Most maneuverable fighter.
Padraigh ProAmerica
kicked around the usual suspects- P-51 Mustang; Spitfire, ME-109, Zero.
But- I remember reading several years ago that the real answer was the
twin-engined P-61 Black Widow night-fighter; the P-61 could reportedly
turn INSIDE a Spitfire!
Thoughts, opinions and/or facts?
"You must be an intellectual to believe such nonsense. No ordinary man
could be such a fool."
George Orwell
Bruce Burden
:
: But- I remember reading several years ago that the real answer was the
: twin-engined P-61 Black Widow night-fighter; the P-61 could reportedly
: turn INSIDE a Spitfire!
I am not going to argue, for or against, the statement
above. I would, however, like to know why you have selected
wing loading as the telling arguement, as opposed, to say,
roll rate.
Personally, such open ended questions can't be defined,
therefore, can't be answered, and the discussion will loop
around for several days, before dying from lack of anything
to add, and you will still not have a definitve answer.
Bruce
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I like bad!" Bruce Burden Austin, TX.
- Thuganlitha
The Power and the Prophet
Robert Don Hughes
Padraigh ProAmerica
instability makes maneuvering easier- but tougher to control.
It's also difficult to sort out because of differences in training, any
restrictions placed by commands, and probably a dozen different factors.
Maybe the question is bit vague...but tat's part of the fun.
Rich Rostrom
> In a discussion with someone the other day, this subject came up. We
> kicked around the usual suspects- P-51 Mustang; Spitfire, ME-109, Zero.
>
What is the definition of "maneuverability"?
Roll rate, turn radius?
At what speed?
At what altitude?
My personal criterion would be the
"second derivative" of roll or bank:
that is, how quickly can the plane
_change_ its roll or bank rate?
The Italian CR-42 "Falco" was extremely
maneuverable. It was a biplane, and thus
had a lot of the aeronautical equivalent
of "traction". I've read that even as late
as 1943, Allied pilots who made the mistake
of trying to 'dogfight' with a CR-42 usually
lost, even if flying such excellent aircraft
as the Spitfire or Mustang. Of course the
proper tactic in such cases was to use the
Allied plane's greater speed, in which case
the CR-42 was usually doomed.
A more conventional candidate for "most
maneuverable" would be the Yak-3, described
by some sources as "phenomenally agile".
Don Kirkman
article <1576-4B1...@storefull-3173.bay.webtv.net>:
>But- I remember reading several years ago that the real answer was the
>twin-engined P-61 Black Widow night-fighter; the P-61 could reportedly
>turn INSIDE a Spitfire!
>Thoughts, opinions and/or facts?
Impressions--I used to watch them as they flew training missions at
dusk when they were still secret (ISTR the first public glimpse of
them was in a comic strip--Steve Canyon or Terry and the Pirates
type); my impression still is that they wouldn't have been that agile,
but I'd like to know the facts, whatever they are.
--
Don Kirkman
don...@charter.net
Don Phillipson
news:1576-4B1...@storefull-3173.bay.webtv.net...
> In a discussion with someone the other day, this subject came up. We
> kicked around the usual suspects- P-51 Mustang; Spitfire, ME-109, Zero.
>
> But- I remember reading several years ago that the real answer was the
> twin-engined P-61 Black Widow night-fighter; the P-61 could reportedly
> turn INSIDE a Spitfire!
>
> Thoughts, opinions and/or facts?
Factors obviously include:
1. Speed (at various altitudes . . . ) including
1b. rate of climb, max. safe dive speed etc.
2. Endurance (what limited Bf109 sorties over England and
Spitfire sorties over France).
3. Armament (e.g. cannon vs. solid shot, 0.5 vs. 0.303 cal.)
4. Rate of turn (manoeuvrability.) This is also affected by
inertia (cf. mass, weight.) The P-61 weighed 15 tons, the
Mosquito 9 tons and the Spitfire 4 tons. Generally, lighter
aircraft were more agile, but Wikipedia says "the USAAF
determined that the P-61 had a slightly better rate of climb,
and could turn tighter than the Mosquito."
5. Engine power (P-61 two 2250 h.p. engines, cf.
Mosquito two 1800 h.p. engines.)
Serviceability is a secondary but relevant factor, so far as
it affects the percentage of inventory that is ready to fight,
i.e. not under repair or awaiting replacement of time-
expired parts. The Bf109 was famously easier to build
and repair than the Spitfire.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
Andrew Robert Breen
Padraigh ProAmerica <ogr...@webtv.net> wrote:
>In a discussion with someone the other day, this subject came up. We
>kicked around the usual suspects- P-51 Mustang; Spitfire, ME-109, Zero.
>
>But- I remember reading several years ago that the real answer was the
>twin-engined P-61 Black Widow night-fighter; the P-61 could reportedly
>turn INSIDE a Spitfire!
>
>Thoughts, opinions and/or facts?
If you're counting turning ability and agility close-up as the criteria,
then it'll come down to the usual suspects: CR32 and 42, Hawker Fury
(Yugoslavia and South Africa), Polikarov i-15bis and i-153, Fairey
Fantomes and so on (Belgium), Gloster Gauntlet (South Africa, Finland) and
Gladiator, Bristol Bulldog (Finland)..
Of the monoplanes, probably Polikarpov i-16, Claude and FIAT G50s would be
high-rankers, as would the Hurricane (and, unexpectedly, probably the
Fairey Fulmar too, big thing though it was).
--
Andy Breen ~ Not speaking on behalf of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Feng Shui: an ancient oriental art for extracting
money from the gullible (Martin Sinclair)
Tero P. Mustalahti
> Of the monoplanes, probably Polikarpov i-16, Claude and FIAT G50s would be
> high-rankers, as would the Hurricane (and, unexpectedly, probably the
> Fairey Fulmar too, big thing though it was).
As well as the Japanese Army Air Force Nakajima Ki-27 and Ki-43. Both
were more maneuverable than the Zero. I don't know about the Hurricane,
though. Finnish sources indicate that it was not quite as maneuverable
as the I-16. The Soviets operated both types in much higher quantities
and with better access to spare parts, but I have never seen a Soviet
comparison of them.
Tero P. Mustalahti
Andrew Robert Breen
Agree about the Japanese army fighters - just couldn't remember their
names off-hand. As to the Hurri - it certaibly seems to have been aglile
in reasonable hands: it early got a rep. with German pilots as something
you don't get into a close fight with (well, not twice..) and in the Med.
it seems to have been capable of close-fighting with some of the very
agile Italian machines, even through boom-and-zoom was probably a better
option (particularly against things like the CR.42..). Later Hurris got
heavier. This would hurt agility, and may lie behind some of the Finnish
comments.
Michele
news:herfu0$ne$1...@theodyn.ncf.ca...
> "Padraigh ProAmerica" <ogr...@webtv.net> wrote in message
> news:1576-4B1...@storefull-3173.bay.webtv.net...
>
>> In a discussion with someone the other day, this subject came up. We
>> kicked around the usual suspects- P-51 Mustang; Spitfire, ME-109, Zero.
>>
>> But- I remember reading several years ago that the real answer was the
>> twin-engined P-61 Black Widow night-fighter; the P-61 could reportedly
>> turn INSIDE a Spitfire!
>>
>> Thoughts, opinions and/or facts?
>
> Factors obviously include:
(snip)
either I did not understand the question, or I don't understand your answer.
The question was, what was the most maneuverable fighter. You reply by
quoting speed, endurance, armament, serviceability... and maneuverability.
Wasn't the question only about the last one?
I mean, the CR.32 was certainly inferior to the Tempest as to armament, to
the Corsair as to endurance, to the Komet as to speed... still it was far
superior to all of them as to maneuverability (turning radius).
> 5. Engine power (P-61 two 2250 h.p. engines, cf.
> Mosquito two 1800 h.p. engines.)
>
Yes, and...? Isn't the effect of engine power already factored in, together
with the total weight, and thus the power/weight ratio, once you consider
speed and acceleration?
Tero P. Mustalahti
> Later Hurris got
> heavier. This would hurt agility, and may lie behind some of the Finnish
> comments.
The only Hurries in Finnish service were Mk. I models with Merlin III
engines purchased from Britain during during the Winter War. They did
not see any service during that war, because it ended too soon. During
the so called Continuation War there were problems with spare part
availability, since shot down Soviet Mk. IIs could not be used for
engine spares due to different engines. So the actual combat record of
the Hurries in Finland was not very extensive.
The biggest gripe the pilots had was the armament, however; the Finnish
pilot training emphasized marksmanship and the widely spread
rifle-caliber machine guns in the wings were seen as "spray and pray"
weapons by the Finnish pilots, who were used to concentrated fuselage or
wing root mounted guns. They of course knew about the convergence point,
but having all your guns effective only at a certain range was seen as a
serious limitation.
Tero P. Mustalahti
Andrew Robert Breen
Michele <don'tspamm...@tln.it> wrote:
>
>I mean, the CR.32 was certainly inferior to the Tempest as to armament, to
>the Corsair as to endurance, to the Komet as to speed... still it was far
>superior to all of them as to maneuverability (turning radius).
The late, great Norman Hanson (he of "Carrier Pilot") hit the nail on the
head with this one: the Gladiator was the most delightful, agile
/aeroplane/ he ever encountered[1], but the Corsair was a superb /weapon/.
Sure, the Glad could turn inside a Corsair, but no sane Corair pilot would
ever give it the chance. Ditto, in bucketfuls, for the CR32.
[1] The Tiger Moth, OTOH, was naught more than an airbourne paper bag, and
if one were the last aeroplane in the world then he, Hans, was walking.
j...@cix.compulink.co.uk
Robert Breen) wrote:
> Later Hurris got heavier. This would hurt agility, and may lie behind
> some of the Finnish comments.
According to Mason's _Hawker Aircraft Since 1920_, the Hurricanes the
Finns had were a dozen Hurricane Is, shipped in 1940 shortly after the
Russian attack that started the Winter War. That was November 30th,
1939, so the Hurris must have been shipped - presumably via Scandinavia
- very early in 1940.
--
John Dallman, j...@cix.co.uk, HTML mail is treated as probable spam.
David H Thornley
> I mean, the CR.32 was certainly inferior to the Tempest as to armament, to
> the Corsair as to endurance, to the Komet as to speed... still it was far
> superior to all of them as to maneuverability (turning radius).
>
There's turning radius, and turning rate, which are different. It's
possible to have a small turning radius and still not manage to turn
as many degrees per second as a considerably faster aircraft with
a larger turning radius. For a given plane, there's normally an optimum
speed for turning, keeping radius down and rate up.
There's also the difference between instantaneous and sustained
performance. Turning costs energy, and unless the engines are
sufficient to replace that energy the aircraft will either dive or
slow down or both.
>> 5. Engine power (P-61 two 2250 h.p. engines, cf.
>> Mosquito two 1800 h.p. engines.)
>>
> Yes, and...? Isn't the effect of engine power already factored in, together
> with the total weight, and thus the power/weight ratio, once you consider
> speed and acceleration?
>
It is, since velocity and acceleration will determine the entire course
of flight. The question is what sort of acceleration can any aircraft
do at any given velocity, and that depends on things like engine power,
drag, control surfaces, air density, and so forth.
All things being equal, the aircraft with more engine power will have
better sustained turn performance, since it will be able to keep its
speed up.
--
David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
da...@thornley.net | If you don't, flee.
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | O-
Michele
news:n1ddu6x...@news.aber.ac.uk...
> In article <4b13fd0b$0$34595$4faf...@reader1.news.tin.it>,
> Michele <don'tspamm...@tln.it> wrote:
>>
>>I mean, the CR.32 was certainly inferior to the Tempest as to armament, to
>>the Corsair as to endurance, to the Komet as to speed... still it was far
>>superior to all of them as to maneuverability (turning radius).
>
> The late, great Norman Hanson (he of "Carrier Pilot") hit the nail on the
> head with this one: the Gladiator was the most delightful, agile
> /aeroplane/ he ever encountered[1], but the Corsair was a superb /weapon/.
>
> Sure, the Glad could turn inside a Corsair, but no sane Corair pilot would
> ever give it the chance. Ditto, in bucketfuls, for the CR32.
No objection from me. Just, the question wasn't, what was the best fighter
as a weapon. It was, what was the most maneuverable fighter.
bbrought
very open ended. I spend a lot of my time working on evaluating flying
qualities and performance as an aero engineer, albeit on modern FBW
fighters, but of course the basic physics didn't change.
I guess you could define maneuverability as the ability to quickly
change from one state to another. Roll rate and roll acceleration
would therefore influence how quickly you can change from one bank
angle to another. Pitch rate influences how quickly you can change
from one load factor to another, etc. Similarly turn rate influences
how quickly you can change heading. There are several maneuverability
parameters that influence the usefulness of a fighter in combat. To
name just a few:
Initial roll acceleration
Maximum roll rate (these two are not the same)
Maximum pitch rate
Maximum load factor
Best instantaneous turn rate
Best sustained turn rate
Acceleration performance
Best climb rate
etc.
Many of these blurr the boundaries between "maneuverability" and
"performance".
It also depends to some extent on the flight envelope of the aircraft.
For example, an aircraft with a higher wing loading will usually have
its corner speed at a higher speed than one with a lower wingloading.
Assuming they have the same maximum load factor and most other things
being the same, the aircraft with the lower wing loading will have the
advantage as it will be able to generate the maximum load factor at a
lower speed. If the pilot of the low-wingloading aircraft can get the
other guy to fight at a speed below the high-wingloading aircrafts
corner speed, the one with the lower wingloading will have the
advantage. However, those are just instantaneous turn rates and say
nothing about the ability to sustain that turn rate - for that the
aircraft with the superior power loading will have the advantage.
Handling is also very important - aircraft that are less stable may
sometimes be able to change state quicker but also be so sensitive
that it becomes very difficult to aim accurately and the pilot will
have to maintain a larger safety buffer from departure. An unstable
aircraft may be impossible to use in combat as all the pilots
attention will be concentrated on just flying the aircraft. In a
flight test sense, the unstable aircraft will get high Cooper-Harper
ratings, meaning handling is inadequate for performing the task at
hand.
This is just a small part of it. Go through a typical handling
qualities spec (such as MIL-STD-8785C) and combine with performance
requirements and you can see it is very difficult to come up with a
simple set of specs to compare two aircraft. Usually the one with good
handling and flying qualities, low inertia values (meaning starting
and stopping a maneuver is easier), low drag, low power loading
(weight / power), low wing loading, will tend to be the preferred
choice in a dog fight. In this regard I think an aircraft like a Yak-3
would be a pretty good combination of parameters. Of course, add in
other important parameters for combat such as armour and armament,
combat survivability, reliability of components, etc, and the picture
changes. With the right tactics all out performance may trump
"maneuverability", so that something like a Me-262 could be the
preferred choice despite it being rather difficult to handle and slow
to maneuver. This is why just about any list of "best aircraft" will
come out differently depending on who makes the selection.
Michele
news:Ut6dnV3gs7Eh9InW...@posted.visi...
So all of the focus of this post is on taking into account the ideal
compromise between speed and maneuverability. Which is undoubtedly a key
point if one is interested in seeking the ideal performance balance. But the
question here was about manuverability, solely.
Haydn
> I mean, the CR.32 was certainly inferior to the Tempest as to armament, to
> the Corsair as to endurance, to the Komet as to speed... still it was far
> superior to all of them as to maneuverability (turning radius).
...and the Soviet-made Polikarpov I-15 - the Chato of the Spanish Civil
War - could even turn inside the CR.32. It would be interesting to know how
it fared in the hands of Chinese pilots against Japanese opponents, from
1937 onwards.
Haydn
Haydn
>I've read that even as late
> as 1943, Allied pilots who made the mistake
> of trying to 'dogfight' with a CR-42 usually
> lost, even if flying such excellent aircraft
> as the Spitfire or Mustang.
The CR.42 was an agile plane but I think that crediting it with victories
over Spitfires or P-51s as late as 1943 is just talking a bit tall (not you
personally, but the source you may have tapped into).
There positively are some (few) recorded and verified occurrences, earlier
in the war, of Hurricanes or P-40s shot down by CR.42s after they had
allowed the latter to engage them in whirling dogfight, a naive and
unnecessary tactical mistake other British and Commonwealth pilots tended to
scoff at.
Haydn
narrl...@hotmail.com
I don't know where I read or heard this, years ago, but I always liked
it: if two fighter pilots are dogfighting, at least one of them has
made a mistake.
Narr
David H Thornley
> So all of the focus of this post is on taking into account the ideal
> compromise between speed and maneuverability. Which is undoubtedly a key
> point if one is interested in seeking the ideal performance balance. But the
> question here was about manuverability, solely.
>
Certainly. The question is what "maneuverability" means in this
context. If it were defined as, say, smallest turn radius at
300 mph at 15,000 feet, we could perhaps determine it exactly.
However, we have turn radius and turn rate as candidates for
maneuverability (I'm not counting roll here). Of those, we have
the choice of maximum instantaneous and sustained performance,
or if we like how fast it can achieve a given rate or radius.
There's also the question of what airspeed and altitude we're
talking about. Or, for that matter, if we want to introduce
altitude (turning can be different in rolling vs. flat
scissors).
In short, there is no one simple definition of aircraft
maneuverability, and all the factors I was talking about
are important.
Tero P. Mustalahti
> There positively are some (few) recorded and verified occurrences, earlier
> in the war, of Hurricanes or P-40s shot down by CR.42s after they had
> allowed the latter to engage them in whirling dogfight, a naive and
> unnecessary tactical mistake other British and Commonwealth pilots tended to
> scoff at.
There are some such instances even from the Eastern front with some
German rookie Bf 109 pilots trying to dogfight with a Polikarpov I-16 or
I-153. They are even more rare, however, since most German pilots had
already encountered more maneuverable enemies in the West, and German
pilot training by 1941 emphasized energy conserving tactics ("boom &
zoom" etc.) whenever possible. It is also likely that many Soviet pilots
did not have the skills to really capitalize all the mistakes made by
German rookie pilots.
Tero P. Mustalahti
Tero P. Mustalahti
> ...and the Soviet-made Polikarpov I-15 - the Chato of the Spanish Civil
> War - could even turn inside the CR.32. It would be interesting to know how
> it fared in the hands of Chinese pilots against Japanese opponents, from
> 1937 onwards.
Initially well, but not for very long, since from March 1938 the
Japanese were using the Ki-27, which was very maneuverable for a
monoplane but much faster than the I-15. The improved I-15bis (a.k.a.
I-152) did somewhat better, but was still outclassed by the Ki-27. On
the other the I-16, once deployed to China, and during the
Russo-Japanese border conflicts proved to be superior to the Ki-27. It
had better armament and some armor, it was roughly as maneuverable and
faster than the Ki-27 (Especially in dive thanks to the retractable
landing gear; the level flight speeds were very similar. The last I-16
models gained more speed (up to 490 km/h) but I don't think they were
used against the Japanese).
The I-153 was used in the East only during the Khalkhin Gol incident
where it proved to be a good match for the Ki-27. It was more
maneuverable, but marginally slower, and like the I-16 it has some armor
and better armament than the Ki-27.
Tero P. Mustalahti
Chris
> What is the definition of "maneuverability"?
>
> Roll rate, turn radius?
Wouldn't the direction of the turn matter as well? I seem to recall
reading somewhere that because a single engine plane had that big
propeller turning, giving it a lot of torque in one direction, the
plane was easier and quicker to turn in that direction than in the
opposite direction.
So is it conceivable that a twin engine plane (where the two engines
torques would counter-balance and thus it wouldn't matter which
direction it turned) could out-turn a single engine plane in the
opposite direction of the single engine, but would be out-turned in
the direction that the single engined airplane naturally wanted to
go?
Chris Manteuffel
nik Simpson
> On Nov 28, 1:18 am, Rich Rostrom <rrostrom.21stcent...@rcn.com> wrote:
>
>> What is the definition of "maneuverability"?
>>
>> Roll rate, turn radius?
>
> Wouldn't the direction of the turn matter as well? I seem to recall
> reading somewhere that because a single engine plane had that big
> propeller turning, giving it a lot of torque in one direction, the
> plane was easier and quicker to turn in that direction than in the
> opposite direction.
>
That's correct, there's a great story about a guy switching over from
Merlin to Griffin-engined Spitfires. The Merlin spun the prop one way,
the Griffin spun the prop the other. But he didn't know that and trimmed
the rudder for a Merlin, with the result that he almost made a mess of
the Officer's Mess.
--
Nik Simpson
.
Al Montestruc
http://www.daveswarbirds.com/usplanes/aircraft/flapjack.htm
If this plane (XF5U-1) had been built earlier and made it into service
in WWII it would have been hands down the most maneuverable fighter
of any made by anyone. Her stall speed was well below that of anyone
else so she could turn on a dime.
The V-173 actually flew, it was a proof of concept prototype aircraft
and proved that Zimmerman's concept worked and you could build an
aircraft that would land and take off at very low speeds and short
runways using this design.
The side effect of the Zimmerman design was that it was also very
maneuverable.
WaltBJ
saw the guy who did it, one could posit that maneuverability was not a
factor in that 80%. Secondly, a speed differential was a factor in
that the shooter had to get in range of the target - unless in the
turning fight said target offered himself up as a clay pigeon. .
My own experience included two very different aircraft. The F102A with
a wingloading of about 38 pounds per square foot and the F104A with
about 90 pounds per square foot, both at fighting weight. The Deuce
would turn like a bat, capable of 6 G at 300 knots indicated. The
Zipper needed about 425 knots with maneuver flaps down to get 6 G. But
- even if the Deuce had carried a gun it wouldn't have stood a chance
against the Zipper. Like a good friend of mine said, flying a MiG17
against 2 Zippers - "All I could do was dodge them . . ."
If the other guy has the speed, all you can do is try for a head-on
shot and hope to get lucky . . .oh, and hope you see him first! If
he's got speed and skill and sees you first . . .
Walt BJ
Al Montestruc
> Since records indicate that about 80% of all fighters shot down never
> saw the guy who did it, one could posit that maneuverability was not a
> factor in that 80%.
It's not?? So the length of time it takes to get into position to
fire on a fighter that has not seen you is not a maneuverability
issue? So being better able to stay out of the line of site of the
pilot of the plane that has not yet seen you is not an issue?
Please!!
>Secondly, a speed differential was a factor in
> that the shooter had to get in range of the target
No sh&% GI?
> - unless in the
> turning fight said target offered himself up as a clay pigeon. .
> My own experience included two very different aircraft. The F102A with
> a wingloading of about 38 pounds per square foot and the F104A with
> about 90 pounds per square foot, both at fighting weight.
That is well after supersonic flight is an issue, and the F-104 has a
top speed of over Mach 2, and the F102 is not capable of supersonic
flight. We were talking WWII propeller engine fighters, and the
flying flapjack fighter should have had over 400 knots max speed,
which is faster than a Zero and comperable to a ME-109.
If the F-102 had about the same max speed of an F-104 would it be a
sitting duck for an F-104? I think not.
The thing is the flying flapjack achieved this high maneuverability
using a unique technology, as different from fighters of it's era as
the Hawker Harrier is from the F-102.
She has forced airflow over her wing from the huge counter-rotating
propellers on the wingtips that by the direction they are rotating,
all but eliminate the wing tip vortex that loses so much lift in
conventional aircraft.
The proof of concept prototype could lift off with absurdly short
takeoff rolls, especially with any headwind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfpTDOAfj7Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2yzoMt6etc&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-joM6ngTD8&NR=1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vought_XF5U
My thought now is that why the hell did we spend billions developing
the V-22 Osprey when you could get the same effect in terms of
capability with a variation of Zimmerman's design for far less that
would cost less to develop..
ThePro
> On Dec 4, 8:32 pm, WaltBJ <waltb...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> > Since records indicate that about 80% of all fighters shot down never
> > saw the guy who did it, one could posit that maneuverability was not a
> > factor in that 80%.
>
> It's not?? So the length of time it takes to get into position to
> fire on a fighter that has not seen you is not a maneuverability
> issue? So being better able to stay out of the line of site of the
> pilot of the plane that has not yet seen you is not an issue?
>
> Please!!
Most fighter kills by enemy fighters were with "boom and zoom" tactics
i.e. energy-based tactics instead of "dogfight" i.e. maneuver-based
tactics. So for this majority of kills maneuverability was not a
factor, the plane was down before the pilot could do any kind of
evasive action.
Pierrot Robert
Chicoutimi, Canada
Al Montestruc
I see that, and I see WaltBJ's comment to the effect that 80% of all
kills the pilot of the killed plane never saw it coming.
How do you know? Gun camera footage is not going to tell you that the
pilot on the other plane never saw you. Nor will it always confirm a
kill, it will often only confirm hits. It can also confirm that the
plane did not "appear" to be evading.
In the mean time gun camera footage does not always show the needed
information to tell this.
So how can you say that with such absolute assurance. Do you have
some evidence?
Further a lot of planes that are hit, are not shot down, and a lot of
planes that you cannot confirm were shot down were in fact.
All that said, the flying flapjack had as good or better speed than
almost all enemy fighters in wwii, so the argument WaltBJ was using is
balderdash for that plane. The flying flapjack was not a slow
fighter, at least by wind tunnel test results set next to German or
Japanese propeller engined fighters.
So would you prefer a fast fighter with excellent maneuverability, and
a very short take-off and landing roll, or one just as fast with not
so hot maneuverability and a long take-off or landing roll?
Bill Shatzer
-snip-
> All that said, the flying flapjack had as good or better speed than
> almost all enemy fighters in wwii, so the argument WaltBJ was using is
> balderdash for that plane. The flying flapjack was not a slow
> fighter, at least by wind tunnel test results set next to German or
> Japanese propeller engined fighters.
The F5U never flew so it's top speed remains entirely theoretical.
And the F5U didn't even begin taxiing tests until early 1947 - a bit too
late to be measured against "enemy fighters in wwii" or "German or
Japanese propeller engined fighters". Rather it should be measured
against contemporary aircraft at a similar stage of development in 1947
- the F2H Banshee, the FJ-1 Fury, the F9F Panther, the F-84 Thunderjet,
or the F-86 Saber. Not to mention the MiG-15 or the already-in-service
F-80 and Meteor and Vampire.
Even the first generation F-80s had top speeds 100 mph greater than the
F5U's -projected- top speed.
And I can hardly imagine F5Us mixing it up with MiG-15s over the Yalu.
That would not have been a pretty sight.
Louis C
> How do you know? Gun camera footage is not going to tell you that the
> pilot on the other plane never saw you. Nor will it always confirm a
> kill, it will often only confirm hits. It can also confirm that the
> plane did not "appear" to be evading.
You're grasping at straws. So far, you have produced exactly zero
evidence in favor of your defense of maneuverability as a desirable
characteristics (never mind the fact that planes have become less and
less maneuverable) but still you're asking for more evidence for the
opposite.
Consider the following:
- pilots are not noted for their suicidal tendencies, if they don't
appear to be evading, it usually means they aren't.
- if the targets only sees its attacker in the last second and doesn't
have time to react, the result is the same as if it had never seen a
thing. In either case, maneuverability is irrelevant.
- as you noticed, a hit doesn't always result in a kill. Nor does a
kill automatically result in the pilot's death. So in both cases, we
have the pilot's testimony for whether he'd seen his opponent or not.
LC
WaltBJ
done by destroying other fighters. To do this one must command the
fight. Speed allows the choice of attack or evasion. Maneuverability
does neither.
You can design and buld an airplane and maximize one or the other -
you cannot have both. Yes, you can build a next generation airplane
that will be superior to preent day aircraft. But - that is not
guaranteed to rpevail forever.
Now consider a highly maneuverable airplane attacking one capable of
significantly more speed - he has to catch his prey at cruise power.
If the other guy has any sense at all he will be as fast or faster
than his enemy. But say 'Speedy' is flown by an FNG pilot - if
'Turner' jumps him and gets him, well and good for Turner, But if
Speedy sees Turner approaching he is going to get some speed and
maneuver away and keep his eye on Turner. Now, someone's going to get
low on fuel. If it's Speedy, well, he's going home. But if it's Turner
and he turns away to head for his base, Speedy just might drop down
upon him like a hawk.
The previous, of course, supposes those two are alone in the sky. If
there are other airplanes present, things could get interesting very
quickly, since maneuvering aircraft are much more easily detected by
eyeball (or radar!) than ones flying straight and level. Sunglint, for
one thing, can be seen over 20 miles away. And an airplane cocked up
on one wing is much more visible (reflective) than in level flight.
that's why most practicing fighter pilots say if you don't get him
first gun pass disengage and run out for more energy and a good look
around.
Lots of good and some not-so-good books out there - read them all and
make up your own mind. That all said, maneuver is necessary in the
knife fight but with everything nowadays loaded down with missiles -
the fight may be over when still 40 miles apart . . .
Walt BJ
WaltBJ
me. I was a USAF fighter pilot, my chosen profession, and in the
cockpit for 22 years. I studied fighter tactics diligently, read every
pertinent publication I could get my hands on, and learned to fly
every fighter I was given to its limits, not mine. I flew the F86F
Sabre, F86D 'Dog', F102 delta, F104 STarffighter and the F4D/E
Phantoms. I was an instructor pilot in the F102, F104 and both F4D and
E, and maintenance test pilot in the F102 and F4D/E.. I logged just
over 5000 hours in fighter, from wingman to squadron commander. I also
flew the F4 series in Vietnam, 150 missions worth. BTW when I retired
at 49, I was still combat-ready in the F4E..
Now as to that 80% - that comes from USAF historical statistics, not
something I dreamed up. Just about every ace's
story will cite numerous cases where he shot down someone who had no
idea he was there.
For horrid examples, look up 'Tail End Charlie' in the Battle
of Britain, or why the RAF finally ditched the 3-ship Vee
formation . . .. .
Walt BJ
ThePro
> Further comments: the mission of a fighter is air superiority.
What about interception ? interdiction ?
<snip>
>
> Lots of good and some not-so-good books out there - read them all and
> make up your own mind.
One of my favorites: In Pursuit (http://www.scribd.com/doc/7601051/In-
Pursuit)
Pierrot Robert
Chicoutimi, Canada
Al Montestruc
> AlMontestrucwrote:
>
> -snip-
>
> > All that said, the flying flapjack had as good or better speed than
> > almost all enemy fighters in wwii, so the argument WaltBJ was using is
> > balderdash for that plane. The flying flapjack was not a slow
> > fighter, at least by wind tunnel test results set next to German or
> > Japanese propeller engined fighters.
>
> The F5U never flew so it's top speed remains entirely theoretical.
>
> And the F5U didn't even begin taxiing tests until early 1947 - a bit too
> late to be measured against "enemy fighters in wwii" or "German or
> Japanese propeller engined fighters".
Because not enough resources were given to it.
> Rather it should be measured
> against contemporary aircraft at a similar stage of development in 1947
> - the F2H Banshee, the FJ-1 Fury, the F9F Panther, the F-84 Thunderjet,
> or the F-86 Saber. Not to mention the MiG-15 or the already-in-service
> F-80 and Meteor and Vampire.
We do not agree on that matter.
WaltBJ
maneuverability versus speed. The same comparison could have been made
between the Fokker DVII and the SE5 in WW1, or the P38 and the Zero in
WW2. The Flying Tigers did prettty good with their faster lead sleds
against the tighter turning Oscars and Zeros . . .
The point I made citing the 102 and the 104, both of which I flew quit
a bit, was missed. FWIW the clean F102 was definitely supersonic; 1.3
in level flight at 35,000. Been there, done that. Had it ever fought
a 104 meeting head-on, that's the only chance it would ever have had;
the rest of the fight it would be evading, and if the 104 never
managed to land a shot the 104 pilot could easily disengage and go
home to try again another day.
Put yourself in the 102; you just passed the 104 meeting head-on.
Being not dumb, he was going at least 150 knots faster than you so he
went straight up and is sitting 10 to 15,000 feet above you, waiting
for an opportune time to make a firing pass on you. What are you going
to do?
The other problem with the F5U was it was a technological dead end. By
the time the bugs were worked out it would have been far too slow to
compete. The P80 could do 580/.8M in level flight, its red line. The
86 Sabre could do right at 680 in level flight, all its engine could
generate. Other prop fighters were hitting the Mach limit with their
prop blades at less than 500; you can hear the effect at the Reno Air
Races.
BTW I rechecked my facts in Wkipedia. It is odd that the picture of
the XF5U shows both props turning clockwise. Looks like they installed
two right-hand R-2000 engines and props for the ground runs.The site
also lists 475 for the estimated top speed; if that is as optimistic
as usual, the XF5U was definitely a dead end because the F4U4 was in
that range already.
One disadvantage has never, so far, been mentioned - it looked like no
other airplane in the world (except its daddy the V173) so combat
recognition would have been a snap. BTW the P38 had the same
disadvantage. OTH the P51 and Me109 looked alike in certain positions;
a disadvantage the other way around.
Now, a turboprop Flapjack with props with many short blades and say
4000HP each side . . .STOL CAS?
Walt BJ
David H Thornley
> On Dec 15, 12:28 am, Bill Shatzer <ww...@NOcornell.edu> wrote:
>> The F5U never flew so it's top speed remains entirely theoretical.
>>
There have been lots of good ideas that looked good and weren't as
good in practice.
We can see that in the Wikipedia article: the original specs were
for 550 mph, and the estimated top speed was 475 mph, or slightly
slower than what is normally listed for a P-51H (which did see
operational service in WWII).
>> And the F5U didn't even begin taxiing tests until early 1947 - a bit too
>> late to be measured against "enemy fighters in wwii" or "German or
>> Japanese propeller engined fighters".
>
> Because not enough resources were given to it.
>
According to the Wikipedia article, the project was well over budget
in 1946. Since it was an unproven design (to say the least),
and not actually revolutionary, it would seem unproductive to give
massive amounts of resources to it.
We can look at what the Germans did with similarly unusual projects.
The V-1 and jet fighters were at least qualified successes. The V-2
was not really cost-effective, and the V-3 (multichamber long-range
cannon) would probably have failed completely. The hydrogen peroxide
engine for submarines was a failure, although the submarines building
at the end of the war would have been quite successful if not for
construction and design issues. Certainly a second generation could
have been deadly. All the nuclear research went nowhere. The
supertanks would have been mostly useless in practice.
The Germans actually had some justification for going for
"Wunderwaffen": they were losing, after all, and had to go
for the long shot. The improved U-boats could conceivably have
had a considerable effect on the war.
I don't see why more resources should have been spent on it,
and I don't see how it was supposed to have been picked out as
a winner.
Tero P. Mustalahti
> There have been lots of good ideas that looked good and weren't as
> good in practice.
>
> We can see that in the Wikipedia article: the original specs were
> for 550 mph, and the estimated top speed was 475 mph, or slightly
> slower than what is normally listed for a P-51H (which did see
> operational service in WWII).
Then of course there was the XP-72, which reached 490 mph during the
prototype trials and was projected with a maximum speed of over 500 mph
with the six blade contrarotating propellers of the second prototype
(and projected production machines). Unfortunately the second prototype
did not complete maximum speed tests before crashing in a takeoff.
Since the XP-72 was a relatively straightforward development of the
P-47, it experienced relatively few teething problems and the P-72 could
have entered service before the end of the war (in the Pacific, probably
not in Europe, though). It was canceled only because jet fighters were
clearly the wave of the future.
Tero P. Mustalahti
pbrom...@aol.com
> In a discussion with someone the other day, this subject came up. We
> kicked around the usual suspects- P-51 Mustang; Spitfire, ME-109, Zero.
>
> But- I remember reading several years ago that the real answer was the
> twin-engined P-61 Black Widow night-fighter; the P-61 could reportedly
> turn INSIDE a Spitfire!
>
> Thoughts, opinions and/or facts?
Since living memory of how the planes flew is nearly gone, your best
answer might be had from flight simmers, especially those centered
around the Microsoft combat simulator products. I don't know how
active any of them are now, but 5-10 years ago there online leagues
where people got together and had massive dogfights with their
favorite simulated WWII fighter planes. Some of those guys were very
serious about historical detail in flight models. There were many 40-
year old guys living in their parents basements all over the world who
tweaked the models so they performed within 1% of the original plane's
specifications. Some tracked their time like real pilots and had
thousands of hours in different fighters.
As always happens with serious weirdos, there were discussion forums
that argued out every fine detail imaginable. Hmm. Sounds familiar.
Here's a link to one.
Al Montestruc
>
> -snip-
>
> > All that said, the flying flapjack had as good or better speed than
> > almost all enemy fighters in wwii, so the argument WaltBJ was using is
> > balderdash for that plane. The flying flapjack was not a slow
> > fighter, at least by wind tunnel test results set next to German or
> > Japanese propeller engined fighters.
>
> The F5U never flew so it's top speed remains entirely theoretical.
That only adds a +/- uncertainty of maybe 5% at very most. This
"theoretical" was based on wind tunnel tests of the model and known/
tested behavior of engine and propeller.
>
> And the F5U didn't even begin taxiing tests until early 1947 - a bit too
> late to be measured against "enemy fighters in wwii" or "German or
> Japanese propeller engined fighters".
Because not enough resources were put into it, not because the idea
lacked technical merit or was more costly than others.
WaltBJ
>
> > The F5U never flew so it's top speed remains entirely theoretical.
> That only adds a +/- uncertainty of maybe 5% at very most. This
> "theoretical" was based on wind tunnel tests of the model and known/
> tested behavior of engine and propeller.
>
>
Unfortunately for the above statement there are quite a few WW2
aicraft whose actual performance fell far below the calculated
performance. Forex the F2G, P40Q, XP55, XP56, XP67, XP75.They all flew
but never reached their designed speeds; in fact most were
disappointing failures.
Later on there was the YF102 which was unable to exceed M1.0 in level
flight. The wind tunnel tests never detected the problem. Only after
area-ruling was applied could the resultiing YF102A exceed M1.0 - and
was rather more than 5% faster than the XF102 - AMAF 30% faster. Wiki
is off in the Deuce's performance, too. It cites 1.22 and 53,000. That
must have been with a detuned or early version of the final engine.
Our Deuces in 1960 could easily reach 59,000; I was up there on a test
hop, subsonic! BTW we normally flew at 1.3 and 57,000 as targets for
our own pilots making head-on snapup passes.
Walt BJ
Al Montestruc
> The comparison Iwas making between the 102 and the 104 was
> maneuverability versus speed. The same comparison could have been made
> between the Fokker DVII and the SE5 in WW1, or the P38 and the Zero in
> WW2. The Flying Tigers did prettty good with their faster lead sleds
> against the tighter turning Oscars and Zeros . . .
Yes, exactly. My point is that argument falls flat on it's face if
the more maneuverable fighter is also just as fast or faster.
>
> The point I made citing the 102 and the 104, both of which I flew quit
> a bit, was missed. FWIW the clean F102 was definitely supersonic; 1.3
> in level flight at 35,000.
Ok fine, the reference says otherwise but references have been wrong
before,
> Been there, done that. Had it ever fought
> a 104 meeting head-on, that's the only chance it would ever have had;
> the rest of the fight it would be evading, and if the 104 never
> managed to land a shot the 104 pilot could easily disengage and go
> home to try again another day.
> Put yourself in the 102; you just passed the 104 meeting head-on.
> Being not dumb, he was going at least 150 knots faster than you so he
> went straight up and is sitting 10 to 15,000 feet above you, waiting
> for an opportune time to make a firing pass on you. What are you going
> to do?
Well first off a fight in the air is rarely between two and only two
planes, then it would depend alot on the rest of the local conditions,
what planes and how many, how close,on my side, what planes,,,, on
your side, time of day, cloud cover if any, weather and so on, how
much fuel reserve I have, a reasonable estimate of how much you have,
and so on.
Do recall the incident where a SBD Dauntless pilot shot down two Zeros
and flew home to tell about it.
>
> The other problem with the F5U was it was a technological dead end.
As an air superiority fighter, sure agreed post WWII in any first rate
nation's airforce it is not a practical air superiority fighter.
Though for a small developing nation the STOL feature would be a big
plus for having more planes and less infrastructure cost. Say a
middle-eastern or African nation.
Zimmerman's concept as an STOL aircraft for any of a million other
applications military or civilian, hell no. It has never been
properly developed, it is massively applicable for starters as a bush
plane, or an STOL transport, or as a close air support plane.
As a forward air support aircraft it would have been as good or
honestly much better than the Skyraider.
Why? Very STOL, very efficent use of it's wing.
By
> the time the bugs were worked out it would have been far too slow to
> compete. The P80 could do 580/.8M in level flight, its red line. The
> 86 Sabre could do right at 680 in level flight, all its engine could
> generate. Other prop fighters were hitting the Mach limit with their
> prop blades at less than 500; you can hear the effect at the Reno Air
> Races.
>
> BTW I rechecked my facts in Wkipedia. It is odd that the picture of
> the XF5U shows both props turning clockwise.
Humm, maybe that was for taxi tests. They had a problem getting the
flight propellers done on time. It would be simple enough given they
had to gear down the engines to reverse rotation for taxi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vought_V.173.jpg
The V-173 shows clearly they were rotating in the sense that Zimmerman
intended. That is the up side of the rotation is inboard so the
vortex from the prop is inverted from what the normal wing vortex
would be, which keeps the vacuum on the too of the wing.
> Looks like they installed
> two right-hand R-2000 engines and props for the ground runs.The site
> also lists 475 for the estimated top speed; if that is as optimistic
> as usual, the XF5U was definitely a dead end because the F4U4 was in
> that range already.
Not if you need almost zero take-off roll. Now the navy could take
off and land them off the fantail of a tin can, jeep carriers now are
serious contenders.
That might have been the reason the US Navy axed the program. They
knew the soviets would tend to copy things they could and that would
give the USSR an advantage. Making carrier operations easy would not
be to the USA's net advantage if the USSRE could copy it easy.
>
> One disadvantage has never, so far, been mentioned - it looked like no
> other airplane in the world (except its daddy the V173) so combat
> recognition would have been a snap. BTW the P38 had the same
> disadvantage. OTH the P51 and Me109 looked alike in certain positions;
> a disadvantage the other way around.
Yeah, and fewer friendly fire losses, which given US numerical
advantages is really not a disadvantage in my opinion.
>
> Now, a turboprop Flapjack with props with many short blades and say
> 4000HP each side . . .STOL CAS?
Yes, and a troop transport, cargo version that can also do medical
evacuation, and has a top speed more like 300 knots than 100.
Not quite as short a landing roll as a helicopter, but long range and
high speed with good fuel economy.
My thought is that in my industry (offshore oil & gas) a plane that
can land on a helipad with long range and is much faster than a simple
helicopter has good market potential.
WaltBJ
iger;s Diary" by Charles Bodn. Here one has a highly maneuverable
plane vs a stronger heavier plane. Note that the Zero in service was
approximately equal to the P40 in level speed, but the P40 could
outdive it And at higher speeds teh Zero's ailerons became very stiff.
This could have been a result of design; I do not know..
The problems above are inherent in aircraft design - you can optimize
certain characterisics - but to do so you are forced to sacrifice
capability in the others. Speed - minimum parasite drag maxi,u power.
Range -lighness high aspect ratio wings. Battle hardiness, what the
Navy calls staying power: Armor, self-sealing fule tanks, multiple
engine, redundnacy in controls and systems - Stormovik, A10.
There is no free lunch.
I was fortunate enough to visit a shop building a Zero Model 32 from
scratch. i was amazed at the very light contruction - the skin
appeared to be .020" aluminum and when pressed by a thumb yielded
about like that on a Cessna 150.
The comment about 1v1 combat being rather rare was pointed out by
myself several times, however it did occur now and then. I included it
as a cautionary comment, not to get tunnel vision on the guy one is
fighting and forget to guard one's six. Note that from WW2 on a vital
maxim has been that stay with your wingman and if alone, go home!
Figures from Bond's book:
The AVG never had more than 70 trined pilots nor ore than 49 P40s
ready for combat. They started out with P40Bs, airplanes the Brtish
and French never took delivery on and relinquished to the USA. Note
that is teh ,aximum force elevel ever reached. But the AVG logged
confirmed kills on 299 enemy aircraft with a possible 153 more down.
AVG losses were 12 in teh air and 61 on the ground. The AVG lost 10
pilots in combat and 10 in accidents.
Al Montestruc
> Comments: For a comparison of the P40 vs the Zero - read "A Flying
> iger;s Diary" by Charles Bodn. Here one has a highly maneuverable
> plane vs a stronger heavier plane. Note that the Zero in service was
> approximately equal to the P40 in level speed, but the P40 could
> outdive it And at higher speeds teh Zero's ailerons became very stiff.
> This could have been a result of design; I do not know..
>
> The problems above are inherent in aircraft design - you can optimize
> certain characterisics - but to do so you are forced to sacrifice
> capability in the others. Speed - minimum parasite drag maxi,u power.
> Range -lighness high aspect ratio wings. Battle hardiness, what the
> Navy calls staying power: Armor, self-sealing fule tanks, multiple
> engine, redundnacy in controls and systems - Stormovik, A10.
Agree with all you say and I must point out that from time to time
engineers come upon a conceptual breakthrough idea, and sometimes the
powers that be do not have the education or brains to realize what
they are throwing away when the shelve really good technical ideas for
something more conservative.
It is my opinion that Zimmerman's concept is one of these breakthrough
ideas that has been largely ignored because the people making the
decisions are not looking at the fundamental physics of what
Zimmerman's concept could do, and was proven to be able to do by the
V-173, and rather are looking at it as being "strange" because it
looks significantly different from other mass produced planes of that
era.
My point is that if you use Zimmerman's concept you are on a totally
different power/speed/lift/drag relationship curve than you would be
on that seen by the P-51, ME-109, Spitfire and Zero. Those planes
are enough alike in fundamental design that one could plot a
relationship between the variables of plane mass to engine power, lift
to drag ratio for a given angle of attack, and wing area over plane
mass and all would have almost the same speed if they have almost
exactly the same speed of the specified ratios are the same.
That would not be true for a plane designed as Zimmerman intended as
it does not have a body, it has a huge wing with a very short span to
chord ratio and cover's the loss of lift caused by tip vortex with the
large counter vortex rotation propellers on the wing tips.
At that point the engineering stops being of the cook book trade off
variety and starts being of fundamental differences, like (for
example) that between jets and propeller driven planes.
>
> There is no free lunch.
100% agree, and physics does not lie and some engineers are a whole
lot smarter than others,just as some fighter jocks are a hell of a lot
better than others.
The pity of it is (for engineers) that people who can't, or won't
follow the physics of the argument can't tell the difference between a
so-so and a brilliant design on paper, and it costs a hell of a lot of
money time and labor to build a prototype and test it to prove a
point. On the other hand the difference between fighter pilots is
the same as the difference between the quick and the dead.
As far as I am concerned, the V-173 proved the basics of Zimmerman's
design, you need to be able to understand the basics of aircraft
design to see what is possible given the V-173 design worked as
advertised.
>
> I was fortunate enough to visit a shop building a Zero Model 32 from
> scratch. i was amazed at the very light contruction - the skin
> appeared to be .020" aluminum and when pressed by a thumb yielded
> about like that on a Cessna 150.
>
> The comment about 1v1 combat being rather rare was pointed out by
> myself several times, however it did occur now and then. I included it
> as a cautionary comment, not to get tunnel vision on the guy one is
> fighting and forget to guard one's six. Note that from WW2 on a vital
> maxim has been that stay with your wingman and if alone, go home!
>
> Figures from Bond's book:
> The AVG never had more than 70 trined pilots nor ore than 49 P40s
> ready for combat. They started out with P40Bs, airplanes the Brtish
> and French never took delivery on and relinquished to the USA. Note
> that is teh ,aximum force elevel ever reached. But the AVG logged
> confirmed kills on 299 enemy aircraft with a possible 153 more down.
> AVG losses were 12 in teh air and 61 on the ground. The AVG lost 10
> pilots in combat and 10 in accidents.
100% agree that the pilot quality is generally more important than the
plane design. That said, a good pilot is not going to turn down a
better plane now is he?
Also if the design difference gets large enough, , well as you said
plane design does count when discussing the 102 vs the 104.
Do you really want to be the really, really good experienced fighter
pilot (Say as good as Hartmann) driving a WWII vintage Me-109G facing
a so-so to poor pilot in a MiG-21??
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Hartmann
Somehow that does not seem to be a fair encounter at all.
Hartmann by the way hated the F-104.
"Hartmann considered the F-104 a fundamentally flawed and unsafe
aircraft and strongly opposed its adoption by the Bundesluftwaffe.
Although events subsequently validated his low opinion of the aircraft
(282 crashes and 115 German pilots killed on the F-104 in non-combat
missions, along with allegations of bribes culminating in the Lockheed
scandal), Hartmann's outspoken criticism proved unpopular with his
superiors. General Werner Panitzki, successor to General Josef
Kammhuber as Inspekteur der Luftwaffe, said "Erich is a good pilot but
not a good officer" and this relationship with his superiors forced
Hartmann into early retirement in 1970."
Louis C
(snip good points)
> The AVG ... started out with P40Bs, airplanes the Brtish
> and French never took delivery on and relinquished to the USA.
Small detail:
The French never took delivery of them because they were out of the
war by then, and the British were made an offer they couldn't refuse
to let go of their early P40s in exchange for some late-model ones, as
the USAAF really wanted the extra fighters now.
LC
David H Thornley
> 100% agree, and physics does not lie and some engineers are a whole
> lot smarter than others,just as some fighter jocks are a hell of a lot
> better than others.
>
We're talking about wingtip vortices here - in other words, turbulent
flow. The basics of turbulent flow are well understood, but the
consequences are still hard to work with theoretically, or for that
matter computationally. It doesn't necessarily scale in speed or
size.
If you've played chess or go or a similar game, you'll be familiar with
the idea that simple rules can result in amazingly complex situations.
> The pity of it is (for engineers) that people who can't, or won't
> follow the physics of the argument can't tell the difference between a
> so-so and a brilliant design on paper,
I've got news for you: with something like this, people who can and do
follow the physics can't tell the difference. At most, they can
divide the proposals into more and less promising, and it appears that
the USN did consider this promising.
> As far as I am concerned, the V-173 proved the basics of Zimmerman's
> design, you need to be able to understand the basics of aircraft
> design to see what is possible given the V-173 design worked as
> advertised.
>
As far as I'm concerned the V-173 proved the basics at low speeds.
Wikipedia lists it as having a maximum speed of 138mph, which would
have made it one heck of a warplane in 1918, but irrelevant in WWII.
It proves nothing about what would happen at over 400mph. The Navy
kept putting money into the project until 1947, and never did get an
actual flight out of it. That's four or five years from the first
V-173 flight to the cancellation of the XF5U. If there was an ability
to simply scale up the results, it sure didn't show in trials.
Nor is this part of the basics of aircraft design. We're talking about
a new idea, not a simple extrapolation from experience. Like everything
complicated, aircraft design is partly physics and partly a whole lot of
experience with more or less conventional designs.
Finally, the potential of this idea, at least at slow speeds, was shown
over 60 years ago, and I'm not aware of any development since. A
sturdy STOL design capable of operating at attack plane speed
would have come in quite handy for several roles since. We're a lot
more able to deal with unconventional designs nowadays.
There's nothing about this idea to suggest to me that it's a promising
approach except at low speed.
Bill Shatzer
> Comments: For a comparison of the P40 vs the Zero - read "A Flying
> iger;s Diary" by Charles Bodn. Here one has a highly maneuverable
> plane vs a stronger heavier plane. Note that the Zero in service was
> approximately equal to the P40 in level speed, but the P40 could
> outdive it And at higher speeds teh Zero's ailerons became very stiff.
> This could have been a result of design; I do not know..
It's my understanding that the AVG P-40s never faced Zeros in combat.
China was primarily a Japanese Army show and the Zero was, of course, a
Japanese Navy aircraft.
There was a limited deployment of A6M Zeros to China in 1940-41 but they
had all been withdrawn by September of 1941. The AVG didn't see any
combat until December, 1941.
Also, I think the AVG P-40s were P-40Cs, not Bs - although the external
differences between the two models were minimal.
Al Montestruc
> Al Montestruc wrote:
> > 100% agree, and physics does not lie and some engineers are a whole
> > lot smarter than others,just as some fighter jocks are a hell of a lot
> > better than others.
>
> Physics doesn't lie, but it's real easy to oversimplify.
Zimmerman' s models and prototype flew and got the results he got on
the model scale.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfpTDOAfj7Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2yzoMt6etc&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-joM6ngTD8&NR=1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vought_XF5U
>
> We're talking about wingtip vortices here - in other words, turbulent
> flow. The basics of turbulent flow are well understood, but the
> consequences are still hard to work with theoretically, or for that
> matter computationally. It doesn't necessarily scale in speed or
> size.
This is not theory fella, this is prototype proven fact.
>
> If you've played chess or go or a similar game, you'll be familiar with
> the idea that simple rules can result in amazingly complex situations.
>
> > The pity of it is (for engineers) that people who can't, or won't
> > follow the physics of the argument can't tell the difference between a
> > so-so and a brilliant design on paper,
>
> I've got news for you: with something like this, people who can and do
> follow the physics can't tell the difference.
Experimental results do not lie.
> At most, they can
> divide the proposals into more and less promising, and it appears that
> the USN did consider this promising.
>
> > As far as I am concerned, the V-173 proved the basics of Zimmerman's
> > design, you need to be able to understand the basics of aircraft
> > design to see what is possible given the V-173 design worked as
> > advertised.
>
> As far as I'm concerned the V-173 proved the basics at low speeds.
> Wikipedia lists it as having a maximum speed of 138mph, which would
> have made it one heck of a warplane in 1918, but irrelevant in WWII.
>
> It proves nothing about what would happen at over 400mph.
Wind tunnel tests mean a lot, this was checked out in a wind tunnel.
Furthermore I am not so much interested in the detailed specifics of
how it performs at higher speeds, the STOL aspect and ability to turn
tight at much lower speeds.
If you are going to assert it will not be able to pull high gees at
higher speeds, then look at the bloody structure of the thing it is
intrinsically more strong by it's shape as the wing is deeper which
givens you more bending moment of inertia for less structural weight,
the blended wing-body will give much less drag per volume than a
conventional design.
> The Navy
> kept putting money into the project until 1947, and never did get an
> actual flight out of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vought_XF5U
Because they pulled the plug, The problems with the plane at end of
program were engine and propeller vibration that combined with the end
of the war and the start of the jet age caused the Navy to pull the
plug.
My take is that also they also did not want to do the development work
on an aircraft that the USSR could copy that would tend to give more
advantage to the USSR than to the USA. A very STOL propeller strike
aircraft would give the USSR a leg up in developing an effective
carrier fleet in the 40's and 50's.
> That's four or five years from the first
> V-173 flight to the cancellation of the XF5U. If there was an ability
> to simply scale up the results, it sure didn't show in trials.
They tried to hard to add too many features. They put in helicopter
type pitch controls on the propellers, as in the pitch varies by
angular position of the blade (cyclic stick on a helicopter). That
was massive overkill and probably was an additional significant source
of the vibration problem.
A simple pitch control on the propellers should have been enough. The
V-173 did not try to use a cyclic type control, but it also had
gearbox vibration issues. Those were solved. The thing is the (much
larger) propellers for this thing to work must turn much slower than a
conventional aircraft for the same engine size, thus you need a
gearbox.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vought_V-173
Off the cuff having done a lot of gear design work I would suggest the
first thing to do was move to a planetary system and ditch the four
bladed propellers and use either a three or five bladed system to
reduce resonant frequencies.
>
> Nor is this part of the basics of aircraft design. We're talking about
> a new idea, not a simple extrapolation from experience.
Exactly, it is not cookbook engineering. It is the kind that requires
real skull sweat.
> Like everything
> complicated, aircraft design is partly physics and partly a whole lot of
> experience with more or less conventional designs.
That is called cook book engineering.
When you venture off the well explored path, expect to find new
issues, and new potential.
>
> Finally, the potential of this idea, at least at slow speeds, was shown
> over 60 years ago, and I'm not aware of any development since. A
> sturdy STOL design capable of operating at attack plane speed
> would have come in quite handy for several roles since. We're a lot
> more able to deal with unconventional designs nowadays.
>
> There's nothing about this idea to suggest to me that it's a promising
> approach except at low speed.
Nothing to say it will not and a hell of a lot to say it will.
The V-173 flew and worked well in its power/performance envelope, the
vibration problems for that design were solved. Nothing suggests to
me that the vibration problems of the XF5U were not solvable then and
gear design technology has advanced a hell of a lot in the last 60
years FYI.
WaltBJ
> had all been withdrawn by September of 1941. The AVG didn't see any
> combat until December, 1941.
>
> Also, I think the AVG P-40s were P-40Cs, not Bs - although the external
> differences between the two models were minimal.
Read General Bond's book, then argue with him. The AVG started with
100 P40Bs diverted from shipments to the RAF, who dubbed them
Tomahawks. The AVG flew these along with P40Es which began arriving in
March 1942. It took awhile before teh P40Bs were phased out/worn out.
The USAAC took over from the AVG in July 1942.
The Zeros - Model A6M2 - were first service-tested in China in
July 1940. Before meeting Zeros the AVG encountered I-96 Claude and
I-97 Nate aircraft, both similar low-wing fighters with fixed gear, 2x
7.7 mm guns in the cowl, slower but much more maneuverable than the
P40s. Because the hit and run tactics essentailly made the odds
disproportionately in the AVG's favor, the Japanese brought in newer
fighters. I suspect the AVG pilots may have confused Zeros and Oscars
to be the same airplane. This is not to say the Japanese couldn't have
deployed Zeros into the theater. I have seen both and on the ground
they are easily distinguishable - in the air, maybe not. Oscar does
look smaller to me, even on the ground, but they're extremely close to
the same dimensions. Oscar's canopy is almost free of mullions and its
fuselage more tapered, its wing has a straight leading edge and its
rudder is about the same as a P40..
Walt BJ
Geoffrey Sinclair
news:16694f01-3f08-4252...@l30g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
Bill Shatzer wrote,
>> There was a limited deployment of A6M Zeros to China in 1940-41 but they
>> had all been withdrawn by September of 1941. The AVG didn't see any
>> combat until December, 1941.
>>
>> Also, I think the AVG P-40s were P-40Cs, not Bs - although the external
>> differences between the two models were minimal.
>
> Read General Bond's book, then argue with him. The AVG started with
> 100 P40Bs diverted from shipments to the RAF, who dubbed them
> Tomahawks.
Sort of, it seems the P-40s sent with the AVG were a hybrid of B
and C features, with things like the engines carefully selected. The
Curtiss line was suffering the usual teething problems from moving
to mass production, quality control and ability to fully standardise
the product.
> The AVG flew these along with P40Es which began arriving in
> March 1942. It took awhile before teh P40Bs were phased out/worn out.
> The USAAC took over from the AVG in July 1942.
The AVG did not go into combat before Pearl Harbor.
> The Zeros - Model A6M2 - were first service-tested in China in
> July 1940.
But were pulled out for the invasion of South East Asia.
This is from a post from 2004, discussing the Zero the USAAF
in China ended up with, it was from the 22nd Air Flotilla's fighter
unit, one of those lost while transferring south in December 1941.
Information from Japanese Naval aces and fighter units in World
War II, Hata and Izawa, translated by Gorham. Tainan Air Group
used a V on the tail as identification October 1941 to October
1942, so for example Sakai's "tail number" was V-107
The Zeros operating in China were under the 12th Air Group, which
lost 3 to ground fire while on operations from August 1940 to
September 1941. The group was disbanded on 15 September 1941
with personnel going to Tainan and the 3rd Air groups. Basically
the Zeros were withdrawn from China. Tail identification code the
number 3.
The Tainan group was officially established on 1 October 1941 at
Tainan in Taiwan, as a fighter unit, under 23rd Air Flotilla. The
establishment was 54 fighters plus 18 spares and 6 reconnaissance
aircraft. In December it actually had 45 Model 21 A6M, 12 type 96
fighters (Claudes) and 6 reconnaissance aircraft. Some 14 A6M
and some type 96s had been transferred to the 22nd Air Flotilla's
fighter squadron for operations in Malaya.
The opening days battle over the Philippines are said to have
cost Tainan 4 fighters MIA and one that "destroyed itself", which
means the pilot knew he could not make it back to base and so
deliberately died.
Tainan moved to the Philippines beginning on 26 December 1941,
then onto Tarakan on 16 January 1942 and Balikpapan on 30
January 1942. It fought over eastern Java, arriving at Denpasar
on 20th February and then on 1 April 1942 was ordered to Rabaul.
So it is hard for a Tainan group fighter to end up in Burma unless
via China in the October/November 1941 period. This leaves the
aircraft sent to the 22nd Air Flotilla's fighter unit, presumably not
repainted.
The fighter unit was outside the regular organisation, established
on 15 November 1941, using a mixture of aircraft from the 3rd
and Tainan air groups. Deployed to Saigon on 1 December
1941, losing 2 aircraft. Lost 4 A6M aircraft on the first day of war
operations. Some aircraft sent to North Borneo on 22 December,
main body arrived at Kota Bharu on 26 December, advanced
down the Malay peninsula and on to the Dutch East Indies.
In Penang on 9 March 1942, sent to Tavoy in South Burma
29 March to 3 April 1942, no combat, sent to Bangkok. Took
part in the attack on Rangoon on 6 April 1942, then back to
Bangkok the next day, again no combat mentioned. Then
absorbed by Air Group 253. Tail letter identifier what looks like
a Roman numeral II to my eyes. The unit can be referred to as
the Yamada unit, after the name of the commanding officer.
As for other candidates,
Air group 253/Kanoya Air Group fighter squadron, created in
April 1942, patrolled out of Sabang and Andaman Island,
no combat recorded. Sent to Rabaul in September 1942.
Tail letter identifier K.
3rd Air Group went to the Philippines then Balikpapan, so
no real chance there. Tail letter identifier X.
Hard to find a Zero equipped unit that fought in Burma. The
area, along with the Indian Ocean, was largely left to the IJAAF,
particularly after the IJN carriers finished their raids.
The tail codes for the IJN carrier fighters present in April 1942
were AI, Akagi, AII, Kaga, BI Soryu, BII Hiryu, EI Shokaku, EII
Zuikaku, DI Ryujo (in this case flying Claudes, not Zeros).
Markings as of April 1942, corresponding to 1st, 2nd, 5th and
4th carrier squadrons respectively.
> Before meeting Zeros the AVG encountered I-96 Claude and
> I-97 Nate aircraft, both similar low-wing fighters with fixed gear, 2x
> 7.7 mm guns in the cowl, slower but much more maneuverable than the
> P40s. Because the hit and run tactics essentailly made the odds
> disproportionately in the AVG's favor, the Japanese brought in newer
> fighters. I suspect the AVG pilots may have confused Zeros and Oscars
> to be the same airplane.
Were the Claudes the AVG encountered from the Ryujo in April 1942?
The Japanese indicate the Claude never saw combat against the western
allies.
I suspect the confusion extends to Claudes and Nates. There were
plenty of the latter in China and Burma
> This is not to say the Japanese couldn't have
> deployed Zeros into the theater.
It seems any deployment was brief and may have not seen any combat.
Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.
bbrought
>
> Zimmerman' s models and prototype flew and got the results he got on
> the model scale.
Actually, it is much more complex than that. When we do small scale
tests, whether in the wind tunnel or free-flight R/C tests, there are
mainly four parameters that need to be scaled depending on what you
are testing: The Reynolds number, the Mach number, stiffness and
inertia (affecting aeroelasticity and dynamics) and finally, power
effects. It is actually impossible to scale all of these
simultaneously, so you try to match what is most significant for the
particular information you are seeking. You then make corrections for
the other effects that you could not scale correctly, and it is here
that you can start to run into serious unknowns.
The models you see in the youtube videos are proof-of-concept models.
The data obtained from those types of models do not scale up very well
at all. They were just used to demonstrate that the basic idea was
sound and worthy of further investigation.
> > We're talking about wingtip vortices here - in other words, turbulent
> > flow. The basics of turbulent flow are well understood, but the
> > consequences are still hard to work with theoretically, or for that
> > matter computationally. It doesn't necessarily scale in speed or
> > size.
>
> This is not theory fella, this is prototype proven fact.
They did indeed demonstrate that some of the basic ideas worked with
the prototype (V-173), and mostly in the low-speed regime. The full
interactions on all levels - aerodynamic interaction between the
propeller and structure, aerodynamic interaction between propeller and
wake (static and while maneuvering), and power effects on
controllability were never fully explored, nor was the high speed
envelope. The V-173 had a very limited flight envelope compared to
what was proposed for the XF5U and even the V-173 had many practical
problems, some of which were still not solved or that resurfaced on
the XF5U prototype (such as vibration).
> Experimental results do not lie.
I think I should print that out and put it up in my office!
In my career I have worked on many manned aircraft and UAV projects as
an aeronautical engineer. During my studies at university, I spent
many days and nights in wind tunnels - during some test programmes I
practically lived in the wind tunnel control room. Towards my PhD I
got involved in more computational work and design methodologies, and
later in flight dynamics and flying qualities. More recently I have
been involved mostly in flight testing (performance and flying
qualities) and also a littlebit in operational systems testing - most
of this on fighters. So, I have spent most of my adult life doing some
sort of experimental work. If there is one thing I learnt, it is that
any difference between the experiment and the real thing, unless it is
extremely well understood, will come back to bite you. In the
beginning of this post I described issues with scaling - the same goes
for assuming that something works on a prototype it will also work on
a production model. Furthermore, I have seen many times how a good
idea just turns out not to be practical due to all sorts of peripheral
issues. In the context of the Flapjack, an example would be gearbox
vibration, propeller/structural interaction, flying qualities, and
Mach effects in the proposed high speed regime. Some of these issues
may have been solved eventually, but at a price, and this price would
almost certainly have been the curtailment of performance and
efficiency.
> > It proves nothing about what would happen at over 400mph.
>
> Wind tunnel tests mean a lot, this was checked out in a wind tunnel.
No, they never did powered wind tunnel tests at the equivalent Mach
numbers. In fact, at that time the practical effects of
compressibility were still not very well understood at all.
> Furthermore I am not so much interested in the detailed specifics of
> how it performs at higher speeds, the STOL aspect and ability to turn
> tight at much lower speeds.
I think Walt explained this - throughout history it was shown that a
slower "fighter" (remember, that is what it was designed to do) is
almost entirely defensive for most of the fight. Today this is a
littlebit less true with new generation missiles and BVR, but as soon
as you end up in a close-in engagement the problem is back. A slower
but very maneuverable aircraft can potentially win a fight, but it
relies on the pilot of the faster aircraft to make a mistake, which is
a very bad way to get involved in air combat. This was very well
demonstrated in engagements between the Messerschmitt Bf-109 and
Polikarpov I-16 early in Barbarossa. The I-16s, which were extremely
maneuverable compared to the 109, but slightly slower, would
occasionally win a fight by just turning into each pass of the 109
(assuming the enemy was spotted in time) and getting a lucky shot off,
but the rest of the time the 109 would be in total control and able to
engage and disengage at will.
>
> > The Navy
> > kept putting money into the project until 1947, and never did get an
> > actual flight out of it.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vought_XF5U
>
> Because they pulled the plug, The problems with the plane at end of
> program were engine and propeller vibration that combined with the end
> of the war and the start of the jet age caused the Navy to pull the
> plug.
Exactly - and those problems you mentioned were not just going to go
away. You can continue to make things stiffer and heavier, and each
time you do that the performance envelope shrinks. After a while it
becomes clear that you are not going to make the initial spec, and it
was becoming clear to the Navy that there were other concepts with
more overall potential that were more worthy of continued investment.
> My take is that also they also did not want to do the development work
> on an aircraft that the USSR could copy that would tend to give more
> advantage to the USSR than to the USA. A very STOL propeller strike
> aircraft would give the USSR a leg up in developing an effective
> carrier fleet in the 40's and 50's.
That is really stretching it - not pursuing what is apparently a
"brilliant design" because your enemy could copy it.
> Off the cuff having done a lot of gear design work I would suggest the
> first thing to do was move to a planetary system and ditch the four
> bladed propellers and use either a three or five bladed system to
> reduce resonant frequencies.
It is always easy for an armchair engineer to quickly solve all the
problems that teams of well funded and resourced engineers could not
solve over a development period of seven years or longer...
> The V-173 flew and worked well in its power/performance envelope, the
> vibration problems for that design were solved. Nothing suggests to
> me that the vibration problems of the XF5U were not solvable then and
> gear design technology has advanced a hell of a lot in the last 60
> years FYI.
... or that just a littlebit more time would have solved everything.
Bill Shatzer
>>There was a limited deployment of A6M Zeros to China in 1940-41 but they
>>had all been withdrawn by September of 1941. The AVG didn't see any
>>combat until December, 1941.
>>Also, I think the AVG P-40s were P-40Cs, not Bs - although the external
>>differences between the two models were minimal.
> Read General Bond's book, then argue with him. The AVG started with
> 100 P40Bs diverted from shipments to the RAF, who dubbed them
> Tomahawks. The AVG flew these along with P40Es which began arriving in
> March 1942. It took awhile before teh P40Bs were phased out/worn out.
> The USAAC took over from the AVG in July 1942.
The aircraft are shown in Curtiss records as Tomahawk IIBs which were
the RAF equivalent to P-40Cs. However, Dan Ford suggests that the
aircraft may have actually been composites, with the components of older
aircraft installed in an effort to use up Curtiss's parts inventory.
They may have incorporated both P-40B (Tomahawk IIA) and P-40C (Tomahawk
IIB) features - and not necessarily the same from aircraft to aircraft.
> The Zeros - Model A6M2 - were first service-tested in China in
> July 1940. Before meeting Zeros the AVG encountered I-96 Claude and
> I-97 Nate aircraft, both similar low-wing fighters with fixed gear, 2x
> 7.7 mm guns in the cowl, slower but much more maneuverable than the
> P40s. Because the hit and run tactics essentailly made the odds
> disproportionately in the AVG's favor, the Japanese brought in newer
> fighters. I suspect the AVG pilots may have confused Zeros and Oscars
> to be the same airplane. This is not to say the Japanese couldn't have
> deployed Zeros into the theater. I have seen both and on the ground
> they are easily distinguishable - in the air, maybe not. Oscar does
> look smaller to me, even on the ground, but they're extremely close to
> the same dimensions. Oscar's canopy is almost free of mullions and its
> fuselage more tapered, its wing has a straight leading edge and its
> rudder is about the same as a P40..
Aerial identification was not a strong point by pilots on either side.
Pilots new to the theater and possessing little combat experience like
the AVG, were no doubt worse than average.
Larry Pistol's book reprints a combat report by Parker DuPouy near
Rangoon on Christmas day, 1941, in which he reports he engaged a fighter
with "square wing tips and an inline engine. I believe it was a ME
109. RAF Flying Officer Bingham Wallace saw this fighter and also
believes it was a ME 109."
Needless to say, there were no Messerschmitts flying over Rangoon that
day and for the life of me, I can't come up with any Japanese
single-engined aircraft with "square wing tips and an inline engine"
which might have been in the area either. The best explanation is that
in the excitement of combat, DuPouy let his imagination run away on him
- presumably, FO Wallace did as well.
Give DuPouy's apparent ID errors on the "Messerschmitt", we can probably
discount DuPouy's account of later engaging Japanese "Type '0's" and
downing one of them as Japanese records report no Zeroes (or even IJNAF
units) in the area.
Not that DuPouy didn't down a Japanese aircraft - he may well have - but
it's unlikely that it was a Zero.
David H Thornley
> On Jan 1, 10:54 am, David H Thornley <da...@thornley.net> wrote:
>> Al Montestruc wrote:
>> Physics doesn't lie, but it's real easy to oversimplify.
>
> Zimmerman' s models and prototype flew and got the results he got on
> the model scale.
>
results on the model scale. Furthermore, he got good results
at speeds under 140mph.
That's all we know experimentally. Remember that.
>> matter computationally. It doesn't necessarily scale in speed or
>> size.
>
> This is not theory fella, this is prototype proven fact.
>
I understand that, and if the Navy had needed a fighter capable
of 140mph, they had one.
Anything beyond that is extrapolation - in other words, theory.
I fail to see why you're insisting on proven facts here, because
they don't support what you appear to want to say.
>>> The pity of it is (for engineers) that people who can't, or won't
>>> follow the physics of the argument can't tell the difference between a
>>> so-so and a brilliant design on paper,
>> I've got news for you: with something like this, people who can and do
>> follow the physics can't tell the difference.
>
> Experimental results do not lie.
>
No, they don't.
Experimental results tell you exactly what happened in that experiment.
In this case, we know that the V-173 flew well. We know that some
wind tunnel tests were promising. That is all we know, from
experiment.
We don't know, from experiment, what an actual flying XF5U would have
done. For all I know, it would have been hopelessly unstable, or
subject to intolerable vibration above 300mph, or something like that.
Without actual experimental results, we don't know.
>> It proves nothing about what would happen at over 400mph.
>
> Wind tunnel tests mean a lot, this was checked out in a wind tunnel.
>
Wind tunnel tests are not the real thing.
Remember, we're talking turbulent airflow here. The idea was to
put the engines at the end of the wings to deal with it. That
means we're dealing with something that *does* *not* *scale*
reliably.
> Furthermore I am not so much interested in the detailed specifics of
> how it performs at higher speeds, the STOL aspect and ability to turn
> tight at much lower speeds.
>
If you don't care about higher speeds, then the V-173 should have
been good enough. That did, apparently, have the performance you
wanted.
However, the USN wanted a warplane capable of going at high speeds.
> If you are going to assert it will not be able to pull high gees at
> higher speeds,
I'm not asserting anything about high speed performance. I'm saying
that I have no reason to think it could have gotten to higher speeds
at all safely, or perhaps at all.
Theory fails us, particularly the theory of the time, and all we have
to go on is experiment, and a team of competent engineers weren't
able to get the XF5U into powered flight over a period of several years.
> The Navy
>> kept putting money into the project until 1947, and never did get an
>> actual flight out of it.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vought_XF5U
>
> Because they pulled the plug,
Very reasonably. You've quoted the Wikipedia article. It says that
it was originally envisaged to go 550mph, which was a decent speed in
the early jet era. The estimated flight characteristics list a top
speed of 475mph, which was less than that of more conventional designs
that had served operationally in numbers (such as the P-51H).
At that point, the F5U would have been a slowpoke as a fighter,
particularly since a first flight of 1948 suggests operational service
no earlier than the early 50s. It would have been unable to compete.
It would have been unable to engage or disengage against probable
enemy fighters. It would have faced serious difficulties trying to
intercept primitive jet bombers.
It might have been a decent attack aircraft, but the USN had good attack
aircraft already, and extreme maneuverability in an attack aircraft is
of much less use than in a fighter.
The problems with the plane at end of
> program were engine and propeller vibration that combined with the end
> of the war and the start of the jet age caused the Navy to pull the
> plug.
>
So, why was a team of engineers unable to solve vibration problems?
They presumably had incentive and financing. Could it be that
there were going to be vibration problems due to the basic design?
> gearbox vibration issues. Those were solved. The thing is the (much
> larger) propellers for this thing to work must turn much slower than a
> conventional aircraft for the same engine size, thus you need a
> gearbox.
>
Now, that's a potential problem.
You've just said that it needed different propeller designs, which means
potentially different problems.
Remember, a whole lot of engineering throughout history has been doing
what the last guy did, only a little better. Nowadays, we're better
able to evaluate novel designs through computer simulation, but back
then it was heavily empirical.
>> Nor is this part of the basics of aircraft design. We're talking about
>> a new idea, not a simple extrapolation from experience.
>
> Exactly, it is not cookbook engineering. It is the kind that requires
> real skull sweat.
>
Right.
It's the kind that can fail really easily, as you find out that things
just don't work like you've guessed.
> When you venture off the well explored path, expect to find new
> issues, and new potential.
>
And new problems. The well-explored path is well explored because
it works. There were decades of experience going into the idea of
longer wings and engines more towards the middle. There have been
a lot of experiments, and despite them aircraft have tended to
look rather alike.
If it was generally possible to get a superior aircraft by making
radical deviations from the designs known to work, and apply a lot
of intelligent and able people to the problems, every first-rate
air power would do it, and fighters would look a whole lot different
from air force to air force.
>> There's nothing about this idea to suggest to me that it's a promising
>> approach except at low speed.
>
> Nothing to say it will not and a hell of a lot to say it will.
>
You're still assuming that turbulent airflow scales reliably. It
doesn't. Solutions that work at 140mph will not necessarily work
at 550mph. Solutions that work on a model in a wind tunnel will
not necessarily work in the real world.
> The V-173 flew and worked well in its power/performance envelope, the
> vibration problems for that design were solved.
Right. We've agreed that the idea works just fine at 140mph.
What we don't seem to agree on is that you seem to think quadrupling
the speed will result in the same basic effects.
Nothing suggests to
> me that the vibration problems of the XF5U were not solvable then
It wasn't solved, after years.
and
> gear design technology has advanced a hell of a lot in the last 60
> years FYI.
>
And, in that time, I'm unaware of anybody taking that idea up and
making a 500mph aircraft with it.
Bill Shatzer
> Al Montestruc wrote:
-snip-
>>Experimental results do not lie.
>>
>
> No, they don't.
>
> Experimental results tell you exactly what happened in that experiment.
>
> In this case, we know that the V-173 flew well. We know that some
> wind tunnel tests were promising. That is all we know, from
> experiment.
>
> We don't know, from experiment, what an actual flying XF5U would have
> done. For all I know, it would have been hopelessly unstable, or
> subject to intolerable vibration above 300mph, or something like that.
> Without actual experimental results, we don't know.
It's worth recalling that Curtiss built a V-173-type flying model (the
CW-24B) of the proposed XP-55.
http://www.aero-web.org/database/aircraft/getimage.htm?id=16880
The results of test flights with that aircraft were sufficiently
satisfactory that Curtiss was given a contract to construct three XP-55
prototypes.
The results proved less than satisfactory when the concept was
translated into the full scale prototypes and all sorts problems
developed which were not apparent in the CW-24B test bed. In particular,
some nasty stall and control charistics showed up and the actual
performance considerably less than predicted.
Wind tunnels and small scale flying models can tell you only so much,
especially when you're developing novel designs. With novel designs,
unpleasant surprises almost certainly await, somewhere along the line.
Al Montestruc
> On Jan 4, 4:22 am, AlMontestruc<montest...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Zimmerman' s models and prototype flew and got the results he got on
> > the model scale.
>
> Actually, it is much more complex than that. When we do small scale
> tests, whether in the wind tunnel or free-flight R/C tests, there are
> mainly four parameters that need to be scaled depending on what you
> are testing: The Reynolds number, the Mach number, stiffness and
> inertia (affecting aeroelasticity and dynamics) and finally, power
> effects. It is actually impossible to scale all of these
> simultaneously, so you try to match what is most significant for the
> particular information you are seeking. You then make corrections for
> the other effects that you could not scale correctly, and it is here
> that you can start to run into serious unknowns.
I know. I did a lot of graduate work in non-dimentionalization in the
field of combustion.
>
> The models you see in the youtube videos are proof-of-concept models.
No some are smaller home built toys made for fun.
I do not call a manned aircraft approximately the same size (wingspan
wise) as the fighter that was envisioned a "model" is was a proof of
concept prototype.
> The data obtained from those types of models do not scale up very well
> at all. They were just used to demonstrate that the basic idea was
> sound and worthy of further investigation.
>
> > > We're talking about wingtip vortices here - in other words, turbulent
> > > flow. The basics of turbulent flow are well understood, but the
> > > consequences are still hard to work with theoretically, or for that
> > > matter computationally. It doesn't necessarily scale in speed or
> > > size.
>
> > This is not theory fella, this is prototype proven fact.
>
> They did indeed demonstrate that some of the basic ideas worked with
> the prototype (V-173), and mostly in the low-speed regime.
Where it matters.
>
> > Experimental results do not lie.
>
> I think I should print that out and put it up in my office!
>
Feel Free to.
>
> > > It proves nothing about what would happen at over 400mph.
>
> > Wind tunnel tests mean a lot, this was checked out in a wind tunnel.
>
> No, they never did powered wind tunnel tests at the equivalent Mach
> numbers. In fact, at that time the practical effects of
> compressibility were still not very well understood at all.
>
> > Furthermore I am not so much interested in the detailed specifics of
> > how it performs at higher speeds, the STOL aspect and ability to turn
> > tight at much lower speeds.
>
> I think Walt explained this - throughout history it was shown that a
> slower "fighter" (remember, that is what it was designed to do) is
> almost entirely defensive for most of the fight. Today this is a
> littlebit less true with new generation missiles and BVR, but as soon
> as you end up in a close-in engagement the problem is back. A slower
> but very maneuverable aircraft can potentially win a fight, but it
> relies on the pilot of the faster aircraft to make a mistake, which is
> a very bad way to get involved in air combat. This was very well
> demonstrated in engagements between the Messerschmitt Bf-109 and
> Polikarpov I-16 early in Barbarossa. The I-16s, which were extremely
> maneuverable compared to the 109, but slightly slower, would
> occasionally win a fight by just turning into each pass of the 109
> (assuming the enemy was spotted in time) and getting a lucky shot off,
> but the rest of the time the 109 would be in total control and able to
> engage and disengage at will.
The speed differential was over 75 MPH, and that was almost 1/4 the
max speed of the I-16. Where the differences are not small, I would
agree. However no one has ever proven that the XF5U could not beat
the speeds of the ME-109 or Zero. That you pose that their might have
been problems is of course possible.
It is also possible it was faster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vought_XF5U
> > My take is that also they also did not want to do the development work
> > on an aircraft that the USSR could copy that would tend to give more
> > advantage to the USSR than to the USA. A very STOL propeller strike
> > aircraft would give the USSR a leg up in developing an effective
> > carrier fleet in the 40's and 50's.
>
> That is really stretching it - not pursuing what is apparently a
> "brilliant design" because your enemy could copy it.
No. Because it gives him (USSR) more advantage than you (USA). We
already had
figured out how to build carriers for planes that needed long runways
in normal conditions. STOL planes make it easy to build carriers that
can launch STOL planes that cannot handle those that need long
runways.
In other words no catapults and arrestor gear or even long flight
decks and required high ship speed. Just a small flight deck.
>
> > Off the cuff having done a lot of gear design work I would suggest the
> > first thing to do was move to a planetary system and ditch the four
> > bladed propellers and use either a three or five bladed system to
> > reduce resonant frequencies.
>
> It is always easy for an armchair engineer to quickly solve all the
> problems that teams of well funded and resourced engineers could not
> solve over a development period of seven years or longer...
It was not seven years, and full bore effort was not going on till
January 1942. Before that it was Zimmerman's crazy idea that he built
models of. Then they built the V-173 in a short time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vought_V-173
It was requested in January of 1942 and first flew in November of that
year. That is not a lot of time and that was not a toy model that was
full size piloted aircraft. How many manned planes have you helped to
develop that went from request to flight that fast?
>
> > The V-173 flew and worked well in its power/performance envelope, the
> > vibration problems for that design were solved. Nothing suggests to
> > me that the vibration problems of the XF5U were not solvable then and
> > gear design technology has advanced a hell of a lot in the last 60
> > years FYI.
>
> ... or that just a littlebit more time would have solved everything.
They could not test the vibration issue till the propellers were
delivered, and they were not delivered until after the war was over.
Much of the delays were caused by the F4U being developed by the same
people at the same time.
My take is they tried too hard to put too many bells and whistles on
the propellers (cyclic controls). A simple pitch controlled propeller
would have been much easier, baby steps one at a time. Then after a
flying fighter is developed, go for the cyclic controls that would
allow hover.
If you want to look at something that really is a money waster it is
the attempts to develop fusion by the US government. We have been "20
years away" from fusion for about 60 years now.
It is unreasonable to assert that 7 years were spend as that is not
how long the program lasted (42-47), and the V-173 was a full size
plane that flew in about 10 months after it was ordered and well
before the end of the war.
My take is not enough emphasis was put on it.
Be that as it may I agree that it is no longer practical as a fighter
after the jet age started. However it still had lots of potenital in
other roles.
The thing I think is important is this concept has real commercial
possibilities as a bush plane, that is more like the V-173 than a
fighter. Say use a gas turbine engine and design for a top speed of
~ 250 knots.
You also snipped a lot about the attempt to put cyclic controls on the
propellers that were not done on the V-173.
Bill Shatzer
-snip-
> The speed differential was over 75 MPH, and that was almost 1/4 the
> max speed of the I-16. Where the differences are not small, I would
> agree. However no one has ever proven that the XF5U could not beat
> the speeds of the ME-109 or Zero. That you pose that their might have
> been problems is of course possible.
But the US didn't NEED an F5U to fight Bf 109s or Zeros. Hellcats,
Corsairs, Mustangs, and Thunderbolts had demonstrated that they were
more than sufficient to deal with those.
Why waste the time and money to develop a completely novel concept when
existing aircraft were more than adequate for the task?
Al Montestruc
> AlMontestrucwrote:
>
Because it could take off and land on tiny runways or off the deck of
much much smaller ships.
This allows much smaller naval units to have fighter/bomber cover.
Bill Shatzer
>>AlMontestrucwrote:
>>-snip-
By the late spring of 1944 (about the earliest a hypothetical F5U could
become operational) the US Navy was operating 10 fleet carriers, 9 light
carriers, and, what, about three dozen escort carriers with a total
capacity of some 1,800+ aircraft. There was no paricular need for a
fighter aircraft which could operate from 'smaller ships' as the Navy
possessed plenty of bigger ships.
As for airstrips, the Seabees had demonstrated the ability construct and
make operational a 5,000 foot airstrip in less than two weeks.
> This allows much smaller naval units to have fighter/bomber cover.
I see no particular advantage in that - even an F5U would require a
minimal take off and landing pad and where would you put that on a WW2
era destroyer or cruiser? Not to mention the required hanger, avgas,
ordinance, and maintenance facilities. US warships were getting pretty
top heavy as it was - adding aircraft and aircraft servicing facilities
would only exacerbate that problem.
You could, I suppose, construct specialized ships to handle an F5U
detachment but then you've essentially re-invented the escort carrier.
Having done that, why not just go with the CVEs and standard aircraft in
the first place?
In any case, you don't go sailing "smaller naval units' in harm's way
and subject them to the risks of getting picked off piecemeal.
By 1944, the US Navy was spitting out CVEs like watermelon seeds in more
than sufficient quantities to provide at least the air cover an F5U
might have provided to "smaller naval units" - had they felt it
advisable to actually operate "smaller naval units". Generally they did not.
Joel Shepherd
Bill Shatzer <ww...@NOcornell.edu> wrote:
>
> As for airstrips, the Seabees had demonstrated the ability construct and
> make operational a 5,000 foot airstrip in less than two weeks.
That's amazing when you stop to think about it. Anyway ...
> > This allows much smaller naval units to have fighter/bomber cover.
>
> You could, I suppose, construct specialized ships to handle an F5U
> detachment but then you've essentially re-invented the escort carrier.
I think the theory would go that because they're STOL, you'd need to
leave less deck free for operations, so you could pack more aircraft
aboard a CVE-sized carrier, giving a smaller ship a bigger punch.
(Assuming a continuation of the USN practice of generally "hangaring"
planes on the flight deck, not the hangar deck.)
Then the next question becomes: how many F5U's could be spotted on a
small flight deck, leaving adequate room for flight ops, versus the
Hellcat or Corsair (though did they ever operate those from CVEs or
CVLs?)? How much room would those big wing-tip props need during warmup,
and would the net effect be to reduce the number of planes which could
be spotted to the point where there was no net advantage over more
conventional aircraft, in terms of the number that could be operated by
a smaller CV?
(I also think the argument about killing the project so the Soviets
wouldn't copy it is weak. The first-mover advantage, especially for a
worthwhile idea, can be huge, because it immediately puts the rest of
the competition into a position of playing catch-up.)
>
> Having done that, why not just go with the CVEs and standard aircraft in
> the first place?
>
> In any case, you don't go sailing "smaller naval units' in harm's way
> and subject them to the risks of getting picked off piecemeal.
>
> By 1944, the US Navy was spitting out CVEs like watermelon seeds in more
> than sufficient quantities to provide at least the air cover an F5U
> might have provided to "smaller naval units" - had they felt it
> advisable to actually operate "smaller naval units". Generally they did not.
--
Joel.
Scott M. Kozel
>
> I think the theory would go that because they're STOL, you'd need to
> leave less deck free for operations, so you could pack more aircraft
> aboard a CVE-sized carrier, giving a smaller ship a bigger punch.
> (Assuming a continuation of the USN practice of generally "hangaring"
> planes on the flight deck, not the hangar deck.)
The escort carriers, at least the U.S. versions, were way too slow to
utilize for fleet-to-fleet operations. Top speeds of 17 to 18 knots, as
opposed to around 32 knots for fleet carriers. Also far less armor and
range than fleet carriers. That is because they were built on tanker
and freighter hulls.
It would have been way more expensive to build a carrier of that size
that had fleet sailing performance. It would have been an entirely
different design than the U.S. CVE.
Interesting that of the 122 CVE built by the U.S. during WWII, none were
preserved as a museum ship. Be interesting if even one was preserved.
David H Thornley
> On Jan 4, 9:09 am, bbrought <bbrou...@uiuc.edu> wrote:
> I do not call a manned aircraft approximately the same size (wingspan
> wise) as the fighter that was envisioned a "model" is was a proof of
> concept prototype.
>
and that's where the problems with extrapolation come in. There's
stuff that works at 140mph that just isn't going to work when nearing
transsonic speeds.
>> They did indeed demonstrate that some of the basic ideas worked with
>> the prototype (V-173), and mostly in the low-speed regime.
>
> Where it matters.
>
Nope; for a WWII fighter the performance characteristics at 140mph are
pretty much irrelevant.
If you let your speed get that low, you were dead. You would be unable
to evade an attack. Everything I've read about dogfights as flying-slow
contests indicates that it's a really dangerous way to win a fight.
Enemy bombers would be attacking at considerably faster than that, and
an interceptor pilot would want a considerable speed advantage. 140mph
isn't good for intercepting a loaded Swordfish.
I have no idea why you think that performance at those low speeds means
anything at all for a fighter.
> agree. However no one has ever proven that the XF5U could not beat
> the speeds of the ME-109 or Zero.
Nobody's proved that it could get going as fast as a Zero, for that
matter. You seem to be assuming that playing tricks with wingtip
vortices scales up in speed by a factor of three or four, and there's
no reason to think that.
>> That is really stretching it - not pursuing what is apparently a
>> "brilliant design" because your enemy could copy it.
>
> No. Because it gives him (USSR) more advantage than you (USA).
Except that the Soviets could have learned of the V-173, and were
perfectly capable of designing their own warplanes. Developing
the F5U didn't matter in that regard.
If the idea was good, the Soviets could use it no matter what.
If not, it wasn't worth developing.
> Be that as it may I agree that it is no longer practical as a fighter
> after the jet age started. However it still had lots of potenital in
> other roles.
>
Like what? There were already good attack planes available.
> The thing I think is important is this concept has real commercial
> possibilities as a bush plane, that is more like the V-173 than a
> fighter. Say use a gas turbine engine and design for a top speed of
> ~ 250 knots.
>
And it hasn't been followed up on. Currently, we're far better at
developing aircraft than we were in the 40s, particularly unconventional
aircraft. We can model a whole lot of things nowadays that we'd have
had to build a plane to test back then. I haven't seen anybody doing
anything with the idea for over 60 years since the V-173.
Scott M. Kozel
> pretty much irrelevant.
>
> If you let your speed get that low, you were dead. You would be unable
> to evade an attack. Everything I've read about dogfights as flying-slow
> contests indicates that it's a really dangerous way to win a fight.
>
> Enemy bombers would be attacking at considerably faster than that, and
> an interceptor pilot would want a considerable speed advantage. 140mph
> isn't good for intercepting a loaded Swordfish.
Even the B-17 Fortress, a lumbering 4-engine bomber, routinely cruised
at 170, and had a top speed of about 310.
Bill Shatzer
-snip-
> Then the next question becomes: how many F5U's could be spotted on a
> small flight deck, leaving adequate room for flight ops, versus the
> Hellcat or Corsair (though did they ever operate those from CVEs or
> CVLs?)?
I don't believe any Corsairs operated from CVEs or CVLs during WW2.
Although that seems more a matter of choice than necessity - F4Us
regularly operated from both CVLs and CVEs during the Korean conflict.
Hellcats were the standard fighter deployment on the CVLs during WW2 and
many (most/all?) of the larger CVEs (Sangamon class) carried F6Fs as well.
Al Montestruc
> > I do not call a manned aircraft approximately the same size (wingspan
> > wise) as the fighter that was envisioned a "model" is was a proof of
> > concept prototype.
>
> It was the same size, and that's useful. It was a whole lot slower,
> and that's where the problems with extrapolation come in. There's
> stuff that works at 140mph that just isn't going to work when nearing
> transsonic speeds.
>
> >> They did indeed demonstrate that some of the basic ideas worked with
> >> the prototype (V-173), and mostly in the low-speed regime.
>
> > Where it matters.
>
> Nope; for a WWII fighter the performance characteristics at 140mph are
> pretty much irrelevant.
Where it matters for STOL performance. The big advantage of this
design was the massive reduction in infrastructure it needed to work.
As in it did not need many thousand foot long paved airstrips, or a
big aircraft carrier moving at 25 knots to get enough wind over the
500 foot long flight deck. It only needed a couple of hundred feet of
dirt strip at most and maybe a hundred feed of deck moving at 10 knots
or less. The cost difference of the infrastructure is a potentially
very big deal.
Al Montestruc
No just a flat deck on some of the merchant ships. In WWII Hurricanes
mounted for single use catapults on merchant ships to run off German
bombers, if a one shot where you have a 100% probability of loss of
the fighter in many cases even if it succeeds in shooting down the
bomber (out of range of land, and they were often used that way) is
worth doing then less work and expense for a small flight deck on the
back of some of your merchant ships and say a fighters on a merchant
ship for every five in the convoy will give your convoy a lot of air-
cover.
>
> Having done that, why not just go with the CVEs and standard aircraft in
> the first place?
Cause that costs a hell of a lot more.
David H Thornley
>> Nope; for a WWII fighter the performance characteristics at 140mph are
>> pretty much irrelevant.
>
> Where it matters for STOL performance. The big advantage of this
> design was the massive reduction in infrastructure it needed to work.
>
The performance characteristics of a WWII fighter at 140mph are
completely irrelevant for combat. The question is whether the
fighter can function well enough at high enough speeds to be useful.
That is what was never demonstrated.
Any claim that the F5U could have been a successful fighter is
speculation, not founded in sound evidence.
> As in it did not need many thousand foot long paved airstrips, or a
> big aircraft carrier moving at 25 knots to get enough wind over the
> 500 foot long flight deck.
Yes, but an aircraft that maxes at 140mph, like the V-173, is about
as useful a fighter plane (for WWII or later) as a large pile of sand.
David H Thornley
> On Jan 8, 7:01 pm, Bill Shatzer <ww...@NOcornell.edu> wrote:
>>
>> You could, I suppose, construct specialized ships to handle an F5U
>> detachment but then you've essentially re-invented the escort carrier.
>
> No just a flat deck on some of the merchant ships.
Darn close to re-inventing the escort carrier.
In WWII Hurricanes
> mounted for single use catapults on merchant ships to run off German
> bombers, if a one shot where you have a 100% probability of loss of
> the fighter in many cases even if it succeeds in shooting down the
> bomber (out of range of land, and they were often used that way) is
> worth doing then less work and expense for a small flight deck on the
> back of some of your merchant ships and say a fighters on a merchant
> ship for every five in the convoy will give your convoy a lot of air-
> cover.
>
That's the Hurricat, and was abandoned as fast as possible.
What the RN did as an immediate replacement was to put flight decks
on merchant ships, just as you suggest. They went with grain carriers
and oilers, as general merchant ships need their deck space for loading
and unloading.
Having done that, they put four Hurricanes on each of those. They
didn't need special aircraft. This was an entirely adequate solution
to counter the lone Fw 200, but the Hurricane was not an ASW aircraft,
so they were replaced by escort carriers that could also carry Avengers.
In other words, in WWII it was possible to plate over a bulk carrier,
and use it as a platform to fly off very small numbers of fighters.
They didn't need the F5U for that; they had the Hurricane. Now, *if*
the F5U worked as hoped, it would be a higher-performance fighter to put
on a merchant aircraft carrier, but that really wasn't the point.
One of the MACs would be overwhelmed by any sort of air strike, having
only four fighters to defend, and they didn't carry much in the way of
maintenance facilities. The purpose of the Hurricanes was to shoot down
or drive away scout aircraft and possibly a random bomber, if it was
spotted in time to get a fighter into the air. (The MACs did not, to
the best of my knowledge, fly CAP.)
Of course, if the F5U turned out to need more maintenance than a
Hurricane, perhaps fiddling with the propellers, it would be worse
for the role than the Hurricane.
>> Having done that, why not just go with the CVEs and standard aircraft in
>> the first place?
>
> Cause that costs a hell of a lot more.
>
And gives much greater capabilities.
Remember, the CVEs were not needed for defense against scout aircraft,
and merchant aircraft carriers with F5Us could not maintain a CAP or
fight off a serious airstrike or hunt submarines.
Al Montestruc
> >> pretty much irrelevant.
>
> > Where it matters for STOL performance. The big advantage of this
> > design was the massive reduction in infrastructure it needed to work.
>
> Wrong. Completely wrong.
You are not paying attention. The infrastructure cost of a fighter
squadron includes the cost of construction and maintenance of the
airfield, and the cost and maintenance of the facilities such as fuel
bunkers and repair shops and hangers. Typically the cost of the
runway is large as is maintaining the runway
>
> The performance characteristics of a WWII fighter at 140mph are
> completely irrelevant for combat.
Yes it is as is more important the stall speed which governs the
length of runway needed for operations. The XF5U had an estimated
stall speed of around 30-40 MPH, the V-173 was more like 20 MPH. It
could take off and land in less than 100 feet in dead calm
conditions. (That being the one that flew.).
Being able to use tiny postage stamp airfields is a big advantage. In
modern war it is common to attack the other guys runways as that can
knock him out of the fight. Six day war is a good example of that.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Six-Day_War#Preliminary_air_attack
So you are the one who is mistaken. The ability or lack of ability to
STOL is a major component of the value of a warplane.
>The question is whether the
> fighter can function well enough at high enough speeds to be useful.
>
> That is what was never demonstrated.
Nor was it disproven.
>
> Any claim that the F5U could have been a successful fighter is
> speculation, not founded in sound evidence.
That is an absurd claim. "Any claim that the F5U *could* have been a
successful fighter is speculation, not founded in sound evidence."
Sound evidence includes wind tunnel tests and prototype tests. It
also includes the fact that having done further research on this, the
vibration problem with the engine and propellers had to do with the
forward speed of the aircraft while it was at very high angles of
attack causing uneven loading on the propellers at a rate of one cycle
per revolution of the prop. FYI that problem has subsequently been
solved for helicopters.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3897/is_200504/ai_n13498092/
>
> > As in it did not need many thousand foot long paved airstrips, or a
> > big aircraft carrier moving at 25 knots to get enough wind over the
> > 500 foot long flight deck.
>
> Yes, but an aircraft that maxes at 140mph, like the V-173, is about
> as useful a fighter plane (for WWII or later) as a large pile of sand.
That was a proof of concept prototype with a total of 160 horsepower
in engines giving it a weight to horsepower ratio of ~ 17 lb/hp. The
XF5U had similar dimensions and a weight to horsepower ratio of about
5 lb/hp close to 3000 hp..
David H Thornley
> On Jan 10, 2:08 pm, David H Thornley <da...@thornley.net> wrote:
>> AlMontestrucwrote:
>>>> Nope; for a WWII fighter the performance characteristics at 140mph are
>>>> pretty much irrelevant.
>>> Where it matters for STOL performance. The big advantage of this
>>> design was the massive reduction in infrastructure it needed to work.
>> Wrong. Completely wrong.
>
> You are not paying attention.
No, you aren't.
The first performance questions to ask are about high speed, since
if a fighter can't go fast it's useless. Once you have a useful
fighter, you can start worrying about its requirements.
If it had proven out as a fighter, the STOL characteristics would
have been important, although most airbases would have had to
have longer runways anyway, in order to operate other equipment.
Still, having a separate fighter runway would have been useful.
> So you are the one who is mistaken. The ability or lack of ability to
> STOL is a major component of the value of a warplane.
>
Okay, how many STOL air superiority aircraft were there in the WWII
and postwar air forces? It seems to me that they got along well enough.
>> Any claim that the F5U could have been a successful fighter is
>> speculation, not founded in sound evidence.
>
> That is an absurd claim. "Any claim that the F5U *could* have been a
> successful fighter is speculation, not founded in sound evidence."
We're talking about a new concept in dealing with things like wingtip
vortices. That means we're talking about exploring into the unknown
in fluid turbulence problems.
> Sound evidence includes wind tunnel tests and prototype tests.
Indicative, but hardly conclusive. Turbulence doesn't scale.
Low-speed prototypes don't scale. The US had plenty of
experience in this.
It
> also includes the fact that having done further research on this, the
> vibration problem with the engine and propellers had to do with the
> forward speed of the aircraft while it was at very high angles of
> attack causing uneven loading on the propellers at a rate of one cycle
> per revolution of the prop. FYI that problem has subsequently been
> solved for helicopters.
>
When was it solved for helicopters?
At any rate, that was the problem the aircraft had getting tested.
It wasn't solved fast enough. I have been assuming that it would
have been solved, perhaps at a cost to performance, perhaps with
no cost.
The big question is whether the aircraft would have performed as hoped
at high speeds. That was never answered, which is rather a pity.
If the propeller loading problem had been solved, then the aircraft
could have been tested. However, in 1947 the hoped-for speed of 475mph
was looking rather inadequate, and there was no way of knowing whether
the aircraft could fly safely at that speed.
Nor can I fault the USN for not pushing it hard. It really wasn't
needed, although it would have been nice, it had an unusual number
of serious problems, and it was not guaranteed to work.
Al Montestruc
> AlMontestrucwrote:
> > On Jan 10, 2:08 pm, David H Thornley <da...@thornley.net> wrote:
> >> AlMontestrucwrote:
> >>>> Nope; for a WWII fighter the performance characteristics at 140mph are
> >>>> pretty much irrelevant.
> >>> Where it matters for STOL performance. The big advantage of this
> >>> design was the massive reduction in infrastructure it needed to work.
> >> Wrong. Completely wrong.
>
> > You are not paying attention.
>
> No, you aren't.
Yes I am so there!! ;P
Seriously the infrastructure issue is a big deal.
>
> > So you are the one who is mistaken. The ability or lack of ability to
> > STOL is a major component of the value of a warplane.
>
> Okay, how many STOL air superiority aircraft were there in the WWII
> and postwar air forces? It seems to me that they got along well enough.
Since the war lots of VSTOL Harriers built and used since WWII and the
Russians are busy with a vectored thrust fighter that is a VSTOL air
superiority fighter.
No VSTOL aircraft of WWII vintage were actually built and tested at
speeds needed for a air superiority fighter. That it was not built,
does not make it impossible.
The economy (cost of building and maintenance of long runways) and
vulnerability of long runways is a significant issue.
>
> >> Any claim that the F5U could have been a successful fighter is
> >> speculation, not founded in sound evidence.
>
> > That is an absurd claim. "Any claim that the F5U *could* have been a
> > successful fighter is speculation, not founded in sound evidence."
>
> We're talking about a new concept in dealing with things like wingtip
> vortices. That means we're talking about exploring into the unknown
> in fluid turbulence problems.
It is still an absurd claim. "Sound evidence" includes wind tunnel
tests and model results.
Get off your high horse.
> > Sound evidence includes wind tunnel tests and prototype tests.
>
> Indicative, but hardly conclusive.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/evidence
"ev<UTF16-22C5>i<UTF16-22C5>dence
-noun
1. that which tends to prove or disprove something; ground for
belief; proof."
I was using it as a noun, per definition 1
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/proof
"proof
1. evidence sufficient to establish a thing as true, or to produce
belief in its truth."
Evidence is not proof, but proof requires SUFFICIENT evidence.
Insufficient evidence does not mean the theory is disproved, it only
means it is not yet proved.
Stating that " Indicative, but hardly conclusive." is stating that
evidence exists to think it possible, but not enough evidence yet
exists to prove it, which is what I was saying.
I did not say it was "proven" I said evidence exists to think it
possible.
---snip
>
> It> also includes the fact that having done further research on this, the
> > vibration problem with the engine and propellers had to do with the
> > forward speed of the aircraft while it was at very high angles of
> > attack causing uneven loading on the propellers at a rate of one cycle
> > per revolution of the prop. FYI that problem has subsequently been
> > solved for helicopters.
>
> When was it solved for helicopters?
Since helicopters have been able to fly horizontally at anything close
to the speeds of the air in their downwash.
Visualize the speed vectors. the helicopter rotor is in a sense a
propeller pointing approximately "up" as in the axis of rotation of
the rotor/propeller. Helicopters commonly fly at angles approaching
90 degree to the axis of the rotor (up), at speeds of as high as 249
mph now for some very fast versions in world record events.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_airspeed_record
The vibration issue is directly related to the vector of the flow of
air into the propeller being at a large angle to the axis of rotation
of the propeller. Note that the downwash of the rotor helps to
mitigate the angle but it is still an issue where the vector of the
air flowing into the blades is at a large angle to the rotor axis of
rotation.
>
> At any rate, that was the problem the aircraft had getting tested.
> It wasn't solved fast enough. I have been assuming that it would
> have been solved, perhaps at a cost to performance, perhaps with
> no cost.
>
> The big question is whether the aircraft would have performed as hoped
> at high speeds. That was never answered, which is rather a pity.
That is not at all proof it could not be solved.
>
> If the propeller loading problem had been solved, then the aircraft
> could have been tested. However, in 1947 the hoped-for speed of 475mph
> was looking rather inadequate, and there was no way of knowing whether
> the aircraft could fly safely at that speed.
>
> Nor can I fault the USN for not pushing it hard. It really wasn't
> needed, although it would have been nice, it had an unusual number
> of serious problems, and it was not guaranteed to work.
It was I read actually aimed at the issue of putting the fighter on
merchant ships to counter the threat of German bombers from the below
article.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3897/is_200504/ai_n13498092/
For that job it is really intended as an interceptor aimed at going
after bombers, so it does not need to be the fastest fighter
available, only faster than the German bombers, typically an FW200
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Wulf_Fw_200
Max speed is only 224 mph so a fighter that can do 300 MPH and can
lift off, and land on a 100 foot plywood runway on the back of a
merchant ship will get the job done quite nicely.
Most other large bombers of that era are slower.
I do not see why they did not crank out a slightly souped up version
of the V-173 that could carry a couple of depth charges and machine
guns would have made life much harder for U-boats. Hell even w/o the
depth charges and machine gun the pilot can see U-boats on the surface
much better than a lookout on a DE can, and can communicate that to
the escorts. That would make a big difference.
David H Thornley
> On Jan 12, 10:06 pm, David H Thornley <da...@thornley.net> wrote:
>> Okay, how many STOL air superiority aircraft were there in the WWII
>> and postwar air forces? It seems to me that they got along well enough.
>
> Since the war lots of VSTOL Harriers built and used since WWII
Not a particularly good air superiority aircraft, given its speed.
> No VSTOL aircraft of WWII vintage were actually built and tested at
> speeds needed for a air superiority fighter. That it was not built,
> does not make it impossible.
>
You are claiming that (a) STOL air superiority aircraft would be
very valuable, (b) that no VSTOL WWII aircraft were tested at
adequate speeds, and (c) it wasn't impossible.
This looks like something of a contradiction. If they would have
been really valuable, and possible, you'd think somebody would
have tried.
In particular, the USAAF and Luftwaffe conducted a lot of experiments
with odd-looking aircraft. In some cases, like the P-38, it paid off
very well.
[Entire physics discussion omitted, since I've repeated facts about
physics and aeronautical engineering as much as I care to.]
>> Nor can I fault the USN for not pushing it hard. It really wasn't
>> needed, although it would have been nice, it had an unusual number
>> of serious problems, and it was not guaranteed to work.
>
> It was I read actually aimed at the issue of putting the fighter on
> merchant ships to counter the threat of German bombers from the below
> article.
>
> http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3897/is_200504/ai_n13498092/
>
Interesting article, thanks, but I didn't see a discussion of intended
use in it. (Then again, I may have missed something in a multipage
ad-heavy article.)
It wasn't needed for the job.
> I do not see why they did not crank out a slightly souped up version
> of the V-173 that could carry a couple of depth charges and machine
> guns would have made life much harder for U-boats.
Simply, because there wasn't the need. An aircraft like that wouldn't
have seen service until 1944 or so, at which time the USN had plenty
of escort carriers. (The V-173 first flew in late 1942, according
to Wikipedia.)
Escort carriers were, when available, a better solution than merchant
ships with flight decks. They could carry lots of aircraft, including
the excellent Avenger (a much better ASW aircraft than a modified V-173
would have been), maintain them, and were also a lot more useful to
deal with enemy bombers.
Postwar, while the value of the smaller escort carriers went down,
as they weren't able to fly off the latest fighters, the larger
Commencement Bay class was being finished.
While a working Flapjack would have had a good many advantages over
a conventional fighter of the same performance, it wouldn't have filled
any need that conventional aircraft couldn't fill. It was possible to
build large runways pretty much wherever the USN and USAAF wanted them.
At the end of the war, the USAAF had fighters like the P-47M and
P-51H that were in the projected F5U speed range, and it's difficult to
see how the F5U was going to exceed conventional aircraft in
performance. Maneuverability turned out to be less important than
anticipated for air superiority fighters, and those air forces that
invested heavily into it suffered from it as the war went on.
In short, the F5U wasn't needed, it had a great many problems (your
article points out the problems with mounting a tailhook, the need to
make sure it'd never have to fly on one propeller, and the unusual
requirements on the propellers themselves), and was becoming
increasingly irrelevant towards the end of its development.
The inline-engined P-47 variant, which was extremely fast, was dropped
for much the same reason: existing propeller fighters would serve
well enough while jets were being developed, and it was better to
allocate design resources to the jets.
Hell even w/o the
> depth charges and machine gun the pilot can see U-boats on the surface
> much better than a lookout on a DE can, and can communicate that to
> the escorts. That would make a big difference.
>
A Hurricane could do that much, but it didn't stop the RN from taking
the merchant aircraft carriers out of service as aircraft carriers.
By the time such an aircraft could have been produced, there would have
been no use for it.
Joe Osman
Marine Carrier Groups (MCVG) One and Two flew F4Us off of CVEs at
Okinawa. MCVG-1 off of the Block Island.
See Whistling death: the test pilot's story of the F4U Corsair
By Boone T. Guyton.
Joe
Joe Osman
The Marines set up Marine Carrier Groups, Fleet Marine Force in
October 1944 to fly Corsairs off of CVEs, but the pilots and planes
were put on CVs instead when the kamikazes started. The Navy had
already shut down most of their training pipeline and didn't have
enough fighter pilots to go against the kamikazes, so they used the
Marines instead. The Marines had wanted to put CAS aircraft on CVEs
since Tarawa. It was an idea that came out of the "lessons learned"
studies after the assault.
See Corsair: The F4U in World War II and Korea by Barrett Tillman
Joe
Al Montestruc
> Al Montestruc wrote:
> > On Jan 12, 10:06 pm, David H Thornley <da...@thornley.net> wrote:
> >> Okay, how many STOL air superiority aircraft were there in the WWII
> >> and postwar air forces? It seems to me that they got along well enough.
>
> > Since the war lots of VSTOL Harriers built and used since WWII
>
> Not a particularly good air superiority aircraft, given its speed.
http://www.worldaffairsboard.com/military-aviation/9592-modern-air-air-kill-record-thread.html
U.K AV-8A Sea Harrier kills in the Falkland War:
1 C-130 Hercules
1 Mirage III
9 Mirage V's
1 Canberra
1 Pucara
6 A-4 Skyhawks
http://modern-british-history.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_falklands_war
total of 20 Sea Harriers on the British side, the Argentinians had
about 120 jet fighters of all types.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War
British losses of Harriers was 10 or a 50% casualty rate over the
whole war.
Note total Argentine losses of fighters was much higher than that
(35+), but I think the others can be chalked up to fleet air defense
missiles.
Bottom line outnumbered ~ 6 : 1 at the start of the war, the Harrier
force inflicted more punishment on the enemy than it took, and that
includes 10 kills of fighters much faster than the Harrier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dassault_Mirage_5
Mach 2.2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dassault_Mirage_III
Mach 2.2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAE_Sea_Harrier#Specifications_.28Sea_Harrier_FA2.29
Less than Mach 1 (635 knots)
Will you admit that you are basically wrong on the matter of the
Harrier as a worthwhile air superiority fighter of its era?
> > No VSTOL aircraft of WWII vintage were actually built and tested at> speeds needed for a air superiority fighter. That it was not built,
> > does not make it impossible.
>
> You are claiming that (a) STOL air superiority aircraft would be
> very valuable, (b) that no VSTOL WWII aircraft were tested at
> adequate speeds, and (c) it wasn't impossible.
>
> This looks like something of a contradiction. If they would have
> been really valuable, and possible, you'd think somebody would
> have tried.
As it turns out that is a fallacy. One and only one example can show
you how absurd that idea is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_bow
The compound bow (pulley bow not the old Asiatic glued together horn
and wood bow) could have been invented at any time after the invention
of the pulley. The compound bow has enormous mechanical advantages
over the simple bow, that make it simpler and easier for the operator
to use accurately and with higher arrow energy for a given maximum
pull. These advantages are quite significant, and a compound bow is
not all that mechanically complex.
So why did we have to wait till the 20th century for its invention?
Long after man as moved on for the most part to firearms. The answer
is no one thought of it, and built and tested it, and showed it to
enough people that it was adopted by large numbers of people.
Your idea that the individual inventor is not important is so
fundamentally wrong it is hard to overemphasize how wrongheaded it is.
>
> In particular, the USAAF and Luftwaffe conducted a lot of experiments
> with odd-looking aircraft. In some cases, like the P-38, it paid off
> very well.
Odd looking does not mean STOL, Odd looking does not mean that the
design has enormous potential.
You actually have to do some skull work to figure out if an idea is
any good.
>
> [Entire physics discussion omitted, since I've repeated facts about
> physics and aeronautical engineering as much as I care to.]
In other words you are not willing to actually think about the
fundamentals of whether it could work or not, you have your mind made
up and do not wish to be confused with facts.
> >> Nor can I fault the USN for not pushing it hard. It really wasn't
> >> needed, although it would have been nice, it had an unusual number
> >> of serious problems, and it was not guaranteed to work.
>
> > It was I read actually aimed at the issue of putting the fighter on
> > merchant ships to counter the threat of German bombers from the below
> > article.
>
> >http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3897/is_200504/ai_n13498092/
>
> Interesting article, thanks, but I didn't see a discussion of intended
> use in it. (Then again, I may have missed something in a multipage
> ad-heavy article.)
>
> It wasn't needed for the job.
The US Navy did not agree as they funded the development in 1942.
The number of merchant ship sailors (and ships and cargos) lost also
strongly speaks that it was.
>
> > I do not see why they did not crank out a slightly souped up version
> > of the V-173 that could carry a couple of depth charges and machine
> > guns would have made life much harder for U-boats.
>
> Simply, because there wasn't the need.
The number of merchant ship sailors lost speaks that it was.
Look the Allies were going to win the war, there was no serious issue
about that after Hitler was fool enough to declare war on the USA
while already fighting the UK and USSR, but losses of men and treasure
to put him down do it count.
>An aircraft like that wouldn't
> have seen service until 1944 or so, at which time the USN had plenty
> of escort carriers. (The V-173 first flew in late 1942, according
> to Wikipedia.)
November '42 which suggests that a crash program might have seen
production models available in perhaps mid '43 if the Navy pushed
hard.
That could have reduced losses in the convoy battles by the way.
>
> Escort carriers were, when available, a better solution than merchant
> ships with flight decks. They could carry lots of aircraft, including
> the excellent Avenger (a much better ASW aircraft than a modified V-173
> would have been), maintain them, and were also a lot more useful to
> deal with enemy bombers.
>
> Postwar, while the value of the smaller escort carriers went down,
> as they weren't able to fly off the latest fighters, the larger
> Commencement Bay class was being finished.
>
> While a working Flapjack would have had a good many advantages over
> a conventional fighter of the same performance, it wouldn't have filled
> any need that conventional aircraft couldn't fill. It was possible to
> build large runways pretty much wherever the USN and USAAF wanted them.
At significant expense, and with significant vulnerability of the
runway to bombing, and the loss of flexibility of airfield position.
If you do not need a long runway, the cost of building a new airfield
drops a lot and you can have more of them and build one as it becomes
convenient.
>
> At the end of the war, the USAAF had fighters like the P-47M and
> P-51H that were in the projected F5U speed range, and it's difficult to
> see how the F5U was going to exceed conventional aircraft in
> performance. Maneuverability turned out to be less important than
> anticipated for air superiority fighters, and those air forces that
> invested heavily into it suffered from it as the war went on.
>
> In short, the F5U wasn't needed, it had a great many problems (your
> article points out the problems with mounting a tailhook, the need to
> make sure it'd never have to fly on one propeller, and the unusual
> requirements on the propellers themselves), and was becoming
> increasingly irrelevant towards the end of its development.
> The inline-engined P-47 variant, which was extremely fast, was dropped
> for much the same reason: existing propeller fighters would serve
> well enough while jets were being developed, and it was better to
> allocate design resources to the jets.
>
> Hell even w/o the> depth charges and machine gun the pilot can see U-boats on the surface
> > much better than a lookout on a DE can, and can communicate that to
> > the escorts. That would make a big difference.
>
> A Hurricane could do that much,
But cannot land on a small deck, and so is a one shot deal or needs a
near full size carrier.
---snip
Al Montestruc
> AlMontestrucwrote:
> > On Jan 8, 12:40 am, Bill Shatzer <ww...@NOcornell.edu> wrote:
> >>AlMontestrucwrote:
> >>-snip-
> >>>The speed differential was over 75 MPH, and that was almost 1/4 the
> >>>max speed of the I-16. Where the differences are not small, I would
> >>>agree. However no one has ever proven that the XF5U could not beat
> >>>the speeds of the ME-109 or Zero. That you pose that their might have
> >>>been problems is of course possible.
> >>But the US didn't NEED an F5U to fight Bf 109s or Zeros. Hellcats,
> >>Corsairs, Mustangs, and Thunderbolts had demonstrated that they were
> >>more than sufficient to deal with those.
> >>Why waste the time and money to develop a completely novel concept when
> >>existing aircraft were more than adequate for the task?
> > Because it could take off and land on tiny runways or off the deck of
> > much much smaller ships.
>
> By the late spring of 1944 (about the earliest a hypothetical F5U could
> become operational)
Dispute that.
> the US Navy was operating 10 fleet carriers, 9 light
> carriers, and, what, about three dozen escort carriers with a total
> capacity of some 1,800+ aircraft. There was no paricular need for a
> fighter aircraft which could operate from 'smaller ships' as the Navy
> possessed plenty of bigger ships.
>
> As for airstrips, the Seabees had demonstrated the ability construct and
> make operational a 5,000 foot airstrip in less than two weeks.
Two weeks w/o air support can cost a lot of lives.
>
> > This allows much smaller naval units to have fighter/bomber cover.
>
> I see no particular advantage in that - even an F5U would require a
> minimal take off and landing pad and where would you put that on a WW2
> era destroyer or cruiser?
A take off roll of ~100' with no headwin? VTOL with ~25 knots
headwind some of which can be ship motion. Give me a break
Bill Shatzer
> On Jan 8, 7:01 pm, Bill Shatzer <ww...@NOcornell.edu> wrote:
>>AlMontestrucwrote:
-snip-
>>>Because it could take off and land on tiny runways or off the deck of
>>>much much smaller ships.
>>By the late spring of 1944 (about the earliest a hypothetical F5U could
>>become operational)
> Dispute that.
I don't see just how.
The P-51 Mustang was about the fastest "drawing board to service"
aircraft of that era I can think of off hand. The P-51 was ordered in
April of 1940, went into production in May of 1941 and entered active
operational service with the RAF in April, 1942.
Two full years from initial order to squadron service.
And the P-51 was a thoroughly conventional aircraft.
The V-173 didn't make its first test flight until November of 1942. Even
if they were immediately satisfied with the V-173 concept and ordered
production of the XF5U the following month (December '42), even a P-51
schedule wouldn't have the aircraft in operational service until
December of 1944 - by which time, the US Navy had a surfeit of carriers
and more than satisfactory conventioal aircraft to provide air support
and interception duties.
Given that the XF5U was a completely novel design - not just the "flying
pancake" shape but also the interconnected engines and the novel
propellors, even matching the P-51's time from order to service would
seem wildly optimistic.
>>the US Navy was operating 10 fleet carriers, 9 light
>>carriers, and, what, about three dozen escort carriers with a total
>>capacity of some 1,800+ aircraft. There was no paricular need for a
>>fighter aircraft which could operate from 'smaller ships' as the Navy
>>possessed plenty of bigger ships.
>>As for airstrips, the Seabees had demonstrated the ability construct and
>>make operational a 5,000 foot airstrip in less than two weeks.
> Two weeks w/o air support can cost a lot of lives.
Except for a brief period after the initial Guadacanal landings when the
carriers skeedaddled, the US was never lacking in air support and, in
most cases had established total and complete air superiority. All
without an F5U and using convential aircraft.
Incidentaly, a 1500' strip is adequate to handle F4U Corsairs - although
2000' is probaly better from a safety standpoint. If the seabees can
build a 5000' airstrip in two weeks, how long would it take them to
build a 2000' runway?
>>>This allows much smaller naval units to have fighter/bomber cover.
>>I see no particular advantage in that - even an F5U would require a
>>minimal take off and landing pad and where would you put that on a WW2
>>era destroyer or cruiser?
> A take off roll of ~100' with no headwin? VTOL with ~25 knots
> headwind some of which can be ship motion. Give me a break
You still need a landing pad. And some place to put the landed aircraft
to make room for other aircraft to land and take off.
One F5U per ship hardly makes much sense.
>>Not to mention the required hanger, avgas,
>>ordinance, and maintenance facilities. US warships were getting pretty
>>top heavy as it was - adding aircraft and aircraft servicing facilities
>>would only exacerbate that problem.
>>You could, I suppose, construct specialized ships to handle an F5U
>>detachment but then you've essentially re-invented the escort carrier.
>>Having done that, why not just go with the CVEs and standard aircraft in
>>the first place?
>>By 1944, the US Navy was spitting out CVEs like watermelon seeds in more
David H Thornley
> On Jan 17, 12:50 pm, David H Thornley <da...@thornley.net> wrote:
> U.K AV-8A Sea Harrier kills in the Falkland War:
>
operating at very long range.
> Will you admit that you are basically wrong on the matter of the
> Harrier as a worthwhile air superiority fighter of its era?
>
There is a difference between an air superiority fighter and an
interceptor, and the Harrier wasn't tremendously good as an
interceptor. The losses to British ships from Argentinian aircraft
were significant, and could have been far worse with different
bomb fusing.
It would make a very bad air superiority fighter, as it could not
have chosen whether or not to engage.
> As it turns out that is a fallacy. One and only one example can show
> you how absurd that idea is.
>
> The compound bow (pulley bow not the old Asiatic glued together horn
> and wood bow) could have been invented at any time after the invention
> of the pulley.
The inventor used pulleys, and found that they didn't work. He had
to use cam and eccentric pulleys to get enough draw length. How
common were they before 1960 or so?
Similarly, to drag this back to WWII, not all ideas work, and not all
ideas work with currently available technology.
> You actually have to do some skull work to figure out if an idea is
> any good.
>
Skull work is not sufficient, though. There are many ideas that
look good, and in aeronautics even look good in preliminary trials
and wind tunnel tests that simply don't pan out. You can find
quite a few examples in any history of the less successful US
fighter designs of WWII.
>> It wasn't needed for the job.
>
> The US Navy did not agree as they funded the development in 1942.
You are missing my meaning.
I'm not saying a STOL fighter wouldn't have been useful. I'm saying
it wasn't needed. There were other ways to satisfy every need it
would have been useful for.
> The number of merchant ship sailors (and ships and cargos) lost also
> strongly speaks that it was.
>
No, the merchant sinkings say nothing about the need for fighters.
The RN had fighters aboard lightly modified bulk carriers. They
sent them out to sea with four Hurricanes each. Putting fighters
out to sea was not all that useful for ASW.
Why do you think a V-173 would have been useful while a Hurricane
was not?
>> An aircraft like that wouldn't
>> have seen service until 1944 or so, at which time the USN had plenty
>> of escort carriers. (The V-173 first flew in late 1942, according
>> to Wikipedia.)
>
> November '42 which suggests that a crash program might have seen
> production models available in perhaps mid '43 if the Navy pushed
> hard.
>
You are welcome to provide any examples of a WWII aircraft that
went from initial prototype flight to front-line service in
six or seven months. Until you do, I'm going with what actually
happened in the war, not what you think could have been done.
> That could have reduced losses in the convoy battles by the way.
>
In what way?
Seriously, the British put flight decks on bulk carriers (and in some
cases built a small hangar) and had real live aircraft carriers with
the convoys. They had four Hurricanes each, and could launch and
recover them.
This didn't seem to slow the U-boats down. Once the RN was getting some
escort carriers, they removed the flight decks and hangars from the
ships.
Again, what could any fighter have done that a Hurricane couldn't?
>> While a working Flapjack would have had a good many advantages over
>> a conventional fighter of the same performance, it wouldn't have filled
>> any need that conventional aircraft couldn't fill. It was possible to
>> build large runways pretty much wherever the USN and USAAF wanted them.
>
> At significant expense, and with significant vulnerability of the
> runway to bombing, and the loss of flexibility of airfield position.
Well, yes.
As I said, a STOL aircraft would have been useful, as long as it
could have served a useful combat role. It wasn't necessary.
>> Hell even w/o the> depth charges and machine gun the pilot can see U-boats on the surface
>>> much better than a lookout on a DE can, and can communicate that to
>>> the escorts. That would make a big difference.
>> A Hurricane could do that much,
>
> But cannot land on a small deck, and so is a one shot deal or needs a
> near full size carrier.
>
Look up the RN "merchant aircraft carriers". They flew off a small
number of fighters, which is what you seem to be talking about.
What actually won the Battle of the Atlantic was not these, but
full-scale escort carriers and very-long-range Liberator patrol
planes.
Al Montestruc
> AlMontestrucwrote:
> > On Jan 17, 12:50 pm, David H Thornley <da...@thornley.net> wrote:
> > U.K AV-8A Sea Harrier kills in the Falkland War:
>
> Where it was acting as an interceptor, against Argentinian aircraft
> operating at very long range.
Outnumbered by a large ratio. The ratio in the Battle of Britain was
more like 1:1 fighters vs fighters the odds in the Falklands war was
more like 5:1 in favor of the Argentine. That makes a big difference.
>
> > Will you admit that you are basically wrong on the matter of the
> > Harrier as a worthwhile air superiority fighter of its era?
>
> There is a difference between an air superiority fighter and an
> interceptor, and the Harrier wasn't tremendously good as an
> interceptor. The losses to British ships from Argentinian aircraft
> were significant, and could have been far worse with different
> bomb fusing.
You snipped the reference to the kill ratios and numerical odds. That
seems more than a bit dishonest to me.
The Harriers outnumbered by a large ratio, and killed more of the
enemy in numbers than they took in casualties. Sorry your claim that
they were not good interceptors is falsified by the fact of the kill
ratios, and numerical odds.
The losses of the British ships given the numerical odds in terms of
air forces was astonishingly low.
> It would make a very bad air superiority fighter, as it could not
> have chosen whether or not to engage.
>
> > As it turns out that is a fallacy. One and only one example can show
> > you how absurd that idea is.
>
> > The compound bow (pulley bow not the old Asiatic glued together horn
> > and wood bow) could have been invented at any time after the invention
> > of the pulley.
>
> The inventor used pulleys, and found that they didn't work.
Really? Did not work at all? Or did not work as well? Cite????
> He had
> to use cam and eccentric pulleys to get enough draw length.
Had to? Cite???
> How
> common were they before 1960 or so?
Common is not relevant. However shaped cams have existed since at
least the 3rd Century BCE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cam#History
Pulleys have existed since ~ 1500 BCE or at least since Archimedes
wrote to Plutarch about using them.
http://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=716
An eccentric shaped pulley is obvious once you have seen both a pulley
and a cam.
>
> Similarly, to drag this back to WWII, not all ideas work,
Especially if you have a jerk put in charge who told Wilbur and told
Orville and is now telling you that damn thing will never fly, who
needs to be handed a broom and told to get to work doing something he
is competent to do and shut up about things he is too stupid to have a
meaningful opinion on.
>and not all
> ideas work with currently available technology.
The compound bow as patented in the 1960s could have been built with
materials and technologies available while Julius Caesar was alive.
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