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Subject: First critical element of WW-II fighter plane effectivness?
45-Shooter    1/18/2013 9:22:46 PM
Given that the "typical" WW-II Single engine fighter could be spotted at 1-2 miles, depending on aspect, about half the time, I propose that the smaller the plane, the more effective it will be! Sort of a semi-stealth solution to the "Spotting" problem?
 
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JFKY    Reactive   1/23/2013 6:10:48 PM
The thrust of the diatribe was that it was a failure, and obviously it wasn't.  Problems with development need to be kept in perspective.
 
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45-Shooter       1/23/2013 7:45:35 PM

Dont bite, its shooter trying to reintroduce his impractical, impossible and unbuildable bat plane 
I tried not to answer this, but I just could not let it all go.
Do you really believe that it is "unbuildable" or "impossible" to build any of the planes I posted? Have you ever read "Janes all the Worlds Aircraft" over the years to see the hundreds if not thousands of similarly sized planes over the last 100 years that have actually been built?
Secondly, how practical is any fighter plane? How do you judge how well any fighter plane does it's job? At the length of the other thread on how to judge a fighter plane, what percentage of weight do you give to each of the attributes of a fighter plane?
That is my question! What are the fighter plane's most important attributes and what weight do you give each of the planes attributes?
 
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45-Shooter       1/23/2013 7:56:12 PM

Small frontal area reduces parasitic onset and reduces overall drag in general.
If the designers, then, knew what we know now, the radial-engined air-cooled ICE-powered fighters would have been designed with jet tunnels for the engines' air-cooled efficiencies so that slipstream inside the tunnel would have helped. This is HOW the corn-cob Pratts were designed to work and would have eventually worked had not the jet and  turbo-prop not killed them. I would stipulate that the newest designs of P&W engine instalations were state of the art even by todays standards.
The various national aircraft designers had some handicaps.

 

The Germans had superb liquid-cooled ICE engines  True! but those were HEAVYFalse! So were their first auto-cannons. Their airframe design was exceptionally poor. Their planes were under-built for the weights they massed. It's almost a uniform certainty that except for Heinkel and Arado, the tail designs on the German aircraft for directional stability were simply awful. On the plus side, the Germans had the best Human-factors engineering for pilot work-load and the best automatic-engine management systems in the world. Their radial air-cooled engines were competent designs on par with the French, but were much better made. Those air-cooled engines, as the case with the Daimlers were heavy for their type. I would dispute most of this PP!
The French had some decent aircraft designers who worked for Morane Saulnier and Dewoitine, so those companies produced average to good fighters, but as a general rule, the French aircraft designers, such as Marcel Bloch (the man who would later become Dassault) were mostly followers, tech thieves, and not innovators. French manufacturing methods were out of date, the aircraft manufacturing quality extremely poor,  and the aircraft manufacturers corrupt thieves, who ill-served the French people.  Engine-tech was average with poor watts per kilogram ratios for the Gnome-Rhone radials. Hispano-Suiza was a bright spot for the French, with both a superb .78 caliber auto-cannon (the famous moteur-cannon HS-404 20mm) and a decent Hispano Suiza 12K-Y series of V-12 LC ICE engines that could have served the French in the role, as the Merlin served the British. Poor manufacturing methods and general laxness in quality control handicapped whatever little good the French aircraft designers produced. There isn't much else good you can say about those incompetents.

The Italians produced outstanding aircraft structures. That is the first thing you notice about their designs. As a general rule, the Italians over-designed and over-engineered their airframes to produce over-weight, too complex, difficult to manufacture, but beautiful aircraft. Their aircraft engines (radials due to a proper, but ill-timed engineering choice in a general re-armament cycle) were licensed and underdeveloped licensed copies of British, American and French designs. The designs they were able to acquire were low watts/kilogram ratio designs that were out of date, so they were unable to catch up with the American and British later designs. hence we see three-engine bombers and transports, as well as underpowered fighters. The Italians would turn to German engines, to produce some small quantities of aircraft that show how truly outstanding their aerodynamacists were. Too little, too late. Like the British, the Italians knew how to design an air-breather circuit. They knew how to design a constant speed propeller, (something the British, the Germans, and the French did not know how to do.)                        
(next post)

 

 

I would dispute more than a little of this. But it is too long now.

 
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45-Shooter       1/23/2013 8:14:23 PM

The only good thing about the Hurricane was the Merlin engine. It was put together with one of the worst fabric and shoddiest metal structured airframes you could imagine. The wing was atrocious as an airfoil. Whereas, the excessively complex Spitfire at least had superb flight characteristics to overbalance its rather poor  Human-factors  and poor ease of manufacture design flaes, the Hurricane with its obsolete skinning techniques and poor fit together was a bitch to repair after battle damage. It was the P-40 with none of the P-40s rugged toughness, and simplicity virtues. The plane could not compete with the BF109 in a fight in any part of the energy spectrum at any altitude. The plane was a stable gun-platform which made it an adequate bomber killer during the BoB. Without the Spitfire to handle the 109s and keep those off the Hurricanes, things would have been dicey for the RAF.   


 harse as the huricane was of the same vintage as the P36, the P40 was 4 years later Really? by which time the Hurricane was pretty much regarded as obsolete, it aslo had a worse reputation for landing crashes than the spit suposedly weak legs.
Worse than the Spit? By who's account? What is your source? The Spit's legs were as far as I know, NOT WAEK! They WERE to narrow by ALL accounts and many people say either that it "Killed more of it's pilots than the Luftwaffe." OR that it "Destroyed more planes than the Luftwaffe"!
   
The P40 was a 1938 fighter that arrived in 1941! and then was made in stupid numbers many late models were flown directly from the facory to the scrapyard.

the hurricane seems to have shot down quite a few 109s during the bob and could turn inside a 109e-Really? Can you please post a source for this outragous claim? Also Hurricanes shot down more Germans that Spits did, but I think that was a factor of the numbers involved?
 
The Russians who were given both the Hurricane and the P-40, used both. The Russians screamed for P-40s and  P-39s, but rejected Hurricanes when Churchill offered additional planes. THAT was how bad the Hurricane was. The Russians preferred the better-made American JUNK.
B.







Some good points, some less good points and some BS!

 
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Belisarius1234    You would be wrong to dispute.   1/23/2013 8:33:09 PM
since you knowledge on the topic is very faulty and superficial  But that appears to be the common awareness  now of much of what you post..
would have eventually worked had not the jet and  turbo-prop not killed them. I would stipulate that the newest designs of P&W engine instalations were state of the art even by todays standards.

The various national aircraft designers had some handicaps.



 



The Germans had superb liquid-cooled ICE engines  True! but those were HEAVYFalse! So were their first auto-cannons. Their airframe design was exceptionally poor. Their planes were under-built for the weights they massed. It's almost a uniform certainty that except for Heinkel and Arado, the tail designs on the German aircraft for directional stability were simply awful. On the plus side, the Germans had the best Human-factors engineering for pilot work-load and the best automatic-engine management systems in the world. Their radial air-cooled engines were competent designs on par with the French, but were much better made. Those air-cooled engines, as the case with the Daimlers were heavy for their type. I would dispute most of this PP!

The French had some decent aircraft designers who worked for Morane Saulnier and Dewoitine, so those companies produced average to good fighters, but as a general rule, the French aircraft designers, such as Marcel Bloch (the man who would later become Dassault) were mostly followers, tech thieves, and not innovators. French manufacturing methods were out of date, the aircraft manufacturing quality extremely poor,  and the aircraft manufacturers corrupt thieves, who ill-served the French people.  Engine-tech was average with poor watts per kilogram ratios for the Gnome-Rhone radials. Hispano-Suiza was a bright spot for the French, with both a superb .78 caliber auto-cannon (the famous moteur-cannon HS-404 20mm) and a decent Hispano Suiza 12K-Y series of V-12 LC ICE engines that could have served the French in the role, as the Merlin served the British. Poor manufacturing methods and general laxness in quality control handicapped whatever little good the French aircraft designers produced. There isn't much else good you can say about those incompetents.



The Italians produced outstanding aircraft structures. That is the first thing you notice about their designs. As a general rule, the Italians over-designed and over-engineered their airframes to produce over-weight, too complex, difficult to manufacture, but beautiful aircraft. Their aircraft engines (radials due to a proper, but ill-timed engineering choice in a general re-armament cycle) were licensed and underdeveloped licensed copies of British, American and French designs. The designs they were able to acquire were low watts/kilogram ratio designs that were out of date, so they were unable to catch up with the American and British later designs. hence we see three-engine bombers and transports, as well as underpowered fighters. The Italians would turn to German engines, to produce some small quantities of aircraft that show how truly outstanding their aerodynamacists were. Too little, too late. Like the British, the Italians knew how to design an air-breather circuit. They knew how to design a constant speed propeller, (something the British, the Germans, and the French did not know how to do.)                        

(next post)



 



 



I would dispute more than a little of this. But it is too long now.

I am trying to be kind.
 
B.
 
 
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45-Shooter       1/23/2013 9:01:45 PM

Then someone discovered that the Flying Fortress had a weak tail that caused her to fly sideways into the wind when she tried to unload bombs with her bomb-bay doors open. Ever tried to bomb from the air sideways at a slant? It doesn't work. So Boeing changed the tail. That was the B-17A all the way to-F. 1935 to 1944! That is a long time to screw around with an aircraft-especially when from 1939 on that plane is being used in WAR.  The first moddle to correct all the faults was the "E" of 1941, in extencive service, 512 in mid 1942. The "F" was in service in 1942 with 3405 built before the "G" 8680 built starting in very late 1942. So it was 1941, not 1944 when the B-17 was fixed! 1942 at the latest.
THIS was the strategic bomber the USAAF got RIGHT!
(next post.)

Hate to nit-pick on such trivial details

 
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45-Shooter       1/23/2013 9:04:13 PM

The B-24 Liberator and the B-29 Superfortress which are HORROR stories of mismanagement, bad aircraft design, and bungled management by the AAC and private industry, are much worse than the B-17 as to their development histories.  


 
 A little taste of what I mean is the B-29. Many aircraft historians state that the He-177 Greif (GRIEF) heavy bomber failed because the Germans couldn't get the double-sided DB-610 engines to work without catching fire? The Luftwaffe rejected the plane as unsafe. 

Well... the USAAC deployed the B-29 with the Wright R-3350-22-23 series of engines which NEVER were properly fixed, that had the same explode in flight and blow the wing off potential problems. THAT is what a professional air force will do to get the job done. Risks and aircraft liabilities, that even the crazy Luftwaffe refused to accept, the USAAC did. 

Note that the USAAF made do with training to work around the problems with flying horrors like the A-26? Once the USAAC figured out how to fly those pilot-killers, they passed on the lessons learned to the allies.

B.


I think you mean the B-26?

 
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45-Shooter       1/23/2013 9:05:35 PM


The development issues are well-documented - in fact you'll scarce find any article about the B-29 that doesn't explicitly reference the troubles with its initial engines. That is a separate issue entirely to what the USAF managed to achieve with the plane and for goodness sake you don't have to discount what the F-22 is capable of to acknowledge it had a terribly compromised development program. 

You are right about all of this!

 
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Belisarius1234    I meant what I said.   1/23/2013 9:31:43 PM
 I no longer see the need to be kind. You have nothing to say on the subject of aircraft, that is of any worth.Come to think of it, you don't seem to have anything of worth to say in race-cars, ICE engines, or just about any subject that you comment on, Shooter.
 
B.
 
 
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45-Shooter       1/23/2013 11:09:19 PM

I'm saying that especially during ww2 aircraft needed to adapt to different missions.
This is still true and the more missions and aircraft can perform the more flexible it is.
You can check for yourself how many different roles aircraft were pressed into and how some aircraft adapted easier then others.
Mostly your original statement is generalizing things to much there are many more factors which determine aircraft effectiveness. You will also find that these factors tend to change over time depending on overall strategy.



After much thought, I chose to reply to this post in a different way than I did before.

Your argument is that a fighter plane needs to be able to perform many different types of missions to be considered great. This is somewhat akin to the debates about fighter missions over the last thirty or so years. ( Should we buy a small and in-expensive, or a larger more versatile plane?) The results of that question so far makes your point in that the heavier and more versatile of the two/three planes under consideration is chosen. ( F-15E over the F-16XL, Eurofighter Typhoon over Rafale, etc...)

This can also be seen in WW-II in the debate between the various "Interceptors" Vs the American Heavy Weights!

Primacy of that criteria would lead to choosing the P-47 over the Spitfire 24.

So my question is, "How much weight should we put on the multi mission ability of the plane to set it's grade?"

 
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