What about putting the fuel nozzle(?) at the wingtip? At least it would be as far away from the prop as possible?
One wing only?
They can´t pump the fuel from one tank into another?
I'm presuming many of these were solved before adoption, or it wouldn't pass. Some bright spark in RAF HQ who plays badminton sees the shuttlecock & thinks, "That flies rather nicely. I wonder..."at this time, it was still a case of the receiver aircraft catching the trailing hose rather than connecting to a drogue - given the problems in catching a trailing hose and hauling it in, I have problems in understanding why a probe drogue system took so long to be 'thought of'.
As proposed for the Atlantic, obviating the need for special VLR B-24s. And they'd carry DCs, not torpedoes.You might also be able to use bunches of these planes with torpedoes to do lots and lots of sub hunting.
There's something else to consider: increasing the bombload at the expense of fuel on takeoff, & fuelling enroute.The twin-engine Armstrong-Whitworth Whitley (more than 2,000 were built) was being withdrawn from frontline service in early 1942. While not a very good bomber (some said it was not even a very good airplane), the Whitley could carry two tons of bombs to Berlin and return, a 1,200-mile flight. It could as easily have given a Sunderland 3,000 pounds of fuel at some point 500 miles from base, and another 3,000 pounds at a rendezvous returning.
Bad, bad idea. Those Stirlings had the legs & bombload to be excellent ASW patrol birds, not employed OTL (tho Bomber Command criticised their hi-altitude perf, which was irrelevant on ASW pat...). Of course, with KB.I Whitleys, even the AnsonThe British eventually built 2,381 Short Stirling bombers, and by mid-1942, that aircraft was being displaced in frontline service by the superior Avro Lancaster. Converted to a tanker, a Stirling easily could have lifted an offload of 7,000 pounds.
Those Stirlings had the legs & bombload to be excellent ASW patrol birds, not employed OTL (tho Bomber Command criticised their hi-altitude perf, which was irrelevant on ASW pat...). Of course, with KB.I Whitleys, even the Ansonmight be suitable. (I confess, I wouldn't want to fly a 12-16hr mission in one, tho.
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MPA Stirlings have been brought up in France Fights On
http://francefightson.yuku.com/topic/424?page=1
and here (from post 34)
http://francefightson.yuku.com/reply/2928#reply-2928
This Zeppelin fan has an alternate suggestion for effective aerial refueling in the 1930's - Rigid Airships.
Imagine that it was realized much earlier than the early 1930's that the most effective military/naval use of the large rigid airship was as a high-speed carrier/tender for combat aircraft, and that by the late 1930's both the US Army and US Navy (as well as other nations like Britain and Japan) defeloped airships (similar in design to the proposed ZRCV), whose principle function was to serve as high speed aerial refueling stations for land-based fighters and small attack planes enroute to distant targets.
Unlike the ZRCV, which would have been an aircraft carrier with 9-10 of its own planes with full equipment stores and basic repair facilities, these ships would be aerial tankers who only carried the minimal skyhook equipmment to temporarily "land" and fuel planes. It is reasonable to believe such an airship might be able to carry up to 300 tons of fuel - a very large amount in the 1930's - and service at one time 10 small planes or half as many twin engined bombers. Aircraft engaged on long range missions requiring aerial refueling would carry jettisonable hook-on equipmenent which were detatched as appropriate once the fueling activities were finished. Since the airplanes are effectivly "landed" during this process, they do not need to fly and be piloted. One might imagine a scenario where planes take off essentially empty of fuel but fully armed at Hawaii, "land" on airships waiting just offshore, be refueled and then transported for hundreds or thousands of miles to within atack range of targets in Japan, and then undertake their attacks, to be retreived by the airships or head for alternate landing sites in China. In the 1930's pre-radar days with far fewer and less effective land based and carrier based aircraft, this might be the most feasible way of extending the range of aircraft to mount long-range aerial attacks. I suppose this could also have civil applications as well - the airships being sort of like high-speed aerial ferrys, carrying 3-4 Fokker trimotors or DC-2s across the atlantic while their crews rest and the passengers eat caviar and drink champagne in the smoking lounge or the airship.