Damn, how did I forget? The best float plane fighter ever. Does anyone have stats (speed and range) for it in floatplane configuration all I can find are the land based fighter version.
Why was the SBD such an effective aircraft?
- Thread starter fliger747
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Damn, how did I forget? The best float plane fighter ever. Does anyone have stats (speed and range) for it in floatplane configuration all I can find are the land based fighter version.
True, and good point, though I don' think AT-6 is the same as an SBD. Performance though is about what I would expect at roughly 300 mph.
But if an SBD could sometimes shoot down a Zero with a top speed of ~ 250 mph I would expect it would do better if it could make 300 mph, right?
I think the main problem with the Boomerang is that it took the Aussies too long to develop it and it showed up in the field as a fighter in April 1943, by then a 300 mph fighter was way too far behind the curve. You wouldn't want to tangle with an A6M5 or a Ki-61 in that. A 300 mph fighter in 1941 or early 1942 though, maybe is a little bit more plausible.
Kevin J
Banned
Its predecessor the Wirraway did shoot down a plane.
MIflyer
1st Lieutenant
Yes, the Whirraway did score some kills, and it was a bit less advanced than an AT-6. I would attribute that success to Aussie desperation and a target rich environment.
You know I just remembered something. My high school physics teacher flew the last test flight in the XSBD-1 before the USN accepted it. He was a USN aviator stationed at Long Beach in the late 30's. The last test the USN wanted was a dive from 20,000 ft with a live 500 lb bomb. The Douglas test pilot refused, saying that he would not fly with live ordnance. They asked my teacher and he said that he certainly would do that test, since he did it with much older aircraft every day. So he flew the test flight, which took 30 min, and Douglas paid him $500. He said that $1000/hour was the highest wage rate he ever made.
You know I just remembered something. My high school physics teacher flew the last test flight in the XSBD-1 before the USN accepted it. He was a USN aviator stationed at Long Beach in the late 30's. The last test the USN wanted was a dive from 20,000 ft with a live 500 lb bomb. The Douglas test pilot refused, saying that he would not fly with live ordnance. They asked my teacher and he said that he certainly would do that test, since he did it with much older aircraft every day. So he flew the test flight, which took 30 min, and Douglas paid him $500. He said that $1000/hour was the highest wage rate he ever made.
GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
Although the Boomerang wasn't ideal as a fighter, it proved it's worth in the ground attack role.
Shortround6
Major General
I believe there were three MKVBs with floats and one MK IX? More sets of floats were built but never used.
I would note however that this is NOT a scout and neither are the French single seaters, unless we are using the term "scout" in it's WW I context. The Sopwith Camel was a "scout".
How long the French kept using the tem "scout" for a single seat fighter plane I don't know.
By the 1930s some AIr Forces and Navies had started calling the 2-3 seat reconnaissance planes "scouts".
The French single seaters were intended to drive off enemy recon planes or disrupt air attacks. While they might do fairly well against many of the float planes listed they were going to be pretty useless against most any land based fighter.
I would also be cautious of the term "observation" in regards to many of these planes. There was a wide spread theory in the 1930s that battleship or Cruiser launched float planes/flying boats could be used during the big gun battle to "observe" the fall of the shells and radio corrections back to the ship to increase the accuracy and effective range of the ships guns.
This may have been done in a few fleet exercises and was done by the Warspite in Norway, much to the detriment of the German destroyer force. Obviously it only works if the enemy has both lousy AA guns and accompanying aircraft of even less performance than the planes doing the observing or "spotting".
A Fairey Seafox spotter plane was used by Ajax in the River Plate.
Shortround6
Major General
Thank you
From wiki the Graf Spee's plane was out of service, I read a book on the BoRP when I was a kid and Ajax had to undertake maneuvers to recover it at some time during the battle, they cant stay up there forever.
swampyankee
Chief Master Sergeant
- 4,031
- Jun 25, 2013
The USS Savannah lost three floatplanes that were trying to observe shoots in Sicily.
Shortround6
Major General
to turn a Dauntless into a 300mph airplane you need to stick an R-2600 into it. No version of the R-1820 or R-1930 is going to do the trick at 14-20,000ft. Turbo engines might do the trick at higher altitudes.
Grumman tried this with an Avenger trying to make an attack plane.
They picked up 3-5mph over a standard Avenger. Bottom step was faired to a point.
If you have 800hp driving your SBD-3 at 250mph at 16,000ft the cube rule says you need 1382hp to go 300 mph.
Shortround6
Major General
When I was a kid one of my friends fathers had flown Kingfishers off the Battleship Colorado. He did a number of spotting missions for shore bombardments. But I think using float planes during fleet engagements had pretty much disappeared.
The Avenger was a bus, so much drag. Empty weight is almost twice that of an SBD, it is a totally different animal. If they could get that T6 derived Boomerang to 300 mph with a 1,200 hp engine, they could have gotten an SBD to go that fast. Might have required trimming the wing down a little bit but I'm not even sure about that.
Spotting shells with scout / observation planes was rare in naval practice for the same reason the Norden bombsight didn't work - there were usually clouds or mist or smoke in the way... or the engagement was at night. Naval gunfire exchanges were also often too quick to register corrections being radioed in. I think usually what mattered more was spotting enemy ships before they came into contact, hence scouting from observation. The SBD itself was a "Scout Bomber".
And of course those were scout planes. Even three hundred km range was a fairly long distance for a surface vessel. Submarines were also routinely spotted that way, as were enemy smoke plumes. A scout, especially one that can deploy from some remote lagoon, doesn't have to be a full-fledged recon plane. The F1M was primarily a scout, despite it's short range and apparent utility as a fighter.
They did do it on land though with regular artillery quite often, that is what the L4 was all about, and the Storch too to some extent. Risky job flying one of those but they were effective as artillery spotters and in observing troop movements.
Spotting shells with scout / observation planes was rare in naval practice for the same reason the Norden bombsight didn't work - there were usually clouds or mist or smoke in the way... or the engagement was at night. Naval gunfire exchanges were also often too quick to register corrections being radioed in. I think usually what mattered more was spotting enemy ships before they came into contact, hence scouting from observation. The SBD itself was a "Scout Bomber".
And of course those were scout planes. Even three hundred km range was a fairly long distance for a surface vessel. Submarines were also routinely spotted that way, as were enemy smoke plumes. A scout, especially one that can deploy from some remote lagoon, doesn't have to be a full-fledged recon plane. The F1M was primarily a scout, despite it's short range and apparent utility as a fighter.
They did do it on land though with regular artillery quite often, that is what the L4 was all about, and the Storch too to some extent. Risky job flying one of those but they were effective as artillery spotters and in observing troop movements.
- Thread starter
- #174
Was just looking at the Graf Zeppelin (the Ship) at 33550 tons and 35 knots, with a proposed air group of 30 ME 109's and only 12 JU 87's. Talk about a small air group. Interesting that they were nothing to have any VT squadron. I suppose with their small Navy that they looked at it being mostly a defensive adjunct.
Shortround6
Major General
The Avenger was a bit of a bus, just pointing out that taking the rear seater out and faring over the opening doesn't really buy you much when comes to speed.
For the T-6 you had an engine that was good for 600hp at 6200ft (at best, some models gave 600hp at 2000 or 3000ft depending on model) so at altitude you had????
the engine in the Boomerang had 1200hp at 4900ft and 1050hp at 13,100ft compared to the 500-520hp the T-6 might have had that altitude. So yes doubling the power can get you up to around 300mph. Now, how are you going to double the power of the R-1820? But you don't need to double it since you are already somewhat faster than the T-6
BTW they cut 7 ft off wing span and 30 sq ft of wing area from the Wirraway to the Boomerang and they also lost over 2 feet of fuselage despite the longer engine.
Boomerangs also got partial wheel covers the T-6 and Wirraway didn't have
Since the SBD is faster than a T-6 you don't need to double the power, around a 70% increase should do the trick.
You won't save much of anything trying to turn a SBD into fighter, you might as well start over.
The spotter planes could operate closer to the enemy and sometimes have a better view than the firing ships. This pre war plan went to heck because it wouldn't work at night and it turned out that even the cruiser engagements wound up being rather twisted affairs with not a lot of straight steaming. The other change was improved radars that could range on the shell splashes and tell the fire control people if they were over or under a lot quicker than the planes could and the radar worked at night and in poor weather.
What I was getting at was that not all navies uses the same terminology and the French "scouts" weren't so much scouts or observation planes as they were float catapult fighters for ship defense.
Shortround6
Major General
Well, they did design and build the Fieseler 167
But with the on again, off again priorities for the Graf Zeppelin it may have been decided that more fighters were a better option than 10-12 torpedo bombers.
Maybe and maybe not. Depends on how you get it to 300 mph. If you trim down that high lift but draggy wing, you're sacrificing the SBD's greatest ACM asset, it's maneuverability. Reducing weight would help with acceleration, rate of climb and general agility, but the real "magic wand" is drag reduction on a massive scale. Replace the 1820 with a two speed 1830 and a tapered stream lined cowling, fair the canopy a la A6M, smooth up the landing gear doors, eliminate all the "dive bomber stuff" mentioned earlier, replace the dive brakes with a smooth, quick deploy fowler combat flap, retract the tail wheel and hook behind well sealed doors, and engineer the exhaust system for max thrust >250 mph. Just might get you there. A "Douglas Zero".
Problem is, a lot of the ACM success of the SBD arose out of its ambush value: "the biter bit". Fighter jocks are often prone to thinking of a dive bomber as "easy meat", sometimes to their terminal chagrin. Tricked out as a fighter, it is seen in a whole different light.
Cheers,
Wes
Ascent
Senior Airman
As an aside, James Doohan (a.k.a Scotty from Star Trek) flew the Auster mark V in this role for the Canadian artillery after being wounded on Juno beach on D-Day.
Wildcat
Major
The boomerang was a development of the Wirraway which in turn was a license built NA-16, not T-6. In fact I believe the T-6 was developed from the NA-16 as well. Splitting hairs I know but many seem to think the wirraway and T-6 are the same.
As for the boomerang and not shooting down enemy aircraft, it must be remembered where it was used and in what role. The first squadrons to be equipped were all home defence squadrons based in Australia. Off the top of my head these units encountered Japanese aircraft 3 or 4 times only. Some were at night and the others were scrambles against bombers which they never caught due to lack of speed. No 4 sqn in New Guinea was a Tactical Reconnaissance squadron, not a fighter squadron. It's boomerangs operated at ground level and therefore always at a tactical height disadvantage to any enemy fighters. Even so, encounters were rare. 3 were believed shot down by Japanese fighters, 2 of these fell when they were attacked by 7 zero's. The first boomerang lost in combat was shot down by American ground fire and ace Gerald Johnson shot one down as well!
Shortround6
Major General
This is close but not quite right, the Finns were supplied with planes right off the Brewster Production line, not from Navy "stocks". However the planes had bee ordered by the navy and the Finns were allowed to jump the production queue so to speak. The Navy swapped their spots in the queue for later ones so they could get a different model. The Navy had already had the original prototype rebuilt with a newer, more powerful engine, bigger prop and other improvements.
