Revolutionary aircraft of World war 2?

[The Basket]

Most revolutionary aircraft go no place.
Me 163
Natter
Concorde
Even the Harrier. Look at the Harrier! Fantastic yet who copied it! Harrier should Bet big time and every fighter should be VTOL. But no. And now the F-35 has a much worse design.

 

[michaelmaltby]

Perhaps too hum drum a suggestion ... but I'd argue that the Bell P-39 Aerocobra was 'revolutionary'. Larry Bell and his designer designed the aircraft around the 37 mm Olds canon ... making the aircraft a weapon system .. as opposed to a platform to which guns were added. To accomplish the goal, features such as the mid-engine mount were adopted ...

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Todays helicopters are not based on German designs pre-war.

No one said that. Still does not change the fact that even Sikorsky had other "true" helicopter designs that worked. The R-4 was not revolutionary, it was just the first one produced on large scale.

 

[pbehn]

The Glostor Whittle and whichever jet first flew in Germany, not because it was any good but straight away (almost) faster than the fastest RAF fighter of the day, blew "last orders" on the piston engine.

Spitfire and Hurricane in the BoB, not because they were better but because of the command and control behind them, all air defence and most attack has some similar system

V2 set the tone for years of post war development leading to men on the moon satellite coms and M.A.D.

Mosquito ......first bomber to be pretty seriously small light laminated structures two man crew a true MRCA maybe not a revolutionary design or even a new principle but changed a lot of minds.


B29 the raid on Hiroshima and Nagasaki revolutionized EVERYONES thoughts about war. True other planes could have dropped the bomb but the B29 did.

 

[oldcrowcv63]

Leduc 0.10 First Ramjet powered aircraft leading to the The french Nord Griffon:

Leduc 0.10 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nord 1500 Griffon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There may have been earlier ramjst powered a/c but this is the earliest I could find in a brief search.

 

[timmy]

The P-51 would have to be mentioned

It was an aerodynamic master piece. Not just the Laminar flow wings, but also excellent Meredith effect radiator ducts and carburetor duct
Add Excellent construction quality, flush sheet metal, no paint and Fully Flush covering wheel wells and you start to understand what made it so fast

Really it only had a standard 2 stage 1700hp Merlin engine giving it speeds up to 450mph. A Spitfire/FW 190 would need seriously boosted engines producing over 2000hp to reach that speed

But the game changer was those same aerodynamic qualities was giving the aircraft serious combat range as well

 

[stona]

The Natter truly revolutionary but it wasnt operational and didnt work as advertised.

And to my knowledge hasnt been copied.

Apart from every rocket powered vertical take off craft since

Cheers

Steve

 

[GrauGeist]

While the Ba349 might not have been copied by the Japanese, they certainly used the same concept with their Yokosuka MXY7

 

[stona]

The P-51 would have to be mentioned

It was an aerodynamic master piece. Not just the Laminar flow wings, but also excellent Meredith effect radiator ducts and carburetor duct
Add Excellent construction quality, flush sheet metal, no paint and Fully Flush covering wheel wells and you start to understand what made it so fast

Really it only had a standard 2 stage 1700hp Merlin engine giving it speeds up to 450mph. A Spitfire/FW 190 would need seriously boosted engines producing over 2000hp to reach that speed

But the game changer was those same aerodynamic qualities was giving the aircraft serious combat range as well

It wasn't revolutionary. It wasn't the first to exploit the Meredith effect. It didn't have laminar flow wings (though the flow was laminar in ideal conditions over a larger percentage of the wing than other contemporary aircraft). There was nothing revolutionary about the construction techniques used. You might want to check your performance figures.

The P-51 was one of the great aeroplanes, it would be in almost anyone's top three single engine (piston) fighters of all time, but it was in no way revolutionary.

Cheers

Steve

 

[tomo pauk]

The P-51 would have to be mentioned

It was an aerodynamic master piece. Not just the Laminar flow wings, but also excellent Meredith effect radiator ducts and carburetor duct
Add Excellent construction quality, flush sheet metal, no paint and Fully Flush covering wheel wells and you start to understand what made it so fast

Really it only had a standard 2 stage 1700hp Merlin engine giving it speeds up to 450mph. A Spitfire/FW 190 would need seriously boosted engines producing over 2000hp to reach that speed

But the game changer was those same aerodynamic qualities was giving the aircraft serious combat range as well

Agreed pretty much. The impressive combat radius was mostly a consequence of huge (for the modest size and engine power) internal fuel load, though.

 

[GrauGeist]

The P-51 wasn't revolutionary, it was innovative.

It didn't revolutionize piston powered fighter aircraft, but it's innovations influenced later generations of aircraft design. Such innovations as the standoff intake for the radiator, that reduced turbulance which can be seen in modern fighter jets.

 

[nuuumannn]

Yep, I agree with Dave. I think some of us are getting revolutionary mixed up with game changers or innovative designs - there is a big difference. A revolution brings about a profound and far reaching change in the way something is done, like nuclear weapons and their impact on the world post war and the application of gas turbines in aircraft - that's revolutionary technology. The Me 163 did not bring about a revolution in technology or in anything in fact, except perhaps that the Germans had found a novel and quite nasty way of killing their own pilots. Its influence was minimal, despite the British flirting with rocket powered interceptors that never entered service and the use of HTP in almost all their rocket motors. It's difficult to name particular aircraft types as being revolutionary since so few actually were. The Me 262 is cited as being one, but wasn't, although it was an influential part of a revolution that was taking place in aircraft powerplants; it was not the cause of it.

 

[GrauGeist]

Sure, like I mentioned before, the Me262 in itself wasn't revolutionary but it's concept and application was.

Technically speaking, the He178 was the revolutionary jet aircraft because it not only was the first successful and practical application of a jet engine to an airframe, it also had the engine mounted in such a way that future jet aircraft followed the example in their designs. Therefore, it set the stage for for the next generation of aircraft evolution. That is revolutionary.

The Me262 used a wide variety of innovations that set it at the head of the line in first generation Jet aircraft, such as it's innovative fuselage design along with it's adapted wing design to allow for the unique CoG problem. While it was not the first armed jet aircraft (He280 has that notoriety) it was the first armed jet aircraft used in combat (sorry Gloster fans, but the '262 beat it by several weeks for that award) and it became a study in high speed combat that changed the school of thought in regards to aerial warfare.

So the Me262 by itself was not revolutionary.

 

[nuuumannn]

Technically speaking, the He 178 was the revolutionary jet aircraft because it not only was the first successful and practical application of a jet engine to an airframe, it also had the engine mounted in such a way that future jet aircraft followed the example in their designs. Therefore, it set the stage for for the next generation of aircraft evolution. That is revolutionary.

yep, you got it.

it was the first armed jet aircraft used in combat (sorry Gloster fans, but the '262 beat it by several weeks for that award)

Yep, also, but the Meat Box was the first jet fighter to enter squadron service.

 

[stona]

I bet that an Me 262 whistling past at over 500mph would have seemed pretty revolutionary to the average B-17 crew. Just the absence of propellers would have astonished most

The P-51, for example, was just another piston engine fighter. As mentioned above, it did incorporate some innovative features but then so did many aircraft.

The V-1 was definitely an aircraft, just as any modern UAV is. Revolutionary? Maybe not. The concept of using unmanned aircraft to deliver death and destruction to an enemy was neither new nor revolutionary in the 1940s.

The V-2 is the direct ancestor of all modern ICBMs and was truly revolutionary. It was the first missile to make sub orbital flights (just) as a matter of course. Without it there would have been no man on the moon in 1969. The problem is it wasn't really an aircraft by any definition I know.

Cheers

Steve

 

[GrauGeist]

Yep, also, but the Meat Box was the first jet fighter to enter squadron service.

That's where things get sticky...

The Germans used active testing for the Me262 and "Erprobungskommando 262" was formed (19 April 44) for this purpose and it was actually from this unit that the first combat action against an Allied aircraft occurred on 26 July 44.

616 Squadron took delivery of the first of their Meteors on 12 July 44 and commenced training (just like Erprobungskommando 262) and it wasn't until 27 July 44 that the Meteor encountered an enemy aircrat (V-1), though due to complications, it wasn't until 4 August 44 that a V-1 was successfully brought down.

The dates of the timelines are so close to each other, it's almost down to the hour...

 

[nuuumannn]

Yep, it boils down to the difference between an operational squadron and a test unit. 616 Sqn was a fully fledged squadron within the RAF order of battle that gave up its Spitfires to transition to the Meteor, whereas Ekdo 262 was formed specifically to trial the '262 before it entered squadron service.

 

[GrauGeist]

What fascinates me, is the timeline...

Like I mentioned, it was so close in many cases, it was down to mere hours between comparable events.

 

[stona]

Yep, it boils down to the difference between an operational squadron and a test unit. 616 Sqn was a fully fledged squadron within the RAF order of battle that gave up its Spitfires to transition to the Meteor, whereas Ekdo 262 was formed specifically to trial the '262 before it entered squadron service.

Erprobungskommando were operational units. They were not testing the aircraft per se but its operational capabilities. It is sometimes referred to as 'service testing' in English. In the RAF there was no equivalent unit and following acceptance, new types were worked up in operational squadrons, usually out of harm's way.

616 Sqn was really doing the same job on the Meteor as Ekdo 262 was doing on the Me 262.

Cheers

Steve

 

[davebender]

Kaman H-43 and K-MAX are direct decedents of Flettner FI-282 helicopter.