This is the way it should have been from the beginning....

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Shortround6 said:
1. Take supercharger off the Merlin XX in the fall of 1940
2. Send to Allison.
3. In modern terms "copy and paste"

solves an awful lot of problems in 1942, early 1943.
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Make a 9.60:1 S/C drive that is strong enough (= reliable), during late 1940. Means a 370 mph P-40, 380+ mph P-39, 400+ mph P-51, all in service by time of Pearl Harbour.
 
.... it wasn't 'The American Way', unfortunately. Makes great sense but the US manufacturers didn't want to pay royalty fees. The Twin-Mustangs reverted to Alison's to avoid RR licensing charges which came into effect with the end of LL, IIRC. However the period you prescribe includes all LL (and Reverse LL) period but commences prior to the start of the LL program, March 15, 1941. If those in power had known that LL was coming and that there would be no fees on British turbos, maybe they might have been more innovative, .... or not.
 
There were two sample Merlin XX engines in the US during the summer of 1940 when talks were going on with Ford and Packard. This is before the -39 Allison goes into production. And over a year before Allison tries to make a production batch of engines with 9.60 gears. paying license fees at this point to get a much more effective engine should have no brainer.
 
Have NAA design the Na-73X with the Merlin from the start, eliminate the development hassle, and the time wasted which is very important considering the lives and planes saved, with the Allison, use that money saved (I bet a LOT), and balance that against the royalty money or other back and forth trades. Or just pay it. In 1969, Pontiac had to pay the SCCA $50.00 for the use of the Trans Am name per car. No big deal as they sold 697 T/A's plus a handful of convertibles. In 1978 they sold almost 100,000 T/A's. That's $5,000,000, big deal, right? Not against the almost 3/4 of a Billion Dollars they took in just from Trans Am sales. Plus even more money from all the other Firebird models they also sold. Just depends on how you look at it.
 
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By the time of the Tempest the Sabre had most of it's issues sorted (once it had been taken out of the hands of Napiers) and factories were churning them out anyway.
 
Nice solution but many built in barriers.

First, Material Command and War Production Board controlled priorities. At no time was NAA even considered in the priority assignment of Packard engines until late 1942. It would have taken incredible foresight by BPC to stipulate that Packard be the engine of choice, as well as incredible Good will by the General Motors Board to cut Allison out of the Mustang I market.

The breakthrough in 1942 occurred as simultaneous thrusts by RR to convert the Mustang I to Merlin 6o series, a revolt by AAF war fighters and planners to wrest the P-51 from a slow death at Wright Field - and get it to Eglin for a test series to confirm 'rumors' from non-Material Command pilots that had flown the Mustang I/XP-51 and raved about it, and finally re-writing AWPD-2 to point to a.) escort fighter requirements as well as b.) a fighter better capable than P-40 and P-39 to gain control of the air over the battlefield as well as CAS and tactical Recon.

Not all senior AAF thought leaders were bound to Strategic bombing - some actually felt moved by ties to armor and infantry support. This is when the 'Aha' occurred in both camps - even while Echols at Material Command still had a hard on for NAA and was over run by Generals Muir Fairchild and D.M Schlatter (Dir Ground Support) rammed the A-36, P-51A and 'conversion to Merlin 60 series as soon as possible'.

Second - Production of the real Difference maker - the 1650-3 did not commence until late April 1943.

Wave a magic wand and transform 'what could have happened' with zero fairy dust, and a.) Echols removed from Material Command - with all his 'like minded' hate NAA acolytes and replace them with thoughtful leaders that had the best interests of the Army Air Force and wished to field the best possible airframes to our troops and allies - in 1940. With foresight and ability to pressure the War Department and War production Board, the AAF would have looked to NAA and Packard and Allison - committed to fully understand the Development tracks for the V-1710 and V-1650-1. With the knowledge that the 2 speed/2 stage supercharger was on the fast track, the AAF could/should have authorized a parallel engine installation with one of the two XP-51 to be delivered as agreed in 1940.

With that idea in hand - and funding for the engine/radiator/cooling system change requirements in hand on or about the time flight tests by the RAF commenced in 1941, the AAF would have been able to aggressively test the first Allison XP-51 in November 1941, and receive the Merlin XX/1650-1
in early 1942... about the time the first Merlin 60 series was in full series production.

Now - with the pixie dust in hand we can come to at least one conclusion. The acceleration of the XP-51B could have started with the 1650-1 before RR began their project in May 1942. The first TEST of the XP-51B in the US with Merlin 60 series still required some airframe changes forward of the firewall and probably to the radiator inlet later in flight tests - but still wouldn't fly with a 1650-3 until November 30, simply because Packard was still solving issues and engine not in production yet.

What Would have happened is that the A-36 with 1650-1 could have been flying in early 1942, NO P-51A would have been necessary as the A-36 would have had better performance, would have been produced in 700+ range before converting to P-51B-1. With no 'contest' between Army C;lose Support and Strategic Airpower on the role of the P-51B vs A-36, the P-51B never would have been mistakenly tasked to 9th AF.

At the end of the day - IMHO - the ONLY differences of historical significance - would have been:
1.) NAA received Priority for Mustang series from WPD --------> with all the implications for additional plants and funding for advanced tooling, faster introduction into series production for A-36/P-51B.
2.) The A-36/Packard combo would have solved all the tactical requirements, including recon, and even CAS much earlier.
3.) P-38 production would have been more focused in Pacific - to replace P-39 and P-40, delivering more P-39 and P-40 to allies earlier (what a deal!), until P-47/A-36 delivered to Pacific/CBI escort and CAS roles.
4.) Production release of airframes for P-51B-1 would have been significantly higher and earlier with increased tooling investment and minimal changes from A-36 to P-51B engine and systems.

Unknown what the impact would have been to Lockheed as the P-38 cost nearly 2.5X over the bare airframe of the P-51 and far cheaper to train both pilots and ground crews, fas well as far cheaper to operate.

Unknown is the effect to Packard with increased funding for potential backlog forecast for A-36 and P-51B-1. Had engine R&D issue resolution for 1650-3 been accelerated, the P-38 may never have returned to the ETO in October and December 1943.
 
YF12A said:
Have NAA design the Na-73X with the Merlin from the start, eliminate the development hassle,
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Thing was, the British Purchasing Commission originally wanted P-40s and it was NAA (Kindelberger) who offered to build a new fighter for the Brits, using the same engine, when NAA was asked to build the P-40 since Curtiss had its hands full.

Also, RR would never re-engineer the Allison. It was designed to be able to be worked on by Elmer Fudd and was simple, but robust and reliable. The Merlin however, was built to fine tolerances. Merlins had to be returned to RR for overhaul, whereas Allisons could be done anywhere. When Lord Hives of RR heard about the simple design of early gas turbines, he said, "don't worry, we'll design the simplicity out of it..."

Another one, give Whittle's engine to RR to begin with, rather than Rover.

Regarding the Mustang, proceed with plans for Gloster to build it instead of continuing Hurricane production.
 
nuuumannn said:
Also, RR would never re-engineer the Allison. It was designed to be able to be worked on by Elmer Fudd and was simple, but robust and reliable. The Merlin however, was built to fine tolerances.
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You know, I would really love to see some documentation on this.

Like piston to cylinder fits or bearing clearances or some other actually measurements like

piston in cylinder top.........0.030L min........0.034L max
vs
Piston in cylinder top...........0.030/0.0 .......0.045 worn

Top is for an Allison and bottom for a Merlin.
Exact wording is a bit different. Merlin calls for measurement at 90 degrees to the gudgeon pin.
I have an old mechanics text book with rather abbreviated chapters on how to overhaul various aircraft engines"Aircraft Handbook" by Fred Colvin, 1942) that has several pages of clearances for both engines and I can't make out any pattern that either one was built to tighter tolerances than the other. different in some places yes, but overall finer???
 
I would also note that there were several overseas overhaul depots for Merlin including one 'housed' in caves outside of Cairo Egypt.
Another was in Algiers, and the far east was handled by facilities in Karachi and Bangalore

Photo can be found in "The Merlin in Perspective-the combat years" Alec Harvey-Bailey Rolls-Royce Heritage trust, Historical series No 2.
 
For the Anglo-Americans:
  • Cancel Hawker Hurricane and Fairey Fulmar in 1941 and put engines built for them into P-39's, P-40's and P-38's. Would have had much better fighter fleet available as a result.
  • Or just ship these engines to the Russians to be fitted to LaGG-3, Yak 1 etc.
  • Do the same with Fairey Firefly, Barracuda and various other dead-ends from the mid-war period. Put those excellent engines into Mustangs or P-40's or P-38's, or Yaks.
  • Close down the Blackburn Aircraft company and also do not make any Boulton Paul Defiants. Put those engines into P-40's or Yak-9's.
  • Or if you can't stand putting them in foreign aircraft just build more Spitfires and Mosquitos.
  • Cancel the Blenheim and Beaufort and make Beaufighters instead.
  • Cancel all British bombers except the Mosquito and make a lot more of those.
  • Cancel the Norden bomb sight program and redirect those billions of dollars into the development of more and better fighters (and fixing the Torpoedoes etc).
  • Cut back the emphasis on the 4 engine heavy bombers in the US. Use B-24 for maritime patrol only and make only as many as you need for that purpose. Use the resulting extra industrial capacity to make Corsairs instead. Use Corsairs as land based fighters and fighter-bombers in Europe.
  • Do a "reverse lend lease" of the Pe-2 and manufacture it in the US in 1941. Or manufacture Mosquitoes in the US on a large scale. In either case do this instead of the B-26.
  • Do a Soviet-style purge of Curtiss and Bell aircraft company executives in the early war years and remove the most corrupt so they can get their act together.
  • Do the same with whatever bureau it was that made the American torpedoes.
For the Soviets:
  • Save the stalled Yak 3 program* in 1942 and rush-build them instead of all other inline-engined Soviet fighters. Might have shortened the war by a year.
  • Build a lot more Tu-2
  • Get a lot of Mosquitoes via Lend-Lease
I also agree force Allison to develop a reliable two stage V-1710 by mid-1942 or earlier if possible. Allow them to copy the RR system if necessary. Could have saved a lot of lives.

*The Luftwaffe slaughtering Yak 3 was almost ready in early 1942 but due to damage at the plant was put on hold for more than a year
 
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For the Luftwaffe
  • Cancel the Me 110 in early 1941, use the engines for Me 109s, Ju 88 or put them in Italian fighters.
  • Same with Do 17 and He 111
  • Work with the Italians to develop a longer range fighter ASAP, Fiat G.55 is a good candidate or maybe Re 2005 if production can be simplified)
  • Or in say 1942 license-build a Ki-61, N1K1, or Ki-84. The Germans could have ironed out the engine problems much quicker than the Japanese.
  • In 1941 License build a bunch of A6M2-N fighter float planes for use in the Med / Malta zone early on.
  • In 1942 license build as many as possible Aichi B7A Ryusei (top speed 352 mph, range 3,000 km) as replacements for the Ju 87 (put Jumo engines in)
  • Develop a high speed transport aircraft (not sure what this would be though)
  • Develop the He 219 night fighter much earlier once Mosquitos started to become a problem
  • Develop the Me 262 only as a fighter (focus on the AR 234 if you want a bomber). I know this one is obvious / low-hanging fruit but come on.
For the Japanese
  • license-build a bunch of Fw 190's for the army, replace the Ki-43 and Ki-44 with these.
 
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Schweik said:
why do you say that? P-40 with a two stage V-1710 would be very dangerous to enemy pilots.
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I say it because I think it is true. You might note that I've wrote that P-40 + 2-stage V-1710 makes plenty of sense.

The P-39 and P-39 need a redesigned Merlin, with reduction gear case separated from the block. Have surplus Merlins in 1941? Shove them on P-51s. Neither P-39, nor P-40, nor P-39 can replace Fulmar.
Yak-1 was supposed to do 650 km/h on Merlin 20, and 620 km/h on V-1710 - so Western V12 is a good idea, the cannon need to go in the cowling, though. Might be easier fit on the bigger LaGG-3 or MiG-3, though.
Mosquito is too late to replace Wellington, Whitley, Stirling, Halifax, it can't haul more than 2000 lb bomb load until late 1943, it can't haul combined bomb load (cookie + incediary) until late 1943. Better improve navigationn training, and use more intruders to harry German NF force.
More Spitfires, Mosquitoes and Mustangs is always a good idea. I agree that Curtiss and Bell will need some of Uncle Joe's medicine, but from 1942 on.

More Tu-2s is a good idea. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough of Mosquitoes to supply demands of yet another major air force. I don't think that Yak-3 was ready in 1942, the engine VK-105-PF2 was available from winter of 1943/44 for example.
An earlier 2-stage V-1710 needs co-operating USAAC/AAF to take flight, literaly. While also killing the V-3420, so there is more manpower to work on the V-1710 proper.
 
tomo pauk said:
The P-39 and P-39 need a redesigned Merlin, with reduction gear case separated from the block. Have surplus Merlins in 1941? Shove them on P-51s. Neither P-39, nor P-40, nor P-39 can replace Fulmar.
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P-40's with Merlin's would have helped a lot in 1942.

The Fulmars should be replaced for the FAA by Martlets, which is what they basically did anyway. Maybe keep a few (10% of the number produced) for recon, for which they were reasonably well suited, but most of those engines should go to better planes. FAA seemed to have a lot of problems making specs for airplanes - they probably needed a purge too. How else do you explain atrocities such as this



Yak-1 was supposed to do 650 km/h on Merlin 20, and 620 km/h on V-1710 - so Western V12 is a good idea, the cannon need to go in the cowling, though. Might be easier fit on the bigger LaGG-3 or MiG-3, though.
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Two nose guns is probably enough, with the vastly improved performance.


My theory, though i realize this is a larger and entirely different discussion, is that fighters and fast attack aircraft (you could classify Mosquito as either) made for much better bombers. I don't think the mass-civilian bombing was effective or a good idea for a bunch of reasons. If you want to say, knock out German oil industry (best target) or even something more iffy like V-2 factories or ball bearings, neither the US day bombers or British night-bombers are very effective. Same if you want to destroy enemy tanks etc.

For the former use Mosquitoes or A-26 Invader, just more of them, for the latter use fighter bombers like Corsair, P-47, Tempest / Typhoon, or any Soviet fighter.


I think engine production could have been more heavily emphasized.

For that matter, for the Soviets
  • put defensive guns in Il-2 from the outset
  • make half as many Il-2 and use that extra industrial / production capacity to speed up / improve engine production
  • let all the top designers out of jail (put some Curtiss execs in there)
 

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Schweik said:
Two nose guns is probably enough, with the vastly improved performance.
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two 12.7mm machine guns could hardly be considered adequate. The B-20 cannons were not available until 1945, so the pre "P" model Yak-3 is dependent on the center line cannon to be effective.

So maybe the B-20 cannon modification to the UB should have been done earlier, replacing all the cowl machine guns.
A Merlin 60 powered Yak-3 armed with two 20mm cannons in the cowl would have been a short ranged rocket ship
 

The Fw 190 'Made in Japan' makes sense, even with Japanese engines and guns.
Late-war Japanese or Italian fighters' designs don't solve Lutwaffe's problems of early ww2. A drop-tank facility on the Bf 109E just two months earlier than historically improves odds for the Luftwaffe during the BoB, but it will not make them win it.
The He 219 without working DB 603A will not be possible. Kill the Me 210 instead of the 110?
Germans need jet fighter from late 1943 on, whether the 262 or something 1-engined, or both. Ditto for a better transport A/C.
The flotplane fighter is a death trap vs. P-40s, let alone something more capable.
He 111 was one of best bombers before 1943.


The Grumman AF-1 was also ugly.
Martlets that FAA got in 1941/42 are under-performers. Perhaps go for Sea Hurricanes ASAP?


Soviet fighters can kill tanks once they got bigger cannons, 23 and then 37mm. Other will need napalm or Class S cannons.
A-26 was too late to matter. Both British and US 4-engined bombers can destroy German fuel industry, but bot before the technology and training are improved, along with advent of escort fighters for the US bombers.
 
The trouble with a lot of these suggestions is that they require not a different decision made at point in time X but time machines and inter dimensional transporters

For instance the first 723 Defiants used Merlin III engines and these offer no real improvement over the Allisons in the early P-40s. It is only the last 350 or so Defiants that have the Merlin XX.

Swiping engines from Fulmars is even worse, The first 250 use Merlin VIIIs which might be able to be changed to Merlin IIIs by changing the supercharger gear. The next 350 use Merlin 30s which are single speed engines using a cropped impeller. Not what you want for P-40s.

Now you have to shuffle engines back and forth across oceans. Please remember that the British planned to use P & W R-1830s in the Beaufort until the ship carrying the first 200 engines got torpedoed.

As for making more Beaufighters sooner? That means sorting out Hercules production much sooner, it means getting more power out of the Hercules sooner Early Hercules engines had around 250-300 less horsepower than the later ones.

Fairey Firefly used Griffon engines. A single stage two speed Griffon weighed about 350lbs more than a single stage two speed Merlin and about 400lbs more than an Allison so these are not drop in replacements for American aircraft.

NO US army aircraft was capable of operating off RN carriers and in fact would have had extreme difficulty on US carriers. P-39s and carriers are a disaster of epic proportions.

Could things have been done better, yes.
 
Why not just hand over the UK military production to the USA and forget about any naval aircraft too. Cancelling all British bombers means bombing effort on Germany starts for real in 1944 in daylight. The Hawker Hurricane should have been out of production and would have been if the Typhoon didn't have problems, just cancelling Hurricanes means less Hurricanes, whatever you want more of come about two years later. I believe world production capacity of Mosquito's was running close to capacity, just because of the special woods it used.

In addition to the aircraft sent on lend lease from UK £1.5billion worth of aero engines, the Russians could have just asked for engines but actually they asked for aircraft.
 
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