PlanesandShips
Airman
- 21
- Feb 25, 2024
WRT "casual wave and it would have been done" being unrealistic, and it is unrealistic, but IMHO that's the point of focusing on the memo. Imagine if a different memo had been written on 5-16-39 requiring the use of drop tanks instead of prohibiting them. That gives another two years for engineering/design, testing, development, training, tactics, etc. Imagine if a forward thinking USAAF required Republic to design drop tank capability from the beginning. Wasn't the whole air corps propaganda going back to Billy Mitchell all about the future, of being forward thinking, that aviation would have a huge role in the future? How many lives might have been saved if the sentence read: "The Chief of the Air Corps directs that all tactical airplanes will be capable of carrying drop tanks." I'm anticipating that some will say, "Ok, how much fuel?" That is TBD, but requiring their use would have been a good step in the right direction.This is not the first time that this has come up nor the idea that somehow the US (and Britain) were remiss in not designing and building escort fighters sooner. This seems to be a rather consistent complainant. I am not single out Planesandships here.
Problem is that complainers never tell where the planes for realistic peace time training were to come from, for the US especially.
As of Dec 7th 1941 the US had about 130-140 B-17s total, of all kinds, and they were scattered from Newfoundland (anti-sub patrol) to the Philippines so getting even two dozen together at one base might have been a real trick.
The US had about 20 or so B-24s and around 1/2 had turbos and 1/2 didn't so we can rule out formation flying with those. Things got better in a hurry but it was no longer peace time.
I would be very interested to see how the US would build escort fighters to escort even those early B-17s with the engines of the time (1938-39-40-41).
Not a casual wave of the hand and statement of "if they wanted to they could have done it."
P&W canceled the 14 cylinder R-2180 after about 30 engines. Probably would not have done the job anyway, also used the same cylinders/piston assemblies as the R-2800.
P&W was working on a 24 cylinder sleeve valve pre war but canceled it in Oct 1940 leaving the XP-49, XP-54 and XP-55 without their first engine.
Wright was working on the 42 cylinder R-2160 Tornado and after about 6.5 million dollars they gave up.
The USAAC fair-haired child, the 0-IV-V-1430 Continental was supposed to take up the slack but it was running several years late and making a lot less the promised power.
Meanwhile, Allison goes from making 40 engines in 1939 to making just under 15,000 engines in 1942. Goes a long way to saving the Allies bacon. But the 1942 production also needed a lot help from at least one Automobile plant (Cadillac) for internal parts. Nowadays gets blamed for not being quicker with a two stage supercharger, 5000 fewer Allison in North Africa, Soviet union and the Pacific in 1942/early 43???
Other companies and countries did a fantastic job but before 1939 Allison had not built more than 13/14 engines in a single year. Blaming them for not coming close to RR superchargers in 1942/43 is more than a little harsh.
So the challenge how does the US come up with an "escort" fighter in 1939 or 1940 or 1941 to accompany even the early B-17s in training. Part of the challenge is that unlike British bombers, the B-17Bs of 1939 had turbos and were going to cruise higher than any non turbo or non two stage engine of the time.
Now just for fun, figure out far a P-36 could return from, after dropping hypothetical drop tanks, with totally full internal fuel (CG adjusted to solve that problem, special fuel pump to allow for full fuel after the tanks are dropped.)
allow for 15 minutes of combat, not 20, and plan on 15 gallons reserve(30 min) to find and land on a friendly field at the end of the mission.
how far will that P-36 fly at what speeds and how many hundreds of miles less is that than the radius of a B-17?
Use the 10,000 ft altitudes of the P-36 and forget flying at high altitudes for the B-17s.
I don't care how much fuel you hang under the P-36, 150-200 gallons? the problem is how do you get back.
WRT the P-36 not getting back, and CG problems.....other airplanes had that problem also, as noted here and elsewhere (for example in Greg's hated video) the P-51 had the same problem. The "get back" is dictated by the FOB after the tanks are dropped minus any fuel used for CG, minus any fuel used for fighting. The drop tank isn't a panacea, but it can be used, and was used later, to great effect. Its interesting to me that 20 years and 1,200 mph faster with very different technology, the Phantom had the same limitation. I know of at least 2 F4's that crashed due to fuel exhaustion: C.E. Southwick and Randy Cunningham were the pilots (I forget the RIO's/WSO's.) I wonder if any P-47s actually ran out of fuel over France or the Channel returning after combat, and if so, how many? Also, I mentioned McNamara and Vietnam earlier, and that was poo-pooed, which seems ironic given McNamara's involvement in strategic bombing in WW2. One might argue that the arrogant man was 0 for 2 in directing large conflicts on a world wide basis from the comfy confines of an office in DC.
WRT taking off downwind, I heard that if you deploy the spoilers it helps catch some of that wind and pushes you forward like a sailboat. Same thing happens in cruise with a big tailwind, deploy the flight spoilers and catch even more of that wind.......
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