Packard/merlin engines [Archive]

Artful

02-28-2015, 12:48 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford

The five-dollar workday

Ford was a pioneer of "welfare capitalism", designed to improve the lot of his workers and especially to reduce the heavy turnover that had many departments hiring 300 men per year to fill 100 slots. Efficiency meant hiring and keeping the best workers.[22]

Ford astonished the world in 1914 by offering a $5 per day wage ($120 today), which more than doubled the rate of most of his workers.[23] A Cleveland, Ohio newspaper editorialized that the announcement "shot like a blinding rocket through the dark clouds of the present industrial depression."[24] The move proved extremely profitable; instead of constant turnover of employees, the best mechanics in Detroit flocked to Ford, bringing their human capital and expertise, raising productivity, and lowering training costs.[25][26]

Ford announced his $5-per-day program on January 5, 1914, raising the minimum daily pay from $2.34 to $5 for qualifying workers. It also set a new, reduced workweek, although the details vary in different accounts. Ford and Crowther in 1922 described it as six 8-hour days, giving a 48-hour week,[27] while in 1926 they described it as five 8-hour days, giving a 40-hour week.[28] (Apparently the program started with Saturday being a workday and sometime later it was changed to a day off.)

Detroit was already a high-wage city, but competitors were forced to raise wages or lose their best workers.[29] Ford's policy proved, however, that paying people more would enable Ford workers to afford the cars they were producing and be good for the local economy. He viewed the increased wages as profit sharing linked with rewarding those who were most productive and of good character.[30] It may have been Couzens who convinced Ford to adopt the $5-day.[31]

The profit-sharing was offered to employees who had worked at the company for six months or more, and, importantly, conducted their lives in a manner of which Ford's "Social Department" approved. They frowned on heavy drinking, gambling, and (what today are called) deadbeat dads. The Social Department used 50 investigators, plus support staff, to maintain employee standards; a large percentage of workers were able to qualify for this "profit-sharing."

Ford's incursion into his employees' private lives was highly controversial, and he soon backed off from the most intrusive aspects. By the time he wrote his 1922 memoir, he spoke of the Social Department and of the private conditions for profit-sharing in the past tense, and admitted that

"paternalism has no place in industry. Welfare work that consists in prying into employees' private concerns is out of date. Men need counsel and men need help, often special help; and all this ought to be rendered for decency's sake. But the broad workable plan of investment and participation will do more to solidify industry and strengthen organization than will any social work on the outside. Without changing the principle we have changed the method of payment."[32]

The coming of World War II and Ford's mental collapse
Ford had opposed America's entry into World War II[35][46] and continued to believe that international business could generate the prosperity that would head off wars.

Ford "insisted that war was the product of greedy financiers who sought profit in human destruction"; in 1939 he went so far as to claim that the torpedoing of U.S. merchant ships by German submarines was the result of conspiratorial activities undertaken by financier war-makers.[47] The financiers to whom he was referring was Ford's code for Jews; he had also accused Jews of fomenting the First World War (see the section on his anti-Semitism below).[35][48] In the run-up to World War II and when the war erupted in 1939, he reported that he did not want to trade with belligerents. Like many other businessmen of the Great Depression era, he never liked or entirely trusted the Franklin Roosevelt Administration, and thought Roosevelt was inching the U.S. closer to war. However, Ford continued to do business with Nazi Germany, including the manufacture of war materiel.[35]

Beginning in 1940, with the requisitioning of between 100 and 200 French POWs to work as slave laborers, Ford-Werke contravened Article 31 of the 1929 Geneva Convention.[35] At that time, which was before the U.S. entered the War and still had full diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany, Ford-Werke was under the control of the Ford Motor Company. The number of slave laborers grew as the war expanded although Wallace made it clear that companies in Germany were not required by the Nazi authorities to use slave laborers.

When Rolls-Royce sought a U.S. manufacturer as an alternative source for the Merlin engine (as fitted to Spitfire and Hurricane fighters), Ford first agreed to do so and then reneged. He "lined up behind the war effort" when the U.S. entered in late 1941.[49] His support of the American war effort, however, was problematic.

Once the U.S. entered the war, Ford directed the Ford Motor Company to construct a vast new purpose-built factory at Willow Run near Detroit, Michigan. Ford broke ground on Willow Run in the spring of 1941, and the first B-24 came off the line in October 1942. At 3,500,000 sq ft (330,000 m2), it was the largest assembly line in the world at the time. At its peak in 1944, the Willow Run plant produced 650 B-24s per month, and by 1945 Ford was completing each B-24 in eighteen hours, with one rolling off the assembly line every 58 minutes.[50] Ford produced 9,000 B-24s at Willow Run, half of the 18,000 total B-24s produced during the war.[50]

When Edsel Ford died prematurely in 1943, Henry Ford nominally resumed control of the company, but a series of strokes in the late 1930s had left him increasingly debilitated, and his mental ability was fading. Ford was increasingly sidelined, and others made decisions in his name.[51] The company was in fact controlled by a handful of senior executives led by Charles Sorensen, an important engineer and production executive at Ford; and Harry Bennett, the chief of Ford's Service Unit, Ford's paramilitary force that spied on, and enforced discipline upon, Ford employees.

Ford grew jealous of the publicity Sorensen received and forced Sorensen out in 1944.[52] Ford's incompetence led to discussions in Washington about how to restore the company, whether by wartime government fiat, or by instigating some sort of coup among executives and directors.[53] Nothing happened until 1945 when, with bankruptcy a serious risk, Edsel's widow led an ouster and installed her son, Henry Ford II, as president.[54][better source needed][55] The young man took full control, and forced out Harry Bennett in a purge of the old guard in 1947.

http://www.academia.edu/207381/Rethinking_the_Ford-Nazi_Connection

http://asitoughttobe.com/2011/04/20/henry-ford-socialist/

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_tqISUN7OIsY/S1wdBLSo68I/AAAAAAAABCA/YnlXzc_TIQ4/s400/judiointernacional.jpg
http://history.hanover.edu/hhr/99/hhr99_2.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/interview/henryford-antisemitism/

http://mormonheretic.org/2011/03/03/was-henry-ford-a-socialist/

https://moreorlessbunk.wordpress.com/2008/10/27/henry-ford-socialist/

FISH4BUGS

02-28-2015, 05:04 PM

He was also a rabid anti-semite

Thumbcocker

02-28-2015, 09:14 PM

Henry ford gave Hitler a convertible for a birthday present. Hardly the actions of a die hard socialist.

MaryB

02-28-2015, 09:33 PM

Amazing engines given the technology of the day.

Rick Hodges

02-28-2015, 10:23 PM

Hahahaha Ford a socialist...not hardly.... no way....socialism is the government owning and running industry....something Ford would never want nor allow. Being a nosy boss, profit sharing and paying a decent wage so his workers could afford the cars they built was a wise business decision but none of that has anything to do with socialism. Socialism is the government taking over the company...ala GM....Henry Ford would have closed the place down and burned it to the ground before he would allow that.
By the way, a Sunday Ice Cream Social has nothing to do with socialism either.

nicholst55

03-01-2015, 02:04 AM

I wonder what the per-unit cost of those engines was during the war, and what they would cost today?

fast ronnie

03-01-2015, 02:16 AM

I wonder what the per-unit cost of those engines was during the war, and what they would cost today?

To my understanding, the Merlin's were $35,000. By the way, the Packard transport engines were basically one and the same. Some parts directly interchange, some have different bolt patterns that can and sometimes are converted to mix and match parts. They also made different series known by the dash number: for instance, the dash nine wheel case is popular on the race engines.

MtGun44

03-01-2015, 02:28 AM

My FIL flew behind those beauties in WW2, P-51 pilot and still alive and well.

Hickory

03-01-2015, 02:42 AM

Ford was a big socialist.

On the contrary, Henry Ford fought the socialist unions tooth & nail.
And that was at the same time he was paying twice the wages as anyone else.

Bad Water Bill

03-01-2015, 06:35 AM

NO you can NOT have it.

My dad worked at the Ford engine plant in Chicago during the war.

A few years later he was notified of some of the STUFF to be sold.

Yes I collected the money from my paper rout and bought one of those great tool boxes.

Solid steel including spring loaded swivel steel wheels for the outrageous price of $5.00.[smilie=s:

Screwbolts

03-01-2015, 09:29 AM

I have had the Pleasure and honor of riding in the back seat of a 2 place P51 powered by one of these works of art. As you know many P51s today have had the radio gear removed and dual controls installed. The Plane is "Never Miss", hangored in the Amsterdam, NY area.

Ken

smokeywolf

03-01-2015, 10:30 AM

Although not Merlins, the PT boats were powered by 3 1,500 horse Packard converted aircraft engines.

fecmech

03-01-2015, 03:22 PM

Screwbolts
I have had the Pleasure and honor of riding in the back seat of a 2 place P51 powered by one of these works of art. As you know many P51s today have had the radio gear removed and dual controls installed

+1. That's me in the back taxiing out at Geneseo.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=106894&stc=1&thumb=1&d=1403163019

popper

03-01-2015, 03:31 PM

http://www.stallion51.com/p51-flight-ops/p51-merlin-engine.shtml - Packard was building aircraft engines in the 20's, changed to marine (probably with some ideas from the merlin) in the 30's. Interesting that a gal invented the carb mod to allow neg. G running and Merlin was not designed for mass production.

Henry Ford fought the socialist unions Only because it interfered with his version.

socialism is the government owning and running industry Isn't that what the Kremlin AND Hitler did?

Echo

03-01-2015, 04:24 PM

A pal worked on -51's in Korea. He never worked on a RR Merlin, but said that they were nasty to work on, as everything had to be hand-fitted, whereas the Packard Merlins were built so in-tolerance that it was a simple matter of bolting on the new item.
I was working out in the yard a few decades ago when I heard an airplane overhead. I knew before I looked up that it was a P-51 - the Merlin sounds like no other airplane engine.
And I believe the high-altitude capabilities of the Merlin were due to it having not just a 2-speed supercharger (most engines at that time did), but also had a second supercharger (two-stage supercharging), and supercharging a supercharger has a multiplicative effect, not an additive effect. It also had a built-in intercooler, something the Alison never had. Intercoolers (in the P-38), Yes, but not built into the engine package.
Looking at a cross-section of the Merlin & the Alison it would appear that the Alison had it all over the Merlin. Semi-hemi-spherical combustion chambers, splayed valves (that permitted larger valves), where the Merlin had a fairly cylindrical combustion chamber and non-splayed valves. But the Merlin was more robustly built, and could be hot-rodded up to greater HP's without hurting reliability too much.

dtknowles

03-01-2015, 09:24 PM

Rick Hodges

03-01-2015, 10:38 PM

Check you definition of a Socialism, your definition sounds more like Communism.

Tim

Socialism: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.

Socialism and communism are kissing cousins....Henry Ford was not an advocate of either.

lead-1

03-01-2015, 10:50 PM

While I always liked the looks of the P-51's, here is my favorite Merlin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIj2GVfua84

MtGun44

03-01-2015, 11:30 PM

Used to think the Merlin had it all over the Allison technologically, but it turns out that
while the actual Allisons built were total dogs at altitude - FIL has flown P-40s and was
NOT impressed due to big power loss at altitude, it really was not due to any real
technical inferiority of the Allison, just development. I did some investigation, and apparently
GM had asked the Army Air Corps if they should develop a two speed, two stage, intercooled
version of the Allison early in the war. The Army told them not to bother, so when the
air battles went to higher altitudes than the Army bureaucrats had expected, there was no
high altitude packaged Allison available rapidly, which is why the Merlin was put into the P-51 when
they were really comparable engines in most ways except for the supercharger system. The P-38
ran Allisons, but with an entirely external turbocharger/intercooler system which was developed by
Lockheed, not GM and was really part of the airframe rather than the engine.

The '55 Chevy is completely nuts.

Have to agree with Rick, socialism and communism are only slightly different, at best and no
way Henry Ford was either. He paid well to keep unions away and to engender loyalty.

MaryB

03-01-2015, 11:40 PM

I get to see these fly over pretty often, about 20 miles from the museum http://www.fagenfighterswwiimuseum.org/aircraft/aircraft.html

I have had the Pleasure and honor of riding in the back seat of a 2 place P51 powered by one of these works of art. As you know many P51s today have had the radio gear removed and dual controls installed. The Plane is "Never Miss", hangored in the Amsterdam, NY area.

Ken

dtknowles

03-01-2015, 11:53 PM

Socialism: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.

Socialism and communism are kissing cousins....Henry Ford was not an advocate of either.

I was wrong, it appears I am the one who should have checked my definitions. While I advocate for neither, I was of the erroneous belief that socialists did not want the government to own the means of production but just control it thru politically correct regulation. What is the name for a political structure where much of the resources and capital are held in private hands but under a tight leash of regulation but these private corporations have great control of the government. While it sounds contradictory it should also sound familiar.

Tim

castalott

03-02-2015, 12:05 AM

I've heard several of those Allison's run. Dowell used them on some pumps. But the most memorable was the guy with one in a pulling tractor. I was at the finish line when he took off. He carried the front wheels all the way to the finish- screaming all the way. He had the biggest grin on his face at the finish line BUT that changed when the engine went "BOOM" and 2 five gallon buckets of parts blew out the bottom. I was 40 feet away when it happened and can still see it in my mind today. I knew that motor was toast the moment it happened.

Oh, in the early 1970's, I had to chance to buy a complete Allison for $100 that ran. I didn't have $100......

Dale

WILCO

03-02-2015, 12:41 AM

My FIL flew behind those beauties in WW2, P-51 pilot and still alive and well.

Any chance of sharing a story or two of his Bill?

castalott

03-02-2015, 06:47 AM

I can give you a true one.

A new p51 with no markings on it arrived at the squadron and the Col. wanted to fly it. He ordered Lt Henson to fly his personal p51 and he would fly the new one. They flew around a while and landed in the part of France that was liberated . The idea was to find some alcohol to drink. The Col landed first in the unmarked plane and the local French, never seeing a hero fighter pilot before, picked him up and carried him on their shoulders singing songs to him. Lt Henson landed and stopped the Col's plane next to the new one. The Col's plane had 14 Swastika's on it when the Col was almost a triple ace. The French, seeing the hero with all the victories, threw the Col down in a mud puddle and picked up Lt Henson to carry this brave warrior around.

The French were carrying around the right guy and threw him down for the wrong reason.

True story from Lt Henson....

castalott

03-02-2015, 06:53 AM

Lt. Henson said the war was almost over...any day it would end. He and a wingman were flying along and they encountered 2 German fighters. Any other day, both sides would have went full throttle and someone would have died. This day Lt Henson 'waggled' his wings in a friendly gesture. The other German fighters did the same and 4 men went home to survive the war. Lt Henson said he would love to meet those guys....

Ballistics in Scotland

03-02-2015, 09:33 AM

There is a story, probably exaggerated at the very least, that in the early stages of development of the Spitfire, RJ Mitchell went to see Mr. Royce. An aeroplane is a lot easier to design around an engine than the other way about, but he didn't have much hope of success. Mr. Royce pulled some rather complete drawings from his cabinet, and said "What do you think of this?" Mitchell said "How did you know I would come looking for this?", and Royce said, somewhere around 1933 probably, "Somebody had to." Unfortunately Royce died when the Spitfire could only have been a very early concept.

The Merlin was a marvelous engine for 1938, and many changes were made in the course of its service life, greatly increasing the power, which was better used by a constant-speed variable-pitch airscrew. There is nothing exaggerated about the effect of g forces on a carbureted engine, which was produced by Miss Shilling's Orifice:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Shilling

In the Battle of Britain the Spitfire and Messerschmitt 109 were very closely matched indeed. But the Spitfire was just that little bit larger and less internally encumbered which made improvements possible throughout the war, while the 109 got left. Late Spitfires had to be adapted to the Rolls-Royce Griffon, a much larger V-12, while later engines, such as the H-24 Napier Sabre of the Typhoon became even larger and more complex.

The Griffon Spitfires were a lot faster, and the whole story of fighter aviation is one of light, manoevrable aircraft being outclassed by faster and heavier ones. But pilots mostly thought it had lost something of the early Spitfires. Clint Eastwood's "Firefox" had thought control, but a Merlin Spitfire came pretty close. I once worked (in a conspicuously unmartial capacity) with the Royal Saudi Air Force, and a good friend of mine had been an aircraft mechanic in the Battle of Britain, and said the Spitfire was a horrible aeroplane to work on, because there wasn't a single-curved surface in it.

To combat myth with dates, Mr. Royce died in April 1933, the same year Supermarine authorized Mitchell to move from an unsuccessful fixed-undercarriage design to what would become the Spitfire. It was also the year Mitchell had a colostomy in August (and designed his personal colostomy bag, highly regarded by the medical profession), and the prototype Merlin was tested in October. It is true that he died of cancer which less hard work would have at least deferred. But it was fourteen months after the maiden flight of the prototype, not the same day as in the movie.

I don't think there has ever been a successful or even halfway-civilized economy in modern times which hasn't been mixed, and partly socialist. We mightn't see much socialism in National Socialism, but traditional Germans certainly did. I've noticed that the people who oppose most strongly the insitutution of a contributory national health service which the individual may never want, are the ones who most support a contributory national war service he might never want either.

GabbyM

03-02-2015, 10:55 AM

By the time we were fighting around Guadalcanal. The New Zealand Air force and perhaps the Aussies. Had a late model P-40 with Allison's Which had enough power to keep up with a F-4U Corsair low level. Granted it takes far less power to move the P-40. This is from pilot stories and they were flying real world land based USMC F4's with poor maintenance and did not have full power. Like the water injection system the USMC didn't have time to remove and replace to work on the engine. So it was left off. Patched up , bent up and worn out planes. Story is from Pappy Boynton's book. One of the pilots thought the P40's were Japs on his tail and tried to out run them. On the deck over water P-40's kept slowly closing and he thought he'd had it. Then he made out who they were. Japan had a fighter with a water cooled engine that silhouetted much like a Warhawk. Plus from long range the NZ circle emblem looked just like a meat ball. ANZAK pilots did a great job in the Pacific. Also pitched in during the Battle of Britton. Which is a bit of history sometimes forgotten by us Yanks. Someone will make a movie about it again to jog memories.

MtGun44

03-02-2015, 12:31 PM

Well, OK Wilco, he has told a few interesting stories.

He has two and a half kills. How do you get half a kill? When you are on the tail of
a German fighter pouring .50s into him and notice that it is suddenly SHADY. Quick glance
upward through the canopy showed the belly of another P-51 about 15 ft away and rapidly
getting closer as the other P-51 slides in behind the same German fighter; the pilot couldn't
see him because he was directly underneath from that pilot's viewpoint! FIL pushed down,
away from the other P-51 who, entirely unaware that he was there, proceeded to slide in
and finish the job. They shared the kill.

I have looked at his log books and there are some missions that ran a bit over 7 hours. He
says that is a long time to sit in that seat and navigate all the way from England to
Romania, get in a fight and then navigate back, wondering if anything you were going to
need in the next three hours has a bullet hole in it. Apparently the rear fuselage fuel
tank caused the center of gravity to be too far rearward for normal stability, but had to
be fully filled for these long missions. He says that they burned that tank down first but
while it was full the airplane was very difficult to fly due to instability.

Most of his buddies that survived the war have died in the last 5-6 years, he is well
into his 90s but still doing pretty well.

He never saw a P-51 after they left the service until a couple years ago when he went to an
airshow. He was happy to see one again, liked it a lot, nothing good to say about P-40s
though.

TXGunNut

03-02-2015, 01:03 PM

leadman

03-02-2015, 02:34 PM

Just watched a program on tv and gave the Merlin credit over the original engine for the P-51 being able to fly with the bombers all the way on the mission due to lower fuel consumption.
Truly amazing what the allies were able to produce for WWII, including the fighting forces.

popper

03-02-2015, 03:06 PM

Only time I've seen allisons run was in unlimited hydro, about the time Chrysler Crew was running dual hemi's (Lake Washington). They ran water injection like the aircraft did but had the 'funny' NOI button that added extra HP. Dad was watching though a T.P. single reflex when one of the boats dipped a sponson and played submarine (Schumaker IIRC). He forgot to pull the trigger when it happened, missed the newspaper shot. Rudder of next boat cut through the allison, like in half. We had pit passes and it was fun wandering about watching the crews get ready for the run. I think he felt guilty as he had pit passes for the 500 which I was not able to attend - boot camp got in the way. He did get tickets to the 500 when Granatelli ran the turbines.

castalott

03-02-2015, 07:07 PM

Someone wanted to put the Merlins on the P38 but not enough engines available. That would have made a truly exceptional plane... We had so many good designs and all of them wonderful at the job they were designed for.

How would you like to be a Japanese pilot? You rise into the sky and you might bump into a P51, An f4f, an F6f, maybe an f8f, an f4u, a p38, or maybe even a Seafire ( the naval version of the Spit). Each of those planes had to be fought differently. The 2 greatest aces flew p38's. But there are a bunch really close with the naval airframes.

Harter66

03-03-2015, 11:23 AM

I wonder what the per-unit cost of those engines was during the war, and what they would cost today?

In 1990 a Rolls Merlin short block was 125,000 dollars plus a core.

robg

03-03-2015, 12:07 PM

hitler was a socialist he was a national socialist = nazi

Harter66

03-03-2015, 12:10 PM

Very interesting engine, in this day and time it is remarkable that one basic engine design was successfully adapted to so many different applications..
And yes, Henry Ford was an odd duck as some folks would say. That's one of the reasons for his success.

The Rolls and Allison engines sound like a new hotrod ad actually.

Quad valves,double over head cams , dual ignition, nitrogen filled ignition cables or direct ignition spark , anti detonation injection, self regulating induction, some even had exhaust driven super chargers over gear driven centrifugal blowers. Pretty cool for 1939s finest.
Another time bit the p51 throttle was rigged with a bit of brass safety wire that prevented the pilot in normal operations from exceeding 75 inches of manifold pressure (2.8 atmospheres or 41 psi + engine consumption ) if the wire was broken the engine was replaced because the blower limit was 125 inches of mercury, just over 61 psi plus 3400 revs x 1760 Cid. kinda makes ya wonder how they kept the main bolts hooked to the aluminum blocks.

For aviation race application they are pulling over 100 inches in the lineup to start the fastest race and around 175 on the course,burning 150 octane leaded fuel and as much as 40 gallons of water as anti detonation injection and auxiliary cooling .

One feature of the P51 that made it a great fighter is that in full armour and fully armed it was a very unstable platform . Patrol pilots that didn't empty the guns often came home with the nose down trim all the forward and holding some nose down to maintain level flight. They were constantly on the trim controls I can imagine that with an aft tank in the airframe that they were very flight intensive .

GabbyM

03-03-2015, 12:30 PM

As for them holding together. They were as solid as any back then but could be blown. Chuck Yeager wrote in his 1st book. How he blew one in a P-39 Air Cobra here in the states. He was diving hell bent for leather on a bomber box formation in practice maneuvers. Engine blew tearing the plane so he had to bail. Broke his back and missed a date with his girl who later became Ms Yeager. Name sake of Glamorous Glennis.

Ballistics in Scotland

03-03-2015, 12:58 PM

Very interesting engine, in this day and time it is remarkable that one basic engine design was successfully adapted to so many different applications..
And yes, Henry Ford was an odd duck as some folks would say. That's one of the reasons for his success.

I've seen the Meteor-engine tanks in the Tank Museum at Bovington Camp, and it makes for a fearfully crowded engine bay. Gasoline fuel is quite a liability too, with people taking shots at you, but those tanks were far from alone in that, at the time. It was also the engine around which Cultivator No. 6, a gigantic trench-digging machine, was originally designed, although Air Force demands produced a change to diesels.

It is easy to scoff at new inventions, and in this case easier than most. Cultivator No.6 would only have worked for a short time, and if surprise was maintained, before the enemy learned to plant the right sort of mines. But nobody knew, before the spring of 1940, that there were other ways of breaking through the stalemate of trench warfare.

Yes, Ford was peculiar, although he got more peculiar as he reached a position of not having to impress anybody. Who is to say how any of us would respond to such temptation? A psychiatrist on someone else's payroll might say he was quite seriously cracked. To be fair, he probably brought benefits to everybody - customers, workers, the country, underdeveloped rural areas. It is unfair to compare him with the great dictators, as some do. Even most of the Bolsheviki intended everybody to come round to seeing the benefits of their system, after being killed a little first. Only Hitler planned for a fair proportion of the population not to benefit under any circumstances.

Don Purcell

03-03-2015, 11:22 PM

The marriage of the Merlin and the P-51 was a match like no other. One aspect that is overlooked is the design of the belly scoop of the P-51. Engineers at North American spent a lot of time adjusting the position of the intake for the best flow thru the radiator and the design of the exit ductwork. When they were finished it was determined that the heated and expanding air coming out the rear of the radiator and the design of the ductwork caused a sort of propulsion effect that when the Mustang was using full power that the jet effect was worth almost an extra 200 horsepower.

smokeywolf

03-03-2015, 11:48 PM

Harter66

03-04-2015, 12:21 AM

There was a super modified P51 called the Red Baron. It was Race number 5 . It was fitted with counter rotation propellers. It may still hold a closed course speed record a little over 512 mph .

You are.correct about the prop tips going super sonic first ,the effect being that that portion of the propeller blade effectively cavitates and stops making thrust.

While there was some venturi and heat exchange thrust created by the scoop design the exhaust side was only a narrow slit in cruise at altitude . Keeping in mind that it doesn't take a lot of air over a radiator when you have a temperature difference of 130-200 degrees between the engine coolant and air temperature. The racers removed the scoops in favor of hauling a cold reservoir because the added weight was less drag load than the slip stream drag of the scoop. If they were gaining 200 HP worth of thrust they would have figured out how to remove the drag while keeping the exhaust thrust.

12 years at Reno in the pits I learned a little here and there.

fast ronnie

03-04-2015, 02:01 AM

Artful

03-04-2015, 02:14 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RB51_Red_Baron
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/RB-51_in_the_Reno_Pits.jpg/600px-RB-51_in_the_Reno_Pits.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc6bhjys0g4

Harter66

03-04-2015, 09:26 AM

94 was my last season. I crewed Lickity Split ,Sheba, Miss Iris and Undecided.
I was there when Rare Bear buried 3 course records ,I still get goose bumps. 456 was amazing but 496 just ....... I can't describe the sensation. I always was a Bear fan except for the short life of the Super Corsair . Don't crop the wings if they plan on the big Pratt . That was the down fall of the Super Corsair, they couldn't hold full power in the turns ,it wanted to roll right.

Artful

03-04-2015, 06:58 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ7phAHX4VY

Loudenboomer

03-05-2015, 12:33 AM

Thanks for tribute to Bob Odegaard. All around good guy.

Ballistics in Scotland

03-05-2015, 12:55 PM

The Rolls and Allison engines sound like a new hotrod ad actually.

Quad valves,double over head cams , dual ignition, nitrogen filled ignition cables or direct ignition spark , anti detonation injection, self regulating induction, some even had exhaust driven super chargers over gear driven centrifugal blowers. Pretty cool for 1939s finest.
Another time bit the p51 throttle was rigged with a bit of brass safety wire that prevented the pilot in normal operations from exceeding 75 inches of manifold pressure (2.8 atmospheres or 41 psi + engine consumption ) if the wire was broken the engine was replaced because the blower limit was 125 inches of mercury, just over 61 psi plus 3400 revs x 1760 Cid. kinda makes ya wonder how they kept the main bolts hooked to the aluminum blocks.

For aviation race application they are pulling over 100 inches in the lineup to start the fastest race and around 175 on the course,burning 150 octane leaded fuel and as much as 40 gallons of water as anti detonation injection and auxiliary cooling .

One feature of the P51 that made it a great fighter is that in full armour and fully armed it was a very unstable platform . Patrol pilots that didn't empty the guns often came home with the nose down trim all the forward and holding some nose down to maintain level flight. They were constantly on the trim controls I can imagine that with an aft tank in the airframe that they were very flight intensive .

Even those service P51s had a phenomenal level of boost, which surely depended on the use of 150 octane fuel. Battle of Britain Spitfires had 12psi authorized only as a five-minute emergency measure, and its use had to be reported afterwards by the pilot, for checking and possible overhaul of the engines. Later it rose only to (I quote from memory) about double that, under the same conditions, and I believe only some number in the thirties was tested. A supercharging system which was actually dangerous to puncture might do in air races, but not in combat.

Most of the great increase in power from the Merlin during its life was due to increased supercharging, rather than the parts that have to stand up to excessive use of supercharging. Strategic bomber escort duty doesn't happen from standby, any minute of any day, and the USAAF, late in the war, probably had far better facilities to service or change engines than the RAF during the Battle. Even in the late 70s (which was the last time I knew about it) the American system was to exchange engines or other units which the Royal Air Force would have repaired locally.

Mitchell learned to be a good aluminium man on biplane flying-boats. There is a photograph of the Supermarine Stranraer drawn up on the beach in Stranraer, with my grandparents' front door in the background, and it doesn't look modern enough for the mid-30s. But that was long after someone said "Suppose we race them?", and he had produced a single-purpose family of Schneider Trophy seaplanes. He came from just the reverse of those air-race P51s, getting more speed than all but the late Spitfires from seaplanes with lesser engines, and about as much frontal area in each float as the fuselage. The snag with those aerial concept cars "So why not build a Spitfire quickly?") was the very limited life and maintenance requirements of those engines. With fuel in the floats and the racing done at low altitude, supercharging was less critical and the wings could be made very thin. The Schneider seaplanes also cut drag by having the coolant pass between double skins on the wings and floats, an expedient which would have made one bullet hole disastrous for a fighter.

I doubt if any aeroplane can be made more manoeuvrable by the mere fact of being heavier, unless you use the weight to provide something useful. That rear tank in the P51 would surely have reduced maneouvrability, but the prime role of an air to air fighter had mutated from interception to bomber escort, in which they would deplete whichever tank was most advantageous, before contact with the enemy was likely. Horses for courses.

I also doubt if radiator heat could produce anything like the jet effect claimed for it. There may be some confusion here, as I believe late highly supercharged piston engines received quite a bit of jet effect from the exhaust. It was a step in the direction of the turboprop.

I remember the press reports in the 1960s when two British businessmen (not a team, but one starting where the other perhaps wisely left off) used a Meteor to power a custom car. As the Merlin was a British icon by then, the press naturally called the engine a Merlin. It wasn't called "The Beast" for nothing, and he was made to remove the Rolls-Royce logo and Spirit of Ecstasy mascot when they sued. It seems a trifle mean-spirited, when nobody was likely to suspect them of complicity in anything so terrifying. They did not have Bonneville in mind, but places with corners.

Another interesting snippet of information was that in a confrontation with Indonesia in the 1960s the Indonesians had single-seat piston engine fighters, P51s I believe. So the British did some combat testing with Spitfires and the English Electric Lightning, which was state of the art then, and at least fast a couple of decades later. They found that the Spitfire was best approached from below. Even with such a great advantage, more conventional fighter attacks weren't safe.

Harter66

03-05-2015, 02:52 PM

The super chargers were more common in the high altitude bomber than the fighter being exhaust driven and taking a long time to spool up or down they were well suited to the stable nearly static power required at high altitude. The thumb rule is 3% per 1000 for power loss basically at 25,000 ft a piston carbureted engine won't run due to air starvation . Aviation cheats using ram air at 200 mph you gain ,assuming intake to consumption area rates are right an atmosphere so at 30,000 ft the 1000 HP 3350 Cid makes 500 HP so we add a 10-1 blower ratio and it comes up to 750 and the cylinders and carb think they are at 12,000 ft . With the exhaust driven super chargers added now the engine has its sea level 1000 HP back.

Flight stability is hard to explain if you have never had a hand on the yoke.
A very stable platform is like a big road car it soaks up the bumps and even at high speed is smooth and responds well to trim and fixed power settings it also is less load shift ,IE fuel consumption,and while it is capable of quick changes in direction it prefers "40 acres". An unstable platform requires constant attention to trim throttle adjustments, especially if it is in any sort of formation kind of like driving a full blown rally/SCCA car that carves every turn and you feel every Crack and pebble in the road . The P51 was like the latter as little as a 5 gallon change in fuel would have a pilot on escort adjusting the trim that Rolls sucks up around 30gal/hr in a 200 mph cruise with the bombers feeding from a tank 5ft behind the lift center, the stick was probably getting nose heavy every 7-10 minutes . The pilot rolls some nose up an gets a comfortable stick loading in his palm and 5 min later it's out of the neutral loading and pushing against his fingers,retrim. All the while the indicated air speed has fallen off to 192 and climbed back to 205. If he was the outside man under the bombers there's a good chance that he feels like he's running down a farm road on a dry day in and out of the air wakes of the bombers and his own flight plus throttle changes and more trim changes to stay in formation . Get into combat mono amono, that all changes he made a tank switch to the full aux tanks at lift center the trim is forgotten at a neutral point and the throttle is up around 90% the platform can be in a 45* bank and or dive or climb at 400 mph and still be pushed into or out of yaw for shooting windage and then flipped into a reversed position in just a hair under a second. They also had the ability to slam on the breaks in a cross controlled maneuver forcing the other guy to break his line and then accelerate back to fire again ,maybe. Because of the heavy high power design they could also out dive an enemy to escape. Late in the war there is a story of a P51 pilot being out matched and rolling into the break away escape dive only to look out his side and see the Me109 pilot smiling back and diving away into a breaking climb and disengagement. By then the Me 109 was sporting over 1900 HP in an 5000 lb combat ready airframe while the P51D was running just 2100 in combat read airframe close to 8000 lbs (Corsairs were where I knew them front to back pardon errors numbers are approximate and of good ratio).

On the race course the Merlin is pulling closer to 3500 HP some even more.

There is an F8F Bearcat "Rare Bear" that runs the 4350 Pratt and Whitney with a 2 stage blower . The yrs that they had great sponsors they built an engine that produced a baseline of 3400 HP and a step to a call at ed 4200 when the high altitude blower stage was engaged. This design allowed the war birds to launch from a carrier at maximum throttle and climb to 10,000 ft with only about a 10% power loss and carry sea level proformace to 25,000 ft and get there in 18 min. Rare Bear also had a nitrous plate that boosted it to some estimated 4600hp . There was a delay built into the switching that turned on cooling spray bars in the cowling the a 7psi open flow fuel line with 2 1/4 inch lines into the intake below the carb before the NOS hit it . It could run for 7 seconds per shot as long as the shots were more than 45 seconds apart. Before the NOS system he set a course win record at 456 and change with a cleaned up much modified P51 called Strega at 43? in 2nd. The next year Strega finished 2nd at 24? and RB set a 458 in qualifing 463 in heat 1 , 47? In the 2nd heat race and 496 for the big money.

The Snider cup racers as sea planes were actually faster than their land based sisters the floats actually carried there own weight and we're rigged to carry in high load (thus lower drag) the wings could then be flattened to carry their load at a higher loading and lower drag as well.

I believe that the "golden age" of racing and design development was probably from about 1925 to 1938 what was learned in those yr has been applied over and over in design aerodynamics and engines ,electronics have only allowed the outer or upper limits to ride the razors edge. I imagine dozens of blown engines could have been saved by digital management . Who turns to see what came around the corner when it's a 14' 400 HP Mustang? Just try to look away from a 500 horse 68 Daytona Road Runner , I dare ya.

Artful

03-05-2015, 05:32 PM

The Beast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHp58Ss5GvM

Harter66

03-05-2015, 06:27 PM

http://youtu.be/SIj2GVfua84

Harter66

03-05-2015, 06:37 PM

http://youtu.be/6SRhOQ7_Yfc

Rare Bear.

castalott

03-05-2015, 06:58 PM

I believe it was rumored that the later configurations of the P-51 reached the sound barrier in power dives. Not sure if that's possible, as it is said that the tip of the propeller is likely to hit the sound barrier before the rest of the aircraft.

the p38 was so clean it could hit the sound barrier in a dive...The latest models had dive brakes for just such an emergency as the controls locked up in a fast dive. That's what I've read anyway....

Harter66

03-05-2015, 07:44 PM

It actually became a victim of control reversal . The non technical description is that at transition speeds the normal down thrust tail plane lift would become up thrust so to get out of the dive ,remember that in the dive the controls are neutral the pilot had to actually push forward (down )to raise the nose . Weird things happen to air planes at transsonic speeds. Even the Jets of today have a tiny window of non responsive controls when they go to or from super sonic speeds. Something to do with shock waves.

Loudenboomer

03-05-2015, 09:18 PM

Merlin = Music! Gotta love that sound! Especially the ones with the wick turned way up. Sense the hey day of piston aircraft getting a good fuel has been a problem unless on a serious race budget. Pump 130 octane just is not available like it was in years gone by. My first job in the Air Force was an engine mech. on a C-131. Twin Prat R 2800's. We flew that until the mid 80's. The only fuel available to us was 100 octane LL. With out Alcohol water injection we would detonate the engines and could not run enough manifold pressure to get the old girl off the ground. Injecting about 55 gal of fluid on take off and initial climb out and we were golden.

Harter66

03-05-2015, 09:58 PM

Boomer ,
I don't suppose you still know the fuel grade color poem ? Red,blue,green ,purple for 80,100,130 ,150..... run boys.....

Bad Water Bill

03-05-2015, 10:06 PM

That "blue goose" worked great for everyones Zippo lighters.[smilie=s:

Loudenboomer

03-06-2015, 12:24 AM

66 I forgot all about the fuel song code until you mentioned it. I'll never forget counting the prop blades go by then sparking up 2800 cubic inches at a time. If that don't make a farm kid that's nuts about flying grin nothing will.:)

Ballistics in Scotland

03-06-2015, 05:48 AM

I can see you have a great deal of first-hand knowledge that I don't, and yet positioning of weight away from the centre of mass of anything can't help but reduce its ability to turn. It is like the difference between a best grade British shotgun and an imported copy of very similar weight and similarly located point of balance. Suspend both of them by threads, force them out of the horizontal, and the former will return to horizontal faster and after fewer oscillations. It even works with mine and a very good Spanish double, although mine is nineteenth century, and only George Gibbs's third quality sidelock. The difference is in moment of inertia.

Supercharging is about as old as internal combustion, and turbocharging has been used in aircraft since WW1. Undoubtedly turbo lag is what made it very useful for bombers, but unacceptable for fighters. Bell tried it with the Airacobra (incidentally an ingenious solution to the moment of inertia problem), and found themselves with an aircraft unsuitable for high altitude combat.

There is an interesting benefit of the turbocharger. Being linked to the engine only by a column of compressed gases, generating that boost imposes very little stress, and the engine is stressed only by the increased power it produces. With the mechanical supercharger quite a bit of power must be taken from the engine to drive the thing. This produces a considerably higher increase in power, so your net profit is the difference between them. The stress imposed on the engine, however, is the sum of the two.

Funny things certainly happened to the controls of the fastest piston-engine fighters in power dives, but I think that was at least partly due to flexure, and actually coming even close to sonic velocity couldn't happen. The problem of propeller tips approaching sonic velocity is much more pronounced, and a serious danger, with helicopter otors. For on one side the airspeed of the rotor blade is the difference between rotational velocity and the aircraft's airspeed, and on the other side it is the sum of the two, with each blade alternating rapidly between them.

Perhaps the biggest snag with the Griffon-engined Spitfires (and the Spiteful, which was little if any more different that the late Spitfires) was fitting enough airscrew to use the power. Even slight increases in undercarriage height still required five blades. I don't think any Spitfire used contra-rotating propellers, although the naval Seafire did. They were used in the Martin-Baker MB5, though, and this was a very interesting aircraft. It incorporated many lessons which had been learned, offering much improved visibility and a speed of 460mph as a prototype. It had the P51's under-fuselage radiator, and was exceptionally easy to repair.

Test-pilots' reports were extremely good, and it could have seen wartime service, but I don't think it was any mystery, as Martin-Baker's own website says, why it wasn't adopted by the RAF. They had done some extremely good design work, including a rear-engine monoplane in 1934, and Britain's first eight-gun fighter, but they had never brought an aircraft into production. I believe it was thought that jets were the coming thing, and meanwhile conversion to high production of a recently-established small company was a lot riskier than asking Supermarine to improve the Spitfire.

http://www.martin-baker.com/about/mb1-mb5

Artful

03-06-2015, 01:23 PM

That MB-5 is a good looking plane!
http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/6492/samaletur6.jpg
http://www.hyperscale.com/images/mb5artworkab_1.jpg
http://www.starshipmodeler.com/real/tm_Britex_02.jpg
http://www.airplanesandrockets.com/airplanes/images/martin-maker-mb5-plans-may-1971-aam-1200x736.jpg
http://www.albentley-drawings.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/MB-5.jpg
http://www.airteamimages.com/pics/161/161516_big.jpg
http://www.mycity-military.com/imgs2/153591_332714963_2.jpg.jpg
http://www.mycity-military.com/imgs2/153591_332714963_2.jpg.jpg
http://aroundpattern.sierrawebsolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/Martin_Baker_1.jpg
http://www.landings.com/GA/images/pacflyer/nov4-2001/Nn-44-Martin-Baker-j.gif
John Marlin reconstructed his own MB5
http://johnmarlinsmb5replica.mysite.com/index_1.html

A Sad Ending to the MB5

Although the MB5 did little flying after this, the engineless airframe was used for training purposes by the Air Ministry Servicing Development Unit at RAF Wattisham, Suffolk, from 1948-49. The aircraft subsequently served as a ground target, the battered remains ending up at RAF Bircham Newton, Norfolk, in 1963. It was then burnt; an ignominious fate for an aircraft that represented the acme of piston-engined fighter development.

http://johnmarlinsmb5replica.mysite.com/photo3.html

Artful

03-06-2015, 01:50 PM

Funny things certainly happened to the controls of the fastest piston-engine fighters in power dives, but I think that was at least partly due to flexure, and actually coming even close to sonic velocity couldn't happen. The problem of propeller tips approaching sonic velocity is much more pronounced, and a serious danger, with helicopter otors. For on one side the airspeed of the rotor blade is the difference between rotational velocity and the aircraft's airspeed, and on the other side it is the sum of the two, with each blade alternating rapidly between them.

compressibility
http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/world-war-ii-history/videos/compressibility-pilots-worst-nightmare

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_flight
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6d/Transonic_flow_patterns.svg/440px-Transonic_flow_patterns.svg.png
Transonic flow patterns on an airfoil showing the formation of shock waves at different Mach numbers (M) in high-speed flight.

Dale in Louisiana

03-06-2015, 06:30 PM

the p38 was so clean it could hit the sound barrier in a dive...The latest models had dive brakes for just such an emergency as the controls locked up in a fast dive. That's what I've read anyway....
Airflow on parts of the airframe of several WW II planes could achieve compressibility in a dive. The planes themselves didn't. The difference is moot because if the shockwaves masked control surfaces, control was lost.

dale in Louisiana

Artful

03-06-2015, 08:23 PM

I was told at air/space museum some probably did reach/exceed the speed of sound while diving away from enemy plane on their tail - and very likely they broke apart at that point, lots of pilots warned about diving away from enemy aircraft too fast. It was compressibility that locked the controls and I guess G forces that kept guys from being able to bail out. Also sad that when the big bombers started spinning the forces pinned the crew inside the aircraft so they couldn't get out.

Ballistics in Scotland

03-06-2015, 10:11 PM

That is an excellent explanation of compressibility, for which much thanks, and also for those pictures of the replica MB5. One of them shows engine accessibility which could hardly be bettered, and the Rolls-Royce magazine link tells us the frame members could all be replaced individually. Despite the benefits of monocoque construction, that must be considered an improvement.

The magazine, which is no doubt the authoritative version, contradicts what I had believed, by saying it was continuing design work by Martin which delayed completion of the aircraft. I had heard elsewhere that it could have been ready much sooner if the Ministry had wished. Of course it is hard to say which came first, the chicken or the egg.

What I find most interesting is the grooved strip of presumably thicker metal in the cowling, behind the exhaust stubs, which didn't exist in Merlin Spitfires or the P51. It might just have been because the exhaust is set a little more deeply to reduce drag, or is hotter than most. But it may also have been designed to best direct the small amount of forward thrust which was obtained.

I suppose I have an ambivalent attitude to anyone being able to spend what an MB5 replica must have cost. But I suppose he could have invested it in derivatives. Andrew Carnegie said that anybody who dies rich dies disgraced, and the creator of something like this is a patron of the arts, employing good people on what they most want to do. I have this image, possibly perverse, of Leonardo da Vinci the engineer cursing the need to earn a living painting that woman with the silly smirk.

MtGun44

03-07-2015, 12:49 AM

fast ronnie

03-07-2015, 03:07 AM

Many Griffon Spits used counter-rotating props. I have seen several of them.

http://ts1.mm.bing.net/th?id=HN.608015271923093087&w=108&h=105&c=7&rs=1&qlt=90&pid=3.1&rm=2 (http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=spitfire+contra+rotating+props&id=52C105CB80DF66FD52C1F0ADF3A0DF104FB94E6C&FORM=IQFRBA) http://ts1.mm.bing.net/th?id=HN.608008597543915449&w=113&h=105&c=7&rs=1&qlt=90&pid=3.1&rm=2 (http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=spitfire+contra+rotating+props&id=D0AA3E9BBF17D800DAFCFB4C84A4BC3BEA1A0BCA&FORM=IQFRBA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ8BUNJYtOo

"Bell tried it with the Airacobra (incidentally an ingenious solution to the moment of inertia problem), and
found themselves with an aircraft unsuitable for high altitude combat."

Not sure exactly what you mean. Sounds like you are saying that the P-39 had a turbocharger, which it did not,
other than an early prototype. The production P-39s used Allison engines with single speed-single stage superchargers and
that is why they were no good at altitude, like all Allisons other than the Lockheed P-38 which had external turbochargers.
The Army told GM not to develop a two speed, two stage, intercooled version of the Allison before the war,
and by the time they understood the mistake, it was easier to put the Merlin into production by Packard
rather than develop the Allison 2 spd,2 stg system.

The reason for the mid-engine design was not for inertia. It was because they installed a 37 mm cannon thru the driveshaft and was fired through the center of the propeller. The driveshaft had a gearbox that dropped it down and ran between the pilot's legs. It also did not have a top canopy, rather had a door to get in and out of. I'm told that it was virtual suicide to try to bail from one as the pilot would end up getting hit by the elevator. Not many of them were used by the U.S. Most were sent to Russia as part of the lend-lease program. Many never made it to Russia, as many of the supply ships were sunk on the northern route. Many of the planes sent to Russia were flown from Alaska and the Aleutians to Siberia and then to where they were to be used. There were many ladies who flew the missions to get the planes where they were going. The first time I saw an Aircobra, I couldn't figure out why there were exhaust burns on the middle of the fuselage. My feeling is that had a decent engine like the Merlin or Packard had been installed in the aircobra, it would have been a much better plane as per the 51 when they figured out to put in the Merlin. Until the Merlin was installed, the 51 was mediocre at best. Enter the Merlin, and it made the Mustang. There was only one thing the Mustang couldn't do that the 47 could. With the big radial and all that frontal area, they could come up behind, back off, and keep from over-running their target. Most people don't realize that the very last model of the 47 was actually a little faster than the 51. Not much, but a little. There was one fighter group that was offered the 51, but they turned it down and stayed with the 47. Interesting some of the little things most don't hear about. Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction.
As a side note, Supercorsair race number 57 is being repaired and put back in flying condition in northern California.

Ballistics in Scotland

03-07-2015, 08:56 AM

Many Griffon Spits used counter-rotating props. I have seen several of them.

http://ts1.mm.bing.net/th?id=HN.608015271923093087&w=108&h=105&c=7&rs=1&qlt=90&pid=3.1&rm=2 (http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=spitfire+contra+rotating+props&id=52C105CB80DF66FD52C1F0ADF3A0DF104FB94E6C&FORM=IQFRBA) http://ts1.mm.bing.net/th?id=HN.608008597543915449&w=113&h=105&c=7&rs=1&qlt=90&pid=3.1&rm=2 (http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=spitfire+contra+rotating+props&id=D0AA3E9BBF17D800DAFCFB4C84A4BC3BEA1A0BCA&FORM=IQFRBA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ8BUNJYtOo

"Bell tried it with the Airacobra (incidentally an ingenious solution to the moment of inertia problem), and
found themselves with an aircraft unsuitable for high altitude combat."

Not sure exactly what you mean. Sounds like you are saying that the P-39 had a turbocharger, which it did not,
other than an early prototype. The production P-39s used Allison engines with single speed-single stage superchargers and
that is why they were no good at altitude, like all Allisons other than the Lockheed P-38 which had external turbochargers.
The Army told GM not to develop a two speed, two stage, intercooled version of the Allison before the war,
and by the time they understood the mistake, it was easier to put the Merlin into production by Packard
rather than develop the Allison 2 spd,2 stg system.

Not that many. My understanding was that only a prototype MkXIV Spitfire was tested with a contra-rotating propeller. I could well be wrong, and it is possible that some MkXIXs were so fitted, since it proved worthwhile with the Seafire, but not many, and most likely not in wartime service. Those pictures are available online, and show a MkXIX at the Chino Air Show, which has been modified by the fitting of an Avro Shackleton engine and propeller unit. So far as I know all contra-rotating Seafires, and certainly the Shackleton, were post-war.

http://www.richard-seaman.com/Aircraft/AirShows/Chino2004/Sampler/

I am aware that the Airacobra was designed and had the rear engine to accommodate that cannon, and that if the engine position produced improved manoeuvrability (other things being equal, which they weren't), it would be incidental. It was designed for the turbocharger, and the protype so equipped had dubious performance at altitude. I believe the single-stage mechanical supercharger was substituted to reach something like the intended speed, but in so doing made the altitude performance more than dubious. The British also found its speed didn't come up to specification.

I think it is a bit of a myth, though, that it was outclassed as an air to air fighter. It never had a chance of being the high altitude interceptor of bombers which was originally intended. But it was well liked and successful with the Russians. A myth possibly engendered by that enormous gun was that the Russians used it as a tank-buster. They didn't. I believe they were supplied only with HE shells, not armour-piercing, and that probably meant with an air-pressure sensitive fuse which would explode on contacting thin aluminium or even canvas. Their Airacobras were most valuable against Stukas and larger bombers, but weren't hopelessly outclassed by German fighters.

Artful

03-07-2015, 12:15 PM

the 37mm AP rounds were only good to penetrate 1" of armor so by the time the Airacobra came around most of the tanks were protected with more than an Inch of armor - would have been pointless to shoot at them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf9mfAnkUxE

http://lend-lease.airforce.ru/english/articles/sheppard/p39/P39l.jpg
http://lend-lease.airforce.ru/english/articles/sheppard/p39/

Discovery

This amazing Bell P39 was located at the bottom of Lake Mart-Yavr within the Russian Arctic Circle in the summer of 2004. As with other recoveries over the years, it was discovered by a fisherman who saw the silt covered outline through the crystal clear water.

The P39 sat on the bottom of a shallow lake at a depth of 5m, covered and buried up to the top of the propeller spinner in fine silt. Covered in silt, no markings were initially visible but after a little brushing, a red star appeared together with a yellow serial on the fin and rudder. With the serial now known, a search through the archives showed the pilot had disappeared on a transfer flight in November 1944.

Taking advantage of the good weather, the recovery team used air bags, tripod frames and a truck winch to bring the P39 to the shore. It caused concern that when the P39 emerged both the cockpit doors were still closed. Usually, if it was a water landing, one or both would have been jettisoned allowing for a quick exit. If the lake had been frozen, the team would still have expected one door to be open following any force landing.

The reason soon became apparent; for some unknown reason, the pilot had not exited the P39 and his remains were located in the cockpit. Missing for 60 years, the pilot was buried on 6 October 2004 with full military honours at the Glory Valley Memorial, near the Litza Valley, NW of Murmansk.

The P39 was remarkably complete, only missing the starboard inboard leading edge. As is always the case with magnesium-based components, the wheel hubs and engine cam covers to the engine had dissolved over the years and disappeared.

An interesting discovery was that the wing 0.5in machine guns had been removed. This in itself was not unusual, but in the area for the ammunition trays the team discovered six cans of American stew and spare lengths of ammunition. The 11 1/2 oz food cans contained cooked pork, lard, and onions with spices and had been packaged by Beerfoot Farms Company, Southboro. Massachusetts. USA. Not all lend-lease supplies were hardware!

The main fuselage weaponry was in place including the Colt-Browning M4 37mm cannon that fired through the spinner with 30 rounds of ammunition. The two 0.5inch heavy machine guns were located over the cannon and fired through the propeller and each had 200 rounds of ammunition as well.

The most amazing discovery was in the document case on the starboard door. The team located the maintenance record book for this P39. Although a few pages had perished, the majority was still legible. Nearly all of the Russian information that follows concerning flight hours/dates, servicing and pilots’ names come from this unique document.

The P39 was easily disassembled before being transported to Moscow where it received its export licence. It was then transported to Jim Pearce’s facility in West Sussex where it is currently being cleaned up and inspected. This amazing and historic P39 is currently for sale.

Artful

03-07-2015, 12:24 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i__qnnMFPSY
Uploaded on Jun 7, 2011
Built in Buffalo, NY, this P39 crashed some 60 years ago in a lake in Russia. This was shot in 2009 as she's being loaded onto a lorry in the UK to be taken to a museum that happens to be in the same building she was original built in.

Ballistics in Scotland

03-07-2015, 03:41 PM

Those are spectacular pictures, and a fascinating restoration project. The RAF Museum at Hendon has part of aa Halifax recovered from a Norwegian lake, but it is in much worse condition, and is being kept pretty much as found.

That cannon looks more like 20mm. in the picture, and I know some (I think a minority) of those sent to the Soviet Union were so armed. I wonder if the wreck showed firm evidence that the wing machine-guns had been present, and removed? For some were supplied that way, and later the Russians, perhaps placing more trust in guns which didn't have to be synchronized for a specific distance, sometimes removed the wing guns. The food and ammunition suggest that aircraft might have been dispersed on small fields without ground transport, which would probably have made a lot of sense in that sort of war. Dying with his service records in order but his stew uneaten makes him seem pretty much like the rest of us.

The tanks that mattered, by that time, had a lot more than an inch of armour where they were exposed to direct fire land weapons, most notably anti-tank guns and those of other tanks. But weight is an important constraint, and they are seldom anywhere near as heavily armoured on the horizontal surfaces. The Germans made out pretty well against armour with 20 and 37mm guns on specialized anti-armour Stukas.

leebuilder

03-07-2015, 03:41 PM

How about the "wooden wonder". Two melins are better than one.
133138

Ballistics in Scotland

03-07-2015, 03:50 PM

"It makes me furious when I see the Mosquito. I turn green and yellow with envy. The British, who can afford aluminium better than we can, knock together a beautiful wooden aircraft that every piano factory over there is building, and they give it a speed which they have now increased yet again. What do you make of that? There is nothing the British do not have. They have the geniuses and we have the nincompoops. After the war is over I'm going to buy a British radio set - then at least I'll own something that has always worked."

Hermann Goering

leebuilder

03-07-2015, 04:56 PM

Love it.
Just one of those designs that went very well.
633 Squadren, good movie.
Dad was armored corps he loved the Centurian with the melin engines, "mexican overdrive"
Met a guy that served on PT boats "merlins were nice, Napiers were wild"

GabbyM

03-07-2015, 05:18 PM

MtGun44

03-07-2015, 05:23 PM

37mm on top would take out most tank's engines. Saw several P39s in Russian aviation museums, plus a B25.

Artful

03-07-2015, 05:25 PM

Airacorbra cannon the M4 used 37x145mmR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/37x145mmR_M4)
same as used on USN PT boat (deck gun) http://www.usmilitariaforum.com/uploads//monthly_01_2010/post-1885-1262803498.jpg
the projectile weighs 1.34 lb (608 g) at prescribed muzzle velocity of 2,000 ft/s (610 m/s).

Stuka Cannon was the BK37 and used much more powerful 37x263B mm
http://milpas.cc/rifles/ZFiles/Misc/Cartridge%20Collection/37-40a.jpg
Muzzle velocity: 1,170 to 780 m/s (3,836 to 2,557 ft/s)
Projectile weight: (Tungsten hard core) APCR 380 g, HE 640 g, AT 685 g

Artful

03-08-2015, 10:21 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1mh99ZLXcw

Artful

03-08-2015, 10:24 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdfO657zHNY

Ballistics in Scotland

03-08-2015, 12:46 PM

37mm cannon on the P39 didn't run through the drive shaft. It's barrel ran through the upper bearing in a gear box that dropped down to receive the drive shaft. Which ran right under the pilots seat. Plane also had 50 caliber synchronized guns above the cannon in the nose plus wing mounted .30 calibers. 50's, 30's and 37mm cannon. Awesome firepower the Russians loved for taking down German bombers. To this day Russia flies a 37mm gun on it's newest fighters.

Allison engines ran much better than the Rolls Royce engines. Merlin's were simply larger displacement and were developed further. We and the Canadians already had RR Merlin's in production before the US entered WWII.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bell_P-39_Airacobra_in_flight_firing_all_weapons_at_night .jpg#mediaviewer/File:Bell_P-39_Airacobra_in_flight_firing_all_weapons_at_night .jpg

Indeed it does, and by far the best way of doing it. You do not want to have a propeller-synchronization failure with one of those things. It is fascinating how many innovations mentioned here originated, possibly in less practical form, in WW1 or even earlier. Gottlieb Daimler, for example, patented forced induction long before anybody knew if the internal combustion engine was going to catch on, and the French had turbocharged aircraft in WW1.

George Guynemer and René Fonck both flew Spads with a short, low-velocity 37mm. cannon fitted in just the same way as the Airacobra's. I have heard unconfirmed reports that Guynemer originated it, but Fonck is reputed to have shot down a considerable of aircraft with it I believe it was the gun used as an infantry weapon, and sometimes a very effective one, although the mortar was surely better, and especially so in the trenches.

I know the Spad's version was hand-loaded, and it was probably the version which someone must surely have called quarter-automatic, for it automatically ejected the fired case, and was then loaded by hand. It was probably as fast firing as the weight-carrying capacity of a WW1 fighter made advisable anyway, but it would be nice to have nothing else to do at the time. I have a vague memory that I have seen a photo of one in the front gunner's cockpit of a very early pusher biplane, which seems like the most practical way to use the thing, but nobody gets famous in one of those.

The Airacobra's drive shaft is variously reported as running under the floor and between the pilot's legs. I don't know which, but the former, or at most between his feet, sounds the more plausible. The rear-engine MB1 was a light civilian aircraft, in which the shaft ran quite high up, between the side-by-side pilot and passenger. Even lightplanes crash sometimes, and two's company in that situation.

Echo

03-08-2015, 01:53 PM

A couple of corrections - first, Rare Bear has a Wright 3350, not a Pratt 4360. I talked to the mechanic, who said that the owner had asked about converting to the turbo-compound 3350 that uses the exhaust gasses to 3 power turbines, that return that power to the crankshaft via a gear reduction and fluid coupling. Each turbine returns 500 hp to the crankshaft at full throttle, at no cost other than weight for the additional machinery. The mechanic demurred, saying "We've got 550 cubic inches on the 2800's and that TC engine is 10" longer, meaning we would have to add a couple hundred pounds to the tail area for balance". The TC 3350 turned out as much power as the 4360, and weighed less. Fairchild C-119's had both, 3350' & 4360's. I imagine performance was about the same, but I would like to hear from someone who had experience in both airplanes.
Seecondly, the -51 feature that allowed them to accompany bombers deep into German-held territory was not the Merlin, but the low-drag laminar-flow wing design. That reduced the drag to the extent that they got better mileage, and range, than the Spitfires and Thunderbolts.

Ballistics in Scotland

03-08-2015, 02:22 PM

I'm not familiar with the machinery. You mean direct back to the crankshaft, rather than by driving turbocharged induction? That is a step in the direction of the turboprop. I doubt if either is completely at no cost, though, as it would impose backpressure on the exhaust. But that is surely less, and a lot harder to predict the effect, than the power takeoff to get the same benefit from a mechanical supercharger.

fecmech

03-08-2015, 03:32 PM

This explains it.
http://aviation-history.com/engines/r3350.htm

The PRT was an exhaust turbine drive mechanical device that was coupled directly to the engine crankshaft. Three PRTs were inserted into the exhaust piping of each group of six cylinders and were geared to the engine crankshaft by fluid couplings. PRTs recovered about 20 percent of the exhaust energy equaling about 550 horsepower at take-off power and 240 horsepower at cruise settings over a similar non-turbo-compounded R-3350. Operation of the PRTs is fully automatic the increased power was achieved with a weight penalty of about 500 pounds.
(http://aviation-history.com/engines/r3350.htm)

133359

Artful

03-08-2015, 09:44 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONk_ozpaXGQ

Artful

03-08-2015, 09:46 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2OMX0i3CO4

MtGun44

03-09-2015, 12:12 PM

There is a cutaway turbo-compound Wright at the museum here for the Save-A-Connie. That
was the ultimate development of the piston engine. They had three turbines arranged at
120 degrees around the circle, angled inward and their shafts drove fluid couplings to allow
speed mismatches as they needed and vibration decoupling and into a gearbox delivering the
horsepower directly to the crankshaft, rather than driving a compressor like a turbocharger does.
The engines had a normal mechanical supercharger stage, like essentially all large round engines did.

The combustion and primary expansion of the hot gasses was in the pistons, but the secondary
expansion was in the turbines, so half a step towards a turbine engine. The complexity was huge
though and they were expensive to run. VERY fuel efficient, though, which was quite important
on long range over-water routes prior to jets.

Extremely interesting engines.

If you want to see another extremely interesting engine design - there Bristol Centaurus which
was used in the Sea Fury. This was a sleeve-valved engine. The intake and exhaust gas
flow was through ports in the side of the cylinder (near the top) and the sleeve that the
piston rings ran on moved up and down and rotated a bit inside the outer sleeve to move
the holes in the sleeve to line up with the inlet and exhaust ports in the cylinder at the correct
time. Very powerful, smooth, quiet and durable. I have some pix from the museum at
Duxford where they have some partially disassembled for display.

http://aviationshoppe.com/bristol-centaurus-radial-engine-p-219.html

Silfield

03-09-2015, 12:30 PM

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/guy-martins-passion-for-life/on-demand/59514-002
Guy Martin is a bit of an eccentric who has made a living as a top motorbike racer (got to be slightly mad to race on twisting streets at 200+ mph!)
He has always wanted a Merlin so has rebuilt one that now sits in his living room as well as helping to restore a Spitfire that was recovered from a beach in France.

Bad Water Bill

03-09-2015, 12:43 PM

It says I need my parents PERMISSION to view the video.

At 70++++++ why and how can I get permission from folks that have been buried for many years.[smilie=s:

Artful

03-09-2015, 02:36 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7Zebpu2nS4

Silfield

03-09-2015, 03:51 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7Zebpu2nS4
Thanks Artful,
The link worked straight away from my pc at work when I posted it! Maybe it won't play on your side of the pond because it's a ploy by our guberment to stop any leaks of sensitive military technology:shock: .

Artful

03-10-2015, 01:18 AM

Maybe your guberment thinks we are all infantile petulant children over here like our president.

Ballistics in Scotland

03-10-2015, 02:09 PM

To export a .310 Cadet Martini rifle from Australia once, I had to complete a declaration that it wasn't necessary for the defence of Australia, or bought to be used for attacking anyplace else. Well, neither I have.

Red River Rick

03-10-2015, 05:07 PM

If quantity is better...............how about 4 merlin engines!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4Gh2DfPkP4

RRR

Bigslug

03-10-2015, 10:13 PM

One of our local museums has a flying P-38 that - as I recall - runs on two of the V-10 versions of the Allison. Don't know how much is due to the engine design, how much to the fact that there are two of them, or how the noise vibrates through the airframe, but it is a VERY distinctive and cool sounding beast!

My grandfather flew B-26's during the war. SOMEWHERE in the family's stash of his things is an aerial gunnery training manual that I flipped through briefly maybe 15 years ago. Any brain-bending you've ever done over exterior ballistics on your loading bench or leading on the sporting clays field is NOTHING compared with what a waist gunner had to deal with shooting SIDEWAYS out of a bomber moving 250mph at a fighter that might be going 400mph in any possible other direction. Yeah, tracers helped some, but damn!:veryconfu

MtGun44

03-10-2015, 10:43 PM

No such thing as "the V-10 version of the Allison". The P-38 runs Allisons with a huge,
complex turbocharger system integrated into each boom. Front inlets are for the
intercoolers, the rear ones on the sides are the radiators for cooling the engines.

The only thing really odd about them is that they run in opposite directions, so one is
a "normal" Allison and the other is a "backwards" Allison. This is to make the airplane
easier to handle on takeoff, much less P-factor (sideways pull from the props) the P-factors
cancel each other out.

GabbyM

03-10-2015, 11:39 PM

About thirty years ago there were only three P-38's left in the world that still flew. They have more up now but I don't know the number. USAF kept flying the P-38's until they were condemned. Look up Lockheed P-38 Lightning in Wiki and read all about the engines. If you want to see something really cool. try finding some aerial gunnery film from a 38. Gun camera film. Those four fifties and a 20 mm. All in the nose pointing straight forwards. Simply sawed enemy planes into. They may not be on YouTube because after all it's film of men dying.

Early Spitfires with nothing but .303 guns had a hard time taking down German bombers. Not the 38's or the P'47. There is the film of the top Russian ace describing taking down JU-88's with the P-39 Aircobra. He stated something like "pull the trigger. Let up on the trigger then watch them come apart. It only took a single 37mm round to bring down a plane. Then those twin 50's mounted parallel in the nose were like a saw. Thirties in the wings just made sure no one got out alive.

MaryB

03-11-2015, 12:12 AM

Saw this P-38 fly by not to long ago, hangered 20 miles away is all

http://www.fagenfighterswwiimuseum.org/images/270861_10150978086584176_480921737_n.jpg

Ballistics in Scotland

03-11-2015, 08:12 AM

I read, in the 60s or 70, an account by two young men who met a very eay-going and friendly man in a remote bird-shooting lodge and only slowly became aware that he was Clark Gable. I think they would have found out a lot sooner about most of the film actors of today. It must have taken some such prior background to get him an air-gunner's job at an age which about made him a living fossil by aircrew standards.

Opposite direction of rotation is certainly the right way to run a high-powered twin-engine aircraft, if it isn't prevented by factor such as space, weight, parts interchangeability etc. Like many other things in aviation, it was known very early. Didn't the Wright brothers start out that way? It looks like it from the photograph, and if so it was done the right way, by the gearing.

Artful

03-11-2015, 10:56 AM

If you want to see something really cool. try finding some aerial gunnery film from a 38. Gun camera film. Those four fifties and a 20 mm. All in the nose pointing straight forwards. Simply sawed enemy planes into. They may not be on YouTube because after all it's film of men dying.

Early Spitfires with nothing but .303 guns had a hard time taking down German bombers. Not the 38's or the P'47. There is the film of the top Russian ace describing taking down JU-88's with the P-39 Aircobra. He stated something like "pull the trigger. Let up on the trigger then watch them come apart. It only took a single 37mm round to bring down a plane. Then those twin 50's mounted parallel in the nose were like a saw. Thirties in the wings just made sure no one got out alive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP-oDzhBUq8

Artful

03-11-2015, 10:57 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QByT6FWDiHo

Harry O

03-11-2015, 01:56 PM

What is not often known is that the engine used in the P-51 was downright puny. It was the same engine that the Spitfire used (and many other aircraft) at the time, but at about that time the Spitfire became outclassed by the FW-190. As soon as possible, the Spitfire was re-engined with a Rolls-Royce Griffon engine. The Griffon was a Merlin times 1-1/2 (approx). Instead of a mere 1650 cubic inches of displacement(for the Merlin) it displaced 2240 cu.in. (for the Griffon).

With the bigger engine, the Spitfire was once again the airplane to beat. Even so, it was not much better than the P-51 and still had a much shorter range. I have often wondered what the P-51 would have been like if it had also been re-engined with the Griffon. There have been a few race planes that tried that, but they have all crashed because of inadequate engineering. If North American had done the engineering for that, things like having a trim-tab fail at top speed (destroying the plane and killing the pilot), probably would not have happened. The two or three other Griffon powered P-51's also came to a bad end, all because of "minor" glitches that were overlooked.

Artful

03-11-2015, 02:27 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Sgvz4oAsNA

Artful

03-11-2015, 02:32 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2A5ywM8TNk

Artful

03-11-2015, 02:39 PM

Precious Metal 2015 planned rebirth as
https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/10920903_1041819305833623_7237172865855949479_n.jp g?oh=055a913526fc4d44587d1af70d440205&oe=55765D28&__gda__=1434978882_4c2b09bc25df8c910f7f9485af6cb30 1

I'm guessing they are going for the
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/North_American_XP-82_Twin_Mustang_44-83887.Color.jpg
F-82
North American F-82 Twin Mustang
Aircraft model
The North American F-82 Twin Mustang was the last American piston-engine fighter ordered into production by the United States Air Force. Wikipedia
Top speed: 482 mph (776 km/h)
Wingspan: 51' (16 m)
Length: 43' (13 m)
First flight: July 6, 1945
Introduced: 1946
Retired: 1953
Unit cost: 215,154–215,154 USD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAd6t_On4rQ

Bigslug

03-11-2015, 10:18 PM

If you want to see something really cool. try finding some aerial gunnery film from a 38. Gun camera film.

I've been trying to find one particular film clip ever since I saw it on AHC or History. Strafing run that was almost undoubted a P-47 from the sheer volume of rounds, but what was unique about it was that EVERY SINGLE ROUND looked to be armor-piercing/incendiary. No tracers - just a huge number of "flash bulbs" going off on and around whatever was unfortunate enough to be catching it. If it sounds familiar to anyone, link it in!

Artful

03-12-2015, 02:21 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c25xFStNVw

Silfield

03-12-2015, 04:45 AM

Interesting shot at 6:20 of an ME262 getting ventilated before it gets off the ground.

Artful

03-12-2015, 05:42 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gZV_Of_-zk

Artful

03-12-2015, 06:01 PM

The Timber Terror with two Merlin's

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmY99snA_po
I didn't realise they had put a cannon under the nose on some of them !

Artful

03-12-2015, 07:30 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh4vazBq-X4

Ballistics in Scotland

03-13-2015, 03:11 AM

I knew of the six-pounder Mosquitoes, and used to know someone who had a deactivated AP shell, said to come from one. The picture of one being fired on the ground looks like it was pointed at a downward angle from the aircraft's line of flight. Maybe it is only temporary, for testing functioning of the gun, and would be in line with the other guns in flight. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a bit like the fairly large cannon mounted in the bows of Napoleonic French harbour gunboats, which placed a finite life on the structure, so that you had to achieve something before a major rebuild or a major swim.

It was true that Britain became a lot richer in aluminium than Germany. The hydroelectric aluminium smelter at Kinlochleven in the Highlands was huge, and a difficult distance for German bombers, while bauxite came from the sterling area in the pre-Lend Lease days. But my uncle was Merchant Navy, and I remember him talking of the sheer bliss of sitting on a cargo of timber rather than one of ore.

Even leaving out of it the high-profile special missions with selected crews, the Mosquito was far cheaper in terms of cost and lives, per pound of bomb on target, than the Lancaster. It couldn't handle the biggest bombs, of course, but consideration was given to adopting the Mosquito as the main strategic bomber, and scaling down production of the heavies. If it had been an aluminium Mosquito, to which aircraft factories could have been converted, it might have happened.

The twin Mustang looks more of a strain than being married.

Multigunner

03-13-2015, 05:17 AM

The Germans built their own Wooden Wonder much like the Mosquito in concept. Unfortunately for them the only supplier for the special wood glue they needed was bombed out of existence pretty much as colateral damage during a bombing raid.
When they built test versions using a different glue the planes came apart under stress.

Other German wooden aircraft were either built or on the drawing board, mostly expendable rocket interceptors.

The key to controlable super sonic flight was the all flying tail used for the Korean War era F-86 Sabre. The Mig 15 with conventional tail surfaces was unable to pull out of a dive if it hit transonic speeds but the Sabre all flying elevator was not effected by these forces.
The very slight edge the F-86 had in speed was far less important than its superior handling at maximum speeds. At lesser speeds the Mig could out manuver and out climb the Sabre.

Ballistics in Scotland

03-13-2015, 11:22 AM

Like the Mosquito in a way. Part of the myth is that it was unarmed because it could outrun all opposition. That was true of night bombing, when the opposition was at best likely to be the JU88 with its performance badly impaired by its radar array. But for day bombing German radar was good enough to have single-seat day fighters waiting at altitude. In those circumstances Mosquito casualties, while lighter than many other aircraft's, were not low. What saved them from being worse was its manoeuvrability.

The glue used in the Mosquito proved unreliable in hot, humid climates. Wilbur Smith the novelist described one being reglued with epoxy, but I don't know if that was really done or just his imagination.

Late in the war Germany was snowed under with brilliant ideas it couldn't complete, and often an inability to drop one to get something else done. The Dornier 335, with twin fuselage-mounted engines and a propeller at each end, would surely have been an effective counter to the Mosquito if it had made large-scale production.

They don't make aircraft much more difficult to bale out of than that one. If the explosive charges in the rear shaft and stabilizer didn't work, it was almost certain to be fatal. The last Do335 was returned to the makers for restoration and loan several decades after being sent to the USA for evaluation, and the technicians were surprised to find that the charges had been armed all that time.

Artful

03-13-2015, 03:43 PM

http://www.mossie.org/stories/David_van_Vlymen.htm

Un-Gluing the Mosquito Recollections by David van Vlymen (http://vanvlymen.home.att.net/) - Ex. RAFThe time is 1940, the Battle of Britain is in full swing and many major towns are being "blitzed". WW2 was only a few months old and I am sworn into the RAF at Uxbridge,

Other factories including "Standard Motors" also switched to producing the Mosquito. It was made of wood, Equador balsa, Alaska Spruce, Canadian birch and fir, and English ash, and furniture makers were called in to help build it. In the heat of India and Burma the glue came unstuck! It carried out nearly every conceivable air-combat job.

http://www.mosquitorestoration.com/

http://www.ocala.com/article/20110424/ARTICLES/110429843?tc=ar

World War II pilot working on Mosquito bomber replica
http://www.ocala.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=OS&Date=20110424&Category=ARTICLES&ArtNo=110429843&Ref=AR&imageVersion=Main&MaxW=445&border=0
Russell F. Loomis Jr. needed steady hands and cool composure to pilot a Douglas A-20 Havoc fighter-bomber in risky missions over World War II-ravaged France, Belgium and Germany.

Sixty-seven years later at age 87, those steady hands are crafting a three-quarter-scale replica of another plane that helped the Allies pound Germany into submission during the war.

Loomis, a retired aeronautical engineer, can be found most days assembling a British Royal Air Force de Havilland Mosquito bomber in his west Marion workshop.

The Mosquito was one of the most successful and unique planes of World War II. In an era when airplane manufacturers favored metal airframes over the wooden airframes used in World War I, the Mosquito was something of a throwback. Its lightweight fuselage was constructed of balsawood and birch and covered in plywood. But the design proved very successful for de Havilland. The Mosquito was able to fly higher and faster than most other aircraft of the time.

Loomis had hoped to build a replica A-20, the tough-as-nails and maneuverable fighter-bomber that carried him into battle 28 times as a 20-year-old pilot in the 1940s. But scaling down the craft presented difficulties in accommodating a pilot, Loomis said. That's not a problem on the current project.

“I have about 10 percent completed,” he said as he looked over the wooden ribs of the right half of the center fuselage section.

The 27-foot-long center fuselage is built in left and right half sections. Just the right half fuselage section and the rudder and fin, or rear tail, have taken about five years to finish. Loomis estimates he has hammered about 2,000 18-gauge nails into the fuselage so far and would “welcome some help.”

After the center fuselage is competed, Loomis will tackle the left and right engine sections, wings spanning 44 feet, landing gear and control equipment.

Loomis said two 500 horsepower LS-2 Corvette engines would be used in place of the original 1,600-hp Rolls-Royce Merlin engines.

It's a costly project, Loomis admitted. The engines cost about $6,000 each and the two nine-foot-diameter props cost about $8,000 each.

According to www.aviation-history.com, about 7,700 of the aircraft were used in low-level missions, including attacks on German Gestapo headquarters in Oslo, Norway. The site describes the twin-engine fighter-bomber as having a top speed of 378 mph and a cruising speed of 295 mph.

During his service from 1942 to 1946, Loomis flew a P-38 Lightning stateside on “high-altitude reconnaissance” missions. As a member of the 9th Air Force, he flew the twin-engine A-20 on 28 missions in Europe.

“We dropped (illumination flare) bombs that lighted a square mile at 1 million candlepower for 1/100th of a second,” he said. The flares were meant to illuminate enemy positions so photos could be taken to provide information for later bombing missions.

“We were called the independent air force because they couldn't see us, and at one point 80 percent of our losses were due to our own ground fire,” Loomis said.

Loomis shares an interest in aviation with friends Paul Sova and Jack Volkmar, who occasionally check on the progress of his project.

Volkmar, a private pilot, said he admired Loomis for flying the dangerous World War II missions with “primitive” navigational gear.

IAF use of the little Mosquito
http://www.oocities.org/capecanaveral/hangar/2848/mosquito.htm

Multigunner

03-13-2015, 09:03 PM

Heres some information on the glue used for the Mosquito and some general information on this type of glue.
https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.seqair.com/skunkworks/Glues/Aerolite/Aerolite.html&sa=U&ei=AIgDVfKLAYWgNuuEgegH&ved=0CAYQFjAB&client=internal-uds-cse&usg=AFQjCNFX6QjLzZw7FkdEoEAbMk1CsazuSQ

Heres some first hand information on the Mosquito including how difficult it could be to bail out of one.
https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.mossie.org/stories/David_van_Vlymen.htm&sa=U&ei=AIgDVfKLAYWgNuuEgegH&ved=0CAcQFjAC&client=internal-uds-cse&usg=AFQjCNESO2hROydk_iMxO5KwEnY4U-ajfg

MaryB

03-14-2015, 12:25 AM

Interesting about the glue used!

Ballistics in Scotland

03-14-2015, 07:18 AM

That miniature Mosquito is a marvelous project, but I suspect that it is one of the things that are easier to build from scratch than to rebuild. I used Aerolite for boatbuilding in the 1970s, and even the maker's instructions at the time warned against overdoing the amount of water used to mix it. But it remained secure in very humid but cool environments, and with the joint three times as strong as the wood, I don't see any way of simply getting it apart to reglue.

There can be few greater examples of optimism than working on what appears to be a single-seat aircraft at the age of 87, with five years taken to do the first 10%. I suppose it is a matter of principle.

Apart from range, the great advantage of the photo-reconnaissance Mosquito over the Spitfire was in the direction you could point a large camera. The photo-reconnaissance Spitfires had it pointing out of the side of the fuselage, and it took extremely good timing to photograph a heavily defended target from low altitude. Dr. RV Jones of Scientific Intelligence, writes of sending Spitfire pilots back to some dreadful places because they had missed the target.

popper

03-14-2015, 11:29 AM

Had a SS teacher who flew the P-38 in Europe, had fun shooting 262s on the ground. When they did make it airborne, they had about two climbs & dives so we just waited for them to run low on fuel, then shot them down. He was one of the first to survive the supersonic shift in a power dive. He freaked out when he figured he couldn't pull out and accidentally did a roll which inverted the plane and it started to go UP. They put some kind of limiter on the engine so that wouldn't happen anymore, so I was told.
I feel sorry for the guys that did the calculations for a variable pitch counter rotating props on the same shaft, even the VTOL (pogo). Studied wind turbine props back in the 70's, Calculating back draft from the blades is really complicated. 109 was deadly cause they used 4 20mm in the nose vs our 30 & 50s.

Multigunner

03-14-2015, 05:06 PM

An interesting side note on the P-39. It turns out many Soviet pilots may have flown the P-63 but all Soviet records would say they were flying the P-39.
Apparently the Soviets wished to obscure the fact that they had obtained the much better P-63 fighter, though German records of the time show that they already knew of the deployment of the P-63.

A Soviet test pilot who traveled to the U S had discovered flaws in the P-63 design and the Soviets aided in redesigns that greatly improved that fighter. Mainly they moved the cannon further forwards moving the center of gravity which made it possible to recover from a flat spin.

While the 37mm cannon was likely very useful against thin skinned vechicles and light armored vehicles in the ground attack role it was not a tank buster.

MtGun44

03-15-2015, 01:06 AM

Multigunner

03-15-2015, 04:27 AM

Turns out the Soviets never got ahold of the AP rounds for the M4 cannon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_cannon

With the modest velocity of the M4 it probably would have only been effective against light tanks or tankettes.

Artful

03-15-2015, 09:53 AM

http://www.chuckhawks.com/airacobra_iron_dog.htm

The last major misconception about the P-39 is that it was an effective tank buster. In early August of 1944, while flying over a tank battle in Poland, Alexsandr Pokryshkin told the T-34 unit commander, "Our cannons will not penetrate tank armor." The Colt M4 had a muzzle velocity of only 600 meters per second and a low rating of 1.41 kilograms 'steel on target' per second. Theoretically, it could penetrate the armor of early panzer tanks, but only the top of the hull and turret. By comparison, the NS-37 37mm cannon had a muzzle velocity of 900 m/s and a steel on target rating of 3.06kg, enough to get through all but the Tiger's side or front armor. Also, instead of the M80 AP rounds that were required, the U.S. shipped the Soviets M54 high explosive shells, which were ineffective against tanks. Therefore, the P-39 was not used as a tank destroyer on the Eastern Front.

Ballistics in Scotland

03-15-2015, 04:12 PM

Tanks of that era had little or no armor over the engine from above angles, so they
were readily killed by hitting the engine with the 37mm from aircraft. No doubt that
the 37mm would not penetrate frontal armor on the hull or turret, but some turrets
were amazingly thin on top, too.

For example, the Panther - one of the very late German tank designs -- "The rear hull top
armour was only 16 mm (0.63 in) thick, and had two radiator fans and four air intake
louvres over the engine compartment that were vulnerable to strafing by aircraft."
Louvers and fans are basically unarmored areas.

Also, the side armor on the Panthers was only 1.6 inches thick, and I wonder if an
AP round from a 37mm wouldn't penetrate that thickness. Seems like a 37 mm
round (1.45 inches) may penetrate at least as deep as it's diameter, or a good bit
more with a hard AP core.

That is mostly true, but the Russians were making an extremely good ground-attack aircraft, the Sturmovik, on a large scale, and weren't nearly as well supplied with modern fighters. It seems likely that the shells sent to them reflected the needs they expressed, and were right to express.

I've just sent my 98-year-old uncle in Australia the West Point textbook on ordnance for 1938, which was issued to him in wartime. Serve him right for writing his name in handwriting I only recently deciphered. Aircraft and antiaircraft shells then available armed themselves centrifugally after leaving the gun (always a source of relief), and the striker was then prevented from functioning by air pressure entering through holes in a tiny frontal cup. I suppose they arranged for it to leave by smaller holes, and keep up the pressure inside the fuse. As soon as anything cut off that pressure (or if it hit nothing, and was liable to descent at low velocity on a taxpayer) it exploded. Even thin aluminium or canvas would do it. Maybe someone here knows, but it seems likely that the shells sent to Russia were so fused, and weren't even as good as most HE at penetrating thin armour.

You can't make a variable pitch turbojet, unless it has been done at vast expense recently, so the Me262 was weak on acceleration from low speed. One of the big snags about contra-rotating propellers is that if the variable pitch malfunctioned, much worse things than power loss could happen.

The cannon-armed Messerschmitt 109 was indeed deadly, but it never had four 20mm cannon in the nose, because there wasn't room. Late in the war they replaced the two nose machine-guns with 13mm., which could fire incendiary HE but was a long way from being as good as a 20mm. There were various ways of placing cannon in (or more usually on) its thin wing, but they mostly carried penalties, such as drag, complex ammunition feed or limited ammunition capacity. That might have been all right in an interceptor of bombers, which can earn its keep in a brief burst. But it was a liability in aerial combat with fighters.

Hermann Goering said he could have won the Battle of Britain with the .50 Browning, but he said it when he needed an excuse. The Germans had developed a tank und flieger 13mm. machine-gun in the closing stages of WW1, which was heavy but about as good as any other Maxim. The few completed were ignored during Germany's clandestine rearmament, and were destroyed in storage by Allied bombing.

rondog

03-15-2015, 04:44 PM

I adore P51's! I wish I could afford to ride in one, this one was gorgeous and ran like a Swiss watch.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P0m2C5LN3IQ

Multigunner

03-15-2015, 06:17 PM

The Japanese also had problems with their 20mm cannon on aircraft, mainly due to the low velocity of the early guns and resulting looping trajectory that plagued the P-39 cannon.
US bomber Pilots in the Aleutions reported that the Japanese would try to stay out of range of the bombers gunners and put their aircraft in a nose up position to try to lob cannon shells onto the bomber from extended ranges. This seldom worked out well for them.
For the cannon to be effective the Japanese had to close the distance and risk being chewed to pieces by our aerial gunners.

I'm pretty sure the Japanese went with the 20mm low velocity guns for use in the ground attack role more than as an aerial gun, but the robust airframes and armor of the American aircraft made using the 20mm in aerial combat a necessity.
Most WW1 use of aircraft mounted cannon was intended entirely for use against ground vehicles and gun emplacments rather than aerial combat, with the exception of the few 37mm armed Spads, and pilots of those Spads mainly used canister shot to blast enemy aircraft like using a shotgun for birds.

The 20mm was very effective against patrol boats and small supply ships, and suppressing anti aircraft batteries.

Early WW2 German tanks while often more heavily armored than most of the contemporary allied tanks were sometimes knocked out by the 37mm guns of light tanks if hit from the side in an ambush.
Some British tankers used superior speed and handling of the light M3 tanks to rush among German tank formations so the Germans risked hitting each other and the M3 gunner could pick their targets and penetrate the side armor before the German gunners could rotate their turrets far enough to return fire.
Also the Germans were never able to produce their heavy tanks in great enough numbers, and often made use of captured tanks of lesser design and light armored vehicles.

No matter how well armored a tank was a thrown tread or busted road wheel could put them out of the fighting and leave them exposed to air attacks or sitting ducks for allied tank destroyers.

GabbyM

03-15-2015, 06:21 PM

Nazi tanks always had infantry surrounding them. Those HE rounds cleared a lot of them out. Then you drop your bomb.

Then, in order for the Luftwaffe to get to the Sturmovik. They had to come down where they played. P-39's were just fine for mixing it up with ME-109's. They devastated Stukas and JU-88's. FW-190's were another matter. You'd better hope you ran into a green pilot.

In total we sent about fifty thousand aircraft to the USSR. Quarter of a million Studebaker trucks. Any truck you see in old film with round fenders. Launching rockets. Soviet Zlin trucks had flat fenders and looked like model T's.

In my 2nd cousins book. Shot at and Missed. There is a chapter written by one of his squadron mates. This man lived through being shot down and captured. The USSR knowingly attacked a POW marching column in daylight. His account of the carnage wrecked by P-39's upon shackled prisoners on a road won't leave you thinking they couldn't kill. Soviets kept coming back for more. Was reminded of that story yesterday. When I saw video of the Iranian guard driving an M1 Abrams tank outside Tikrit, Iraq.

"Sometimes the enemy of my enemy is my enemy." Israeli Prime Minister.

Thing to remember is the 37mm as it was had about all the recoil the air frame could handle. Later on larger Soviet planes had a larger 37mm and as I posted earlier they still use a 37mm. Mig 29's have one with an optical sight designed especially for shooting down stealth aircraft. Computer aimed just like an F-16 20mm gun. Top Soviet aces of WWII loved the P-39's armament because it would always take a Nazi plane out. Migs could outfly it but had small guns. This is why Mig 15's in Korea had 24 and 37mm guns. They used them to shoot down all but a couple of the B-29's we sent there. IIRC the kill total was 50 to 51 in the B-29's favor. German ME-109 had a 30mm through the prop spinner that cradled in the V-12 engine driving a gear box. Probably a better gun than the 37mm on the AirCobra. It's what made the ME-109 work. Sure wasn't the plane as it was out dated by 1939. P-40 could fly circles around it. Fact is if the Army hadn't cut the turbo charger off the P-39 it would of been a different plane.

GabbyM

03-15-2015, 06:27 PM

Good info Multigunner: just want to point out. The 37mm tank gun was much larger shell than the 37mm on the P-39.

GabbyM

03-15-2015, 06:31 PM

Japanese Imperial Army used the puff puff 20mm on there planes for the same reason most of there stuff was sub standard buy the times. There infantry also did not have an equivalent to the mighty M2. Which had more power than the puffy 20mm. Japan didn't have a snowballs chance in Hates against the USA. What they had was millions of very brave men who were abused, disgraced then wasted.

Multigunner

03-16-2015, 11:43 AM

German ME-109 had a 30mm through the prop spinner that cradled in the V-12 engine driving a gear box.
the 30mm appeared in 1943 with the ME-109 G6 and not all G6 models had the 30mm, before that the ME-109 had the 20mm gun in the nose.
The 30mm used a high brisiance RDX shell that could destroy a fighter with a single hit and could sometimes take down a B-17 with a single hit. The 20mm averaged 25 hits to take down a B-17.

MtGun44

03-17-2015, 02:43 AM

Variable pitch stator blades were standard on the J-79 engine used from late 50s on
but have nothing to do with why the Me262 was slow on the ground. All early jets
were terrible at slow speeds because the engines produced very little thrust.

The Me262 accelerated slowly because it had VERY low thrust, but the thrust was constant,
unlike prop thrust which drops off with speed. An engine that makes thrust, as opposed to
one that makes HP, makes the same thrust at any speed. Equivalent HP is dependent
on airspeed. At 375 mph, one pound of thrust =1 hp. So the approx. 2000 lb thrust
engines were making equivalent to 2000 hp at 375 mph (times two engines!) and much more
equivalent HP as they went faster. Compare to a Mustang with a fixed max HP of maybe 1200 or
1300 hp, the Me 262 at takeoff had much less thrust, but at high speed MUCH, MUCH
more equivalent HP (more thrust).

I was told by Russians when I was going through the Monino museum that the P-39s
were used against tanks, but I suppose that modern Russians may not really have the
facts.

GabbyM

03-17-2015, 09:02 AM

Most non military types refer to anything with armor over the thickness of a beer can as a "tank". Germany had a wide array of armored vehicles. They also had man self propelled guns. Just Recall our last gulf war. Most of the reporters were referring to Bradley's as "tanks". When in Israel they about always call the SP-155mm a "tank".

So sure the P-39 attacked tanks. They could also carry bombs. BTW Germany had many SP guns with no roof at all over the turret.

GabbyM

03-17-2015, 09:43 AM

the 30mm appeared in 1943 with the ME-109 G6 and not all G6 models had the 30mm, before that the ME-109 had the 20mm gun in the nose.
The 30mm used a high brisiance RDX shell that could destroy a fighter with a single hit and could sometimes take down a B-17 with a single hit. The 20mm averaged 25 hits to take down a B-17.

All correct. Thing is they had the 30mm in them by the time we were flying thousands of bombers a day over Europe.
My late father in law commanded a ground crew responsible for recovering KIA from returned aircraft. They took great care and respect to recover and restore a man. It took great care. Especially with the B-17 tail gunner position of laying on his belly with a 30mm through. That big gun was extremely feared by Allied flyers.

As for the Japanese 20mm I maligned earlier. It was the same Hispano gun all sides copied and used. Including the USA. Japan , from all reports I've read, never had the velocity from theirs. One reason is they used a heavy shell. Was also a lighter modification with at least some having a shorter barrel. They may of had to load shells to a lower pressure since they lightened the gun for the zeros. Whatever the cause. It was known to be anemic. Our fifties would out range it. A fact Bond used in head on attacks using his P-38. The Hispano 20mm in the nose of the P-38 Lighting along with four fifties tore the zeros up before he suffered hits. You have to give credit for courage to any Japanese pilot who turned a Zero into a head on engagement with a P-38. Even though desperation had a lot to do with it. The V-12 turbocharged V-1710 Allison's in the P-38. Gave the Lightning the power and speed to simply make pass after high speed angling pass at a Zero until they shot it down. Since the 38 could not out climb or out turn a Zero. That's the way they did it. American pilots could also break away and escape with speed at any time. Japanese quickly tired of that and would turn into the attacking Lightning's. The great shots like Bond would keep on track and take them on. Lesser pilots with less confidence in there marksmanship would turn away to look for a cheaper shot.

Definitely no game for the timid. Those Allison's in P-38's and the props they turned were far more power than anything we put in a P-39. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allison_V-1710

MtGun44

03-17-2015, 01:09 PM

I assume you mean Richard Bong when you say "Bond". Bong was a very poor shot, and repeatedly
said that he pressed into to very close ranges and blew the Jap planes to pieces. One huge advantage
that the P-38s had was that the guns were mounted together in the nose and firing parallel, so at any
range they all hit together. With wing mounted guns, at close ranges they were spread across a
much wider 'pattern', so less effective. Bong pulled huge G's in his P-38s, structurally damaging a
couple of them to the point that they were scrapped.

The P-38 could not turn well, and you are correct about the slashing attacks being the most effective.
My father tells about getting jumped in an FM-2 (Eastern Aircraft "Super" Wildcat, lightened and more power
than the Grumman F4F Wildcat) near the end of WW2 by a P-38 Lightning. He reported
that he turned into the P-38 and then formed up on him, flying formation on the guy as he tried to
shake him and move into a position to get a "shot" - of course, with no firing. He said the P-38 shuddered
around in tight turns, rolled and even used his maneuvering flap to try to turn away and shake the
little FM-2. After a couple of minutes of this humiliation - trying to "fight" a guy that was flying formation
on you (which meant he could have shot you to pieces at any time in real combat) the P-38 added
power and pulled away - far faster than the FM-2 could go. My father said that in a turning fight he could
easily best a P-38, and IF YOU SAW HIM COMING you could easily screw up his gun runs as he slashed
in from his speed advantage and avoid getting "shot" but he was careful to point out that while the FM-2
could pretty easily survive, and maybe even hit back effectively, the P-38 really controlled the fight and
could engage and disengage at will. The FM-2 was entirely defensive, no matter how effective that defense
was.