WW2 Fantasy Aircraft

Let's design some fantasy aircraft for WWII.

The Rules

• Select a country and an air service.
• Select dates to start design, and introduce the aircraft into service. It should take three years to design a new aircraft, but blind, screaming panic mode over three months has had good results.
• Consider available resources. The Germans and Japanese fantasized about bombing the USA, but it was not happening. If your proposal is resource heavy, describe what other activity will be discontinued. Forget about not invading Russia. The whole point of WWII in Europe was to invade Russia.
• Select an aircraft manufacturer and engine(s).
• In context of WWII, new engine design from scratch takes too long. According to writer Bill Gunston, it takes five or six years to design a new engine and get it working. All the important engines of WWII were running prior to or very early in the war. You may propose upgrades of existing engines.
• Understand doctrine, design practise, and available technology of the nation and manufacturer. For example, the Russians did not see a requirement for high altitude combat. They did not make aircraft out of metal, and they did not have turbochargers. The Soviet P-47 Thunderbolt was not happening.
• Discuss how the aircraft will work, and justify your design decisions.
• You may design from scratch, or modify something that already exists.

Tools

3D CAD is cool, but it requires you to model everything. 2D CAD is recommended. Plan to show an orthogonal general arrangement drawing. Isometric drawings are cool, but also a lot of work. Total detail design takes years, and is absolutely not required.

If you have some form of AutoCAD, that is cool. LibreCAD is Free Software as defined by Front Page — Free Software Foundation — working together for free software and The GNU Operating System and the Free Software Movement, and it generates DXF files.

Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, or GIMP? Have fun.

Plan to generate a PNG or JPEG file that can attached to a message post.

Plan on spending a couple of hours at this, not the next six years of your life. It's not like it matters.

Vickers Heracles

Design a (British) Royal Navy carrier based fighter around the Bristol Hercules radial engine. The two seat fighter with navigator/wireless operator in the rear seat was a dumb idea. Let's do the best dogfighter/interceptor we can.

Design starts in 1939. Aircraft reach Royal Navy squadrons in 1942. The aircraft is contemporary to the Fw 190, and will not be influenced by it.

The aircraft's mission will be interception, air superiority, and escort of carrier based bombers. It can drop bombs in a pinch. The aircraft must be as small and light as possible.

I am not sure which manufacture ought to design this. Blackburn's Firebrand is the precise opposite of what we want to do here. Supermarine, Hawker, Fairey, and de Havilland were busy. I like the bubble canopy on the Miles M20, but I don't like the thick wings. The non-strategic material M20 was a good idea, even if they wound up not needing it. Gloster was working on the Meteor and other jet aircraft. By 1940, Bristol had finished with the Beaufighter. It would have been nice if they had focussed on updating the Hercules and getting the Centaurus into production. How about Vickers? We don't want to stop their high altitude fighter development, but their future bombers came to nothing.

The Vickers Heracles is an all-metal low-wing monoplane. As shown, it is about the size of a Spitfire, with similar wing loading. The wings are fairly thin. Naval catapult, arrestor gear, and generally rugged construction will make it a bit heavier. The 1600HP Hercules engine still should provide excellent accleration and climb. The fuel tank is fairly large, so that aircraft will have intermediate range capability, i.e., better than a Seafire, not as good as a P-51 Mustang, but good enough to escort Avengers and Barracudas. The pilot is sitting up fairly high, so he has a good view over the nose.

The Bristol Hercules is a bit small for a WWII radial engined fighter by mid-war, but it is bigger than the Nakajima HA-45 Homare used to power the excellent Nakajima Ki.84 Hayate ("Frank"). Post war versions put out 2000HP. Maybe use in fighters would have put pressure on to make it more powerful during the war. The radial engine withstands battle damage, and takes pressure off Merlin production. I don't know (yet) what the bottlenecks were for Hercules production.

The Hercules should be more powerful than the available Merlins. The Merlin 32 put out 1600HP only up to 6000ft. The Merlin 60 series engines did not reach service in Seafires. The Hercules engine's altitude performance is adequate for Royal Navy service, and quite a bit better than that of the hot-rod low altitude Merlin Seafires. According to Wikipedia, the Hercules has an outside diameter of 55 inches. The somewhat larger BMW 801 has a diameter of 51 inches, and the significantly bigger P&W R2800 is 52.8 inches. Maybe the Hercules diameter is a typo! I am waiting for my copy of The Hercules: The Other Engine that Helped Win the War, by Gordon A.A. Wilson. Bill Gunston's book on aircraft cutaways quotes a diameter of 52 inches. I suspect Gunston is correct, and that a real Heracles will be sleeker than what is shown on my drawing.

The Hercules' carburettor scoop is located on top of the engine, as shown. This is not a problem on a Beaufighter or Wellington, but it would be nice to relocate it to one side of a single-engined fighter, where it won't block the pilot's view.

The Hercules exhausts at the front. On most Hercules powered aircraft, a ring at the front of the engine cowling takes the exhaust away from the engine. I am showing exhaust stacks at the bottom, angled to generate thrust and some lift. Shooting straight back means heating up the aluminium wing structure.

The propeller is 12 feet in diameter and it has four blades. The Beaufighter's prop is 12'-9", and it is three bladed.

I am showing armament of four 20mm Hispano II cannons. These would be available by introduction in 1942, but there must be some plan to use eight .303 machine guns, which I have not thought through. The British did not use .50 Brownings until late in the war. The outboard 20mm cannons can be removed to improve manoeuverability up against the Italians and Japanese.

There is one fuel tank containing 170 imperial gallons. This can be subdivided a bit for safety and to minimize sloshing fuel. The tank is located at the aircraft's centre of mass, so there are no trim issues as fuel is consumed. We can attach external fuel tanks.

Fighters need bubble canopies. The Royal Navy took off with the canopies open so that the pilot could escape in any emergencies, so a sideways canopy like that of the Bf 109 is not acceptable. It must slide open. The radial engine imposes a radically tapered fuselage which messes up sliding canopy geometry, but we will just have to solve it somehow, eventually. Focke Wulf had the same problem with the Fw 190, and they integrated the canopy outline with the fuselage. The P-51D Mustang was similar, but the British did nothing like this. The divided canopy is based on the Miles M20. It can be replaced by a bulged canopy as on the Hawker Typhoons and Tempests, later in the war.

The cockpit is located behind the wings. I have not worked out the footsteps and hand-holds needed to access the cockpit.

Now, I understand why the landing gear for the Corsairs and Hellcats folded to the rear. The wing folding must be located somewhere outside the landing gear. The landing gear must be tall enough to clear the propeller, and if it folds inwards like most land based aircraft, they must be far apart enough that both wheels clear each other. Backwards folding gear can be located closer together. The wings of the Heracles have to fold rather far out on the wings. Fortunately, this is a fairly small aircraft.

Bearcat ... very light.

Does this count?


In mid 1943 as planning for Boeing B-29 operations against Japan were first being envisioned, the possible need for escort fighters was raised. At this stage of the war, the immense ranges being considered raised the spectre of no fighter being available with sufficient range to accompany the bombers all the way to the target. One possibility mooted was the use of carrier based fighters being used to provide escort. The idea being that the carriers could operate closer to the Japanese targets then land based aircraft and thus 'pick up the bombers part way'. However whilst an attractive idea at first glance, the USAAF very quickly pointed out a concern that no USN fighter then available had satisfactory sustained performance at the altitudes (in excess of 30,000ft) at which the B-29s were planned to operate.

At this stage, both Grumman and Vought were approached to see what they could offer. Naturally both assured the USN (and in turn the USAAF) that their respective premier fighters (the Grumman F6F Hellcat and Vought F4U Corsair) could handle the altitude. Vought however went one step further and proposed a new subvariant of the F4U. This proposal was accepted by the USN and development of what would eventually become known as the Vought F4U-3C was commenced.

Based upon the XF4U-3, an experimental aircraft built to hold different engine variations, this version married the standard F4U airframe and Pratt & Whitney R-2800-18W radial engine with an intercooled turbo-supercharger similar to that already in use on USAAF fighters such as the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. The most recognisable external difference of the new version was the prominent belly intake feeding the turbo-supercharger. The resulting combination resulted in the F4U-3C now achieving its highest speed of 447mph at some 32,000 ft rather then the then best achieved of 417mph at less then 20,000 ft. To account for the increased weight of the new turbosupercharger and associated ducting, the F4U-3C also dispensed with two of the 0.50 in (12.7 mm) AN/M2 Browning wing machine guns.



The first prototype of the new variant first flew on 1 April 1944 with Vought test pilot Lyman A. Bullard, Jr. at the controls. All proceeded well and soon an initial order of 40 airframes was in production. The first of these entered service in June 1944 with VF-20 "The Jokers". However before they could be allocated to a carrier, events in the war had changed the underlying need for these high altitude fighters. USAAF B-29s had now commenced operations from bases in China and were being escorted by the superlative North American P-51 Mustang. Soon thereafter, additional bases were established in the captured Mariana Islands with P-51s also operating from these. Thus the need for USN fighters to 'pick up the bombers part way' was greatly diminished. Moreover, Japanese defences over the target were found to be nowhere near what was predicted only a year beforehand – Japanese fighter developments and production was simply unable to match that of the United States.


The initial 40 F4U-3Cs were followed by one further order of 140. However, this was changed partway through the order to be for F4U-4s instead. As a result, a total of only 62 F4U-3Cs were completed. With no operational requirement, these were soon scrapped at the end of the war. Goodyear was also to have built these high altitude turbo-supercharged aircraft as FG-3s but this never came to fruition.

Howard Gibson said:

For example, the Russians did not see a requirement for high altitude combat.

Click to expand...

But they did. Russians as Polikarpov, for example, with his I-200. Then some Armenians as Mikoyan, Jews as Gurevich... Probably, "the Soviets" is a better term.

Dimlee said:

But they did. Russians as Polikarpov, for example, with his I-200. Then some Armenians as Mikoyan, Jews as Gurevich... Probably, "the Soviets" is a better term.

Click to expand...

They didn't knock themselves out. They preferred P-39s to Spitfires.

A turbocharged I-153 anybody? They built one with a pressurized cockpit.

Hi,
I tried something a little bit along these lines several years ago for a UK single seat naval/colonial fighter powered by a Bristol Hercules engine. I used an old program called Airplane PDQ but updated some of the weight estimating equations with data from Francis Dean's "America's 100,000" and also added in some added resistance modifications based on data from some old NACA reports on resistance reduction efforts done on the Brewster Buffalo.

Unfortunately at the time I didn't know alot about UK requirements and since I was using weights based on US Fighters the final thing that I came up with was probably a bit more like a US plane of the time (including accidentally using 50 cal machine guns instead of 30 cal weapons which I think would likely have been more typical of a UK designed fighter of that era ).

I did however, try and use what information that I could find on the whatever Bristol Hercules engine was available around that time (I think I assumed early 1939 as a planned in service date), though someone who commented on my posts on whatever board I posted this information on at the time suggested that I should probably have looked into what may have needed to be done tomake this engine into a "power egg" type module, since the UK was investigating that kind of stuff at that time (I think)

In the end, if I am recalling correctly, overall performace was estimated as bing OK, but not great. Specifically, I think Rate of Climb at Sea Level was only on the order of about 2000-2100 fpm, with top speed somewhere around 300 to 320mph.

Maybe if I get the time I may try and dig up the info that I had and try and update the design a little.

Regards

Pat

If you want to build a fantasy ww2 plane and test-fly it directly, i found that little soft on steam, must say it looks promising (a lot of vids on youtube)
PS: i don't have any shares in the company making this soft/game/simulator.


View: https://store.steampowered.com/app/777390/Flyout/

I'd like to have seen the Gloster F5/34 swap out its Bristol Mercury (Length: 47 in, Diameter: 51.5 in, Dry weight: 966 lb), skip entirely its intended Bristol Perseus (Length: 49 in, Diameter: 55.3 in, Dry weight: 1,025 lb) and instead use a Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp (Length: 59.06 in, Diameter: 48.03 in, Dry weight: 1,250 lb). The 10 in. longer and significantly heavier engine will necessitate changes to the CoG. While we're at it, we'll replace the undercarriage and make a smooth lower wing surface.

By 1935, with the full integration of Gloster into the Hawker Siddeley Group, the entire F5/34 project could be transferred to Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation (CAC) in Australia. In this alternate timeline, the modified F5/34 would become the Royal Australian Air Force's primary fighter by 1941, offering a unique blend of British design and American-engineered power to the RAAF during World War II.

Howard Gibson said:

The Rules

• Select a country and an air service.
• Select dates to start design, and introduce the aircraft into service. It should take three years to design a new aircraft, but blind, screaming panic mode over three months has had good results.
• Consider available resources. The Germans and Japanese fantasized about bombing the USA, but it was not happening. If your proposal is resource heavy, describe what other activity will be discontinued. Forget about not invading Russia. The whole point of WWII in Europe was to invade Russia.
• Select an aircraft manufacturer and engine(s).
• In context of WWII, new engine design from scratch takes too long. According to writer Bill Gunston, it takes five or six years to design a new engine and get it working. All the important engines of WWII were running prior to or very early in the war. You may propose upgrades of existing engines.
• Understand doctrine, design practise, and available technology of the nation and manufacturer. For example, the Russians did not see a requirement for high altitude combat. They did not make aircraft out of metal, and they did not have turbochargers. The Soviet P-47 Thunderbolt was not happening.
• Discuss how the aircraft will work, and justify your design decisions.
• You may design from scratch, or modify something that already exists.

Click to expand...

- UK
- Start in 1938, in service in 1940, since it is (big) modificaltion of an existing A/C
- Check
- Vickers Supermarine; RR Merlin
- Historical engines will do
- British have requirements laid out for the high-perf fighters armed with 4 cannons
- It will work great, since it shares a lot with Spitfire, and it does not mean an all-new design like the host of Supermarine and Vickers 2-engined fighters
- Spitfire turned into a 2-fuselage fighter, armed with 4 cannons, clipped wings, both fuselages populated

Howard Gibson said:

• Select a country and an air service.
• Select dates to start design, and introduce the aircraft into service. It should take three years to design a new aircraft, but blind, screaming panic mode over three months has had good results.
• Consider available resources. The Germans and Japanese fantasized about bombing the USA, but it was not happening. If your proposal is resource heavy, describe what other activity will be discontinued. Forget about not invading Russia. The whole point of WWII in Europe was to invade Russia.
• Select an aircraft manufacturer and engine(s).
• In context of WWII, new engine design from scratch takes too long. According to writer Bill Gunston, it takes five or six years to design a new engine and get it working. All the important engines of WWII were running prior to or very early in the war. You may propose upgrades of existing engines.
• Understand doctrine, design practise, and available technology of the nation and manufacturer. For example, the Russians did not see a requirement for high altitude combat. They did not make aircraft out of metal, and they did not have turbochargers. The Soviet P-47 Thunderbolt was not happening.
• Discuss how the aircraft will work, and justify your design decisions.
• You may design from scratch, or modify something that already exists.

Click to expand...

• USAAF
• Start in 1938, in service in 1941 (a mod of the existing A/C)
• Check
• Curtiss, V-1710
• Easy peasy
• Check
• It will be a less draggy P-40, with shorter and a bit lighter wing due to the wing loosing the innermost part; less drag = more speed; also just 4 HMGs for the lower all-up weight; lower weight = better RoC
• Mod of the P-40D/E:

Numbers are just for the scale. To the left is the short-winged version, to the right is the historical P-40E.

tomo pauk said:

- Spitfire turned into a 2-fuselage fighter, both fuselages populated

Click to expand...

Why?


View: https://youtu.be/QhGRzKcAu10?feature=shared&t=4

Howard Gibson said:

Vickers Heracles

The Vickers Heracles is an all-metal low-wing monoplane. As shown, it is about the size of a Spitfire, with similar wing loading. The wings are fairly thin. Naval catapult, arrestor gear, and generally rugged construction will make it a bit heavier. The 1600HP Hercules engine still should provide excellent accleration and climb. The fuel tank is fairly large, so that aircraft will have intermediate range capability, i.e., better than a Seafire, not as good as a P-51 Mustang, but good enough to escort Avengers and Barracudas. The pilot is sitting up fairly high, so he has a good view over the nose.

Click to expand...

I like it a lot, but I think we'd better make it from another firm than Vickers-Supermarine. They're fully invested in the Spitfire/Seafire program and won't pursue a competitor to their own business, especially one that gives additional money to their competitors over at Bristol.

I'd suggest your design be penned by Bristol, Hawker (incl. its subsidiary Gloster), Fairey, Blackburn, Boulton Paul or Armstrong-Siddeley. The latter two desperately need a win to remain relevant.

Admiral Beez said:

I like it a lot, but I think we'd better make it from another firm than Vickers-Supermarine. They're fully invested in the Spitfire/Seafire program and won't pursue a competitor to their own business, especially one that gives additional money to their competitors over at Bristol.

I'd suggest your design be penned by Bristol, Hawker (incl. its subsidiary Gloster), Fairey, Blackburn, Boulton Paul or Armstrong-Siddeley. The latter two desperately need a win to remain relevant.

Click to expand...

I looked at most of the others. I forgot about Boulton Paul. They did a good job on the Defiant, even if it was a dumb idea.

Howard Gibson said:

• Select a country and an air service.
• Select dates to start design, and introduce the aircraft into service. It should take three years to design a new aircraft, but blind, screaming panic mode over three months has had good results.
• Consider available resources. The Germans and Japanese fantasized about bombing the USA, but it was not happening. If your proposal is resource heavy, describe what other activity will be discontinued. Forget about not invading Russia. The whole point of WWII in Europe was to invade Russia.
• Select an aircraft manufacturer and engine(s).
• In context of WWII, new engine design from scratch takes too long. According to writer Bill Gunston, it takes five or six years to design a new engine and get it working. All the important engines of WWII were running prior to or very early in the war. You may propose upgrades of existing engines.
• Understand doctrine, design practise, and available technology of the nation and manufacturer. For example, the Russians did not see a requirement for high altitude combat. They did not make aircraft out of metal, and they did not have turbochargers. The Soviet P-47 Thunderbolt was not happening.
• Discuss how the aircraft will work, and justify your design decisions.
• You may design from scratch, or modify something that already exists.

Click to expand...

• Luftwaffe
• Start in 1936, introduction in 1939
• Check
• Messerschmitt; DB 601, later 605
• Check
• Check
• Role of the aircraft is that of a long-range escort fighter, 'normal' fighter, recon, later a fast bomber and night fighter. Sized as a Spitfire or the D4Y (the drawing of what is used). Opting for an 1-engined design vs. a 2-engined means a lot of them can be made, and that available fuel can cover a lot more. Less of the blind spots, smaller target, better rate of roll. Opting for a V12 means lower drag and better mileage.
• Drawing is based on the D4Y, but it might've used some Bf 109 parts, like the tail and outer wing panels. Contrary to the D4Y, Germans will provide the protection both for the crew and fuel tanks.

Ah, if I only had a good CAD program on this machine and a couple of hours to knock this up.

My fantasy originates in 1942 when British intelligence intercepts the communication from the Reich Air Ministry to Dornier requesting that airframe 8-335 be converted from a bomber to a high-speed fighter using a push-pull twin engine configuration. Some boffins conclude that this idea is a world-beater, and the RAF needs something similar.

Hawker bites, pulls together a crash program, and in early 1945 the Hawker Frenzy prototype takes to the skies, powered by two Sabre V engines. Tricycle landing gear (idea stolen from the Jerrys) to keep the back prop off the ground. 4-bladed props. About the same size and weight as a Do-335, but faster. Much, much faster.

Brewster supposedly proposed a 2-seat fighter derived from first the XSBA=1 and then the F2A1. The British navy bites at the end of 1937. Based on the F2A1, extend the fuselage to except the navigator, increase wing span to keep same wing loading and arm with eight 303 browning mgs in the wings. Folding wings? The Royal Navy's precious two seat fighter with good range reasonable climb and mgs, all in a plane smaller than a Hurricane. I wish I could do CAD.

Howard Gibson said:

I looked at most of the others. I forgot about Boulton Paul. They did a good job on the Defiant, even if it was a dumb idea.

Click to expand...

Hi,

One thought that I had in the past was to try and convert the Fairey Battle into a torpedo bomber. Although a single engine bomber during the early war was probably an out of date concept over land, the US and Japan still operated roughly similar sized aircraft at sea as torpedo bombers that could also do level bombing.

Looking at the overall dimensions from Wikipedia (as shown below) of the Battle it appears tobe a little bit longer than the Torpedo Bombers operated by the US and Japan at sea, but it appears to have a wingspan just a little less than the Grumman TBF Avenger (with its wings extended). As such, it would be interesting to see if the wings on the Battle could be modified to fold small enough to operate of typical RN carrier of the time. Lengthwise though it looks a bit longer than all the other planes and as such, I suspect that could be a big problem. It would likely be a big issue to try and addressthat, but I wonder what could be potentially be done there.

For reference I have also included the Fairey P.4/34 design and Fairey Fulmar to see if maybe a plane could be "derived" from partsof either the Battle, Fulmar,or P.4/34 design to come up with a torpedo bomber design that might actually fit on an RN carrier.

Regards

Pat

I was wondering about availability of Merlins for the "Torbattle". Use V-1710s?