Worst aircraft of WW2?

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Just read about this bomber. First time ever heard of it. Seems it was a problem.

Consolidated B-32 Dominator

Consolidated B-32 Dominator

".....In service, the B-32 had numerous deficiencies. The cockpit had an extremely high noise level and the instrument layout was poor. Bombardier vision was rather poor. The aircraft was overweight for the available engine power, the mechanical subsystems were inadequate, and there were frequent engine fires caused by a faulty nacelle design. There were frequent undercarriage failures, which caused the type to be grounded briefly during May of 1945. On the plus side, the B-32 had excellent low-speed directional control, good takeoff and landing characteristics and rapid control response. The B-32 was a stable bombing platform, its manned turrets provided good protection, its subsystems were easily accessible for maintenance, and its reversible inboard propellers gave it excellent ground-handling characteristics....."


Adler, its taken me 10 minutes to stop laughing at your siggy quotes!!!!
 

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I think I mentioned earlier that I was surprised no one had mentioned the Airacomet, though I personally think it's a bad plane per se, just not allowed to develop properly. As it was it did fail as a fighter, though it was the first US jet a/c and provided valuable data and experience with jet technology; in that respect it is more like an experemental testbed than a combat a/c. But the Meteor Mk.1 wasn't much better, with worse climb and similar high speed insibillity and was more underpowered than the P-59A, the Meteor did have the advantage that it had excelent low-alt speed performance with 415 mph near SL while the P-59 had a similar speed gradiant to prop fighters.

The Plane was unfortunatly overengeneered for safety and a high service ceiling with a very large and thick -albeit laminar flow- wing (45.5 ft span, 386 ft2 area). Unfortunaely this wing actually limited ceiling to (a still impressive) ~47,500 ft due to shock-stall (compressibillity) problems. Restrictions were also placed on testing the design due to secrecy issues: preventing the use of NACA wind tunnels and resulting in poor streamlining and aerodynamic problems with the air intakes and nacelle-wingroot interaction.

With smaller thinner wings (say the same wings but scaled down to 85% of the originals (thus ~72% of the area) with a new canopy with better view, more streamlined intakes and nacelles, improoved flaps and controll surfaces, and a strengthened tail it could have been a good fighter. (it could have carried the P-38's armament as well) This may seem like alot of changes, but besides the wings, its just a large number of small modifications, no more than was done with the P-63 also designed by Bell and shared many characteristics with the P-59.

The P-59A/B also served in the useful role of conversion trainer being well suited to this role with friendly handeling and low stall speed it also glided well.
 
Did the P-59 ever enter service as a fighter?
I've only heard of it as a trainer.
The part I set in bold font is the reason I think that it does not make this list.



Elvis
 
Another thing about the p-59 was its top speed, only 409 mph, so slower than the P-51, F4U and P-47. Seems a pretty big drawback for something intended as a next generation fighter
 
KK89...Your improvements on the P59 resulted in the P80! That's what the original requirement was for the 80, an improved 59.
 
A I said there were huge handicaps in development due to secrecy with the P-59 program which prevented collaboration with the NACA, or even the use of any decent wind tunnels (issues Lockheed didn't have to deal with, granted their designs were better and they had more background in high speed paper projects- L133 jet project). It was also over-engineered to be safe so the designers could be sure that it would at least work.

Look at the early Meteor, it wasn't much better, but unlike the P-59 the Meteor continued to be developed. On the other Hand the P-59 was abandoned as a combat plane soon after the delivery of the YP-59A's and only minor improvements were made to the Production P-59s. Similarly the Meteor could have been abandoned in favor of the Vampire as was done with the P-80. One major advantage the Meteor did have (besides continual development and interest) was low altitude performance, the Mk.I could do 410+ mph at SL and ~420 mph at 10,000 ft and could maintain this unlike piston fighters which had to use brief WEP usages, while the P-59 performed no better than piston a/c down low, though it did out perform most above 30,000 ft and had better maneuverability at altitude with the low wing loading. (although it would have benefited more to use smaller, thinner, wings at the expense of wing loading to have better speed performance:the P-59 having a wing area of 386 ft2 and fairly thick too!!!)

The speed of the YP-59A was 409 mph @ 35,000 ft with 1,650 lbf I-16 engines, the P-59A improoved this to 413 mph at ~30,000 ft with 1,650 lbf J31 engines, the P-59 with slight airframe improvements and 2,000 lbf J31-GE-5 engines managed to do ~450 mph at optimum altitude (~35,000 ft). And the P-59B even managed a max range of 950 mi ith 2x 125 gal drop tanks and increased internal fuel over earlier versions.

The biggest change needed to make the craft combat worthy would be the wings: scaling them down in all dimensions to ~85% would bring area down to ~270-280 ft2 somewhat thinner (the same airfoil but smaller in all dimensions) and span to ~38-40 ft. This would cut down on drag considerably, increase roll rate, and low altitude speed at the expense of higher wing loading- ceiling may actually improve due to the thinner wings and reduction of shock stall. (though wing loading would still be under 50 lb/ft2 at max load, and under 40 lb/ft2 normal loaded, similar to the Vampire I) Other than that small improvements in control surfaces and flaps, a redesign of nacelle/intake and general streamlining, and a better canopy. (armament was easiliy changed, the P-38's armament being probably the most practical) It would never have been as good as the P-80 and not as versatile , but it could have been much better than it turned out imo. (not mostly Bell's fault, just a bad combination of decisions and cercumstances)

The craft also had the highest thrust/weight of any fighter design of the war with 2x 2000 lbf engines (used on the last few P-59A's and all B's) and a max takeoff weight of 12,700 lbs of the P-59A (13,700 max in the P-59B) and 10,800-11,000 lbs normal loaded it had a thrust/weight of .31 to .37 at takeoff! (compared to ~.28-.32 for the early (Y)P-80A, ~.25-.29 for the Meteor I and III, ~25-.27 in the early Vampire I with 2,700 lbf Goblin I, and ~.28-.31 for the Me 262 and He 162 without over-rev, the He 280 had more with 004A and B engines but it was not matched well at all to these-- overall performance dropped despite the increase of ~650-670 kp in late HeS-8/HeS-001 prototypes to ~820-860 kp per engine of the 004 without over-rev of the 004A as they were bulkier -though diameter was about the same- and weighed twice as much and range went to hell as well)

Yes it only saw operational service as a conversion trainer (and later a drone/target towing a/c) And as it was it was fairly well suited for conversion training with good glider characteristics (good for engine outs which were common in testing) and had friendly handling characteristics.
 
I understand it wasn't uncommon to deadstick the P-59's after running out of fuel. It certainly was a pretty plane, even if it wasn't a success as a fighter.

As to flyboy's comment about the TBD's being kamikazes at Midway, the problem was that, for varied reasons, they never got the fighter escort they were supposed to get.

Navy air doctrine of the day was that the torpedo-haulers would come in on the deck, whilst dive bombers would come down from above and both would get fighter escort that would both protect the attackers and suppress defensive flak. What's more, the torpedo planes were expected to split up, so as to hit their targets from both sides. Defense against a torpedo plane attack was by turning into the attackers; when they're coming at you from both sides of the bow, turning into one group gives the other group a clear shot at your side. All of this, of course, whilst the dive bombers are dropping down on you from above and the fighters are strafing your decks.

Unfortunately, the F4F's couldn't stay down low with the slow TBD's, so they got separated en route to the Japanese fleet and weren't there when the Japs CAP struck.

Do remember that there were more Torpedo 8 birds at Midway: TBF's that flew from Midway, together with 4 torpedo-carrying B-26's (Huh?). Most of them didn't come back home, either, and no one can consider either TBFs or B-26s to be dogs.

CD
 
And with that huge wing area the P-59 was a good glider, a property appreciated during testing when the fairly unreliable I-A engines would fail (or sometimes the plane would just run out of fuel due to the high fuel consumption)
dead stick glide landings were relatively mild in this plane, particularly when you have unlimited hard pan to land on stretching for miles. (Muroc AAF base)

It was this feature which largely limited the performance of the a/c as well, the thick airfoil caused shock stall problems above ~48,000 ft, and the high drag of this huge (ironically laminar flow) wing prevented the craft from reaching high speeds, particularly at low altitude. (opposed to the Meteor I which could reach ~420 mph at 10,000 ft) Plus there were aerodynamic problems (most noticeably with the intakes and nacelle/wing-root interaction) which could have been solved had Gen. Arnold (for all the good he did for the advancements of high performance a/c) prevented Bell from testing their design in decent wind tunnels and working with the NACA-- due to secrecy issues...
 
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