Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules
OK and my original statement was "depending on the aircraft, they were partially made of wood" So your point?I didn't include the biplanes because their performance wasn't high enough
The I-16 was mixed but mostly wood, 10,000 were made almost all before 1942. (270 -300 mph depending on the model)
The Yak 1 was mostly-wood aircraft, with wooden wings. 8,700 made, mostly before 1944. (340-360 mph depending on version)
The Yak 7 also had wooden wings and partly wood fuselage, 6,300 made, also mostly before 1944 (350 mph)
The Yak 9 was 'partly wood' a mix of wood and aluminum (aluminum covered wings) 16,000 built (420 mph)
The LaGG-3 was all wood, 6,500 made, all prior to 1944. (340 mph)
The La 5 and La 5F and FN was all wood, 9,900 made, mostly replaced by La 7 in 1944 (400 mph)
The La 7 was mixed wood and metal, 5,000 made (410 mph)
The MiG-3 was mixed, including mostly wooden wings, 3,400 made (400 mph) (image here gives you an idea what parts were wood and what parts aluminum alloy)
By my count that is 16,000 all-wood (except for engine and guns), 25,000 'mostly' wood, and 24,000 mixed or partly wood aircraft. May of them successful, all in the 300-400 mph range (except some of the earlier I-16s)
A a large portion of the aircraft you listed were destroyed on the ground and shot out of the sky, especially during Barbarossa, so again what's your point?OK - and my original statement "depending on the aircraft, they were partially made of wood"I think this demonstrates that the Soviets made a very large amount of high performance wooden aircraft. They had some problems with the designs and the manufacturing, but the Mosquito wasn't entirely without problems either, and both England and the US had superior industrial capacity to the Soviet Union.
Yeah, I don't think an industrial pivot in the middle of a war is advisable. Even in the best circumstances you'll incur production slowdowns and production conflicts.
OK - now you get a warning! Pull your head out of your butt
OKThat was a joke about rating Soviet industrial capacity above US and British. Soviets were 'commies'. Get it?
Ban me if you think you ought to.
Like I said, you could get most of the Merlin engines you needed in say 1943 from Hurricanes which were being taken off the line in many Theaters about then. Work out a swap to the FAA to give them a few more TBFs, Martlets and Hellcats in exchange for the engines that would have gone into Fireflies and Barracudas. Dare I say maybe replace some of those Seafires too. Cancel the Henley a bit earlier and don't make Beaufighters with Merlins. You probably have enough right there.
Oh man,Like I said, you could get most of the Merlin engines you needed in say 1943 from Hurricanes which were being taken off the line in many Theaters about then. Work out a swap to the FAA to give them a few more TBFs, Martlets and Hellcats in exchange for the engines that would have gone into Fireflies and Barracudas. Dare I say maybe replace some of those Seafires too. Cancel the Henley a bit earlier and don't make Beaufighters with Merlins. You probably have enough right there.
As a further note I would suggest reading about operation Oyster, the raid on the Philips radio plant/s in Holland in Dec 1942.
Out of 97 planes used 15 were lost and 57 damaged, many due to bird strikes.
Are you speaking in terms of aircraft production because if so this is not true.US definition of length was based on the metric system and so was different to Britain, add all sorts of other standards like screw threads and sizes that were different in Britain and the US. Even aviation terminology. Drawings standards were different too, over and above the variation between companies.
What USSR produced is otally irrelevant to his debate. The key questions are a.) When is the earliest possible recognition that the Special Mosquito is a plausible alternative to B-17/24 for long range strategic bombing, b.) when can design/configuration be decided - leading to GFE procurement of specific engine variant of Packard Merlin, and c.) how early could a decision be made to prioritize production. If Merlin 61 series is the engine selected, then the A1 Priority for NAA P-51B must be the loser for Super Mosquito to procede. Alternative would be to seek and fund separate source for both.Wait a minute. Woah. Hold on padnuh. IIRC the Mosquito bomber wasn't flying in any numbers until 1942.
By then, you have thousands of Soviet aircraft made of wood, many of them with speeds of ~ 350 mph, and in mid 1942 they introduced the 400 mph La 5. All of these made of wood. The Soviets made tens of thousands of aircraft made of laminated plywood and resin during WW2.
If the Soviets could make ~20,000 Yak series fighters, and 9,000 La 5s I am certain the US could make at least that many Mosquitos if they really wanted to.
I think this is referring to the US survey foot, it only actually matters if rulers and tape measures start disagreeing with each other and you have to refer back to a reference standard.Are you speaking in terms of aircraft production because if so this is not true.
Plans were formulated in late 1944 to convert Canadian built B.25 aircraft arriving in Britain to two stage Merlins and bulged bomb bays. IIRC Marshalls of Cambridge produced one conversion before the plans were cancelled as the was expected that they would not be ready in time to make a difference.It should be noted that the Canadian built B. XXs and B. 25s used by the LNSF used single stage Merlins (in addition to B.XVIs) Used single stage Merlin Bomber Command did not consider 60 Series Merlins to be essential for missions over Germany. Obviously the faster, higher flying XVIs would be better, but war is nothing if not a series of compromises.
The link to the Mendenhall order gives the background to it. Spending many evenings in Germany and France the subject of weights measures and driving on the wrong side frequently comes up. The dimensions of a football (soccer) field are good for a two hour 5 beer discussion.I think this is referring to the US survey foot, it only actually matters if rulers and tape measures start disagreeing with each other and you have to refer back to a reference standard.
Foot (unit) - Wikipedia
In the United States, the foot was defined as 12 inches, with the inch being defined by the Mendenhall Order of 1893 as 39.37 inches = 1 m (making a US foot exactly 1200⁄3937 meters, approximately 0.30480061 m).[27][28] Out of 50 states and six other jurisdictions, 40 have legislated that surveying measures should be based on the U.S. survey foot, six have legislated that they be made on the basis of the international foot, and ten have not specified the conversion factor from metric units.[29]
Like I said, you could get most of the Merlin engines you needed in say 1943 from Hurricanes which were being taken off the line in many Theaters about then. Work out a swap to the FAA to give them a few more TBFs, Martlets and Hellcats in exchange for the engines that would have gone into Fireflies and Barracudas. Dare I say maybe replace some of those Seafires too. Cancel the Henley a bit earlier and don't make Beaufighters with Merlins. You probably have enough right there.
The attrition of the Luftwaffe was a long drawn out affair for which the 8th AF get a a disproportionate share of the credit. Frank W. Heilenday sums it up in a Rand paper entitled "Daylight Raids by the Eighth Air Force : Lingering Myths From World War II"Others have mentioned it already, with Mosquitos doing the strategic daylight bombing of Germany instead of B-17 / B-24 's, the Allies are going to have find some other way of luring the Jagdwaffe up to be destroyed in the air, if the Allies want air supremacy over the Normandy beaches.
Ok...so, if the 8th AF wasn't responsible for high attrition to the Luftwaffe, then what was?The attrition of the Luftwaffe was a long drawn out affair for which the 8th AF get a a disproportionate share of the credit. Frank W. Heilenday sums it up in a Rand paper entitled "Daylight Raids by the Eighth Air Force : Lingering Myths From World War II"
" Eighth Air Force has a special interest for the author since he was chief of Operations Analysis at Headquarters (HQ) 8th AF. He later was chief of Applied Research with the parent Strategic Sir Command (SAC) and served a total of 29 years in SAC."
"Myth F. 8th AF aircraft shot down a large fraction of all Luftwaffe fighters lost in combat. About 20,000 German fighters were lost in combat in 1944, the peak year of the air war. Eighth AF fighters and bombers
were credited with downing some 4000 of these, or about 20%. The Luftwaffe lost most of their fighters while performing their primary role — close air support of the German Army."
The Luftwaffe had largely withdrawn from France before the 8th AF showed up. A case in point was the effort made by the Luftwaffe at Dieppe. Despite having fighter aircraft that were superior in performance to the Spitfire Vs that formed the bulk of the fighters they were facing, the Luftwaffe made almost no impression on the invading force. Jabos did sink the small destroyer Berkley. On the other hand, the Luftwaffe bombers were more than decimated, losing 25 bombers, more than 17% of sorties.(source Eagle in Flames by E. R. Hooton)
The RAF flew 2,640 sorties (including 120 by the USAAF) vs 945 by the Luftwaffe. To put that in perspective the RAF and USAAF flew somewhere around 14,000 sorties on D Day. It is difficult to imagine even a thousand more fighters making a difference.
The record of the Luftwaffe in stopping anything Was extremely poor. They never stopped the invasion of Italy, the invasion of Sicily, the invasion of North Africa. They never stopped the evacuation of Dunkirk, they never stopped the evacuation of Crete, At Crete they had absolute air supremacy yet still could stop it.