Could the P36 have become America's Zero? (1 Viewer)

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Very easily. The P-36 was a radial.
Spitfire was a V-12 inline and was faster.
Maybe if you put an inline V-12 in the P-36 it would be faster.
Not saying the P-40 was a copy. Just the inline concept.
Glad you told me the Spitfire flew in 1936. Next you will tell me the Pope is Catholic.
 
The XP-40 was the 10th production P-36 pulled from the production line and refitted with the Allison engine. aside from the engine the other changes (landing gear doors, etc) were introduced slowly.

Americans had used both radials and V-12s on several earlier aircraft, Including the P-30 airframe.

consolidated_p-30.jpg

From Wiki:
"Three of the four P-30s were delivered to the 94th Pursuit Squadron at Selfridge Field in 1934. The first P-30A, by this time redesignated PB-2A (Pursuit, Biplace), made its maiden flight on 17 December 1935, with deliveries to service units starting on 28 April 1936. The last of the 50 PB-2As were completed by August that year."

Who is copying who?

Notice the turbo charger in the picture ;)

The designers in the US knew full well that V-12 engines offered more speed than identical power radials. That had been proved a number of times in the late 20s and early 30s on US planes using US engines. They didn't need to copy the "concept" from any foreign country and most foreign countries didn't need to copy it from the US.

Climb rate, weight, reliability and a few other features were up for debate but the speed advantage was not.
 
Not the Zero. By 1942 Zero was a poor performer.
No point copying that.
The P-36 was certainly good for its day. But Spitfire was better.
Maybe a better rationale is that America should build a fighter that can match the Spitfire since it was plenty good.

I guess no one told the Japanese the Zero was a poor performer. There was a squadron of Spitfire veterans from the BOB that were sent to Austraila and got their butt's handed to them by Zero's. The Spitfires that tangled with Zero's in 1942 didn't fair to well.
 
Two other prototypes of the P-36 were the YP-37 and the XP-42

In the YP-37, Curtiss installed a water-cooled Allison V-12 (V-1710) along with some modifications. But terrible visibility from the relocated cockpit and cooling problems led the design nowhere.

The XP-42 was addressing the drag problems of the radial by incorporating a longer cowling and a full spinner. This suffered cooling problems as well and though the aerodynamic improvements gave it a faster speed, the P-40 ended up being faster in the end.
 
What would have kept the P36 from becoming the US version of the Zero or KI43?

In a word or two. Army/Navy.
They wanted armor, self sealing fuel tanks, ect. This means more weight, less performance.
 
This idea would never fly. The aircraft described here would not meet the customer's requirements.

Consider that the P-40 followed the P-36 even though its maneuverability was considerably worse. The goal was a bit more speed to be comparable to the European fighters.

The USN also chose to go to the F4F-4 to replace the F4F-3 even though the -4 was considerably heavier and had much worse performance.

I believe it was Flatley who commented that although there was a great reduction in maneuverability from the -3 to the -4, it didn't make any significant difference since both types were so far below the A6M in agility.

- Ivan.
 
Apples and oranges.

P-36 is an Army land based fighter aircraft. Historically replaced by P-40.
F4F is a CV based fighter aircraft. Historically replaced by F6F.
.....USMC land based F4Fs muddy the distinction a bit. However if given a choice (and similar engines) the Jar Heads might prefer P-36 over F4F when operating from Guadalcanal.

I only mentioned the F4 since it was called out by name. Perhaps the P-36 would have done better with the engine but I still thought the F4 did better than most people think and held the line until other planes came into service and was still useful after the fact. I also thought the problem with the P-40 was how it was used and not the plane itself?
 
I guess no one told the Japanese the Zero was a poor performer. There was a squadron of Spitfire veterans from the BOB that were sent to Austraila and got their butt's handed to them by Zero's. The Spitfires that tangled with Zero's in 1942 didn't fair to well.

I could be wrong but I thought the problem with the Spitfires was not the planes but that people tried to fight the Zero the same as they would a 109. I thought if they had used energy tactics and speed the Spitfire would have been successful?
 
The P-40 and Wildcat suffered losses until the pilots changed thier tactics against the Oscar and Zero. Once they changed thier tactics, the Japanese started experiencing losses.

Both the P-40 and Wildcat were rugged aircraft and could absorb the damage inflicted by thier adversaries and still remain in the fight.
 
The early P-40 may have not been that much worse in maneuverability than the P-36. And early P-40 (no letter) was about 15% heavier than a P-36 (?) or Hawk 75 with P&W engine ( some of the figures for the P-36 are a little unbelievable compared to the HAWK 75 factory brochure). A P-40E clean is about 40% heavier which helps explain where the maneuverability went ( those six .50 cal guns in part).

People would do well to remember that the P-36 had some initial troubles ( wing skin wrinkling for one) and may have gained a bit of weight on it's own had it stayed in production instead/in addition to, the P-40.

From Joe Baugher's web site; " . However, the new Curtiss fighters began to encounter an extensive series of teething troubles almost as soon as they reached the field. Severe skin buckling in the vicinity of the landing gear wells had appeared, dictating increased skin thicknesses and reinforcing webs. Engine exhaust difficulties and some weaknesses in the fuselage structure were also encountered. Despite both production line and field fixes, the P-36As were grounded again and again. At one time, the 20th Pursuit Group was down to six serviceable P-36As, and even these planes had to be flown under severe limitations on their speed, aerobatics, and combat maneuvers. "
 
The P-36 could certainly have had significant performance improvements, simply due to increased engine power. I suspect, too, that it could do with a bit of aerodynamic clean-up, especially with regards to its engine installation. It is, of course, more difficult to design a good air-cooled engine installation than that of a water-cooled in-line, but it's certainly possible to design a clean engine with a radial. Compare the zero-lift drag coefficient of the F4U and that of the Bf109. The latter was reportedly about 0.029, or about 30% greater than the Corsair's.
The 1200hp of the R-1830-17 as installed on the P-36C were pretty much end of the line for the engine. Instead of raw power (as in higher octane fuel, more boost), it would have needed a better supercharger to have this power available at higher altitude. This doesn't come for free, as pointed out elsewhere in the topic by shortround6 - it adds weight and costs space.
The F4U has a lower drag coefficient also because it has a larger reference area. The wing is nearly twice as big, so a 30% higher drag coefficient means 30% less total drag for the 109. You can't just take some coefficient, it means nothing.
I guess no one told the Japanese the Zero was a poor performer. There was a squadron of Spitfire veterans from the BOB that were sent to Austraila and got their butt's handed to them by Zero's. The Spitfires that tangled with Zero's in 1942 didn't fair to well.
That's not an aircraft problem, but a tactics problem. The AVG fought with their P-40's against A6M since early on, used proper tactics and was highly successful under bad operating conditions.
 
The P-36 could certainly have had significant performance improvements, simply due to increased engine power. I suspect, too, that it could do with a bit of aerodynamic clean-up, especially with regards to its engine installation. It is, of course, more difficult to design a good air-cooled engine installation than that of a water-cooled in-line, but it's certainly possible to design a clean engine with a radial. Compare the zero-lift drag coefficient of the F4U and that of the Bf109. The latter was reportedly about 0.029, or about 30% greater than the Corsair's.

The 'late P-36' could also use a better layout of exhaust stacks, that would provide some additional thrust when compared with the historic one. As done on XP-42?
The two speed engine should add another boost in performance, the deletion of fuselage MGs and ammo providing more space neccesarry for next step, two stage engine - again as with XP-42?
The armament - 4 HMGs should do.

The Cd0 of the Bf-109 was between .0225-0.024, depending wheter it was F/early G, or E/late G?
 
I guess no one told the Japanese the Zero was a poor performer. There was a squadron of Spitfire veterans from the BOB that were sent to Austraila and got their butt's handed to them by Zero's. The Spitfires that tangled with Zero's in 1942 didn't fair to well.

You are right no one did tell the Japanese as they kept building them. A Zero against a Buffalo is ok but not against a Corsair. Considering that even the best Zero model was slower than a Spitfire I shows that.
 
The 1200hp of the R-1830-17 as installed on the P-36C were pretty much end of the line for the engine. Instead of raw power (as in higher octane fuel, more boost), it would have needed a better supercharger to have this power available at higher altitude. This doesn't come for free, as pointed out elsewhere in the topic by shortround6 - it adds weight and costs space.
The F4U has a lower drag coefficient also because it has a larger reference area. The wing is nearly twice as big, so a 30% higher drag coefficient means 30% less total drag for the 109. You can't just take some coefficient, it means nothing.
That's not an aircraft problem, but a tactics problem. The AVG fought with their P-40's against A6M since early on, used proper tactics and was highly successful under bad operating conditions.

The AVG didn't fight against A6Ms. Their fighter opponents were Army Ki -27s and Ki-43s.

Duane
 
To my knowledge, most of the opposition was IJA, but the IJN used China as a test bed for the A6M, and on occasion ran into the AVG. But at any rate, tactics against the Ki-43 are the same that work against the A6M.
 
The 1200hp of the R-1830-17 as installed on the P-36C were pretty much end of the line for the engine. Instead of raw power (as in higher octane fuel, more boost), it would have needed a better supercharger to have this power available at higher altitude. This doesn't come for free, as pointed out elsewhere in the topic by shortround6 - it adds weight and costs space.
The F4U has a lower drag coefficient also because it has a larger reference area. The wing is nearly twice as big, so a 30% higher drag coefficient means 30% less total drag for the 109. You can't just take some coefficient, it means nothing.
That's not an aircraft problem, but a tactics problem. The AVG fought with their P-40's against A6M since early on, used proper tactics and was highly successful under bad operating conditions.

Please don't try to tell me how aerodynamic coefficients work. The F4U-1 had a slightly higher wing loading than the Bf109 and was a much larger aircraft. A lower wing loading will tend to decrease the value of zero-lift drag coefficient, so, if anything, the F4U was relatively cleaner than the comparison of Cd,0​ would show. Just about all single-engined fighters of WW2 had Cd,0​ between about 0.021 to about 0.025, whether using V-12s or radials, with no demonstrable superiority of one over the other, except for the Mustang, which was easily had the lowest Cd,0​ of any production WW2 combat aircraft.
 
Try looking at the actual drag and not coefficients. The drag of the P-36 was 22% higher than the prototype XP-40 in it's last configuration. That is computed by HP vs speed at a certain altitude but may not include exhaust thrust (about zero on a P-36) Later P-40s got worse, heavier and more bits and pieces sticking out or more holes creating turbulence. P &W got the difference down to 8% with their test mule (NOT the XP-42) but they appear to be using exhaust thrust. The Test mule was an early P-40 (no letter) airframe and more than likely had no self sealing tanks, no armor and no guns making it very close in weight to the XP-40.
Since ALL THREE aircraft used just about the same airframe except for engines and minor things like landing gear doors it is about the best comparison that I can think of, instead of trying to compare vastly different aircraft using coefficients.
 
I'm not going to argue that the P-36 was aerodynamically inferior to the P-40, just that the P-36 did not have as well-designed an engine installation as did many other radial-engined fighters, probably because it was one of the earlier ones, and did not get the kind of attention that was given to the F4F. The USAAF could have paid to put the P-36 into NACA's full-scale wind tunnel as was done with the F4F-3.
 

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