Was the B-29 Superfortress a Failure?
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GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
Actually, no - not having a good life at the moment.I'm shocked, Dave, not your usual degree of care... Are you feeling okay?
The Stirling was a good idea crippled be reusing the wrong ideas.
It was a bad bomber, but its draggy high lift wing from the Sunderland made it a half decent transport.
As a transport, it made a great glider tug.
Indeed!
Tom Graham
Airman
- 16
- Sep 27, 2022
Nobody has mentioned the "Battle of Kansas" or "Operation Matterhorn", so here are a couple of links.
Battle of Kansas - Wikipedia
Operation Matterhorn - Wikipedia
Tom Graham
Airman
- 16
- Sep 27, 2022
In Tokyo, like all Japanese cities house were built of wood. They burnt very easily. The surviving buildings are built of bricks or concrete. Fire bombing European cities required explosive bombs to destroy the roof and give access to the interior for the incendiaries. The exterior remained standing but the interiors were gutted.
See here:
Japanese houses were built of wood, they burnt very well in SUMMER. The surviving buildings you can see are built from brick or concrete. European house were built of brick. They required demolition of the roof by explosive bombs, to give access to the interiors for incendiaries.
You can see how it worked here:
I know - but the the quote I highlighted in bold earlier refers to the specification that the main RAF heavies were built to - Spec P.13/36 "Twin-engined medium bomber for "world-wide use" (Halifax and Manchester/Lancaster built to this - ended up as four engined bombers - absolutely no reference to functionality incorporated into the design for troop transport that I can find - any use as such afterwards was as adaptation)
McAndy and Pbehn mention the provision of troop transport and the incorporation of that functionality being incorporated into the design and specification and mention the Stirling in particular - but again, this was built to a different specification - spec B.12/36 . This specifically required a four-engined bomber - of the designs for which, only the Stirling went into production. I can't find any written proof so far that troop transport was 'designed in' to this either as of yet
Production aircraft like the AW 23 and the Bombay were designed to spec Air Ministry Specification C.26/31 - issued five years before and very different in nature. The Bombay proved to be an exceedingly useful aircraft, as it happened.
Aha, no less that the lazy mans research tool, wiki:
"The Air Ministry published Specification B.12/36, for a high-speed, long-range, four-engined strategic bomber aircraft that would be capable of being designed and constructed at speed.[4] The bomb load was to be a maximum of 14,000 lb (6,350 kg) carried to a range of 2,000 miles (3218 km) or a lesser payload of 8,000 lb (3,629 kg) to 3,000 miles (4,800 km) (very demanding for the era). It was to have a crew of six and was to have a normal all-up weight of 48,000 lb, while a maximum overload weight of 65,000 lb was also envisioned.[4] The aircraft would have to be capable of cruising at speeds of 230 mph or greater while flying at 15,000 ft (4,600 m), carrying three gun turrets (located in the nose, amidships, and rear positions) for defence.[5]
The aircraft should also be able to be used as a troop transport for 24 soldiers and be able to use catapult assistance for takeoff when heavily laden.[6][5] The concept was that the aircraft would fly troops to far corners of the British Empire and then support them with bombing. To help with this task, as well as ease production, it needed to be able to be broken down into parts, for transport by train.[7] Since it could be operating from limited "back country" airfields, it needed to lift off from a 500 ft (150 m) runway and be able to clear 50 ft (15 m) trees at the end, a specification with which most small aircraft would have a problem today. Aviation author Geoffrey Norris observed that the stringent requirements given in the specification for the prospective aircraft to be able to make use of existing infrastructure, specifically the specified maximum wingspan of 100 feet, adversely affected the Stirling's performance, such as its relatively low ceiling and its inability to carry anything larger than 500 lb bombs.[4]"
So transport capability WAS built into the Stirling. But it was built to a different spec than the Lancaster or Halifax. So in case anyone is still awake, we can rewind back to the initial postulation that the Lancaster was a compromised design because troop transportation capability was built into its inherent design.
*It wasn't* - but it was for the Stirling [and relax!]
"The Air Ministry published Specification B.12/36, for a high-speed, long-range, four-engined strategic bomber aircraft that would be capable of being designed and constructed at speed.[4] The bomb load was to be a maximum of 14,000 lb (6,350 kg) carried to a range of 2,000 miles (3218 km) or a lesser payload of 8,000 lb (3,629 kg) to 3,000 miles (4,800 km) (very demanding for the era). It was to have a crew of six and was to have a normal all-up weight of 48,000 lb, while a maximum overload weight of 65,000 lb was also envisioned.[4] The aircraft would have to be capable of cruising at speeds of 230 mph or greater while flying at 15,000 ft (4,600 m), carrying three gun turrets (located in the nose, amidships, and rear positions) for defence.[5]
The aircraft should also be able to be used as a troop transport for 24 soldiers and be able to use catapult assistance for takeoff when heavily laden.[6][5] The concept was that the aircraft would fly troops to far corners of the British Empire and then support them with bombing. To help with this task, as well as ease production, it needed to be able to be broken down into parts, for transport by train.[7] Since it could be operating from limited "back country" airfields, it needed to lift off from a 500 ft (150 m) runway and be able to clear 50 ft (15 m) trees at the end, a specification with which most small aircraft would have a problem today. Aviation author Geoffrey Norris observed that the stringent requirements given in the specification for the prospective aircraft to be able to make use of existing infrastructure, specifically the specified maximum wingspan of 100 feet, adversely affected the Stirling's performance, such as its relatively low ceiling and its inability to carry anything larger than 500 lb bombs.[4]"
So transport capability WAS built into the Stirling. But it was built to a different spec than the Lancaster or Halifax. So in case anyone is still awake, we can rewind back to the initial postulation that the Lancaster was a compromised design because troop transportation capability was built into its inherent design.
*It wasn't* - but it was for the Stirling
[and relax!]
Thumpalumpacus
Captain
Tokyo was firebombed the first time at the end of winter. The buildings went up fine.
Ambient temperature is only rarely a factor in structural fires -- especially ones started by gasoline-based incendiaries in the first place.
Shortround6
Major General
It wasn't just that the B-29 could set fire to cities. That was more a function of the actual bombs.
It was that they could destroy a city using around 300 bombers rather than 1000 bombers. Add do it from longer range.
The other Japanese cities also use wood construction. More square miles of Tokyo were destroyed than in either atomic bomb blast.
The B-29 could perform a number of missions, using a variety of weapons and do it at longer ranges using fewer aircraft than any other bomber if the time.
It was that they could destroy a city using around 300 bombers rather than 1000 bombers. Add do it from longer range.
The other Japanese cities also use wood construction. More square miles of Tokyo were destroyed than in either atomic bomb blast.
The B-29 could perform a number of missions, using a variety of weapons and do it at longer ranges using fewer aircraft than any other bomber if the time.
P.13/36 That led to the Manchester (and the following Lancaster) and Halifax DID include a troop carrying requirement. As I previously noted that was not dropped until 30 Jan 1940. Other initial requirements like dive bombing, catapult launch and torpedo dropping had been dropped at different points earlier in the design process. I extracted that from a history of the Manchester bomber. Can't now recall how many troops it was for.
And the claim that the wingspan of the Stirling was limited to 99ft to fit existing infrastructure (specifically hangars) is a myth. By the time Spec B.12/36 was drawn up, the RAF was already building hangars on its airfields plenty wide enough to take it.
The Type A Aeroplane Shed designed in 1924 and erected from 1925 became the standard RAF inter-war hangar until the mid-1930s. It spanned 122ft with the doors opening across the full width. With a clear door height of 30ft it could even accommodate the Stirling's great height. Subsequent types were even wider and taller.
I researched the history of the Manchester/Halifax a few years ago and posted this on another site
"Not sure about B.12/36 (4 engined heavy bomber), that led to the Stirling, as I can't find much on the details of the original spec, but P.13/36 (the 2 engined medium or "small heavy" bomber) did contain a dive bombing requirement, as you correctly note, along with the torpedo bombing and catapulting requirements - initially.
The winner of P.13/36 was the Avro Manchester with the Handley Page HP.56 chosen as a second back-up type to meet the requirement. Both were to be fitted with RR Vulture engines. Both designs were signed off by the Air Ministry early in 1937.
The torpedo dropping requirement of P.13/36 was then dropped on 26 Aug 1937.
The catapult launch requirement was dropped on 4 July 1938. However it seems that the weight saving this should have generated could not be taken advantage of in the first 20 Avro Manchester airframes as they were already on the production lines, and it is not clear if it was ever designed out, according to Robert Kirby's "The Avro Manchester". Why the weight saving from this and not the dive bombing requirement is specifically noted in more than one book I know not. It is also odd that the first production Manchesters did not come off the production line until July 1939, if 20 were already on it in July 1938.
The dive bombing requirement was dropped on 11 Aug 1938 as the 60 degree angle required was considered unobtainable.
The troop carrying requirement also in the original specification was not dropped until 30 January 1940.
By mid-1937 the Air Ministry was becoming concerned about progress with the Vulture, and the ability of RR to deliver enough engines. In July that year the Air Ministry decided that the HP aircraft should be fitted with 4 engines. At the same time they were giving Avro a production contract for 200 Manchesters. HP went back to the drawing board and re-designed the HP.56 into the HP.57 Halifax by the end of that year, with manufacture of the prototype beginning in March 1938. So HP were able to take advantage of all the deletions from the spec. before the prototype Halifax progressed very far in its build.
So I'm not sure if it is Chadwick's "determination to meet the spec" , as you put it, or his being locked into delivering what had been signed off by the Air Ministry earlier in 1937. I've read a comment to suggest that it had been reported to the Air Ministry that "from the moment Avro's Roy Chadwick knew that HP was going to build a four-engine machine, he became dissatisfied with his Manchester design". If he was so dis-satisfied it took him until 18th April 1940 to write to the Air Ministry making proposals for Manchester variants, the last of which is the Manchester III/Lancaster I (last as it wasn't his preferred idea or last for effect?). In mid-1940 BT308 was pulled from the Manchester production line, converted, and first flew as a Lancaster in Jan 1941, with production switching over from October 1941 after completion of the initial production order for 200 Manchesters.
Why choose the HP design over the Avro one in 1937 for the 4 engine conversion? One reason might be that Avro were the competion winners and were promising prototype delivery within an estimated 12 months of selection (contract award 30 April 1937, delivery eventually slipped to July 1939) while HP were looking at 21 months (contract award on 30 April 1937, delivery slipped after re-design, which was estimated to have cost 6 months, to Oct 1939). Later Chadwick admitted "that it was his inexperience in designing large all-metal aircraft of the rigidity demanded by the specification that had led, in part, to the aircraft coming out overweight" (Kirby again). It is perhaps fortunate therefore that Avro was later able to benefit from that inexperience through the massive weight lifting capacity of the Lancaster as much as the requirements built into the original spec. that couldn't be changed."
And the claim that the wingspan of the Stirling was limited to 99ft to fit existing infrastructure (specifically hangars) is a myth. By the time Spec B.12/36 was drawn up, the RAF was already building hangars on its airfields plenty wide enough to take it.
The Type A Aeroplane Shed designed in 1924 and erected from 1925 became the standard RAF inter-war hangar until the mid-1930s. It spanned 122ft with the doors opening across the full width. With a clear door height of 30ft it could even accommodate the Stirling's great height. Subsequent types were even wider and taller.
I researched the history of the Manchester/Halifax a few years ago and posted this on another site
"Not sure about B.12/36 (4 engined heavy bomber), that led to the Stirling, as I can't find much on the details of the original spec, but P.13/36 (the 2 engined medium or "small heavy" bomber) did contain a dive bombing requirement, as you correctly note, along with the torpedo bombing and catapulting requirements - initially.
The winner of P.13/36 was the Avro Manchester with the Handley Page HP.56 chosen as a second back-up type to meet the requirement. Both were to be fitted with RR Vulture engines. Both designs were signed off by the Air Ministry early in 1937.
The torpedo dropping requirement of P.13/36 was then dropped on 26 Aug 1937.
The catapult launch requirement was dropped on 4 July 1938. However it seems that the weight saving this should have generated could not be taken advantage of in the first 20 Avro Manchester airframes as they were already on the production lines, and it is not clear if it was ever designed out, according to Robert Kirby's "The Avro Manchester". Why the weight saving from this and not the dive bombing requirement is specifically noted in more than one book I know not. It is also odd that the first production Manchesters did not come off the production line until July 1939, if 20 were already on it in July 1938.
The dive bombing requirement was dropped on 11 Aug 1938 as the 60 degree angle required was considered unobtainable.
The troop carrying requirement also in the original specification was not dropped until 30 January 1940.
By mid-1937 the Air Ministry was becoming concerned about progress with the Vulture, and the ability of RR to deliver enough engines. In July that year the Air Ministry decided that the HP aircraft should be fitted with 4 engines. At the same time they were giving Avro a production contract for 200 Manchesters. HP went back to the drawing board and re-designed the HP.56 into the HP.57 Halifax by the end of that year, with manufacture of the prototype beginning in March 1938. So HP were able to take advantage of all the deletions from the spec. before the prototype Halifax progressed very far in its build.
So I'm not sure if it is Chadwick's "determination to meet the spec" , as you put it, or his being locked into delivering what had been signed off by the Air Ministry earlier in 1937. I've read a comment to suggest that it had been reported to the Air Ministry that "from the moment Avro's Roy Chadwick knew that HP was going to build a four-engine machine, he became dissatisfied with his Manchester design". If he was so dis-satisfied it took him until 18th April 1940 to write to the Air Ministry making proposals for Manchester variants, the last of which is the Manchester III/Lancaster I (last as it wasn't his preferred idea or last for effect?). In mid-1940 BT308 was pulled from the Manchester production line, converted, and first flew as a Lancaster in Jan 1941, with production switching over from October 1941 after completion of the initial production order for 200 Manchesters.
Why choose the HP design over the Avro one in 1937 for the 4 engine conversion? One reason might be that Avro were the competion winners and were promising prototype delivery within an estimated 12 months of selection (contract award 30 April 1937, delivery eventually slipped to July 1939) while HP were looking at 21 months (contract award on 30 April 1937, delivery slipped after re-design, which was estimated to have cost 6 months, to Oct 1939). Later Chadwick admitted "that it was his inexperience in designing large all-metal aircraft of the rigidity demanded by the specification that had led, in part, to the aircraft coming out overweight" (Kirby again). It is perhaps fortunate therefore that Avro was later able to benefit from that inexperience through the massive weight lifting capacity of the Lancaster as much as the requirements built into the original spec. that couldn't be changed."
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As I noted previously there were 3 firebombing raids against Japanese cities in Jan/Feb 1945. While the buildings burned just fine, the raids themselves were considered failures because they didn't achieve the mass firestorm effect hoped for.
In post #186 I set out the factors considered necessary for a successful firestorm. Precipitation was considered the least important.
Peter Gunn
Master Sergeant
Hang in there bud, we're all in this together, we're always here for you!Actually, no - not having a good life at the moment.
Hang in there, buddy.
This is an interesting point, and it explains a lot. The Manchester was Avro's first all-metal monoplane the company put into production of its own design. In the late 1930s it was a big gamble awarding the contract to Avro as the only all-metal modern aircraft the firm built in that time was the Bristol Blenheim under licence. Avro's workforce essentially learned metal working techniques from Bristol to build the Blenheim; it had not produced such a thing before. The Anson and its previous aircraft on the production lines were of earlier vintage, metal structures covered in fabric and still working in wood with the Anson's wings, so a big change on the factory floor.
Sheet metal fabrication is quite a different discipline to welding steel structures and cladding them in fabric and adding wood. Tooling is different as well. A production line would need a compressed air supply that maintained a constant pressure across the entire shop floor for the operation of rivet guns across the entire production line, for example, as well as the side shops for operating benders etc. A vast amount of expenditure would have been needed before Avro built the Blenheims to enable increased sheet metal fabrication. There's no doubt that English wheels and benders etc would have already been available within Avro's facilities, but there's a big difference between having one or two in a side shop making cowls for Ansons and fabricating an entire aircraft structure, so a lot more tooling was required.
These things illustrate what Avro was up against just to build the Blenheim and from that work it deemed itself confident enough to design and fabricate an advanced bomber like the Manchester. It also explains the issues the type suffered, aerodynamically and systems-wise.
Yup, whilst operating in performance parameters, e.g. altitudes, speeds and distances that no single bomber beforehand had been able to achieve, meanwhile offering a shirt sleeve environment on board. The B-29 was a game changer.
This photo that has appeared many times has always puzzled me. With two Grand Slams totalling 44,000lb aboard, just how much fuel was it carrying? And therefore what was its potential range? Were they even filled with explosives or sand ballast or effectively just aerodynamic test shapes?
The USAAF tested a B-29 at Eglin AFB in Florida between Feb & June 1945 carrying a single 12,000lb Tallboy in a modified bomb bay (similar arrangement to that very first Silverplate aircraft but with the bomb carried semi-internally). They found the range of the aircraft reduced to 1,320 miles (with the hope of increasing it to 1,500 miles with further bomb door modifications. In other words about 300-500 miles less than normal), service ceiling was 27,000ft and the time to climb from 5,000ft to 27,000ft increased by 15 mins. Tests were then being continued with Grand Slam.
Here is a report from June 1945 on the results of those tests. Unfortunately the reproduction of the photos is too poor to make out much of the bomb bay detail.
The proposal was to create one specialist bomb group to deploy these weapons against Japan. Anyone happen to know if this got beyond a proposal in WW2? I know that come Korea in 1950 a small group of crews in the 19th BG had been trained to drop the VB-13 Tarzon bombs (based on Tallboy) from similarly modified aircraft. In WW2 the 19th BG had already deployed to the Marianas by the time the Eglin tests were carried out.
At 22,000lbs, its not as if they can be dropped separately either, is it?
That on top of the penalties you describe, makes its difficult to imagine a sensible operational reason for carrying two Grand Slams. I suspect this was primarily and engineering challenge and a propaganda opportunity.
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