Least resource intensive/easy to maintain aircraft of WW2?

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Re post 113

Yes the B-17, B-24 and B-29 etc were being BUILT in sections but then those sections are RIVETED together in a jig. Replacing a fuselage section could NOT be done at squadron level.

The Lancaster, and most other British aircraft except the Wellington, was built in sections and bolted together and unbolting everything except the nose was a fairly easy job. The upper bolts on the nose and the instrument bolts tended to get in each others way. (Been there done that)

The A-20, A-26 and B-25 had noses that unbolted and the Martin B-26 had a three piece bolted fuselage that was painted so accurately that you can change a forward fuselage and the paintwork lines up. (Been there done that too on A-20, B-25 and B-26)
 

And the simplest engines are actually high maintenance. Look at the Gipsy engine maintenance in the threads RAF engine documents and 1930's and 40's de Havilland aircraft and engine documents

The Gipsy Major depends on splash lubrication of the valve gear so checking the oil level in each rocker hat is just one part of the daily inspection and the valve clearances are prone to changing meaning a lot of owners check that daily as well. Oil changes are an additional low hour item.

Some of the other old engines had no pressure and scavenge oil to the valve gear so it had to be greased by hand every five hours or every flight. Very time consuming.
 
For fighters in the field give me a FW190 all day long. Cost 1/3 of a P-47 Thunderbolt and could quickly be modified to pure fighter, fighter bomber and long range fighter bomber.

Built for quick maintenance in primitive, rough field conditions and power eggs were basically plug and play - as were weapon systems with quick change wiring harnesses.
 
Agree about your cost message.

P47 is one of the best fighters in WW2 and the safest for the pilot, but it was incredibly pricey and juicy, gobbling 150 Octane.

Does anyone know what it was like to maintain? I would guess the giant body makes access easy...
 
It took an enormous time to work on in the field IMO. Freeman's Mighty Eighth War Manual goes into some detail on maintaining P-47s in the field. People always go on about how big and complicated some of the German Tigers were...

Some P-47 took a staggering 700 man hours if you followed the instructions of all three staging letters in the summer of 1943, so not a single P-47 had all the mods done per Freeman. Inspections for war weariness could take 100-200 man hours. It took several weeks just to get bomb shackles outfitted and at the beginning they could only do ten per week - even then the P-47 couldn't use 108 gallon fuselage tank on grass airfields due to ground clearance (P-47 s would again run into problems trying to operate out of the same fields the Luftwaffe did in France).

It's hard to imagine a fighter aircraft worse suited for maintenance in tactical conditions of warfare from poorly improvised fields than the P-47. These same conditions FW-190s and Me-109s flew from as normal...say what you will about the 190 and 109 but those machines were ideal for terrible conditions and rough airfield use.
 
I wouldn't want to fly--let alone land--a Me-109 from a rough airfield with that narrow undercarrage; something that Kurt Tank--a Captain in the German Army cavalry during World War I, the Fw-190's chief designer and an accomplished pilot in his own right--was a critic of.

As far as for sure Allied aircraft, in that respect, give me a Hurricane, Typhoon, Tempest or P-51 any day.
 
No one has mentioned the P-40. I guess from the D model on, they were ok. The RAF used them in the harsh desert conditions and we used them in Alaska while the Australians and New Zealanders seem to have managed.
 

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I sometimes wondered about maintenence on the British radials that had the exhaust collector as part of the cowling. Did it get in the way of maintenence or spark plug changing?
 

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Maxrobot1 said:
I sometimes wondered about maintenence on the British radials that had the exhaust collector as part of the cowling. Did it get in the way of maintenence or spark plug changing?
Click to expand...

Yes

In general the P-40 was far easier than the P-51, especially on anything to do with the powerplant, though the main gear actuators are a bitch. I have never worked on a long nose but again the cowls come off easy and leave the engine very accessible whereas on the P-51 when the cowls are off there is a mass of cowl support structure getting in the way.

Maxrobot1 also said I sometimes wondered about maintenance on the British radials that had the exhaust collector as part of the cowling. Did it get in the way of maintenence or spark plug changing?

The Bristol Pegasus, Mercury and Perseus engines have very long reduction gear housings compared to the Wright engines and long compared to the Pratts engines so the exhaust ring is forward of the engine enough that it gets in the way less than the similar width nose cowl on the Hudsons and similar US aircraft which is just as well because the early Pegasus engines like the IIM3's, and the Mercury's, that I worked on in the 60's had no pressure lubrication to the valve gear so needed to be hand greased every few hours operation. The Perseus had sleeves so that was not a problem.

 
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Interestingly, North American on the XP-51 Lightweights, P-51H and F-82s got rid of most of the panel support rails to improve access and save weight. This left you with a "power egg" consisting of the engine, and engine bearers (that all the cowling panels attached to). Reportedly, on the XP-82 (the Merlin P-82s, P-51H and LW P-51s used the same power egg arrangement), it took less than 30 minutes to do an engine change from start to finish, and replacing everything forward of the firewall took less than 45 minutes start to finish.

XP-51F without cowling (main cowling comes off in big panels):



P-51H:



 
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