Could you have designed a better Warbird?

[riacrato]

Lots of colorful sentences but let's get back to reality. The spinner you are proposing would have hole with a huge diameter (probably 40-50 cm) and would be huge itself. The large hole would require large gears for making the prop rotate with all the bad that comes with it. Then to get even halfway you would need very long blades or a large chord. Then what does such a huge hole do to your aerodynamics. Then there is the space issue... Just check the real P-39 installation and you want to fit 3 MK 108s there without interfering with the shaft?

And there is no need to tell me about Tony Williams site. The fact remains with 1 MK108 and 2 MG151 you have plenty of firepower to shoot down IL-2s and you're much more versatile. There was no need for a dedicated anti-Sturmovik aircraft.

And this is about as close as you can keep two MK 108s together:

 

[Burmese Bandit]

Not two MK 108s together - did you not read my post? A two barrel Mk 108 in a Zwillig configuration was what I said. And it seems you have not read the part of the German P 39 being a MULTIPURPOSE aircraft, able to kill heavy four engine bombers, vehicles up to tanks, and even small landing craft.

Tsk, tsk. This new TV and internet generation is slowly becoming illiterate.

 

[tomo pauk]

Bandit, post some stuff sources about MK 108 Zwilling, please.

 

[riacrato]

Wtf you are calling me illiterate? totally uncalled for. You talk like you know anything about the guns in question or what it means to design a prop installation when it is pretty clear you are probably 16 years old with no experience on either.

 

[Soren]

Wow, calm down guys.

 

[davebender]

Germany needs twice as much aviation gasoline. They also need DB603 and/or Jumo 213 engines early and in quantity. Early production of the R4M folding fin rocket would be nice too. With these changes the historical German aircraft designs will work just fine.

The USA needs a proper supercharger for the Allison engine. Alternately they need to scrap the Allison design early and put the Packard Merlin into mass production. The USA also needs a decent 20mm cannon ILO .50cal machinegun. With these changes both the P-38 and P-51 become war winners during 1942.

The British Spitfire works fine in the daytime. Unfortunately most of the British air war was at night. They need to work out a system where Mosquito night fighters can accompany the bomber stream without getting shot up by nervous bomber tail gunners.

Italy and Japan both need to license build the DB601 engine early and in quantity. They need to throw enough money at the problem to fix the technical glitches. Both Italy and Japan produced airframes that have good performance when powered by DB601 / DB605 engines.

Russian Yak fighters and Sturmovik attack aircraft are both pretty good. Unfortunately they are crippled by a national command and control system driven by Stalin's meglomania. I see no solution as long as Stalin remains in charge.

 

[Shortround6]

Not two MK 108s together - did you not read my post? A two barrel Mk 108 in a Zwillig configuration was what I said. And it seems you have not read the part of the German P 39 being a MULTIPURPOSE aircraft, able to kill heavy four engine bombers, vehicles up to tanks, and even small landing craft.

Tsk, tsk. This new TV and internet generation is slowly becoming illiterate.

take another look at the picture of two MK 108s. even if you redesign the MK 108 to feed from either side AND EJECT out the bottom ( and I wonder how long that will take) to make a Zwillig you still have the bulk of the receivers dictating the barrel spacing so maybe you can reduce the barrel spacing to half, and that is before you add the third barrel. Still a big hole in the front of the aircraft and a lot of complication in the gerar drive and propeller.

The Idea of turning the P-39 into a multi-role aircraft is a joke. An anti-tank/ground strafer plane is going to need all kinds of extra armour that will only hurt the performance of the bomber interceptor and a bomber interceptor is going to need a supercharger set up that is so much dead weight and bulk on a ground attack plane.

 

[Shortround6]

Germany needs twice as much aviation gasoline. They also need DB603 and/or Jumo 213 engines early and in quantity. Early production of the R4M folding fin rocket would be nice too. With these changes the historical German aircraft designs will work just fine.

Means coming up with a new plane to replace the 109 which actually might have been a good idea.

The USA needs a proper supercharger for the Allison engine. Alternately they need to scrap the Allison design early and put the Packard Merlin into mass production. The USA also needs a decent 20mm cannon ILO .50cal machinegun. With these changes both the P-38 and P-51 become war winners during 1942.

Just when were these decisions supposed to be made? The Allison's supercharger wasn't any worse than anybody else's supercharger in service in 1939. The Packard Merlin that was put into mass production in 1941 in America was a two-speed version not two stage and had niether the power or the altitude performance of the two stage engines that helped make the Mustangs reputation. As far as a 2 speed engine replacing the Turbo supercharged Allison's in the P-38, they may have been a bit more reliable but the with speed, climb and range all going to pot I am not sure the result would have been a war winner even if the US had sorted out the 20mm problem.

Italy and Japan both need to license build the DB601 engine early and in quantity. They need to throw enough money at the problem to fix the technical glitches. Both Italy and Japan produced airframes that have good performance when powered by DB601 / DB605 engines.

Or throw enough money at the available radial engines to solve their problems and skip the DB601/605 all together. Replacing an 840hp radial with an 1100hp V-12 doesn't really prove how good V-12s are.

Japan actually needed to cut out the multiple different engines and try producing a smaller number of different types.

 

[davebender]

throw enough money at the available radial engines to solve their problems and skip the DB601/605 all together.

I could envision Japan taking this approach as shipping machine tools and Daimler-Benz engineers from Germany are rather difficult.

But what was Italy's excuse for DB601 / DB605 engine production problems? The production machinery and Daimler engineers were only a short train ride away. Specific engine components like those troublesome crankshaft bearings can be imported directly from Germany. Copy or purchase the MG151/20 cannon also. A Macchi C.202 fighter powered by a reliable engine and armed with a pair of MG151/20 cannon would be a world class fighter aircraft.

 

[Clay_Allison]

I could envision Japan taking this approach as shipping machine tools and Daimler-Benz engineers from Germany are rather difficult.

But what was Italy's excuse for DB601 / DB605 engine production problems? The production machinery and Daimler engineers were only a short train ride away. Specific engine components like those troublesome crankshaft bearings can be imported directly from Germany. Copy or purchase the MG151/20 cannon also. A Macchi C.202 fighter powered by a reliable engine and armed with a pair of MG151/20 cannon would be a world class fighter aircraft.

Italy lacked mass production capability, they were really not industrial enough to pull their weight.

 

[davebender]

Most of the German military-industrial capability was built from scratch after 1934. Why can't Italy do the same thing with help from German engineers and German machine tools?

 

[Burmese Bandit]

Here is another idea, this time for a dedicated ground attack aircraft for the Luftwaffe.

THE PROBLEM

Starting from 1942 onwards the T-34 problem begins to loom larger and larger on the Eastern Front. While other tanks pose a problem, Intelligence tells the Germans that for the forseeable future, the mass-produced T-34 will be the biggest danger on the Eastern front.

The Greatest Danger for German ON THE GROUND is in the East.
The Greatest Danger in the East lies in the NUMBER of Russian Tanks.
The Greatest Percentage of those Russian Tanks is the T-34 model.

Ergo: solve the T-34 Problem, solve the danger in the East.

But German does not have the time to develop a perfect solution to the problem. It does have some resources, but they are being stretched thin.

So what is needed is something that can be put into production very fast, and uses limited resources.

Historically, the Germans answered that question by putting two 37 mm cannon under a Stuka (The only plane in their inventory that had the wings with the strength to handle the recoil of that gun) and building the ground attack version of the FW 190, with armour.

These designs were capable of being put into production fast, and they did not use a large amount of resources.

But the weakness of these designs has been discussed in this forum and many others, notably in Tony Williams' 'Flying guns'. The best solution to the problem was a centerline mounted heavy gun of at least 37 mm in a fairly cheap, rugged, Russian field condition tolerant plane of fairly small size.

The plane needed to be cheap to be able to counter the large numbers of Russian Tanks and to survive battlefield attrition. It needed to be rugged to take the punishment dished out to it by the Russian anti aircraft guns and Russian Fighters. It needed to be able to fly in the Russian Winter and the mud of the Russian Spring.

And while the 30 x 184 of the Mk 103 with Tungsten Ammunition was adequate, Tungsten was scarce. As Tony Williams said

"...The lighter, more compact and faster-firing MK 103 used a hybrid gas+recoil system and was belt-fed. Various AP rounds were used, but the most effective was the Hartkernmunition, which had a penetrating core of tungsten carbide sheathed in a light-alloy shell with a sharply-pointed profile. This could penetrate 75-90 mm / 300 m / 90 degrees (depending on the type of armour), dropping to 42-52 mm when impacting at 60 degrees..."

But without the tungsten, the penetrative power dropped sharply. Thus with the tungsten ammuniton, the 103 was just capable of penentrating the top armour of the T 34 at high angles, but without, it was not.

Therefore what was needed was a gun capable of penentration using vanilla steel cored ammo. Of all the guns the germans had in that category, only the BK 3.7 was ready and available in significant numbers in 1943. The BK 5 was not ready yet, and the BK 7.5 was a technological marvel...but it was way too heavy, the recoil way too much, and the muzzle blast almost as dangerous to the aircraft carrying it as ground fire!

Now the Germans did have a fairly cheap aircraft, adequately armoured, that could carry a centerline mounted gun. This was the Hs 129.

Unfortunately its French Grnome Rhome engines were not only unreliable and sensitive to battle damage, they were underpowered.

In an earlier part of this thread I proposed a solution for a four AS 410 engined aircraft in a dornier tandem configuration with a supercharger powered by a fifth 410 in the fuselage.

My new solution is almost as powerful, and much more simpler to design and produce.

(to be continued)

 

[davebender]

Fw-190F3/R3. Based on the Fw-190A6 airframe. This was a dedicated tank buster.
WW2 Warbirds: the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Wrger (Shrike) - Frans Bonn
2 x 3cm Mk103 cannons.

Mk103 cannon.
MK 103 cannon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Armour penetration: AP-T(WC) 70 mm /60°/300 m or 100 mm /90°/300 m
Rate of fire: 380 (HE/M) to 420 (AP) rounds/min

T-34 Tank.
T-34 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Armor 52 mm

A Fw-190F armed with Mk103 cannons will turn a T-34 tank into Swiss cheese. It's superior in almost every way to both the Ju-87G and Hs-129. It was possibly the best all around CAS aircraft produced by anyone during WWII. Germany just needs more of them plus an adequate supply of aviation gasoline.

 

[Clay_Allison]

Fw-190F3/R3. Based on the Fw-190A6 airframe. This was a dedicated tank buster.
WW2 Warbirds: the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Wrger (Shrike) - Frans Bonn
2 x 3cm Mk103 cannons.

Mk103 cannon.
MK 103 cannon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Armour penetration: AP-T(WC) 70 mm /60°/300 m or 100 mm /90°/300 m
Rate of fire: 380 (HE/M) to 420 (AP) rounds/min

T-34 Tank.
T-34 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Armor 52 mm

A Fw-190F armed with Mk103 cannons will turn a T-34 tank into Swiss cheese. It's superior in almost every way to both the Ju-87G and Hs-129. It was possibly the best all around CAS aircraft produced by anyone during WWII. Germany just needs more of them plus an adequate supply of aviation gasoline.

Besides AVGas you'll need more tungten for the ammo.

 

[Burmese Bandit]

From "Flying guns" by Tony Williams:

There were various possible locations for heavy cannon, but they all boiled down to two basic types - wing or fuselage mountings. Wing mountings had several disadvantages. First, they suffered the usual problems with this location of harmonisation; that is, the guns had to be angled inwards to coincide with the sight line, and this could only be for a specified distance. At much shorter or longer distances, the projectiles would not strike where the sights were aimed.

Incidentally, it is worth mentioning that with all guns, wherever mounted, there was also a vertical harmonisation issue, in that projectiles followed a curved trajectory so at much shorter or longer distances they would strike above or below the aiming point. However, this would be much less of a problem with a high muzzle velocity. Other disadvantages of wing mounting peculiar to heavy cannon were, obviously, that the weight and drag penalties were much greater than with one fuselage-mounted gun, the wings were more flexible not just in flight but also under recoil (which affected accuracy) and the plane could be moved from side-to-side by the recoil if the guns fired at different instants, further affecting accuracy.
The guns were also mounted under the plane's centre of gravity, which meant that recoil pushed the nose down on firing.

All of this added up to less accuracy and lower aircraft performance with wing-mounted cannon. This is significant because most single-engined aircraft fitted with large cannon had no option but to fit them under the wings, as few vee-engines, and no radials, were compatible with the engine-mounting of the gun. In theory, a gun could be mounted under the belly of the plane and synchronised to fire through the propeller disk, but in practice this became more problematic as the size of the cartridge case increased because of the variations in the burning time of the propellant (the Luftwaffe considered but rejected such an installation of the MK 103 in the Fw 190 for this reason).
Of course, none of these problems bothered twin-engined aircraft, which were able to employ a rigid central mounting in or under the fuselage, directly under the sights, to the great benefit of accuracy. They also usually had a much better forwards and downwards view (important for a ground attack plane), although blocked to the side by the engines.


From Wikipedia:

Il-2 with NS-37
Referred in west as "Il-2 Type 3M". Based on two seat Il-2, armed with Nudelman-Suranov NS-37 instead of 20/23 mm cannons, this version is an approach to anti-tank airplane, prepared for the Battle of Kursk. However, combat effectiveness was quite low and production of version was limited to about 3,500. Moreover, bomb load decreased from 600 kg to 200 kg. It was replaced by conventional Il-2 attackers armed with cassettes with cumulative bomblets.


That's why your idea wouldn't work, Dave. It was tried IRL by both the Germans and the Soviets, and both found out through bitter battlefield experience that wing mounted heavy guns simply were not effective because they shot all over the place.

So how did Rudel kill hundreds of tanks? He fired single shots. And corrected his aim after every shot - not that he needed to do that often, since he had the nerve to get down to point blank range before shooting.

And apart from that...look at the critical shortage of tungsten and molybedenum in the late years of the war. No, the way to go is vanilla hard steel armour piercing bullets.

(to be continued)

 

[Clay_Allison]

Could a Bf 110 carry the BK 3.7?

 

[tomo pauk]

No reason why not - Beaufighter was tried (successfully) with 2 x 40mm Bofors. So the single 3,7 would've worked without trouble. There was a twin 30mm (MK 103) instalation that Bf-110 carried under belly too.

 

[riacrato]

It could, but the installation was not considered very successful iirc.

 

[davebender]

Then use R4M rockets with HEAT warheads. No critical resources are required. Even a Me-109G6 can kill tanks (and heavy bombers too!) using this weapons system.

 

[Burmese Bandit]

And now, my idea for a ground attack aircraft of the Luftwaffe.

It is the FW 189...but instead of the 3 man central gondola of the 189, it has a slightly enlarged version of the Hs 129 armoured cabin, and a third Argus As Engine in a pusher confguration behind the pilot. I will call it the " FW 289 ".
Why would this design be perfect for tank killing in 1943?

1. The base design for the FW 289, the 189, was already flying in July 1938, which was a full 12 months ahead of the historical Hs 129. This meant that if our 289 with a third engine was designed at the same time, it could have been in service a full 12 months sooner.

2. There was already a production line for the 189. Many components - the twin booms, the wings - would have been common to it and our 289.

3. The weight of the armour made the historical 129 underpowered in the beginning. It was only when the two 700 hp Gnome Rhone engines were fitted for a total of 1400 hp that adequate performance was achieved. Three As 410s in early part of war = 465 x 3, = 1395hp. Later in the war 600 hp As 411s can be fitted for a total of 1800 hp.

4. Unlike the Gnone Rhone, which gained a battlefield reputation for being sensitive to dust and bullets, the Argus As series gained nothing but praise in both areas during WW II.

5. The rear pusher engine protects the pilot from rear attack. Not even 20mm armour piercing bullets will go through an engine AND rear armour.

6. The twin boom installation makes for an extremely robust aircraft. During WWII the Fw 189 was one of the most survivable planes on the battlefield. Even Ramming attacks by Desperate Russian aircraft were survived!

7. There is a free centerline position for guns and bombs...historically, the Mk 103 in a pod was carried by the Hs 129. In the early part of 1943 I propose this for the armament. Later in 1943 when the 600 hp As 411 becomes available, I propose the BK 3.7 be mounted. If no centerline gun pod, 500 kg of bombs can be carried there, increasing to 1,000 kg in late models.

8. Note that with three engines, we have the possibility of a 'loiter capability' where one or two of the three engines can be switched off and the airplane cruise around slowly over the battlefield. And three engines means that even if enemy fire knocks out two of the three engines, and the plane is at low level, still the plane can still stagger back about 5-15 kilometers back towards the safety of its own lines before it falls to the ground.

For production, I propose first flight in December 1938, and from mid 1940 onwards production to Ground attack planes to be split equally between the Stuka and the 289. From 1943 onwards all ground attack planes to be 289s only.