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Was the goal to carry twice the Mosquito's load off the bat? I ask, because I didn't think they carried the cookies until 1944...Aggie08 said:The Mixmaster's engines generated about the same power as the superlative British De Havilland Mosquito but the American bomber carried twice the Mosquito's maximum bomb load at the same speed as the British airplane.
For most purposes that's actually completely true, but it didn't seem to be able to fly as high as the B-29 could and it might not have been able to fit a nuclear bomb in it.When he compared his design to the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, Burton believed he could develop a faster airplane that would carry a similar bomb load and employ a crew of 3 instead of the 10 airmen needed to man the B-29. Burton believed his Mixmaster would require just half of the maintenance crew required to keep the Superfortress airborne and cost one-third the price of the large, four-engine bomber from Boeing."
Actually that's the thought going through my mind as well... if they couldn't blow the prop off, they'd end up going through a blender!I bet bailing out of that plane would have been exciting!
I think they were motivated by reducing frontal area, but yeah you'd need an intercom to do what previously could have been done by speaking, and if the com fails you're basically communicating by hand-signals when you previously could have just spoke.The double canopies are pretty cool, but many forward thinking pilots didn't like them - the seperation made the workload more stressful, especially during emergencies.
Great to know!The B-42 was originally the A-42
Yeah, they didn't want single-engine attack aircraft anymore, and that basically left twin-engine attack aircraft (aka light bombers)October 7, 1943 the Mockup Board examined the bomber version and found it satisfactory for production with certain changes. However, this also occurred at the time when the "Attack" category was in the process of being deleted
Good featureDouglas had designed the A-42 to be a multi-function aircraft which was more typical for this time in the war. The aircraft was to be fitted with Douglas' easily interchangeable nose concept with different noses fitted for different mission profiles - specifically bombardment, attack and reconnaissance.
They were also proposing a night-fighter: I'm not sure if it was favored over the P-61 at anytimeThis same concept had been developed for the A-26, but was not used.
The C-74 actually flew after the XB-42. Regardless, I agree with your position though I never knew the gunner was in the second canopy.The famous "bug-eye" canopies configuration appears to have been uniquely Douglas'. As previously mentioned, it was used on a number of the C-74's that were produced. While it may or may not have decreased drag or given greater vision, it also made communication between the pilot and co-pilot nearly impossible.