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

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Regarding the 50 mm, some further elaboration...Yes, I could have put the 37 mm Flak 43 (in a twin gun installation) with no less than 240 x 2 or 480 rounds a minute for this design - that twin gun would have weighed just slightly more than the monster MK 214 A. I thought for a long time about whether to go down that route.

It was attractive. I could have put 80 rounds per gun for a total of 160 rounds, with 10 seconds of fire at the full double-gun simultaneous fire or 20 seconds at single gun fire. This would certainly have killed anything on the ground except tanks, give at least a 50% probability of kill against tanks, and if there was ammo left give an excellent chance in head-on defence against enemy fighters...

But in the end I chose to put the MK 214 A as the primary weapon. For tank killing a weapon like this monster is the ONLY sure one that will guarantee kills against the top, side, or even sometimes the front armour of any tank the Russians fielded except for the late war Stalins.

However, the option to put two Flak 43s in an aircraft mounting is there. That's one good thing about having a big design...it allows you to have choices.
 
Before we go into tactics, a thought on performance. What sort of performance could we expect from this beast?

Well, if we look at the power to weight ration, we have 2000 hp or just under against a weight of 17600 lb - that's just under 9 lb per hp, which is about 10% better than the Ju 87 G with 10 lb per hp. The wing loading is about the same for both aircraft, and therefore basically the basic performace should be the same - IF - the drag for both aircraft are the same....

I think that they will be. The BB 129 does have a stubbier wing and that canard which produces more drag, plus of course the two powerpods on each wing. However, against that the JU 87 G has two huge guns in pods on each wing, plus the fixed undercarraige, plus 10% less relative power.

I suspect my design will have about the same speed figures as the 87. but be more agile - and have much better takeoff performance, especially at full load. Taxing should be miles better with the nosewheel of the BB 129 and landing, of course, better.

Since the HS 129 had worse performance in all areas and worse agility than the 87 this design should be better in performance and handling than the HS 129 in all respects.
 
a quick point: there were reliability issues with the MK 214 A and it was constructed very late in the war. However, I have looked at the gun design, and there is nothing that I can see that would preclude it from having been built much earlier if the decision to do so had been made. Further, I believe that the reliability issues could have been worked out...and of course, we have the Flak 43 which was actually used and found to be reliable...to fall back on.
 
Bandit, what about mounting 2 Bramos instead of 5 Argus engines. Again some 2000HP on board, and much more less logistical trouble.

As for the (main) armament: single 3,7cm would do until something heavier is developed. And some unguided rockets under the wings to make the Hs-129 a real general purpose attack platform.
 
Bramos - I thought about it, but what if an attack from the front takes out one of the Bramos? As I said in post no. 98, fifth para, self quote here...

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.

The reason why I don't want rockets for my tankbuster is given in the start of Tony William's excellent essay on tankbusting aircraft - rockets are just too dang inaccurate.

And I did give an alternate 3.7 armamaent, Tomo. It's the FlaK 43. an excellent weapon.
 
Here is the quote from Tony Williams regarding small cannon and rockets as useless against Tanks...

" The ineffectiveness of air attack against tanks should have caused no surprise because the weapons available to the fighter-bombers were not suitable for destroying them. Put simply, the heavy machine guns and 20 mm cannon were capable of hitting the tanks easily enough, but insufficiently powerful to damage them, except occasionally by chance. The RPs and bombs used were certainly capable of destroying the tanks but were too inaccurate to hit them, except occasionally by chance."
 
If I was going to design a new fighter for WWII using technology of the day, I think it would be a V-engined pusher that would look a bit like a baby P-38 with a blunter nose, split tail, short wide elliptical wings for fast climb and tight turns.

Pusher designs were unfairly overlooked during WW-II, they provide certain advantages in maneuverability due to less disrupted airflow over the control surfaces. Also it allows for nose armament without fighting the engine block for space.

Weapons would be where it would really hang its hat, with 4 20mm cannon in the nose, aligned to shoot as tight as possible for easy tracking and kills on shorter bursts. It would be equally at home dogfighting other fighters or intercepting bombers.

Sounds awesome to me, hell if I know if it would work.
 
You know, I was researching pusher planes after I posted and the Swedes has a pusher (Saab 21) that they liked quite a bit, powered by a DB 602. They kept it into the mid 50s.

Sadly (like the AG-42 rifle) it was never really used in anger because Sweden remained neutral.
 
Pushers have one drawback - no rear gunner possible...and you need an ejection seat.

That said, I think that if 4-7 years of research into high powered pushers had been done before WW II, we might have seen some very interesting designs indeed!
 
You know, I was researching pusher planes after I posted and the Swedes has a pusher (Saab 21) that they liked quite a bit, powered by a DB 602. They kept it into the mid 50s.

Interestingly enough, Clay, they developed it into a jet, the Saab 21R, one of the very few piston-engined aircraft to be developed into a production jet aircraft. The only other one that comes to mind is the Yak-3, which was developed post GPW into the Yak-15, with a copy of the Me-262's Jumo engine slung underneath the front. It preserved the tail-wheel landing gear and mixed construction of the Yak-3. It was the lightest jet fighter ever, at around 7,000 lbs. if my memory serves me. By the way Burmese Bandit, still working on my visual interpretation of your BB-129. It will be interesting to see how close it gets to your idea. I'll be lucky if it looks as similar to your conception as the Commonwealth Kangaroo did to a P-51D.

Venganza
 
Pushers have one drawback - no rear gunner possible...and you need an ejection seat.

That said, I think that if 4-7 years of research into high powered pushers had been done before WW II, we might have seen some very interesting designs indeed!
I never thought rear gunners did much good. They never had more than a single .50 to shake at the enemy, and if one was enough to down an enemy fighter, why did the fighters have 6?
 
Rear gunners are valuable not so much for their shooting skills as for their eyes.

If we look at the analysis of fighter kills done by the US, UK, Nazi Germany, the Russians, etc etc, one fact leaps out - the great majority of pilots shot down were shot down from the rear, and they never saw the plane that shot them down until the bullets were striking them!

This is why the great aces in the air had what was joking called the "fighter pilot neck syndrome" - their heads and eyes were continually swiveling round amd round, looking for the enemy ambush. There's an ace saying "If it's a fair fight, you didn't set it up right".

The greatest of all, Hartman, gained most of his kills by ambush hit-and-runs. If you're a soccer fan...and remember the German soccer team of the 1970s...think of him as Gerd Muller with wings and machine guns!

So, for fighter planes with space limitations, no rear gunner means you have to have a fighter pilot neck. Only rare human beings can do this 24/7 in the air. No matter how often it's drilled into you, your mind gets tired and you stare in one direction just a little too long...and the next thing you know, your ass is on fire!

This is why bomber and attack planes have a rear gunner.

Of course, if your plane can neither run worth a damn or maneuver worth a ****, then you need a gunner with superb shooting skills...
 
Bramos - I thought about it, but what if an attack from the front takes out one of the Bramos? As I said in post no. 98, fifth para, self quote here...

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.

The reason why I don't want rockets for my tankbuster is given in the start of Tony William's excellent essay on tankbusting aircraft - rockets are just too dang inaccurate.

And I did give an alternate 3.7 armamaent, Tomo. It's the FlaK 43. an excellent weapon.


The reason I suggested 2 engines instead of 5 is that five Arguses on a single plane is the over-engineering (the main reason when something german malfunctioned in WWII). So, instead of trouble of installing 5 engines, I'd rather add a rear gunner or something really useful IMO.

As for rockets, that is for the word 'general' in the 'general attack plane'. I've checked out Tony's articles site years ago BTW :)

3,7cm Flak 18/36 or the 43*, it doesn't make any difference for the ground attack (check out videos of Ju-87G attacking tanks - single shots!!)

*I know that it was an excelent gun :)
 
Rear gunners are valuable not so much for their shooting skills as for their eyes.

If we look at the analysis of fighter kills done by the US, UK, Nazi Germany, the Russians, etc etc, one fact leaps out - the great majority of pilots shot down were shot down from the rear, and they never saw the plane that shot them down until the bullets were striking them!

This is why the great aces in the air had what was joking called the "fighter pilot neck syndrome" - their heads and eyes were continually swiveling round amd round, looking for the enemy ambush. There's an ace saying "If it's a fair fight, you didn't set it up right".

The greatest of all, Hartman, gained most of his kills by ambush hit-and-runs. If you're a soccer fan...and remember the German soccer team of the 1970s...think of him as Gerd Muller with wings and machine guns!

So, for fighter planes with space limitations, no rear gunner means you have to have a fighter pilot neck. Only rare human beings can do this 24/7 in the air. No matter how often it's drilled into you, your mind gets tired and you stare in one direction just a little too long...and the next thing you know, your ass is on fire!

This is why bomber and attack planes have a rear gunner.

Of course, if your plane can neither run worth a damn or maneuver worth a ****, then you need a gunner with superb shooting skills...

Burmese has it right.

The tail/rear gunner is best suited as an extra set of eyes. Of course the gunner is also valuable for the occasional fighter pilot who gets careless, forgets about the gun and comes up your tail.
 
OK, Burmese Bandit, you asked for it you got it. My pathetic attempt to portray your BB-129. Don't laugh too hard. It may not be anything like you envisioned, but I kind of like it. I didn't do a planform because I'm still confused (not hard to do to me) about the exact wing configuration which I'm pretty sure I botched up in this profile. To explain a little about my interpretation, I put the supercharger Argus in the center of the plane to try and not mess up the c/g too much. The Argus engines have two-bladers like the FW-189 because with less than 500 h/p per engine, anything more than two-blades is a waste of metal (I mean, you wouldn't want a 5-blade Rotol on them). The armoured crew compartment is based on that of the attack version of the FW-189, partly because I had no good idea how you saw the crew compartment (other than the pilot and gunner being back to back) and because I like the way it looks. I have the main landing gear retracting into the fuselage a la the Ar-234 because with the engine and wing arrangement it made sense. I might have had the gear retracting backwards, but the space was taken up by the supercharger Argus. If nothing else, I hope you're amused by my attempt. If you could provide me with just some rough sketches, I could fix (or scrap and completely redo) my version and also do the planform. At any rate, here it is, warts and all. Enjoy!

Venganza
 

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You got 80% of it right - Kudos to you!

Where you missed, though,(and this is more my fault of inadequate description than yours of inadequate visualization,I think) is in the fact that the powerpod mates smoothly with the main wing, and the rear propeller has a driveshaft that goes right through the main wing to drive a prop that turns behind the main wing.

Furthermore I would have the air and cooling intakes for the fifth argus in the main wing roots so as to keep the belly clean for possible ordnance stations. And, of course, mud on takeoff is better avoided this way...

The landing gear (this is something I forgot to fully describe, again) is behind the rear engine, and continues neatly behind the powerpod with half the wheel visible in the folded back flight position, like the stormovik, a very useful thing to have in a belly landing.

And I definitely would have a cockpit with more view! :D

But apart from that, A FANTASTIC JOB!!!
 
The main reason for the powerpod mating with the main wing: structural strength. There is a beam that connects the junction of the powerpod which mates to the canard with the junction of the powerpod which mates to the main beam. This creates a box girder rectangle which is very, very strong.
 
You got 80% of it right - Kudos to you!

Where you missed, though,(and this is more my fault of inadequate description than yours of inadequate visualization,I think) is in the fact that the powerpod mates smoothly with the main wing, and the rear propeller has a driveshaft that goes right through the main wing to drive a prop that turns behind the main wing.

Furthermore I would have the air and cooling intakes for the fifth argus in the main wing roots so as to keep the belly clean for possible ordnance stations. And, of course, mud on takeoff is better avoided this way...

The landing gear (this is something I forgot to fully describe, again) is behind the rear engine, and continues neatly behind the powerpod with half the wheel visible in the folded back flight position, like the stormovik, a very useful thing to have in a belly landing.

And I definitely would have a cockpit with more view! :D

But apart from that, A FANTASTIC JOB!!!

Thank you! I knew I didn't do the wing correctly, but I couldn't quite visualize how you planned to do it, with the mainwing attached to the forward mounted powerpods. I wondered about how to do the cooling for the fuselage mounted Argus, and having the intakes in the wings makes more sense than having them on the fuselage not just for ordnance carrying reasons, but also for giving a cleaner underfuselage in case of a crashlanding. I wondered about the landing gear too - I also thought that the wheels should be partially exposed, as on the IL-2 and the A-10, for the reason you mention. The cockpit on the FW-189 ground assault prototype had horrendous vision, of course, but nothing that a little armored glass couldn't improve. I may try to correct my interpretation, with the additional information you gave me. Stay tuned.

Venganza

P.S. Do you envision the plane having an internal bombbay? If all the ordnance is external, I can make the fuselage slimmer (with the limiting factor being the mid-mounted Argus), which would also cut down on drag (once the ordnance's dropped), lower the weight and make it a smaller target head-on.
 
Hi!

I'm making a Allied (English-American) heavy bomber, something between B-17F or G, B-24D and Lancaster B.III, I want to make a universal bomber - to operate during day and night. I forecast there'll be two versions: B.IE (for ETO and MTO) and B.IP (for PTO and China/Burma/India).

It'll be four-engine mid-wing aircraft with full metal fuselage. Engines: there are two options I think: RR Merlins or P&W R-2800. The piston engine would make a bomber more aerodynamical, but its unresistant for flak and one bullet can exclude it from the action. Radial engine is more resistant and gives more power. In spite of all I prefer P&W, but my design studio (I'm the chef and one worker heh) can process version with Merlins (B.IE-Mr, for PTO piston engine isn't a good idea).

Work in progress and Happy New Year to all, in Poland is 22:29 only.
 

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