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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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Belisarius1234    That you can't SEE   1/25/2013 12:48:30 PM
That high altitude bombers had to be converted into low altitude cruise missile carriers not once but TWICE at the cost of billions of dollars (B-52 and B-1), or that the porcupine gun carrier bomber was ABANDONED ten years after the evidence was in that the dash bomber (B-29 was wrong in 1940. B-36 was wrong in 1943 AS THE BRITISH GERMANS and the fighting AMERICANS knew by 1943 [but not apparently by the stupid air planners], those planes went ahead anyway not to be replaced by B-47s and B-52s until 1958! ) was the correct solution or that the B-1 (that abomination) still doesn't work, or that the Japanese could make all the fighters they want in 1944 (until the subs finally sank all the ore carriers coming  from Manchuria as they were doing.), but without FUEL (no oil tankers and flooded coal mines thanks to fuel for the water punps) those planes were just paperweights, or that as of August 1945 the average Japanese was down to 1400 calories a day and the civil administrators were terrified of the public health disaster the winter would bring with at least four million DEAD from the cold and starvation (those numbers were gross underestimates, because the Japanese farming base collapsed. The pre-war freighters that brought fertilizer to the islands that made Japanese farmers the world's most efficient growers were SUNK and the farmers who knew how to use it, by that point were DEAD either in China or the Pacific islands.)   
 
 Lots of stuff, you don't know there. But go ahead and CHECK. It's all true.
 
B.
 
 
 
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JFKY    Belasarius your diatribe   1/25/2013 1:31:36 PM
was convuluted and almost spittle-flecked....and fairly incomprehensible.  Sorry.
 
The B-29 was RIGHT in 1940 (Long-range, hi altitude, heavy hauler)....the B-36 was right when created (A long-range, heavy hauler-for the incredibly large and heavy nuclear weapons of the day)....the B-52 moved from Hi speed/hi altitude to low altitude becasue of tehcnology and the fact the air frame was so long-lived...
 
As to the rest...put the adrenal glands in park and think it thru and then right me a response.
 
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JFKY    Belasarius   1/25/2013 2:06:30 PM
After wading thrut he spittle all I'll say is that I don't need to check, because I've read Downfall" and I know what you have written is true...but you ignore that fact that the B-29's ended coastal trade with their mining campaign, completing the starvation and you ignore that the B-29's destroyed the basis of Japanese Industry.
 
I'm not disputing the role that submairnes played, but the B-29's completed the end-game...bringing home the cost of war to both the Japanese populace and the Government in unmistakable terms.
 
So mayhap YOU ought to check some facts...try Franks' Downfall and then try Hansen's US Nuclear Weapons.   You'll begin to get some idea of what the B-29's wrought and why the B-29 and its successor were as they were.  You might profitably look at some studies of aircraft tehcnology, too, to see what was POSSIBLE in 1946.
 
Lastly the FB-111 was a relative failure as compared to the B-52...It's designed role might have matched its ACTUAL role, but you'll notice which airframe outlasted the other.  And THAT is the testimony that counts.  Long after the FB-111 is in the scrap yard, the B-52 is still flying combat missions....the B-52 flew combat missions BEFORE the F-111 and AFTER the FB-111 and that means the b-52 was the far better aircraft.  At several levels.....
 
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Belisarius1234    Difference of opinion.   1/25/2013 2:47:41 PM
The ones doing the fighting, reported back ACCURATELY what worked and what didn't. The planners didn't listen.
 
The great air-warfare object lesson for you to consider is Curtis LeMay. He was the USAF/USAAF  go-to guy when things went BADLY wrong in WW II, Korea and during the lead decades of the Cold War.
 
Look at what he did, what he said, what he achieved, and how he achieved it in spite of the wrong planes, wrong tactical doctrine, and wrong methods foisted on him.
 
Examine his record, his comments, his decisions and then come back and talk to me.
 
Much of what I say about American bombers, is based on his record.
 
He did not have much good to say about such incompetents as Bissell, Brereton, Eiger, et al; who were part of the BOMBER BARONS of the USAAF.  
 
Did the B-29 do the job? Much the same way the B-17 did, but not the way it was INTENDED.
 
I measure "success" by intent as opposed to result.
 
If the intent matched the result, then the original concept was a success.
 
To take an American example of intent that was successful in the air.
 
Have you heard of the Dauntless dive bomber? One of Ed Heinemann's first warbirds it was.(the man was a GENIUS!). It arguably was the finest plane ever designed to do its major specific task, kill ships and other surface targets through dive-bombing. It was never supposed to be used any other way. Yet we have recorded instances of that little bird dog-fighting Zekes and winning! Heinemann designed into that bird the qualities that made it stable gun and bomb platform, turnable, and an agile angle fighter, all at the same time.  
 
It was his intent that the plane be a swing-mission plane, that it be able to bomb, scout, and pad the air-defense CAP as needed.
 
He did not design a STUKA which was utterly helpless in the presence of enemy fighters. He designed a DAUNTLESS. 
 
He knew what the customer needed, when the navy didn't and he gave them the plane.
 
Much like Boeing tried to do with the YB-17, but the USAAC wouldn't listen.
 
So? The better USAAC generals took the JUNK and WRONG CHOICES they were given and made do.
 
Look up the sad history of the Lockheed J-37  jet engine, or how Theodore von Karman (famous American rocketeer [JPL founder] and a leading transonics regime expert ) misplaced the German swept-wing research that was dumped into his lap by Albert Busemann.
 
The P-80 Shooting Star should have been the swept-wing fighter terror facing the Luftwaffe over France in EARLY 1944, not the clumsy underpowered Gloster Meteor trying to defend British cities from an OHAIN German jet-powered flying bomb. The P-80 was flying, but it was using a 1935 NACA wing and a knock-off copy of a British jet engine. not the ALL-AMERICAN L-1000 axial flow turbojet and  not the Busemann wing that Robert T. Jordan was urgently investigating in 1945, ten years after someone remembered and FOUND what Karman brought back and filed away from that 1935 conference! 
 
Those same muffed opportunities apply to BOMBERS. YB-45 comes to mind. 
 
B.
 
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Reactive       1/25/2013 3:07:09 PM

 
 
 
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45-Shooter       1/25/2013 3:27:28 PM


Shooter is a liar, he claimed that the B29 at Dayton This is a lie! I claimed that the B-29 at Hill AFB is/was the B-29 that was modified to drop the Tallboy bomb! There are two hard points under the wing of said plane between the inner engine nacell and the fuselage. I have pictures. was the one they used to carry 2x tallboys on ops during WW2 This is also a lie! I never claimed any such thing! I claimed when it was pointed out that that plane dint leave the factory until a week before they dropped the first A Bomb he changed his tune, This is also a lie! I claimed  now he claims it is a famous Mig killer! This is also a lie! Look at the last claim made on this board. I claimed at that time that they have a B-29 that shot down five Migs! I never ever claimed anything else about it, except to point out that the B-29 was not as helpless as he said. I claimed  what next? did it carry the first men to the moon? bombed Bagdad and Killed Sadam?

 

by the way Shooter has been banned from many more than just the Delphi site, yet its never his fault its allways people being jealous of his brillianceThis is true!

thire is a whole webpage dedicated to his rubbish I will have to look it up but its something like stardestroyers.net/stuart davis
Stardestroyers.net is a petty and mean site that still argues, inspite of overwhealming evidence that the Evil empire and it's ships were better than those of Star Trek. If any one here would like a more reasoned argument than the one on Stardestroyer.net, I will post an alternate address with much more coppelling evidence to make my point!


 
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45-Shooter       1/25/2013 3:35:40 PM

P.s. for Shooter:  
That B-29 at Dayton, Shooter? It is NOT Command Decision. True. Read the original post carefully! I did not state it was, or was not, I stated they had a disply about the B-29 that shot down five Migs. And you weaselling about the authenticity or anything else about it will not change the FACT that a B-29 shot down FIVE MIGS!That plane, which claimed the five Mig kills was DESTROYED in a transportation accident when a helicopter dropped it during a transfer from the Air Force Museum to another museum as a loaner quite a while back. What you claimed you saw is a REPRODUCTION of the NOSE ART on another B-29 nose section taken from another B-29 to replace the destroyed exhibit piece. 
But if you'd been to Dayton, or simply asked the Museum, you'd have KNOWN THAT.
I have and do go to Daton almost EVERY YEAR! I look for bot big ideas, the fact that a B-29 shot down five migs and little tiny things like how wrinkeled the skin is on the B-52 in the cold war hangar.
 
 

 

 

 

How about instead of attacking me, ad Hominum, we start argueing about the ideas I espouse? Or is that too much to ask?

 
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JFKY    Well then   1/25/2013 3:41:03 PM
I measure "success" by intent as opposed to result.
 
that makes you an idiot.  No one in their right mind measures INTENT as compared to result...because no one has bad INTENTIONS....
 
The only thing that can be measured is outcomes/results.  So if you are going to continue to prate on about what planes were DESIGNED to do, rather than what they actually ACCOMPLISHED...we're thru.
 
I'd say anyone else reading that is a fool to debate with you, too....
 
You are simply becoming irrational.
 
 
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45-Shooter       1/25/2013 3:44:47 PM


That high altitude bombers had to be converted into low altitude cruise missile carriers not once but TWICE at the cost of billions of dollars (B-52 and B-1), or that the porcupine gun carrier bomber was ABANDONED ten years after the evidence was in that the dash bomber (B-29 was wrong in 1940. B-36 was wrong in 1943 AS THE BRITISH GERMANS and the fighting AMERICANS knew by 1943 [but not apparently by the stupid air planners], those planes went ahead anyway not to be replaced by B-47s and B-52s until 1958! ) was the correct solution or that the B-1 (that abomination) still doesn't work, or that the Japanese could make all the fighters they want in 1944 (until the subs finally sank all the ore carriers coming  from Manchuria as they were doing.), but without FUEL (no oil tankers and flooded coal mines thanks to fuel for the water punps) those planes were just paperweights, or that as of August 1945 the average Japanese was down to 1400 calories a day and the civil administrators were terrified of the public health disaster the winter would bring with at least four million DEAD from the cold and starvation (those numbers were gross underestimates, because the Japanese farming base collapsed. The pre-war freighters that brought fertilizer to the islands that made Japanese farmers the world's most efficient growers were SUNK and the farmers who knew how to use it, by that point were DEAD either in China or the Pacific islands.)   

 

 Lots of stuff, you don't know there. But go ahead and CHECK. It's all true.

 

B.

 

 

Lots of this stuff above is true and some is not. But that is not the idea to argue. The Adaptability of ALL aircraft to do things they were not designed for is inhearant in the details of any machine with such a high P/W ratio. The fact that the B36/47/52/1/2 all were modified to do other missions is testament to their greatness, not the failure of their design. I would point out that the B-29/50/36 were not modified to remove the gun turrits until long after tests to determin the ability of primitive/early jets to intercept them were done.

 
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Belisarius1234    If the intent is to correctly address a problem.   1/25/2013 3:52:23 PM
And the initial result is wrong, it is still wrong, no matter how many times you tweak the follow on result to make it approximate a different 'right' solution, one that incidentally never seems to match the original intent. 
 
B-17 first solution. Schwinefurt Regensberg introduces REALITY.
 
New solution. Add P-51 Mustangs.
 
NOW do you understand?
 
B.
 
P.s. For Shooter; No matter how much  you protest otherwise, Shooter, you are DONE here as a credible poster. 
 
 
 
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