LUFTWAFEE 1946 (Would Have Happened if ...)

I like the pics! Have no clue who was in the first, but BSS was one of my favorites when I was a kid.

 

Remind me again...In mid-44, the Luftwaffe basically ceased to be operationally effective.

Seems that the Germans were the ones that got their butts kicked. Not the other way around.

 

So you were/are trolling?

The first fact doesn't necessarily support your conclusion. If a WWII fighter plane was in range to shoot down another then it was in range to be seen. The fact that it wasn't indicates that the attention of the pilot was elsewhere. There's also the question of whether or not the Me-109 was significantly harder to see.
Let's take a quick look at say the Spitfire and the Me 109.
From the side the critical dimension for the Spitfire is 9.6 and the Me-109 9.3. Not much of a difference.

That was almost totally incoherent except of the part where you told me what I believed.

Not so. The accuracy of the statistics depends on how you obtain the sample and the sample size as well as the population size. If you have a sample of 12 out of a population of 10,000 you probably don't have a very accurate sample. If it's from a population of 12 you have a perfect sample.

Again not so. Depending on what you are looking at looking at the whole war may not be appropriate. If for instance you are comparing two planes one of which flew the entire war and one only in 44 and 45 then looking at the whole war for one is not appropriate.

That indicates that you don't understand statistics of the topic at hand.

Which suggest your previous claims are wrong doesn't it?

I find that extremely presumptuous. Do you have anything to back it up?

 

In terms of being difficult to see...the opposite may also be true, in terms of actually being able to see...the 109 had possibly the worst vision of all aircraft due to the cage with thick spars...and we are really talking about attacks from the rear in terms of not being seen...so any aircraft is difficult to see from the rear...

 

I like it. Good demonstration of critical thinking skills. All good points, but the formulae must be readily adaptable to widely disseminated open source material. The dimensions and procedures you list would be superior to the plan I posted, but worthless in real life as they would require either detailed access of blue prints and or dimensioned mechanical plans. So given those criteria, how would you combine the gross dimensions from many mass market books and a (as in Single!) simple formulae to determine the "To Spot #" for a simple game, or a more sophisticated simulation to be sold to the DoD that addresses ALL of the factors you mentioned above???

 

Not at all! While the immaturity of the early jets did cause a few accidents by failure, the largest single cause of accidents was landing speed and sink rates. The faster they went, the more they crashed. No other source of causality is even close to sink rate and speed on the list of things gone wrong.

 

Flame out??

 

Why? Tell me what great plane from the war has done anything like so many amateur built planes in the last few decades. Long-EZ, Voyager, AR-5, Gossamer Albatross, Space-X, Nemesis, Pushy Galore, Tsunami, Miss Ashley-II and Rare Bear, to name just a few.

 

Ummm...Rare Bear is a great plane from the war...an F8F Bearcat.

Tsunami had an brief undistinguished career, not unlike several mediocre fighters from WW2.

Basically, the aircraft you have mentioned are x-craft...Like the XP-47J that achieved 505MPH in level flight.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Why even mention it?

 

There's a saying something to the effect of: "For every complex problem there is a simple solution ... that is wrong." . If you are looking at a computer aided, moderated, or executed simulation why not go with a reasonable instead of a simple method to determine spotting. For ground vehicles critical dimension is used as is based on the vehicle dimensions and aspect angle. it would be more complex with planes due to the extra dimension and how to account for the wings which are almost immaterial in some aspects and major contributors in others. Still most single engine WWII fighters were reasonably close to the same size. Close enough that pilot skill, relevant camouflage, weather conditions, and even how tired the pilot was would dominate over plane size as far as spotting goes.

How many of them (the F8F excepted) would hold up to carrier or rough field landings much less combat in WWII. Those are mostly single trick ponies that rely on advances in aeronautics learned during and since the war, as well as modern tools, more than the skill of the designers.

 

RareBear, indeed, a modified F8F Bearcat. And for those who wish to pic nits, the F8Fs of VF-19 under LCDR Joe Smith were at NAS Kaneohe ready to deploy when the war in the Pacific ended, so, yes, the F8F was a WWII era aircraft. And a not surprising, considering its Grumman lineage, very capable craft. For example:

November 22, 1946 . . . Cleveland Air Show . . . Operation Pogostick . . . two F8F-1 from TacTest at the NAS Patuxent NATC are prepared for climbs to 10000 feet. Both aircraft have the WEP safety interlock bypassed allowing WEP with wheels down, something standard configuration does not allow. Both aircraft are otherwise standard, armed, but no ammo, with about 50% fuel. Each is equipped with what was called a “theater” installed behind the pilot’s seat. This was a small instrument board, about one-foot square, that had as it’s most important feature a movie camera that recorded time, altitude, and various goings on in the cockpit. The camera was actuated thusly: the pilot taxied the airplane to his starting point and flipped a switch to activate the camera. At that point, when the pilot releases his brakes, another switch is automatically thrown and the camera starts recording events.

In this particular instance, the cameras were calibrated by National Aeronautics Association for the climb attempts. By reviewing the film it became relatively academic to determine the time take to reach 10000 feet or 3000 meters, which ever you wanted to look at.

First to go was LCDR Bill Leonard, Projects Director at TacTest, from a dead stop to 10K feet in 100.0 seconds, including a 150 foot take off run. LCDR Butch Davenport, F8F Projects Officer at TacTest, came along about 30 minutes later and set the next new record of 97.8 seconds, including a 115 foot take off run. Leonard's take off was into an estimated 30 knot head wind, by the time Davenport took off the head wind was over 40 knots. This higher wind speed helped to reduce Davenport’s time on the ground. I have never seen Davenport’s pilot’s log book, but I have Leonard’s in my possession. It shows his run and earlier practice runs made at TacTest in preparation.

It took a jet to beat Davenport's climb mark.

Rapid climb to altitude was the F8F's bread and butter. The plane was to have been one of the solutions to the kamikaze problem ... rapid climbs capability, firepower, speed, and more (better) maneuverability than the F6F or F4U.

 

Would LCDR Butch Davenport be the former Engineering Officer of VF-17 who - working with Vought Tech Reps - was instrumental in solving many of the F4U's carrier issues that our esteemed military analyst attributed to the British?

 

Yup, that was Merl William ("Butch") Davenport's fine hand there, too. He had, pre-war, a degree in aeronautical engineering. Did okay as a fighter pilot as well, 6.25 victories while in VF-17 in the Solomons, sharing a G4M with the rest of his division, ENS Robert Ray Hogan, LTJG Robert Hal Jackson, and LT Walter John Schub; and six A6Ms all by himself.

 

wELL NO, rARE BEAR IS NOT A GREAT PLANE FROM ww-ii, IT IS A HAND BUILT DBOTBABTDCLM! plane with so many changes from the original that it scarcely resembles it any more. It does not even use the original engine any more. If you doubt this, just ask one of the crew.
You are right, it was undistinguished, except for the fact that it was an original design that beat all speeds by WW-II planes including the XP-47J at it's altitude. The AR-5 was an X craft? Nemesis was an X craft? Voyager? Long EZ?? These are all examples of amateur designed and built planes.

 

Not really! Size is different enough that while most WW-II planes were reasonably close in out side dimensions, but because of the huge differences in AR can be seen at very different ranges. Compute the scores using my formulae for the 109 and Spitfire to see what I mean.

 

The trick was not changing the plane, but the pilot's skills.

 

I calculated the critical dimension (side view) and there was less than a 10% difference. I didn't have the width of the fuselage so couldn't calculate that one but since their engines are about same width we can use that as an estimation and the result is a critical dimension for the Me-109 about 1/3 less than that of the Spitfire. Not sure if the height number include the landing gear though. Do PLS note that the Yak-3 is smaller in all dimensions except possibly width as it's engine is 1cm wider than that of the Me-10 so it's going to come out looking better no matter which formula you use. It also featured the center mounted weaponry you are so fond of. Note the critical dimension of the Yak-1 is about 1% larger from the front and 5% smaller from the side, given it's other dimensions it's also going to be smaller using your formula and from the top or bottom using surface area or the square root there of.

 

Yeah, it's becoming more and more obvious it's Shooter Ike again or a near clone. My suggestion is to stop feeding the creature under the bridge.

 

You have once again contradicted yourself even from that somewhat less than accurate cut-paste job you did on F4Us. It was Butch Davenport who worked out the need for spoiler to remedy the low speed stall problem, determining optimal size, shape, and placement. All F4Us sported the spoiler he designed. So the plane was changed. He also worked with the Vought reps on the oleo pressure problem (that inaccurately described in your Wiki cut-paste) which eliminated that portion of the bounce not caused by simple poor technique. So, still another change to the aircraft.

You need to read up on Naval Aviation, its aircraft, development of same, and personages before you start pontificating; the lack of breadth whenever you write of F4Fs, F6Fs, F4Us, and F8Fs is painfully obvious.

 

Did others note that he did actually come up with the reason the Me-109 shot down as many planes as it did? I.e. the allies furnished it with a target rich environment.