Fast bomber for USAAC: how would've you done it?

[wuzak]

Greg, the fact remains that the head of the USAAC investigated having the Mosquito built under licence in the US, even going to the extent that he procured plans for the aircraft and sent them to several manufacturers for comment. He was, most likely, swayed by their comments on the Mosquito and didn't push any further.

 

[GrauGeist]

Since we flew them so little and they scored not even a single victory in US service

Actually, there was one victory credited to a U.S. operated Mossie in the MTO

* The U.S. 416 NFS based out of Italy, operated NF.30 Mosquitos, and it was this unit that claimed a victory later in the war. *

 

[GregP]

Right, it was investigated and found to be not worth the effort.

Wuzak, it was less to the USA than the Ta-152 was to Germany ... a footnote at best. Again, nothing bad said about the Mosquito, except the USA didn't need it, didn't build it, and barely operated it.

I realize you are a consumate Mosquito guy, but it was NOT a USA choice for operations and never WAS operated in an offensive mode by the USA, regardless of how much you wanted all the Allies to move to Mosquitoes. It might well have done as well as Lancasters and B-17's, etc. in the war, but it didn't in real life.

An investigation of the feasibility of building it doesn't even come close to a decision to DO it. When it comes to alternate choices for the USA, let it go. We did, in the real world.

I must say, I'm glad the British didn't fail to take advantage of one of the best of their designs, though.

Good as it was, it wasn't without issues. Here is the last airworthy Mosquito, before the new-build unit, meeting it's end.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aVZMNw6u2U

I don't have the accident report, but it LOOKS like structural failure. One outer wing appears to fail in flight, possibly preventing the pilot from completing the roll. I don't know the real story, but that looks like airframe failure to me. He wasn't "babying" the engines by flying at low boost and just seemed to stop rolling. Watch the time when it stops flying and starts falling. The left outer wing appears to flex upward, signifying, to me, spar failure. Once that happened, it was almost a foregone conclusion. Sorry to see it. Would MUCH rather see ascending rolls on one engine like the prototype did in demos.

 

[GregP]

This is MUCH more pleasant to watch! An all-de Havilland formation with the immortal Mossie in the lead position.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ePsaJ0gy14

Wish I had been there.

 

[Jabberwocky]

We were so keen on Mosquitoes that we ordered 120, only 40 of which were delivered. We sent 16 to Europe and gave 11 of those to the RAF, and 5 went to Italy for reconnaissance. I guess were were overrun with Mosquitoes, huh?

Some USAAF commanders were keen on the Mosquito. From Conquering the Night. Army Air Forces Night Fighters at War by Stephen L. McFarland:

"AAF Col. Phineas K. Morrill laid the groundwork for a major controversy in September 1943, when he requested that all of the night fighter squadrons trained by his 481st Night Fighter Operational Training Group be equipped with twin-engine British Mosquitoes rather than American P�70s or P�61s. The proposal received little attention until June 1944, when Maj. Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg, Deputy Commander in Chief of Allied Expeditionary Air Force in Europe, added his weight to Morrill�s request. Considering that �neither the P�61 nor the P�70 type aircraft are suitable night fighters . . . and that little success can be expected,� Vandenberg wanted US night fighter squadrons to switch to British-provided Mosquitoes."

The RAF provided 145 Mosquito PR Mk XVI's to the Eighth Air Force and they flew reconnaissance between February 1944 and the end of the war.

We never ran a single offensive operation with them and could have flown the recon without them.

You can't convince me we needed them at all. We sent FIVE to Italy and BORROWED 145 for PR duties. Hardly seems "indispensable" from any standpoint. In point of fact, we evaluated MANY and, indeed, almost ALL Allied aircraft including Soviet types, as well as many Axis types. The British did, too. So did the Germans, Soviets, Japanese, etc.

Since we flew them so little and they scored not even a single victory in US service, and never dropped a single bomb in US service as far as I can tell, why do I keep hearing this from you about the Mosquito? It was never on the US list of "things to help win the war for the USA," but WAS handy for recon when needed, just as it was to the RAF. It meant we had other resources to free up for offensive operations and didn't have to convert more of our own assets for recon.

The 416th Night Fighter squadron operated the Mosquito NF Mk XXX offensively, and other US NF squadrons in the Med wanted and asked for them, as their Beaufighters were clapped out and too slow to intercept high-flying, fast moving German nusiance bombers and there were delays with the P-61A. The 425th operated it in the ETO as well, but failed to score a kill.

The 416th scored a single kill with a Mosquito, I think in late-ish 1944.

But it wan't our cup of tea and never would have been so.

I agreed that the Mosquito didn't meet with USAAF daylight bombing philosophies, but if the USAAF had been given more responsibility for night fighting (for which the British had primary responisbility in the MTO and ETO) then the Mosquito may have well been much more to their taste, at least as a NF if not a bomber.

Certainly, the USAAF night fighter squadrons in the Mediterranean took warmly to the Beaufighter as a night fighter, scoring 31 of the 89 USAAF NF kills in the ETO/MTO with it. They much preferred it to the P-70, but as a nightfighter it was decidedly less capable than the Mosquito NFs the RAF was operating at the same time, being slower and equipped with the less-capable Mk IV radar (RAF squdrons had Mk VIII by this time).

 

[Jabberwocky]

Double post

 

[nuuumannn]

Thanks Jabberwocky; I posted mine after you'd filled in the gaps. The United States, specifically the US Navy examined the Mosquito as a land based night fighter, but complications arose over the responsibility of operating these, from the USAAF. Despite the reluctance to examine the Mossie for offensive roles, the type did have its supporters in the USAAF and requests for night fighter Mossies in the Med could not be fulfilled because of unavailability of aircraft in production. The use of Beaufighters was because the British couldn't build them fast enough and barely had enough for their needs, let alone anyone else's, so the USAAF received the Beaufighters. A request for PR Mossies in the PTO was met with the Air Ministry's response of "...and why not make operational use of your 40 F-8s?" meaning the Canadian examples not used. The US ones also flew pathfinder missions in support of 8th AF ops. It seems that the Americans didn't really understand the Mosquito and it took a new generation of combat aircraft before they finally took to the concept, in the Mossie's spiritual successor the Canberra, which Martin built as the B-57.

 

[GregP]

Never said the Mosquito wasn't capable or wasn't desired by the men in the field. I said it wasn't going to happen that the USA was ever going to be equipped with it. It wasn't wanted by the people charged with procuring American war equipment and wasn't ever going to be built here. And it didn't get built here. The record is VERY clear. We didn't use the Mosquito much except for reconnaissance.

Is there anything I said that is wrong? Or unclear? All the posturing in the world won't change the fact that we didn't use the Mosquito much at all.

It wasn't until the Canberra was wanted as a stop-gap attack plane the we built a foreign design for the USAAF / USAF, and we redesigned the fuselage when we did. As it happens, the Canberra turned out to be a better plane than we expected and we used it well past when it was initially slated to be phased out. I have several friends who flew it and they loved the plane once it was above 300 feet AGL.

Below that altitude they hated it because the ejection seat wasn't any good below 300 feet ... you'd hit the ground before you slowed down enough to survive. Nothing unusual about that at the time. It was before widely-deployed zero-zero ejection seats were in general use. Many of our own planes had the same failing at the time.

 

[nuuumannn]

While you are right about it not finding other offensive roles (it was used as a night fighter by the USAAF), that's no indication of the aeroplane's performance or capability itself, in fact...

It wasn't until the Canberra was wanted as a stop-gap attack plane the we built a foreign design for the USAAF / USAF, and we redesigned the fuselage when we did. As it happens, the Canberra turned out to be a better plane than we expected and we used it well past when it was initially slated to be phased out. I have several friends who flew it and they loved the plane once it was above 300 feet AGL.

The Mosquito easily falls into what you've stated here in the service of many armed forces around the world, during and post-war. Like I said, the Americans didn't get it and had they operated them offensively, they would have. It took the Canberra to prove to them just how effective the concept was.

 

[wuzak]

Right, it was investigated and found to be not worth the effort.

No, that is not what I said, and, most likely, not what happened.

The manufacturers that were given the design to evaluate did not want to build it, pure and simple. Beech wrote a critique describing it as worthless and an anachrnism (because it was made from wood).

Most of the manufacturers involved didn't make a huge impact with their own products, at least offensively, during the war either.

The manufacturers asked to look at the plans were:
Beech
Curtiss Wright
Fairchild
Fleetwings
Hughes

As to the bomber version, that was never going to happen. Arnold was part of the "Bomber Mafia", who believed in the concept of the self defending bomber fighting its way to the target. It was this dogma which prevented the Mosquito bomber from even being considered.

As mentioned earlier, Arnold's initial interest was for the Photo Reconnaissance version.

 

[GregP]

Hey nuuumannn,

I thought I made myself VERY clear. There was and IS nothing wrong with the Mosquito. It was and IS a good performing aircraft. The political climate of the 1940's would never allow a foreign aircraft to be built for the US Armed Forces IN the USA and it was never DONE in WWII. We did accept some foreign aircraft into service in auxiliary roles, such as recon. None in primary roles to any real extent.

This says NOTHING about the performance of the Mosquito in the real war. It was a simple FACT. We didn't use it except in an auxiliary roles, even when it was requested by the field personnel. The people in procurement weren't fliers, they were ground people and did what they were told to do by the people in power.

These facts are not nationalism or my own opinion, they are simple, historical facts and reflect the attitudes of the time, not MINE or the attitudes NOW. Personally, I'd rather have Eurofighters than the F-35. Hell, I'd rather have Sukhois than the F-35, too. I would NOT have bought the Mosquito under any circumstances, mostly because it was of wood construction. The longevity of such material in tropical salt air environments was not good and never was. Likewise, it wasn't all that good in arctic conditions. That's the way it IS.

The jobs we specifically wanted done were done by aircraft WE designed and built, and that was the way it WAS, not necessarily the way it IS today. I don't want to change the facts of history, but I DO want it recorded accurately, as it happened at the time. Not as someone outside the country and outside the internal politics of the time saw it or sees it today.

Record what REALLY happened, not what you wanted to have happened.

I have NO agenda here. We didn't use Mosquitoes much when they were available, and when we wanted them, very few were delivered. That might well have had a lot to do with it ... I don't KNOW, but non-performance was not tolerated in WWII to any extent by the USA. If you didn't DO it, you were bypassed by someone who COULD. Maybe ordering 120 Mosquitoes and getting 40 was the straw that broke the Camel's back.

Whatever the reason, they were insignificant in US WWII operations. That cannot be refuted by anyone with any facts from the time.

 

[Shortround6]

I think the B-26 had considerable development potential in it. But whether or not they would have done that development given some incentive to do so is a question that cannot be answered except by "what if."

A lot of "What IF", change wing, change fuselage, use different version of the engines that need a lot more volume in the Nacelles.

Development of the A-20 might have made it a LOT better and might have speeded up the A-26 development, too but, again, the question is what would have precipitated such a change in historic development? Another "what if."

Futzing with the A-20 wouldn't have done much for the A-26 and the A-26 shows why the Army probably wasn't interested in a small bomber powered by Allison engines. Douglas was already doing private venture work in 1940 on the A-26 (or at least a successor/improved A-20) and a mock-up was being inspected on April 11-12 1941 and a contract for two prototypes place June 2 1941, about 6 months before Pearl Harbor. Prototype flew July 10, 1942. It seems to be what people here are asking for except for the two remote control turrets. Because of the remote control turrets it was a 3 seat plane with bombardier in the nose so fuselage is a LOT smaller than the B-26.

The Curtiss A-18 Shrike might have been developed but, at the same or more cost as a P-38, why try it? Why not go with the P-38? But the Shrike had potential for considerable clean-up. What if they had use two turbo-supercharged Allisons and had done an aerodynamic cleanup with an eye toward a high-speed light to medium bomber? Might have been formidable in 1940 - 1941. More "what-if."

Sorry Greg but the A-18 was a no go. The whole airframe was a NO GO. Sticking turbo Allisons on it is like sticking Merlin 61s on a Blenheim. You have a 1935 wing with 1935 flaps and 1935 bomb bays in the wing. It is a cool looking plane but any money spent on it other than a complete and totally new airplane is money down a rat hole.

 

[nuuumannn]

Record what REALLY happened, not what you wanted to have happened.

Greg, cool your jets. You are reading too much into the posts being put up here. Take a deep breath. Typing every SECOND word in CAPITALS makes you SOUND very ANGRY.

 

[Shortround6]

The political climate of the 1940's would never allow a foreign aircraft to be built for the US Armed Forces IN the USA and it was never DONE in WWII. We did accept some foreign aircraft into service in auxiliary roles, such as recon. None in primary roles to any real extent.

600 Spitfires and no, they were not recon, at least for the most part.
Beaufighter night fighters. :http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=492

Four squadrons may not be your idea of any real extent but for a year and half they were the ONLY US night fighters in the Med theater.
P-61 first flew 26 May 1942 and took two years to get into combat at all let alone in several theaters so somebody was not getting the job done.

I have NO agenda here. We didn't use Mosquitoes much when they were available, and when we wanted them, very few were delivered. That might well have had a lot to do with it ... I don't KNOW, but non-performance was not tolerated in WWII to any extent by the USA. If you didn't DO it, you were bypassed by someone who COULD.

Not quite true about non-performance as the US 20mm Hispano fiasco shows. US job performance was sometimes judged by numbers produced (much like a Soviet factory manager) rather than the actual effectiveness of the weapon/vehicle/item.

 

[gjs238]

I always wondered if Bell could have placed a couple of small Radials (R-1830 ?) in the front of the Bell Airacuda Nacelle's
To make it a 4 engined high speed bomber in the push/pull configuration

Better than those stupid manned cannon pods

Looks like Buck Rogers!

 

[Shortround6]

...or faster than real ones anyway

Please toss in you proposals, for a light/medium/heavy bomber that could be conceived between 1939-1942(from proposal to deployment; 1941 as a deadline is fine also, if judged posible), using engines armament (if any?) available for USAAC back then.

Returning to first post you have 3 different categories.

Light bomber is pretty much covered by the A-20 and has been said before the USAAC policy was to use air-cooled engines for ground attack planes.
The US was very interested in long range bombers and had little use for small bombers with light payloads for long range use. For one thing the state of the art wasn't quite there in mid to late 30s. See XB-15. XB-16 ( 6 Allison engines, The maximum weight was to have been 105,000 pounds. The range was estimated to be 3300 miles carrying 2500 pounds of bombs. The crew was to be 11. ) and the B-19 project.

For the ranges the US was interested in the fast bomber wasn't really an option. Rightly or wrongly they envisioned long missions with most of the flying time spent in undefended airspace (over oceans) so a slow or moderate cruise speed wasn't a real problem. And let's face it, in 1938 the fast (schnell) bomber was still pretty much a concept. The He 111-Bs operating in Spain had a top speed of 230mph at around 4000 meters (without the dustbin lowered) with a cruise speed of 214mph. The He 111-Es that were staring to show up maxed at 261mph with max cruise of 237mph. These were only schnell bombers compared to JU 52s. The DO 17s with radial engines topped out at about 255mph with 3-4 man crews.
315-320mph B-25s and B-26s were rockets compared to those aircraft and had better defenses to boot. (three 7.9mm mgs didn't take much to beat).

Also please consider that in 1939 the Allison factory didn't really exist. From 1930 through 1937 they built 16 engines, in 1938 they built 12 V-1710s and one V 3420 and in 1939 they built 48 engines. In 1940 they built 1153 with only 342 going to the USAAC and in 1941 they built 6,433.

Army was interested in turbos for high altitude cruise and range (same reason airliners went for pressurized fuselages with late piston engined airliners), same fuel will take you further in the thinner air if you can get the engines to work there. Army thought that air cooled engines wouldn't take the strain of trubo operation at high altitudes ( thin air won't cool as well).

A lot of things happened to change at least some of the thinking. Better casting and forging techniques allowed a lot more fin area to be used by air cooled engines which went a long way to solving the high altitude cooling problems. Better fuels allowed a bit more compression to be used for better economy. Bomb accuracy from the higher altitudes proved to be more elusive than 1930's theory calling for lower operational altitudes ( and slower speeds and shorter range). Fighters got a lot better (although they should have seen this one coming, although it took quite a while for the Japanese to catch up).

US was sort of trapped into the B-17, in many ways it was behind the times by 1941, not surprising for a contemporary of the Bristol Blenheim and Curtiss A-18, but it was the case of the B-17 or ??? 53 built in 1940, 144 in 1941 (could have been more?), 1,412 in 1942 and 4179 in 1943 with the "G" being introduced in July of 1943.

IF you decide in 1940 that you what to replace the B-17, what do you replace it with and how long will it take to to build it in the numbers the B-17 could be built in late 1941 and in 1942? While the numbers were small the production tooling was already designed and "merely" needed coping to get more factories on line. Please remember that Buick, Chevrolet and Studebaker were ALL being brought into the aircraft engine manufacturing plan in the fall of 1940. Dinking around with which company would produce which engine could delay things by months. Studebaker was originally supposed to build R-2600s and not R-1820s but as production priorities changed it was thought that Studebaker had more flexibility to change type of engine that parent company Wright did.

 

[GregP]

Hi Nuuumann,

Not angry at all. I'm a bit tired of being either misunderstood or being deliberately misinterpreted, but that goes with a forum I suspect.

Unsurprisingly I disagree with Shortround's comment on my comments. He took the route of deliberate misinterpretation.

You don't have to do a complete redesign of the B-26 to make it a lot better. Some changes have to be made, but not a complete redesign.

Futzing with the A-20 is what generated the A-26; it was an evolutionary plane, not a revolutionary one. Stand them side by side (we have that happening right across from the museum now) and the family resemblance is obvious. It's sort of like standing a P-47B next to our Seversky AT-12 ... it is just scaled up a bit and has a belly for all the air and exhaust ducts to and from the turbocharger.

The A-18 Shrike could easily have been improved with a different, higher-speed airfoil, general cleanup, and a complete new set of engines. It would resemble the Me 110 and some of the Japanese planes, but COULD have been made a LOT faster with suitable attention. If you did it with attention to a possible bomb load, you would have a high-speed bomber with some bomb load that I would not care to speculate on without some design work that I am not interested in doing.

The title of this thread is how would YOU make a high-speed bomber, but everyone who comes up with a suggestion is beset by nay-sayers from all sides. Perhaps they don't want any discussion of ideas they didn't think of themselves. It happens all the time in business. I made three suggestions and have maybe five more, but I see that discussion is not apparently really wanted, so all I'll say in here going forward is that a high-speed American light to medium bomber was certainly possible in the early 1940's if that had been the specification that was sent out. Instead, the specs of the time were all about planes that any semi-modern fighter could catch.

It seems the people with the foresight worked at de Havilland in the UK and thus was born the Mosquito. It wasn't that nobody else could DO, but they mostly were never asked to do it creatively. Most aircraft designers were hemmed in by requirements. The Mosquito was born out of "what can we do that will be better than anything flying today or in the next few years?" ... not from a specification. Such innovation was possible from almost all design agencies if they had been given a free hand and could use any equipment they could imagine.

I don't think there is anything that could be done to make the Airacuda into a good aircraft unless they ditched the pods. Putting in two extra crewmen was never going to help performance!

 

[tomo pauk]

I think the B-26 had considerable development potential in it. But whether or not they would have done that development given some incentive to do so is a question that cannot be answered except by "what if."
...

A lot of "What IF", change wing, change fuselage, use different version of the engines that need a lot more volume in the Nacelles.

In case the reduction of guns/gun ammo/turrets and crew is executed, the wing loading of the B-26 should return in more acceptable values - meaning no such a pressing need to increase the wing dimensions and incidence. Wing's thickness to chord ratio was 17%, vs 18% of the A-20. Anyway, I'd appreciate a more complete analysis of the B-26's wing profile.
This is how much some airplane items reduced the max range of the B-26; it is very much possible that reduction in speed was in similar values?

Speed of the early B-26s, with 'small wing' (605 sq ft) and R-2800-5 engines (1850 HP for take off):

We might see that max RPM used is not 2600 (as available for the 'A' series of the R-2800), but 2400. One wonders how fast would've been those B-26s with engines operating at 2600 rpm, and with less drag and weight. Let alone with next engines used (R-2800-43s) operating at 2700 RPM, delivering 1600 HP at 13500 ft, no ram (and at 15000 ft with ram) and improved exhaust system.

Much* or all** of the intercoolers of the two-stage R-2800s was located along the engine bearer's tubing. The auxiliary compressor was within the tubing. This means that no extra space was needed behind the bearer, ie. within the nacelle (or fuselage). As can be seen in the pg. 509 (*= F4U) and pg. 581 (**= F6F) of the 'Americas hundred thousand.
Here is how the B-26's engine bearers looked like.

Please note the extra space between aft part of the bearer and firewall:

Fuselage was able to house a large bomb load; once there is less crew and guns around, it is tad a too big though.

added: 'explosion' view of the B-26: link
added2: cutaway of the F6F: link; cutaway of the F4U: link

 

[pbehn]

Cant complain about the USA not using the Mosquito, the British put work on it on hold in favour of Wellingtons and Tiger Moths. By the time its abilities were known and proved it was wanted by almost all sections of the RAF and a good few of the USAF ( for recon and night fighter).

 

[gjs238]

The manufacturers that were given the design to evaluate [Mosquito] did not want to build it, pure and simple. Beech wrote a critique describing it as worthless and an anachrnism (because it was made from wood).

Most of the manufacturers involved didn't make a huge impact with their own products, at least offensively, during the war either.

The manufacturers asked to look at the plans were:
Beech
Curtiss Wright
Fairchild
Fleetwings
Hughes

As to the bomber version, that was never going to happen. Arnold was part of the "Bomber Mafia", who believed in the concept of the self defending bomber fighting its way to the target. It was this dogma which prevented the Mosquito bomber from even being considered.

As mentioned earlier, Arnold's initial interest was for the Photo Reconnaissance version.

Wait a minute, Hughes, of Spruce Goose fame, couldn't build a Mosquito?