More long-range Spitfires and daylight Bomber Command raids, with added nationalistic abuse (was: #1 Jet of World War II)

Indrek Aavisto wrote:

Guy Alcala wrote:
prune

Can you name another 4 turboprop western tactical

airlifter with semi-STOL capability that was available in the 1955-2008 time
frame? I

Short Belfast comes to mind. It had a similar configuration, though I daresay its
capabilities fell short, or more of them would have been built.

I'd say the Belfast was more of a strategic airlifter (in cargo size) than a tactical
one. It seems to be about halfway between the C-130 and C-133 in size. I stand ready
to be corrected, but was it stressed for tactical missions, maneuverable enough to do
them, and of sufficiently low ground pressure to operate off paved runways?

Guy

Subject: More long-range Spitfires and daylight Bomber Command raids,
with
From: Guy Alcala

he also says that Mitchell wanted to stick with the tailskid, but the
Air Ministry insisted on the tailwheel, because they knew (but couldn't tell
Mitchell at the time, because it was classified) that they were going to lay
down
all-weather (i.e. paved) runways at all the fighter bases, and the tail skid
wouldn't last long under those conditions. This thing's just filled with
great
info.

Guy


It seems as though the Air Ministry didn't entirely trust Mitchell. Imagine
being an aircraft designer and having th air ministry withhold info that would
impact on your designs. The mind boggles.


Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

" wrote:

Guy Alcala wrote:

snip

[skipping a bit] "Tilting the wing upward during landing maneuvers allowed a
relatively slow landing speed, yet kept the F-8's fuselage at an AoA of about
5.5 deg. rather than 12.5 deg. as required with its wing down."


Guy, can you expound on that a little? I can't see how the angle
of the fuselage (AoI?) has any effect on the 'landing speed'.

snip

I think you're overanalyzing this. If the wing didn't tilt, then the whole
fuselage (assuming an AoI of 0 deg.) would need to be at 12.5 deg. AoA to have a
sufficiently slow landing speed. Instead, they achieved that low landing speed by
tilting the wing, which also gave them the benefit of a lower fuselage AoA for
view/clearance.

Guy

Guy Alcala wrote:

Geoffrey Sinclair wrote:

snip

snip PR data

From Spitfire by Peter Moss, the initial hand converted PR
versions from Spitfire I had a 29 gallon fuel tank under the
pilot's seat and a 64 pound camera installation behind
the cockpit, no radio though. It all worked because there
was 32 pounds of removable ballast in the tail to compensate
for the mark I moving to a heavier 3 bladed propeller.

If the ballast figures are correct there is obviously some room
for extra fuselage tanks, the maximum take off weight comes
into play though.

snip fuel weights

Price says the Mk. I was designed to take either the two-blade wooden FP
prop or three blade metal two-pitch prop, and ballast had to be provided
accordingly. With the wooden prop (83 lb. vs. ca. 350 lb. for the metal
prop), 135 lb. of lead ballast had to be carried in the nose, on both
sides of the front of the engine at the bottom, roughly under the first
two cylinders and the aft end of the coolant tank. He includes a picture
showing the weights installed. By the time the MK.V came around the CS
prop was standard, which I believe was even heavier (can't find the figure
yet).

As always, thanks for posting the data.

Guy

Okay, I've got Price's "The Spitfire Story," which is very helpful. Here's
what Wing Commander Tuttle, former head of the PRU, told Price about the
handling of the hand-modified PR.1Ds (normal 84 gallons forward, 114 gallons
in the wing L.E., 29 gallons behind the pilot, plus two cameras further back
(but no radio):

"You could not fly it straight and level for the first half hour or hour after
takeoff. Until you had emptied the rear tank, the aircraft hunted the whole
time. The center of gravity was so far back you couldn't control it. It was
the sort of thing that would never have got in during peacetime, but war is
another matter."

What may be barely acceptable for a PR bird flying solo in VFR conditions by
experienced pilots not making any radical maneuvers, is definitely
unacceptable for formation or combat flying by less experienced pilots.
Later, the production PR.1Ds had the aft tank removed, the radio reinstalled,
and the L.E. tanks enlarged from 57 to 66.5 gallons each side, to improve the
handling (L.E. tanks were forward of the datum). They also got somewhat
heavier Merlin 45s.

Guy

ArtKramr wrote:

Subject: More long-range Spitfires and daylight Bomber Command raids,
with
From: Guy Alcala

he also says that Mitchell wanted to stick with the tailskid, but the
Air Ministry insisted on the tailwheel, because they knew (but couldn't tell
Mitchell at the time, because it was classified) that they were going to lay
down
all-weather (i.e. paved) runways at all the fighter bases, and the tail skid
wouldn't last long under those conditions. This thing's just filled with
great
info.

Guy


It seems as though the Air Ministry didn't entirely trust Mitchell. Imagine
being an aircraft designer and having th air ministry withhold info that would
impact on your designs. The mind boggles.

It wasn't a case of trust, just a case of need to know. Mitchell only needed to
know that a tailwheel was a firm requirement, not the rationale behind it, to
design one. I imagine the spec change to increase the armament from 4 to 6 or 8 x
..303s was handled the same way -- they told him what they wanted and asked him if
it could be done, but probably not the reasoning behind it. Whether the tailwheel
case was an example of the government being classification happy is another
matter; the Brits tended to be (and still are, to a great extent) a lot more
reluctant about releasing such details, even when they're apparently innocuous,
than we were/are. OTOH, there were some probably unnecessary security concerns
over Mitchell's technical assistant, S/Ldr H.J. 'Agony' Payn, AFC RAF (ret)
because he'd divorced and his second wife was foreign (maybe German; I forget).
After Mitchell died he was named manager of the Design Department at Supermarine
(not Chief Designer, the post which Mitchell had held). The Air Ministry forced
Supermarine to remove him from work on the Spitfire or anything else classified
because of this, and in fact the company fired him.

Supermarine tried two different designs, a single wheel and one with dual wheels
(side by side). The latter tended to get clogged with mud, so they went with the
single.

Guy

Guy Alcala wrote:

" wrote:

Guy Alcala wrote:

snip

[skipping a bit] "Tilting the wing upward during landing maneuvers allowed a
relatively slow landing speed, yet kept the F-8's fuselage at an AoA of about
5.5 deg. rather than 12.5 deg. as required with its wing down."


Guy, can you expound on that a little? I can't see how the angle
of the fuselage (AoI?) has any effect on the 'landing speed'.

snip

I think you're overanalyzing this. If the wing didn't tilt, then the whole
fuselage (assuming an AoI of 0 deg.) would need to be at 12.5 deg. AoA to have a
sufficiently slow landing speed.

But saying it that way makes it seem as if 'tilting the wing up'
(which you're not actually doing of course) makes it possible to
fly slower when actually you're tilting the *fuselage down* so as
to make it possible to land on a carrier.

You're not *tilting the wing up*, you're *tilting the fuselage
down*, right?. I know that it's just semantics but saying that
this system 'allows slower flight' isn't true is it?. I suppose
you could say that it allows slower flight *without banging the
tail on the deck etc* but it doesn't allow the a/c to 'fly
slower' in the sense that flaps do right?.



Instead, they achieved that low landing speed by
tilting the wing, which also gave them the benefit of a lower fuselage AoA for
view/clearance.

Guy

Well now, lessee...


--

-Gord.

" wrote:

Guy Alcala wrote:

" wrote:

Guy Alcala wrote:

snip

[skipping a bit] "Tilting the wing upward during landing maneuvers allowed a
relatively slow landing speed, yet kept the F-8's fuselage at an AoA of about
5.5 deg. rather than 12.5 deg. as required with its wing down."


Guy, can you expound on that a little? I can't see how the angle
of the fuselage (AoI?) has any effect on the 'landing speed'.

snip

I think you're overanalyzing this. If the wing didn't tilt, then the whole
fuselage (assuming an AoI of 0 deg.) would need to be at 12.5 deg. AoA to have a
sufficiently slow landing speed.

But saying it that way makes it seem as if 'tilting the wing up'
(which you're not actually doing of course)

You are, with reference to the fuselage and virtually any other a/c, but then the
whole description is relative to the datum you use.

makes it possible to
fly slower when actually you're tilting the *fuselage down* so as
to make it possible to land on a carrier.

You're not *tilting the wing up*, you're *tilting the fuselage
down*, right?. I know that it's just semantics but saying that
this system 'allows slower flight' isn't true is it?. I suppose
you could say that it allows slower flight *without banging the
tail on the deck etc*

That would be the correct phraseology, and includes the assumption that I (at least)
made. After all, if your a/c design can only make one landing on a carrier deck
before being hauled off for scrap, NAVAIR would probably take a few points off your
score;-)

but it doesn't allow the a/c to 'fly
slower' in the sense that flaps do right?.

Right.

Instead, they achieved that low landing speed by
tilting the wing, which also gave them the benefit of a lower fuselage AoA for
view/clearance.

Guy

Well now, lessee...

Very simply, the wing had to fly at a high-enough AoA to fly sufficiently slowly for
the a/c to land on Essex class carriers. In order to achieve that AoA with the wing
rigidly attached to the fuselage, they would have had to chop off the after part of
the fuselage, mount the wing at a much higher fixed AoI, and/or give the a/c a taller
landing gear (to avoid dragging the tail), any of which would have been detrimental
to its performance. In addition, the pilot would have had to be sitting much higher
to have adequate view on the approach, also at a detriment to performance. CVA had
already designed the F7U Cutlass once, and had no wish to repeat it;-)

Guy

In article , Guy Alcala
writes
ArtKramr wrote:

It seems as though the Air Ministry didn't entirely trust Mitchell. Imagine
being an aircraft designer and having th air ministry withhold info that would
impact on your designs. The mind boggles.

It wasn't a case of trust, just a case of need to know. Mitchell only needed to
know that a tailwheel was a firm requirement, not the rationale behind it, to
design one. I imagine the spec change to increase the armament from 4 to 6 or 8
x
.303s was handled the same way -- they told him what they wanted and asked him
if
it could be done, but probably not the reasoning behind it. Whether the
tailwheel
case was an example of the government being classification happy is another
matter; the Brits tended to be (and still are, to a great extent) a lot more
reluctant about releasing such details, even when they're apparently innocuous,
than we were/are. OTOH, there were some probably unnecessary security concerns
over Mitchell's technical assistant, S/Ldr H.J. 'Agony' Payn, AFC RAF (ret)
because he'd divorced and his second wife was foreign (maybe German; I forget).
After Mitchell died he was named manager of the Design Department at Supermarine
(not Chief Designer, the post which Mitchell had held). The Air Ministry forced
Supermarine to remove him from work on the Spitfire or anything else classified
because of this, and in fact the company fired him.

Supermarine tried two different designs, a single wheel and one with dual wheels
(side by side). The latter tended to get clogged with mud, so they went with
the
single.

Guy


The 'need to know' principle is at least a couple of hundred years old
in UK government. The notion (valid, if infuriating at times) is that
even the most innocent details can be amassed and used, for instance to
gain knowledge of civil service culture to the point that someone can
masquerade as a government official and dupe another official into
giving away secret stuff. One of the acknowledged masters of building
up a mass of cultural information to get more out of people was Hanns
Scharff, who got tons of operational information out of captured allied
aircrew just by having friendly chats with them. His approach worked
where 'roughing up' had failed.

A double wheel, like the Mosquito, was it also an anti-shimmy measure?

Cheers,

Dave

--
Dave Eadsforth

Guy Alcala wrote:



Very simply, the wing had to fly at a high-enough AoA to fly sufficiently slowly for
the a/c to land on Essex class carriers. In order to achieve that AoA with the wing
rigidly attached to the fuselage, they would have had to chop off the after part of
the fuselage, mount the wing at a much higher fixed AoI, and/or give the a/c a taller
landing gear (to avoid dragging the tail), any of which would have been detrimental
to its performance. In addition, the pilot would have had to be sitting much higher
to have adequate view on the approach, also at a detriment to performance. CVA had
already designed the F7U Cutlass once, and had no wish to repeat it;-)

Guy

ROGER!!...very good, thanks Guy...I'm sure that I understood it
properly all along but I wasn't very good at explaining my
thoughts.

Plus, I kept getting waylaid by someone who has the wrong
understanding of it, but that's fine, at least I'm comfortable
with my understanding of it now.
--

-Gord.

In article ,
Mike Marron writes:
Guy Alcala wrote:

I imagine the longevity of all of these (certainly the Shackleton) has more
to due with lack of money for replacement, than finding the right niche.

Exactly right. In the grand scheme of things the RAF really didn't
have much to brag about throughout the Cold War years compared
to their American and Soviet (and even French) counterparts. The Brits
certainly produced a good number of ass-kickin' Rock 'n Roll bands
back in the '60's and 70's though.

-Mike (can't get no satisfaction from a Shackleton) Marron

Oh, I dunno. As the Shackleton folks used to say when the RAF was
considering reconstituting the remaing Shack AEW Squadron as a
Canberra outfit, "Eight Screws beats two blow-jobs any time."

To each their own.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster