Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules
Agreed. But this is where your hypothetical exercise needs to begin.
Otherwise, as I wrote above; in a sea of Wildcats, Hellcats and soon Corsairs, they'll be no Merlin naval fighter for the USN.
Nimitz's telegram seems to be going a long way to say a couple of things:
1. We need Army planes for the land based Marines so we can put all available Wildcats on carriers. Okay. Not that there were any Army planes available in June '42, but not impossible depending on the number of land based Marine squadrons.
2. We need to lighten the Wildcats and increase ammunition capacity. Okay, that could have been done immediately aboard the carriers. Remove two of the six guns and put more ammunition in the Wildcat's four remaining ammo boxes in the wings.
Converting P-40s for carrier use may have been an impossible job. Folding wings, tail hook, big weight reduction (P-40F weighed 8500#), strengthened landing gear and who knows what else.
Corsair didn't get into combat until Feb '43 and that was for Marine/land use. Hellcat didn't get into combat until fall of '43. Probably could have had the Corsair ready for carrier use before a reworked P-40.
A year. Less time than it would take to get a V12 powered fighter modified and into combat service.The USN didn't begin to operate Hellcats and Corsairs in any number till mid 1943, that's very long time from Nimitz's request of June 1942.
At NATTC they had an FJ Fury (the latest swept wing version) that had more patches, straps, and braces to deal with fatigue cracking than you could point a stick at. It was a thousand pounds overweight, and kept as an example to impress AMS (Aviation Maintenance, Structural) trainees of the seriousness of their trade.
Cheers,
Wes
Let's not forget that all-metal stressed skin, monocoque, cantilever monoplane technology was a relatively young art at the time. The highly detailed computer based stress analysis we have today just wasn't as robust in the day of the slide rule, so the temptation to add a little extra "beef" for "safety's sake" tended to settle in. Some designers (Horikoshi and Heinneman come to mind) managed to resist this temptation, but so many did not. And this "overbuilding" did in fact often enhance survivability under combat damage conditions. The "Grumman Iron Works" EARNED their title!
Cheers,
Wes
Experience counts.This seems to be how the P51-H came about.
Field use revealed that the earlier versions could indeed be lightened.
Fatigue will always be with us, especially in high-cycle aero-elastic structures. At this time, we have 70 years experience with flexible swept wing airplanes, and we still don't know it all. The only way we get 50K+ hours and cycles out of them is by constant inspection and repair. Cracks WILL form, and cracks WILL propagate as the cycle count goes up, no matter how badly we curse and complain. Repair techniques have become more sophisticated over the decades, but they still owe homage to patches and straps and braces. Composite materials have added a few more arrows to the quiver. And I'm sure there's new stuff out there I haven't heard of yet.Do they still make such repairs today?
I frequently hear in the news about airframe fatigue as a reason for aircraft retirement.
I think you will find that the P51H came about because it was designed using UK standards for airframe design not American. Supermarine were consulted in the early days of the design regarding the approach used by the UK.This seems to be how the P51-H came about.
Field use revealed that the earlier versions could indeed be lightened.
And once again the mutha country asserts her mastery.I think you will find that the P51H came about because it was designed using UK standards for airframe design not American. Supermarine were consulted in the early days of the design regarding the approach used by the UK.
Fatigue will always be with us, especially in high-cycle aero-elastic structures. At this time, we have 70 years experience with flexible swept wing airplanes, and we still don't know it all. The only way we get 50K+ hours and cycles out of them is by constant inspection and repair. Cracks WILL form, and cracks WILL propagate as the cycle count goes up, no matter how badly we curse and complain. Repair techniques have become more sophisticated over the decades, but they still owe homage to patches and straps and braces. Composite materials have added a few more arrows to the quiver. And I'm sure there's new stuff out there I haven't heard of yet.
Cheers,
Wes
And once again the mutha country asserts her mastery.
How about Tomcats of that vintage who were still bashing the boat when their wings were clipped in 2006? Patches on top of patches.I flew 1975-76 F15A models into the 2007-2009 timeframe.
And didn't a few of them come unglued midair?The interesting thing is how long the planes stay around given how hard we whale on them.
How about Tomcats of that vintage who were still bashing the boat when their wings were clipped in 2006? Patches on top of patches.
And didn't a few of them come unglued midair?
Interesting. That's not the hype we were given when it was being developed. I'm sure you've seen the promotional film "No Points For Second Place", n'est-ce pas? All about ACM and furballs. MiG killer par excellence. Interesting to hear a different perspective. Of course high speed standoff missiles launched from supersonic bombers were always a concern, and I believe, the impetus for the Phoenix missile.It's a cool plane to look at but was designed to shoot down bombers over water and wasn't optimized for fighter versus fighter operations.
Since they couldn't compute exact strength, they usually erred on the side of caution. That's why a modern plane rated to a given amount seems flimsy to an older design. It actually is, in a way, since people can better compute what the exact limit is, they can build right onto that limit.Don't forget the plane initially had a 7.3 g limit until the F16 came out. Then MacAir invented a overload warning system (OWS) to allow pulls of up to 9 G's if they were symmetric. Nothing was beefed up structurally to go from 7.3 to 9. Old guys with Slide rules Rule!
That had to also do with older-fashioned ideas about how a design should last as long as the customer wants it to. If you want to keep it a long time, we'll keep repairing it. Boeing, from what it appeared, seemed to subscribe less to the idea: The 707 for example was expected to last 40,000 hours. While the plane could probably be repaired and maintained past that point, there was the presumption that people would probably just buy the newer model.If you get a chance to look down a DC-8 fuselage you will notice the skin is without wrinkles regardless of its age. Not so on Boeing or Airbus. MacD made aerial tanks.
Not to be a nitpicker, but in the airframe terminology I was taught, the main fuselage longitudinal structural member (fore - aft spar if you will) is the keel. Longerons (always in the plural) are smaller distributed-stress longitudinal members in the fuselage. Since the advent of aluminum monocoque construction, keels have become less common (except in boat bashing birds), since longerons are more readily integrated into monocoque construction.there was a structural defect in its longeron (fore aft spar if you will).
Not to be a nitpicker, but in the airframe terminology I was taught, the main fuselage longitudinal structural member (fore - aft spar if you will) is the keel. Longerons (always in the plural) are smaller distributed-stress longitudinal members in the fuselage. Since the advent of aluminum monocoque construction, keels have become less common (except in boat bashing birds), since longerons are more readily integrated into monocoque construction.
Cheers,
Wes