywood stringers and formers integrated with the light alloy airframe construction. In the case of the former some of the metal skin panels on the outer parts on the lower side of the wing, behind the main spar, were secured to the ribs by wood screws which were screwed onto plywood stringers that had been attached to the metal ribs along the lower edges with screws and nuts. Skin panels on a side of the vertical stabilizer were attached to the rib/spars by the same method. The inside structures of the wing tip panels were of all wood too.

In case of the Lancaster some of the parts were of wood; curved leading edges of the fins, the frames of the openings for each doors, the thick edge of the circular opening on the lower side of the fuselage, and the edges of the wing tip panels. Expensive wood materials such as laminated mahogany were specified for the use, though.

I understand that these were employed primarily for the frexibility in designing and manufacturing, and secondly for the conserving metal materials. But I have been wonderling how these wooden parts became, say, after some years of serving under variable weather conditions during which period the parts must have been trapped inside of the structure and subjected to possible condensation/moisture.

I saw a Lancaster at the RAF Museum in 2000, which had vertical stabilizer leading edge formers partially and appearently rotten and the edges of the skin panels originally attaced to the L/E former slightly detouched and raised.

From these two examples I can deduce that if one get to operate the airplanes having these type of construction it is necessary to inspect often on the wooden parts and do repairs on them as necessary. These may produce more complicated situations than the case of all wood construction on a long run.

The Mosquito;
As an airframe mechanic I had been wondering how they protect the airframe of the Mosquito from the moisture/water while it was in service. We use waterproof cover (tarpauline) for wooden gliders when they need to be parked outdoors and I knew it was quite necessary under the weather like in Japan.

So, on reading carefully on the Mosquito F. MkII manual A.P. 2019B Vol.1 Sect.4. Chap.3 #129 through 133, I found however that they used waterproof covers only on the cockpit and the engine nacelles. That is the aircraft can be parmanently parked outdoors without protection provided that the inspection and servicing procedures as per instructed carefully followed.

Also if an wooden aircraft like the Mosquito was used under very dry conditions like the one in the outback in Australia it would suffer considerable shrink on the wood materials since it contains more than 10% of water by weight. In such cases wooden part contacts with metal structural hardware would shrink through excessive drying and will cause looseness on fitting of such parts. These problems can also be adressed if proper inspection/maintenance procedure was taken but it shall be traded off with the efficiency of the aircraft for the role; maintenance cost.

From these I would rather think the British before and during WW2 had an idea that an airplane only necessarily be airworty for just a few years. It can be understood when considering about the life-cycle of the aircraft that was current in 30's, though.
 

Attachments

  • Lancasterwoodenparts.jpg
    123.7 KB · Views: 128
I just realized that if we had been building some kind of Mosquito clone under license here, maybe with 6x.50 in the nose, we could have had a long-range escort in 1942!
Click to expand...
I think that's a bad idea. The Mosquito would fare no better vs single engine fighters then the Me-410 did.

If the U.S. Army Air Corps want to get serious about a long range bomber escort during 1942 then they should power the P-38 with Packard built Merlin engines. For that matter nothing prevents the P-51 from being powered with this engine during 1942.
 
I think that fighting with some cover fire from B-17s is different from flying close escort to Ju-88s. Agree on the other points though. I always thought that they should never have appoved the airacobra and should have had Bell building P-38s under license.

Having them equipped with Merlins would have been interesting. For several reasons the Allison's engine mounting didn't work well in the COld of Western europe.
 
Post-WWII, Mossies were flown in action against targets in Malaya and Batavia. The last front-line RAF Mossie sortie was flown by an aircraft based in Singapore, I believe in 1956.

The Israeli Mosquitos suffered no operational losses in the six-day war, and the book I have on IAF Mossies, so far as I recall, doesn't complain about structural failures.

I think the French even flew them in Indo-China, though I've no info beyond that.

I've also read "somewhere" (so I can't give you a reference) that the late-44 difficulties suffered by FBs in India was traced to a manufacturing fault, not the glue. IIRC "Mosquito" by Sharp Bowyer says either the first or second Mosquito to arrive in the theatre had the formaldehyde glue.

Anyway, the best non-strategic material is clearly Kit-Kat. If I were marooned on a desert island and could only have three things, I'd have Kit-Kat, Kit-Kat, and Pamela Anderson, covered in Kit-Kat.

I believe this settles the matter.
 
The first practical all-metal aircraft, the Junkers J1 (1915), nicknamed the Blechesel, was made of iron and steel, as the first aluminum alloys were initially prone to flaking and other undesirable characteristic flaws when worked in sheet metal form.




Later a couple of American companies specialized in aircraft made from stainless steel.

Budd Company made a flying boat, the Budd BB, and later Budd RB Conestoga transport:


Fleetwings made BT-12 primary trainer and Sea Bird amphibian:
 
"Properly Constructed" aircraft did not last that long during the war either. The average life expectancy of a P-51, EXCLUDING COMBAT LOSSES was a meree 10 months. Most WWII planes should be viewed as consumer items, so the cheaper the construction the better.

If the Mossie had an airframe life of 500 hours, that I think is typically about 10 months of regular flying....so the difference in life expectancy of a Mosquito, and a P-51 is basically zero.

This is not so much a comment about maintenance, as to airframe life
 
All very true - then add in operational and combat damage, field modifications and normal wear and tear. Basically many WW2 aircraft were "throw away" items.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 1 (members: 0, guests: 1)

Similar threads

A
Best WW2 Seafire vs. best A6M Zero
Replies
9
Views
999
Shortround6
S
Axis Strategic Heavy Bombers?
2
Replies
26
Views
2K
Shortround6
S
FG 42, but designed around a non-German cartridge from day 1
2
Replies
20
Views
943
tomo pauk
A
Were any British non-RR ww2-era aeroengines considered for land use?
2 3 4
Replies
71
Views
3K
MiTasol
Best "general purpose" prop fighter also capable of best high altitude performance
2
Replies
31
Views
3K
PAT303
P
Menu
Log in
Register