Could you have designed a better Warbird? (1 Viewer)

Burmese Bandit said:

Tomo, the 30 mm had a whole bunch of problems. First, it could be used only as an inline engine mounted gun on single engine fighters - the reasons can be seen in many other threads on this site. Second, if you put it in the wings, the tremendous recoil would warp the wings and cause not only instability but inaccuracy of fire.

As pointed out by koolkity, MK-108's recoil was easily manageable by 190's wings

And the 109 was too physically small to take the 603.

I've talked about the 190, not 109

Regarding superchargers, every country was going flat out to build the best. Britain and Rolls Royce just happened to be better.

If we take a look into deployment of BMW 801, there is a 3 (three) year gap between 'plain' (under 1700HP) and 801-TJ (1900HP, plus no high altitude problems). And 3 years in WWII is a lots of time.

About RR G.Britain: care to elaborate?

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As for 30mm cannons in wings: was there really much of a problem regarding the mounting in FW-190?

30 mm wing cannon in the FW 190: it was tried by the Luftwaffe - as a bolt-on field conversion kit which had two 30 mm high-velocity103's under the wings - but AFAIK abandoned after a brief period of battlefield usage because the heavy recoil made the otherwise excellent cannon just too inaccurate. (If someone has documented evidence to the contrary, could you please let me know? Thanks!)

The MK 108 could be mounted internally in the outer wings in place of the 20 mm weapon.

This installation was satisfactory and was used operationally on the Fw 190A-8/R2
(this configuration was also used on the D-11/12/13)

Burmese Bandit said:

My next 'paper aircraft' design will attempt to design a better Stormovik than the Il-2, and also a better Tank killer on the Axis side. Back again when I have more time from work...

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Burmese Bandit, Sergei Vladimirovich Ilyushin beat you to it, or at least had a pretty good try at it in the form of the IL-10. From what I've read of it, it was an excellent plane (plagued at first by various teething problems, some serious - like engine fires[!], some not so serious). It was heavily armored with a much better rear gunner position than the IL-2, relatively fast, at about 340 mph at 8500 feet, and it was rated nearly as manueverable in the horizontal plane as an FW-190F at low altitude. When it was tested against an ace, Hero of the Soviet Union Captain V. Popkov in an La-5FN, it put its rear gunner's gunsight several times on the Lavochkin before the La-5FN got on its tail. It was obsolete by the time it saw service in Korea, but in service in the closing months of the GPW (WWII), it was probably the best attack plane around. Burmese Bandit, it'll be interesting to see what you come up with as a "Super Shturmovik". The IL-10 would be a good start. I don't think you'll have much problem coming up with something better than the Hs-129 Panzerknacker or the Ju-87G.

Venganza

Venganza said:

"Back off - way off!"

R.J. McReady, Helicopter Pilot, The Thing

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Hi Venganza. John Carpenter's version of "The Thing" has to be one of the best all time sci-fi/horror films made. Watched it again last night. One of your favourites?

Burmese Bandit said:

Tomo, the 30 mm had a whole bunch of problems. First, it could be used only as an inline engine mounted gun on single engine fighters - the reasons can be seen in many other threads on this site. Second, if you put it in the wings, the tremendous recoil would warp the wings and cause not only instability but inaccuracy of fire.

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They put it into the wings in the 109K-6.

And the 109 was too physically small to take the 603.

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I don't think so - the dimensions of the 603 and the 605 were rather similiar, and the similiar, interchangable Jumo 213 was built into the 109 during the war - they even put a BMW 801(?) in one of the 109 protos IIRC!

Thanks again to all the posters, and to Venganza, new to this thread.

Now regarding my improved Stormovik...I am still finalizing the paper design, but at this point I'd like to digress, since this thread has (to my pleasure) grown way beyond the point I first imagined. I thought that only two to three posters would be interested. I was wrong - how pleasant to be so wrong!

In the first post and in a subsequent post, I explained that the point of this intellectual excercise in designing a paper airplane was to see if you could have built a better house with the bricks and straw that were available at the time, and to have built it at time when it was needed.

Now do you see, Venganza? Of course Ilyushin designed a better replacement for the Il-2 - it was 1944, the war was nearly over, the Soviet factories were in high gear - heck, overdrive - and pleeeeeenty of experience and a BRAND NEW engine was at hand!

BUT...

the point of my intellectual excercise was - could someone have taken the basic building blocks available in 1939, and it 2 years have designed an Il-2 that was BETTER than the Il-2....and have it ready for service WHEN IT WAS DESPERATELY NEEDED, in the desperate days of 1941 and 42?

And I believe that I could have done so. Yes, yes, I have now the hindsight that was not available in 1939, but apart from that I will rigourously - well, at least as rigourously as I can - limit my house to the bricks and straw that was available in 1939. No 2000 HP engine in 1939. No b-20 cannon either.

But, i have to stop now - work calls. And a loooong post is needed. So I'll leave with a hint....read the beginning of Antony Williams' EXCELLENT article on tank busting aircraft, and if possible, read the whole thing.

Graeme said:

Hi Venganza. John Carpenter's version of "The Thing" has to be one of the best all time sci-fi/horror films made. Watched it again last night. One of your favourites?

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Too right! I've watched that movie so many times I've lost count. I thought the phrase kind of captured the angry look on my avatar. Hope your summer got off to good start.

Venganza

Burmese Bandit said:

And I believe that I could have done so. Yes, yes, I have now the hindsight that was not available in 1939, but apart from that I will rigourously - well, at least as rigourously as I can - limit my house to the bricks and straw that was available in 1939. No 2000 HP engine in 1939. No b-20 cannon either.

But, i have to stop now - work calls. And a loooong post is needed. So I'll leave with a hint....read the beginning of Antony Williams' EXCELLENT article on tank busting aircraft, and if possible, read the whole thing.

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I understand Burmese Bandit. No slight against your engineering skills. I should have read the whole thread to understand what the exact premise was. It'll still be interesting to see what you come up with, and I'll give that article you mention a look. And I'll no doubt have some pearls of wisdom to add to the thread when it turns to the "Super Shturmovik".

Venganza

An apology to the readers of this thread is needed.

I had intended to post my concept on what a better Stormovik would be like, and indeed I already have the text typed. But before I do that...

I intend first to give my ideas on what a better Hs-129 should and would have been.

Why?

The reason is that not only will it finish the trilogy of Axis Aircraft I always intended to 'paper build', but after I have finished it I will post my thoughts on how the duo, the BB-47 and the BB-109 should have been used tactically on the Western Front, and how the trio of the BB 129 plus the other two should have used tactically on the Eastern Front. (For reasons of Clarity I have decided to call my paper aircraft BB 47 and BB 109 and BB 129 now - may the gods of engineering forgive this poor Burmese for his presumption... ) This will provide fertile ground for all the enthusiasts who may, at present, for various reasons, be hesitant and wary of posting in what they might feel to be a 'pure engineering' thread (always supposing, of course, that they will accept the initial premise that the planes themselves could have been built and the proposed performance goals met) and in this way, this thread would become even more livelier, and attract more posters, than it does now.

For, after all, this was the main reason for my starting this thread in the first place - not to show off my (considerably deficient) engineering skills, not to impress anyone with my (definitely spotty) knowledge of WWII armament technology, but to try to stimulate debate that will make the debaters think 'out of the box'. There is a lot of debate in this forum that is predictable, not because the intellectual capabilities of the debaters are low - they most definitely are not - but because the events and hardware they are debating are frozen in history: the progress of WW II, the specific power output of the Merlin 61 at a certain altitude, et cetera, et cetera.

A new (BUT historically plausible) set of facts will open a new box, wider and deeper than the old, which will allow all of us to think 'out of the box'. Think of my aircraft as those from an alternate history of WW II set in a planet in a space-time different from ours - World War 2.1, if you like!

Well said, Burmese Bandit. As I mentioned in a previous post, I don't think you'll have much trouble designing a better Hs-129.

Venganza

And with that having been said...let's go to the BB-129!


Some of my basic thinking behind the thinking of the BB 129 will be stated, so that the design can be fully appreciated...

I believe in the concept of having a ground attack aircraft designed first and foremost to destroy heavy armoured vehicles is necessary, particularly for a war which is fought on a front of vast distances and relative small armies to cover that distance (read: the Eastern Front 1941-44). In designing the paper airplane I admit freely to being heavily influenced by this forum's own TONY WILLIAMS (a big hand for this big Brit!) although, as you'll see, I end up with a plane different from his ideal radial engine pusher design.

But the basic parameters are the same as his. It should be armoured. It should have gun, not rocket armament, and the gun armament should be at least 37 mm. It should also be as small a size as possible, and as agile as an armoured aircraft carrying a heavy gun can be. It should have engines and other systems as battle damage resistant as possible.

To these basic design constraints I'm adding some of my own. It should be capable of operations even when the temperature is way to the south of the zero mark and also when the ground of your airfield decides to do its gigantic mud soupbowl imitation. Even though it will - it must - be a heavy beast, it should also be capable of taking off in as short a distance as possible.

And, of course, it MUST have some sort of rear defence. Preferably one that can be credible enough to cause any Russian pilot to mentally wince and touch his lucky charm before he charges in to attack.

And, of course, as we have said before, it has to use the materials available at the time, and have a projected cost that's plausible!

So - we've set the ground (or should I say air?) rules - what can we do or design that engineering teams in the WW II era that were very, very competent haven't designed already?

As someone much better than me said a long time before "Let's cut to the chase!" So without further ado, here comes the summary of my proposed design in one sentence.

It's a twin powerpod, four-Argus engine push-pull prop design with a tandem triplane wing configuration, central engine supercharging, a retractable nosewheel gear with a twin tail and a counterrecoil 50 mm gun firing downward at a 5 degree angle with two 13 mm guns for defense.

(Do I hear somebody saying "Holy Imagination Overkill Technologically Overreaching Pretentious Crap Burmese Bat-man! "? )

To be continued....

In my last post I outlined the basic form of my BB-129. I shall now try to explain the design in detail.

First, the choice of the Argus as the powerplant. This is a 12 cylinder air cooled Vee, which not only has a slim frontal area but earned a reputation for reliability in the harsh battlefield environment of the Eastern Front. Its only weakness, a lack of power (common to all air cooled vee designs, by the way) producing only 485 hp at 3100 rpm. By mounting four Argus in a push-pull configuration we get about 2,000 hp. And only two powerpods, one on each wing.

Weight - I'm thinking of a total weight, with 15 mm nose armour, 6 mm belly and 10 mm pilot side armour, and of course the monster gun, of which I'll describe later, of 8000 kg (17,600 lbs). The Twin Argus in each power pod will be set far ahead of the wing, and with the armour of the crew pod and the heavy gun the plane will be very nose heavy...which will be counterbalanced by the fifth argus driving a central supercharger behind the gunner in the fuselage.

The main wing is a high wing, which span out to the power pods and beyond. The power pods are under and forward of the wing, with the front spinner level with the nose of the airplane - and from that nose, a short span biplane wing extends to either side till it mates with the underside of each power pod. Thus seen from the front, the planform will look like a two oblong rectangles joined together: a central fuselage, two powerpods on left and right, and two wings joining the top and bottom of the powerpods. The upper wing continues on past the powerpod, but the bottom wing stops there. In effect, it is a one and a half wing biplane, with the lower wing ahead of the upper, main wing. The lower wing is effectively what is called a 'canard' wing.

Such a design should give this plane a great structural strength, which will be necessary in the event of battlefield damage. With this one and a half wing design, I feel confident that we can get 450 square feet of total wing area on a total span of only 40 feet. This will lead to a wing loading of just under 40 lbs per square foot, which I think is just the right balance between low speed maneuverability and low altitude stability. The fuselage, housing the central supercharger, will continue to a tapered twin tail having two tails, like the Me 110. Each vertical tail will have its controls separated as widely as possible so that one can remain functional even if the other is damaged.

The front underwing, like the main wing, will have flaps. When these flaps are used together with the flaps in the main wing and with also the horizontal tail providing lift, we have in effect three wings - one in front, one mid, and one in the back of the plane. When the front underwing (the canard) is used to lift and the tail used to spoil lift, this plane should be able to pitch up faster than conventional planes.

I intend to use a page from the design of the P-61, and supplement my ailerons with spoilers on top of each wing, with them deploying differentially so that when one wing's ailerons go down the spoilers on the opposite wing will go up. This should create a roll faster than could be achieved with ailerons alone. The P-61 black widow at nearly twice the weight of this design was very, very maneuverable for such a huge aircraft, so I believe that this design should also be quite maneuverable...I think it should be just slightly less agile than the Stuka. Certainly much, much more maneuverable than the Hs 129.

The nosewheel will be offset, as in the A-10, and for the same reasons.

To be continued....

Wow, Burmese Bandit, is all I can say! (Not really, I'm going to say a few more things.) Could you come up with a schematic of the beast?; I'd love to see it - I may take a crack at it myself just so I can visualize it better. It might have terrified the Soviets just by its appearance alone (the visual equivalent of the sirens on the Stuka). This is definitely not your grandparents' Hs-129, so to speak.

Venganza

Actually, I think the better fighter was designed. The He-100 which was not accepted for production reasons broke a world speed record at the time and it wasn't even a racing plane. If you just look at the pictures and how beautifully streamlined it was, you know it would fly like a dream, probably competitive with Mustangs. Just put 6 13mm MG 131s on it and it's probably the most intimidating dogfighter type fighter of the war.

Ok, here I go. I'll call it the F4U-4h

I would start with a standard F4U-4. Lengthen the landing front landing gear slightly so that it could carry a torpedo. In the empty space behind the cockpit there would be options for; a cramped fold-down seat for a passenger, a bomb bay, an extra fuel tank, or a pair of cannon (20mm-37mm depending on pilot choice and mission) firing through extended barrels and groves in the fuselage (similar to the Gladiator). Also a .30in MG fixed in the tail with a rear view mirror for the pilot to shoot it with (to scare the unwary fighter).

The image is the illustration of a congruent space on a Yak fighter.

This seems to be a regular feature of this thread - another apology from its starter. Yes, I owe this thread a schematic, and not just one but THREE - the BB 47 that started all of this, the BB `09 with its heavy nose armament and its T-tail, and of course the BB 129. I intend to post the schematic when I get around to it (stares at the round 'tuit' given to him by the resident aviation thread joker) but now my old and bruised Tee square is gathering dust as I try to do 1,001 things at once. I ask the forbearance of all those who have graced this thread with over 1,200 views as to date. Vengenza, if you want to post your own schematic before I do, by all means do. Let's see how close you get to my design! BTW I thank whoever was responsible for giving a star to this thread - I certainly wasn't expecting one!

And again BTW, if other posters wish to elaborate on their own ideas, PLEASE feel free to do so in this thread, but ...the only request I will make...try to group it in one, or a series of closely grouped posts, please? The reason I make this request is because even I can't submit all my paper designs in one post, and I'm sure those who try to do the same with other aircraft will have the same problem too. So we might have a situation where posts describing two different aircraft will weave in and out of each other, and this might confuse the reader.

And now to resume the description of the BB - 129...

Why the fifth Argus in the fuselage centrally charging the other four in the two powerpods? Well, apart from the balance reasons I have already stated, the engine and massive superchager in the fuselage will probably provide complete immunity to rear attack by 20 or even 23 mm within 5 degrees each side of the rear, and the side armour an excellent amount of protection against 12.7 mm attack for 20 degrees or more on each side and good protection against 20 mm for about 10 degrees each side at least

Even if rear attack destroys the central supercharger the unsupercharged output of the four Arguses should give at least 50% remaining power, good enough for a limp-home-after-dropping-all-unnecessary-weight escape strategy if the rest of the plane and powerplant are not too heavily damaged...and of course, as I have posted before, the tandem triplane configuration where the underwing mates with the power pod which in turn mates with the main wing should give this design a very high structural strength.

And now we see another reason for having two engines in each powerpod (separated of course by an armoured firewall) - battle damage redundancy. With an attack from the front, the front engines will soak up the fire but at the same time protect the rear engines, thus ensuring at least 50% power available. Probably more, as air cooled engines will take more than one hit before they finally give up the ghost and stop producing power. Same in an attack from the rear. Even in a worst case scenario, an attack from the rear destroying both the left rear engine, the central engine and supercharger, and the right rear engine, we should still have 25% power left...enough to make a controlled crash landing scenario, some miles away from the combat zone, plausible.

Continuing on the theme of defense, I intend to put a rear gunner sitting back-to-back with the pilot, with an armament of two MG 131s (perhaps an MG 131Z) with a rate of fire uprated to 1200 rpm. This again looks quite plausible, as the ordinary MG 131 had a rof of 900 rpm and the cartridge was not too powerful. This gun should have a deterrent effect much better than the MG 81Z of the Stuka, and almost equal to the more powerful double 12,7 HMG rear armament of some late model Stormoviks. (I would also decree an upper body weightlifting program for german rear gunners, too!)

With a power to weight ratio higher and a wing loading lower than the Lancaster, with a much shorter wingspan, with the engine weight in the wings closer to the center, and with the spoiler/aileron system too, I see no reason why the BB 129 should not be at least as good, or IMHO much better, at 'corkscrewing' than the great Lancaster. At 3000 feet height (about the right height for a ground-pounder attack aircraft) and a maximum drop in the corkscrew of 500 feet, there is enough margin for error for this maneuver to be done safely. Should the BB 129 suddenly grow a tail of Yaks or La-7s attacking from the rear, the Corkscrew maneuver should be used. This, combined with the two 13 mm, the armour, the structural strength and the redundancy, and the rear charger engine and supercharger, should give the pilot and gunner a good chance of escape from a rear attack!

My next post will describe the offensive armament...

Oh, er, by the way, Magnocain, it's just not possible for any gun bigger than, say, 30 mm to fire through the propeller by interruptor mechanisms, whether the mechanisms are electrical or mechanical. The reason is that the bigger cartridge cases of these guns cause variations in propellant burn time so that sooner or later a mistimed shot will hit your own propeller, with results that you wouldn't want to even think about...if you were the pilot. The Germans tried to mount their 30 mm guns in a belly installation for the FW 190 but gave up for the reasons stated above. A 37 mm gun firing through the propeller with interruptor mechanism would have even worse results...

And now, the reason for the existence of this plane: and another reason for my needing 2000 hp: the reason why this plane weighs 8000 kg (17600 lbs) all up: the reason why I think this plane would have been a world beater....

...the armament.

Unlike other tankbusting designs which use the BK 3.7 or its equivalents, I intend to use the 50 mm Mk 214 A for this plane. And I think this installation would have worked, unlike the unhappy history of the Mk 214 A, mated with other planes - eg the Me 262..

But why this cartridge and this gun? And why should this tremendously powerful and heavy gun work in this design when it wouldn't work in other designs?

First, a heavy gun with heavy recoil will work only in a heavy plane that can soak up the recoil. The JU 87 G had two BK 3.7 cannon that had a muzzle energy of 263,000 joules each. That's equivalent to a single gun of 526,000 joules. The 50 mm cannon round (50 x 420 R) firing the round with the heaviest recoil, the 2 kg (4.5 lb) steel-core armour-piercing round, has a muzzle energy of 716,000 joules. That's about 33% more power than the two 37s fired in unision. The JU 87 G weighs 6500 kg. all-up. At 8000 kg my design is about 22% heavier than the 87 G.

So: a gun with 33% more equivalent power in a plane that's 22% heavier. That's about a 10% increase in effective recoil over the JU 87 G. It's doable, unlike the grotesque mating of the BK 7.5 75 mm gun with 2,120.000 joules muzzle energy in the HS 129 B airframe that weighed only 5250 kg all up! Compared to that, my design has only one-third the recoil in an airframe that's 50% heavier!

The gun itself, mounted on the centerline, will also have a hydraulic damper as was the case with the 75 mm cannon of the HS 129 B. The damper will allow the entire gun and ammunition to move backwards, but only for a short distance - I don't want to disturb the cg too much. The gun is angled down slightly - say about 5-7 degrees - for aiming ease, and also to counterbalance the nose pitch down that will happen as this gun is mounted just under the center of lift. As the nose pitches up as the gun is fired, the gun is also moving slightly to the rear of the plane, which will make the plane slightly tail heavy, which will counteract the nose pitch down with a tail pitch down effect. When combined with the fact that this design, because of the canard tandem triplane wing, has excellent pitch control, I think we have basically solved the recoil problems that plagued the HS 129 B in its anti tank role.

Note that I am proceeding from the worst case scenario concerning recoil, which is the MK 214 A firing the 2 kg (4.5 lb) steel cored shell. I plan to have my design fire the 0.9 kg (2lb) tungsten-cored shell, with a much faster muzzle velocity AND a much lower recoil. With this shell, I think my design would be as steady as the P-39 in firing...which should lead to a very, very good accuracy of fire. (Incidentally, the tungsten round could pierce 72 mm of armour at 500 meters and as much as 130 mm of armour at 100 meters!)

As for the weight, the Mk 214 A is listed as 490 kg. Let's say 900 kg for the gun, ammunition, hydraulic damper system, and other necessary accessories. With a total all up weight of 8000 kg in the BB 129 this is perfectly plausible.

So much for the recoil and the weight...what about the size?

Well, the Mk 214 A is about 4.5 meters in total. I think about 3.5 meters should be absorbed into the fuselage, leaving about 1 meters to project ahead of the nose. This is a manageable length, especially if it is enclosed with a fairing to ensure smooth aerodynamic properties.

Since only about 50-60 rounds of ammo will be carried for the heavy gun, it will need a spotting gun for ranging, and also for emergency self-defense in case of a frontal attack by aircraft. I propose the MG 151 high velocity cannon in the 15 mm variant, with a shell that explodes with a bright flash on striking heavy armour.

That's all for now...in my next post I will propose how this design might be used tactically, in conjunction with my other two designs.