100 Octane Fuel
Aldrin
Messieurs - Dames
In March 1940, RAF pilots of Spitfires and Hurricanes (ie. those with
Merlin engines) in France noticed a significant improvement in the
performance of their aircraft. This was due to the introduction of
'green' 100 octane fuel replacing the existing 'blue' 87 octane fuel.
(The Luftwaffe also noticed this improvement and, to their chagrin,
discovered the 'green' fuel in a downed Spitfire in August '40).
An agreement had been made with the Anglo-American Oil Company ('Esso')
to supply the fuel from their refineries in Baton Rouge. Supplies had
been shipped before September '39, but, on the outbreak of hostilities
the US Neutrality Act came into force arresting the supply of fuel until
suitable arrangements were made.
So, we have at the beginning of the Battle of Britain (which, I believe,
officially started to-day; 8th August 1940) two British fighters were
given an advantage over their German rivals due to their fuel. The
question I wish to ask is - was this advantage vital? Without this
higher octane fuel would the Spitfire and, particularly, the Hurricane be
competitive enough over the Me109Es to have won the battle? Or, was
there other factors in play sufficient to provide victory?
The other question, whilst I am here, that I am interested in and value
your opinion is whether the fuel-injection system, used in the DB601
engine of Me109s was ever incorporated into later versions of the Merlin
engine? If so, when, and what improvement did it make? If not, then why
not, and what improvement might it have made?
I thank you for your attention and consideration.
http://www.arrakis@es
.. The question I wish to ask is - was this advantage vital?
What octanes do is allow to use higher power settings without the fear of
detonation (a cylinder firing before it should), in air combat the more
power you have available, the better.
> The other question, whilst I am here, that I am interested in and value
> your opinion is whether the fuel-injection system, used in the DB601
> engine of Me109s was ever incorporated into later versions of the Merlin
> engine? If so, when, and what improvement did it make? If not, then why
> not, and what improvement might it have made?
The problem with the Merlin was that while on Negative g it coughed and
missed a few breaths, this was because of the float type carburator (no
fuel arrived to the engine for a few seconds). The DB, being fuel injected
never had such a problem. Entering a dive the Sptfire and the Hurricane
had to do a half roll and then dive (to keep the a/c loaded with positive
g), the 109 pilot just had to push hard on the stick. The more carefree
handling the airplane is, the better, especially in combat. The Merlins
were later modified (I can4t remember with a fuel injection system or just
modifying the carburator). I read that the British had a Bosch injection
system recovered from a downed 109 long before the Battle of Britain, but
it never arrived where it should have...
Chris Hall
Have you not heard of Miss Halfpenny's orifice? Seriously, from what I
remember, this was a modification to the float chamber of Merlin engines
to control the sloshing of fuel under negative G conditions. It was a
baffle plate with a small hole in it. From what I understand, it was
designed by Miss Halpenny of Rolls Royce in an attempt to prevent the
engine from stopping under negative G. It helped the problem, but did
not overcome it.
>From my limited knowledge of fuels and octane ratings, the calorific
value of 80 and 100 octane fuels are identical, the only difference
being in the resistance to detonation. In order to extract more power
from the 100 octane fuel, the timing of the engine would have to be
altered significantly. Just putting 100 octane in the tank and making no
adjustments to the engine timing will not result in more power.
--
Chris Hall
Erik Shilling
>.. The question I wish to ask is - was this advantage vital?
>What octanes do is allow to use higher power settings without the fear
>of detonation (a cylinder firing before it should), in air combat the
more power you have available, the better.
snip
Actually 100 octane, relatively speaking, was rather low, although
there were still some engines requiring 80/87 oct. but most fighter at
least used either 115/130 or 115/145 if these higher octaines were
unavailable lower manifold pressures had to be used. and in some cases
could only used in an emergency.
Erik Shilling
Flying Tiger
Gareth Rowlands
In article <5t7v20$o69$1...@nina.pagesz.net>,
sa...@arrakis.es ("http://www.arrakis@es") wrote:
> The problem with the Merlin was that while on Negative g it coughed
> and missed a few breaths, this was because of the float type carburator
> The Merlins were later modified (I can4t remember with a fuel injection
> system or just modifying the carburator).
Whilst my primary interest isn't quite in aviation engineering, I
did find some information on Merlin 'negative g' problems, and the
modification work done by the Royal Aircraft Establishment on the
carburettors to combat this.
Very sadly, this was while reading of the tragic loss of a DeHavilland
'Mosquito' and its crew, and where maintenance problems associated
with the carburrettor of one of the 'Merlin' engines were implicated
as to being the likely cause of the crash during a display flight
last year.
The UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch page:
http://www.open.gov.uk/aaib/jun97htm/gaskh.htm
is very deeply involved (text, photographs and drawings) with the
design and modifications to the Merlins' carburrettors.
I only wish that this information could be made available in less
awful circumstances.
Warm Regards,
Gareth.
Charles K. Scott
In article <5t3bb7$n...@gap.cco.caltech.edu>
Aldrin <mac...@dial.pipex.com> writes:
> So, we have at the beginning of the Battle of Britain (which, I believe,
> officially started to-day; 8th August 1940) two British fighters were
> given an advantage over their German rivals due to their fuel. The
> question I wish to ask is - was this advantage vital? Without this
> higher octane fuel would the Spitfire and, particularly, the Hurricane be
> competitive enough over the Me109Es to have won the battle? Or, was
> there other factors in play sufficient to provide victory?
>
> The other question, whilst I am here, that I am interested in and value
> your opinion is whether the fuel-injection system, used in the DB601
> engine of Me109s was ever incorporated into later versions of the Merlin
> engine? If so, when, and what improvement did it make? If not, then why
> not, and what improvement might it have made?
>
> I thank you for your attention and consideration.
Good questions. Even with the 100 octane fuel, the Hurricane was never
the equal to the Me 109 in combat being inferior in all modes of flight
except for turning radius. So just giving the Hurricane a higher
octane fuel (and tuning the engine to use it) only narrowed the gap
slightly, it did not make them equal. Please note, however, the
Hurrcane equitted itself very well, downing more enemy airplanes than
the Spitfire and was also a better (more steady) gun platform than the
more publicly popular Spitfire. In the rush of combat during the
battle of Britain, the classic "man to man" dogfight rarely happened so
the apparent performance differences did not play a huge part with the
Hurricane vs the Messerschmitt.
But the Spitfire became very close in performance to the 109 with the
higher octane fuel, loosing out just slightly in climb and more in
dive. In the swirl of combat the differences between the two airplanes
was essentially negligeable, if the pilots knew their machines and the
advantages and weaknesses of the opposing machinery. Without the
higher performing engines, the Spitfires would have still been
competitive but their climb rate would have been lower and they might
have been poorly placed for combat more frequently because of it.
But we won't ever know this because the fuel was available and Rolls
Royce did up the blower rate to take advantage of it giving the Merlin
higher performance.
As to whether the Merlin was ever fuel injected, the answer is no. The
carburator was successfully modified so that for most aerial combat
situations, the engine continued to put out military power even under
negative G's. But negative G flight did have a time limitation of a
few seconds. Not much, but enough.
Corky Scott
Bill MacArthur
Chris Hall <Ha...@airborne.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>From my limited knowledge of fuels and octane ratings, the calorific
>value of 80 and 100 octane fuels are identical, the only difference
>being in the resistance to detonation. In order to extract more power
>from the 100 octane fuel, the timing of the engine would have to be
>altered significantly. Just putting 100 octane in the tank and making no
>adjustments to the engine timing will not result in more power.
>--
My knowledge is probably equally limited but IIRC the difference between
octane ratings is based on the percentage of gasoline which has been
converted into pure octane C8H18. I am not sure how the octane rating
works, but I presume 100 is pure octane. The impurities (other
compounds) are what cause knock. Knock will occur much more easily in
lower octane and the engine is tuned down to avoid it. So you are quite
right, just changing the fuel won't do anything.
bil...@uwindsor.ca having a gas with spammers
Clan Budkiewicz
In article <5t9rpd$1d...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>, Erik Shilling
<eri...@ix.netcom.com> writes
>
>>.. The question I wish to ask is - was this advantage vital?
>>What octanes do is allow to use higher power settings without the fear
>>of detonation (a cylinder firing before it should), in air combat the
>more power you have available, the better.
>snip
>Erik Shilling
>Flying Tiger
>
>
Was the advantage of 100 Octane vital? Like other answers to this
subject, this improvement was an incremental advantage to the
RAF. Every little improveent helped. Adolf Galland once remarked that
after the Battle of France Spitfires were flying faster by upto 40
knots. However, this increase was apparently divided between improved
engine performance provided by 100 Octane fuel and assisted by the
introduction of the new Hamilton variable pitch propellor. I
understand that at first these propellors were prone to leaking oil
onto windscreens; however, one sqn adj recently assurred me that this
was solved by a visit to the local cobbler, who made replacement
leather seals. With regard to the lady who designed a partial
solution to fuel stavation in the carbs, the reference to a Miss
Moneypenny must be a pun, her name was Miss Shilling, she worked at
Farnborough and died in the 1980s--
Kon Budkiewicz
ArtKramr
>.. The question I wish to ask is - was this advantage vital?
>What octanes do is allow to use higher power settings without the fear of
>detonation (a cylinder firing before it should), in air combat the more
>p
100 Octane fuel was the secret weapon that halped win the Battle of
Britain. One day the ME's were outclimbing the Spits, and the next day the
Spits with American 100 Octane in their tanks, were outclimbing the Me's
It was kept a secret because we were neutral at the time, shipping the 100
Octane to England as fast as we could produce it.
Arthur Kramer
344trh Bomb Group 9th Air Force
Dirk Lorek
Charles...@Dartmouth.EDU (Charles K. Scott) wrote:
> But the Spitfire became very close in performance to the 109 with the
> higher octane fuel, loosing out just slightly in climb and more in
> dive. In the swirl of combat the differences between the two airplanes
> was essentially negligeable, if the pilots knew their machines and the
> advantages and weaknesses of the opposing machinery. Without the
> higher performing engines, the Spitfires would have still been
> competitive but their climb rate would have been lower and they might
> have been poorly placed for combat more frequently because of it.
> But we won't ever know this because the fuel was available and Rolls
> Royce did up the blower rate to take advantage of it giving the Merlin
> higher performance.
I might add that also the Luftwaffe was sometimes using high octane
fuel during the Battle of Britain. The Me 109 E-4/N and the E-6 were
powered by the DB 601 N engine with flattened instead of concave
piston heads, the compression ratio being increased from 6.9 to 8.2
using 96 octane C3 fuel in place of the usual 87 octane B4, allowing
about 1 minute of WEP.
It is also my understanding that the *real* boost for the Spitfire was
not so much 100 octane fuel but rather the introduction of the
constant speed propeller during the summer of 1940. When mock combats
were flown between a captured Me 109 E-3 and a Spitfire I at
Farnborough in May 1940, the still two-pitch-airscrew equipped Spit
was found inferior in almost every aspect.
I>irk
______________________________________________________________________
What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt, held in cohesion by unresting
cells,which work they know not why, which never halt, myself unwitting
where their Master dwells. - John Masefield -
ArtKramr
>When mock combats
>were flown between a captured Me 109 E-3 and a Spitfire I at
>Farnborough in May 1940, the still two-pitch-airscrew equipped Spit
>was found inferior in almost every aspect.
Really? The isn't it amazing how a hand full of inferior( in almost every
aspect) Spits, heavily outnumbered, knocked the hell out of a sky full of
ME's in the Battle of Britain. Amazing! How can you believe that, when the
facts indicate otherwise? I guess the only logical answer is that the RAF
pilots totally outclassed the inferior German pilots. Or do you have some
other explaination? Let common sense prevail..
Arthur Kramer
344th BG 9th AF
Erik Shilling
Dirk Lorek
artk...@aol.com (ArtKramr) wrote:
> Really? The isn't it amazing how a hand full of inferior( in almost every
> aspect) Spits, heavily outnumbered, knocked the hell out of a sky full of
> ME's in the Battle of Britain. Amazing! How can you believe that, when the
> facts indicate otherwise? I guess the only logical answer is that the RAF
> pilots totally outclassed the inferior German pilots. Or do you have some
> other explaination? Let common sense prevail..
1. If you read the article you replied to, it says that during the
summer of 1940 the Spitfires were boosted up with the constant speed
propeller implicating that they were not inferior any longer.
2. It were the Hurricanes that shot down most German aircraft.
3. The fighter losses in the Battle of Britain were:
Germany Great Britain
610 Me 109s 631 Hurricanes
235 Me 110s 403 Spitfires
115 Blenheims
23 Defiants
___________ _______________
845 1 172
The British losses include of course fighters shot down by German
bombers. The Luftwaffe lost also 947 bombers and other aircraft.
4. The Spitfire Mk I (with constant speed propeller) and the Me 109 E
are considered equivalent. Later Spitfire marks proved superior, the
latest Spitfire was probably the best fighter of WW2.
5. The Luftwaffe was not knocked out of the sky. The Battle of Britain
developed into a battle of attrition, but the Luftwaffe needed a fast,
decisive victory in order to launch an invasion before the bad weather
period started. This was not achieved because the British used their
resources wisely.
Noggin
In article <5up7vu$u9$1...@nntp1.u.washington.edu>, ArtKramr
<artk...@aol.com> writes
>
>Really? The isn't it amazing how a hand full of inferior( in almost every
>aspect) Spits, heavily outnumbered, knocked the hell out of a sky full of
>ME's in the Battle of Britain. Amazing! How can you believe that, when the
>facts indicate otherwise? I guess the only logical answer is that the RAF
>pilots totally outclassed the inferior German pilots. Or do you have some
>other explaination? Let common sense prevail..
Or was it the fact that the RAF were over home ground and so any downed
Aircrew could be back in battle as soon as they were back at base and
any LW were in the bag.
Or that the 109 only had a duration of 1 hour and then had to return to
france to refuel and then fly back to Kent. Where as the RAF were
fighting over (yes over) their bases.
--
Noggin
Robert Sveinson
Erik Shilling wrote:
>
> In <5un4fo$g...@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> DiL...@pobox.com (Dirk Lorek)
> writes:
> >
>
> >It is also my understanding that the *real* boost for the Spitfire
> >was not so much 100 octane fuel but rather the introduction of the
> >constant speed propeller during the summer of 1940.
> snip
>
> I'm not saying they did or didn't have constant speed props, because I
> don't know. But it is difficult for me to believe that the British
> Spitfires, flying in 1940 were so far behind in the developement of the
> constant speed propeller that they had fixed pitch props.
The first Spitfires that went into squadron
service were equiped with 2 blade fixed pitch
wooden props. When Spitfires went into battle it was
with 3 blade 2 pitch propellors. By the Battle of Britain
all British aircraft were fitted with Constant
Speed Propellors, and these along with 100 octane
fuel allowed the Spitfires and Hurricanes to
achieve a better rate of climb.
>
> The Consolidated PB-2A built in 1934 had constant speed Props.
> The Seversky P-35 built in 1937 had a constant speed Prop.
> The Curtiss P-36 also built in 1937 had a constant speed Prop.
Could the above 3 aircraft have had the 2 pitch
propellors, like the AT6 Harvard, and Beech 18
Expeditor?
Robert Sveinson
Winnipeg
Canada
Rob Davis
Remove MAPSON when replying via email
» Really? The isn't it amazing how a hand full of inferior( in almost
every
» aspect) Spits, heavily outnumbered, knocked the hell out of a sky full
of
» ME's in the Battle of Britain. Amazing! How can you believe that, when
Do I have this right, in that you are claiming that the Spitfire was
inferior in every aspect to the Me109? Hum... you would be in a
minority...
The only recognised aspect that the 109 outclassed the Spit was early in
the Battle, before the Merlin was equipped with a floatless carburettor,
which then enabled it to dive after 109s, whose injected engines were
unaffected by negative G.
Oh yes, I suppose that the provision of cannon on the 109 would count as an
advantage, too. But general performance,and most importantly turning
radius, left the 109 cold. Though it's interesting to compare the opinions
of Bader (who favoured the .303) and Stanford-Tuck (who favoured cannon).
Bader advocated the .303 because he felt that it was reliable and the
armourers knew it. S-T felt the opposite as he considered the increasing
degree of armour plate fitted to Luftwaffe bombers, and the superior range
of cannon, made the latter essential. Great debate reigned... the RAF
cannon at the time (I believe, Hispano) were less than reliable and prone
to jamming (they were belt fed). Later the drum fed cannon was an
excellent weapon, but the Spitfire's thin wing required a blister to
accommodate the magazine.
Certainly the Hurricane was slightly inferior to the 109, and was soon
rendered obsolete (let's say, by 1942). The figures on number of e/a
destroyed during the Battle are well in favour of the Hurricane, mainly
because it was available in far greater numbers.
Rob Davis MSc MIAP Leicester, UK 0976 379489
sxcuse tje typong errorts I'm swirching to ab ergnomonic ketboard
SPAM bait: abuse@localhost postmaster@localhost admin@localhost
ArtKramr
>Or was it the fact that the RAF were over home ground and so any downed
>Aircrew could be back in battle as soon as they were back at base and
>any LW were in the bag.
>
>Or that the 109 only had a duration of 1 hour and then had to return to
>france to refuel and then fly back to Kent. Where as the RAF were
Those are just excuses for dismal failure. In war, only victory counts.
And the Luftwaffe and its poor planning went down in flames and inadequate
equipment failed to ge the job done. It is amamzing that through the
enmtire war the Luftwaffe couldn't produce a long range fighter while the
U.S. needing one for Bomber escort built two, the P-51 and the P-47. German
aircraft technology just wasn't up the the task. as our sweeping the
Luftwaffe from the skies proves.
Arthur Kramer
344th BG 9th Air Force.
Jay Martino
eri...@ix.netcom.com (Erik Shilling) wrote:
>I'm not saying they did or didn't have constant speed props, because I
>don't know. But it is difficult for me to believe that the British
>Spitfires, flying in 1940 were so far behind in the developement of the
>constant speed propeller that they had fixed pitch props.
The fixed pitch propellers had been out of service for some months.
The Spits, IIRC, were the first to recieve them beginning in '39, and
I don't think there were many, if any, without them by the time of
the Battle of France. The Hurricanes had mostly, if not all, been
converted by the time of the Battle of Britain as well.
Frankly I'm always amazed at anyone who says the Spitfire was inferior
to the Me-109 (I know that the poster quoted above didn't say that in
his post, it was alluded to elsewhere). Anyone saying that I always
suspect of being a "bean counter" type who engages in comparison of
raw factors without a full analysis of actual combat performance. The
type who gets his info from "coffee-table" books.
The fact of the matter is that the differences in performance between
the two aircraft were so minor ('cept the carbeurator problems with
the Spit, and some armament considerations) that it was _always_ a
case of pilot experience that made the difference in actual combat.
The oft-ignored "soft" factor of experience or talent was the main
deciding factor in WWII air combat. Otherwise how can one explain the
ability of three Gladiators successfully (well, almost) defending
Malta for a time (and no ill-advised Italian jokes please).
Jay
"Life. Hate it or loath it, you can't ignore it".
Remove the * from the "reply to:' field when replying
by e-mail.
Dan Ford
> Oh yes, I suppose that the provision of cannon on the 109 would count as an
> advantage, too. But general performance,and most importantly turning
> radius, left the 109 cold. Though it's interesting to compare the opinions
> of Bader (who favoured the .303) and Stanford-Tuck (who favoured cannon).
> Bader advocated the .303 because he felt that it was reliable and the
> armourers knew it. S-T felt the opposite as he considered the increasing
> degree of armour plate fitted to Luftwaffe bombers, and the superior range
> of cannon, made the latter essential. Great debate reigned... the RAF
> cannon at the time (I believe, Hispano) were less than reliable and prone
> to jamming (they were belt fed). Later the drum fed cannon was an
> excellent weapon, but the Spitfire's thin wing required a blister to
> accommodate the magazine.
I don't think this subject gets the attention it deserves. American
experience in the Pacific certainly indicated that six or even four
fifty-caliber (12.7 mm) machineguns were a formidable counter to two 20 mm
cannon. See John Lundstrom, The First Team; Robert Mikesh, Zero. Despite
the Zero myth, relatively green American pilots in Grumman Wildcats held
their own against the Zero in the first year of the war, and we all know
what happened thereafter.
Perhaps the fifty-calibers wouldn't have fared as well against German
cannon, but from the little I've read it seems that the P-40 at low
altitude and the P-38 at high altitude were reasonably good competition
against the 109 in North Africa.
On the other hand, BOB books are replete with stories of German bombers
and fighters returning to their airfields in France with upwards of 200
bullet holes. With self-sealing tanks, it may be that thirty-caliber (7.62
mm) machineguns were a bit small for the job. It could be, for example,
that one of the reasons the Brewster Buffalo did so poorly in the defense
of Malaya is that the RAF/RAAF/RNZAF replaced its fifty-caliber guns with
.303 for reasons of maintenance and supply. The Finns kept the fifties,
and I think had extra fifty-cal wing guns fitted, to a total of six, and
did very well indeed with the reviled Buffalo.
- Dan (http://www.concentric.net/~danford)
Flying Tigers / Brewster Buffalo / Germany at War / Japan at War
Phillip McGregor
On 6 Sep 1997 03:44:05 GMT, Noggin <ma...@pygmy.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <5up7vu$u9$1...@nntp1.u.washington.edu>, ArtKramr
><artk...@aol.com> writes
>>
>>Really? The isn't it amazing how a hand full of inferior( in almost every
>>aspect) Spits, heavily outnumbered, knocked the hell out of a sky full of
>>ME's in the Battle of Britain. Amazing! How can you believe that, when the
>>facts indicate otherwise? I guess the only logical answer is that the RAF
>>pilots totally outclassed the inferior German pilots. Or do you have some
>>other explaination? Let common sense prevail..
>
>Or was it the fact that the RAF were over home ground and so any downed
>Aircrew could be back in battle as soon as they were back at base and
>any LW were in the bag.
Yes. True, but Art is also correct -- the Brits were better trained. Why?
Simple! The Germans imported 70% or more of their pre-war oil supplies; all of
the countries they conquered were also net importers of oil (Italy, their "ally"
imported 90% of its oil). And these figures are for *peacetime* requirements.
Wartime requirements were much higher. The Germans were behind the 8 ball right
from the beginning and things got progressively worse for them as the war went
on.
How does this affect training? Well, while in 1939 the Luftwaffe and the Allies
bot gave their pilot trainees around 250 flight hours before gradiuation, the
ongoing fuel shortage in Germany meant they had to progressively *cut* the
flight hours they gave their pilots ... IIRC it was down to about 25-50 by the
end of the war. The allies, on the other hand, were able to *increase* their
training markedly because they had, essentially, no shortage of POL. The allied
pilots *were* increasingly better trained as a result.
>Or that the 109 only had a duration of 1 hour and then had to return to
>france to refuel and then fly back to Kent. Where as the RAF were
>fighting over (yes over) their bases.
Actually, they had a combat duration of (IIRC) 15-20 minutes *over Britain* --
and why? Because they didn't have access to 100 Octane fuel!
Phil
---------------------------------------------
Phillip McGregor | asp...@curie.dialix.oz.au
Co-designer, Space Opera (FGU)
Author, Rigger Black Book (FASA)
Designer, Standard Role Playing (PGD)
The Shannons
--
From what I understand the U.S. 50 Cal machine gun was a different
beasty from virtually all other 12.7mm guns. I do not have the
comparative specs in front of me, but an example of how different guns
of the same caliber can be is the Italian Breda 12.5mm vs. the U.S. 50
Cal. The Breda had a lower firing rate, often lower still due to
propellor synchronization gear, lower muzzle velocity, and fired mostly
low-density case shells with a nominal explosive charge. The U.S. 50
fired a lot of metal in a short time and used solid slugs. It is known
that the slugs sometimes bounced off of armored areas of the enemy
planes (such as the oil cooler ring on FW-190A models), but the four to
eight gun armament of U.S. fighters literally disassembled the Japanese
aircraft in that theater of operations, and could do a pretty effective
job against the Me-109 and Me-110. Because they were rare in the U.S.
operations, not as many stories come out of the effectiveness against
larger German aircraft, but it is significant that the first U.S.
victory against a German aircraft was the FW-200C shot down by the
transport flight P-38s. The air fighting over the Mediterranean also
gave some opportunities against Heinkels, Ju-52 and 88, and such, but I
don't know of much request for more firepower until the F-86 Sabers
found themselves having to riddle the North Korean (and everyone else
from Comintern) MiG-15's to down them.
--
This has been Mark and/or Mary Shannon
at Shin...@ix.netcom.com
History manages to get away with cliches no novelist could.
MarkASinge
On 7 Sep 1997 Dan Ford <d...@christa.unh.edu> wrote:
>> Oh yes, I suppose that the provision of cannon on the 109 would
>>count as an advantage, too.
[small snip]
>> Though it's interesting to compare the opinions of Bader (who
>>favoured the .303) and Stanford-Tuck (who favoured cannon).
>>Bader advocated the .303 because he felt that it was reliable and
>>the armourers knew it. S-T felt the opposite as he considered the
>>increasing degree of armour plate fitted to Luftwaffe bombers,
>>and the superior range of cannon, made the latter essential.
>>Great debate reigned...
[snip discussion of Hispano 20mm in Spits]
I expect the heart of the debate revolved around differing views on the
primary opponents for a Spit or Hurricane. I would expect that eight guns
that fired as fast as the .303 would do better against an Me-109, but
subtracting several guns to add the punch and range of two slower-firing
20mm's would be worthwhile against an He-111 or Ju-88.
>I don't think this subject gets the attention it deserves. American
>experience in the Pacific certainly indicated that six or even four
>fifty-caliber (12.7 mm) machineguns were a formidable counter to
>two 20 mm cannon. See John Lundstrom, The First Team; Robert >Mikesh, Zero.
As I recall, the 20mm in the Zero was a relatively poor performer.
It has a lower muzzle velocity than other combatants' cannon, and so did
not provide the range advantage that cannon-armed fighters usually enjoyed.
Their primary advantage was in the explosive shells they fired.
In addition, the Zero's low 20mm ammunition capacity (60 rpg) meant that
the cannon were not typically fired unless/until the shot was well
lined-up, and the 7.7's were already showing strikes. Very useful in
brining down straight-and-level opponents, but most firing during hard
maneuvers was probably done with the dual 7.7mm mg's. And the Japanese
Army's primary fighter, the Oscar, only had 2 mg's (usually one 7.7mm, one
12.7mm). This is one potential reason that mid-war fighters like the P-40
and F4F, with their "rugged" construction, seemed to fair so well against
the Japanese.
>Perhaps the fifty-calibers wouldn't have fared as well against >German
cannon, but from the little I've read it seems that the P-40
>at low altitude and the P-38 at high altitude were reasonably good
>competition against the 109 in North Africa.
It is clear that the USAAF, and immediate post-war USAF, showed a clear
and distinct preference for .50cal's for air-to-air use. Mustangs and
Thunderjug's did quite well in the ETO, and were not criticized for their
lack of cannon.
>On the other hand, BOB books are replete with stories of German
>bombers and fighters returning to their airfields in France with
>upwards of 200 bullet holes. With self-sealing tanks, it may be that
>thirty-caliber (7.62mm) machineguns were a bit small for the job. It
>could be, for example, that one of the reasons the Brewster
>Buffalo did so poorly in the defense of Malaya is that the
>RAF/RAAF/RNZAF replaced its fifty-caliber guns with
>.303 for reasons of maintenance and supply. The Finns kept the
>fifties, and I think had extra fifty-cal wing guns fitted, to a total of
>six, and did very well indeed with the reviled Buffalo.
I expect there are two issues at play here. As you suggest, .30 cal
(.303 cal, 7.5mm, 7.62mm, 7.7mm, or 7.92mm) may have been on the light
against modern fighters. But perhaps more significantly .30 cal (etc.) and
even .50 cal (12.7mm, 13mm) may have been too light against multi-engined,
multi-crewed bombers.
Against fighters, the controlling factor was probably rounds-per-minute
AFTER you moved up to a projectile of sufficient substance to punch through
the 8 - 10mm of armor plate (or 20-30mm of "armored" glass) that protected
the vitals of most fighters. The evolution of the Me-109's armament shows
an appreciation for this. The wing-mounted 20mm's were abandoned after the
-E, for the hub-mounted cannon the fast-firing 15mm seems to have been
preferred (although 20mm's were still used in some), and the nose-mounted
machine-guns were upgraded to 13mm in the -G and beyond.
However, an explosive projectile brought a considerable advantage against
a multi-engined, multi-crewed aircraft. This may have been due to the
larger amount of "null space" through which bullets could pass without
causing real damage, and the amount of redundancy in critical issues
(including co-pilots and multiple gunners). The Me-109 was considered
underarmed when facing American bombers (by the Germans -- I'm sure any
guns at all was too heavily armed for the preferrence of the bomber crews),
and hub-mounted 30mm's and under-wing cannon were called for if
interception was to be a unit's primary assignment.
The Browning .50 was an excellent solution for the opponents the USAAF
aircraft faced. Probably the best balance of punch, rate-of-fire, and ammo
capacity against fighters (the primary opponents), and you could probably
get adequate results against the occasional bomber since you had so many
guns, especially against Japanese bombers which did not generally carry
armor or self-sealing tanks. USAAF pilots may have seen things differently
if they ever had to try to bring down IL-2s, much less B-17s!
BTW, as my "vote" for the best multi-purpose air-to-air weapons of the
war, I would select either the Browning .50 cal, or the Russian ShVAK 20mm.
The ShVAK had a high rate of fire (~650 rpm), and a reasonable compact and
light-weight design. It seemed to allow for about 50% greater ammo storage
compared with the Russian 20 and 23mm cannons (several models), when
compared as alternative installations in otherwise identical aircraft.
-marka...@aol.com
(aka: Mark A. Singer squeezed into ten characters)
Dirk Lorek
artk...@aol.com (ArtKramr) wrote:
> Really? The isn't it amazing how a hand full of inferior( in almost every
> aspect) Spits, heavily outnumbered, knocked the hell out of a sky full of
> ME's in the Battle of Britain. Amazing! How can you believe that, when the
> facts indicate otherwise? I guess the only logical answer is that the RAF
> pilots totally outclassed the inferior German pilots. Or do you have some
> other explaination? Let common sense prevail..
If you read the article you replied to, it says that during the summer
of 1940 the Spitfire Mk Is were boosted up with the constant speed
propeller implying that this reduced their inferiority.
And mjmartino@igs*.net (Jay Martino) wrote:
>Frankly I'm always amazed at anyone who says the Spitfire was inferior
>to the Me-109 (I know that the poster quoted above didn't say that in
>his post, it was alluded to elsewhere). Anyone saying that I always
>suspect of being a "bean counter" type who engages in comparison of
>raw factors without a full analysis of actual combat performance. The
>type who gets his info from "coffee-table" books.
My sources here are Len Deighton's 'Fighter' (pg 110 - 113) and
William Green 'Warplanes of the Third Reich' (pg 541). I hope they are
not 'coffee-table' books :-)
According to Green, the general handling trials of the Me 103 E-3
began around 14 May 1940 at Farnborough:
'In so far as the Spitfire I was concerned, when fitted with the
two-pitch airscrew - and at that stage of war virtually all Spitfires
were fitted with such airscrews as priority in the supply of constant-
speed units had been allocated to bombers - this was also bested from
virtually every aspect by the Bf 109 E-3, although its inferiority was
markedly reduced by the application of a constant-speed airscrew with
which the average production Spitfire was only marginally slower than
its German contemporary at rated altitude.'
Deighton describes the fitting of the new propeller:
'Another semi-official modification came as late as June 9, 1940....The
propeller added 7 000 ft to the service ceiling and so transformed the
aircraft's performance that the Air Ministry authorized all Hurricanes
and Spitfires to be changed to constant-speed props...A total of 1 050
props were fitted by August 15....Considering that the constant-speed
unit was a British invention, it was remarkable that the Air Ministry
sent its Hurricane and Spitfire to war with fixed-pitch, two-bladed
wooden props, or at best with two-pitch (variable-pitch) propellers.'
Maybe I'm a bean-counter :-), but even with constant speed propeller
the Spitfire Mk I was still slightly inferior to the Me 109 E IMHO.
Both fighters were equally fast, the 109 had the tightest turning
circle (although most German pilots didn't dare to test that because
of the 109's supposed weak wings) but the Spit had a better sustained
turn rate. The Emil could outclimb and outdive the Mk I, accelerated
better and had a higher ceiling. The Mk I lacked still self-sealing
fuel tanks and had the well-known problems with its carburetor. OTOH
it had better armor protection for its pilot and better visibility.
The Spitfire had the advantage over the Me 109s in the BoB when the
German fighters were forced to fly close escort.
That the British won the Battle of Britain due to the Spitfire is a
longstanding myth. The Hurricane shot down more enemy aircraft than
the Spit. While the late Spitfire models probably were the best air
superiority fighters of WW2, the earlier models (Mk I vs Me 109 E, Mk
II - V vs Me 109 F) are overrated IMHO.
MarkASinge
Jay Martino
artk...@aol.com (ArtKramr) wrote:
>Those are just excuses for dismal failure. In war, only victory counts.
The latter is just as much a platitude as anything else.
>And the Luftwaffe and its poor planning went down in flames and inadequate
>equipment failed to ge the job done. It is amamzing that through the
>enmtire war the Luftwaffe couldn't produce a long range fighter while the
>U.S. needing one for Bomber escort built two, the P-51 and the P-47. German
>aircraft technology just wasn't up the the task. as our sweeping the
>Luftwaffe from the skies proves.
The P-51, IIRC, was a pre-war design. In fact I don't think there were
too many war-designed fighters in anyone's inventory.
The German fighters corresponded to European convention. Call it poor
planning if you wish, but it's unfair. Strategic and geographical
considerations determine the design of aircraft as much as foresight
of what will actually be required in the next war. The US produced
some real dogs as well (including the P-51 pre-Merlin). The
Luftwaffe's equipment managed to get dozens of German pilots over 100
kills. No Allied pilot can say the same.
Drazen Kramaric
Erik Shilling wrote:
> I'm not saying they did or didn't have constant speed props, because I
> don't know. But it is difficult for me to believe that the British
> Spitfires, flying in 1940 were so far behind in the developement of
> the constant speed propeller that they had fixed pitch props.
That's true. Read Len Deighton's "Fighter" for detailed story. There
were teams of trained mechanics (from factories) which travelled from
squadron to squadron performing the first change, supervising the second
and leaving the rest of the job to local group of mechanics.
Drax
Charles K. Scott
In article <5uudui$i...@portal.gmu.edu>
asp...@curie.dialix.com.au (Phillip McGregor) writes:
> Yes. True, but Art is also correct -- the Brits were better trained. Why?
> Simple! The Germans imported 70% or more of their pre-war oil supplies; all of
> the countries they conquered were also net importers of oil (Italy, their "ally"
> imported 90% of its oil). And these figures are for *peacetime* requirements.
> Wartime requirements were much higher. The Germans were behind the 8 ball right
> from the beginning and things got progressively worse for them as the war went
> on.
>
> How does this affect training? Well, while in 1939 the Luftwaffe and the Allies
> bot gave their pilot trainees around 250 flight hours before gradiuation, the
> ongoing fuel shortage in Germany meant they had to progressively *cut* the
> flight hours they gave their pilots ... IIRC it was down to about 25-50 by the
> end of the war. The allies, on the other hand, were able to *increase* their
> training markedly because they had, essentially, no shortage of POL. The allied
> pilots *were* increasingly better trained as a result.
While true around the middle part of the ETO conflict, at the time of
the Battle of Britain, many British fighter pilots were woefully
undertrained. Many was the replacement pilot who showed up at his
assigned squadron having less than 50 hours flying in type and had yet
to fire his weapons at ANY target let alone something in the air. For
these hapless fighter pilots, lasting through their first combats was
largely a matter of luck. Many perished in their first or second
flights as they had all they could do just maintaining formation.
When Park was relieved of his command of 12 Group and sent to command
the training of pilots, he was shocked to discover that training
command had yet to shift to a wartime footing despite the war having
been on for more than a year. His efforts to galvanize training
command made a huge difference in pilot output.
All the more remarkable that Fighter Command was able to equit itself
so admirably in the Battle of Britain.
Corky Scott
MarkASinge
On 7 Sep 1997 asp...@curie.dialix.com.au (Phillip McGregor)
wrote:
>On 6 Sep 1997 03:44:05 GMT, Noggin <ma...@pygmy.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>In article <5up7vu$u9$1...@nntp1.u.washington.edu>, ArtKramr
>><artk...@aol.com> writes
[To those just dropping in on this thread, this starting point was a
somewhat sarcastic reply to an assertion that the Spit was inferior or flawed]
>>>
>>>Really? The isn't it amazing how a hand full of inferior( in
>>> almost every aspect) Spits, heavily outnumbered, knocked the
>>> hell out of a sky full of ME's in the Battle of Britain. Amazing!
>>> How can you believe that, when the facts indicate otherwise? I
>>>guess the only logical answer is that the RAF pilots totally
>>>outclassed the inferior German pilots. Or do you have some
>>>other explaination? Let common sense prevail..
>>
>>Or was it the fact that the RAF were over home ground and so
>>any downed Aircrew could be back in battle as soon as they
>>were back at base and any LW were in the bag.
>
>Yes. True, but Art is also correct -- the Brits were better trained.
>Why? Simple! The Germans imported 70% or more of their
>pre-war oil supplies;
[snip of other Axis countries' oil needs]
>The Germans were behind the 8 ball right from the beginning and
>things got progressively worse for them as the war went
>on.
>
>How does this affect training? Well, while in 1939 the Luftwaffe
>and the Allies bot gave their pilot trainees around 250 flight hours
>before gradiuation,
Small note: of course, most of the pilots involved in the BOB were
trained pre-war, or during the phony-war, weren't they?
> the ongoing fuel shortage in
Germany meant
>they had to progressively *cut* the flight hours they gave their
>pilots ... IIRC it was down to about 25-50 by the end of the war.
>The allies, on the other hand, were able to *increase* their
>training markedly because they had, essentially, no shortage of
>POL. The allied pilots *were* increasingly better trained as a
>result.
While none of this should have affected the BOB (too early in the war --
Luftwaffe pilots were still among the best trained in the world), I would
like to point out that the shortage of POL was not the only reason that the
Germans curtailing training flights as the war progressed.
Don't underestimate the direct impact of losing control of the airspace
over the homeland! Even with POL, it is desperately dangerous to conduct
flight training operations when any observable activity at an airfield one
day can lead to bomber strikes the next, and when the air above your
country is prowling with enemy fighters. Yes, it seems cruel to send a
pilot to an operational unit with only 30 hours flight training, but what
else can you do? If an amateur is to be bounced by Mustangs, does he stand
a better chance if he's flying a twin-placed unarmed trainer all by itself
in the sky, or if he's flying an Me-109 in a Rotte with an experienced leader?
Charles K. Scott
In article <5uudsh$g...@portal.gmu.edu>
mjmartino@igs*.net (Jay Martino) writes:
> Frankly I'm always amazed at anyone who says the Spitfire was inferior
> to the Me-109 (I know that the poster quoted above didn't say that in
> his post, it was alluded to elsewhere). Anyone saying that I always
> suspect of being a "bean counter" type who engages in comparison of
> raw factors without a full analysis of actual combat performance. The
> type who gets his info from "coffee-table" books.
>
> The fact of the matter is that the differences in performance between
> the two aircraft were so minor ('cept the carbeurator problems with
> the Spit, and some armament considerations) that it was _always_ a
> case of pilot experience that made the difference in actual combat.
Well there are differences and then there are differences. The 109E
was better at high altitude than the Spitfire and also was so much
faster in the dive that for litterally years, the method for escaping a
bad situation was to push the nose down and dive away. This remained
the stock escape for the Luftwaffe until the introduction of the P-47
when the Germans learned the hard way that nothing outdove that
airplane.
Also, while I agree with Mr. Kramer that the Luftwaffe was defeated in
the Battle of Britain, or at least turned away (they did not accomplish
their objective which was to destroy Fighter Command), if you look at
the losses the German fighters didn't do so badly. There were more
British fighters shot down than German fighters. This is attributed to
the nature of the combat. The Germans were TRYING to shoot down
fighters while the British were trying to shoot down bombers. In
general (I don't like to generalise but in this case) the British felt
that only the bombers were dangerous to their intended targets
(airfields initially) and the fighters were left as alone as was
possible in the swirl of combat.
The result was that more British fighters went down than German
fighters and many German fighter pilots have ever since claimed that
they did their job well.
Also, during the war, the British overclaimed victories by a
substantial margin making the apparent victory much more significant
than the later examination of records verifies.
As usual when discussing this battle it should be noted that at one
point the British were truly desperately pressed and Dowding was said
to be considering moving his beleagured squadrons beyond the range of
the escorting fighters.
That didn't happen however. And it should also be noted that all
Fighter Command had to do in order to claim victory was remain in being
until past the time when the "invasion" could possibly be attempted.
This they did.
Corky Scott
Jens_P...@online.tietokone.fi
marka...@aol.com,Usenet2 writes:
>The Browning .50 was an excellent solution for the opponents the USAAF
>aircraft faced. Probably the best balance of punch, rate-of-fire, and ammo
>capacity against fighters (the primary opponents), and you could probably
>get adequate results against the occasional bomber since you had so many
>guns, especially against Japanese bombers which did not generally carry
>armor or self-sealing tanks. USAAF pilots may have seen things differently
>if they ever had to try to bring down IL-2s, much less B-17s!
Correct, the preferred armament depends of course of the opponent. One
Luftwaffe ace from the Eastern Front, Helmut Lipfert, told in his book how
delighted he was after his Staffel had been updated from Me 109-G6 to -G10
with the 30 mm MK108 center cannon. He said that finally he really got
something to down the 'Flying Tank', IL-2 Stormovik.
A few .50 cal machine guns was perfect in downing a Me 109, which seems to
been very prone to battle damage because of its large and protrusive,
unshielded, radiators. Well, that applied to the most of the liquid cooled
fighters, including Spitfire and P-51.
So, correct tools for each task.
BTW, Helmut Lipfert mentioned about the aerial battles when a liquid cooled
fighter got a hit in the radiator it plunged immediately a thick, white,
smoke trail. The pilot of the hit fighter then of course withdrew
immediately from the battle by making a steep dive or a split-S. The
wounded fighter was then very often claimed as shot down by the
inexperienced airmen. As an example, after the second raid to Schweinfurt
October 14 1943, The American aircrews claimed a total of 186 kills, when
the Luftwaffe actually lost 31 fighters shot down and 12 written off as
unrepairable.
Regards,
Jens Paananen
Noggin
In article <5uudui$i...@portal.gmu.edu>, Phillip McGregor
<asp...@curie.dialix.com.au> writes
>the Brits were better trained. Why?
>Simple! The Germans imported 70% or more of their pre-war oil supplies;
England up to 1960 imported 100% of its oil. I think that the Germans
were better trained, mainly due to the Condor Legion having done 2 years
combat in Spain during the civil war. Also a lot of the German bomber
pilots were use to flying over England in the inter war years as crew on
passenger planes.
>How does this affect training? Well, while in 1939 the Luftwaffe and
the Allies
>bot gave their pilot trainees around 250 flight hours before
gradiuation, the
>ongoing fuel shortage in Germany meant they had to progressively *cut*
the
>flight hours they gave their pilots ... IIRC it was down to about 25-50
by the
>end of the war.
In the battle of Britain the Royal Air Force was putting men in the air,
in combat, who had 20 hours air time and if lucky 8-10 hours on the
aircraft they were to fly.
In an interview on the BBC, tonight 8.sept.97, one Hurricane Pilot, told
a story where a pilot in his squadron attacked two bombers with his guns
on safe, because he didn't know he had to switch them to arm.
>Actually, they had a combat duration of (IIRC) 15-20 minutes *over
Britain* --
>and why? Because they didn't have access to 100 Octane fuel!
No, it was because the fuel tank on the 109 could only hold 88 imp Gal.
An increase in Octane would not give you longer endurance only better
performance.
Before I get big time flamed, I must say that I have the utmost respect
for "the few".
--
Noggin
Robert Sveinson
Rob Davis wrote:
>
> Remove MAPSON when replying via email
> every
> » aspect) Spits, heavily outnumbered, knocked the hell out of a sky full
> of
> » ME's in the Battle of Britain. Amazing! How can you believe that, when
>
> inferior in every aspect to the Me109? Hum... you would be in a
> minority...
Report from the Royal Aircraft Establishment:
During May, 1940, the Royal Aircraft Establishment at
Farnborough, a Spitfire I, and an ME109E fought a series
of mock combats as part of a trial intended to determine
the strengths and weaknesses of each compared with the
other.......
Overall, however the ME 109E, and the Spitfire I matched
each other fairly evenly. If they fought, victory would
almost invariably go to the side which was the more alert,
which held the initiative, which understood the strengths
and weaknesses of its opponents aircraft, which showed
the better team work and which, in the last resort,
could shoot the more accurately.
From the Coffee Table Book "SPITFIRE" by Alfred Price
Robert Sveinson
Winnipeg
Canada
>
> The only recognised aspect that the 109 outclassed the Spit was early in
> the Battle, before the Merlin was equipped with a floatless carburettor,
> which then enabled it to dive after 109s, whose injected engines were
> unaffected by negative G.
And performance above 20,000 feet. Royal Aircraft Establishment
>
GlennShiv
> The Luftwaffe's equipment managed to get dozens of German
> pilots over 100 kills. No Allied pilot can say the same.
You have made the mistake of confusing pilot and plane quality with number
of combat kills. Both the US and Germans possessed both good planes and
pilots. The Germans have several pilot credited with over 100 kills
because their pilots flew until they were killed or seriously wounded.
The US pilots, on the other hand, were rotated out of action after so many
missions so that they could not possibly earn 100 kills. The US pilots
were rotated to other duties, including many who became instructors at
flight school, training new pilots with their hard earned skills. It
should be noted that a number of Russian pilots earned over 100 kills.
Glenn Shiveler
Bob Wartburg
Dan Ford <d...@christa.unh.edu> wrote:
> Despite the Zero myth, relatively green American pilots in Grumman Wildcats held
>their own against the Zero in the first year of the war, and we all know
>what happened thereafter.
>
The only reason the Wildcats 'held their own' against the Zeroes was
when the Americans learned not to turn with it. They also worked out
teamwork (ie wingman) tactics to combat the Zero (see Thach Weave).
I doubt the Aircobra pilots defending the Phillipines in 1941 would
refute the Zero Myth.
>Perhaps the fifty-calibers wouldn't have fared as well against German
>cannon
If I remember correctly, the M2 Browning .50 did reasonably well
against the Germans over the skies of Western Europe (see Thunderbolt
and Mustang).
--
amcmicha@osf1,gmu.edu, dr...@comped1.cas.vanderbilt.edu
Visit the AFU FAQ and archives at http://www.urbanlegends.com
or e-mail mail-...@rtfm.mit.edu with "send
usenet/news.answers/folklore-faq/*" in the body of your message.
Per Andersson
artk...@aol.com (ArtKramr) wrote:
>Really? The isn't it amazing how a hand full of inferior( in almost every
>aspect) Spits, heavily outnumbered, knocked the hell out of a sky full of
>ME's in the Battle of Britain. Amazing! How can you believe that, when the
>facts indicate otherwise?
Because these trial probably took place on equal terms, while the Bf
109s in real life had to protect the bombers and had a rather narrow
fuel margin.
Per Andersson
Robert Sveinson
The first Spitfires that went into squadron
service were equiped with 2 blade fixed pitch
wooden props. When Spitfires went into battle it was
with 3 blade 2 pitch propellors. By the Battle of
Britain
all British aircraft were fitted with Constant
Speed Propellors, and these along with 100 octane
fuel allowed the Spitfires and Hurricanes to
achieve a better rate of climb.
Drazen Kramaric
ArtKramr wrote:
> Really? The isn't it amazing how a hand full of inferior( in almost
> every aspect) Spits, heavily outnumbered, knocked the hell out of a
> sky full of ME's in the Battle of Britain.
Spitfires weren't that inferior to Messerschmitts and had better
armament too. But the true RAF warhorse of the Batlle of Britain was of
course Hurricane.
But your sentence of "sky full of ME's" is the most inaccurate, since
due to empty fuel tanks no Messerchmitt could spend more than 15 minutes
above the target.
British had all the advantages of radar, Corps of observers,
Antiaircraft defense etc.
> Amazing! How can you believe that, when the facts indicate otherwise?
> I guess the only logical answer is that the RAF pilots totally
> outclassed the inferior German pilots. Or do you have some other
> explaination?
Germans were simply trying to defeate Britain with aerial bombardment
which never worked, even in case of Allied strategic bombing.
For succesfful conclusion of Battle of Britain, Luftwaffe needed to
disable British radar system (difficult but possible), but except for
one attack Luftwaffe didn't engaged in such mission, or to attack
Fighter's Command airfields which nearly brought RAF near defeat, (But
this strategy was abandoned by Goering in favor of bombing of London) or
to systematically bomb British air industry factories especially those
which produced engines.
Luftwaffe intelligence (led by General Martini failed to give accurate
data about British defense and Goering and his high command failed to
formulate a clear strategy of aerial offensive against Britain.
The fact that Bf-109s weren't supplied with additional fuel tanks didn't
help either although such tactics were performed in Spain.
> Let common sense prevail..
Yes, the lack of common sense in Luftwaffe high command prevailed and
outnumbered and outgunned British survived only to sack those most
responsible for British victory, Dowding and Park.
Drax
Emmanuel.Gustin
Rob Davis (r...@rob.MAPSON.foobar.co.uk) wrote:
: of cannon, made the latter essential. Great debate reigned... the RAF
: cannon at the time (I believe, Hispano) were less than reliable and prone
: to jamming (they were belt fed). Later the drum fed cannon was an
: excellent weapon, but the Spitfire's thin wing required a blister to
: accommodate the magazine.
The reverse, actually: They began with 60-round drums, and later developed
a reliable belt feed. The blister was not required to cover the magazine,
but the cannon itself.
The .303 guns were probably just effective enough against 1940/1941
fighters, but lacked punch when it came to shooting down bombers, or the
later, better armoured aircraft.
I once bothered to write a web page about WWII fighter gun armament:
http://www.topedge.com/~gustin/fgun.html
OR
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~pettypi/elevon/gustin_military/fgun.html
Emmanuel Gustin
Drazen Kramaric
GlennShiv wrote:
> The US pilots were rotated to other duties, including many who became
> instructors at flight school, training new pilots with their hard
> earned skills.
This is true. However, some of the top US aces were killed in combat
well before 50 victories.
By the time when US pilots became worthy opponents, their number
increased so much that there was not enough enemy fighters to shot down.
However, US pilots still weren't as good as some of the Axis top flyers.
For example Saburo Sakai succesfully held in his Zero against 15
Hellcats above Iwo Jima.
> It should be noted that a number of Russian pilots earned over 100
> kills.
The highest number of victories during WW2 among Soviet pilots is 62 (or
65) and the ace was triple Hero of Soviet Union, Ivan Kozhedub.
Drax
Tero P. Mustalahti
In article <5uvnko$12...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
> In addition, the Zero's low 20mm ammunition capacity (60 rpg) meant that
> the cannon were not typically fired unless/until the shot was well
> lined-up, and the 7.7's were already showing strikes. Very useful in
> brining down straight-and-level opponents, but most firing during hard
> maneuvers was probably done with the dual 7.7mm mg's.
Yes, but the ammunition capacity was increased later. The A6M3 and
A6M5 carried 100 rounds per gun and the A6M5a 125 rpg. The cannon was
also changed to a longer barreled type with a higher muzzle velocity
starting from the late production A6M3s.
> And the Japanese
> Army's primary fighter, the Oscar, only had 2 mg's (usually one 7.7mm, one
> 12.7mm).
Not really. The major production version of the Oscar was the
Ki-43-IIb, which had two 12.7mm machine guns. Only the Ki-43-Ib had a
mixed armament with one 7.7mm mg and one 12.7mm mg. The original
Ki-43-Ia had two 7.7mm mg's and the Ki-43-Ic and all later production
variants (including all Ki-43-II and the Ki-43-IIIa) had two 12.7mm machine
guns.
But yes, the armament was still very light.
> The Browning .50 was an excellent solution for the opponents the USAAF
> aircraft faced. Probably the best balance of punch, rate-of-fire, and ammo
> capacity against fighters (the primary opponents), and you could probably
> get adequate results against the occasional bomber since you had so many
> guns, especially against Japanese bombers which did not generally carry
> armor or self-sealing tanks. USAAF pilots may have seen things differently
> if they ever had to try to bring down IL-2s, much less B-17s!
I agree. The USAF later switched directly to unguided rockets and
later to missiles in interceptor designs. On the other hand, the USN
favored cannon armored fighters after the WWII all the way until the
F-4 appeared.
> BTW, as my "vote" for the best multi-purpose air-to-air weapons of the
> war, I would select either the Browning .50 cal, or the Russian ShVAK 20mm.
> The ShVAK had a high rate of fire (~650 rpm), and a reasonable compact and
> light-weight design. It seemed to allow for about 50% greater ammo storage
> compared with the Russian 20 and 23mm cannons (several models), when
> compared as alternative installations in otherwise identical aircraft.
If the ShVAK was so great, then why did the Soviets abandon it relatively
soon after the war? The MiG-15 carried two 23mm NR-23 cannons and
one 37mm N-37 cannon. If fact no Soviet late 40's or 50's design had
the 20mm ShVAK.
Tero P. Mustalahti
David R. Smith
GlennShiv <glen...@aol.com> wrote in article
<5v2g89$1h...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>...
> > The Luftwaffe's equipment managed to get dozens of German
> > pilots over 100 kills. No Allied pilot can say the same.
>
> ... It
> should be noted that a number of Russian pilots earned over 100 kills.
The sources I have read credit Ivan Kozhedub, with 63 kills, as the
highest-scoring Soviet ace.
David Smith
CDB100620
>the Ki-43-Ic and all later production
>variants (including all Ki-43-II and the Ki-43-IIIa) had two 12.7mm machine
>guns.
>
>But yes, the armament was still very light.
Like all good figher pilots, JAAF Oscar drivers in New Guinea were trained
to take advantage of the weaknesses of enemy aircraft. For USAAF
Prestone-cooled fighters, this meant the radiators and associated plumbing.
A couple of puntures was all that was needed to write off an e/a. The
P-39F used by the 8FG was dead meat for a Ki-43's 2 mgs because the
radiator and plumbing were all in the rear, and not protected by armor.
All the Ki-43 pilot had to do was maneuver onto the P-39's six and squirt a
few rounds into the center of mass and that was all she wrote.
The P-40 was a tougher nut, because the radiator and plumbing were all
bunched up forward and well-protected by armor. An Oscar jockey could nail
away for quite some time without inflicting serious damage on the Curtiss
machine. His best bet was an attack from six o'clock low, aiming at the
front of the aircraft, or from the side in a pursuit curve, again aiming
for the front of the aircraft. Or he could aim for the cockpit and try to
kill the pilot. The P-40 was more vulnerable when it attacked bombers just
because its radiator was forward, and thus subject to receiving projectile
strikes from defending bomber gunners.
The P-38, should the joker at the controls allow his speed to bleed off,
was also easy pickings for the Oscar driver, whose standard tactic was to
attack from the four or eight o'clock position and aim for the bulges on
the boom that housed the radiator. He could also rip the shit out of the
turbo-supercharger by walking his rounds forward a bit.
The P-47 was the toughest nut to crack, because its engine was air-cooled.
But the turbo-supercharger was mounted aft, and vulnerable to a few
well-placed rounds.
The problem for the Oscar driver with the P-38 and the P-47 was that they
held such a performance advantage over his mount that he was unlikely to
get a chance to make his nails count.
In the hands of a skilled pilot with excellent gunnery skills, the Ki-43
was formidable. In the hands of a less-skilled pilot with poor gunnery
skills.... Even for a skilled pilot, the Ki-43 was too lightly armed to do
much damage to a bomber.
The Ki-43 also had its weak point: a high-pressure oxygen cylinder
mounted directly behind the pilot. AAF pilots tried to place their rounds
to strike it; the ensuing explosion would rip the Ki-43 apart.
It's worth noting that the throw weight of the Ki-43 with 2 .50 cal (more
or less) machine guns was about 162 lbs per minute. The throw weight of
the Me-109 models with one 20mm cannon and two .30 cal (more or less)
machine guns was about 246 lbs. per minute--better, but not all that much
different. The throw weight of a P-40, with six .50 cal mgs, however, was
486 lbs. per minute--very significantly different. That's why marksmanship
was so important to scoring with either the Ki-43 or Me-109: the pilot had
to make the few rounds he could fire in the brief window of opportunity he
had count. The P-40, on the other hand (and the other US fighters) put out
such a volume of fire that as long as they hit the e/a somewhere, they
likely did serious damage.
Jay Martino
glen...@aol.com (GlennShiv) wrote:
>> The Luftwaffe's equipment managed to get dozens of German
>> pilots over 100 kills. No Allied pilot can say the same.
>
>You have made the mistake of confusing pilot and plane quality with number
>of combat kills. Both the US and Germans possessed both good planes and
>pilots.
Actually the confusion was in previous posts which spoke of how
inferior the German equipment was, which was why the Western Allies
(specifically the American USAAF) "swept then from the skies".
> It
>should be noted that a number of Russian pilots earned over 100 kills.
I believe, though it's from memory, that the highest scoring Soviet
ace was somewhere around the 80 kill mark. I'll see if I can find some
more info on that.
Dan Ford
> > And the Japanese
> > Army's primary fighter, the Oscar, only had 2 mg's (usually one 7.7mm, one
> > 12.7mm).
>
> Not really. The major production version of the Oscar was the
> Ki-43-IIb, which had two 12.7mm machine guns. Only the Ki-43-Ib had a
In 1942, the Japanese army 64th Sentai based in Thailand refitted many of
its Ki-43 Hayabusas with a 7.7 mm gun because the 12.x (I thought they
were 12.9, but never mind) were so slow-firing. My source for that is the
memoirs published by Yohei Hinoki, and correspondence I had with him.
(Hinoki was a sergeant pilot in the 64th sentai.)
As I recall, the 12.x mm was adapted from an infantry weapon.
Their radios, too, were all but useless. The army, of course, would not
have demeaned itself by using navy equipment :)
CDB100620
>By the time when US pilots became worthy opponents, their number
>increased so much that there was not enough enemy fighters to shot down.
>
>
American pilots at the start of the war were very highly skilled and quite
capable. Granted, they lacked combat experience, but they gained it
quickly. The main problem was that their were very few of them--aside from
the AVG pilots in China (who managed to do quite well for themselves), the
only American pilots facing the Japanese in the Pacific at the outset of
the war were those of the 24PG and the 4CPG in the P.I. They were
equipped with P-35A, P-40B and P-40E (receiving the first of these on
9-29-41; some units didn't equip with P-40Es until 11-25-41). U.S. Navy
pilots acquitted themselves quite well from the get-go, though they were
few in number.
To make a reasonable comparison of pilot skills, simple total victories
isn't adequate. You need to look at how on how many sorties the pilot
encountered enemy aircraft and divide the number of kills into that number.
Eg., the well-known Chuck Yeager flew 58 missions, encountered the enemy on
six of those missions, downing 11.5 e/a., his "kill-per-encounter ratio is
thus about 2:1. Eric Hartmann flew some 800 sorites, encountering enemy
aircraft on about 400, destroying 352, for a kill-per-encounter ratio of
close to 1:1. Bill Preddy (P-51 pilot) flew 143 combat missions,
encountering enemy aircraft 22 times and shooting down 27, for a
kill-per-encounter ratio of 1.23:1.
On top of this, you have to consider how many times a pilot was shot down.
Hartmann and many of the German pilots were shot down numerous times and
quickly returned to combat. American pilots for the most part flew over
enemy territory, and if they were shot down they were out of the war.
Hartmann himself was shot down numerous times. Yeager was shot down once,
but was one of the few allied pilots to escape. Preddy was shot down and
killed (by friendly ground fire). Soviet pilots also fought close to their
own lines, like the Germans, and so were able to survive multiple
shoot-downs and return to duty. Japanese pilots, often flew long-range
missions with no chance of rescue should they be shot down.
Oliver Weber
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
In the article " Re: Cannon v. machineguns (Was: Re: 100
Octane Fuel) ",
wart...@ni.net (Bob Wartburg) wrote on 9 Sep 1997 16:01:10
GMT:
>>Perhaps the fifty-calibers wouldn't have fared as well against German
>>cannon
>
>If I remember correctly, the M2 Browning .50 did reasonably well
>against the Germans over the skies of Western Europe (see Thunderbolt
>and Mustang).
Yes, but of course the guns were added to the German fighters because
of their different mission - shooting down bombers.
There were design variants of the Bf-109 during the battle of Britain
that used 20mm guns firing through the propeller-shaft (and they were
pretty succesful), but later - and much heavier - gun armaments were
of course aimed against the bomber threat.
It's therefore quite unfair to compare - let's say - a fully armed
Bf-109 with 3x20mm (or even more firepower) with a nimble fighter
escort who didn't have to carry around such weight and additional
drag.
Yours,
Oliver Weber O-
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Emmanuel.Gustin
Oliver Weber (O.W...@rz.uni-frankfurt.de) wrote:
: There were design variants of the Bf-109 during the battle of Britain
: that used 20mm guns firing through the propeller-shaft (and they were
: pretty succesful), but later - and much heavier - gun armaments were
: of course aimed against the bomber threat.
Actually, at the time of the Battle of Britain the engine-mounted MG FF
was seldom installed, because it was so unreliable. The opening in the
propeller hub was used by an oil cooler. Most Bf 109Es relied on two 20mm
cannon in the wings. The Bf 109F of course returned to the cannon between
the cylinder banks, but this was the much better MG151.
Also: Someone remarked that the Japanese pilots replaced one of the 12.7mm
guns in the Ki.43 with a 7.7mm gun, because it was too slow-firing. But
this 12.7mm gun was the Ho-103, and it had a higher rate of fire than the
vaunted Browning .50... Although this not a very good reference, for the
rpm of the Browning gun was modest. I believe the Ho-103 was actually a
lighter, improved copy of the Browning gun.
As far as I know, weight and availability of the bigger gun were the
primary reasons to equip early Ki.43s with the 7.7mm Type 89.
Emmanuel Gustin
Emmanuel.Gustin
Tero P. Mustalahti (term...@strangelove.yok.utu.fi) wrote:
: If the ShVAK was so great, then why did the Soviets abandon it relatively
: soon after the war? The MiG-15 carried two 23mm NR-23 cannons and
: one 37mm N-37 cannon. If fact no Soviet late 40's or 50's design had
: the 20mm ShVAK.
Two factors: (i) By 1944, they had the even better Berezin B-20, with the
same performance as the ShVAK but much lighter. The B-20 was actually
lighter than a Browning .50! (ii) The MiG-15 was designed to destroy the
B-29 (this was the nuclear age, remember) and for this task 20mm cannon
were considered insufficient. The designers of the MiG-15 calculated that
two 37mm shells or eight 23mm shells would do the job. The Germans had the
same motiviation for equipping their fighters with the 30mm MK108: Against
B-17s, even the 20mm cannon were insufficient armament.
In comparison with the ShVAK and B-20 the German MG151/20 and the British
Hispano Mk.II had a lower rate of fire, but they fired considerably
heavier shells. However, the ShVAK was available from the start, while the
MG151/20 and Hispano Mk.II appeared later.
It must be said that for most of the war, the Russians had really
excellent guns in all calibres: The 7.62mm ShKAS, 12.7mm UB, 20mm ShVAK
and B-20, 23mm NS-23 and 37mm NS-37. They probably did better than the
British or Germans, and certainly better than the USA --- The American
industry could not even make a decent copy of the MG151.
Emmanuel Gustin
Bill MacArthur
Drazen Kramaric <etk...@etk.ericsson.se> wrote:
>
>GlennShiv wrote:
>
>> The US pilots were rotated to other duties, including many who became
>> instructors at flight school, training new pilots with their hard
>> earned skills.
>
>This is true. However, some of the top US aces were killed in combat
>well before 50 victories.
>
Since the top US ace is credited with 40 kills, any top US aces who were
killed were killed with less than 50 victories.
The British including Commonwealth & Empire pilots who fought on the
Western front throughout the war really suffered from losing top aces like
Paddy Finucane (killed) and Douglas Bader (captured). To a large extent
this was due to going on the offensive and flying sweeps over the English
Channel and France. If shot down they either drowned or were captured.
While on the defensive, they could crashland or bail out and live to fight
again as the Germans did.
Johnnie Johnson (who was the top western ace in Europe) was the exception.
>By the time when US pilots became worthy opponents, their number
>increased so much that there was not enough enemy fighters to shot down.
>
I don't think that this is totally fair to the Yanks. The Americans shot
down very few bombers as they were on the attack when they entered the
war (in Europe anyway). They also enjoyed numerical superiority so
perhaps the best pilots didn't get first crack at the enemy.
>However, US pilots still weren't as good as some of the Axis top flyers.
>For example Saburo Sakai succesfully held in his Zero against 15
>Hellcats above Iwo Jima.
>
One can't take away from Sakai's ability, but who is to say that those
Hellcat pilots were top flyers and that there wasn't some quite natural
exageration on his part.
>
>> It should be noted that a number of Russian pilots earned over 100
>> kills.
>
>The highest number of victories during WW2 among Soviet pilots is 62 (or
>65) and the ace was triple Hero of Soviet Union, Ivan Kozhedub.
>
As with the forces under British and American command, the Soviet pilots
ran out of targets.
bil...@uwindsor.ca targetting spammers in my email address
Brad Meyer
In message <5uudt9$a...@portal.gmu.edu> - Dan Ford <d...@christa.unh.edu> writes:
>
(snip)
>
>I don't think this subject gets the attention it deserves. American
>experience in the Pacific certainly indicated that six or even four
>fifty-caliber (12.7 mm) machineguns were a formidable counter to two 20 mm
>cannon.
True, but not especially useful as many more things factored into the
equation then guns vs cannon. The american air frames, across the board, were
much more rugged then most of the Japanese airfraimes, especially the zero.
The American engines were also much more rugged and generally more reliable.
The doctrine, especially the "Thach weave" and two plane element, were
superior to Japanese doctrine based on the three plane element. These three
things combined to get a lot of pilots back after getting shot up, and the
more pilots get back the better chance you have of creating combat vets. In
addition, during the critical pilot attrition period the last 5 months of
1942 the Zeros were flying at _extreme_ range and had many of the same "time
over target" restrictions the the Germans suffered during BOB.
>See John Lundstrom, The First Team; Robert Mikesh, Zero. Despite
>the Zero myth, relatively green American pilots in Grumman Wildcats held
>their own against the Zero in the first year of the war, and we all know
>what happened thereafter.
Acent on "relatively". Even pre-war carrier pilots were pretty well schooled
and logged many hours just to get into a carrier copit. People like Thach,
Flatley, Lem Massey, McClusky, etc. were a solid cadre of vetern,
professional naval aviators.
>Perhaps the fifty-calibers wouldn't have fared as well against German
>cannon, but from the little I've read it seems that the P-40 at low
>altitude and the P-38 at high altitude were reasonably good competition
>against the 109 in North Africa.
Also the P51's and P-47's.
>With self-sealing tanks, it may be that thirty-caliber (7.62
>mm) machineguns were a bit small for the job.
Early P40's and I think one or two other US a/c had .30's and were quickly
ditched in favor of all .50's. In addition to its obvious advantage in size
and weight of the projectile, the basic US 50 cal machine gun was rugged,
reliable weapon even before the war. The US, being the US, churned them out
faster then most countries could make bullets. They went on planes, tanks,
landing craft, ships, jeeps, gravel cruncher's backs and 'most anywhere else.
Abundance and ruggedness probably counted for as much as utility in its
selection over cannon in US a/c. Given that the "six fifties" of the P51,
F6F, and F4U all seemed to dominate their respective theaters, the US decided
to defer transition to cannon to largely post-war a/c.
I think the gun vs cannon question is just another another item in the
volume of fire vs accuracy of fire debate. For mass armies (and air forces)
of WW II type, volume of fire has been demonstrated to be more effective.
Brad Meyer
"It is history that teaches us to hope."
-- R E Lee
CDB100620
>The American
>industry could not even make a decent copy of the MG151.
A little strong. Had sufficiently high priority been given to developing
a particular weapon, it would have been developed. Not only did the United
States possess the greatest industrial base in the world, it began in WWII
to implement the government/university/industry alliance that has made it
the leader in R&D for the last half-century. Nor should it be forgotten
that the Soviets killed off most of their brilliant innovaters, and the
Germans did the USA the favor of expelling theirs (or forcing them to flee)
as well as killing them, so America had not only its own great minds, but
those of central Europe as well.
The fact is that for the enemies America faced, the .50 M2 was more than
sufficient. It was proven technology that could be used by infantry,
armor, naval and air forces and mass produced quickly. The .50 and its
ammo were universal among US military forces, simplifying logistics
immensely. It served well on the back of Jeeps, in tanks on PT boats, in
B-25s, F4Us, in.... Its sufficiency is one reason that today Europe is
merely a quasi-autonomous dependency of the USA, and has been since the end
of WWII.
CDB100620
>The american air frames, across the board, were
>much more rugged then most of the Japanese airfraimes, especially the zero.
>The American engines were also much more rugged and generally more reliable.
The Japanese Naval Air Force's Zero was notoriously built on the light
side in the earlier models. But the Japanese Army Air Force fielded a
number of ruggedly constructed aircraft with pilot armor and self-sealing
fuel tanks: the Ki-44, Ki-61 and Ki-84 in particular. The Ki-44 was
common in the CBI and SWPA, and the Ki-61 served largely in the SWPA.
Japanese radial engines were rugged and reliable. USAAF squadrons in New
Guinea routinely had Japanese "mascot" fighters, usually the Ki-43 because
it was such a pleasure to fly, the engine of which ran like Jack the Bear
as long as you put gas and oil in it.
Charles K. Scott
In article <5v3sqf$f...@portal.gmu.edu>
Drazen Kramaric <etk...@etk.ericsson.se> writes:
> By the time when US pilots became worthy opponents, their number
> increased so much that there was not enough enemy fighters to shot down.
>
> However, US pilots still weren't as good as some of the Axis top flyers.
> For example Saburo Sakai succesfully held in his Zero against 15
> Hellcats above Iwo Jima.
A number of Luftwaffe pilots who had scored more than 100 shoot downs
did not make it through the war and almost none of the top Japanese
pilots survived. What does this prove? To me, nothing. It just shows
that war is dangerous and death can be anywhere and happen any time.
Molders died in a non combat related crash when he attempted a flight
in bad weather. One of the top German Battle of Britain aces died when
he pulled his wings off at low level over the Channel after the
conflict was over. Marseille died when he bailed out of a fighter that
was particularly difficult to get out of. So what? Many of the rest
of the "aces" were shot down in combat. To me it doesn't matter if a
dozen German pilots were more experienced than their counterparts and
had higher scores. That only counts in discussions like this. What
matters is numbers of aircraft and overall training and efficiency. In
this, the Allies definately held the advantage.
In the situation you mention of Sakai vs the Hellcats, that's a kind of
a "so what?". So he was a great pilot and most probably the most
experienced at Iwo Jima of any Japanese pilot . . . and probably of any
American pilot as well. But he was only one guy and during the
dogfight you mention, he was just a nimble target. He posed no real
threat to the attackers who used their speed and climb to stay mostly
out of his sights. All he wanted to do was return to Iwo Jima to have
the AA fire drive the Hellcats off his back. Does that sound like he
was in any way effective as a combatant? The Japanese could have used
thousands of Sakais. One great pilot does not a winning formula make.
You need LOTS of good pilots and many many aircraft for them to fly,
and even more mechanics to repair them and keep them flying, and fuel
to keep them in the air and ammunition for them to use. That's what
wins wars, not just a few pilots who individually were great sticks.
In my opinion.
Corky Scott
CDB100620
>the
>latest Spitfire was probably the best fighter of WW2.
In the fall of 1943 Hap Arnold told Sir Charles Portal, chief of the
British Air Staff that the Spitfire was "relatively useless." Earlier, the
US had agreed to trade 600 P-51s for 600 Spitfires. Now Arnold wanted to
return the Spitfires and get the P-51s back. The British refused to hand
them over, claiming they needed them to carry out reconnaissance. So
whatever the merits of the Spitfire may have been in the fall of 1943,
neither the USAAF nor the RAF wanted them as much as they wanted P-51s.
Emmanuel.Gustin
CDB100620 (cdb1...@aol.com) wrote:
: the leader in R&D for the last half-century. Nor should it be forgotten
: that the Soviets killed off most of their brilliant innovaters, and the
: Germans did the USA the favor of expelling theirs (or forcing them to flee)
: as well as killing them, so America had not only its own great minds, but
: those of central Europe as well.
To some extent that is true. But on the other hand, where aircraft guns
are concerned, the Russians and Germans seem to have kept the best minds.
I may have worded it a bit strong, but like many Europeans I'm a bit
annoyed by this assumption that "American is Best", which sometimes
expands into the ridiculous... The Browning .50 M2 was easy to
manufacture, cheap, and very reliable. On the downside, it was rather
heavy for a .50 gun, and had a mediocre rate of fire. It was a good
weapon, but not an excellent one, and it was the only suitable fighter gun
the USA had! Almost all major combattants of WWII --- the Italians are the
exception --- produced better fighter armament.
If the Japanese, or the Germans, had been able to afford the development
and contruction in large numbers of a well-armed, well-protected bomber,
the USAAF and USN would have been in serious trouble. They did not, but
luck is not a virtue.
: B-25s, F4Us, in.... Its sufficiency is one reason that today Europe is
: merely a quasi-autonomous dependency of the USA, and has been since the end
: of WWII.
That's the mentality that will get us all in trouble... But that is
current politics, and therefore off-topic.
Emmanuel Gustin
Robert Sveinson
Drazen Kramaric wrote:
> That's true. Read Len Deighton's "Fighter" for detailed story. There
> were teams of trained mechanics (from factories) which travelled from
> squadron to squadron performing the first change, supervising the second
> and leaving the rest of the job to local group of mechanics.
The early Spitfires, and probably Hurricanes had fabric covered
control surfaces which made stick effort excessive. There was
a huge retrofit program during the Battle, where a pilot would
take his a/c to the factory to have metal control surfaces
installed on a drive through basis. The a/c manufacturers did
these retrofits without benefit of approval from the Ministry
of A/C production, the same as for the constant speed props.
Everything, of course came out in the end.
Robert Sveinson
Winnipeg
Canada
Gsp223
mjmartino@igs*.net (Jay Martino) Wrote:
>The P-51, IIRC, was a pre-war design. In fact I don't think there were
>too many war-designed fighters in anyone's inventory.
From "American Fighters of Worl War Two" Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1968.
Page 49
"In the early spring of 1940 the British Purchasing Commission were
feverishly evaluating existing and projected types of fighter aircraft
available for sale in the then then neutral United States.... (Much words
about the Curtis Hawk 87A-1 left out cuz I didn't want to type them... <g>)
As, at the time, the members of the British Purchasing Commission had
estblished a close working relationship with the management and staff of
North American Aviation Inc., which was then producing Harvard advanced
trainers for the R.A.F. for a period, they approached this company with the
idea of participatin in the Hawk 87A-1 production programme. To their
suprise North American flatly rejected the idea, but offered to build a new
fighter which the company had been studying with the idea of incorporating
in its design the features which early combat experience in Europe had
revealed necessary. As the calculated characteristics and performances of
the proposed fighter were markedly superior to those of the Hawk 87A-1,
powered by the same Allison V-1710-39, the British Purchasing Commission
were willing to sign if North American were willing to guarantee delivery
of the prototype in no more than 120 days. On May 4 1940 the contract was
signed."
Technically you are correct, The P-51 was designed prior to the US's entry
into WWII. But....
>The US produced some real dogs as well (including the P-51 pre-Merlin).
The Allison-powered Mustang was not a dog, but very good design that was
hampered buy the use of a marginal power plant. <Sorry, couldn't resist :) >
The Allison Mustangs got favorable reviews from test pilots (though not
spectacular) and the perfromance was not so as to warrant change in the,
then, USAAF's production program. After all "the P-38 and P-47 were
supposed to meet all their needs." <cited>
The Allison-powered Mustangs became the A-36 dive-bomber and F-6
Reconnaissance aircraft.
Alex
Tero P. Mustalahti
In article <5v3rvq$l...@portal.gmu.edu>,
gus...@hhipe.uia.ac.be (Emmanuel.Gustin) writes:
> The .303 guns were probably just effective enough against 1940/1941
> fighters, but lacked punch when it came to shooting down bombers, or the
> later, better armoured aircraft.
The Finnish pilots found the 8 .303 cal mg's of the Hurricane Mk. I almost
useless in air combat when compared to the 4 .50 calibers of the
Buffalo. The .303 were only good for strafing infantry and horse
carts, they said...
Tero P. Mustalahti
Drazen Kramaric
Phillip McGregor wrote:
> Yes. True, but Art is also correct -- the Brits were better trained.
On the contrary. Luftwaffe pilots employed in Battle of Britain were
true elite.
On the other side, British found themselves with quite enough fighter
but without pilots to fly them.
Many young pilots had only a couple of straffs as the only shooting
practise before they were sent to fight Germans.
In darkest days of attcking the airfields of 11th Group, Dowding even
signed a secret order to send OTU (Operational Training Units) into
battle.
> Actually, they had a combat duration of (IIRC) 15-20 minutes *over
> Britain* -- and why? Because they didn't have access to 100 Octane
> fuel!
Galland wasn't so upset becuase of 100 Octane fuel. He complained
because of lack of additional fuel tanks, which was already used in
Condor Legion in Spain.
Drax
Robert Sveinson
Jay Martino wrote:
>
> The P-51, IIRC, was a pre-war design. In fact I don't think there were
> too many war-designed fighters in anyone's inventory.
The British Ministry of Aircraft Production came to the
US to buy more aircraft. Curtis was so busy that they could not
produce any P 40s for the RAF. The MAP went to North
American Aviation, to try and get them to produce P 40s
for the British. Some executive at NAA told the British that they
could produce an entirely new aircraft in as short
a time as 100 days [or something like that].
The British agreed, and the new P51 [Mustang] was produced
in one day over the agreed time. The P51, with the Allison engine
didn't perform at all at altitude, and as a result, Mustangs
were used for low level operations. I don't know
who got the bright idea to put the RR Merlin into the P51,
but some one did, and the rest as they say is history.
Many P51s, were made with the Packard Merlin as well.
One of the better fortunes of war
Robert Sveinson
Winnipeg
Canada
CDB100620
>October 14 1943, The American aircrews claimed a total of 186 kills, when
>the Luftwaffe actually lost 31 fighters shot down and 12 written off as
>unrepairable.
>
>
The breakdown of losses is interesting: 24 Bf 109 and only 2 FW 190 (plus
3 Bf 110 and 2 Me 410). There were more 109s than 190s engaged, but the
fact that the 109s suffered so severely is an indication of the
vulnerability of the Bf 109 to .50 cal projectile strikes in particular and
the liquid-cooled engine in general.
It's worth noting that the liquid-cooled reciprocating aircraft engine
disappeared abruptly with the end of WWII while the, air-cooled
reciprocating aircraft engine is with us still. Big radial and corncob
engines powered the postwar prop airliners such as the Constellation,
Stratocruiser, DC-6 and DC-7 and boxer engines are found in practically all
of today's general aviation aircraft. The liquid-cooled reciprocating
aircraft engine is one bit of WWII-era technology that had a very short
lifespan.
David R. Smith
Gsp223 <gsp...@aol.com> wrote in article <5v8q5a$h...@portal.gmu.edu>...
> >The US produced some real dogs as well (including the P-51 pre-Merlin).
> The Allison-powered Mustang was not a dog, but very good design that was
> hampered buy the use of a marginal power plant. <Sorry, couldn't resist
:) >
> The Allison Mustangs got favorable reviews from test pilots (though not
> spectacular) and the perfromance was not so as to warrant change in the,
> then, USAAF's production program. After all "the P-38 and P-47 were
> supposed to meet all their needs." <cited>
>
> The Allison-powered Mustangs became the A-36 dive-bomber and F-6
> Reconnaissance aircraft.
I recall reading somewhere (probably _Wings_ or _Airpower_) that the
Mustang was initially produced for the USAAF as the A-36 because there were
appropriated funds for the attack category, whereas funds for the fighter
category were already committed. This then represents a workound of
bureaucratic problems, rather than failure to appreciate the value of the
Mustang as a fighter.
The Allison Mustang may have been a dog compared to the Merlin variant, but
I suspect it was still quite superior to the Hawk 87, P-39, F4F, or F2A.
I wonder how a Griffon-powered P-51H might have performed.
David Smith
Scott Peterson
cdb1...@AOL.COM (CDB100620) wrote:
>{snip}
>It's worth noting that the liquid-cooled reciprocating aircraft engine
>disappeared abruptly with the end of WWII while the, air-cooled
>reciprocating aircraft engine is with us still. Big radial and corncob
>engines powered the postwar prop airliners such as the Constellation,
>Stratocruiser, DC-6 and DC-7 and boxer engines are found in practically all
>of today's general aviation aircraft. The liquid-cooled reciprocating
>aircraft engine is one bit of WWII-era technology that had a very short
>lifespan.
Methinks that you need to research this a bit more. In fact, after
WWII, the USAAF/USAF standardized their piston engined fighters on the
P-51 which was liquid cooled, scrapping the P-38's, P-47's, etc.
As far as the passenger airliners, they all used WWII vintage radial
engine designs. Effectively radial engine design hit a dead end after
WWII as well. It's a simplification, but even in the early fifties it
was clear that the future was jets, turboprops and turbines when you
needed reliability and high power output.
Scott Peterson
OscarV6990
>wrote "David R. Smith"
>I recall reading somewhere (probably _Wings_ or _Airpower_) that the
>Mustang was initially produced for the USAAF as the A-36 because there were
>appropriated funds for the attack category, whereas funds for the fighter
>category were already committed.
David Smith
Just before WWII we lived a couple of miles from the Valtee Aircraft plant
which became the North American Plant in Downy California were P-51 were
produced. My Dad worked there before the War and during the War. My
understanding is the the P-51 was designed from the start for the English
under an English Contract at first and then the USAAF got into the act . My
Dad and I used to set at the end of the "flightline" runway and watch
P-51's takeoff heading east, with English markings. We were broke at the
time from the depression so that was our Sunday recreation until we got on
our feet
Jim Carew
CDB100620
The Aug/Sep 1996 issue of Smithsonian Air & Space magazine has a very
thorough article on the origin of the Mustang ("Who Made the Mustang" by
Peter Garrison). The magazine has a web site and the article is in its
on-line archives.
C.C. Jordan
On 12 Sep 1997 04:36:30 GMT, cdb1...@AOL.COM (CDB100620) wrote:
[snip]
>It's worth noting that the liquid-cooled reciprocating aircraft engine
>disappeared abruptly with the end of WWII while the, air-cooled
>reciprocating aircraft engine is with us still.
I think you misunderstand the reasons why liquid cooled engines
were not used in new designs. Jet engine technology eclipsed
piston engine technology. Besides, liquid cooled aircraft continued to
serve the major Air Forces beyond the Korean war.
>Big radial and corncob
>engines powered the postwar prop airliners such as the Constellation,
>Stratocruiser, DC-6 and DC-7 and boxer engines are found in practically all
>of today's general aviation aircraft.
The reasons for this are simple to understand. In civil aviation, small air
cooled engines require less maintenance than water cooled. The basic
systems are simplified as well. In the airline industry, there were other
considerations as well. Radial engines generally demonstrated greater
reliability due to not having cooling systems to leak or otherwise fail.
There was also the problem of horsepower. The Pratt & Whitney R2800
made 2,000 hp with a reliability unheard of in water cooled engines.
The Wright R3350 made up to 3,000 hp in later varients. Then there was
the monsterous R4360..... The Airline manufacturers selected radials
for their reliability, simplicity of maintenance, excellent power to weight
ratio and reasonable fuel consumption. Liquid cooled engines that were
available simply were too expensive to maintain and generally did not produce
enough power for the larger airliners.
> The liquid-cooled reciprocating
>aircraft engine is one bit of WWII-era technology that had a very short
>lifespan.
>
Actually, this life span is much longer than you think. From the pioneer
days of aviation, liquid cooled engines were common. During WWI, many
famous aircraft employed liquid cooled powerplants. The overwhelming
majority of German aircraft used water cooled engines, including what many
consider the best plane of the war, the Fokker D-VII. The Allies produced
many aircraft with water cooled engines as well. Planes such as the SE-5a,
Martinsyde Buzzard and Bristol F2B. America produced the 400 hp. Liberty V12
engine. During the between war years, water cooled engines were also
common. The British Hawkers and the American Boeing fighters are typical.
If liquid cooled engines were inferior, why were the best fighters powered
by them? The P-51, P-38, Spitfire, Typhoon, Tempest, Fw-190D-9, TA-152,
Bf-109, Mosquito, and the Soviet Yaks and MiGs were all powered by liquid
cooled engines. Why? Because the compact liquid cooled engines lend
themselves to small frontal areas, and the cleaner aerodynamics provided for
very high speeds. The only arena where radial engines dominated, was in naval
aircraft, where maximum speed took a back seat to reliability and ease of
maintenance. Both of these factors being critical at sea, where engine failure
usually meant ditching at sea and maintenance facilities were limited to what
was available on a carrier.
The demise of liquid cooled engines is directly related to the development
of jet engine and turboprop technology, not any inferiority to radial engines.
Regards,
C.C. Jordan
"Passion and prejudice govern the world; only
under the name of reason".
John Wesley
David Read
In article <5vfasu$f...@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>, CDB100620
<cdb1...@aol.com> writes
>In the fall of 1943 Hap Arnold told Sir Charles Portal, chief of the
>British Air Staff that the Spitfire was "relatively useless." Earlier, the
>US had agreed to trade 600 P-51s for 600 Spitfires. Now Arnold wanted to
>return the Spitfires and get the P-51s back. The British refused to hand
>them over, claiming they needed them to carry out reconnaissance. So
>whatever the merits of the Spitfire may have been in the fall of 1943,
>neither the USAAF nor the RAF wanted them as much as they wanted P-51s.
And what mark of Spitfire would that have been ? My guess is the Mark V,
which I thought was the only Spit used by the USAAF to any great extent.
The Mark V was obsolete by 1943, so no wonder the British didn't want
them back. By 1943 the Mk IX was in frontline service, a great
improvement on the Mark V. In any case, I suspect the previous poster
had in mind the Griffon engined Mk XIV as his representative of later
mark Spitfires. That entered service in 1944.
Wanting the long range of a P51 for reconnaissance is one thing; trading
that for some obsolete Mk V Spitfires for the air defence of Great
Britain is another.
cheers,
--
David Read
CDB100620
>You need LOTS of good pilots
And good pilots aren't necessarily aces. An example is William Levitan,
of the 49FG. He was only credited with one confirmed kill (an Oscar), but
his influence extended far beyond that single destroyed aircraft. A
veteran of the fighting in Java, and hundreds of combat hours thereafter,
he not only taught the kids fresh from the states how to fight and stay
alive, but how to navigate over the trackless (literally) wastes of New
Guinea and handle the treacherous weather. He also taught them successful
tricks for beating the Nip in the air and pounding him on the ground.
But more important than that, he kept the pilots' morale up. He was an
optimist in a world that quickly changed happy-go-lucky 20-year-olds into
grim, pessimistic old men. He was coach and father and buddy to dozens and
dozens of young, uncertain fighter pilots desperately trying to hide the
fact that they were scared sick every time they climbed into the cockpit.
He disappeared ferrying a P-38 from Townville to 14 Mile Strip, his
epitaph, "Last seen entering a weather front." Levitan's death was a
visceral blow to the pilots of the 49FG, and was felt more deeply than the
passing of some self-aggrandizing "aces" who only cared about racking up a
big personal score. Levitan's concern was to complete the mission
successfully without taking unnecessary risks. His common comment to some
youngster tossing and turning on his cot the night before a mission was,
"Don't worry kid. You've got a lot of living waiting for you after this
war is over. I guarantee it." And he did guarantee it, time after time.
He knew how to take advantage of terrain and sun and cloud to achieve
surprise. He knew when to stay and fight and when to skeedaddle. He never
got lost. He never ran his boys out of gas.
The fact that, ultimately, he couldn't guarantee is own safety, despite
his finely honed skills, clutched like an icy fist at the hearts of 49FG
pilots. They knew they weren't as good as he was, even if they happened to
have shot down a plane or two or ten more than he had. So what chance of
coming out alive did they have?
But they kept right on flying missions, because one of the things Levitan
taught them was that the mark of a professional is that he does the job.
Personal feelings don't enter into it. No matter what, you carry out the
mission.
Dan Ford
A principal reason for the popularity of liquid-cooled engines in European
air forces and the USAAF was that their small frontal area made possible a
greater degree of streamlining and therefore a higher top speed from the
relatively small horsepower engines available in the 1930s. This appeal
was principally for fighter aircraft. Postwar, turbojets took over this
role. Liquid cooled engines had few attractions for the builders of
transport aircraft.
But liquid-cooled engines are far from valueless, witness their near
universal application in automobile engines for the past 70 years.
- Dan (http://www.concentric.net/~danford)
Brewster Buffalo / Flying Tigers / Germany at War / Japan at War
Robert Sveinson
CDB100620 wrote:
>
> >the
> >latest Spitfire was probably the best fighter of WW2.
>
> In the fall of 1943 Hap Arnold told Sir Charles Portal, chief of the
> British Air Staff that the Spitfire was "relatively useless." Earlier, the
> US had agreed to trade 600 P-51s for 600 Spitfires. Now Arnold wanted to
> return the Spitfires and get the P-51s back. The British refused to hand
> them over, claiming they needed them to carry out reconnaissance. So
> whatever the merits of the Spitfire may have been in the fall of 1943,
> neither the USAAF nor the RAF wanted them as much as they wanted P-51s.
The RAF received Mustang Is in 1942, that stayed in squadron service
until 1944. This was the Mustang equiped with the Allison engine,
and could only be used for low level work. The RAF received
Mustang IIIs in December 1943, after the date that you say
the USAAF wanted their P 51s back. If that was the case all
Arnold had to do was not deliver P 51s, and thus avoid any scrapping
over who should keep the P 51s.
Now I could see the RAF not wanting the early P 51s, and would
rather have their Spitfires back, but in all my reading about
the air war in Europe I have never heard of any dispute about who
should give up their Mustangs, and Spitfires.
The RAF were well pleased with their Mustang Is for doing
low level work; photo, reconnaissance, and ground attacks, and
were happy to recieve the RR Merlin engine equiped P 51s.
It was about this time that the USAAF were trying to get their
hands on the MOSQUITO, for reconnaissance work, and the USAAF
eventually had 14 squadrons of Mosquitos.
Robert Sveinson
Winnipeg
Canada
CDB100620
>I think you misunderstand the reasons why liquid cooled engines
>were not used in new designs
Actually, you're making my point for me. The liquid-cooled (definitely
NOT "water-cooled") aircraft engine was perfected in the WWII era and did
not survive it because it was complex, unreliable and vulnerable compared
to the air-cooled aircraft engine. Ultimately, of course, the turbine
replaced both the radial and liquid-cooled reciprocating engines. But the
air-cooled recips played a major role in aviation for 15 years after the
end of the war. The liquid-cooled aircraft engine did not. Twenty years
after the end of WWII, radial recips were being used in combat in Vietnam
(T-28, AD-1, A-26, AC-47, AC-119, E2A, even EC-121). There was nary a
liquid-cooled job in sight.
Incidentally, during WWII, Lockheed, recognizing the problems inherent in
the liquid-cooled engine, proposed re-equipping the P-38 with R-2800s.
Emmanuel.Gustin
C.C. Jordan (C.C.J...@worldnet.att.net) wrote:
: On 12 Sep 1997 04:36:30 GMT, cdb1...@AOL.COM (CDB100620) wrote:
: >It's worth noting that the liquid-cooled reciprocating aircraft engine
: >disappeared abruptly with the end of WWII while the, air-cooled
: >reciprocating aircraft engine is with us still.
An additional note: The engine that is still with us is the in-line
air-cooled engine. From a technical point of view they are probably the
simplest, cheapest, and most reliable engines; which is why they are
popular today, and why they were popular in the 1930s. Especially the de
Havilland "Gipsy" family was very successful. But they seem to be limited
to about 500hp. During WWII, this was achieved by engines such as the
Ranger V-770. When trying to get more power out of them, one runs into
cooling problems.
Today, for higher powers turboprops are the best alternative. But from the
end of WWI to the end of WWII the alternatives were liquid-cooled V or H
engines, or air-cooled radials. And some of the very big, +5000hp engines
designed at the end of WWII were water-cooled radials... But these were
never more than prototypes.
: >Big radial and corncob
: >engines powered the postwar prop airliners such as the Constellation,
: >Stratocruiser, DC-6 and DC-7 and boxer engines are found in practically all
: >of today's general aviation aircraft.
: The reasons for this are simple to understand. In civil aviation, small air
: cooled engines require less maintenance than water cooled. The basic
: systems are simplified as well.
One Douglas airliner (don't remember which one, but I think the DC-4) was
marketed in Canada with Merlin engines... Which were more maintenance
intensive, but probably more fuel-efficient.
: The Wright R3350 made up to 3,000 hp in later varients. Then there was
: the monsterous R4360..... The Airline manufacturers selected radials
: for their reliability, simplicity of maintenance, excellent power to weight
: ratio and reasonable fuel consumption.
But the R-4360 was probably at the upper end of practical design. Cooling
problems were frequent, usually at the third row. Stratocruiser captains
got used to flying on three engines...
Emmanuel Gustin
Bill MacArthur
Dan Ford <d...@christa.unh.edu> wrote:
>It could be, for example,
>that one of the reasons the Brewster Buffalo did so poorly in the defense
>of Malaya is that the RAF/RAAF/RNZAF replaced its fifty-caliber guns with
>.303 for reasons of maintenance and supply. The Finns kept the fifties,
>and I think had extra fifty-cal wing guns fitted, to a total of six, and
>did very well indeed with the reviled Buffalo.
>
I don't think that Finnish success with the Buffalo can be ascribed to
anything but the quality of the enemy that they were facing. The Germans
shot down USSR aircraft in droves during the first couple of years of the
war. The Soviets had many obsolete/obsolescent aircraft and pilots with
little training. Furthermore, the Finnish front was not the primary
front for the USSR so the best Soviet aircrews and aircraft would have
been where they were needed most.
There is no question that 50 calibre mgs had far greater penetration than
the 30 cals the British used. Still given the lack of armor on the Zero
and other Japanese aircraft, few hits were required to down them. The
Buffalo was unable to give its pilots the opportunity to get those few
hits.
CDB100620
>A principal reason for the popularity of liquid-cooled engines in European
>air forces and the USAAF was that their small frontal area made possible a
>greater degree of streamlining and therefore a higher top speed
That was the idea, but, as it turned out, the fastest allied
piston-engined fighter was a variant of the radial-engined P-47, the J,
which had a measured top speed of 500+mph. While it didn't see production,
it certainly could have had conditions warranted it. The P-36/P-40
probably would have been a better plane had the army pushed Curtiss to bolt
on a more powerful radial rather than the Allison in-line. Lockheed
proposed putting P-W radials on the P-38.
Properly cowled, the radial engine actually produced more thrust from the
hot air that had cooled the cylinders than there was drag from the frontal area.
The liquid-cooled aircraft engine was a dead end side branch of aircraft
development. Had the US Army joined the U.S. Navy (and the airlines) in
favoring the radial and pushing its development, a lot of young men who
died in air combat in the early 1940s would be alive today to infest
internet newsgroups.
CDB100620
Arnold's comment was in direct reference to the range of the Spitfire.
The model Spitfire was irrelevant. The Spitfire was of no value because it
couldn't fly to where the action was. Because of its limited range, the
Spitfire played no role in the destruction of the Luftwaffe in the fall of
1943 and spring of 1944.
Arnold clashed repeatedly with the British over the RAF's contribution to
gaining air superiority. His feud with Sir Charles Portal was quite
bitter, and ended with Arnold deciding that the USAAF would go it alone in
the war against the Luftwaffe, which it did.
American airmen were dying by the thousands in the fall of 1943 in the
defense of Britain. Many American lives could have been saved had the
British been gracious enough to relenquish their allotment of Merlin P-51s
to the USAAF, or even cooperated with the USAAF and had the RAF fly its
P-51s on escort missions to protect the 8th AF bombers. Arnold made his
request to Portal on Sept 23, 1943. Portal did not deign to respond until
Oct. 14, 1943--the day of the disasterous Schweinfurt raid. In his reply,
he offered to loan the USAAF four P-51 squadrons beginning in the middle of
Jan., 1944.
Arnold's response was to point out that the airplanes were needed
immediately, that there was a crisis happening now. He also pointed out
the lack of RAF offensive operations. "As presently employed, it would
appear that your thousands of fighters are not making use of their full
capabilities," he wrote in diplomatic understatement.
The RAF plan for Overlord was to fight a super Dieppe, avoiding
challenging the Luftwaffe day fighter force while hoarding its own fighter
force for the day of reckoning, when they envisioned huge air battles over
the beaches of France.
The USAAF leaders were appalled at that sort of thinking, believing it was
crucial to destroy the Luftwaffe before the landings took place. This the
USAAF did.
After the war, Arnold commented that the British killed as many American
airmen as the Germans did. That may have been unfair, but it reveals the
depth of anger Arnold felt for people like Portal. Arnold's anger at the
British was shared by many American senior military officers, including
Eisenhower, who had had his own cross to bear in Montgomery. Payback time
came more than a decade later during the Suez crisis, when the U.S. saw a
chance to humiliate Britain and its military and did so without hesitation.
CDB100620
>There is no question that 50 calibre mgs had far greater penetration than
>the 30 cals the British used. Still given the lack of armor on the Zero
>and other Japanese aircraft, few hits were required to down them.
The RAF Buffalos needed to shoot down bombers. For that purpose, the .50
would have been a lot more useful than the rifle-caliber guns they were
equipped with. In New Guinea, 8FG pilots who flew the P-39F, which was
equipped with four .30 wing guns, found them so useless against Japanese
aircraft that they had their ground crews remove them. That, at least,
lightened the plane a bit and gave it a little more performance. Even Bell
replaced the four .30s with two .50s in later versions. The change
actually increased the throw weight of the P-39 by 62 lbs. per minute.
Tony Crompton
My apologies if this has already been covered - I'm a new arrival at
this News Group!
In RAF wartime squadron records, reference is made to two different
types of aviation fuel: DTD224 and DTD230.
Am I correct in believing that DTD224 was 87 octane and DTD 230 was
100 octane?
TIA
--
Tony Crompton.
CDB100620
>One Douglas airliner (don't remember which one, but I think the DC-4) was
>marketed in Canada with Merlin engines...
That was the DC-4M. A couple of other British airliners used the Merlin,
the Tudor was one. But customers were limited to BOAC and Trans-Canada.
The R-2800 was a much more economical engine--and a quieter one, important
in passenger applications--so other airlines weren't interested.
Incidentally, in 1941 Pratt & Whitney installed an R-1830-SSC7-G radial
engine in a Hawk 81A-2 (export version of the P-40B). This experiment
resulted in an airplane with a top speed of 389 mph at 22,700 ft. (critical
altitude). Time to 20,000 ft. was 7.5 min. Even with armor and more guns
added, it's likely, had such a variant been produced, to have had superior
performance to the liquid-cooled edition. And--most importantly--been much
less vulnerable to battle damage and been easier to service. It probably
would have had a little bit better range, as well.
It's likely that with routine further development the round-engined
version of the P-40 might well have become a 400 mph airplane.
One can only wonder at what the performance of the P-38 would have been
had Lockheed actually built its proposed variant with P&W R-2800s. That
would have given the plane 5,600 horsepower!
CDB100620
>But liquid-cooled engines are far from valueless, witness their near
>universal application in automobile engines for the past 70 years.
>
>
A point of interest: About the only liquid-cooled automobile engine to
see much aviation use is that built by Subaru (aka Fuji); Subaru used to
have a different name: Nakajima. Builder of bullet-proof (figuratively
and literally) radial aircraft engines and chief supplier of fighter planes
to the Japanese Army Air Force.
Dan Ford
> One Douglas airliner (don't remember which one, but I think the DC-4) was
> marketed in Canada with Merlin engines... Which were more maintenance
> intensive, but probably more fuel-efficient.
Boeing and Wright Field also played around with an Allison-powered B-29
Superfortress variant. The XB-39, I think it was.
> But the R-4360 was probably at the upper end of practical design. Cooling
> problems were frequent, usually at the third row. Stratocruiser captains
> got used to flying on three engines...
Bill Gunston wrote that if a B-36 Peacemaker crew came home with all six
corncorbs still turning, they felt they were letting down the side.
- Dan (http://www.concentric.net/~danford)
Flying Tigers / Brewster Buffalo / Germany at War / Japan at War
Paul F Austin
C.C. Jordan wrote:
>
> On 12 Sep 1997 04:36:30 GMT, cdb1...@AOL.COM (CDB100620) wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> I think you misunderstand the reasons why liquid cooled engines
> were not used in new designs. Jet engine technology eclipsed
> piston engine technology. Besides, liquid cooled aircraft continued to
> serve the major Air Forces beyond the Korean war.
>
> The reasons for this are simple to understand. In civil aviation, small air
> cooled engines require less maintenance than water cooled. The basic
> systems are simplified as well. In the airline industry, there were other
> considerations as well. Radial engines generally demonstrated greater
> reliability due to not having cooling systems to leak or otherwise fail.
> There was also the problem of horsepower. The Pratt & Whitney R2800
> made 2,000 hp with a reliability unheard of in water cooled engines.
> The Wright R3350 made up to 3,000 hp in later varients.
>
<snippa>
> The demise of liquid cooled engines is directly related to the development
> of jet engine and turboprop technology, not any inferiority to radial engines.
>
Let's see: Radials have higher power, better reliability, lower
maintenance, less susceptable to battle damage. Tell me again how liquid
cooled engines are in no way inferior to radials. I would suggest that
the ultimate piston radial engined fighter (F8F) gave nothing away to
the ultimate piston water-cooled engined fighter (P51H) in overall
performance.
Piston engines lived on in heavy service because the SFC of early
turbojets wasn't up to the mission. With the advent of high pressure
ratio fan engines, recips were closed out completely.
--
Eat a live toad, first thing in the morning
and nothing worse will happen to you all day
-------------------------------------
Paul Austin
PAU...@HARRIS.COM
Tero P. Mustalahti
In article <5vjjvt$fig$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
cdb1...@aol.com (CDB100620) writes:
[discussion about the benefits of radial engines over liquid-cooled
inlines snipped]
I think your arguments are showing hindsight. Let's compare the
situation to a more recent engine problem. In the late '70s it looked
like diesel engines were not powerful enough for new tanks and both
the US and the USSR chose gas turbines for their new tank designs (the
M1 Abrams and T-80, respectively).
But now there are diesels that are almost as powerful as gas turbines and
they have much lower fuel consumption and heat signature than
turbines. Did those late '70s designers choose incorrectly? In my
opinion no, because they had no way of knowing how much diesel engines
would develop in the the future. The late '30s fighter designers
faced a similar situation and many of them chose the liquid-cooled
inline engines, because it seemed to be the right way to go.
Tero P. Mustalahti
C.C. Jordan
On 15 Sep 1997 03:17:07 GMT, cdb1...@aol.com (CDB100620) wrote:
>as it turned out, the fastest allied
>piston-engined fighter was a variant of the radial-engined P-47, the J,
>which had a measured top speed of 500+mph. While it didn't see production,
>it certainly could have had conditions warranted it.
IIRC, this T-Bolt had the Wright 3350 installed. Seeing as virtually
all of these were earmarked for the B-29, it is doubtful that any
allocation designated for fighters would be forthcoming. The 3350 had
some rather severe teething troubles, which were not fully solved
until after the war. Then again, the P-80 was nearing production
status, making any further development of piston engine fighters
dubious at best. I heard from a former Lockheed engineer, that the
success of the P-51 bought Lockheed more time to continue P-80
development, I.E. the redesign and lengthening of the
fuselage. According to this fellow, had the need been great enough,
Lockheed was prepared to produce the original XP-80 design with little
modification, as early as December 1944. So, if the gentleman is
correct, and conditions warranted it, we may have seen P-80's, in
Europe, by April 1945. There were pre-production aircraft in England
prior to the surrender. However, they were not used for combat
purposes.
It's amazing that true trans-sonic fighters such as the F-86 and MiG-15 were
only 2 years down the road. This is what really killed piston engine fighter
development, be they powered by radials or ethlylene glycol cooled V12's.
There were the interim stopgap aircraft such as the P-51H, P-47N and the P-82
twin Mustang. We must not forget Grumman's mighty mite F8F Bearcat.
Being at the pinnacle of piston engine evolution, they were all but obsolete
within a year of Japans's surrender. Remarkably, the need for piston powered
combat aircraft was not as dead as was thought. The F4U and the post war
Skyraider soldiered on for decades, the F4U serving the French fleet into the
60's. The old "Spad" fulfilled the "Sandy" role in Vietnam, and no adequate
replacement would be found. The venerable radial engines served on with the
Navy until the mid 1970's, powering the S2, E1 and C-1A with the ancient Wright
R1820-52.
These days one must go to an airshow to hear the roar of a big radial
or the ear splitting scream of a Merlin or Allison. The sound of a
P-38 is unique and sends a tingle down the spine. That moan, muffled
by the turbochargers is unmistakable. That is something I really miss,
the sounds. No jet engine can make those marvelous sounds that WWII
fighters make. Over 20 years ago, I flew Navy transport types. The
HU-16, C-118, C-131, C-1A and various S2 types. There was no sound on
earth like running up 4 R2800 engines to full power. The 1820's make
their own wonderful music. At full power in an S2, the prop tips are
only 2 feet from your head, the racket is shear joy to behold.
The ability to simply start a big radial is an art form unto
itself. The R1820 predates WWII by more than a few years, yet the
start procedure changed little. Mag master switch on, push the starter
switch in the direction of the engine you wish to start (S2), count 9
blades (6 if still warm), magneto switch on "both", apply intermittant
primer till she catches. Smoke pours out from the stacks as pooled oil
in the cylinders (lower) burns off. Continuous primer as the engine
settles down and smooths out, mixture level forward into "rich". The
motor dies for a split second as the carb. takes over fuel feed. Check
the oil pressure and adjust the throttle. This same basic procedure
would start a B-17. It takes a good deal of "feel" to start a big
radial without a backfire, which frequently blows off an exhaust
stack. This will not build loving relationships with the maintenance
people. As part of my preflight, I always pushed the props thru 20
blades (by hand). One day an old snagglepuss Aviation Machinist Mate,
Chief saw me do this, he walked over, put his wrinkled hand on my
shoulder and asked, " where'd you learn to do that, son?" I said" from
an old ugly Chief just like you." He smiled a big grin and said, "God
bless you son, god bless you", and strolled off. That old ADRC called
everyone, officer or enlisted, "son". No one ever took exception. It
meant he had respect for you.
Please excuse the rambling and drifting a bit off topic. I hope the
moderator understands.
Best regards,
C.C. Jordan
> The P-36/P-40
>probably would have been a better plane had the army pushed Curtiss to bolt
>on a more powerful radial rather than the Allison in-line. Lockheed
>proposed putting P-W radials on the P-38.
>Properly cowled, the radial engine actually produced more thrust from the
>hot air that had cooled the cylinders than there was drag from the frontal area.
>The liquid-cooled aircraft engine was a dead end side branch of aircraft
>development. Had the US Army joined the U.S. Navy (and the airlines) in
>favoring the radial and pushing its development, a lot of young men who
>died in air combat in the early 1940s would be alive today to infest
>internet newsgroups.
>
"Passion and prejudice govern the world; only
David Read
In article <5vieuu$j...@portal.gmu.edu>, CDB100620 <cdb1...@aol.com>
writes
>
>Arnold's comment was in direct reference to the range of the Spitfire.
>The model Spitfire was irrelevant. The Spitfire was of no value because it
>couldn't fly to where the action was. Because of its limited range, the
>Spitfire played no role in the destruction of the Luftwaffe in the fall of
>1943 and spring of 1944.
If Arnold's complaint was indeed solely concerned with the limited range
of the Spitfire and not other performance characteristics then his
argument makes more sense, at least according to Arnold's view of the
strategic use of airpower. I quite appreciate that the Spitfire's lack
of range prevented it from taking the war to the enemy in the same way
as the P51, and that the P51 enjoyed the lion's share in the destruction
of the Luftwaffe over the Reich.
>
>
>Arnold clashed repeatedly with the British over the RAF's contribution to
>gaining air superiority. His feud with Sir Charles Portal was quite
>bitter, and ended with Arnold deciding that the USAAF would go it alone in
>the war against the Luftwaffe, which it did.
Arnold, unlike Portal, bore no responsibility for the air defence of
Great Britain. "Tip-and-run" raids over England, as well as enemy aerial
reconnaissance missions were still a reality even in the Autumn of '43
and the Spring of '44, and by the summer of '44 the V1 attacks had
begun. Those raids were commonly carried out by FW190's against which
obsolete American Spitfire Mk V's were of very little use. The model of
Spitfire may have been irrelevant as far as Arnold was concerned; it was
not irrelevant to the civilian populations of the towns and villages of
southern England or the personnel stationed in all the hundreds of
military installations there.
>
>American airmen were dying by the thousands in the fall of 1943 in the
>defense of Britain.
Most were dying over the Reich, in the offensive against Germany; not in
the direct defence of British airspace. Thousands of British airmen were
dying over the Reich, too.
> Many American lives could have been saved had the
>British been gracious enough to relenquish their allotment of Merlin P-51s
>to the USAAF, or even cooperated with the USAAF and had the RAF fly its
>P-51s on escort missions to protect the 8th AF bombers. Arnold made his
>request to Portal on Sept 23, 1943. Portal did not deign to respond until
>Oct. 14, 1943--the day of the disasterous Schweinfurt raid. In his reply,
>he offered to loan the USAAF four P-51 squadrons beginning in the middle of
>Jan., 1944.
The British had had a long-held mistrust of the efficacy of daylight
bombing from before the the beginning of the war. The RAF forced the
Luftwaffe in 1940-41 to switch from daylight to night-time bombing
because the British were able to defend their own airspace. The
Americans sought to prove that unescorted daylight bombing could be made
to work if the bombers were heavily armed and correct tactical
formations were employed. The Germans proved them wrong, as exemplified
by the Schweinfurt raid. German bombers over Britain in 1940 were
escorted by fighters and the battle was won by the RAF. Why would the
experience of the RAF in 1940 have encouraged Portal to sacrifice the
lives of British fighter pilots in protecting American daylight missions
that he had no faith in ? American pilots' lives may well have been
saved by the presence of British escorts flying Mustangs in late '43,
early '44; more would have been saved had the USAAF called off its
daylight bomber offensive altogether, (at least those missions beyond
the range of existing fighter cover), until more American fighter
squadrons with P38's, P47's and P51's became available.
If Arnold considered the Spitfire useless, and that the RAF was not
pulling its weight, it seems odd that he would want to completely neuter
it by either taking RAF Mustangs in exchange for obsolete USAAF
Spitfires, or using RAF Mustangs to support what was then seen by some
as the catastrophic USAAF policy of daylight bombing. The case for
daylight bombing, escorted or otherwise, was an American baby that they
had to deal with. In the end, the swarms of P51's that the USAAF was
able to put into the skies over the Reich in 1944 was decisive in
finishing off the Luftwaffe, already seriously damaged by the three
years of fighting on the Eastern Front.
You said that Portal's prime use for P51's was air reconnaissance.
Perhaps you should consider the contribution made by RAF Mustang pilots
to the success of Operation Overlord, and the part that Allied
intelligence and tactical airstrikes in the weeks leading up to D-Day
played in saving lives of the men in the Allied beach-head. Or do you
think that all those armed tactical reconnaissance missions, including
those made by the rangy and nimble RAF Mustangs were a complete waste of
time ?
>
>Arnold's response was to point out that the airplanes were needed
>immediately, that there was a crisis happening now. He also pointed out
>the lack of RAF offensive operations. "As presently employed, it would
>appear that your thousands of fighters are not making use of their full
>capabilities," he wrote in diplomatic understatement.
Are you saying that Arnold didn't count Bomber Command's efforts as
worthy of the name of "RAF offensive operations" ? Since Arnold was well
aware that as a great part of the "thousands of fighters" in RAF service
were short-ranged Spitfires his "diplomatic understatement" is
fraudulent. Their "full capabilities" did not allow them to take to the
skies over the heart of the Reich.
>
>The RAF plan for Overlord was to fight a super Dieppe, avoiding
>challenging the Luftwaffe day fighter force while hoarding its own fighter
>force for the day of reckoning, when they envisioned huge air battles over
>the beaches of France.
That thinking was in part influenced by the short range of the Spitfire.
The skill and bravery of USAAF fighter pilots over the Reich, in not
only destroying the Luftwaffe, but protecting their own vulnerable
bombers played the greatest part in making sure that the Luftwaffe put
in very few appearances over Normandy. Spitfires could not have done
that job.
>The USAAF leaders were appalled at that sort of thinking, believing it was
>crucial to destroy the Luftwaffe before the landings took place. This the
>USAAF did.
And indeed the range of the P51 allowed this to happen. The P51 was
vital in protecting the bombing operations of Eighth Air Force. It was
rather less important as far as Bomber Command was concerned.
USAAF thinking, at least that of Eighth Air Force, was more concerned
with the protection of its strategic bomber fleet. That Luftwaffe
fighters were practically non-existant over Normandy was the _result_ of
that policy of P51 flying combat missions over the Reich, not the
_reason_ for it. If the far-sighted USAAF planners' theories had proved
successful in 1943 their bombers would never have needed fighter escort;
they would have got through and won the war on their own. Happenstance
put the excellent P51 in the position of being able to defeat the
Luftwaffe on its own turf rather than elsewhere as might have been more
conventionally expected before 1944.
>
>After the war, Arnold commented that the British killed as many American
>airmen as the Germans did. That may have been unfair, but it reveals the
>depth of anger Arnold felt for people like Portal.
You're damned right it was unfair. Without a British requirement for new
fighters in 1940 or the Merlin engine, there might have been no P51 at
all, or at least it may have entered production and squadron service
rather later than it did.
> Arnold's anger at the
>British was shared by many American senior military officers, including
>Eisenhower, who had had his own cross to bear in Montgomery. Payback time
>came more than a decade later during the Suez crisis, when the U.S. saw a
>chance to humiliate Britain and its military and did so without hesitation.
The resentment worked both ways, and still continues in some quarters
today. There are others on both sides who take the view that in the
circumstances, and not just in WWII, the level of co-operation and
friendship between the US and the UK during has been remarkable in the
face of the differing aspirations and objectives of the two countries.
I take it you are not suggesting a direct causal link between Portal's
decision not to support US daylight bombing failures in 1943 with the
Eisenhower administration's condemnation of Franco-British-Israeli
actions over Suez. Payback time, if that is what you want to call it,
came much earlier than 1956. After the war Truman refused to share the
full nuclear technology of the Manhattan Project with Britain, despite
the huge contribution made by British scientists to the project and the
freely shared radar and jet technologies from UK to the US during the
war. Perhaps if Attlee proposed the return of some obsolete four stack
ex-USN destroyers, or any other American hardware still in the British
inventory, in exchange for A-Bomb blueprints, Truman might have been
"gracious enough to relinquish" the goods. :)
cheers,
--
David Read
C.C. Jordan
On 15 Sep 1997 03:17:07 GMT, cdb1...@aol.com (CDB100620) wrote:
>as it turned out, the fastest allied
>piston-engined fighter was a variant of the radial-engined P-47, the J,
>which had a measured top speed of 500+mph. While it didn't see production,
>it certainly could have had conditions warranted it.
IIRC, this T-Bolt had the Wright 3350 installed.
( I emailed this originally, and the respondent coreected me. The engine
installed was a modified R2800 P&W. My thanks to him, and I'll leave the
error in place )
Dan Ford
> A point of interest: About the only liquid-cooled automobile engine to
> see much aviation use is that built by Subaru (aka Fuji); Subaru used to
> have a different name: Nakajima. Builder of bullet-proof (figuratively
> and literally) radial aircraft engines and chief supplier of fighter planes
> to the Japanese Army Air Force.
Every once in a while I read something on Usenet that is new and
interesting. Thank you. I always wondered what happened to Nakajima!
But Nakajima radials were hardly bulletproof, if the stories told by the
AVG Flying Tigers are true: a fifty-caliber bullet could knock off a
cylinder head, especially on the Nakajima Ki-27 "Nate"--or so the stories
are told.
Brad Meyer
In message <5vh85k$tlk$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu> - C.C.J...@worldnet.att.net
(C.C. Jordan) writes:
>
>On 12 Sep 1997 04:36:30 GMT, cdb1...@AOL.COM (CDB100620) wrote:
>
>[snip]
>
>I think you misunderstand the reasons why liquid cooled engines
>were not used in new designs. Jet engine technology eclipsed
>piston engine technology.
Only in combat a/c. Pistons were used, even in combat into the late '60's.
Even so, it's worth noting that the USAF and USN kept Radials when all the
in-lines had been retired.
>Besides, liquid cooled aircraft continued to
>serve the major Air Forces beyond the Korean war.
>
Given that there were only two major air forces after Korea, and that the US
abandonded in-lines with the retirement of the P-51's, you must mean the
USSR. I doubt that they did much engine development post WW II and
rather refined the types they had.
[snip]
>
>The reasons for this are simple to understand.
All the reasons you cite apply equally (if not more so) to military/combat
aviation. Further, radials can stand rapid changes in torque loading better
then in-lines because of the shorter crankshaft. Some P-47 drivers felt this
was a practical advantage in combat against the German a/c with in-line
engines.
[snip]
>If liquid cooled engines were inferior, why were the best fighters powered
>by them? The P-51, P-38, Spitfire, Typhoon, Tempest, Fw-190D-9, TA-152,
>Bf-109, Mosquito, and the Soviet Yaks and MiGs were all powered by liquid
>cooled engines.
While the F4U's, F6's, F7's, F8's and P-47's were radial. There are probably
as many advocates of the Corsair as "best plane" as there are of the Mustang.
>Why?
Because they lacked the R&D resources to develop new engines. The US did not
suffer from that handicap.
>Because the compact liquid cooled engines lend
>themselves to small frontal areas, and the cleaner aerodynamics provided for
>very high speeds.
Yet the fastest piston a/c, the Bearcat, was radial. And the Corsair was in
the same league with any ETO a/c and the F2G "anti-kamikaze" variant could
out climb any piston powered a/c.
>The only arena where radial engines dominated, was in naval
>aircraft . . .
The P-47's dominated all the air space they could reach.
> . . . where maximum speed took a back seat to reliability and ease of
>maintenance.
If so then why were the Corsairs and Bearcats among the fastest of all the
piston powered a/c. The Hellcat was no slouch either.
Brad Meyer
"It is history that teaches us to hope."
-- R E Lee
CDB100620
>IIRC, this T-Bolt had the Wright 3350 installed.
Some info on the P-47J:
The aircraft was ordered at the end of 1942. First example rolled out of
the Republic shop on 16 Nov. 1943. Initial flight tests later that year
showed a top speed of 493 mph at 33,350 ft. On 5 Aug. 1944, Republic test
pilot Michael Ritchie recorded a speed of 505 mph at 34,450 ft. Later AAF
tests at Wright Field indicated a speed of 484 mph at 25,350 ft.
The Official Performance Summary of the type by the AAF, prepared by Col.
George Smith of the AAF Engineering Division, after extensive testing,
lists a maximum speed of 507 mph at 34,500 ft. Republic's own Test Report
No. 51 lists the type speed as 502 mph at 33,500 ft.
The P-47J was equippped with an P&W R-2800-57-C engine with water
injection and fan cooling and a GE Model CH-5 turbosupercharger. Prop was a
13 ft. Curtiss HA electric. The powerplant developed 2,730 bhp at 72
inches MP at 33,000 ft. In addition, the engine's exhaust provided a
measured 400 lbs of jet thrust at 33,000 ft.
Design gross wt. was 12,400 lbs.
Re top speeds of piston-engined aircraft:
A highly modified Grumman F8F powered by a P&W R-2800-34W, piloted by
Darryl Greenamyer, reached a speed of 483.041 mph on 16 Aug. 1989.
That was substantially below the speed Steve Hinton's highly modified P-51
"Red Baron" reached on 14 Aug. 1979, 499.04 mph.
On 21 Aug. 1989 Lyle Shelton's very highly modified F8F-2, powered by a
Wright R-3350 achieved a speed of 523.586 mph.
These speed records were all attained at very low level (300 ft. in the
case of Shelton).
It should be pointed out that no one was trying to break any speed records
with the P-47J. It was equipped with armor and six Browning machineguns
and was not specially prepared for its flights. Aside from engine and
turbo and the reduction in armament from 8 to 6 mgs, the only major
difference from P-47D types was the elimination of the aft fuel tank and
limitation of ammo load to 267 rounds per gun. Radio equipment was reduced
to the VHF and one SCR-274.
The P-47J project was cancelled so Republic could concentrate on the P-72
program.
Ralph Simpson
>
>
>>wrote "David R. Smith"
>
>>I recall reading somewhere (probably _Wings_ or _Airpower_) that the
>>Mustang was initially produced for the USAAF as the A-36 because there were
>>appropriated funds for the attack category, whereas funds for the fighter
>>category were already committed.
>
In 1940 the British Purchasing Commission negotiated with North American
Aviation to design and build an advanced fighter for the Royal Air Force
- to be comleted in 120 days !! It was designated NA-73X by NAA and
completed in 117 days having already an outline design in the pipeline.
The first production model made its maiden flight on 1 May 1941. The
BPC bought 320.
In 1942 the USAAF took delivery of 55 as F-6A's and 2 as XP-78's.
Later that year they procured 500 P51's converted to dive-bombers known
as A-36A's. One was supplied to the RAF for evaluation.
A final total of 14,819 Mustangs were built in America and a further
200. in Australia under licence. (Source : American Aircraft of World
War II by David Mooney)
Hope this is useful.
--
Ralph Simpson
Mike Fester
Ted Waldron (ecw...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
: > If the Japanese, or the Germans, had been able to afford the development
: > and contruction in large numbers of a well-armed, well-protected bomber,
: > the USAAF and USN would have been in serious trouble. They did not, but
: > luck is not a virtue.
: Well the Germans did put money in developing a long range bomber, the
: Heinkel He 177, but through the incompetence in putting two engines in one
: coupling, in order to abide an order about all New Bombers should have dive
: bombing capabilities, it had a record to catch fire in flight. it took
: part in a couple operations, including bombing US 8th AF planes that landed
: in USSR.
The He 177 was on the drawing board and prototypes were produced well before
the British long-range heavy bombers were conceived of. By 1939, the craft
was in limitted production, but, as you mention, the dive-bombing requirement
pretty much rendered it useless.
It was able to be fitted with the Heinkel radio-guided bomb, which sunk, I
believe, the troopship Rodin, killing hundreds of Allied soldiers.
Mike
Zhivan & Hilary Alach
>A point of interest: About the only liquid-cooled automobile engine to
>see much aviation use is that built by Subaru (aka Fuji); Subaru used to
>have a different name: Nakajima. Builder of bullet-proof (figuratively
>and literally) radial aircraft engines and chief supplier of fighter planes
>to the Japanese Army Air Force.
A question related to this : was the Wankel rotary engine currently used in
the RX-series of Mazda cars the same as the new Wankel used in the Type
XXVII 'Seehund' mini-submarine (probably mixed up the designation) ? The
Wankel relies on three rotors rather than pistons leading to a circular
motion rather than a up-down 'bang-bang' type of motion. I know the XXVII
used some sort of new engine - either a normal fueled or a peroxide fuelled
one, but what I can't remember !
Zhivan & Hilary Alach
>13 ft. Curtiss HA electric. The powerplant developed 2,730 bhp at 72
>inches MP at 33,000 ft. In addition, the engine's exhaust provided a
>measured 400 lbs of jet thrust at 33,000 ft.
>Design gross wt. was 12,400 lbs.
Fastest Russian piston engined a/c of the war were :
MiG I-225/5A - 720kmh at 27,880 feet with 4 X 20mm cannon
(engined with a AM-42FB liquid-cooled producing 1288 kW at 24,600 feet
and 1472 kW at takeoff)
Yak-3U - 735kmh - armament = 3 X 20mm cannon
(engined with a Klimov VK-108 liquid-cooled developing 1325 kW)
BTW, the I-225 also had a ceiling of 41,330 feet. And both aircraft had
engines delivering much less than 2000 hp.
Yak-3U
David Read
In article <6119r4$h...@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>, mfe...@iisc.com writes
>
>The He 177 was on the drawing board and prototypes were produced well before
>the British long-range heavy bombers were conceived of.
The Short Stirling and the Handley-Page Halifax were built to a 1936
reqiurement. The Heinkel 177 was built to a 1938 requirement. The
Stirling first flew in May 1939, the Halifax in October and the He177 in
November. The Stirling became operational in late 1940, the Halifax in
the Spring of 1941, and the He177 in the Spring of 1942.
--
David Read
Madoc Pope
Folks,
There was also no driving force for the Nazi's to develop a long range
bomber. The one champion in the Luftwaffe, a general whose name escapes
me right now, was killed in the late 30's in a place crash. With no
champion sheparding the project through the byzantine layers of the Nazi
bureaucracy the idea never was adequately developed.
In the US, on the other hand, the Fed tied such programs to air mail
delivery, and US companies started making longer ranged planes to carry
larger payloads of mail. This cycle built until the US was one of the
world leaders in mature long range bomber technology. There was a lot
of institutional know-how that had taken years to develop that the
Nazi's just did not have.
Their doctrine also went completely against strategic bombing. Such
attacks imply a war of attrition and that was something that none of
them thought was winnable given Germany's two opponents; the USSR and
GB. So they concentrated on medium range tactical bombers. Pretty good
in their role but that left them behind the curve once the war stopped
being a blitzkrieg.
MP
========================
Real address: tho...@hotmail.com
Robert Sveinson
David Read wrote:
> Stirling first flew in May 1939, the Halifax in October and the He177 in
> November. The Stirling became operational in late 1940, the Halifax in
> the Spring of 1941, and the He177 in the Spring of 1942.
A funny thing about the Stirling. The wing span was 99 feet,
apperently because the hangers would not house an aircrft with
a larger wing span.
Curious.
Robert
Rob Davis
Remove MAPSON when replying via email
» A funny thing about the Stirling. The wing span was 99 feet,
» apperently because the hangers would not house an aircrft with
» a larger wing span.
» Curious.
This is true - it was a requirement of the Air Ministry that the Stirling
should fit into the then standard size hangar.
This deficiency caused its wingspan to be rather too short for its general
size, resulting in very thick wings and such a high attack angle that the
undercarriage had to be raised or extended in order to give it sufficient
lift for takeoff!
That's why if you look at the top section of the undercarriage (or if you
remember making Airfix models!) there is an extension piece to the top of
the gear assembly, where it retracts ino the wing. It went up for a short
distance before retracting.
It also suffered ffrom being unable to carry a bomb bigger than 2,000 lbs,
as its narrow slotted bomb bay could not accommodate the girth of the 4,000
lb cookies.
However, it was very sturdy and particularly manoeuverable, being able to
turn inside attacking fighters (according to Jonathan Falconer's STIRLING
AT WAR, anyway.)
But tired Stirlings had trouble climbing above 12,000 feet fully laden, at
thus were easy meat for both light and heavy flak and also night fighters.
MAny were converted to Mk IV glider tug or paratroop droppers, where they
did "Sterling" service....
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Remove MAPSON when replying by email.
Rob Davis MSc MIAP Leicester, UK 0976 379489
SPAM bait: abuse@localhost postmaster@localhost admin@localhost
Hillbrath
> was the Wankel rotary engine currently used in
>the RX-series of Mazda cars the same as the new Wankel used in the Type
>XXVII 'Seehund' mini-submarine
*NO*
The submarine engine, which was intended to use hydrogen peroxide, was a
"Walther Cycle" (I am not sure of the spelling) and used a turbine.
The Wankel was not invented for another decade, at the minimum.
Henry Hillbrath
RJD9999
The first truly functional Wankel rotary engine was a DKM type that ran in
February 1957. By May a prototype was able to run for two hours and produce
21 bhp. The first KKM engine ran on July 7, 1958.
There are Felix-Wankel-Strasse streets in Heilbronn, Dachau, and
Neckarsulm, all in Germany.
Taken from the following site. There is more, if you are interested.
http://www.monito.com/wankel/dr-wankel.html
Though some WWI fighters (Fokker DR1, Sopwith Camel, and a few others)
used "rotary" engines, these were piston driven engines that rotated around
a stationary camshaft connected to the body of the plane. This created
tremendous torque to the right, making these machines quirky to fly
(takeoffs by novice pilots were quite interesting, I'm told).
Rick