WW II plane buffs?

[Foster Zygote]

Only if you tried to fight them in the way they wanted to fight, which was low-speed dogfights. Engage them in a high-speed dogfight and your prospects of winning were pretty good, since that's not what those aircraft were designed to do. They were also rather poorly protected, which meant if you could get in the first shot you'd probably win right there.

Oh, absolutely. But it took a while for allied pilots to learn those lessons. They'd been training against pilots flying identical, or very similar, aircraft and had to throw most of what they'd learned out the window when they faced the A6M. Ironically, the AVG had already engaged the IJAAF's similarly conceptualized aircraft like the Ki-43, but the lessons they'd learned and the tactics that they employed weren't disseminated to USN or USAAF pilots. The A6M didn't even have boosted controls, so above 200 mph they actually handled like pigs. I remember reading one Japanese pilot's account that described the stick as feeling like it was rooted in cement when he dived in his A6M. Learning not to engage the A6M in the style of combat in which it excelled, and employing team tactics like the Thatch weave helped turn things around until the arrival of planes like the F6F and the P-38.

 

[sts60]

My earlier post about the Avenger mentioned an Air & Space article about their fire-fighting role. Here it is. Attached are a scan of the cover, and a couple of views of the Avenger that the group bought on the flight line in Canada.

Man, it is a big plane. When it was parked next to the other single-engine planes (the Cessnas, Pipers, Mooneys, etc.) it absolutely dwarfed them.

 

[I Ratant]

Are we talking about a bomber or a cooler

.
The cargo version (C-109) was called the "C-one oh boom" for its tendency to blow up when a flap motor sparked.
George McGovern flew the B-24 in Yurp during the war, and remarked at the enormous strength needed by the pilot to fly it in formation.
When the Collings Foundation came by with theirs, the PIC was a mere slip of a girl! 110 pounds max. No muscles. And there was a WASP pilot there, about the same physique, but 60 years older who'd ferried them solo.
I got photos but they're on a hard drive the computer won't recognize any more.

 

[I Ratant]

Oh, absolutely. But it took a while for allied pilots to learn those lessons. They'd been training against pilots flying identical, or very similar, aircraft and had to throw most of what they'd learned out the window when they faced the A6M. Ironically, the AVG had already engaged the IJAAF's similarly conceptualized aircraft like the Ki-43, but the lessons they'd learned and the tactics that they employed weren't disseminated to USN or USAAF pilots. The A6M didn't even have boosted controls, so above 200 mph they actually handled like pigs. I remember reading one Japanese pilot's account that described the stick as feeling like it was rooted in cement when he dived in his A6M. Learning not to engage the A6M in the style of combat in which it excelled, and employing team tactics like the Thatch weave helped turn things around until the arrival of planes like the F6F and the P-38.

.
The F4U was in flight test in 1940, and the test pilot for Vought, Boone Guyton, took pains to have the engineers design the control system to be responsive at very high speeds. This from the experience with the RAF in the first year of the war.

 

[fuelair]

Some neat Nazi experimental aircraft :http://www.fleetairarmarchive.net/aircraft/faacapturedaircrafthomepage.html

 

[Foster Zygote]

.
The cargo version (C-109) was called the "C-one oh boom" for its tendency to blow up when a flap motor sparked.
George McGovern flew the B-24 in Yurp during the war, and remarked at the enormous strength needed by the pilot to fly it in formation.
When the Collings Foundation came by with theirs, the PIC was a mere slip of a girl! 110 pounds max. No muscles. And there was a WASP pilot there, about the same physique, but 60 years older who'd ferried them solo.
I got photos but they're on a hard drive the computer won't recognize any more.

A friend of mine has a book of old Air Force cartoons that includes a picture of an AAF pilot with one arm twice as big as the other. The caption reads "You can always tell the B-24 pilots by their overdeveloped left arms".

 

[Alex Cured]

Some neat Nazi experimental aircraft :http://www.fleetairarmarchive.net/aircraft/faacapturedaircrafthomepage.html

I imagine spares might have been a problem

 

[Damien Evans]

This?

[qimg]http://www.yvonneclaireadams.com/HostedStuff/KalinenK7.jpg[/qimg]
Kalinin K-7 Bomber​

Read more

Surely couldn't fly

 

[Akhenaten]

Surely couldn't fly

Not in that flying battleship configuration, but fly it most certainly did.

More informations here

 

[Alex Cured]

Surely couldn't fly

Well sort of ...

The K-7 first flew on 11 August 1933. The very brief first flight showed instability and serious vibration caused by the airframe resonating with the engine frequency. The solution to this was thought to be to shorten and strengthen the tail booms, little being known then about the natural frequencies of structures and their response to vibration. The aircraft completed seven test flights before a crash due to structural failure of one of the tail booms on 21 November 1933.[3] However, there appeared recently some speculations in the Russian aviation press about the role of politics and competing design office of A. N. Tupolev, suggesting possible sabotage. The accident killed 14 people aboard and one on the ground.[4] Although two more prototypes were ordered in 1933, the project was cancelled in 1935 before they could be completed

 

[Marduk]

I imagine spares might have been a problem

no, they were falling out of the skies

 

[a_unique_person]

The early F2A was much lighter than the version used by the USN. The Finns used the earlier version to good effect against both the Germans and the Russians. And really, pretty much anything that face incredibly maneuverable Japanese aircraft like the A6M and the Ki-43 was doomed. Especially considering that it took a lot of bloody noses to gain enough experience to learn what to do and what not to do when engaging Japanese aircraft.

The Australians found the Buffalo to be not much better than useless against the Japanese in the tropics. The engines tended to overheat, which would cause them to spew oil all over the windscreen, they were very slow to climb, the Japanese had much better performance.

 

[I Ratant]

From the April 1941 issue of "Fortune" magazine..
These were in flight test in 1940!
The manufacturing of planes was just getting to the enormous rate it would achieve in the next 3 years.

 

[I Ratant]

Noted journalist Bruce McCall found a seldom-seen Soviet bomber..
The blueprints had been damaged, and being state property, it would be a capital crime to admit to any damage, so the plane was built to the print.

 

[Marduk]

Noted journalist Bruce McCall found a seldom-seen Soviet bomber..
The blueprints had been damaged, and being state property, it would be a capital crime to admit to any damage, so the plane was built to the print.

lol polet khuy

 

[SpitfireIX]

no, they were falling out of the skies

 

[Andy_Ross]

Noted journalist Bruce McCall found a seldom-seen Soviet bomber..
The blueprints had been damaged, and being state property, it would be a capital crime to admit to any damage, so the plane was built to the print.

Are you sure?
I would like to see a source for that.

Blueprints for aircraft like any other engineering project run to hundreds and hundreds of drawings and revisions over years. There isn't just one sketch that gets copied.

 

[Akhenaten]

Noted journalist Bruce McCall found a seldom-seen Soviet bomber..
The blueprints had been damaged, and being state property, it would be a capital crime to admit to any damage, so the plane was built to the print.

Are you sure?
I would like to see a source for that.

Blueprints for aircraft like any other engineering project run to hundreds and hundreds of drawings and revisions over years. There isn't just one sketch that gets copied.

The Other Air Forces - Humorist Bruce McCall's small fleet of little-known aircraft.

 

[Marduk]

Are you sure?
I would like to see a source for that.
.

from the above book, from the section entitled
Major Howdy Bixbie's Forgotten Warbirds by Bruce Mccall
from here
http://discaircraft.greyfalcon.us/Major Howdy Bixby.htm

The bent fuselage of the Snud U-14 stood for many years as a Soviet military secret; only after the last example of this little-known type had safely crashed was it revealed. During the design stage in 1938, a blueprint had been wrinkled accidentally and because nobody would own up to responsibility -since damaging state property carried the death penalty- the mistake went unchecked and into production. As a work-horse transport aircraft, this behemoth of the blue, with its four Kapodny-Gific engines, each producing 400 hp, and its vast cargo capacity, "had everything." Unusual features were tiny cockpits on each wing, where an engineer sat supervising the engines, and solid pig-iron wheels. These last ingeniously skirted the Russian rubber shortage, but caused another problem; reports claim the locomotive-style wheels so badly chewed up even paved landing strips that bringing a Snud to earth meant maximum risk to plane, crew and all nearby buildings and collective farms. Obliquely, this may explain the Soviet insistence that a Snud had set a world record for nonstop flight in 1941 -staying aloft over 64 hours while traveling nearly 3500 miles and averaging over 54 mph- and also why the pilot and navigator were transported to Siberia immediately after landing and receiving the Order of Heavy Industry.

 

[I Ratant]

I'd first seen Bruce's air force in Car & Driver, prolly 40 years ago...
His bi-allegiance Italian fighter was quite interesting.