Vultee P-66

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Trilisser

Airman 1st Class
261
24
May 22, 2011
Is there a book or even a magazine article with a good structural description/cutaway drawings of the P-66? Both books and the net references I have seen are very vague. It seems that 99 % of Internet articles are based on basically the same few books (American Fighter/Bowers & Angelucci; General Dynamics/John Wegg (Putnam) and Jonathan Thompson's Vultee book), none of which has much detail.
 
A couple of us were looking at build several of them a bunch of years back. There were enough specialty extrusions required, it was going to be hugely expensive, so the idea got dropped.
I had the thought that rebuilding a BT-13 into a P-66 replica powered by R-1340 would be neat. My father saw a BT-15 in Tulsa about 1950 that had flush riveted wings so you just need to find where those went(probably into the aluminum Coke cans at the supermarket).
 
The original design work on the P-66 was going to use as much commonality between the BT-13/15 as possible. But by the time the a/c went into production, there wasn't much left structures wise that was common between them. Some of the fuselage furnishings were common, but few other items.

Bob: Using a 1340 would only give you half the horsepower that the -66 had. Would make for a very anemic performing a/c.
 
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The original design work on the P-66 was going to use as much commonality between the BT-13/15 as possible. But by the time the a/c went into production, there wasn't much left structures wise that was common between them. Some of the fuselage furnishings were common, but few other items.

Bob: Using a 1340 would only give you half the horsepower that the -66 had. Would make for a very anemic performing a/c.
There's a lot of times when flying a T-6 that you realize even though it's fighter-like it needs more power to be a fighter. A BT-13 modified to look like a P-66 with retracting gear and shorter wings would be a lot lighter than a real P-66 and probably slightly better than a T-6 as that T-6 canopy has DRAG written all over it.
 
Tried that. First two link to this thread
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and web search came up dry
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Try this:



Interesting to see that, yet again, there are assertions that US designs had a critical impact on the design of the A6M and yet there isn't a single shred of evidence to support the claim.

Now we're supposed to believe that the P-66 (another failed US design) which first flew in September 1939 somehow influenced the Zero which first flew in April 1939. The Japanese couldn't design a good fighter without US help but they could clearly build and operate a time machine to steal data for a machine that first flew after the Zero. Truly remarkable!
 
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