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Spitfire I - 6.25 lb, 2600 rpm (6,050 lb)
Hurricane I - 6.25 lb, 2600 rpm (6,316 lb)
Mohawk II - 87 cm, 2550 rpm (5,962 lb)
All A&AEE tests. The Mohawk is from the Norwegian order and has an R1830-SC3G engine.
Does anyone know if there was supposed to be a difference with the R1830-SC3G engines given to France? French numbers seem to indicate critical alt was about 14,000 feet, not 10,000 feet as in the Mohawk II.
Them thar is fighting words Smokey
When making claims like that it is best to have all your ducks in a row and unfortunately your ducks are different breeds in different ponds.
Crash of prototype had nothing to do with the qualities of the aircraft, good or bad. They tried to take off without unlocking the control surfaces. Gust locks had been installed to keep the large control surfaces from flapping around in the wind and getting damaged. One thing that came of this accident was take-off check lists. Douglas got the contract, in large part, because a twin engine bomber was cheaper than a 4 engine. They could get a lot more planes for the money ( first order for B-18s was a whopping 82 aircraft)
The 4000lb bomb load is a furphy that just will not go away. It seems to have got it's start in an offhand quote from a General to a war correspondent. B-17s routinely carried 5000lb loads to Berlin and 6000lbs on occasion to Berlin and often on shorter flights. The element of truth to the 4000lb load is that while the Berlin bound B-17s carried 5000lbs of iron bombs the ones carrying incendiaries carried a bit over 3000lbs so the average was 4000lbs.
A B-17, with the external bomb racks (seldom used) could get 17,000lbs off the ground, it just couldn't go very far with it.
External racks would hold a pair of 4000lb bombs (or smaller) and did not block the bomb bay.
Mosquitoes could not carry the 4000lb cookie until 1944 so what they could or could not carry makes little difference to B-17s in action in 1942/43. Mosquitoes carried four 500lbs inside and two outside at best for the first year or more of operation. And they very rarely carried incendiaries except for target marking.
The British "test" was flawed for a bunch of reasons. Despite being told that the B-17Cs they got weren't really ready for combat the British used them anyway, in the typical British "penny packet" numbers, rarely more than 3 aircraft per mission, which is hardly enough to set up the defensive formation quantity of fire the 'theory' depended on. The as fitted armament consisted of a single manually operated .50 cal out each waist window, one, 50 cal out the back of a ventral tub and the fourth out the top of the radio compartment, however field of fire and indeed field of view for the dorsal gunner were best described as restricted.
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There was one additional .30 cal or .50 cal in the nose. British were using either two or three power turrets in most of their bombers at this point and why they thought that a handful of manually aimed .50 cal guns was such a big improvement as to allow daylight operation is beyond me.
The B-17E was already on order when the RAF got their 20 Fortress MK Is and with double the number of guns and twin dorsal and ventral power turrets the firepower was significantly higher. Still not enough as it turned out but there was reason to discount earlier experience.
BTW you might want to check on that just a few more bombs a little bit further for the B-29 comparison also.
In Flying to the Limit, page 131, the British test of a Mohawk IV (H-75A-4) with 6 LMG and armor, showed best climb of 2,600 fpm at 8,000 feet. Climb rate did not fall below 1,000 fpm until 27,000 feet. 3.9 minutes to 10,000 feet. 6.2 minutes to 15,000. 8.8 minutes to 20,000. 13.3 minutes to 26,000. 18 minutes to 30,000. 23.2 minutes to 32,000. 302 mph at 14,000. Test was done in early 1941.
But my point is this was a World War. If you take round figures a loss of 40% of bombers in a 10 week conflict is 4% per week. This is like Bomber Command making one, thousand bomber raid every week with losses of 4% or two per week with losses of 2%. That is about the best BC ever achieved not the worst. The numbers and losses suffered by the LW were not unusual compared to WW1, the surprise is they had no production or training system to sustain them. Before the BoB was over Germany was involved in the siege of Malta and at the beginning of 1941 in North Africa. The loss of 407 single engine fighters destroyed or damaged is only serious if you are not producing many, in terms of beating France it is a very small loss. The LW were to lose many more in the BoB getting nowhere at all.France was doomed no later than 3 June. The decisive battles that sealed her fate were fought 14 May to 26May. She succumbed for a number of reasons, some of them stretching as far back as 1917.
But, in going down, the French managed to inflict serious losses on the LW, as Murray and Cornwell demonstrate
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/Halifax/Halifax_III_ADS.jpgOk, sorry it's a bit late i had to dig out my files from the loft/attic.
Bombs: Although it theoretically could carry 17,417 lb of bombs, the B-17 rarely flew combat missions with more than 5,071lbs to 6,000lbs. This was because of its poor climb rate with load, poor performance at altitude and the low power to weight ratio of the Wright cyclones. (Although i have a feeling you will try and debate that)
Also the B-17 was not a heavy bomber just because it had four engines. If anything it was a mediocre medium bomber.
Losses
These statistics came from the 398th BG newsletter. These numbers match up with what I have seen listed by individual unit histories and in reference books. It also matches up with the wall in front of the American Air Museum before the unit names were worn away by rain.
Bomb Group Station Bomber
Type Missions
Flown Losses First number denotes amount of aircraft. Second number losses.
305 Chelveston B-17 337 /154
Total 10631 /4145
Almost half of the amount of aircraft on each mission failed to return
An advantage of night operations was the aircraft involved didn't "form up" but had to be at a specific place and altitude and course at a specific time. I would think daylight operations needed more performance "in reserve" to allow changes to formation etc.DIfference between what the plane on it's own could do and what happened on operations and in formation. I would note that B-17s and B-24s at 40-41,000lbs were carry not much in the way of fuel and bombs.
At 65,000lbs or so they took around 40 minutes to get to 20,000 ft but so did the Halifax and the Lancaster (Lancaster was at 68,000lbs) That would be one plane, pretty much flying straight, not circling as it climbed.
An advantage of night operations was the aircraft involved didn't "form up" but had to be at a specific place and altitude and course at a specific time. I would think daylight operations needed more performance "in reserve" to allow changes to formation etc.
I don't think time to altitude was any problem at all Tomo. Some crews had a lot of time to waste between take off and the first way mark /time /altitude /direction.The RAF BC bombers were trying to fly in a tight formation when penetrating a chosen part of the 'Himmelbelt'. They will reach the cruise altitue faster than the USAF heavies, since that altitude was lower by a large margin, 5-10 thousand feet.
Yep, medium bomber, anybody else got a medium bomber that can carry 10,000lb of bombs 1640 miles?
Bombs: Although it theoretically could carry 17,417 lb of bombs, the B-17 rarely flew combat missions with more than 5,071lbs to 6,000lbs. This was because of its poor climb rate with load, poor performance at altitude and the low power to weight ratio of the Wright cyclones. (Although i have a feeling you will try and debate that)
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/Halifax/Halifax_III_ADS.jpg
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/B-17/Fortress_III_Data_Sheet.pdf
Yep, poor performance at altitude. Service ceiling of 26,500ft at 64,000lbs vrs the Halifax III's service ceiling of 20,000ft at 65,000lbs.
Yep, medium bomber, anybody else got a medium bomber that can carry 10,000lb of bombs 1640 miles?
Hmmmmm,
305th Bomb Group Can Do | American Air Museum in Britain
"During their tour of duty the Group flew 337 missions in 9,321 sorties and dropped 22,363 tons of bombs. The Group lost 154 aircraft MIA; 13 of those losses occurred on the famous "2nd Schweinfurt" mission of 14-Oct-1943, the most losses of any Bomb Group participating in that action."
Each mission consisted of multiple sorties (one aircraft flying one mission).
SO your statics are worthless in this case for figuring out losses.
For this one bomb group operating out of this one airfield (and Chelveston was an air base, not a target) they averaged 27.5 aircraft flown per mission
and they also averaged one loss for every 60.5 sorties flown, not the near 50% loss rate you are claiming.