The best fighter of the 1930s

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Shortround6 said:
I-16 did not influence any later Russian designs
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I mentioned already the lineage I-16 -> I-180 -> I-185. Both I-180 and I-185 were the best soviet fighters at the time of their development ready for serial production which was either cancelled or not started rather for "political" reasons. I-180 was initially considered as a modification of I-16.
 
That may be true but the Mig-1 & 3, Yak Series and Lagg/LA series didn't take anything from the I-16.
The I-180 development crosses over I-16 development with the I-16 type 17 coming after the crash of the first I-180.
The 3rd I-180 was being tested in the summer of 1940 by which time all 3 of the major new soviet fighters had their first flights.
The I-185 was 'pie in the sky'. It skipped from one experimental engine to the next to the next.
Something is a little bit off with the I-185 with the M-71 engine. You have a fighter with just under the wing area of a 109 with 3636cu in engine, think long stroke R-3350.
The thing is supposed to have grossed 8,234lbs although weight figures do vary. It was supposed to hold 1058lbs of fuel (176 US gallons?) to feed the big engine. (42% bigger than the BMW 801).
I would note that the Yak and Lagg early fighters were supposed to get more advanced engines in the early stages than the M-105. They were forced into the M-105 by the slow development (failure?) of the M-106 and M-107 engines.
 
Shortround6 said:
That may be true but the Mig-1 & 3, Yak Series and Lagg/LA series didn't take anything from the I-16.
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Early MiGs had many similarities with I-16 - all of them were initially developed in the same design office (Gurevich was one of the Polikarpov' deputees). For instance, the construction of the rear part of fuselage is very similar - absolutely the same technology indeed. Another very promising lineage originating from I-16 was I-17/-19.
Both LaGG and Yak were rather great mistakes of the soviets required many efforts to achieve combat readiness whereas I-180 had just a few problems except the motor (which was improved and reached mass production). I-185M-82 outperformed all of Yak/LaGG by the most characteristics. I-19M-105 was more promising than LaGG or Yak as well.
M-71 was ready for serial production in 1942. The soviets preferred to produce thousands mediocre aircrafts instead.
 

This is why trusting AI isn't smart.
 


Well, round the 153 up to 16 and the AI got 2 out 3 items correct.
 
bf109xxl said:
The soviets preferred to produce thousands mediocre aircrafts instead.
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They preferred to produce aircraft that had a better chance of actually working.
Maybe the I-180 would have worked, or even the I-185.
But way too many Soviet engines passed 50 hour or 100 hour tests and then proved near useless in a combat/service environment.
To be fair the British/Americans/Germans had a few engines of their own that did the same thing.
I am just not seeing the advantage of the M-88 engine for the I-180.
This is like trying to make a 1st rate fighter in 1941-42 using a P & W R-1830 engine without the two stage supercharger.
The M-88 engine is larger in displacement and a bit larger diameter, uses lower compression and lower rpm (no center bearing really screws things up) and weight seems to zig zag back and forth depending on source and exact model.

Maybe the US screwed up by not sticking the R-1830 from a DC-3 into a very small airframe with limited fuel and limited guns (two .50s and two .30s?) and sending them out to conquer the Luftwaffe.
Payload of the I-180 may have been 900lbs to be divided between fuel, oil, pilot, ammo and probably guns.
For context the Spitfire I carried 1585lbs which included 646lb of fuel, 54 lbs of oil, 200lbs of pilot and parachute, and 685lb of guns, ammo, sight, radio etc.
The I-16 versions had about the same payload, maybe the Soviets were using empty equipped weight? that would include guns and a radio, if the plane had one. I-16s held 56 imp gal (212 liters) of fuel.
Yak-1s had around an 1100lb payload.
The I-180 may have been a very successful airfield defense fighter, just don't ask it to fly very far.
 
Interesting discussion, much to learn here as always.

My only issue is that it seems asking a lot to figure out the "best" fighter for a whole decade. In 1930, as shown in Beez's chart we have the Boeing P-12 and at the end we have the Bf-109 and Spit and just barely the P-40. I hate to say it but I don't think performance numbers are going to show true potential and worth.

I mean if you did the 1940's, how well for example, would a Fw-190 fare against an F-86?

Perhaps something along the lines of which fighter had the most examples built/bought?

Not knocking anything here and least of all the thread topic, just trying to wrap my head around how you find the best of something when, over the course of 10 years, development is almost staggering. Even in 1941, the USAAF started the war with fighters doing 350MPH and only four years later had aircraft capable of exceeding 500MPH and powered by a jet engine.

Eh, again, just my two cents.
 
Shortround6 said:
They preferred to produce aircraft that had a better chance of actually working.
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They preferred to produce what Stalin ordered. But he was not a good manager. Voluntarism was one of the most typical flaws of the soviet system. Taking into account the relatively low mean educational level of soviet leaders, it is not surprising that most decisions made were far from optimal.
Moreover, the soviets did not need as many aircrafts as they produced - the domestic production of high-octane gasoline in the USSR was absolutely insufficient to supply air forces adequately. A thousand soviet aircrafts frequently made less sorties than 300-400 German ones in the same time period and in the same sector of the front. Cadets in Soviet flight schools had a lousy amount of flight hours at graduation, less than the Japanese kamikazes, due to insufficient gasoline supply.
I-180 was adequate in 1939-1941 (even if compared to 109E/F) and had to be consequently replaced by I-185 in 1941-1942, eventually equipped with M-82, which was already in mass production but had no real "customer" (the production of Su-2 was negligible).
The payload of I-180-3 was 615 kg. With small improvements, it could exceed speed limits of 600 km/h in 1940. Short range was a problem for all Soviet fighters in the early 1940s, but I never heard that I-180 was inferior to Yak/LaGG regarding this parameter.

All I wanted to say was that the I-16 had some very worthy successors that didn't play a significant role just due to circumstances.
 
bf109xxl said:
All I wanted to say was that the I-16 had some very worthy successors that didn't play a significant role just due to circumstances.
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Polikarpov did seem to run out of steam, or perhaps exhausted Stalin's good will after the I-16. The Polikarpov I-17 could have been a good 1930s fighter if it had gone into production.
 
Admiral Beez said:
Polikarpov did seem to run out of steam, or perhaps exhausted Stalin's good will after the I-16. The Polikarpov I-17 could have been a good 1930s fighter if it had gone into production.
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Nope. Indeed, he had too many projects at the same time ("Ivanov", I-180, I-185, ITP, I-190, I-170, I-195, I-17, I-200("X"), VIT (-1/-2), SPB, ODB). He was at the peak of his creative power. Although I-180 crashes gave him a lot of troubles, he was still able to develop aircrafts better than any other Soviet designer - for instance, Il'yushin stated directly, that all young aircraft designers learned from Polikarpov at that time.
 
Admiral Beez said:
Perhaps, but he never had another series production aircraft after the I-16, with the Ishak being followed mainly by failed prototypes.
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In some cases "failed prototypes" were significantly better than serial aircrafts. Just read the reports of pilots who participated in the front-line testing of the I-185.
Polikarpov had a poor relationship with serial production - primarily due to the ambitions of serial plant directors (e.g., Voronin). His design bureau was severely weakened after the transfer of some employees to Mikoyan. But as I already mentioned above, Polikarpov was too focused on the development of new projects, paying insufficient attention to serial production - a fatal mistake in the Soviet Union.

In addition. Technologically, I-200 (MiG-1 prototype) was much better suited for mass production than previous Polikarpov's fighters. But the idea to optimize the design in order to simplify the technological process initially arose at the very early project stage - it was not a merit of Mikoyan&Gurevich.
 
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Many soviet designers were let down by the engine makers failing to sort out their engines in a timely fashion. They failed to reach desired power and the desired overhaul life.
Getting a single engine (or even a few) through a state trial was no guarantee that the production engines would perform to the same standards. This often left the designers scrambling to fit alternative engines or trying to reduce weight to compensate for the lower power.
A number of times engines were accepted at lower power or lower times between overhauls or both just to get something to fly. Several aircraft designers also built prototypes with significantly better fit and finish than the production lines could even hope to duplicate. (not confined to the Soviet Union alone).
The low octane fuel is a poor excuse. If your engines aren't even lasting 50 hours pouring in high octane fuel and boosting the pressure just means the engines are going to fail a lot quicker. This short engine life is also a reason why the Soviets didn't do a lot with long range bombing.

Polikarpov also had some of the worst luck in the Aviation world. His planes killed more test pilots than just about any designer in History (at least before jets) even if the problems had little or nothing to do with the way the planes flew.
 
I emphasize: I-185 equipped with M-82A outperformed La-5M-82A by most characteristics. With the same serial engine. I'm just trying to explain, that Polikarpov's design culture was superior to other Soviet aircraft developers at that time.

Shortround6 said:
The low octane fuel is a poor excuse. If your engines aren't even lasting 50 hours pouring in high octane fuel and boosting the pressure just means the engines are going to fail a lot quicker.
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I told about the shortage of high-octane fuel components in the Soviet Union, although all the new engines required high-octane gasoline. The production of high-octane gasoline was absolutely insufficient - with no regard for the quality.
Shortround6 said:
This short engine life is also a reason why the Soviets didn't do a lot with long range bombing.
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Nope. The Soviets could produce long-range bombers with AM-35/M-82 or even Diesel engines. The major problems were low technological level and shortage of aluminum. The Soviets had the only long-range bomber that was poorly suited for mass production. They preferred to produce front-line bombers and fighters instead.
Shortround6 said:
Polikarpov also had some of the worst luck in the Aviation world. His planes killed more test pilots than just about any designer in History (at least before jets) even if the problems had little or nothing to do with the way the planes flew.
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That is what I called "circumstances".
 

They did produce small numbers of the PE-8 with AM-35s, diesels (3 types) and M-82 engines.

Some of these were used in very small numbers but since they only built 93 (?) planes total and were lucky they had more the 20 in service at the same time until part way through 1944. During the war it's reputation tended to change a lot.
It was important for morale/propaganda. Actual results are rather hard to judge.
However getting back to the engines. It is claimed that the crews flying PE-8s with ACh-30B engines (the 3rd diesel) in 1943-44 "fondly remembered the less powerful and economical but far more reliable AM-35A engines" from the early versions. Now look the average life of a AM-35A or AM-38 engine for context.
On the 10th of Aug 1941 8 aircraft (with another type of aircraft) took off to bomb Berlin. 2 made it back, mostly due the problems with the M-40 diesel engines.
From Wiki
"In 1943, from the division's primary airfield at Kratovo, southeast of Moscow, the regiments bombed transportation centers, airfields and troop concentrations. The railroad yard at Gomel was a favorite target and the regiment dropped approximately 606 tonnes (596 long tons; 668 short tons) of bombs there between February and September 1943."
Which is all well and good, except that it was only about 370-380 miles from Kratovo to Gomel and the front line was roughly 1/2 way in between.

The M-82 engines also had problems, Not so much with the engines themselves but with the installation. They had to abandon the underwing gun station

Because of exhaust fumes. They also had not fitted flame dampening exhausts which made the M-82 powered versions easy to see at night and German night fighters shot down several because of that. Again, keep in the mind the numbers, the Soviets were seldom flying a dozen per night.
This is something that could have been solved, it just may not have been worth it for the small number of aircraft involved.
More serious was the complicated throttle controls of the M-82 engine, careful handling was needed on take-off because uneven operation could cause the aircraft to veer off the runway causing damage to the undercarriage. 6 PE-8s were written off in 1943 because of this reason.

Some PE-8 crews did some amazing things. But the airplane as a whole was not modern enough (huge wing) and the engines, of any of the attempts at power were not suitable for sustained long range missions.
British and American bombers had engines that were good for 200-300 hours between overhauls. Trying to operate a long range bombing campaign with engines that were good for 50-100 hours (and the diesels were worse) was a waste of resources.
Figure out many IL-2 missions you could fly with the engines sucked up by one PE-8 and several sets of replacement engines.
 
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