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Survivability in Combat
Let's take two planes going on low level support missions. They will have to
fly through heavy ground fire including small arms fire. One plane is equipped with a radial engine,. let's say an R-2800. The other with a jet engine. Which plane would have a better chance of survival inder these conditions?. Opinions? Regards, Arthur Kramer 344th BG 494th BS England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany Visit my WW II B-26 website at: http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer |
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"ArtKramr" wrote in message ... Let's take two planes going on low level support missions. They will have to fly through heavy ground fire including small arms fire. One plane is equipped with a radial engine,. let's say an R-2800. The other with a jet engine. Which plane would have a better chance of survival inder these conditions?. Opinions? Regards, The one who manages to avoid getting hit of course!!! :-) I would imagine after the last thread on radials that your point here might be that the radials have been known to take hits even to the point of taking out several cylinders and God knows what else and return home, as opposed to a jet engine where the dynamic balance of the compressor and turbine sections are so delicate. Honestly Art, I think it's a crap shoot. I know guys who flew wounded jets home to the boat with most of the parts banging away inside the engine and the aircraft shaking so badly it threatened to come apart. There are so many variables in this equation that it's really hard to make a call. For example, are the run in speeds the same? (Time in the kill zone) These things usually boil down to who gets lucky and who doesn't. Who takes what hit, how many, what caliber, and where on the airframe. This is just one of those subjects that can go every which way but loose. I know one guy who would tell you that if he had a choice of any bird in the world to go strafing in, it would be a Jug. He didn't like the plumbing on the inlines for low work. Ed will probably tell you that on the target run itself it's a crap shoot, but that there's nothing alive that can catch a Thud on a level run going in and going out...jink or no jink, especially if there's a drink on the bar waiting :-)). It's interesting that of the two examples I'm coming up with here, both involve The Republic Airplane and Brick Manufacturing Company. :-)) Dudley Henriques International Fighter Pilots Fellowship Commercial Pilot/ CFI Retired For personal email, please replace the z's with e's. dhenriquesATzarthlinkDOTnzt |
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Speed is life.
"ArtKramr" wrote in message ... Let's take two planes going on low level support missions. They will have to fly through heavy ground fire including small arms fire. One plane is equipped with a radial engine,. let's say an R-2800. The other with a jet engine. Which plane would have a better chance of survival inder these conditions?. Opinions? Regards, Arthur Kramer 344th BG 494th BS England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany Visit my WW II B-26 website at: http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer |
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"Dudley Henriques" wrote:
I would imagine after the last thread on radials that your point here might be that the radials have been known to take hits even to the point of taking out several cylinders and God knows what else and return home, as opposed to a jet engine where the dynamic balance of the compressor and turbine sections are so delicate. Honestly Art, I think it's a crap shoot. I know guys who flew wounded jets home to the boat with most of the parts banging away inside the engine and the aircraft shaking so badly it threatened to come apart. There are so many variables in this equation that it's really hard to make a call. For example, are the run in speeds the same? (Time in the kill zone) These things usually boil down to who gets lucky and who doesn't. Who takes what hit, how many, what caliber, and where on the airframe. This is just one of those subjects that can go every which way but loose. I know one guy who would tell you that if he had a choice of any bird in the world to go strafing in, it would be a Jug. He didn't like the plumbing on the inlines for low work. Ed will probably tell you that on the target run itself it's a crap shoot, but that there's nothing alive that can catch a Thud on a level run going in and going out...jink or no jink, especially if there's a drink on the bar waiting :-)). It's interesting that of the two examples I'm coming up with here, both involve The Republic Airplane and Brick Manufacturing Company. :-)) A-1 Skyraider w/badass Irishman/Germanic/English/etc. etc. pirate... -Mike ('nuff said) Marron |
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On Sun, 07 Dec 2003 02:15:49 GMT, "Dudley Henriques"
wrote: International Fighter Pilots Fellowship Commercial Pilot/ CFI Retired Dudley, would you post a brief bio for us? I think I recall P-51s, but I don't have any notion of your career. When were you in the USAF/USAAF? For whom a commercial pilot? Where taught? Thanks! all the best -- Dan Ford email: see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com |
#8
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"ArtKramr" wrote in message ... Let's take two planes going on low level support missions. They will have to fly through heavy ground fire including small arms fire. One plane is equipped with a radial engine,. let's say an R-2800. The other with a jet engine. Which plane would have a better chance of survival inder these conditions?. Opinions? Regards, Arthur Kramer 344th BG 494th BS England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany Visit my WW II B-26 website at: http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer Much of the Structure of a Gas turbine is thinner than that of the rugged engine blocks, cylinder and heads required on piston engines and thus penetration into a vital component by projectiles may be more likely however gas turbines can be quite tough. The central casting of which the shaft and combustion chambers are suspended is quite solid and centrifugal compressors can be very rugged. It might be possible to obtain data as to how influential compressor type is on combat ruggedness. I suppose that the best comparison might be to assume an aircraft such as the B26,A26 or B29 had of been equipped with a turboprop like the Rolls Royce Dart. (Fokker when designing the F27 (built latter by Fairchild) resisted American Airlines's pressure to use the PW2800.) This engine would have about 1/2rd the weight and I suspect 1/2 to volume of the PW2800 and this in itself would reduce its chance of being hit. The two stage centrifugal compressor was very rugged and for the weight saved you could wrap the engine in armor. The Allison T53 gas turbine used on the UH-1 Iroquois and many other aircraft had a reputation for ruggedness. It kept operating with objects like bolts ingested and stuck in the compressor. This engine had as a first stage an axial compressor, a second stage centrifugal stage that led to a double reverse flow combustion chamber. The Germans seemed to have had a concern with debris ingestion (presumably after a hit on a target) in the Jumo 004B engine of the Me 262. For ground handling and safety reasons wire baskets had been developed to prevent unfortunate ground crewman being ingested. The aircraft was tested in flight with the baskets attached and apparently suffered no reduction in performance. The concern of 'combat ruggedness' was one reason that the RLM technocrat Helmuth Schelp (who mapped out Germany's 15 year gas turbine development program in 1938?) specified that the Heinkel Hirth He S11 1300kg turbo-jet was to have a 'diagonal compressor'. This is essentially a centrifugal compressor faired such that the air flow exits axially (backward) instead of radialy (outward). The air is then impinged upon a stator to get a degree of axial compression. In the He S11 there were then 3 subsequently axial stages. The beauty is that the ruggedness of centrifugal compressor in object ingestion and turbulent airflow as a first stage can be combined with subsequently more axial stages of higher efficiency. (Thus He S11 aircraft designees had very flexible air intake shapes e.g. slits in wing leading edges ) The efficiency at the operating point for the axial unit of the Jumo 004B was 0.79. For the hybrid diagonal-axial He S11 it was 0.8. By the time the He S11 entered production in 1945 the diagonal compressor for the BMW 003C the HERMESO I was achieving 0.85 on the test stand and the HERMESO II of the BMW 004D was expected to achieve 0.91. (By this time the Germans were converting to more efficient reaction type axial compressors over the impulse type axial seen on the Jumo 004B and BMW 003A then in service) so they sacrificed a lot to achieve this diagonal/compressor on the He S11. The British style centrifugal compressors, the double sided impeller types, must have been much more rugged than the axial types they Germans preferred (for their low frontal area and ease of installation) However a shrapnel or bullet hole in the post combustion area of a combustion chamber in either type of engine would have been fatal as a flame would be expelled that would eventually melt or burn through something. A holed combustion chamber or rocker cover was unlikely to be fatal in an air cooled radial. The answer clearly is to try and armor parts of the Jet engine, e.g. the Chance Vought A7 used silicon carbide. Jets are free of the oil.water cooler problems of piston engines. The |
#9
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Subject: Survivability in Combat
From: "Dudley Henriques" Date: 12/6/03 6:15 PM Pacific Standard Time Message-id: . net "ArtKramr" wrote in message ... Let's take two planes going on low level support missions. They will have to fly through heavy ground fire including small arms fire. One plane is equipped with a radial engine,. let's say an R-2800. The other with a jet engine. Which plane would have a better chance of survival inder these conditions?. Opinions? Regards, The one who manages to avoid getting hit of course!!! :-) I would imagine after the last thread on radials that your point here might be that the radials have been known to take hits even to the point of taking out several cylinders and God knows what else and return home, as opposed to a jet engine where the dynamic balance of the compressor and turbine sections are so delicate. Honestly Art, I think it's a crap shoot. I know guys who flew wounded jets home to the boat with most of the parts banging away inside the engine and the aircraft shaking so badly it threatened to come apart. There are so many variables in this equation that it's really hard to make a call. For example, are the run in speeds the same? (Time in the kill zone) These things usually boil down to who gets lucky and who doesn't. Who takes what hit, how many, what caliber, and where on the airframe. This is just one of those subjects that can go every which way but loose. I know one guy who would tell you that if he had a choice of any bird in the world to go strafing in, it would be a Jug. He didn't like the plumbing on the inlines for low work. Ed will probably tell you that on the target run itself it's a crap shoot, but that there's nothing alive that can catch a Thud on a level run going in and going out...jink or no jink, especially if there's a drink on the bar waiting :-)). It's interesting that of the two examples I'm coming up with here, both involve The Republic Airplane and Brick Manufacturing Company. :-)) Dudley Henriques International Fighter Pilots Fellowship Commercial Pilot/ CFI Retired For personal email, please replace the z's with e's. dhenriquesATzarthlinkDOTnzt I have no experience flying jets in combat, so I was just looking for some expert opinions on the subject. But I heard a lot about a few pebbles on a runway wrecking jet engines, so I was just wondering how they would do in low level combat. Thanks for your reply. Regards, Arthur Kramer 344th BG 494th BS England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany Visit my WW II B-26 website at: http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer |
#10
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Subject: Survivability in Combat
From: "Nele VII" AP Date: 12/6/03 11:19 PM Pacific Standard Time Message-id: Some fragments of a post made few years ago by (ALEXEI GRETCHIKHINE) about Su-25 Frogfoot survivability in Afghanistan: Quote ... One particular Su-25 (actually preproduction T-8-15 or Blue 15) flown by Colonel Alexander V. Rutskoj was damaged by AAA and two (!) AIM-9L Sidewinders launched by Pakistani F-16s. Both times the aircraft brought pilot back to base. It was "refurbished" in Tbilisi and after receiving new paint job and bort number Blue 301 it was displayed in Paris in 1989. It was further modified for the weapon trials which included S-240 and S-25 330 mm unguided rockets. This aircraft currently on display at Khodynka Museum. Here are few more stories highlighting Su-25 roughness: -Major Rubalov's Su-25 was hit in the engine which surged and flooded an engine bay with fuel, the cockpit was shattered, buster controls are gone and major's face covered with blood. None of the dials in the cockpit worked and his wingman guided him to the final approach. After belly landing, major rushed away from the Su-25 fearing that plane going to explode. After figuring that this is not going to happen, he got back to the aircraft and cut the engine. -Another Su-25 was on fire which burned out most of the wiring and 95% of horizontal tail controls. In few moments before the landing, fire short cut the gear release wires and Su-25 made "conventional" landing. -Lieutenant Golubtsov's Su-25 lost half of its rudder along with breaks. After landing his a/c ended up off runaway and rolled into adjacent mine field. He was forced to wait in the cockpit till mine squad cleared his way out. -One Su-25 brought a missile in the engine which failed to detonate. (SAM?) -Rutskoi's Su-25 was hit by AAA (ZGU) when a missile (Blowpipe) hit right engine (head on - it "turned off" the engine though the intake). Second AAA finally managed to shot it down. This is a second Frogfoot he flew (not the preproduction T-8-15 Blue 15 which was damaged twice). Rutskoi spent some time as Pakistani POW and was shortly exchanged. ... End quote -- Nele NULLA ROSA SINE SPINA Thanks for that informative reply.But would it have done better with radials? I guess we will never know. Regards, Arthur Kramer 344th BG 494th BS England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany Visit my WW II B-26 website at: http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer |
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