Luftwaffe's whitewall tires

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Ju 52 in 1940..note tailwheel
and its NOT just to make them look good..it tells something..its "grounded" and its nothing to do with africa either.
 

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and one more thing..its mean its "grounded" when on ground.not when up flying !!!

and the picture you found of the 109 in africa with "white " frontwheels..those are not the wheels but covers ( look closely and you can see the tires behind the "white" cover that is leant up against the tire/wheel.. most likely to protect the wheels from getting sand inside !! because if that " white" is the tire that 109 has double tires on each side and THAT i have never seen
 
It is not the rubber tires that make a car a safe place to be during a thunderstorm. It is the electrically conductive structure of the car itself, ie; the steel body. Electric current follows the path of least resistance to the ground. If the car is wet, the tires are also wet and hence no longer act as insulaters. If the car is dry, the lightning will arc from a low point of the metal body into the ground. Or rather, the electrical charge from the ground will rise to meet the downstroke.

The metal structure of an a/c also protects it from most lightning strikes. The recent trend towards building a/c from non-conductive materials has led to increased concerns regarding lightning strikes.

JL
 
you are right. but its the same thing the white tire "tells" you on the german aircrafts ! and that is what Chrismag2 tried to tell and also i tried..but you are better with words ( and know more about eletricity than i do )
but still. that is the meaning of the white tire..it tells something and thats it

and you are also right regarding the new material but that is something most people dont talk about..
 
maybe this can put a stop to this question regarding the wheel

thsi is a outcats from the book "german Aircraft landing gear " by Gunther Sengfelder ( he has studied and collected german landing gears for over +-40 years )

read the last section of the page i have put here. this is truly a great book ! and not one tailwheel in this book is without the whitewash ( and he covers pretty much all )..except some from the 30`s
 

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So, from what Junkers and Chris Mag are saying, what the white is for is to simply indicate that the tyres are electrically conductive, rather than an insualtor.

This enables the tyres to discharge the static electricity that is built up due to propeller movement, etc, to be safely discharged, without zapping some poor S.O.B on the ground who happens to touch the aircraft. Nothing to do with the aircraft's electrical system.

It's a standard thing for modern aircraft tyres from what I understand.

Hope this clarifies things a bit.
 
wish i had opened the book at once and put the page here.. lol
to many words to try and explain something very simple..but its 2am so i hope i am forgiven lol

and we learn something new every day ! i still keep getting amazed over things i still learn even after 15 years with german aircrfats from WW2
 
Junkers88A1, thanks for explaining that...it clears the mystery up!

I know that inside an automobile or aircraft, you are pretty well protected from lightning because of the "Faraday Effect", but I wasn't aware that the older aircraft of the Luftwaffe had conductive tires like modern aircraft.

And I'll apologize to ChrisMAg2, simply because I totally missed what they were trying to say and it looked completely off the wall at first.

However, regarding the Afrika whitewalls, those really don't look like covers, those have the dimensions and appearance of actual whitewalls. Hopefully we can dig a little deeper and find more information.

Junkers88A1 thanks again for sharing the information from your book, and I agree about learning something new about the aircraft all the time!
 
Well, I learned something, too. It never even occurred to me that aircraft tires would be designed so as to discharge static electricity. I was having trouble following your reasoning when you said that the whitewall tires meant that the plane was grounded. I was looking for some kinda static discharge strap on the tail gear strut. You know, like you see on big rigs

Thanks

JL
 
Butters,
You may see that sort of strap on some aircraft. I know some of the AT-6's around here have them (at the bottom of the rear fuselage), and they seem to be quite common on Yak-52's (on the nose wheel).

I've been searching, but can't find any pics of them.
 
no problem greugeist we are learbing something every day !!
and this is ofcourse something that might sound a bit far out if one dont fully understand what they do ( and when people like me cant find the right words to explain what i am actually trying to say..but i got there in the end.. lol )..and yes..you are right that they keep eletrical bombs safe and refuelers.. ( german planes like the Ju 88 had electrical charged bombs..not manually like the B-17 )and its seen often on many modern birds that they have the strap ( groundwire ) but these planes dident need it as the tires did the job ! and its common on many modern aircrafts also !!

the 88 also has a cool sign telling the crew to turn oif the electrical switch that arms the bombs..one "sticker" in the cockpit..one in the entrancedoor and one on each bombrack ! and as long as that switch is of the tire will stop any electril current to arm the bombs..or zap any poor guy touching the plane if it has been charged by turning propellers and things..

here is the 88 sign..

has du ausgeschaltet..? did you turn off ?

i am not going to say 100 % that it als lead the lighning thru the tail IF the plane get hits on ground but i think it might will do so as it lead the static charges down to ground that builds up in the plane...
 

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might be slightly on the side of the topic but here you can see the sign in the cockpit of the Ju 88 just above the bomb arm selector switch
 

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Came across a great photo...and while it's not Luftwaffe, it definately has whitewall tires!

Here's a photo of "SHILAYLEE", a B-17G of the 349th BS, 100th BG and her crew.

And looky there! Custom whitewall tires!

(they're painted on!)
 

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