Improved Skua for FAA?

[Shortround6]

Again, not true, by June 1940, a lot of British fighters, Hurricanes and Spitfires had Rotol constant speed props, Hurricanes had these fitted from late 1939

lets see. What I said is not true according to you.
"So did scores if not hundreds of British fighters in June of 1940."

and then in the next paragraph you state.

July, since that's when Spitfires began receiving the de Havilland kits and as recorded in the Big Book of Spitfires by Morgan and Shacklady, every in-service Spitfire had a C/S prop by August 1940.

So for my statement to be not true either Morgan and Shacklady are wrong or only a few dozen aircraft were refitted. It can't be both ways.

The British had fighters (both Hurricanes and Spitfires) that were equipped with both Rotol and DH props. they had hundreds of each type of prop. In June (and working into in July) they converted the DH props to constant speed in the field. Given the total number of Hurricanes and Spitfires in June of 1940 you had hundreds that had constant speed props and you had
" scores if not hundreds of British fighters in June" that did not which caused the big change over. Again, it can't be both ways. Either there was a big change over with DH teams traveling across Britain with truck loads of parts installing the 1st conversion on a squadron fighter with squadron mechanics being instructed, and then the squadron mechanics taking over and converting the rest of the squadron aircraft while the DH factory team moved to the next squadron or air field and so on until the DH teams (more than one) had reached all the required squadrons...............................or there was no big change over. You can't have it both ways.

http://www.spitfireperformance.com/Flight_DH_CSP_9_Dec_1943.pdf

Article states (and it is Flight magazine and it may be in error) that by the time Paris fell DH had supplied 1,250 two pitch propellers for Hurricanes, 1000 two pitch props for Spitfires and 325 two pitch props for Defiants.

That doesn't mean that all those propellers had been installed at the factories or even that all those propellers had been supplied to the factories, some may have been supplied to maintenance/repair units.

This isn't all black or or all white. You could have (and did) hundreds of Hurricanes and Spitfires in service with the constant speed props at the same time you had hundreds of Hurricanes and Spitfires in service (or in depot) with the two pitch props.

What I am blaming the British (which is actually blaming some government officials) for is the circumstances that lead to this big change over.

The travesty here is that you refuse to budge on this, not that Britain had bad props!

The travesty here is that you refuse to acknowledge my position and misrepresent it.
Britain was behind a number of other nations when it came to propellers, They were trying hard to fight government officials with DH and Rotol and Bristol and RR knowing what was needed but not being allowed to buy (or tool up for) the needed production capacity.

 

[Shortround6]

Again with the British bombs, to use your example, what does the bombing of tribesmen with small calibre weapons actually teach you? Let's not forget that British bombs sank the Konigsberg, caused a whole lot of damage to German shipping and Axis infrastructure, so it can't have been as bad as you make out. Again though, you work with what you've got. You need to lower your expectations and be fairer since your anti-British bias has little foundation.

They actually, at least a few times, dropped 500lb bombs on the "tribesmen".

It wasn't just 20lb and 40lb bombs as they were trying to punish the tribesmen by destroying buildings. Some (many?) of the operations were not against tents but towns/settlements with the "mud" walls 3-5 ft thick. If your 116lb to 250lb bombs don't do much more than blow the shutters off windows of a "mud" building with a near miss what are such bombs going to do to a European brick or stone building?
Officer in the study measured miss distances and made notes of damage like cracks in the walls.

The British may have been able to sink the Konigsberg with non SAP bombs.
Without knowing the location of the hits it is hard to say. Some sources say the Konigsberg had 40mm armor deck but it is doubtful that they had that thickness over much of the ship.
one diagram has this

Yes we all know that armor thickness varied over the length of a ship.
The Konigsberg was a little bit longer than a Arethusa or Dido and within inches of beam.

Again, so what of it? What does that add up to in this case? Are you going to tell me that Britain was hopelessly unprepared for war? So tell me something I don't know. Was any country opposing the Germans in 1939/1940 ready for war?

So we are to ignore all the mistakes the British made during the 30s?
A lot of countries made mistakes, a lot of countries were not able to build/buy what they wanted. And this is for a number of reasons.
Perhaps Britain gets a bum rap because some of her mistakes or the effects of them, are spread out over a number of years instead of being concentrated into a few weeks or months like Poland or France. The US certainly can be picked on as they had over 2 years to observe the British and Germans at war and were suppling all sorts of weapons to the British with feed back on results and the US still managed to make a number of mistakes.

But some of the British mistake were the direct result of ignoring the results/lessons of WW I and following too many pretty theories that came up during peace time without even testing things out on a firing range or trying to use cameras to see if the ideal actually worked.

 

[Admiral Beez]

To get both an Armoured deck and a large air group you need the Audacious class (31,600 tons std; 57-69 aircraft hangar capacity as designed in 1942), or an IJN Taiho (29,770 tons std, 53-82 aircraft)

Now that would have been a match-up had expeditious construction and better luck allowed both ships to engage one another in 1945.

HMS Ark Royal (R09) with Hellcats, Barracudas and Tarpons vs. Taiho with A7M Reppūs and B7A Ryusei.

 

[EwenS]

Now that would have been a match-up had expeditious construction and better luck allowed both ships to engage one another in 1945.

HMS Ark Royal (R09) with Hellcats, Barracudas and Tarpons vs. Taiho with A7M Reppūs and B7A Ryusei.

An Admiralty study at the end of 1941 that looked at the projected build times for different types of ship, estimated 46 months for a fleet carrier. So with 3 Audacious ordered Mar-Aug 1942, and Audacious laid down in Oct, the forecast completion dates for the first two was March 1946. That betters the estimates from the study by 5 months. So a 1945 completion was never on the cards. With Ark Royal laid down 7 months after Audacious 1946 would have been highly unlikely even if everything had gone right.

 

[GregP]

I know, let's improve the Skua, even though it is British!

Put in a Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp with a constant-speed prop and let a third-grader improve the windscreen or use one from a racing airplane. Next, remove all the little lumps and bumps, add a spinner and paint on Swastikas. It would be invincible.

 

[keithwwalker]

I know, let's improve the Skua, even though it is British!

Put in a Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp with a constant-speed prop

If there were a warbird Skua flying today, it would be running an R-1830 or 1820

 

[GregP]

Sounds like someone needs to build a Skua ...

 

[SaparotRob]

I'll come up with the new windscreen. I did manage to graduate the third grade, barely.

 

[MikeMeech]

Hi
The book 'The Dawn of Carrier Strike' by David Hobbs, pages 246-247, has a combat report of the attack on the Konigsberg:

The Douglas SBD Dauntless was not really a 'contemporary' of the Skua, the former was just entering service(with USMC from late 1940 and USN by the end of 1941 on the USS Enterprise and Lexington) as the Skua left operational service (as dive bomber until November 1940 and as fighter until February 1941). More 'contemporary' aircraft were the Curtiss SBC Helldiver, in service from 1937 with two squadrons still on the USS Hornet in December 1941 apparently. Also the Vought SB2U Vindicator, in service from 1937 to 1942.

Mike

 

[Shortround6]

The Douglas SBD Dauntless was not really a 'contemporary' of the Skua, the former was just entering service(with USMC from late 1940 and USN by the end of 1941 on the USS Enterprise and Lexington) as the Skua left operational service (as dive bomber until November 1940 and as fighter until February 1941). More 'contemporary' aircraft were the Curtiss SBC Helldiver, in service from 1937 with two squadrons still on the USS Hornet in December 1941 apparently. Also the Vought SB2U Vindicator, in service from 1937 to 1942.

Thank you for your post..

The Dauntless falls into a gray area time wise as you left out the Northrop BT-1 of 1936.

"The U.S. Navy placed an order for 54 BT-1s in 1936 with the aircraft entering service during 1938. BT-1s served on USS Yorktown and Enterprise."
This was pretty much a disaster even though 55 were built.
However the last plane built was modified into the Northrop XBT-2 by April of 1938.

After testing Douglas, which had taken over development from Northrop, got a contract for 144 aircraft in 1939 although no production planes were completed until 1940.
The Plane in the lower photo had a 800hp (?) Wright R-1820. The last SBDs in 1944 had 1350hp Wright R-1820s.
The SBD-1 and SBD-2s of 1940 had 1000hp Wright R-1820s.

Maybe the Skua had development potential and maybe it didn't. It doesn't seem like they tried?

 

[GregP]

I'll come up with the new windscreen. I did manage to graduate the third grade, barely.

No fair using cellophane (not bulletproof) or Aluminum (can't see through it) ...

 

[Admiral Beez]

the Skua left operational service (as dive bomber until November 1940 and as fighter until February 1941)…

At which point they should have been sent to "back water" FAA or RAF squadrons in Malaya, India, PNG and Ceylon. Send all the Rocs too, for that matter.

 

[Admiral Beez]

I'll come up with the new windscreen. I did manage to graduate the third grade, barely.

It is odd that its designers thought to semi-recess the bombload but make a near vertical air brake windscreen.

 

[nuuumannn]

But some of the British mistake were the direct result of ignoring the results/lessons of WW I and following too many pretty theories that came up during peace time without even testing things out on a firing range or trying to use cameras to see if the ideal actually worked.

So, Britain didn't learn lessons from the Great War then? Well, it seems no air force did, because no one was prepared for what happened, so that kind'a levels the playing field a bit more. Let's put it this way, I sincerely doubt that in the face of the German onslaught in 1940 that any other country's pre-war tactics would have been able to overcome and defeat the German advance with the equipment these armed forces chose to arm themselves with in the late 1930s - certainly not the USA, if America is your benchmark.

So again, you need to reassess your bias against Britain, its bad bombs, its inadequate propellers its terrible early war bombers and every other prejudice you have against British stuff, because it seems that very few other countries could provide better examples. Britain was at the very least contemporaneous with worldwide expectations at the time, with examples that put them ahead in some technologies, such as gun turrets, radar and other things that get lost in your uneven assessments. Let's not forget that one of what was quite probably the two best fighters in service in 1940 was British, so they weren't doing everything wrong. The Bf 109 and Spitfire, in case anyone's curious.

SR, I generally value your input because you have a blatantly realistic view of things, but when it comes to Britain you drop the ball on objectivity. You have been proven wrong in your assessment of British early war bombers, your claims about British propellers have proven to be unfounded and as for your claims about British bombs, well, in the early war years, whose other bombs were being used and could be held up by comparison, Germany? They probably led the world in bomb development, but and I can't confirm this, the rest of the world's bomb stocks were probably not a whole lot better than Britain's.

 

[nuuumannn]

lets see. What I said is not true according to you.
"So did scores if not hundreds of British fighters in June of 1940."

and then in the next paragraph you state.

You know the point I'm making, SR; don't cloud the issue. Admit it. You're wrong in your assessment of British propeller use at the outbreak of the war. I will agree with you that the fitting of the big wooden clubs to
Spitfires and Hurricanes when every other British frontline aircraft that came from a specification released in the late 1930s had VP props was a curious decision (daft idea is probably appropriate!), but as mentioned sooo many times before, British fighters had VP and C/S props before most in Europe that were not licenced manufactured variants of Hamilton Standard props, if not the world.

Apologies for dragging this out, everyone...

 

[Reluctant Poster]

Don't call me Shirley

Hawker Aircraft since 1920 by Francis Mason says that the Henley Prototype used a Hamilton Standard Hydromatic propeller.
However the 2nd prototype and all production versions got DH 3 blade 2 position (two pitch) propellers.
Doesn't matter what the British fighters had in this discussion. The Henley's, as built, had the two pitch propellers.
So did the Battles, so did the Blenheim's.
So did scores if not hundreds of British fighters in June of 1940.

I am not missing anything because I am talking about the Spring of 1940. What happened after that is a different story. And I believe I have stated, not only here but in other threads that the US or any other Western force wouldn't really have done any better.
Considering the amount of time the RAF spent "policing" tribesmen in a number of different places they didn't seem to take much of their experience to and go forward with it.


I think my assessment of the British bombs flies very well indeed.

It really wasn't rocket science. As I have state before the British had done a study of British bombs and the damage they had done to the Germans in WW I. They had also done a separate study of German bombs and damage they done in England in WW I. They had also done a study to assess the damage done in some of the bombings in the Mid East and tribal territories.
They had at least some idea of what worked and what didn't, at least as far bombs up to and including 500lb bombs and some larger.
Nobody else had the experience the British had access to. The Germans knew what British and French bombs had done to them. They didn't have access to the damage records of their own bombs had done to the British in WW I. They did not have an officer on the ground examining the bomb craters and the damage to structures in the mid east.
The Germans (and others?) may or may not have done more extensive tests on test ranges/proving grounds.
The British seemed to ignore the knowledge they did have until around 1938-39. Which in some cases was almost too late. The Early 30s decision that a 500lb bomb would be all that would be needed flew in the face of all three existing studies/reports. However convenient it made bomb stowage spread across the wing span of bombers.
The British standard bombs had about the worst ratio of explosive to bomb weight. It made them cheap to build/buy. But you have to use more of them to get the same effect. Which was know to the men who made the reports and to any group who studied bombs or artillery shells in any other countries. The British, as I have noted before, built among the lowest capacity artillery shells of modern armies. In part because they could use cheaper steel. Now maybe cheaper bombs and shells are better than no bombs or shells but at what point does having to use a lot more of them turn the cost upside down?

With the Henley the bomb bay using a pair of 250lb bombs with no ability to use a single 500lb simply boggles the mind. The US had been sticking a single 500lb bomb under a variety of naval single bombers (Dive and otherwise) well before they put pencil to paper on the Henley. French were using a 440lb bomb?
The Skua being rigged to hold that 500lb SAP bomb without the option to use a fatter 500lb with more explosive should the situation warrant it turns the Skua into a one trick pony.
OK two tricks if you count the eight 20 or 30lbs(?) bombs under the wing.
Some of the US scout bombers could trade their 500lb bomb for four 116lb bombs. I am not holding up the US a paragon of virtue. It is just common sense. The German HS 123 Biplane could carry a 550lb under the fuselage or four 110lb bombs under the wing. Take your 500-551lb bomb and split the load up 4 ways using whatever bomb/s of the appropriate size your air force uses.
None of this uses the retrospectroscope. I have not used what the Italians or Japanese were doing as it was not well known at the time. people knew they bombing people in Africa or China but the details don't seem to have been common knowledge.

From "The Ordnance Department: Planning for Munitions for War" a discussion of British bomb design philosophy

 

[don4331]

E EwenS

OK, perhaps '38 is too aggressive, and '40 would have been better date.

But if you remove the "spook" the RN received during Abyssinian Crisis of 1935, and RN builds 3or 4 repeat Ark Royal (91); you have carriers which will operate ~60 aircraft. And then that has knock-on effect on what aircraft you are ordering.

When FAA/AM ordered the Skua, they knew the ABH carriers would only have room for 36 aircraft. If you split that 33/33/33 with TSR/DB/F, you're limiting to <12 of each once you account for in-serviceability. And everyone felt those numbers weren't sufficient so you get hybrid fighter/dive bombers that does neither great.

With Ark Royal (91) carriers, even if you split that 50/25/25 to give the TSR boys the 30 planes they want, you still have enough planes to split into dedicated DB and high performance single seat fighter*. And when RN realizes (and gets enough pilots/air frames) that they can operate deck park without planes being destroyed by 1st squall, the numbers improve further.

There are also knock on effects to the carrier itself - a carrier for 36 planes doesn't need a lot of aviation fuel storage; one that is operating double the number of aircraft and at higher tempo, needs at least double, maybe triple, which serves the carrier well when 800 hp engines become 1,600 hp ones.

The other solution is the French one:

High performance single seat fighter - 35 to 40%​

Twin TSR/DB - 60-65%​

The issue being TB needs to be able to deliver a >2,000 lbs piece of ordinance, so you need a large enough airplane to lift that weight, while DB needs to be stressed for high g's while delivering its ordinance which means large, heavy airplane which will be slow unless you have lots of power. As La Royale saw it given the engines available that meant a twin, the Bréguet 810.

Not sure if a twin TSR/DB is a better solution or not to the Skua. And even if FAA was ordering its own high performance fighters, would RAF have appropriate them ahead of BoB, leaving RN with nothing.

*We also need to correct the RAE wind tunnel issues to get rid of the biplane TSR, but that isn't critical.

 

[Shortround6]

I don't really care about the wooden clubs on the early Hurricanes and Spitfires since they either went away well before the shooting started or any Hurricane or Spit that had them in Sept of 1939 it was in an OTU. And maybe all of them were gone.

I didn't cloud the issue,
I made a statement "So did scores if not hundreds of British fighters in June of 1940."

it was true. In fact if anything it underplayed the situation because De Havilland got a contract/order for 500 conversion units. That is nice round number so I will assume the number of planes that needed converting was a bit less.

Clouding the issue is countering that the British were fitting Rotol props months earlier. They were, I never said they weren't, but if they need to place the order for 500 conversion units then there were scores or hundreds of fighters that needed the constant speed props. From some of the letters/memos is seems (could be wrong) that not ALL new production was being fitted with constant speed props or at least 100% fitting of constant speed props (either Rotol or DH) was relatively new.
The British probably thought they had more time.

Hamilton Standard had 4 different propeller designs they were licensing to a number of countries. We do have to be careful as to who was producing what. The Constant speed prop dates to late 1935/1936. The HS controllable pitch prop (Two pitch?) dates to the early 30s. There was a ground "adjustable" pitch prop earlier but since you couldn't adjust it in flight it's actual advantage over a wooden club may have been marginal? Assuming the wooded club actually suited the particular aircraft.
The last one was the Constant speed prop with full feathering which was announced in April of 1938 and this one may not have been in use in many countries. It was in use, as I have said before< in at least air lines in the US by the end of 1938.

It doesn't really matter if the French or the Italians or whoever was using HS license props or not in combat planes. There were no "bonus" points for using a home designed propeller.
What matters was aircraft performance, aircraft reliability, and the odds of a crew of a multi engine aircraft making it home with one engine (and later with two) not operating.

America was not perfect, the early Curtiss electric props gave a lot trouble (some of the later ones gave trouble, just not as much) and were noted for the governor mechanism not operating fast enough which allowed the engine to over speed which could lead to wrecked engines.

On the bomb issues.
The British, in the 1930s, made a poorly reasoned decision to not use bombs over 500lbs. They changed their minds before the war actually broke out but it but them behind the curve production wise.
The Germans made two major series of bombs, the SC series in variety of sizes that held around 50% explosive by weight. Minor variations. Then they had the SD series had thicker walls and around 30 explosive by weight. Actual AP bombs had less and the Germans also, eventually, had quite a Varity of special purpose bombs, probably too many. But they were designing and building 500kg and 1000kg bombs.

The US changed bomb sizes just before the war, the 300, 600 and 1100lbs were used early on but quickly replaced but 250, 500 and 1000 bombs. However since the US didn't start bombing anything until 1942 they were using their "old" bombs well into the war compared to everybody else.
However the older American bombs used about 55% HE by weight. 1940 they were convinced by the British that fragmentation was more important than blast and that their new bombs should be about 30% HE. Like the British GP bombs. This was reversed in late 1941 and American bombs standardized on a filling of about 50%.

Now we get into production capacity. In order to make bombs that will carry 50% explosive and not split open on impact you need bomb bodies made of good quality steel forgings.
The British had problems with this both pre war and early war which helps explain the the British GP bombs. They did get more capacity to make high quality steel forged casings later (the Medium capacity bombs).

The British 500lb SAP bomb carried by the Skua may have been a very good 500lb SAP bomb. Any SAP bomb is probably going to have 20% or under HE content. My problem with it isn't so much the bomb, it was that the British arranged the bomb crutch to retract into a recess under plane and hold the bomb in a semi-exposed position. Better streaming?
However it appears that this limited the Skua in that it could not carry a 500lbGP ? bomb and the 500lb MC bomb didn't exist at the time. You might have been able to mount the 250lbs GP bomb but that carried a bit less HE than the 500lb SAP.
You build a dive bomber and then restrict the size of the bomb it can carry and thus limit the potential types targets you can engage? Or engage effectively?
The action report on the Konigsberg says the the 500lb SAP bombs caused extensive damage from the near misses. One wonders what kind of damage a near miss from a bomb with 250lbs of HE would have caused compared to the 90lb Fillings used in the actual attack?
The 500lb SAP bombs did the job in this attack. A better choice of bombs may have offered better results in other attacks if the British had built more Skuas and used them in other places.

The British Army used lower quality steel for artillery shells than most other armies and just about every British Artillery piece (or battery) had to fire more shells to get the same destructive effect.

 

[SaparotRob]

No fair using cellophane (not bulletproof) or Aluminum (can't see through it) ...

Dang!

 

[nuuumannn]

Interesting logic, Don. How the RNAS/RN/RAF handled the carrier issue before the FAA was established in the early 1920s, was by dividing the carriers into role specific air groups. Argus for example was designated a torpedo carrier equipped with Sopwith Cuckoos. Furious had fighters - this was before the reconstruction into a full deck carrier, but after the rear gun had been removed, when it still had a flying off deck on the bow and landing deck on the stern. The Furious' "F" Sqn as it was known was equipped with Sopwith ship's Camels and Deck Pups specifically, but obviously that all changed once it emerged after its refit. also the aircraft were bigger by the 1930s.

The problem lay with the FAA's budget - it was a branch of the RAF, so funding was limited between the wars, the issue of aircraft size was a big one of course, enough to make the Air Ministry prompt these mixed role specifications, but budget also plays are role there. That all metal aircraft could be smaller and still effective hadn't really been revealed when the Skua was being designed. Again I turn to the Dauntless' size as an example. Ultimately it depends on what the Air Ministry and Admiralty want to do with this power. Britain had a mixed bag of carriers between the wars, with little commonality between them since only one was built from the keel up as a carrier.

The Ark design was a good one and was designed to incorporate what the admiralty believed a carrier needed and for Britain's needs, this was probably different to the other carrier operators because of its far flung territories across the world - long range, overseas deployments, force projection, flag waving etc, etc, so its air group has to fulfill these needs. The FAA put a lot of emphasis in long range reconnaissance and it was a theme that ran through the post Great War FAA equipment. Spotting was considered a vital role and almost every specification, except that of single-seat fighter had the spotter role incorporated into it. This was purely to serve as the fleet's eyes at sea beyond the ships' crews' eyeline, obviously, but the role also encompassed fall-of-shot spotting as this was considered vital to enhancing naval gun aiming. Naturally, making a fighter a two-seater and giving it a spotter role because the likelihood of encountering an enemy single-seater far out to see was low made sense, but it set back the FAA going into the forthcoming war...

Nevertheless, British carriers had to be able to carry a quantity of every type with them because of British maritime policy at the time, which kinda restricts the number of each role-specific aircraft on the carriers...