Recent content by pdf27

I'm not 100% sure on that - currently digging through that NACA report to see how they were planning on gearing the turbine (not very clear) and the maths so far sort of fits with what I was expecting/remembering. Most helpful point is where they state that the gearbox efficiency assumed in...

That's fantastic, thanks. What I have in mind is that the two relevant scenarios in the early war are (B) and (D): the USAAF aren't going to move away from turbochargers in the early war even if 2-stage superchargers plus an intercooler are the best technical solution to the problem. I think...

The reason I'm using "like" is that while at a component level it's a supercharger (centrifugal impeller turned by mechanical power at a multiple of engine speed), at a system level it isn't. Key point there is that a supercharger pulls power from the engine, this would inject power into the...

So now I've started to go down a turbo- and super-charger rabbit-hole this morning. Wahey. There are a whole bunch of interlocking problems, and I'm wondering if the technology for a very good solution to them existed in the form of the swirl throttle, invented by Szydlowski and Planiol in 1937...

One thing to be careful of here is that my understanding of the early turbos is that they were running right on the material limits and needed the exhaust gas to be cooled somewhat before it reached them to operate safely. Hence putting the turbos distant from the engine, allowing the gases to...

In OTL they were all re-exported to Europe which needed them even worse. So getting rid of them is easy, if you can replace them. Not clear to me - have the locomotive works shifted over wholesale or just partially? Because they built 1085 WD 2-8-0 and 2-10-0 locomotives from 1943 onwards, and...

And she would also be strong enough to do unpleasant things even without shooting them!

More to the point, it will make those around him a target for the enemy. That's why Prince Harry never deployed to Iraq, and why he subject to a medial blackout in Afghanistan then withdrawn as soon as it leaked. He's unlikely to listen to advice that he's in danger, but hopefully will to...

One additional point which is absolutely critical here: ASV Mk II is capable of detecting large ships at a range of 60 miles, while in good meteorological conditions a scout aircraft might be able to spot surface ships at 10 miles. This means that even in daylight the RN scout aircraft are ~6x...

No other nation's aircraft ever had to fly into the sort of defensive firepower that the USN was able to put up in 1944-45, which is why I'm a little reluctant to treat this as a fact rather than opinion. When HMS Illustrious was attacked by Fligerkorps X in January 1941 she was armed with 8x...

He wasn't expecting aircraft carrying aerial torpedoes to be able to reach him. That's the critical point - Torpedoes are big and heavy beasts, and there's a hard limit to what a particular engine power (fairly well known) could lift off the ground. Within that weight you need to allocate...

Important note here: the bite-and-hold attacks were combined arms attacks as well. Bite-and-hold isn't about how you're fighting, instead it sets the limit of exploitation in an attack as that which can still be supported without moving your artillery. This was the critical lesson the British...

Dieudonné Saive would like a word.

My understanding is that the UK really couldn't have absorbed the tonnage much faster than it did - for all the scares, the UK never had any serious shortages and the effort to build up bases for the US to arrive is very significant and will take quite a while. One of the big reasons for Torch...

You're missing the point. If Suez remains closed, the saving is **only** the million GRT of shipping they used to supply North Africa and the several million tonnes of supplies they delivered there, all looking for an alternative use. If you can reopen Suez, the saving gets to be more like 5...