Why did the P-46 have so much problems? It seemed to deliver such little performance? As for the P-53/60 and XP-62, I'm curious what went wrong.
It was strange...
What problems dogged Supermarine?
Curtiss-Wright: Loss of Don Berlin and downfall
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swampyankee
Chief Master Sergeant
- 3,991
- Jun 25, 2013
If a single employee leaves a large company, it shouldn't go downhill as a result; doing so indicates (imho) a basic flaw in corporate governance*. A previous poster had said that this happened after Mitchell's death at Supermarine.
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* Companies can be remarkably stupid about this. A number of years ago, a company I worked with had all three of its experts in gyrodynamics retire simultaneously (I carpooled with an HR manager). This was a quite rare and necessary type of expertise; the company higher-ups thought these guys could be replaced by a quick newspaper ad, in a couple of weeks: they were just engineers, weren't they? It ended up taking close to a year, while spending a lot of money on consultants.
I was just curious what problems affected Supermarine.
drgondog
Major
Drag is the curse of performance. P-40, P-46, P-60 cursed by excess drag - wing and fuselage.
More or less ( I have not the book in my hands) when Geoffrey Quill tested P-39 was amazed by the handling on the ground due to his tricycle landing gear: " I could not understand why a factory like Vickers, with a tradition in oleopneumatics, did not implement a tricycle landing gear in the Attacker, that I had strongly suggested..." states in his memories.
A great airplane designer must be a sort of an artist: he must know, not with reasoning or study or calculus, but with some sort of "intuition".
A great airplane designer must be a sort of an artist: he must know, not with reasoning or study or calculus, but with some sort of "intuition".
Shortround6
Major General
The P-40 is not as bad as many people think. At least compared to it's contemporaries. Which the P-51 was not, being started about 6 years after the Hawk 75/P-36.
The P-46 is a real puzzle as it is no faster, using the same engine, as the P-40D/E despite being smaller and lighter. Something (or more likely many little somethings) were creating a lot of drag.
The P-60 Saga also has a lot of drag, but perhaps not as much as we suppose if published performance is to be believed as one prototype using the same engine as a P-40F was a bit faster than the P-40F while using a larger wing and weighing more. However having less drag than the P-40 in the fall of 1941 was no longer good enough.
Admiral Beez
Major
Their 1929 acquisition by Vickers seems to be the beginning of their downfall, with the precipice being the 1937 death of Mitchell and the 1938 reorg of Supermarine into Vickers-Armstrongs (Aircraft) Ltd. From then onwards, any new Supermarine aircraft designs were dogs.
wuzak
Captain
I believe the XP-46 was no faster without military equipment than the P-40D was with.
Maybe the ventral radiator had something to do with the poor performance. The XP-40 had a ventral radiator before it was quickly moved under the nose. Perhaps Curtiss didn't have a good handle on radiator placement and design.
The timing is also interesting - the XP-60 flew before the XP-46. What was required was a rapidly moving target.
wuzak
Captain
The XP-53 failed because its engine never materialised and was a turd (I-1430).
Two XP-53s were ordered. One was re-purposed as the XP-60 (the USAAC/F wanting to see the Merlin engine in an airframe with laminar flow wings) and the other was completed as a static test frame for the XP-60 program. No XP-53 flew.
The XP-60 was converted later into the XP-60D with 2 stage Merlin. I do not know what performance that possessed.
That's a little of an oversimplification given the history of the type, and no, it didn't take a genius, it took a whole team of individuals, some of which were geniusses, the Air Ministry and Rolls-Royce, so yeah, you're partially right, but the point is that under Smith the Spitfire evolved in a completely different direction to how Mitchellplanned it, in hasty response to wartime needs. Sure, there is no saying it wouldn't have under Mitchell, but let's not diminish Smith's enormous contribution (and Shenstone's and Quill's and soooo many others - it takes a whole design team, as you know) to the Spitfire's evolution, with flippant and inaccurate staements.
As for the post-war contribution of Supermarine, again, quite a few missteps, which I highlighted. That still does nothing to diminish what Smith achieved, which is the point. Mitchell's death did not bring about a downfall of sorts for Supermarine; Smith and everyone else at Supermarine who was active during the war would disagree entirely.
Shortround6
Major General
IF the accounts can be believed the XP-46A managed 410mph and flew months ahead of the XP-60. However the XP-60 flew a few weeks ahead of the XP-46, confused yet?
The XP-46A was plane stripped of all military equipment in an effort to get an airframe into the air for testing. This was done so thoroughly that it could not even be properly ballasted for tests as there was no way to fasten the ballast in place. The XP-46 was equipped with all military equipment and was completed at a somewhat leisurely pace. Unfortunately the performance was also rather leisurely. 355mph at 12,200ft at 7,081lbs (gross weight was 7,432lbs with full internal fuel and armament) however with a bullet proof windscreen and gun ports open for firing speed was 348.5mph. 6.5 minutes to 15,200ft didn't help it's cause.
I don't know if the XP-46A actually hit 410mph or if that was an estimated speed. 55mph seems to be a rather large difference for military equipment?
The P-40 still performed pretty well: Able to reach around 340-370 mph @ 13000-15000'. That wasn't actually bad, as it actually outperformed the Hurricane Mk.I, possibly the Mk.II's at those altitudes. Considering the performance could be achieved at those lower altitudes, that could also imply the plane was cleaner than the Hurricanes.
If I recall, they were starting out with a propeller design that they decided to modify into a jet-fighter. That said, it is strange that they would ignore suggestions to put a tricycle-gear in.
I'm not sure what produced the increase in drag. The only thing I could think of was the belly radiator design, it seemed that Curtiss couldn't quite get that one right, though Donovan Berlin might have gotten that right on the XP-75 (he got everything else wrong, but...)
What was wrong with Vickers? They produced many top-notch aircraft including the Vickers Wellington, and some other proposals.
wuzak
Captain
Curtiss P-60
That may explain the poor performance of the XP-60, as well as having a large wing:
*Note that the wing area given was the same for the XP-60 as for later versions with smaller span.
Compare that to the P-51A:
The page has the wing span as 27ft, but it clearly was 37ft.
North American P-51A Mustang
And the P-47C
Republic P-47C Thunderbolt
So it had gotten too big and heavy, as well as the wings not being designed to adequate tolerances. I guess North American had a greater attention to detail than Curtiss did -- they also managed to make the belly-radiator work, where Curtiss couldn't pull it off.
Considering the wing-area figures are listed the same as the XP-60, this plane probably had larger wings?
Admiral Beez
Major
It's a good question. On fighters, Vickers seemed to be behind the curve. At the same time their Supermarine subsidiary was flying the Spitfire prototype in 1936, the mother company's Vickers Venom first took flight.
How can the same company make this....
....and this? I hope Smith didn't pen this one.
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Peter Gunn
Master Sergeant
Well there's always market driven reasons... 
and...
and...
Kevin J
Banned
The Venom would have whooped a lot of Japanese arses.
swampyankee
Chief Master Sergeant
- 3,991
- Jun 25, 2013
Yes, a useful, four-passenger vehicle and a very expensive toy one.
Engineering is very much a team activity, and the reports of the critical nature of Don Berlin or Reginald Mitchell are either evidence of poor management practices within the companies or of a very shallow talent pool. What engineers like Berlin or Mitchell should have been doing is managing projects and making sure that they had talented people in their teams. Clarence Johnson and Edward Heinemann probably did this better than almost any other managers in the aircraft business. Berlin and Mitchell didn't.
Shortround6
Major General
Clarence Johnson and Edward Heinemann didn't start out as "managers". At what point they became managers I don't know. At what point they transitioned from just another engineer to design leader on a project to overseeing several projects took a number of years. Upper management at times was responsible for letting them take an idea and running with it.
Yes, once the initial concept/rough design is figured out then a team should be assembled and "leader" be relieved of detail work.
British were at a disadvantage in there was a general shortage of engineers. At times it wasn't a question of picking the best and brightest but just getting enough people to move a project forward. Design offices often didn't have enough draftsmen let alone real real engineers.
Not to pick on the British too much, the Book "The Engines of Pratt & Whitney: a technical history" by Jack Connors has one engineer remembering that the P&W supercharger design dept had 5 men in it before WW II after P & W decided to build their own superchargers and stop buying designs/parts from GE. I wonder how many were in that dept in 1945?
What if's that say P & W (or insert another company) should have just done XXXX overlook this part.
Yes, once the initial concept/rough design is figured out then a team should be assembled and "leader" be relieved of detail work.
British were at a disadvantage in there was a general shortage of engineers. At times it wasn't a question of picking the best and brightest but just getting enough people to move a project forward. Design offices often didn't have enough draftsmen let alone real real engineers.
Not to pick on the British too much, the Book "The Engines of Pratt & Whitney: a technical history" by Jack Connors has one engineer remembering that the P&W supercharger design dept had 5 men in it before WW II after P & W decided to build their own superchargers and stop buying designs/parts from GE. I wonder how many were in that dept in 1945?
What if's that say P & W (or insert another company) should have just done XXXX overlook this part.
swampyankee
Chief Master Sergeant
- 3,991
- Jun 25, 2013
One would hope it took some time. While management is a skill many engineers don't ever get (one of the senior managers at my last aerospace employer had his secretary rate his direct reports, who were all engineering managers, because he couldn't be bothered), engineering managers are rarely hired in as such right out of school.
Alas, true. An article I read about the V-bomber development stated that the UK had fewer engineers working on all the V-bombers than Boeing had working on B-47 hydraulics. I'm not sure I believe that; I suspect that there is a problem with job titles, which don't necessarily correspond between two US companies, let alone US and UK companies.
As a recovering aeronautical engineer, I'm actually pretty cognizant of how few engineers may be working in a given specialty at even a large company: we had one engineer, who dealt with all the anti-ice systems when I was at HSD; she worked about half-time on anti-ice systems and about half-time on gearing. While she would get other engineers (frequently me) assigned to anti-ice or gears (anti-ice was fun; I like heat transfer), she was basically the only engineer on either. Different countries had (it's much less today) significant differences in engineering education. Continental Europe, starting with France, had formal, university-level education for engineers before the US, and I think the US did before the UK; one of the benefits of this is that university-trained engineers are likely to be more capable of moving to different specialties (my engineering career included gas turbine engine testing, structural fatigue analysis, aerodynamics, thermodynamic modeling of gas turbine engines and aircraft environmental control systems, low-observables analysis, and writing data reduction software).
