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I think the Fisher P-75 is a special category because, well, the manufacturer didn't care if it worked. Right? It's like they took one of the ideas from Bell to add to the fun.
I'm outside on the phone so I'm even less inclined to look stuff up.
I had a model of their DC-9 copy after they merged with Price back in the 60s. This one was in Braniff colors:
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What scale is that...it looks like a highly realistic model!
Putting the Griffon in a Spitfire involved 140Lbs of lead ballast in the tail, but the Griffon had over 1000BHP more than the early versions. The P-39 was already a heavy design when it first flew, adding ballast to the front of a P-39 would add to its problems.Yeah, not usually too many holes in Graugeist's posts. The ones I added are interesting only, and none of them proved very successful. Seems as if the idea of a centrally-mounted engine was never a very good idea unless you had a specific use for it.
From a logical standpoint, if you have a 1200-pound engine out front, then adding a few hundred pounds away from the CG doesn't move things around too much. But if the same engine is ON the CG, then the rest of the airframe is relatively light, and adding a few hundred pounds away from the CG moves the CG a LOT by comparison. This seems obvious to me, but it rather obviously didn't to Bell. HE had a name in airplanes and I don't, and we know what happened ... they made almost 10,000 P-39s along with 3,300 P-63s, none of which could haul much of a load away from the fore and aft CG location. But they DID manage to get decent range from the late P-63s, at least.
Rambling ... so I'll stop ...
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Just slot a Griffon in and away you go. The last Griffons used on the Spiteful were rated at 2,350BHP which is between 3 to 4 times the output of the first Merlins. But in any case the P-63 just beat the Me262 and Meteor into introduction/service use by months not years.Perhaps, but maybe not if the power went up by 1,000 hp!
Of course, then the range would have been 71 miles with no reserve ...
I remember when it was fun to fly!I had a model of their DC-9 copy after they merged with Price back in the 60s. This one was in Braniff colors:
View attachment 636669
So the development of the P-63 was basically putting lipstick on a pig?Yeah, not usually too many holes in Graugeist's posts. The ones I added are interesting only, and none of them proved very successful. Seems as if the idea of a centrally-mounted engine was never a very good idea unless you had a specific use for it.
From a logical standpoint, if you have a 1200-pound engine out front, then adding a few hundred pounds away from the CG doesn't move things around too much. But if the same engine is ON the CG, then the rest of the airframe is relatively light, and adding a few hundred pounds away from the CG moves the CG a LOT by comparison. This seems obvious to me, but it rather obviously didn't to Bell. HE had a name in airplanes and I don't, and we know what happened ... they made almost 10,000 P-39s along with 3,300 P-63s, none of which could haul much of a load away from the fore and aft CG location. But they DID manage to get decent range from the late P-63s, at least.
Rambling ... so I'll stop ...
View attachment 636676
If you forget about the p-39 and P-63 as types, they served to keep Allisson in the engine business and Bell in the aircraft business to still be there when the war was finished.So the development of the P-63 was basically putting lipstick on a pig?
I remember when it was fun to fly!
We could use an insightful award.If you forget about the p-39 and P-63 as types, they served to keep Allisson in the engine business and Bell in the aircraft business to still be there when the war was finished.
I think my first flight was on Eastern; "The wings of Man". I wore a jacket and tie as did all the male passengers. The ladies, in their finest. I don't remember the food being so awful.When we returned to Iran from an American vacation in 1976, we flew aboard a Pan Am Clipper -- can't remember which name -- nonstop from JFK to Mehrabad in Teheran, about 17 hours in the air. Thankfully, the plane was very light, a 747 with perhaps 60 or 70 passengers, so when we kids got tired we lifted the armrests in the middle bank of seats and had a lumpy couch to sleep on.
Pre-Internet, it was about as fun as hammering an ingrown toenail.
I was having a bit of fun anonymously tossing the P.119 out there.
Truth be told, there were quite a few mid-engined projects either before or during the war. Some never made it off the drawing board while a few actually made it to the prototype stage.
Aside from Bell's P-39/P-63 and Piaggio's P.119, there was:
Koolhoven FK.55: first flew in 1938.
Messerschmitt Me509: paper only, cancelled.
Yokosuka R2Y: first flew in 1945.
Heinkel He119: first flew in 1937.
To add to the mid-engine mix, were the tandem engine tractor types that had an engine fore and aft of the cockpit (the Do335 was a push/pull, so not included):
Arsenal VG 10/20: first flew in 1945.
Kawasaki KI-64: first flew in 1943.
So Bell's design was not unique.