Yes, and having lots of ammo allowed the Fulmar to open fire at long range (to suppress return fire) and still continue firing as he closed the range.
RAF BoB Fighters OTL ATL v Me-109
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Yes, and having lots of ammo allowed the Fulmar to open fire at long range (to suppress return fire) and still continue firing as he closed the range.
parsifal
Colonel
Ah yes, but one of the parameters of the hypothetical was that the hurricane and/or Spitfire are either not there at all, or are in short supply. What options are available in that circumstance.
The situation would have to be considered dire, some have suggested the RAF might develop a new type, or develop existing prototypes further than they did. Perhaps. Of they could try and extract more out of the assets that they did posses, or might posess with some production or expenditure.
One obvious solution might be to balance up the supply and quality of RAF pilots.another might be to try and secure US equipment. another might be to establish additional industrial support in the dominions. Another might be to use other resources as best as possible. hence the suggestion to use fulmars.
The problem for britain was not the 109 (at least directly). it was a fighter, and a fighter on its own doesnt do much, if your opponent does not want to play ball (neither does a bomber, unless there is a plan that the force is working to. in 1940, the germans only had the very vaguest of plans, which in any case changed several times) . The impotence of pure fighter operations was something the RAF learned the hard way in 1941. But having fighters control the skies over an opposing territory usually allows your own strike aircraft to go out there and do stuff at tolerable cost. So, in the absence of having enough air superiority fighters to take on the enemy fighters, apart from the obvious of having a very big problem, what can you do. Well, you can try and reduce that advantage of fighter control, by making the cost to his bombers a little more expensive he had expected. one thing is to scrounge around and find aircraft that, whilst unable to challenge for air superiority, can cause a bit of mischief amongst the enemy's bombers, by working to the strengths that opposing aircraft, or aircraft fleets might not possess. The best second line candidate for that is the Fulmar, or possibly the American Hawk, each for different reasons. The 109 and the force to which it was attached had some glaring weaknesses, despite being arguably the best fighter in the world at that time. It was short ranged, it was in relatively limited numbers, and this might be considered worse if the Spits and Hurricanes were also in short supply. The obvious reason for a shortage of RAF top line fighters would have to be over committment over france, but if that had happened, then it also follows that there would be less 109s available. Not a 1 for 1 exchange, France was a bottomless, non-cost effective snake pit for the RAF in 1940, but some reduction
What Im suggesting is nothing new, it was used by the germans themselves in 1943-5 when faced with a heavy assault against their own territory, even in the face of escorted raids against them. With wide variations of success and failure. Certainly not ideal for them, but they made the best of it. They were not above using bombers, and twin engined obsolete aircraft, night fighters (during the day), anything they could lay their hands on to try and get at the bomber forces and reduce its effectiveness. The Germans knew about the concept of improvising, making do, adapting. Evidently our British related colleagues, after more than 70 years, still have not grasped that concept. Its not a first line fighter, so it cant be used in their air fight. I bet if they had a 3.7 inch AA gun available and were being attacked by tanks, would argue they had no weapons to attack that tank "because an AA gun is for shooting at aircraft, not tanks!!!"....weve heard those sorts or arguments before havent we. i thought we'd learnt that lesson, but evidently not.
other than those, ther isnt a lot around to choose from that could realistically be acquired by the RAF in time. I certainly discount the defiant because it was a manifest failure, and i doubt also that the gladiator had much stretch left in it. Other types are too far in the pipieline to arrive in time, except perhaps the Whirlwind. A twin engined fulmar might help a bit as well
According to the report of the captain of HMS Victorious the crews of the Fulmars saw at least three M.E. 109s and six ME110s approaching. Because the 1.(Z)/JG 77 and 14./JG 77 were the only LW Zerstörer and fighter units participating and most of them clearly concentrated on torpedo-bombers, I doubt that Fulmars fought against significantly superior numbers. And as I have written before the Bf 110 pilot, Karl-Fritz Schlossstein, and his gunner, both survived, maintained that they were shot down by an Albacore gunner whose plane they were hitting hard not by a Fulmar.
Juha
Doesn't paint a rosy picture for the Fulmar in an environment heavy with first class single-seaters!
Parsifal, I generally respect your point of view and on the whole agree with your synopsies of situations because you generally make sense. But I think in this case I have to disagree with you, for the simple fact that what the RAF needed was first rate fighters - forget for the moment pilot shortage etc - aircraft that were up to the quality of the Spitfire and Hurricane - nothing less. Dowding had to accept the Defiant, Gladiator and Blenheim and all their inadequacies; he had little choice. Although I'm guessing here, I suspect that if he had a choice, Dowding would have gone for a single-seater with good performance, not another two-seater and certainly not something with performance worse than that of the second fiddle fighters he already had. Adding another poor performer like the Fulmar would not serve any real benefit at all and, like we've stated all along, in an environment where high performance single-seaters were operating in large numbers, the last thing you want is to throw away the lives of your pilots and waste equipment. The removal of the Defiant from day fighter duties at the end of August 1940 was for that very reason.
In the event of production of either Spitfire or Hurricane not living up to expectations, the Air Ministry made plans for stop-gap fighters to be built that it was hoped could have some effect against the Germans, but they were stop-gaps only. Even then, with performance better by a country mile than the Fulmar, they were only expected to do their jobs until there were sufficient high performance single-seaters available. Adding another second string fighter is a waste. Whilst I agree that a Hawk 75 would be a possible option, I have to disagree with the Fulmar because of its inadequate performance alone - not that they were in any numbers to have been available by the summer of 1940 at any rate.
Ask yourself this question; what would you choose (if you could) if you were in Dowding's position - a single-seater with as good or close performance to the Spitfire or Hurricane or the Fulmar? You'd be mad to choose the Fulmar.
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They wouldn't be the first aircrew to be wrong about how they were shot down...clearly they didn't see the attacking Fulmar, as their attention was elsewhere:
Fulmar's claimed 2 x 110s while Albacores claimed none, AFAIK.
In any event, even if the numbers were roughly equal; 3 (or more) 109s and 6 110s, why weren't the Fulmars wiped out? Even the 110 has a huge advantage, on paper, over the Fulmar.
I have to say that it is almost pointless to discuss historical alternatives on this board, because there is such a huge resistance to actually discussing the topic at hand - alternative fighters in this case. The naval Fulmar gives us a guide to how a much lighter, uprated engined Fulmar might have performed, but it is not an exact guide because the speed and climb rate of the NN Fulmar would be clearly superior. There is continuing reference to the naval fulmar, rather than to the NN Fulmar, which is what the RAF would have been using, if developed as an alternate, heavy LR patrol/escort fighter.
Because the naval Fulmar actually existed and therefore was being considered among the very first choices laid down by posters on this thread. All the aircraft suggested in the first few posts by Merlin et al existed or were paper projects submitted as alternative to existing specifications. No one said anything about inventing something that did not exist or was not considered and as I stated in an earlier post, Marcel Lobelle (Fairey's chief designer) never considered a single-seat P.4/34 or Fulmar for that matter. All of his immediate pre-war official paper projects were new designs with features based on the Firefly rather than the Fulmar.
All the merits and inadedquacies of the types discussed here were real, not imaginary, like your single-seat Fulmar. You are living in fantasyland. I could turn to you and state, "well, if you are going to build a fighter based on the Fulmar, in my 'what if' scenario, Heinkel had developed jet fighters and jet bombers and had them in service in the summer of 1940 - and lots of them".
That's true but they anyway were probably in the best position to know what happened to their plane, after all both the pilot and the WOp/AG survived, alongside the crew of the artillery training ship Bremse, who picked them up. They clearly didn't see an attacking Fulmar, probably there was none. A pilot/AG combination was clearly more difficult to attack unnoticed than a single-seater, especially at low level.
½ of the Albacores were lost, there is a good chance that an Albacore hit hard by the 110, according to the German pilot, didn't make it back, so no claim.
Because they did what they should, shot down (with Flak) ½ of the attacking torpedobombers, Fulmars clearly failed to protect effectively their charges.
Juha
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Shortround6
Major General
Pot calling kettle.....................
If your "historical alternatives" include not only alternative fighters but engines that never were (and never could be) and alternative physics then yes, you are going to wind up with huge resistance.
The Bristol Mercury was a very nice 25 liter 9 cylinder radial but it had 92.6% of the displacement of the Merlin, it ran at 91.66% the RPM of the Merlin and even with 100 octane fuel and even boosting to 9lbs it operated at 88.8% of the manifold pressure of the Merlin. Put it all together and it was going to give you 75-80% of the power of the Merlin, granted it was lighter but it had more drag. Powering ANY alternative fighter with the Mercury is going to result in distinctly second rate fighter.
The ONLY other British radial in production in numbers during the BoB is the Bristol Pegasus, which is not only in demand for the Hampden and Wellington bombers but a number of other aircraft as well. It also has higher drag than the Mercury to somewhat off set it's higher power but even at it's best it only gave 965hp at 13,000ft with a 2 speed supercharger and 100/130 octane fuel.
No matter how much stuff you rip out out of the P4/34 there is no way on THIS earth that a plane of it's size is going to perform as well as a Hurricane using the same engine and prop. The question is how much worse it will perform. The Defiant was both smaller and lighter than the P4/34 and the prototype Defiant without turret was slower than Hurricane. Maybe it was the radiator?
You also want to stuff in more armament weight than the Hurricane carried. An extra 170lbs of ammo over and above the 420lbs of guns and ammo the Hurricane carried not including the weight of larger ammo boxes/trays/hatches, and not including the weight of the gun mounts, local strengthening, gun heating, charging and firing equipment. (gun installations could go 20-50% more than the weight of the guns and ammo alone).
Taking weight out of a carrier plane is a lot harder than it seems without a lot of redesign and new components. You don't want the wing to fold? fine, take out the hinges (and control linkage hinges) and any power assist the wing may use and bolt it in place but you are stuck with the beefed up ribs at the joint and any local stiffening/structure unless you build new tooling and run a stress analysis on the new structure. Same with taking out the arresting gear, some of the weight is the the gear and some is beefed up structure. Same with catapult points. Converting land planes to naval use was often easier. They could just beef up local areas or add doubling plates to existing structure.
The P4/34 was designed as a dive bomber and as such had a pretty sturdy airframe, made a good staring point for a Carrier aircraft, perhaps not so good for a land fighter, you weren't likely to break it in a hard turn but you may have a bit more weight distributed through the spar/s frames and structure than you really need for a land fighter. Taking it "out" requires new drawings, new stress analysis and new testing of the new structure.
Can it be modified? yes but it may not be as easy and quick as you think, a reason that they often designed new airframes for new jobs rather than modifying an old airframe for too long.
When looking the prototypes that were passed over in 1935-39 try asking why instead of assuming politics or stupidity on the part of the air staff. There may have been but it requires proof, they may have had good reasons for passing over many of those planes.
My own personnel favorite was the Whirlwind, especially with 20/20 hindsight but the decision to ditch working on a 21 liter engine in favor of working on a 36 liter engine was the right one for R-R. Dowding's quote about not wanting a plane with two engines when you could have a plane with the same armament with one engine actually doesn't stand up quite so well when it is two 12 cylinder engines vs one 24 cylinder engine.
As an "alternative" it is one of the few that had decent performance, an engine that needed little, if any, modification to be "useful" in the Bob and both aircraft and engine had actual production facilities (small though they may be) in existence in time for the BoB.
A little more 'belief" at the time and a firm order NOT to concentrate of Lysander production might have seen more use of the Whirlwind.
Me too. It did have some serious problems but had both the Spitfire and Hurricane failed, leaving only the Gloster fighter as a back up, some serious time and effort could have been invested in the Whirlwind and its engines. The RAF might have had, with the removal of the uncertainty which surrounded the project, potentially, a competitive cannon armed fighter in 1940.
It makes a lot more sense than mucking about with a hopelessly outclassed navalised light bomber as a front line fighter.
Cheers
Steve
Thanks Steve, I did read in one book that Leigh Mallory was suspected of keeping his best pilots to further his big wing theory.
It wouldn't surprise me if he did that.
12 Group was the second line of defence and the next strongest Group.It did field some very good squadrons though they were more undermanned than those in 11 Group. It was tasked with protecting the Midlands and 11 Groups air fields. It failed to do the latter, much to Park's dismay.
Why Leigh Mallory was not forced by Dowding to toe the line would be the subject of another thread
Cheers
Steve
The spitfire hurricane defiant and fulmar all had merlin engines. I cannot see a scenariowhere the British ordered a twin seat fighter but no single seaters. If the whirlwind was originally designed for Merlins and was available for the BoB it could have been devastating, even 8 rifle calibre guns couldnt guarantee a kill. IIRC a heinkle was eventually brought down after being attacked but 7 spitfires-hurricanes it had literally hundreds of holes, it waas known at the time cannon were needed but how to mount them?
The fact that the Whirlwind was designed for Peregrine engines (originally the Kestrel K.26 for the pedants) was one of the factors that led to its and that engine's demise. It could have been developed into a decent fighter with those engines but it, like many war time designs, was never given a chance. As it was it was by no means a bad aeroplane. It was a very advanced aeroplane for its time and a 350+mph fighter which certainly puts it in a different class to something like a Fulmar.
Cheers
Steve
Cheers
Steve
Part of the reason for the Whirlwind's demise was that the Hurricane and Spitfire were so successful, meaning that development and production of the Merlin had to take priority over developing the Peregrine. It is still extremely doubtful that the Whirlwind could have been built in sufficient numbers in 1940, and another fighter or fighters would still have been needed - perhaps even a single seat Defiant with eight forward firing Brownings?
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- #156
With my original list - I avoided aircraft such as the Bristol 153 153A, Supermarine 313, or Martin-Baker MB2:
The Boulton-Paul P.88 - one of the 'winners' of the competition, but the Treasury wouldn't finance so many prototypes - only Westland built, in addition, while in OTL the Vulture got terminated, the Hercules had 'problems' while not imagining the Hercules 100 could appear years earlier, still possible one in the 1500hp region could've been done in-time.
The Gloster single-engine - granted the Mercury engine was quite mature by then - not a lot more that could be squeezed out of it, yet the original spec was for a radial fighter for hot climates - so maybe the Air Staff still take that into account! Also I have seen mention of re-engining with the Taurus - though much of an advantage that gives is debatable! But it does need an earlier first flight to stand a chance, especially if that was when there were 'problems' with the Merlin.
The Gloster 'twin' - granted the main problem was the Taurus engine, yet even with the 900 hp IIIs 332 mph at 15,200 ft. is still pretty good. Again (as in the other thread) there's room for it to appear earlier.
The Marlet - the British Purchasing Commission could've been interested enough in it to order it before the French, so interesting to see the comments. But they were more interested in the Harvard, Hudson, Catalina later the Mustang, so no early Martlet and no P-36.
Few can dislike the Whirlwind, obviously again problems with the engine, have read as well about maintenance issues - unrelated to the engine.
Precisely. There were other problems with the Whirlwind, collapsing tail wheels and problems with the exhaust and radiator systems and even armament. Attempts to reduce the landing speed using leading edge slats were also less than successful.
There was never any impetus to address these and other issues, particularly after the initial two stage cancellation and partial reprieve, because there was not any real need for the Whirlwind and the RAF was expecting the Hawker cannon armed fighter imminently. That of course didn't happen.
If the Air Ministry and RAF had been forced into pushing through the Whirlwind then things might have been different.
Cheers
Steve
Shortround6
Major General
Some of these look attractive at first glance but a bit deeper look reveals the problems. For instance the Supermarine 313 was a larger plane than the Whirlwind, was supposed to use lower powered engines (The Goshawk?) and yet go faster? Something seems off.
The Martin-Baker MB2 shows a lot of ingenuity but the Dagger engine had more than it's share of problems, one that is hard to "fix" is that it gave it's peak power at around 8,000ft not 16,250 like the Merlin. Even if you "fix" the cooling problem you are only going to get around 830hp at 16,250 ft out of it which rather limits the altitude performance. Let's please remember that effective combat ceiling was thousands of feet lower than "service ceiling".
The problem with the Hercules is what numbers of production and what power at what altitude. Bristol had little trouble making a few sleeve engines a month or even a few dozen per month, the trouble was trying to make thousands of sleeves per month in order to make hundreds of engines per month, they did solve it 1940, just not in time for the BoB. The adoption of 100 octane fuel did very little for the early Hercules engines. In some cases allowable boost went from 5lb to 6 3/4lbs (for a 1941 MK VI engine), There were changes in cylinder finning and cylinder head design as the Hercules went on.
The Gloster single-engine - granted the Mercury engine was quite mature by then - not a lot more that could be squeezed out of it, yet the original spec was for a radial fighter for hot climates - so maybe the Air Staff still take that into account! Also I have seen mention of re-engining with the Taurus - though much of an advantage that gives is debatable! But it does need an earlier first flight to stand a chance, especially if that was when there were 'problems' with the Merlin.
Perhaps more could have been squeezed out, but not without taking engineering time from the sleeve-valve engines, given the Taurus's saga perhaps they should have
Debate on the Taurus is you get a smaller diameter but heavier engine that gives no more power at altitude (in production versions) but adds cooling problems. Lets look at it objectively shall we. Replace 24.9 liter 9 cylinder radial with 25.4 14 cylinder radial engine. You have to believe the sleeve valve is some sort of magic to think you are going to get a major increase in power. Minor increase due to higher rpm, minor increase due to smaller cylinders, minor increase due to the sleeve valves, but a MAJOR increase? US 1200 hp radials were around 29.9 liters.
And here you run into an engine problem too, which model P&W R-1830 or wright R-1820s will be ordered in 1939 compared to what was becoming available in the fall of 1940 let alone what was used in 1941? A lot of the P W engines deleverid to the French and early British were single speed engines with around 1050 hp for take-off, later delivers shifted to 1200hp engines, Wright engines usually had two speed super chargers but had some problems as fighter engines.
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Some of the maintenance issues were overblown. Some may not have been, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight we know that the Hawker Typhoon had more than it's share of maintenance issues too.
parsifal
Colonel
The nost likley scenario for the Spitfire and Hurricane not being in a position to rise to the Luftwaffes challenge in the late summer of 1940, is because of excessive attrition or inadequate production. Day , for example that the british had not ramped up production of Spitfires from early 1940, and found in June, after the fall of france, that FC was denuded of fighters....
One option, is simply not to rise to fight the luftwaffe, withraw out of the range of German fighters, and atack the bomber formations, as best as possible, from afar, until numbers situation had been restored. Britains SE might have been pasted, but the LW was of insufficient strength to carry out serrious damage, and her prearations for invasions non existent in a usable form until the early part of October, and even then of dubious reliability. So, what are the costs to Britain of foregoing serious deployment to the southeast of Britain until say early october. What could the Luftwaffe have done of long lasting importance in that time?
One option, is simply not to rise to fight the luftwaffe, withraw out of the range of German fighters, and atack the bomber formations, as best as possible, from afar, until numbers situation had been restored. Britains SE might have been pasted, but the LW was of insufficient strength to carry out serrious damage, and her prearations for invasions non existent in a usable form until the early part of October, and even then of dubious reliability. So, what are the costs to Britain of foregoing serious deployment to the southeast of Britain until say early october. What could the Luftwaffe have done of long lasting importance in that time?
- Thread starter
- #160
The problem with the Hercules is what numbers of production and what power at what altitude. Bristol had little trouble making a few sleeve engines a month or even a few dozen per month, the trouble was trying to make thousands of sleeves per month in order to make hundreds of engines per month, they did solve it 1940, just not in time for the BoB. The adoption of 100 octane fuel did very little for the early Hercules engines. In some cases allowable boost went from 5lb to 6 3/4lbs (for a 1941 MK VI engine), There were changes in cylinder finning and cylinder head design as the Hercules went on.
So, this begs the Question - what was the 'problem', why couldn't Bristol do it earlier? And how did they solve it? Therefore could that solution have arrived earlier!? I seem to remember that unlike Rolls-Royce Bristol didn't take on apprentices when re-armament started. And altitude - I think Fedden was fixated on the snail-volute rather than the turbine-volute for the supercharger.
The Gloster single-engine - granted the Mercury engine was quite mature by then - not a lot more that could be squeezed out of it, yet the original spec was for a radial fighter for hot climates - so maybe the Air Staff still take that into account! Also I have seen mention of re-engining with the Taurus - though much of an advantage that gives is debatable! But it does need an earlier first flight to stand a chance, especially if that was when there were 'problems' with the Merlin.
Perhaps more could have been squeezed out, but not without taking engineering time from the sleeve-valve engines, given the Taurus's saga perhaps they should have
Debate on the Taurus is you get a smaller diameter but heavier engine that gives no more power at altitude (in production versions) but adds cooling problems. Lets look at it objectively shall we. Replace 24.9 liter 9 cylinder radial with 25.4 14 cylinder radial engine. You have to believe the sleeve valve is some sort of magic to think you are going to get a major increase in power. Minor increase due to higher rpm, minor increase due to smaller cylinders, minor increase due to the sleeve valves, but a MAJOR increase? US 1200 hp radials were around 29.9 liters.
The Gloster single-seater had a lot in common with the Macchi MC200, whereas later many would be glad to have the MC202, I suspect at the time most preferred it to the CR-42.
And here you run into an engine problem too, which model P&W R-1830 or wright R-1820s will be ordered in 1939 compared to what was becoming available in the fall of 1940 let alone what was used in 1941? A lot of the P W engines deleverid to the French and early British were single speed engines with around 1050 hp for take-off, later delivers shifted to 1200hp engines, Wright engines usually had two speed super chargers but had some problems as fighter engines.
)
So if the British did what the French did and ordered US engines, which ones would've been the most benefit with the timescale, e.g. the Wight Double-row Cyclone 2600 ??
