LUFTWAFEE 1946 (Would Have Happened if ...)

Actually, engagements at supersonic speed did occur, and you are actually proving my point rather well. The Supersonic jets have the capability to leave the combat scene due to their speed (and many did), but sometimes they had to fight, and sometimes got shot down. Just because an aircraft has superior speed, does not make it better than a slower opponent, unless your objective is to avoid conflict altogether.....which is not what WW2 fighters were made to do.

 

Different methods of combat...a slower aircraft will outturn, great for evasion and for getting on target...speed is great for an ambush in combat, not much else...otherwise speed gets a pilot to and away from combat.

 

How about we distill the 24 odd types down to only those types that were not members of the same family? Then lets discount all those planes that lost more times that they won?

But most of those planes are not greatly inferior, in fact most of them have at least some traits that were superior to those of the -109 and lost in spite of it.

Actually I think not. My favorite plane is/was the P-38, but if I had to take a single engined plane, it would be the P-47

No, there is no practical way to distribute Victories if you start on the lost side of the equation.

See above!

Any of the Ace books, plus the Ace Factor book. Nice arguments and true, but not practical. Sincere there is little chance of sorting out who got what for most of the tens of thousands of downed planes, your analysis is flawed.

Well, what you stated could also be said of both the Hawker Hurricane and Spitfire, but no one thinks they are world beaters! ( Should have stated out side of Britain?)

Missed some of the details here. They switched from two very low MV guns to one of slightly higher MV, then one of extreme MV, the Mk-151-15, then to one of lower MV, the Mk-151-20, then one with a much lower MV the Mk-108 and then trialed the Mk-103 and had two versions of the Mk213 in the wings. (Both with more MV than their predecessors.)

Poor logic on many levels here? What would you call the singular plane that shot down more EA than any other type? Then you make a sideways conversion that the wing root mounted guns of the FW 190 family are not CL mounted guns. They are in fact close enough that their dispersion makes them CL guns for all intents and purposes! They were not pointed at two different directions but parallel to the LoS and elevated such that they were Zeroed at 600 Meters, not 200-250 yards like the Brits or 400 yards like most American planes.

Not at all! Read the above answer.

The P-38 was the fastest war plane on the planet for most of it's career. The actual number of P-38s that "Augured in" as they say, was insignificant when compared to those who died in landing and take off accidents in Spitfires and Me-109s! I think all things should be takes at the value in lives they cost. P-38s saved more lives than any other type. Tricycle nose gear!!! More pilots brought home than other types because of the twin engines. Etc...

Look up General Chuck Yeager's interview on line at You-tube. He thinks the .50 was better than cannons! I think he was right. They worked just fine in Korea Vs a much harder plane to damage and destroy, the Mig-15 and at much longer ranges too! Average 750 yards. We only replaced the .50s when we invented a faster firing, higher MV cannon.

 

I only know of two combats where one of the planes went Super on the other. "Hands Hanly's F-105 and Norm Lockard's F104??? Your assumption that they could leave at will is erroneous. It takes time to build up enough speed to go super and early Heaters made that time you did not have if you were trying to escape.
So yes, better speed does make a WW-II plane significantly better than a slower type! Instead of attacking the idea with off topic examples that are not related to the matter at hand, why not read the details of my arguments and think on them.

 

An F-4 Phantom shot down a Mig-19 in Vietnam while both were supersonic, an F-8 Crusader shot down a Mig-17 while going supersonic.....just to put that out there. What I'm saying is completely relevant and logical, speed is not everything, and examples in both WW2, and beyond, show that. The faster an aircraft goes, it sacrifices maneuverability, the more maneuverable and aircraft, the slower it is. What I have been trying to say this whole time, is that looking purely at an aircraft's specifications does not give you an idea as to what kind of success that aircraft had in combat. You are saying that the fastest aircraft, the most plentiful aircraft, the aircraft with the most kills is the "best" aircraft of the war, when in reality it is purely subjective as to what aircraft you believe is the best of WW2, you can have plenty of arguments to support your claim, but at the end of the day, that's all it is, an argument, there will never be an answer.

 

I've seen the 335 MPH figure and will not argue about 5 MPH. I will also not argue about the difference between a late war plane and a early war plane. What I did state was that if Fairchild had spent the money to fix the bugs, it could have been the best plane of the war. I did not know they eliminated the 20 mm gun to make the Service Ceiling? What I do know was that WO a supercharger, it went ~330-335 MPH and with a super charger that would have allowed the engine to make more power at a higher altitude would certainly have made it very much faster in the thinner air at altitude! The figures you quote for the P-51 are all, as far as I know all correct, but what you did not state is that those speeds at higher altitudes were ALL made on less power than was available down low were it was much slower. So, the blower makes more power at altitude and there is less wind resistance at the same time.
Bell XP-77 pictures - Google Search
See the picture including the type "A" turbocharger? Your list of Ranger engine figures misses the point, the war plane requires a supercharger of some sort If we were to assume that the blown engine could make the same "Specific Power Density" as other air cooled engines of the period, then with a blower it makes 750 HP with a conventional blower WO ADI and over 900 HP with ADI and or an intercooled turbo.
So now the figures come out as 750/550= 36.4% more HP and because of the diminishing thickness of air at altitude a true air speed increase of about 16.8% to ~390 MPH low and very much over 450 MPH at altitude, if it follows the same power density conversion as other notable air cooled planes. If the turbo and ADI gives 900 plus HP the plane becomes as fast, or faster than the P-51 H, or Mk22 Spitfire.
Then there is the two .50s weapons fitment, just fine by me, but If you trade out the cannon, you get two extra .50s for the same, or less weight. I would settle for two .50s as being enough for the mission and take the increased performance that goes with it.
Several studies, both at the time and post war showed that building the XP-77 out of conventional stressed skin Aluminum, the air frame would Mass about 20% less. Tell me how much extra performance does that get you?
I would trade that 20% of weight for the Slotted flaps and LE slats, CR props, increased tail surfaces, one foot fuselage stretch mentioned before and pressurize the cockpit! What that picture in the link does not show is the larger gas tank between the pilot and engine which I would eliminate for safety reasons. With larger tail and fuse stretch, the 40 gallon tank shown can stay, but the wet wing would give the tiny plane huge range performance!! I like combat persistence!

 

Why would you think only one third were lost to EA? The figures you quoted earlier were 6800 to 7800. Something that approximated a 45/55 split? But that was for American sources, how can you claim that the Brits who did very much less staffing than we did would get the same ratio? Ditto for the Ruskies too.
So, if that 96,000 number is at least half right then roughly 50,000 were lost to EA?

 

Well not exactly. Speed, usable speed that is, makes it harder for the bad guy to sneak up behind you in any given time period. So if you are going 300 MPH and the enemy is going 350, then it takes him >23 seconds to get to shooting range from half a mile back where it would be very easy to miss spotting him. That means it gives you only about 22 seconds to spot him. But if on the other hand you are going 375 MPH at higher altitude because of your Turbocharger, then it takes many minutes for him to climb up to shoot at you and you have much longer time to see the easier to spot contrails before they can get to you and he will have been using TO, or WE Power and be close to the point at which he has to throttle back before he destroys the engine for a self goal as it were!
No, speed is as they say in every AF on the planet, is LIFE!

 

I would dispute your claim. Speed is everything. It enters into the numerous equations in so many ways it is impossible not to believe it is not important. Secondly, in the Viet Nam war, not all things were even close to being equal. But in WW-II, our subject here, there was very little difference in speeds of most aircraft! they cruised at about 200 MPH for maximum range and about 300 MPH in the so called "Combat Cruise" There were only four real exceptions to this rule. The Turbocharged P-38 and 47, the P-51 with it's super slick aerodynamics and the Me-109 with it's huge engine and little tiny wing. Of the four, none were perfect, but the P-38 and Me-109 came closest, but for very different reasons.
Turning is vastly over rated at a tactic for winning. It only comes into play when you about to die, because if you use good Zoom and Boom tactics, turns are not important at all! You either get them on the first pass or wait for some other turkey to come your way.

 

Tell that to a mongoose...

 

And I have seen the Holy Ghost and will not argue about it either. Faith is just that, it is faith, which appears to be all you are going by. I will go by Joe Baugher and the Aircraft Engine Historical Society.

The XP-77 development contract was let 30 October 1941. The NA-73 began development on 23 May 1940. It is the XP-77 that is the "late war plane".

They eliminated the 20mm gun to meet the AAC requirement that it be able to carry a 300-lb bomb or a 325-lb depth charge. And even then the Bell engineers had to do a major weight trimming exercise to get it flyable. It was intended to be 4,000 pounds and 400 MPH, instead, it was 4,028 pounds and 330 MPH. BTW, it wasn't "Fairchild" spending the money, it was Bell, who was the contractor. They spent money making 54 changes required by the AAC.

Given that Fairchild had such a difficult time manufacturing the supercharged V-770...if pigs had wings they'd be pigeons.

What part of Fairchild actually built a supercharged V-770 and it achieved 575 HP do you not understand?

You do realize you are simply making those numbers up don't you?

Name the "several studies" please.

And I would happily trade you a hamburger Tuesday for a hamburger today.

I'm done with this silliness.

 

I appreciate the civil argument shooter, I'm going to move on to greener pastures......

 

The development time scales were vastly different as evidenced by the dates of their first flights. Just one more instance of failure to spend the money as required?

Only 54 changes? As is proper in these types of arguments, we split the problem into several parts. The airframe and engine. As you must have noticed, I stipulated that the R&D of both projects follow established trends and rates of development for both the plane and the engine. Now I remember the details from so long ago. They were forced to remove the weight of the gun, or the gun itself depending on which model it was to carry the 325 pound Depth bomb but not the 300 pound bomb. It would not mater if the engine made the required power, which it never did. The failure of the Engine developers to keep pace with P&W and Wright. That is the cause of the quip about Fairchild not spending the money. If they had and kept pace with the others, which by the way, was not that big a deal, they would have met the 750 HP goal. Which only would have required an energy density of 0.77 per Cm of piston crown area. With a Turbocharger and ADI the specific power goes up to 0.93, and the HP to 905, both historical figures of merit and easily attainable. Fairchild did make a blown 700 HP version for post war commercial service which everyone knows is less severe than war time use. So the power was there, if they had spent the money to keep pace with the rest.
Now on to Bell Aircraft Co; The MTO of the plane was supposed to 4,000 pounds including the bomb/depth charge, but as you say it was 28 pounds over weight. If you remember I stipulated conversion of the design to one of conventional Aluminum construction which would have saved >20% of the airframe's weight. ( Minus the 730 pounds of engine.) So 2,125 pounds less 20% or 425 pounds, leaving the airframe weight of 1,700 pounds. That 425 pounds, plus the original 730 pounds of now less weight pays for an improved engine with turbo, reduction gear box, CR props, leading edge slats, double slotted Fowler Flaps, with drooping ailerons and 28 pounds of weight reduction, with weight left over. If it were up to me, I'd trade the 20 mm cannon for two fifties and ammo. I never did like multiple caliber guns on the plane with their disparate trajectories. Even though two .50 is more than enough, four is better. two .50s weighing almost exactly the same as the one 20 mm cannon.

Yes, I knew that and it ran on 87 Octane gas! Why would I do that? Make up the numbers, that is, when it is so easy to check my figures. The studies were done by Bell and involved two different conversions, one with a standard geared blower and one with a turbocharger.
Well actually, Fairchild also built a 700 HP version, the SGV-770D-5 for post war commercial use. It ran on 100 octane gas instead of the 87 they were trying to make work early in the war. How much power would it make on 115-150 Octane gas with ADI like all the other war time recip engines?

 

The development time scales were different because they were different aircraft.

The USAAF required 54 changes based upon the inspection of the mock-up produced by Bell on 20 and 21 September 1942. The requirement for carrying the bomb and depth bomb was in the contract of 16 May 1942.

The "required power" was assumed to be 500 HP in the design. The engine produced the required power, but not the required performance in the airframe.

Sorry, you keep saying things like that, but they simply aren't true. The SGV-770 C-1 (Navy designation XV-770-6, later given the USAAF designation XV-770-7)) as used in the XP-77 dated from 1939. It was rated at 520 HP and 3,150 RPM at takeoff (for 5 minutes). At normal rated power (100%) it was at 450 HP and 3,000 RPM. The "blown" (well, supercharged) version, the SGV-770 D-4 (USAAF designation XV-770-9), produced 575 HP at 3,400 RPM at takeoff. At normal rated power it was 465 HP at 3,200 RPM UP TO 12,000 feet and then fell off to 450 HP at 3,200 RPM up to 27,000 feet. The real problem was that testing showed that the engine had insufficient cooling to climb under military power past 15,000 feet and that the cooling at 27,000 feet would be marginal (see NACA Memorandum Report Analysis of the High-Altitude Cooling of the Ranger SGV-770 D-4 Engine in the Bell XP-77 Airplane 1 October 1943). I can find no evidence that a 750 HP SGV-770 design was ever contemplated and all proposed design changes to the SGV-770 were to produce the intended 450 rated horsepower through 27,000 feet. It was solving that problem that killed the XP-77 high-altitude project and led to the decision to stick with the XV-770-7 in the two prototypes authorized on 3 August 1943.

The XV-920 and XH-1850 engines were proposed by Bell on 20 February 1943 and were similar in design to the SGV-770, but were much larger and heavier. They were intended to produce up to 1,500 HP, but only the eight XH-1850 prototypes are not to have been built.

Why would the Air Force decide to convert the design to "conventional Aluminum construction" when the whole point of the project was to conserve aluminum? It was after the Air Force mandated changes in September 1942 that the Bell designers realized they were going overweight and began paring the weight down, but the requirement to build the aircraft of wood remained. And it was the redesign and weight reduction process, which stretched on into the summer of 1943 without producing a prototype, which led the Air Force to reduce the development contract to just two aircraft on 3 August 1943.

Note BTW, the proposed changes were emphatically not up to you, but were up to the Air Force Material Command.

Yes, sadly, it is easy to check your figures. Indeed, why would they run the SGV-770 C-4 "on 87 Octane gas" (with or without an exclamation point)? Especially given that the specification sheet for the SGV-770 C-4 calls for "not less than 91 Octane" for its "Grade of fuel". It gets even odder when you realize that the United States did not produce 87 or 91 Octane "aviation gasoline" during the war. Wartime production was exclusively 100/130 Octane 4 cc TEL in 1942, then expanded to 100/130 Octane 4.6 CC TEL and 98/130 Octane C-S 4 cc TEL in 1943, then further expanded to various other 98/130 and 99/130 Octane blends in 1944, and finally the 115/145 blends of 1945.

87 and 90 Octane fuels were reserved for training and were not considered part of the "aviation fuels" program, except that they were the base with additives of the "100 Octane aviation fuels" program. See A History of the Petroleum Administration for War, 1941-1945, pp. 140, 191, 204-205, 211, 213, 227, 239, and 454-458.

Running the SGV-770 on 87 and 91 Octane fuels was for its use in the Fairchild AT-21.

Okay, when were the studies? What prototype or production engines did they result in? What is your evidence for the studies?

No, they developed at 700 HP version postwar, which was used in the Ikarus 214 prototype, before the Yugoslavs wisely changed to the Pratt & Whitney R-1340 Wasp. The Ranger never surmounted its cooling and reliability problems.

I think I'm pretty much done with this as well.

 

It could be that most fighter pilots considered .50 caliber guns to be adequate during WWII, but that opinion changed during the Korean war. After action reports from USAF and Soviet pilots tell that the MiG-15 was surprisingly resistant to bullet damage from the F-86 Sabre.

That is one reason why 20-mm guns were tested experimentally, using a small number of Sabres.

 

There was an illuminating incident which supports this point in the 1920s, when the Germans were covertly cooperating with the Soviet Union on weapons development. A group of German pilots were operating at a Russian airfield, and in mock dogfights they consistently defeated their Russian counterparts. The latter attributed this to the Germans having better aircraft, so the Germans offered to switch planes and beat them again.

 

Exactly.

A novice or mediocre pilot will not know enough to get the most out of any aircraft he is flying. He will still fly as a novice or mediocre pilot.

 

I've seen some MTO stats (I don't remember where) that list losses to Flak, EA, and combination. The latter was fairly high as I recall. I've also heard that German "kills" counted the number of engines at least in some areas so a B-17 or a B-24 or a Lancaster counted as "4" kills. Can't confirm that though.

 

Care to state the percentages or numbers? I.e. Sources please.

If you had made the statement that the Me-109 was the "best fighter that served through out the war" you might have a case. Overall though that fact alone pretty much excludes the Me-109 from the top fighter of the war.

Most almost assurdly fell to AA fire.

But all sides keep a pretty good count of own losses. Now who or what caused said losses may be less accurate but that's why people to whom this is important try to match up claims with losses. In some cases they go down to the individual.

???? That's not an explanation at all. It is a very flawed methodology.

From discussion of this in the past (over on the Axis History Forum I believe) squadron and location were more important than nationality in accurate claiming. Bombers tended to be the worst as well.

You aren't paying attention. That statement was made by another.

A somewhat less flawed statement.

And the larger the disparity between pilots the less the plane matters.

Which if you think about it means that wing mounted guns are actually more likely to get hits.

Not really. They only miss if the target is smaller than the bullets are off line of sight. This only becomes really serious if you are looking only at P(H) at extreme ranges where the P(H) is very low anyway.

??? Point bland range is a function of the gun and ammunition not the mounting.

Where centerline guns have an edge, especially if you have several, is in the probability of a telling hit.

Actually if you look at the numbers you just reposted you will see that the USAAF lost about 23,000 planes of which about 8,000 were listed as lost to EA so about 1/3.

I'm not sure just how much strafing the Britt's did in comparioson to the US but from what I've read the air battle in the East was almost exculsivly about ground support. I'd be surprised if the numbers weren't higher there.

 

But the 700 HP version is just proof that it could be done. The fact that the post war Ranger passed it's type test shows that it was possible, that's all. If, and that is the big IF, they had chosen to follow that path, those were some of the choices they could have made to ensure the plane was what they wanted. This entire thread was an exploration of "what if". The figures that I posted were nothing more than the results of other successful projects applied to both the Ranger engine and XP-77 programs.
I do not know why you have taken such a dislike to me, or my ideas. I would hope that you could get past that dislike and discuss the ideas them selves.
Sincerely, Stewart.