Which way do propellers turn?

Gosh, very exhaustive coverage of this interesting question...I always was amazed that our bomb sites worked so well....until the flying wings......where they had trouble stabilizing the flight well enough to drop the bombs.....those big rudders must have corrected a lot of things in our earlier bombers. You can learn so much by studying WWII...I always have something more to learn and I thank those who contributed to this.

 

Thanks, T. A. That clears it all up.

 

question for single-engined fighters: in doing a snap-roll, does one roll in the direction of the propeller? how a bout a barrel roll, is it counter to the prop direction?

 

Rolls in single engined fighters can be performed in either direction, however, they will normally be a bit faster if done in the opposite direction of prop rotation. For most a/c in which the prop rotates clockwise when viewed from the cockpit, rolls to the left will be quicker. If you will recall that the Zero suffered from degraded roll performance above 250kts, the standard disengagement strategy of the F4F was a diving right turn, which played against the prop forces making the Zero's roll perfomance that much more degraded.

To clarify, a snap-roll is actually a horizontal spin in which the inside wing is stalled and is not to be confused with an fast axial aileron roll. A true snap roll was not a common maneuver in aerial combat, although they were sometimes used as a last ditch defensive maneuver to spoil a gun solution. Snap rolls against the prop rotation (i.e. to the left) will break more easily.

Barrel rolls can be performed in either direction.

 

thanks for that. i just remember an account wherein a lone zero was being chased by more than a dozen hellcats. everytime a hellcat came in to shoot, the zero just hit his air breaks, forcing the hellcat to skid, and then snap rolling to the left. the zero escaped.

 

That would have been the Japanese ace, Saburo Sakai, as the incident was described in his book. The book is well worth reading.

 

If that's the one that is being discussed it's worth noting that the US pilots were apparently all green and that he was able to escape when the fight dropped low enough that Japanese AA started to play a part. Sakai's story is told in two books. The first with Caiden which Sakai apparently didn't like and another latter one. It's been mentioned fairly frequently over on the IJN board but I forget the title. Unfortunately both are not easy to come by .

 

went back to that sakai book with caidin. yes, it's him! but two things mystify me: he said the repeated left roll was starting to strain his wings. does it? and second, he did mention that the pilots chasing him were rather sloppy (no better than the students he used to berate as an instructor at the flying school.) but these were the same guys who fought at the marianas turkey shoot. also, that engagement happened on the first day of aerial battle over iwo jima. that day, the hellcats shot down 40 of the island's 80 zeros. on the next day, they shot down 20. the following day, they shot down 11.

don't have figures as to how many hellcats were lost on those three days of fighting. must have been a lot too.

 

more here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propeller_(aircraft)

 

You have to be very careful with the Caiden book. Sakai had no involvement with Caiden and wasn't even interviewed by him. Caiden took some notes of an interview that Fred Saito had done with Sakai and apparently made up whatever he needed to fill the book. Numerous episodes as related by Caiden have been proven to be false.

 

Saito apparently also wrote a book but with more contact with Sakai. Unfortunatly they had a falling out and I think that resulted in the book not being reprinted. Copies are out there from what I understand and it's suppose to be quite good but not cheap.

 

Not familiar with that one. There was a book "Winged Samurai: Saburo Sakai and the Zero Pilots" by Henry Sakaida that is now out of print with used copies going for well over $100. Haven't read it but it supposedly had input from Sakai.

 

That's the one. I got the author names mixed up, too many starting with Sa for my old memory to keep up with. Sakaida posts occasionally over on the j-aircraft boards. He apparently got a lot of input from Sakai but he accidently offended Sakai after the book was published. The result was the book hasn't been reprinted. There may be an old post over there that goes into the details.
Here are some links for those interested:
http://www.warbirdforum.com/wingsams.htm
http://www.randomhouse.com/author/71076/henry-sakaida
http://www.amazon.com/Henry-Sakaida/e/B001JP0J1A
http://books.google.com/books?id=vB...resnum=10&ved=0CDcQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=i1...esnum=2&ved=0CB4Q6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

When I bought and read Sakai's book, I thought there was only one version. Now I've learned that there are three. I've been trying to find my copy for the last couple of days, but to no avail.