Bomber: Flop or Not

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Zipper730

Chief Master Sergeant
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Nov 9, 2015
Frankly if there's a fighter thread, there should be a bomber thread. For the sake of semantics, attack planes should go here as well...
 
OK, what is a Flop?

Plane doesn't fly properly?
Plane can't perform original mission, in some cases 4-8 years after work starts and enemy defences have changed?
Engine maker stuffs up and can't deliver engines making anywhere near the promised power?
 
In terms of WW2 almost all strategic bombers were "flops" in terms of the original idea of bombing nations into submission by daylight bombing. Defensive fire was never sufficient and bomb load and accuracy never enough either. Chief flop on the British side I would say was the Stirling, 13 ft longer than a B17.
 
Well, we are in the post war section

What turned some bombers into flops in the post war era (including the 1950s) were the US Nike Ajax (introduced 1954) the British Bloodhound (1958) the Russian S-25 (1955) and the SA-2/S-75 (1957) which turned high altitude flyovers into a not very profitable attack profile.
Now please note that these programs had all been in the works for years so their expected effect was causing changes in purchasing and tactics even before they were deployed.
 
Shortround6 said:
OK, what is a Flop?
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It includes a number of things ranging from
  • Bad design specifications: The specifications were such that common sense should have ensured such a design never made it off the drawing boards (or on them to be honest!).
  • Major structural defects that manage to escape flight test: Particularly if these defects have a way of appearing frequently and/or have almost no chance of survival.
  • Dangerous handling characteristics that weren't weeded out by the time the aircraft entered service: These traits usually don't come with some kind of unexpectedly redeeming quality by accident. These handling characteristics can also include things like excessively light or heavy control forces.
  • Coming up unacceptably short of performance specifications: Now some planes come up a little short here and there, but prove effective enough; some are so underperforming that they prove to be incapable of doing anything they were either intended or currently expected to do.
  • Inadequate avionics/equipment for the job: The aircraft are either ineffective against projected or actual defenses, are incapable of being modified for such a purpose, as well as other issues such as lack of practical survival equipment (such as not having ejection seats in a day where all planes do).
  • Propulsion: The engines have various problems ranging from inadequate power, excessive fuel-consumption, dangerous characteristics to suffer un-contained failures, particularly if effective replacements exist and aren't used.

I have a good list of aircraft that would be considered flops for various reasons, not all are bombers, and are not all post-war, but many would probably agree with me
  • YFM-1: Designed as a "bomber destroyer" and "escort-fighter". It was incapable of flying fast enough to catch bombers, let alone fighters; it had a waist-gunner (part of the perceived escort requirement) the was unnecessary (he was also a radio operator), as well as two gunners in pods that were basically superfluous and would have been incapable of escaping their aircraft, as well as a co-pilot that was not really necessary (basically three unnecessary crew members, arguably four). It lacked the structural strength to pull g-loads needed to take out fighters, and it had an APU system that basically ran everything and had no back-ups, which would basically render the airplane useless if it failed
  • P-59: Was barely capable of exceeding 400 miles an hour and would have no real edge over existing piston engined aircraft.
  • F6U-1: Underpowered, overweight, had stability issues, and described as one of the most uninspiring planes ever
Well, we are in the post war section
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That's correct, so it'd be preferable to start from September 3, 1945 until 1973.
I'm not sure how much fear the SA-1 (S-25) provoked in the US/NATO, the SA-2 did however produce such an effect.

It didn't appear that everybody felt it was as big a threat as one would expect as from 1958-1962, the USAF had still worked on high-altitude profiles (as well as low), and the RAF had some approaches that would be up high as well. My guess is some people felt they could get through, others didn't. The politicians seemed to actually be more worried than the generals.

pbehn said:
In terms of WW2 almost all strategic bombers were "flops" in terms of the original idea of bombing nations into submission by daylight bombing.
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When I say bomber in this case, I'm covering all bombers from attack-aircraft to heavy-bombers.


BTW: I would not be opposed to creating a flop or not thread in the WWII era, but I worry it'd be merged with this one...
 
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The flops faded quite a bit after WW II. Just for the Americans they went from 13 wind tunnels in 1938 to over 40 in 1945. There were a lot fewer surprises in flight testing. Most airplane makers had entire departments devoted to structural strength post war compared to one or two "stress men" with perhaps a few assistants pre war. And that meant one or two stress men for the entire company, not one or two per project.
The design by the seat of the pants had pretty much disappeared by the end of WW II.
Obviously large companies had an advantage. One writer claimed Boeing, by the time they were working on the B-52, had more engineers and draftsmen working in the landing gear dept than the British did on all aspects of all three "V" bombers put together. This also explains the rapid progress of some projects.

there were only about 3 1/2 nations building high performance aircraft after WW II. The US, The British, The Russians and the French are the 1/2. (Swedes did pretty good too, but they tended to work on plane at a time). They all built numbers of experimental aircraft to investigate flight and aerodynamic problems close to the sound barrier. The Area rule was discovered and put into use before any really large numbers of aircraft were built.
For the US Westinghouse dropped the ball on engines and never recovered. Some designs that used the last Westinghouse jets went down the tubes but most American and British jets were able to make the needed power after around 1950 or so.

Be careful of just which years you are looking at as in some case right after WW II there may have been some widely differing opinions on problems concerning the speed of sound which modified expectations of performance.
 
How about the AJ1 Savage, Carrier based (Strategic Bomber), While it did perform it's function (flying on and off carriers) I would caution it's capability (save for a one way trip to deliver successfully an atomic weapon. Just my opinion but hey.
 
Quite a few nuclear bombing mission plans seem to have been quite willing to accept very high loss rates, possibly because there wouldn't be anything to return to, especially for nuclear bombers flying from France or the UK. With the likely damage to bases and command and control systems, planning on returning bombers being met by tankers was also likely optimistic.

Flops, though? The A-5 couldn't perform its design role, due to a design decision by North American.
 
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Donivanp said:
How about the AJ1 Savage, Carrier based (Strategic Bomber), While it did perform it's function (flying on and off carriers) I would caution it's capability (save for a one way trip to deliver successfully an atomic weapon. Just my opinion but hey.
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The aircraft was designed for both the delivery of conventional and nuclear ordinance technically, and even in nuclear missions, the goal is to actually not get killed in the process (believe it or not).

The aircraft's control forces were said to be excessively light due to the configuration of the hydraulics system, which made possible over-control. To make it better, when they were off, the control forces became very heavy, and might very well have reduced roll control to a level that would be inadequate for bringing the plane aboard deck. The hydraulic system may have been damage prone.

swampyankee said:
Quite a few nuclear bombing mission plans seem to have been quite willing to accept very high loss rates
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And that's on the way *in*. There would be problems on the way out as well
  • Many command and control systems or their relays would be destroyed making it difficult to get messages to the right people, as well as coordinate things, like (as you said) aerial refueling
  • Many air-bases would be destroyed making it hard for aircraft to find places to land, also refueling aircraft would not be able to land and refuel themselves
  • To avoid counter-attack, there would be the risk of enemy aircraft using IFF spoofing, so our own aircraft would have to be constantly changing IFF's every certain number of seconds or minutes: In the event of damage to the IFF system, or forgetfulness, that plane would probably get shot down by it's own side.
Flops, though? The A-5 couldn't perform its design role, due to a design decision by North American.
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You mean the bomb-train?
 

Exactly that.
 
Why did they do that? How hard would it have been to have simply placed the position of the bombs in a bay underneath the fuselage instead of a tube in the middle?
 
If explosive bolts had been used, they wouldn't have worked. It takes more than gravity to get bombs past the supersonic airflow around the aircraft.
There have been numerous accidents where dropped stores didn't release cleanly, staying near the dropping aircraft , and even sometimes colliding with it. And that's at high sonic speeds, not supersonic.

The bomb racks themselves ( in the 50s and up ) were attached with explosive bolts, but they were only used at slower speeds as a failsafe if a bomb hung on the rack and wouldn't release. In that case you released bomb rack along with the bomb hung on it. The explosive bolts didn't "punch" anything out, they just destroyed the bolts holding the bomb rack to the aircraft and allowed gravity to take over.

If you used explosives to try and force the bomb downward, you'd also disturb the flight of the aircraft, probably not a good idea at supersonic speeds.
 
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tyrodtom said:
If explosive bolts had been used, they wouldn't have worked. It takes more than gravity to get bombs past the supersonic airflow around the aircraft.
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I remember with the XB-70 they had some means of punching out a store or the plane wouldn't have worked, the YF-12 also used some kind of explosive charge system to blow 'em free.
 
In some cases they may have used hydraulic rams.

But please think about it.

If you "jettison" a 2000lb store with even 10fps downward velocity (regardless of mechanism used) you are going to have a similar force pushing the airplane (or local structure) upward. You have a low velocity but large projectile "cannon" you are dealing with the recoil from.

Not saying it wasn't done, just that it requires a lot thought/planning to deal with the consequences.
 
Zipper730 said:
I remember with the XB-70 they had some means of punching out a store or the plane wouldn't have worked, the YF-12 also used some kind of explosive charge system to blow 'em free.
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The YF-12 was a interceptor, it never carried bombs. Missiles have their own method of separation built in.
The XB-70, all 2 of them, never dropped any bombs that I'm aware of. So whatever system they had was never tested.
Though I do wonder how the XB-70 planned to do it.
But with the probable size of the bombs planned to be dropped from the B-70, there may not have been a problem. A 10,000 plus lb. bomb is going down no matter what the aerodynamic flow is near the aircraft.
 
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Shortround6 said:
In some cases they may have used hydraulic rams.
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I know

tyrodtom said:
The YF-12 was a interceptor, it never carried bombs. Missiles have their own method of separation built in.
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Oh, missiles don't always separate right either...
The XB-70, all 2 of them, never dropped any bombs that I'm aware of. So whatever system they had was never tested.
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They would have had to have one though, and they didn't shoot it out the back...
 
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