"Generations" of fighter aircraft (1 Viewer)

[Spindash64]

It's common now to refer to Jet Fighters as belonging to certain "Generations", with certain characteristics and abilities defining the boundaries. For example, 5th Generation aircraft are designed to have incredibly low Radar returns when this wasn't a concern in 4th generation designs. 4th generation designs were willing to sacrifice maximum speed for better capabilities in close-in, fighter vs fighter air combat, which 3rd generation fighters considered a secondary or tertiary concern. It gets fuzzier past that, but you get the picture


I'm wondering how we might be able to categorize propeller driven fighter aircraft into generations in a similar manner. The sheer speed and chaos of development might make this fuzzy, but I think of a few ideas in this regard:

The Bf190A-Bf109E, Hawker Hurricane, and P-36 Hawk were in development and entered service around the same period of time, and share the following traits:
-Enclosed canopy
-Fully retractable main landing gear
-Low wing Monoplane, with no external wing bracing

The Bf109F-Bf109K was a significant redesign, and could potentially be considered a separate generation from the A-E models: new wing, no trail bracing, finally installing the famous motor cannon.

The Fw190 is most definitely a different generation than the A-E 109s, being able to specifically take into consideration lessons learned from those aircraft in combat:
-Tightly cowled Radial engine with cooling fan (tight cowled radials is not unique to this generation, nor are radials mandatory, but it is new for it to be considered sufficient drag reduction to compete with liquid cooled engines)
-higher focus on equipment reliability and usability in suboptimal conditions
-greater concern for range and combat radius
-measures for pilot protection considered from the initial design stage
-use of bubble canopy design to improve pilot awareness

I know this is a somewhat silly sounding discussion, but I think it's interesting

 

[GTX]

Interesting idea. Here's an initial attempt from me:

• Generation 1: Initial WW1 fighters: E.g. Vickers F.B.5
• Generation 2: Initial 'proper' WW1 fighters with introduction of Machine gun synchronisation as key feature: E.g. Fokker E.I
• Generation 3: Later war more developed 'proper' WW1 fighters : E.g. Nieuport 11, 17, SE.5, Sopwiths, latter Fokker's etc
• Generation 4: 1920s fighters, typically biplanes. E.g. Gloster Grebe - Bristol Bulldog
• Generation 5: Early - mid 1930s fighters, typically biplanes such a Gloster Gladiators and similar.
• Generation 6: Later 1930s - early 1940s fighters. E.g. Spitfire, Bf-109 etc
• Generation 7: Later WW2 fighters, further developed, typically 2000+hp, often using cannon armament. E.g. Hellcat, Corsair, Typhoon/Tempest, FW190s, especially late war variants

After this, one gets into the era of jets.

 

[GTX]

I suppose just like today where something like a Super Hornet or Rafael is considered a Gen 4.5 fighter, one could have something like a late war Bf109G10 or Griffon Spit as a Gen 6.5 under my nomenclature.