Most innovative aircraft of WW2 ?

Well I think that settles it, the Bismark was the most innovative aircraft of WW2...…..

Oh, man


I know what a slat is. There are basically two types full span and part span which seem to get confused by people talking about the 109.
Couple of examples of part span flaps

and the 109.

Partial span slats were used to maintain airflow over the ailerons near stalling speed or during the stall to maintain roll control of the aircraft and to prevent spins. Not to increase the angle of attack of the whole wing.
That was the job of full span slats like


there are number of threads on this site that mention this and even a few wing diagrams. the slats on the 109 (especially the later ones with slightly smaller slats) that show the slats only affected about 1/3 of wing. And they only really work when the angle of attack exceeds 13-15 degrees at which point you are bleeding speed like you dragging a parachute. Maintaining lift on 1/3rd of the wing while 2/3rds of the wing is stalled means your are not turning for crap even if you are pulling a high angle of attack.

More in following posts.

Bell P-39
SAAB J-21
Boulton-Paul Defiant

I think one could also argue for the Bf109, but it was really no more innovative than many of its contemporaries.

The "innovative cannon".

as shown it was hardly innovative. German ambition outweighed good sense.
Nobody's early 1930s cannon was all that good and the Germans tried for a 64 kg cannon (without ammo or feed) of high power in 700hp (hopefully) aircraft, see the 3 competitors to the 109. They planned to achieve adequate flight performance by not carrying any machine guns to go with it. The gun didn't work very well and was replaced by a lighter gun even in development aircraft. Which also didn't work good enough for service use. until the fall of 1940, 6-7 years after the "innovative" requirement was issued.
Yes it took the French 3 different guns to get to 1940, the HS7, The HS 9 and finally the HS 404.
At that is one reason the guns went out into the wings, one slow firing cannon did not offer the fire power needed for even 1940 air combat.
Guns that fire at 360rpm or less (way less for the Aircobra) don't offer a good chance of hit in a few second firing opportunity. Greater destructive power per second was wanted and that could not be accomplished with fuselage mounted cannon as most could NOT be synchronized to fire through the propeller. That meant two or more (4) guns mounted in the wings.
With jets there is no propeller and you can bring the guns back into the fuselage (and deal with gun gas ingestion by the engine, at times) Claiming a single gun through prop showed the way rather ignores this significant detour. Which was driven by a real need (see 109 gun boats and Fw 190)
It also ignores the fact that modern guns fire 3-5 times faster than the guns initially planned for the 109 (and in the case of the US Vulcan gun 11-16 times faster.) which certainly lessens the the need for large batteries of cannon. Ot that many modern aircraft use 30mm cannon for much greater destructive effect and need fewer cannon than if they were using 20mm guns.

Claiming the 109 was innovative when it failed to get a fuselage mounted cannon into service until after the French built about 2000 fighters with fuselage mounted cannon seems a real stretch.

and then this " Secondly, there was no room for carburetor, so they deployed fuel injection. But still, you need a space for supercharger – and where to hell to put a fuel tank. Engineers found a solution – behind and under the pilot seat."

Now please note the French (and the Russians) used an upright V-12 engine, and did not use fuel injection. I would also note that the First few hundred Jumo 210 engines (or most?) did not use fuel injection. They all used superchargers. The French and Russians somehow managed to find room for fuel tank/s.
Rather a faint claim for innovation if there are other ways of accomplishing the same thing.

and this;

" 1. Inverted engine add a better visibility, a better CG which leads to the better roll rate…) The meaning of fuel injection cannot be overstated – piston engines could be divided before and after the time of fuel injection, everything before is just obsolete. Fuel injection is a crucial technology breaking point - until today, almost the only progress made and still being making at piston engines is actually enhancement of fuel injection – multipoint, common rail,….). I the sense of fighting machine fuel injection means better climbing, no coughing, more power, less fuel, less maintenance, ,,,,,).

Inverted engine might lead to better visibility, small, squashed cockpit negated some of that.
Change in CG is minimal. Upright V-12 that uses gears to mover thrust line up or inverted V-12 that uses gears to move thrust line down. Unless somebody really knows were the center of gravity in these engines was we are just guessing.
Vertical center of gravity of the engine had next to nothing to do with theroll rate.

Ah,yes, the famous German fuel injection. Unfortunately for your argument the german fuel injection was not the only type of fuel injection used during the war and it had a few major drawbacks. The German system used a plunger pump for each cylinder and when all was said and done, it required many more parts and was much more expensive to make than the carburetors and.......... wait for it.............throttle body fuel injection (although not called that) used by many allied aircraft.
There is no reason to believe that the German fuel injection system offered any better climb than the allied fuel systems. Yes there was a freedom from coughing in some maneuvers (which American carburetors never suffered from).
The more power is a mistake, do not confuse results from post war non supercharged engines with the the results of wartime supercharged engines.
RR figured that the evaporation of fuel in the supercharger lowered the intake temperature by 25 degrees celsius on the Merlin XX and 45, the resulting denser air allowed for more power and the cooler may have allowed for slightly higher boost, which also results in more power.
Fuel consumption is questionable. The German fuel injection certainly used less fuel per horsepower at high power settings but at cruise settings where the carbs were set to lean mixture the difference was pretty small. Please note the German plunger system as used in the aircraft engines had more limited range of possible mixture ratios than some carburetors.
The less maintenance is also debatable. The fuel injection may need servicing less often but when it does it needs a lot more man hours.
Please remember we are talking 1930s-40s aircraft and not modern cars.

Regarding fuel injection, is it true that it provides a more even metering of fuel to each cylinder?

P-39 Expert said:

Regarding fuel injection, is it true that it provides a more even metering of fuel to each cylinder?

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With a carbeurator, you have the air-fuel mixture travel from the carb to the intakes via an intake manifold and the cylinders closest to the carb will be rich and the cylinders furthest from the carb will be lean.

Fuel injection typically provides a measured source of fuel to each cylinder, so the answer is yes.

GrauGeist said:

To be honest, speed really has nothing to do with it - a Stringbag mortally wounded the Bismark with an attack speed of roughly 143mph, yet Devastators (206mph) and Avengers (over 250mph) didn't sink any Japanese ships at Midway.

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It probably didn't help that a) USN aerial torpedoes weren't all that good (see World War II Torpedoes of the United States of America - NavWeaps), b) USN torpedo attack tactics may not have been optimal, as the Mk13 torpedo only entered service in 1938, and the USN seemed to have deprecated aerial (and possibly surface ship) torpedoes, and c) the IJN concentrated its fighters down low because they were very worried about torpedo bombers, which resulted in a general slaughter of the torpedo bombers and relatively unhindered attacks by the dive bombers.

For a lot of the 50s and 60s the cannon was secondary, the primary air to air armament was missiles or rockets in the 50s. Now it turned out the missiles weren't as good (and the rockets were terrible) as was hoped but many aircraft sacrificed guns for for missile and rocket armament. Other aircraft tasked with ground attack or tactical bombing sacrificed one or more guns for extra electronics or navigation equipment.
Anti-bomber gun armament of the early 1950s was multiple cannon, usually four but sometimes more, The British favored four 30mm Aden guns which fired at least twice as fast as the German MK108 of WW II. The English Electric Lighting was designed with four guns in the nose (2 high and 2 low) but the lower guns could be replaced by 2in rocket packs or the equipment needed for Firestreak missiles, one per side. Some later versions had no guns but then had guns added back in, costing 340 liters in fuel tank capacity in the ventral tank, the old gun bays being used for other equipment.
It was race for bigger and longer ranged missiles and the guns took a back seat.
Fighters/interceptors in the late 40s/ 50s / and early 60s were often built (tasked) to intercept bombers with nuclear weapons, stopping them was the priority and guns were NOT the primary armament for all weather interceptors. This was found to a mistake in Vietnam with the rules of engagement used there. Once air forces were used in non-nuclear conflicts (and once missiles were shown not to live up to their advertising) guns made something of a comeback. But no fighter built today (or in the last 20 years) relies on a single gun to shoot down bombers and does not carry missiles.

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Now here we get into a rather twisted timeline. Yes you had Douhet and a few others like him but no, they had not demonstrated any such dominance of the bomber in actual fact. Guernica was April 26th 1937 which was well after most of the early WW II fighters were well into the design and tool up the factories stage.
I would also note that majority of bombers at Guernica were JU 52s being used as bombers which hardly qualifies as powerful and unstoppable.

Most of the bombers in use in the early to mid 30s were actually a pretty pathetic lot with only the Blenheim, the Russian SB bomber and the Martin B-10 showing any real advantages over the fighters of the day. What was promised by the next generation is something else.

Most fighters were evolutionary.

1916 was preceded by


and


Gee, single guns mounted on the fuselage, monoplanes, landing gear attached to the fuselage.

Why, oh why, didn't somebody think of that before Willie???

Trying to think what "firsts" the Bf109 can claim and quite honestly, I am coming up with nothing.

All metal monoplane, retractable undercarriage, two MGs in the cowl, two MGs in the wings, top speed of 290mph and first flew in 1935...oh, wait! That was the Seversky P-35, my bad.

All metal monoplane, retractable undercarriage, two MGs in the cowl, top speed of 313 mph and first flew in 1935...oops, that's the P-36!

Hmmm...ok, I'll try one more time.
All metal monoplane, retractable undercarriage, two MGs in the cowl, top speed of 287 mph and first flew in 1935...ahh, there it is, the Bf109!

Not all metal, one gun in each wing ( and they fire much faster than the guns in the 109s cowl) , but the landing gear retracts
Was going into squadron service before the 109 flew with the Kestrel engine (and no guns).

GrauGeist said:

Trying to think what "firsts" the Bf109 can claim and quite honestly, I am coming up with nothing.

All metal monoplane, retractable undercarriage, two MGs in the cowl, two MGs in the wings, top speed of 290mph and first flew in 1935...oh, wait! That was the Seversky P-35, my bad.

All metal monoplane, retractable undercarriage, two MGs in the cowl, top speed of 313 mph and first flew in 1935...oops, that's the P-36!

Hmmm...ok, I'll try one more time.
All metal monoplane, retractable undercarriage, two MGs in the cowl, top speed of 287 mph and first flew in 1935...ahh, there it is, the Bf109!

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No, no, no!

The US aircraft don't count because, well, they weren't equipped with the Balkenkreuz

swampyankee said:

No, no, no!

The US aircraft don't count because, well, they weren't equipped with the Balkenkreuz

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Oops!
My bad...I completely forgot about the Hakenkreuz performance enhancer!

Shortround6 said:

View attachment 504268
Not all metal, one gun in each wing ( and they fire much faster than the guns in the 109s cowl) , but the landing gear retracts
Was going into squadron service before the 109 flew with the Kestrel engine (and no guns).

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SR6,

I give, what's the GeeBee looking plane with the enclosed cockpit and retractable gear?

Biff

BiffF15 said:

SR6,

I give, what's the GeeBee looking plane with the enclosed cockpit and retractable gear?

Biff

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I think it's an I-16.

It is either the prototype I-16 or early production model.

Shortround6 said:

It is either the prototype I-16 or early production model.

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Preproduction, and was designated TsKB-12 bis before getting the official designation I-16

Thank you.

Shortround6 said:

Thank you.

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You're welcome!

The cowl looks different on the TsKB-12, because they didn't have the license for the Wright R-1820 yet, so ended up using the M-22 until the M-63 was available.

Ok, try to find a car or motorcycle made in the last 10 years that uses a rack of piston pumps that are controlled by mechanical means only.
Fuel injection became a lot more important in cars/motorcycles with the advent of smog laws. Price of the fuel metering system became secondary to being able to sell the car/motorcycle at all.

You keep rearward projection (what is used now with post WW II or even post 1980s knowledge and accessories) to try to show how innovative the 109 (and it's engine and armament) was.

the use of the Kommandogerat is a read herring, It had nothing to do with 109 at least until late in the war.

109Es, at least early ones used a manually controlled propeller. It was variable in pitch but the pilot had to readjust it for every flight condition. later ones got a constant speed prop in which a governor was used to adjust the pitch to maintain a constant ROM as flight loads changed.