Qualities that made for a great aircraft that don't show up in performance stats. (2 Viewers)

[Zipper730]

And how many pilots were injured in a brawl and stayed with their aircraft?

Damage resistance is definitely a criteria which is a function of the armor, and the placement of equipment and structural components. In some cases, they weren't necessarily designed to absorb damage, but did it really good.

Ki-100
580km/h at 6000m at military power, you're looking at 595km/h with war emergency power.

360.4 mph and 369.7 mph.

It had 17 seconds turn time which made it better turner than Yak-3 and it could keep up with Spitfire IX in turn.

I know it could turn well at altitude, though I never knew the turning time. The F4F was around 17-19 secs right?

One of the biggest strengths was its maximum dive rate. It's airframe could withstand higher dive speeds than P-51D

Do you have figures for that?

 

[Frankenerd]

I think part of the idea of Laminar flow wings was to get simultaneously a large wingspan and low drag - presumably the big wing still providing benefits of lift and thereby, maneuverability. But the effect seems to be mainly for low drag and not much else. For the size of the wing it usually seems to end up somewhat lacking in lift. Of the few examples I know of which seems to have possibly succeeded in threading that needle were the elliptical Spitfire wing and the semi-elliptical wing of the Re 2005, also from the same country as that hilarious proverb.

Many mistakes. The rectilinear Mustang wing gave more total lift than the larger elliptical Spitfire wing! The thinner Spit wing had a lower CL and more wash out that greatly reduced the total lift. But the Spit was more than a ton (2?) lighter and thus had a lower wing loading. If you look at the stall speeds at weights you get the idea. In addition, it was the wing twist under load near the tips combined with the wash out that gave the Spit the gentile stall and "Great" Handling early models were famous for. Later models acquired defects with the greater weight and larger props until the Mk-XIV was nearly un-usable for the first year of it's service. (Note the year long time between service entry and first kill!) Those "Snaking" problems persisted until the adoption of larger tails and were only completely fixed with the much larger "Spiteful" tail later on. But they built over a thousand Mk-XIVs because they were so desperate they had no choice. It was their only true 400 MPH plane. The Mk-IX does not count because of said defects which were unfixed! The Snaking in the Mk-XIV was so bad and major defect in a dog fight, but only a minor problem chasing a doodle bug. Watch A2A gunnery film to see the snaking and what it did to gunnery for your self. The Mustang had the exact same problem with the larger chord prop on the P-51H and had to add 8", or was it 18" to the top of the rudder and stretch the fuse more than a little to get a longer lever arm to fix it. All planes go through that type of thing, where mods are required to fix unk defects only found later in combat service. The P-38 was just about the only plane of that era that they found the defects before service, but because it was the only 400 MPH plane in existence at the time, they bought it any way! And do not be fooled by the published 414 MPH placard speed published in all the books. Do you think adding almost 700 HP would not change the actual, but un-tested speed? Just swapping props gave 450 MPH in one un-built but tested type.

 

[Frankenerd]

No it doesn't, the meter as a measure dates to Napoleon, to try to construct a modern railway on a 3 meter gauge is madness, especially on the scale that was planned. The tunnels curves and marshalling yards would be huge. Standard gauge was actually 4ft 8in, they added a half inch just to allow curves and smooth running straight away. A 3m wide railway is a fantasy, possibly useful on a steel plant but of no use at all cross country.

Not true at all. All of the things you mention have to do with car design, not gage. There were plans way back in the 1840-50s to make the gage 3.2 M for all the right reasons but one, cost of conversion. So it got shelved. Put any current car on a set of 3.2 Meter trucks and it can go MORE places than the same car on Standard Gage trucks because the roof will be closer to the ground. Curves are based on the length between truck pivot points, not the gage. Everything else is built around the outside dimensions of the cars, not the Gage. It was time to change the original Roman era Gage when they first started building rail roads in 1825, but they were not very good engineers and went with historical data, thus screwing all of us now.

 

[Frankenerd]

Oh for crying out loud, I was born and raised in Stockton on Tees, the first passenger railway terminated within a few hundred yards of where I was born. Whatever some ancient mystic thought about things they never had anything to do with putting and operating rolling stock on a track. You need to explore the mathematics of it, I am certainly not going to stat teaching you.

Had nothing to do with "Ancient Mystics" but everything to do with the minimum width of a two man, two horse chariot's axel and wheels!

 

[Frankenerd]

Damage resistance is definitely a criteria which is a function of the armor, and the placement of equipment and structural components. In some cases, they weren't necessarily designed to absorb damage, but did it really good.

360.4 mph and 369.7 mph.
I know it could turn well at altitude, though I never knew the turning time. The F4F was around 17-19 secs right?
Do you have figures for that?

Damage resistance is a function of only two major items! How thick the aircraft skin is and whether or not it has an air cooled engine! All other aspects of damage resistance are insignificant in comparison to either of those two factors! American Aircraft were made with thicker and stronger alloys making them more tolerant of damage and heavier. The P-47 was made of much thicker and stronger alloy and was thus the most damage resistant single engined plane of WW-II. All other aircraft of all other Nations were made of thinner and weaker aluminum sheets. Armor was a secondary concern as it only protected a small aria of the total plane. The Il-2 Sturmovic with over a tonne of armor was easy to shoot down, if you knew how. Read EBH's book. The armor only gave partial protection to certain parts and only to RCMGs and some smaller shell fragments. (Rifle Caliber Machine Guns) That made the Il-2 harder to shoot down from the ground, but a single bullet in any radiator brought the plane down with absolute certainty. On the Russian front, that slow leak might get you home, or might not, but the mission was over at that point of impact and the pilot's only mission was to survive and RTB!

 

[Schweik]

Many mistakes. The rectilinear Mustang wing gave more total lift than the larger elliptical Spitfire wing! The thinner Spit wing had a lower CL and more wash out that greatly reduced the total lift. But the Spit was more than a ton (2?) lighter and thus had a lower wing loading. If you look at the stall speeds at weights you get the idea. In addition, it was the wing twist under load near the tips combined with the wash out that gave the Spit the gentile stall and "Great" Handling early models were famous for. Later models acquired defects with the greater weight and larger props until the Mk-XIV was nearly un-usable for the first year of it's service. (Note the year long time between service entry and first kill!) Those "Snaking" problems persisted until the adoption of larger tails and were only completely fixed with the much larger "Spiteful" tail later on. But they built over a thousand Mk-XIVs because they were so desperate they had no choice. It was their only true 400 MPH plane. The Mk-IX does not count because of said defects which were unfixed! The Snaking in the Mk-XIV was so bad and major defect in a dog fight, but only a minor problem chasing a doodle bug. Watch A2A gunnery film to see the snaking and what it did to gunnery for your self. The Mustang had the exact same problem with the larger chord prop on the P-51H and had to add 8", or was it 18" to the top of the rudder and stretch the fuse more than a little to get a longer lever arm to fix it. All planes go through that type of thing, where mods are required to fix unk defects only found later in combat service. The P-38 was just about the only plane of that era that they found the defects before service, but because it was the only 400 MPH plane in existence at the time, they bought it any way! And do not be fooled by the published 414 MPH placard speed published in all the books. Do you think adding almost 700 HP would not change the actual, but un-tested speed? Just swapping props gave 450 MPH in one un-built but tested type.

Spit IX may have had problems but it had an excellent combat record. against German and Italian fighters and other aircraft. It was a game changer in the Med. Mustangs at that time (Allison Engined) barely recorded any kills at all.

 

[Frankenerd]

OK, so...

Should the Germans have created a new designation for the Bf109 after the Emil?
And should the Americans have redesignated the P-51 after it got the got the Merlin?
Then there was the A6M: should the IJN have created a new designation for every change made?
That would have been quite a few new types to keep rack of, since there were 10 variations from the A6M1 Type 0.

Or should we quit being rivet counters and go with the historical flow in airframe identification conventions that the Governments had in place?

None of this has a thing to do with the thread topic, either...if anyone can remember what it was.

Except that the 109 was identical from the firewall back through most of the models. I think it had the absolute highest parts through put between models of any plane in the war. The new mods had different numbers, but some had significant carry over of major sections. This can not be said of the Grumman's, Mustangs, or etc...

 

[Frankenerd]

Spit IX may have had problems but it had an excellent combat record. against German and Italian fighters and other aircraft. It was a game changer in the Med. Mustangs at that time (Allison Engined) barely recorded any kills at all.

I dispute your claim that the Spit-IX had an "Excellent" combat record. In "Circuses" type fighter sweeps over France it got it's butt handed to it's pilots at a horrific rate with many more losses than wins, which was never made public until many years after the war and then not widely!
However, this has little to do with the planes defects and everything to do with the mission parameters requiring long periods of slow cruising speeds to get to and from the targets, IF one was to do the mission and RTB! Running out of gas over Europe is a certain shoot down and loss of both plane and pilot!

 

[Frankenerd]

The Mk 21 was originally to be called the Victor but cooler heads prevailed and the iconic name was retained (They must have learned their lesson after the morale sapping name change from Fighter Command to Air Defense Great Britain).
The difference between a Mk I and a PR XIX isn't really that great, from firewall to empennage its basically the same, as is the wing with some internal differences of course. The F 21 is more of a departure with a redesigned wing and longer undercarriage to support a larger diameter propeller.
Strangely the production Spiteful was the MK XIV skipping Mks I through XIII. It is speculated that this was because it was a laminar winged version of the Spitfire Mk XIV.

On the other hand the Lancaster was originally called the Manchester III, but obviously that's not a name to perpetuate

Not quite right. The Spiteful had an entirely new and larger tail.

 

[Schweik]

I dispute your claim that the Spit-IX had an "Excellent" combat record. In "Circuses" type fighter sweeps over France it got it's butt handed to it's pilots at a horrific rate with many more losses than wins, which was never made public until many years after the war and then not widely!
However, this has little to do with the planes defects and everything to do with the mission parameters requiring long periods of slow cruising speeds to get to and from the targets, IF one was to do the mission and RTB! Running out of gas over Europe is a certain shoot down and loss of both plane and pilot!

You seem to be making the assumption that the NW European front was the only place where the Spit IX fought - that was a static, low-intensity front and most of the losses on the ill-considered 'Rhubarb' and 'Circus' etc. sweeps and raids were largely to flak anyway. Even there however, the Spit IX could take on the Fw 190 which the Spit V couldn't do.

However the Spit IX was also very active in the Med where it was a critical component of, and the best fighter available to the Anglo-American forces. Spit IX squadrons shot down a vast number of Axis aircraft, helped secure Malta (though much of the burden there was carried by the Hurricane and the Mk V), contributed heavily to the breaking of JG 27 and the destruction of Axis forces in Tunisia, to the conquest of Sicily and Southern Italy and the collapse of the Italian Fascist regime. In the MTO Theater in 1943, the Spit IX had by far the best record of any Allied aircraft against the top German and Italian fighter aircraft and their best pilots. Far better than P-51, P-47, P-38 or P-40 units, and obviously better than Hurricane or Spit V units etc.

 

[Shortround6]

Well actually, the small engined GeeBee Racers of the mid '30s had significantly better CD than other radial engined planes of the time and even later into the early 40s.

They may have been better than a lot of radial engine planes but there were a few that were better.

As Biff has noted, the addition of military equipment can make some significant changes.

This book

Amazon product ASIN 0760307296
goes into quite a bit of detail about a proposal to convert the Wedell Model 44 into a pursuit plane.

This went as far as the Proposal being designated the XP-34 but it never went past the paper stage.

One set of figures shows the weight climb with military equipment added to the racer and keeping the same sized wing, another set of figures shows the weight gain and size wing needed to keep the same wing loading as the racer. The proposals are also compared to the Boeing P-26. The P-26 was a pretty dirty airplane.

Now please note that the airplane in the picture may have had a 103 sq ft wing. The GB R1 had a 75 sq ft wing. (The R2 got a bigger wing later?)
In order to operate as pursuit aircraft both planes would need substantially bigger wings in order to get the wing loading down, if only for take-off and landing. The larger wings would play havoc with the drag.

I don't know about the GB planes but the information sent to Wright field for the Wedell racer lists a limit load factor of 5.43 Gs and a design load factor if 8.15.
The Army standard at the time was a limit load factor of 8.5 so the racer would need considerable beefing up to meet the Army strength requirements.

 

[taly01]

Ki-100
580km/h at 6000m at military power, you're looking at 595km/h with war emergency power.
It had 17 seconds turn time which made it better turner than Yak-3 and it could keep up with Spitfire IX in turn.
It's climb rate was also pretty decent.
One of the biggest strengths was its maximum dive rate. It's airframe could withstand higher dive speeds than P-51D

Ki-100 is good example for a plane that has unimpressive stats (for 1945) but was highly regarded by its pilots. Veterans said it was easy for a new pilot to learn to fight well in it in a short time, and was mechanically reliable.

 

[tomo pauk]

Many mistakes. The rectilinear Mustang wing gave more total lift than the larger elliptical Spitfire wing! The thinner Spit wing had a lower CL and more wash out that greatly reduced the total lift. But the Spit was more than a ton (2?) lighter and thus had a lower wing loading. If you look at the stall speeds at weights you get the idea. In addition, it was the wing twist under load near the tips combined with the wash out that gave the Spit the gentile stall and "Great" Handling early models were famous for. Later models acquired defects with the greater weight and larger props until the Mk-XIV was nearly un-usable for the first year of it's service. (Note the year long time between service entry and first kill!) Those "Snaking" problems persisted until the adoption of larger tails and were only completely fixed with the much larger "Spiteful" tail later on. But they built over a thousand Mk-XIVs because they were so desperate they had no choice. It was their only true 400 MPH plane. The Mk-IX does not count because of said defects which were unfixed! The Snaking in the Mk-XIV was so bad and major defect in a dog fight, but only a minor problem chasing a doodle bug. Watch A2A gunnery film to see the snaking and what it did to gunnery for your self. The Mustang had the exact same problem with the larger chord prop on the P-51H and had to add 8", or was it 18" to the top of the rudder and stretch the fuse more than a little to get a longer lever arm to fix it. All planes go through that type of thing, where mods are required to fix unk defects only found later in combat service. The P-38 was just about the only plane of that era that they found the defects before service, but because it was the only 400 MPH plane in existence at the time, they bought it any way! And do not be fooled by the published 414 MPH placard speed published in all the books. Do you think adding almost 700 HP would not change the actual, but un-tested speed? Just swapping props gave 450 MPH in one un-built but tested type.

Don't know where to start from.
How about posting the figures of lift for Spitfire and P-51 to prove your point? Handling was great, not "great" on Spitfires. British were not desperate by the time Spitfire XIV was being designed. Spitfire VII, VIII, IX and Typhoon were 400 mph planes. What deity said that Spitfire IX does not count as such? What P-38 managed 450 mph just due to change in props?

Damage resistance is a function of only two major items! How thick the aircraft skin is and whether or not it has an air cooled engine! All other aspects of damage resistance are insignificant in comparison to either of those two factors! American Aircraft were made with thicker and stronger alloys making them more tolerant of damage and heavier. The P-47 was made of much thicker and stronger alloy and was thus the most damage resistant single engined plane of WW-II. All other aircraft of all other Nations were made of thinner and weaker aluminum sheets.

Surce for all of this?
Flood of exclamation marks does not make one's post gain credibility.

Armor was a secondary concern as it only protected a small aria of the total plane. The Il-2 Sturmovic with over a tonne of armor was easy to shoot down, if you knew how. Read EBH's book. The armor only gave partial protection to certain parts and only to RCMGs and some smaller shell fragments. (Rifle Caliber Machine Guns) That made the Il-2 harder to shoot down from the ground, but a single bullet in any radiator brought the plane down with absolute certainty. On the Russian front, that slow leak might get you home, or might not, but the mission was over at that point of impact and the pilot's only mission was to survive and RTB!

Armor was protecting that small, minor, insignificant thing - pilot. We all know that dead pilot will RTB anyway, so it can be resurrected.
EBH's capabilities were not universaly applied for the LW pilot cadre, and even him will not be able to puncture coolant radiator, even if he might puncture oil radiator.

 

[Greyman]

Don't know where to start from.

Spidey sense tells me this won't be worth it.

 

[pbehn]

It was time to change the original Roman era Gage when they first started building rail roads in 1825, but they were not very good engineers and went with historical data, thus screwing all of us now.

There are many gauges other than standard gauge and many new railways have been made which are single use with custom stock high speed lines, non have been made with a gauge anywhere near 3 meters so obviously todays engineers are not as well versed in these things as you are.

 

[pbehn]

Many mistakes. The rectilinear Mustang wing gave more total lift than the larger elliptical Spitfire wing! The thinner Spit wing had a lower CL and more wash out that greatly reduced the total lift. .

Is this why the P-51 had a much better rate of climb than the Spitfire?

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Damage resistance is a function of only two major items! How thick the aircraft skin is and whether or not it has an air cooled engine! All other aspects of damage resistance are insignificant in comparison to either of those two factors! American Aircraft were made with thicker and stronger alloys making them more tolerant of damage and heavier. The P-47 was made of much thicker and stronger alloy and was thus the most damage resistant single engined plane of WW-II. All other aircraft of all other Nations were made of thinner and weaker aluminum sheets. Armor was a secondary concern as it only protected a small aria of the total plane. The Il-2 Sturmovic with over a tonne of armor was easy to shoot down, if you knew how. Read EBH's book. The armor only gave partial protection to certain parts and only to RCMGs and some smaller shell fragments. (Rifle Caliber Machine Guns) That made the Il-2 harder to shoot down from the ground, but a single bullet in any radiator brought the plane down with absolute certainty. On the Russian front, that slow leak might get you home, or might not, but the mission was over at that point of impact and the pilot's only mission was to survive and RTB!

Not entirely true and in some cases false. Many aircraft (to include US) had portions of their skins between .020 and .030 but some aircraft like the P-47 and F4U had skins over .050 and in some cases layered structure up to .125 thick. Additionally what is commonly missed missed is that some aircraft had skin that was riveted to corrugated structure and then on to internal framework.

http://legendsintheirowntime.com/LiTOT/P38/P38_redo.pdf

Here's an old discussion:

Which fighters were "thick skinned?"

Skin thickness is only one part of the equation, one must consider what's underneath.

The aircooled/ liquid cooled argument has been beat to death.

 

[pbehn]

The strength of a structure isn't determined by the thickness of its surface covering. Survivability is more about built in redundancy than strength itself.

 

[michael rauls]

Many mistakes. The rectilinear Mustang wing gave more total lift than the larger elliptical Spitfire wing! The thinner Spit wing had a lower CL and more wash out that greatly reduced the total lift. But the Spit was more than a ton (2?) lighter and thus had a lower wing loading. If you look at the stall speeds at weights you get the idea. In addition, it was the wing twist under load near the tips combined with the wash out that gave the Spit the gentile stall and "Great" Handling early models were famous for. Later models acquired defects with the greater weight and larger props until the Mk-XIV was nearly un-usable for the first year of it's service. (Note the year long time between service entry and first kill!) Those "Snaking" problems persisted until the adoption of larger tails and were only completely fixed with the much larger "Spiteful" tail later on. But they built over a thousand Mk-XIVs because they were so desperate they had no choice. It was their only true 400 MPH plane. The Mk-IX does not count because of said defects which were unfixed! The Snaking in the Mk-XIV was so bad and major defect in a dog fight, but only a minor problem chasing a doodle bug. Watch A2A gunnery film to see the snaking and what it did to gunnery for your self. The Mustang had the exact same problem with the larger chord prop on the P-51H and had to add 8", or was it 18" to the top of the rudder and stretch the fuse more than a little to get a longer lever arm to fix it. All planes go through that type of thing, where mods are required to fix unk defects only found later in combat service. The P-38 was just about the only plane of that era that they found the defects before service, but because it was the only 400 MPH plane in existence at the time, they bought it any way! And do not be fooled by the published 414 MPH placard speed published in all the books. Do you think adding almost 700 HP would not change the actual, but un-tested speed? Just swapping props gave 450 MPH in one un-built but tested type.

By that time( late 42/ early 43) to the best of my recollection the Brits had a boatload of 400 mph fighters either in service or about to arive in a few months so I don't know why they would be desperate in that regard. The ones that come to mind are the Typhoon, the Spitfire mks 8 and 9, the p51b, and in the not to distant pipeline the Tempest.

 

[pbehn]

By that time( late 42/ early 43) to the best of my recollection the Brits had a boatload of 400 mph fighters either in service or about to arive in a few months so I don't know why they would be desperate in that regard. The ones that come to mind are the Typhoon, the Spitfire mks 8 and 9, the p51b, and in the not to distant pipeline the Tempest.

Production line for the Tempest was being set up early 1943.