Melvin's more biplanes in WW2 thread

More biplanes during WWII

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another related WWII fighters POD- WI biplanes such as the Gloster Gladiator, Fairey Swordfish, or Fiat CR32/42 were more commonplace during 1939-45 ? How could biplanes as opposed to monoplanes have cont'd to be the dominant form of aircraft during WWII ?


Moved here since I figured the jet people would not respond on other thread.

You'd probably have to do at least two things:

(1) stop the development of fast, all-metal monoplane bombers, and
(2) kill Reginald Mitchell, Willi Meserschmitt and a half-dozen other engineers in the UK, Germany, USSR, and USA.

Of the two, (1) is maybe most important because the high-performance stressed skin monoplane with retractable landing gear and enclosed cockpit was created more to be able to intercept fast bombers rather than fight other fighters. If ultimate speed was not as critical, you might have biplanes like the Gladiator, and Cr42 remain first-line fighters for several more years. You'd also probably see a more gradual evolution of fighters, with more parasol or gull-winged monoplanes like the PZL11, Fw159, biplanes with retractable gear like the I-153, and monoplanes with fixed gear and/open cockpits like the Ki-27. Utiimately, however, as powerplants were improved, designers would eventuall end up with the sleek monoplane to take advantage of all that power.

Schneider Trophy & Tandem wings

By 1930, the Schneider Trophy races had set the mono-plane pattern for speed. After that, bi-planes needed very special attributes...

Trainers, Amphibians, Sea-planes, Carrier planes needed lots of lift at slow speed. So, they needed VERY long wings, or bi-plane configuration.

One possible loophole is the DeLanne format...

http://users.skynet.be/nestofdragons/weird_08_delanne.htm

This 'tandem' layout has the lift of a bi-plane, plus the speed of a mono-plane. Unfortunately, in OTL, the prototypes and DeLanne were caught in the Fall of France. IIRC, the Luftwaffe were *very* impressed and <cough> insisted he continue, but DeLanne fudged the re-design, sabotaged his prototypes and barely survived the war...

The problem is that the fast, sleek, monoplane was not developed for the military but for civilian use, for mailplanes and passenger transports. The bombers took a while to catch up, then the fighters followed last. I don't see any obvious way of preventing this development.

(Pity this thread didn't stay with the other one - I was enjoying the concept of jet biplane fighters!)

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

Russian Ramjet Biplane...

IIRC, Russians tested a primitive ramjet design as auxiliary engine(s) on biplane trainer...

They got more thrust than drag, barely...

Now, if the valveless (tuned) pulse-jet with its 'static thrust' had taken off, we might have seen some really wild designs...

Okay, those aircraft would likely have a 'motor-glider' engine for patrolling, but they'd open intake and fire up the hot-rod(s) for climbing & combat.

'Pusher Biplane' would lend itself to canard for shorter control-runs and better weight distribution...

And, yes, bi-plane allows better bracing, faster roll-rates etc. Trying Stagger-wing / Sesqui-wing allows the menagerie of DeLanne, flying wing, lifting-body, Burnelli, ring-wing, box-wing, diamond etc configurations...

At the bottom end of sizing, we could be talking 'bi-plane air-bikes' with a dozen feet wing-span and *startling* performance when their 'tail-pipes' light.

Someone care to mock up a Harley-Davidson / Hell's Angel cloudster ??

I like to imagine that the evolution of combat aircraft, especially fighters, is extremely analagous to biological evolution. Gravity and aerodynamics is a constant, the inventiveness of aeronautical engineers is equivalent to random mutation, cost and conservatism might reflect certain elements of sexual selection, and competition in combat or economy of performance weeds out the "less fit". As much as I like the idea of things like canard prop fighters, assymetical designs, tandem wings, tailless planes, all-wing planes, ornithopters, etc, deep down I suspect that 90 out of 100 histories in which heavier than air flight was invented would lead ultimately to "normal" fighter monoplanes with fuselages, internal combustion engines with tractor props (followed by turbojet engines later), putting multiple engines in balanced wing nacelles, putting the rudders and elevators at the stern, and putting the pilot in a cockpit at the top, toward the front, but usually behind the propellor. There would be minor differences in detail design, but they would be very similar to what occurred in this world.

this is interesting