pinehilljoe
Senior Airman
- 725
- May 1, 2016
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That's a good point and one that I only recently came to realize. I've often thought" why didn't they make this improvement or that" but I guess it was better to have enough good planes than not enough great ones.In many cases the chance to improve performance was given up simply to get more planes. The planned development of the Spitfire and the actual production were almost strangers to each other.
Interesting.
I knew the Hellcat and Bearcat shared the R2800 and that it wasn't the same model R2800. I should have typed a bit more.
I didn't realize the Tempest and Sea Fury shared much of anything.
The Yak-3 isn't too different from the Yak-1M and was developed from it.
Towards 1944 it was sometimes preferable to have more planes now rather than better planes after D-Day for example. The Typhoon and Lancaster were two that I can think of where more was seen as preferable to fewer but better later.That's a good point and one that I only recently came to realize. I've often thought" why didn't they make this improvement or that" but I guess it was better to have enough good planes than not enough great ones.
A plane which was literally "stretched" from a stocky brute of a plane to an elegant slim longwinged bird is the Fw 190 to become the Ta 152.
A plane which reached his pinnacle early and could not developed much further without growing disadvantages was the Me 109.
Early P47 with relatively small amount of fuel and toothpick prop, then went to more fuel, drop tanks, more hp and paddle prop, then went to P47N with even more power, lots and lots of fuel finally finishing with the 'wish they would have built it' XP72 with a mind blowing amount of power.
The German Heinkel and Dornier bombers were stretched. The versions flown in the Mid Thirties evolved significantly into the 40's.
While the capabilities (gross weight and power) of the He 111 were stretched the actual aircraft was not, yes it got a new nose and they straightened out the wing leading edge but a 1937 and a 1943 HE 111 were pretty much the same sized aircraft.
The Dornier Do 217 was a not quite clean sheet of paper aircraft compared to the Do 17. Similar configuration and shape but no actual interchangeable parts aside from hardware.
Max gross weight of the later 217s being almost double that of a Do 17Z-2.
I'd say that Do-217 was a clean sheet design.
Besides the overburdened engineering staff and the less than optimum fuel, there just didn't seem to be available significantly more powerful engines of the necessary reliability and power-to-weight ratio to go with A6M's ultralight design philosophy. Any serious upgrading would require serious beefing up of the airframe, which brings into question the feasibility of a quick production change over. Any attempt to improve combat survivability would doom the ultralight philosophy entirely as well as any hopes for a quick change over.Why did they not develop the A6M Zero further to be competitive?
By most accounts they did, though handicapped by undertrained pilots, lower grade fuel, and overwhelming opposition.The Japanese never completely gave up on their lightweight design philosophy, so that one can doubt if their presumably excellent late-war fighters could compete with sturdily build American fighters in high speed ACM.
The Japanese never completely gave up on their lightweight design philosophy, so that one can doubt if their presumably excellent late-war fighters could compete with sturdily build American fighters in high speed ACM.
I think that reason may have been that the Kinsei didn't reliably develop enough additional horsepower to offset its greater weight until late in the war.With the A6M, I believe they had a suitable replacement pretty early: the Kinsei / Ha 112 but for some reason decided not to attempt a conversion until the war was nearly over.
Hello Ivan. Good question, isn't it? I think the tiebreaker here is reliability, which, IIRC, was something of an issue with the higher powered versions of the Kinsei. Too bad we can't rewrite history.Is the extra power worth the extra weight and having to redesign the armament package? That is really the judgment call.
Hello Ivan. Good question, isn't it? I think the tiebreaker here is reliability, which, IIRC, was something of an issue with the higher powered versions of the Kinsei. Too bad we can't rewrite history.
Cheers,
Wes
Hello Ivan. Good question, isn't it? I think the tiebreaker here is reliability, which, IIRC, was something of an issue with the higher powered versions of the Kinsei. Too bad we can't rewrite history.
Cheers,
Wes
I wasn't talking about them. "We", as in you and me and all our fellow insignifici who can't or won't go viral and change the public mind.Uhhh, have you ever watched CNN...