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Clay_Allison
Staff Sergeant
- 1,154
- Dec 24, 2008
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You have a really good point with Curtiss. I think the only thing that might have put us on a legitimate even footing with Germany and England in fighters is if North American's P-51 design had been submitted to the U.S. Army instead of the British and made a high priority."I'm obsessed with the concept that the US should have had a true contemporary to the Bf 109 and the Spitfire and I wonder ...."
Clay - stop being obsessed. The USA in the '30's and pre-war '40's was NOT England or Germany. For starters - only in the US did you have such an open disagreement between the USAAF and USN over aircraft engines - radial vs inline. The RN used navalized Spits and Hurricanes with inlines - would the USN have done the same? NeverSame with the Germans .. if they had ever got an aircraft carrier in operation - it would have carried Stukas and Me-109's.
If the USN and USAAF had set the same general requirements for fighter aircraft - perhaps you would have had a slightly different outcome. Personally - both the P-40 and P-39 were solid performers that had serious shortcomings. Same with the Wildcat. The only fighter in service on December 7-41 was the P-38 - and it had the hot fighter performance you're seeking but that came with limitations of other sorts.
It is a testament to the wealth of the US - even in the late Depression - that the military had as many options to produce competitive designs. Look at the Seversky Lancer for example - and what it evolved into, the Jug.
Personally Clay, I think most problems with the P-40 rest with the manufacturer - Curtiss Aircraft. They never got it together in wartime the way Bell, Douglas, North American, Grumman, Republic and Boeing did - the Directors were more influenced by short-term profit and loss figures. Consider the planes they built besides the P-40. The Helldiver was seriously flawed as was the C-46 Commando. Plus a few twin-engine trainers and catapult-launched naval observation aircraft.
Curtiss was complacent - not hungry - and the P-40 shows it.
My opinion
MM
While it wasn't quite ready for 1941-42 it wasn't because the Army was "blissfully ignorant of it during the 1930s." about 100 turbo equiped aircraft were purchased by the Army in the years before 1939 and before the P-43 in an effort to get ahead of the curve.
With rather limited funds for most of the 1930s were should the Army have put it's money?
In retrospect? Development of a two-stage centrifugal supercharger for the Allison V-1710. If we had gotten that we'd have had:
The P-40 with good performance up to 25k.
The P-39 as an adequate all-around plane.
Reliable P-38s in the ETO.
The Mustang A without the need for conversion to the Merlin.
There is no reason for Allison's concentration on Superchargers to affect P&W's work on turbochargers. Pratt and Whitney managed to develop both superchargers and turbochargers that worked perfectly with the R-2800.We also might NOT have had B-17s and B-24s with turbochargers.
What did that cost us? John C. Garand's Salary and the very simple tooling setup to create a rifle with 6 moving parts? Be sane.The M-1 rifle?
Hell yes. That thing never produced anything. Neither did the Ranger V-770. There were tons of pretty crazy projects floating around that apparently got Military money.To get a little more serious give up on the hyper engine program a lot earlier?
There is no reason for Allison's concentration on Superchargers to affect P&W's work on turbochargers. Pratt and Whitney managed to develop both superchargers and turbochargers that worked perfectly with the R-2800 .
If the Army had not actively discouraged development of the two-stage superchargers, Allison could have done the same. It's a shame that the V-1710 didn't have any Navy customers since Navy engines had superchargers developed for them. As much as you claim we gave ourselves options, the Army put all of its eggs in one basket, the P-38.
In any case, the Lancaster somehow flew without Turbochargers, it managed to make due with Supercharged Merlins unless I am mistaken.
What did that cost us? John C. Garand's Salary and the very simple tooling setup to create a rifle with 6 moving parts? Be sane .
Hell yes. That thing never produced anything. Neither did the Ranger V-770. There were tons of pretty crazy projects floating around that apparently got Military money.
Bell could build Mustangs under license as soon as the P-51A was available.
You want desperately to believe that it was utterly IMPOSSIBLE to have a two-stage supercharger for the Allison when P&W had no problem making one for the F4F-3 that was in service by pearl harbor.Uh, P&W didn't develop any turbochargers. they adopted General Electric turbochargers. in fact the Wright engines on the B-17 used the same basic model (in some cases the exact model) of turbosupercharger that the P-W engines on the B-24 used. Same basic model used on the P-38. and in dual installations on bothe the B-29 and B-32 with Wright engines.
Got any evidence the Army " actively discouraged development of the two-stage superchargers"?
Allison designed their engine on purpose to be a basic building block engine. Different gear cases (including the P-39 extension shaft) and turbo and non-turbo engines could all e built on the same production line and in fact at times one version could be turned into another in the field with suitable spare parts. even teh Doubel Allison, the V 3220 used standard Allison blocks.
As far as the army putting all it's eggs in basket goes, just how far behind the P-38 was the P-47?
Yes it did. it just didn't fly the same mission profiles did it? a little somthing like the service ceailing being something on the order of 23,500ft?
want to tell us what the 6 moving parts are?
and you have to pay for the rifles to be produced.
Uh, just what military money funded the Ranger V-770? Fairchild had been working on that thing since the early thirties as a commercial engine.
Not without building P-39s first. Bell had built exactly 13 airplanes not counting P-39s by the time the Mustang first flew. Bell had contracts for almost 1000 P-39s of vairous types by the Mustang's first flight and it was these contracts that allowed for plant expansion and the number of workers needed for mass production.
But in your world all contracts can be canceled and production shifted (and new jigs and fixtures all built) to a new type of aircraft in just a couple of weeks, right?
Contracts can be cancelled but it only makes sense to do so when you can cancel the long lead time supplies and parts in an orderly fashion so as to use up a fair amount of the premade parts. Other wise you hae a buch of partialy completed aircraft and awhole lot of very expensive scrap.
You want desperately to believe that it was utterly IMPOSSIBLE to have a two-stage supercharger for the Allison when P&W had no problem making one for the F4F-3 that was in service by pearl harbor.
I don't see why it would be such a big deal if the army had had the foresight to want it. In your world it would cost so much that there would be no way for us to afford to buy GUNS! You are being silly.
I picked some random things we spent too much money on, the P-75 Eagle is another one that comes to mind. You picked the Hyper-Engine, that was a whole engine and that should be enough money right there. I'm talking about an accessory that was actually developed by another company for another engine in EXACTLY the time frame I'm talking about.
www.aviation-history.com said:The production Allison turned out to be the sturdy and reliable powerplant that its designers had striven for. The only thing that stood between the Allison and real greatness was its inability to deliver its power at sufficiently high altitudes. This was not the fault of its builders. It resulted from an early Army decision to rely on turbo-supercharging to obtain adequate power at combat heights.
Wikipedia said:The engine design benefited from the General Motors philosophy to build-in production and installation versatility. The engine was constructed around a basic power section from which different installation requirements could be met by fitting the appropriate Accessories Section at the rear and a tailored reduction gear for power output at the front. This approach allowed easy changes of the supercharger(s) and supercharger drive-gear ratio. That gave different critical altitude ratings ranging from 8,000 to 26,000 feet (2,400 to 7,900 m). It allowed a variety of propeller drives and also remote placement of the reduction gear.
It's a shame that the V-1710 didn't have any Navy customers since Navy engines had superchargers developed for them.
You'd have liked Donovan Berlin even moreYou'd have liked Donaldson R. Berlin, Clay