Groundhog Thread Part Deux - P-39 Fantasy and Fetish - The Never Ending Story (Mods take no responsibility for head against wall injuries sustained)

[buffnut453]

High-powered washing machine . . . hmmm . . . a Brewster Buffalo with a Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engine?

I understand it gave the whitest whites...and had a wicked spin cycle.

 

[GrauGeist]

Wow...look at the weight of that dynamotor!
The ones I'm used to were half that weight.
But yes, wiring harnesses have considerable weight. The control cable between the TX/RX and the controlhead will be hefty because of the bundled wiring, RFI/ground shielding, the paper dividers and the outer cover, which back then, was rubberized. Plus the nickle (or silver) plated brass Amphenol plugs on either end.

 

[ThomasP]

re the weights of the radios and IFF

"Groundhog Thread Part Deux - P-39 Fantasy and Fetish - The Never Ending Story (Mods take no responsibility for head against wall injuries sustained)"

Total fighter(bomber) installation weight of the SCR-522 set was ~105(125) lbs
Total fighter installation weight of the usual 2xtransmitter/3xreceiver SCR-274 set was ~100 lbs

Total fighter installation weight for IFF varied a bit, but they ranged from about 50 lbs for a SCR-535 IFF Mk II to about 60 lbs for the SCR-595 IFF Mk IIIG sets with additional transponder unit for G-band frequency.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Not sure what gauge of wire was used for a typical USAAF transmitter, but they were high-powered output and should have required either 6 or 8-gauge stranded core supply wire from the battery to the transceiver assembly. When the radio transmitted, it would have had a booster motor that upped the transceiver's voltage/amps to transmit.
Just 20 feet of 8-gauge THHN wiring can weigh a few pounds and the motor assembly weighed about 12 pounds (at least the GE motors I worked with did) and the weight came from the iron core and copper windings in a cast aluminum housing.

An increased range implies a larger power transformer for the amp as well, and that's already one of the heaviest pieces in the rig. And the weight rises disproportionate to the output in amps from this era.

 

[Glider]

Please give up on trying to educate me. I already have way more education than I can ever use. Thank you.

I don't suppose you would like to enlighten us with your qualifications and experience would you?

 

[GrauGeist]

An increased range implies a larger power transformer for the amp as well, and that's already one of the heaviest pieces in the rig. And the weight rises disproportionate to the output in amps from this era.

Early transmitters used lower frequencies with elevated wattage to be able to transmit over long distances.

Even today, the California Highway Patrol's TX/RX is in the 47MHz range with a TX output of about 150watts - that's enough power to cook a hotdog skewered on the antenna after a "ten count".

(don't ask me how I know, I'll disavow any knowledge of such things...)

 

[XBe02Drvr]

When the radio transmitted, it would have had a booster motor that upped the transceiver's voltage/amps to transmit.

Not to mention the motor/generator style inverter to supply the 115V 400 Hz current some of the flight instruments and most of the radio gear required. The one in our club's T34 weighed 31 pounds bare and 35 with mounting bracket and wiring. The plane was built in the early 50s with all tube radios, but ours used "modern" Bendix 12VDC nav/coms. The only items that still used 115VAC/400Hz were the three gyros and their synchros.

 

[P-39 Expert]

Can we please have a source for the statement that most bombs dropped from 20,000ft "didn't hit anything. Farmland, a lake, absolutely nothing of importance"?

Can you please provide a source for the doctrine or directives of ANY air force, anywhere, anytime which states that they should only intercept those enemy aircraft that have a chance of bombing something important?

Yet again, you are failing to even read any of the posts that other members are providing. Per @Andrew Arthy post 2104, the Me109 bombers didn't necessarily bomb from 25,000ft. The SOP for at least one Staffeln was to dive to 16,000ft and drop.

Again, you're ENTIRELY MISSING THE POINT....Fighter Command's responsibility was to DEFEND UK AIRSPACE FROM ENEMY AIRCRAFT. PERIOD. It doesn't matter if they came over in high-powered washing machines, the job of the Hurricanes and Spitfires was to intercept them. That's the purpose of gaining/maintaining air superiority.

Throughout the war British area bombing and AAF pinpoint bombing never exceeded 50% of bombs landing within a THREE MILE radius of the target (Wiki). The BoB was before most of the British and AAF bombing.

 

[pbehn]

Throughout the war British area bombing and AAF pinpoint bombing never exceeded 50% of bombs landing within a THREE MILE radius of the target (Wiki). The BoB was before most of the British and AAF bombing.

Can you compare to daylight bombing? I believe the British destroyed many barges in ports along the French and Belian coast during the Battle of Britain while the USA managed to bomb the wrong country in 1945. Everyone can select their own factoids cant they? Irritating isnt it?

 

[buffnut453]

Throughout the war British area bombing and AAF pinpoint bombing never exceeded 50% of bombs landing within a THREE MILE radius of the target (Wiki). The BoB was before most of the British and AAF bombing.

So you're taking an average across all daylight and night-time bombing efforts? Yeah, not the most relevant of statistics. However, let's use your 3-mile figure just for grins to show the irrelevance of your statement.

Per the Wiki page on the Blitz (The Blitz - Wikipedia), the size of London in 1940 was about 750 square miles (it held about one-fifth of the population of Britain). Treating that area as a circle, just to keep things simple, gives us a radius of about 15.4 miles from the centre of London to its edge. If the aim point for the Jabo raids is the centre of the city then, per your statistic, 50% of all the bombs would fall within 3 miles....but that still leaves 12.4 miles of London's radius for the remainder to fall in. Thus, for a large area target like London, the vast majority of the Jabo bombs would hit "something"...not farmland, not lakes, but people, property, industry, businesses, government etc. Again, why would Fighter Command ignore that threat? Still awaiting an answer on that.

But wait...there's more. The Jabo raids didn't only bomb from 20,000 ft. Per this site (Jabo over England I), high-altitude attacks were only used against large area targets like cities. Even then, the Me109 fighter-bombers would dive to improve weapon aiming, a tactic that was mentioned earlier in this thread. Attacks against point targets employed low-level bombing at 1000-1500ft were employed which would greatly increase the precision and accuracy of those attacks....but just because you bomb at low-level does NOT mean the entire sortie was flown at low level. Hi-lo-hi is a very common ground attack flight profile against which FC had to respond.

So...back at you again. Please explain why FC was wrong to intercept these raids.

 

[Just Schmidt]

Throughout the war British area bombing and AAF pinpoint bombing never exceeded 50% of bombs landing within a THREE MILE radius of the target (Wiki). The BoB was before most of the British and AAF bombing.

Honestly, this is getting increasingly silly, to use a good old British word including, if not synonymous with, groundhuggery.

Firstly, if the best source you can come up with is wiki, it can either means that somebody wrote something wrong or out of context on wiki, or that you are too lazy to find something better. It cannot be the final word. After weeks of debating this, you really ought to be able to come up with something more definite. Even as it stands ,half the bombs landing within three miles of an aiming point in the middle of London will worry civilians and authorities, and the purpose of bombing London was not only pin pricking munition factories and docks, but also to strike terror into the population.

Secondly and a pro pos words. Never is is a very big word, did wiki qualify what it meant? Over any three month period of bombing? The whole war as an average? On any single mission? Did it even specify from which height the bombing in its 'sample' took place? As it stands, by implication by 'British area bombing' we are not only talking about high level bombing any more, surely you don't wish to argue that no interception is worth the effort? So second and a halfly, this reference to wiki is neither here nor there.

Thirdly, did those in charge in the bob know what we know? Can we use our hindsight to trump what the decision makers at the time knew or thought they knew? They percieved a threat and wished to be able to counter it. And they could not know at what heights future combat would take place, but the trend seemed to be rising. Neither could they know for certain what numbers or what kind of planes Germany would produce in the years to come, if memory serves the Fw 190 came as a complete surprize. Hell, two weeks ago I didn't realize I needed a word like groundhuggery.

fourthly, the threat from high flying aircraft was not only bombing. Italy is the only major combatant of which I have no positive knowledge of any actual development of at least prototypes of high attitude fighters. The Ju- 86 may have had the ability to carry a few bombs, but the real significance of the plane was its ability to gather intelligence. a concept not to be dismissed. While we can only speculate it is fair to assume that could Germany have photographed the build up to Overlord, the operation may have proved far more costly. I know about those things called clouds, but before you quote some Englishman that it always rains over all of England (hint, you can find him on this very forum), I will only budge if presented with hard metereological data that this was in fact the case from some point in 1943 to mid 1944.

This has had us all cringing for quite a while now. I'm not advocating this thread be closed, nobody is forced to watch a train wreck. But I think we're learning something about human psychology as well, as we watch ourselves typing into this black hole. There is also a warning in the title, that said we may consider adding: "may contain nuts."

I know I'm not the one here who thinks least about the P-39, but I don't think that you're doing it any favours right now either. It becomes increasingly difficult to discern between the plane and its advocate. This is a strange fight to pick, though by no means all, some of your previous contributions have had far more value than this.

This is just ridiculous.

As you have yourself pointed out you're always respectful in the way you write your posts, though sometimes the repetition of certain them and failing to reply to certain posts implies disrespect. Even then you don't spell it out in the same way as some of your opponents here, though I must admit that sometimes I understand their exasperation. As humans we're all fallible and we all make mistakes from time to time, and we can all be affected by tunnel vision. I'm not saying that you are silly in general, but your recent posting in this thread surely has been.

 

[Peter Gunn]

I really got to hand it to a couple of our posters. I try to come up with patently ridiculous claims for an absurd position and I run out of steam. I don't know how they do it.

It's a talent.

Also on that note, I hunker down for a hurricane, which turned out to be a tropical storm, lots of rain, not much wind and you guys have run out three more pages of posts. Now THAT'S talent.

Hey, I think I KNOW that cop you're talking about above ...

I know right? My first Rat motored Chevelle but it was one of the County Sheriff's daughters...

Which sounds a lot more interesting/exciting than reality but it makes for a good cliff hanger to pique interest.

Our High Sheriff had three daughters, all of them lookers, it was the middle one that liked fast cars.

 

[Peter Gunn]

It's already been posted here that rearward c.o.g. doesn't affect performance.

Well the unspoken issue would be the reduction of range, dragging your a... tailpipes will negatively effect fuel consumption. How can you not admit some of these simple cardynamic issues?

 

[SaparotRob]

Well the unspoken issue would be the reduction of range, dragging your a... tailpipes will negatively effect fuel consumption. How can you not admit some of these simple cardynamic issues?

Like I said, I don't know how they do it.

 

[pbehn]

Great post
fourthly, the threat from high flying aircraft was not only bombing. Italy is the only major combatant of which I have no positive knowledge of any actual development of at least prototypes of high attitude fighters. The Ju- 86 may have had the ability to carry a few bombs, but the real significance of the plane was its ability to gather intelligence. a concept not to be dismissed. While we can only speculate it is fair to assume that could Germany have photographed the build up to Overlord, the operation may have proved far more costly. I know about those things called clouds, but before you quote some Englishman that it always rains over all of England (hint, you can find him on this very forum), I will only budge if presented with hard meteorological data that this was in fact the case from some point in 1943 to mid 1944.

In reading stuff for the other groundhog thread and stuff I remember from here and there the deception plan Fortitude for D-Day was interesting. It is impossible to guarantee that no recon planes would get over south England so they prepared for such a plane to find what was expected to be there. The fictitious army in Kent under Patton had inflatable tanks and aircraft out in the open. The real army to the west, all over the countryside north of Southampton and Portsmouth were heavily camouflaged/ disguised. Naval assets around Portsmouth and Southampton would be a logical holding place for action in the Pas de Calais. So the intention was that any recon that happened would confirm what was wanted to confirm, the Landing would be in Calais.

 

[Milosh]

Old saying: You can lead a horse to water but you can`t make it drink.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Old saying: You can lead a horse to water but you can`t make it drink.

or "I give you books and you eat the covers"!

 

[pbehn]

So you're taking an average across all daylight and night-time bombing efforts? Yeah, not the most relevant of statistics. However, let's use your 3-mile figure just for grins to show the irrelevance of your statement.

Per the Wiki page on the Blitz (The Blitz - Wikipedia), the size of London in 1940 was about 750 square miles (it held about one-fifth of the population of Britain). Treating that area as a circle, just to keep things simple, gives us a radius of about 15.4 miles from the centre of London to its edge. If the aim point for the Jabo raids is the centre of the city then, per your statistic, 50% of all the bombs would fall within 3 miles....but that still leaves 12.4 miles of London's radius for the remainder to fall in. Thus, for a large area target like London, the vast majority of the Jabo bombs would hit "something"...not farmland, not lakes, but people, property, industry, businesses, government etc. Again, why would Fighter Command ignore that threat? Still awaiting an answer on that.

But wait...there's more. The Jabo raids didn't only bomb from 20,000 ft. Per this site (Jabo over England I), high-altitude attacks were only used against large area targets like cities. Even then, the Me109 fighter-bombers would dive to improve weapon aiming, a tactic that was mentioned earlier in this thread. Attacks against point targets employed low-level bombing at 1000-1500ft were employed which would greatly increase the precision and accuracy of those attacks....but just because you bomb at low-level does NOT mean the entire sortie was flown at low level. Hi-lo-hi is a very common ground attack flight profile against which FC had to respond.

So...back at you again. Please explain why FC was wrong to intercept these raids.

In two of the pictured Bf109s in the link they are carrying 4x 110Lb bombs, a third of Bf109 Jabos were this type so it isnt certain that they were only dropping one 550Lb bomb.

There was no "standard" raid procedure, each group had its own Jabo aircraft and what they did depended entirely on the weather.

Goering had over 500Bf 109s in the area, one third were made or converted into Jabos,, if the RAF made no attempt to intercept any Jabo raid they would all very quickly become Jabo aircraft.

 

[SaparotRob]

Old saying: You can lead a horse to water but you can`t make it drink.

You can force me to school but you can't make me think.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

The beat goes on...