WW2 Fantasy Aircraft (4 Viewers)

[tomo pauk]

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

From the British perspective, Merlin was probably more easily available.
OTOH - British were also using the Bristol Taurus on the Albacore, so having that powering the "TorBattle" would've not been a long shot. Also makes the aircraft lighter and shorter a bit. Use the R-1830 on it, too?

 

[tomo pauk]

• 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.

• Italian AF
• 1938, in service in 1941
• Check
• Caproni; Isotta-Fraschini Asso L.122 of 1000 HP
• Check
• Check
• A fast 1-engined bomber, max speed of 530 km/h clean, 500 km/h bombed-up (shown with a 1000 kg bomb). Two HMGs in the wing. Italians can afford it.
• A spin-off from the Ca.335 design. wing area of 265 sq ft.

 

[tomo pauk]

• 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.

De Havilland-Percival fighter

• UK, RAF
• Start in 1936, in service in 1940
• Check
• De Havilland and Percival cooperation; RR Merlin
• Check
• Did
• A fighter whose airframe is mainly wooden 'composite' material. Both the companies knew how to make a sleek A/C, and wood 'composite' was DH's bread and butter come 1930s. Less gaps and leakage = lower drag = higher speed. Merlin in the nose, 8 .303s initially in the wings; later two cannons + 4 .303s. A lot of fuel to cover North Sea and for over-seas service.
• Percival and DH racers fell in love, and this is the child of that love.

 

[tomo pauk]

• 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.

• USSR, VVS
• Start in 1964, service entry 1968
• Check
• Northrop/Yakovlev; Mikulin copy of the Bristol/RR Viper
• Check
• Check
• A fail-safe bet against the problems with the new generation of fighters, and as a replacement for the MiG-15s and -17s in the world; guns being the left-over 1-barreled 23mm types
• Soviet moles get the blueprints from Northrop, while Yugoslavia makes an easy access to the small and light engine, that Soviets improve by adding an afterburner

Yak-31:

 

[SaparotRob]

• USSR, VVS
• Start in 1964, service entry 1968
• Check
• Northrop/Yakovlev; Mikulin copy of the Bristol/RR Viper
• Check
• Check
• A fail-safe bet against the problems with the new generation of fighters, and as a replacement for the MiG-15s and -17s in the world; guns being the left-over 1-barreled 23mm types
• Soviet moles get the blueprints from Northrop, while Yugoslavia makes an easy access to the small and light engine, that Soviets improve by adding an afterburner

Yak-31:

View attachment 813488

 

[z42]

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.

I don't know (yet) what the bottlenecks were for Hercules production.

IIRC Bristol spent a lot of time getting the Hercules into decent shape, largely due to the valves. Due to this the Centaurus got pushed further and further into the future, to the point it missed the war.

As far as bottlenecks, one issue was the Hercules used a lot of ball bearing which were supplied in small lots from Sweden with either fast aircraft or fast boats.

 

[tomo pauk]

The Yak-31 prototype in the workshop after the 6th flight:
(historically, an ex-Vietnamese F-5E at Sukhoi's)

 

[bf109xxl]

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.

The I-200 was initially designed as a high speed front-line fighter. The altitude characteristics of the AM-35 were just a bonus which was not used properly - above 8000 m it had certain difficulties with oil cooling. The real attempts to build a high altitude fighter in the USSR were the "100" by Petlyakov and the I-28 (Yak with M-105PD). even the I-135 (Su-1) with turbocharger was not.

If you look for an ideal design for the Eastern Front, it was the I-185. May be, it was the highest _available_ technological level for the Soviets during the war - at the edge of the acceptability due to a higher demand on the aluminum. I don't think that even now anyone can suggest anything better taking into account all the limitations of the Soviet industry.
I don't see much point in fantasizing airplanes that couldn't be built under the available conditions. And this requires accurate knowledge of the capabilities of the industry. If for the USA/UK you can fantasize almost anything, then for the USSR the inspiration will be sharply limited.

 

[Zmauky]

Here's some of my recycling from previous threads.

The Rules
- service - Luftwaffe
- start of designing in 1937
- resources - instead OTL Until 17
- everything else - story


The story of Dornier Do 117

As the performance of Messerschmitt's Bf 110 with jumo engines was not even up to the knees of the Focke Wulf Fw 187 Falke RLM decided during 1937 to accept Tank's private initiative for the single-seater Zestorer as a cheaper variant. Acknowledging the fact that the Fw 187 is still a very small twin engine, the Bf 110 remained in limited production and the reason was partly that it shared a good part of the construction with the more famous Bf 162 Jaguar. This later proved to be a good decision as the Bf 110 turned out to be a good night fighter. Of course, Willi wanted to make up for the lost orders, so he concentrated on the licht schnellbomber variant of the Bf 110, known as the Bf 162. The Jaguar, powered by Jumo 211 engines, shone later during the BoB terrorizing the airfields of the Fighter Command. During that 1937 the Dornier design team was finalizing the Do 17Z variant but they realized that (even if they got permission for the DB 601 or Jumo 211 engines) it would not come close to the performance of the announced Bf 162C powered by the Jumo 211. The only way to continue production of the Do 17 is some radical change. And so in the end, the Do 117 was born. In order for the project and production to be ready during 1938, the existing parts of the Do 17 were used to the maximum, to which a new central part was designed that encompassed the bomb bay and a central part of the wings on which were and additional engines. Existing wings and existing parts of the fuselage - cabin and tail - are attached to it. The new four-engine plane had a greater payload and radius of action than the heaviest bomber of the time, the He 111. RLM found itself in a situation where it did not want to accept a worse plane (Do 17Z vs Bf 162C) but also did not want to lose the Dornier production capacity. The new Bf 162C had the same payload (Max 1000 kg) as the intended (and never produced) Do 17Z over almost the same distance, with a significantly higher speed, so the KG did not feel disadvantaged by the change.
Meantime RLM reluctantly agreed to the production of Do 117A, while in KG they replaced the older Do 17 models with the new Bf 162. By the beginning of the war in 1939, approximately 150 Do 117A powered by 4 Bramo 323 engines (vs 380 OTL Do 17Z) were produced, which was enough for a full Kampfgeschwader . The Luftwaffe command was not sure how best to use that Kampfgeschwader 4 "General Wever" so, oddly enough, it had its own Luftflotte status. So with that status (relying primarily on Abwehr intelligence) KG 4 already carried out a couple of significant strategic attacks in Poland and during the Battle of France. Although the most famous actions were the night bombings of Rolls-Royce's Merlin engine factories in Crewe and Derby. Of course the Luftwaffe could not have carried out the Sealion alone, but they still managed to almost eliminate the British Isles as an Allied base (for attacking Europe) until late winter 1944.
Some historians later put forward the theory that the liberation of Europe would have been easier and faster if the British Isles could have been used as a launching pad with landings in Pas-de-Calais or Normandy rather than across the mountainous Balkans from Africa.

Grey are new components on OTL Do 17Z.
Maybe it will be 3d followed by 3d print but I have to make time for that.

Second episode - how the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe made the best schnell / torpedo ww2 bomber.