Aerial Refueling adopted my the military...1935

What about putting the fuel nozzle(?) at the wingtip? At least it would be as far away from the prop as possible?

The probes that were used are quite bit, I suspect you would totally screw up the aerodynamics of the aircraft - IIRC they did try a Spitfire with a fixed slipper tank for extra fuel on one wing and it made the aircraft virtually uncontrollable even when empty.
 
One wing only?

They can´t pump the fuel from one tank into another?

Aren't there a few things to take into account?


1) I already thought of pumps in the fuel tanks, afaik many planes had them, but these pumps can't be too big; so capacity will be limited.

2) how long would you want a refueling to take?
It can't take more than a minute or so, or refueling will take too long (especially if you want to refuel more then one plane).
The longer refueling lasts, the bigger the danger of an accident or enemy intercepting you while refueling.

So you're pretty much doomed to gushing 100+ kilos of fuel in the extreme of an airplane wing within a minute or so - while the pilot also has to control the aircraft to keep the nozzles connected and not ram the tankeraircraft or get caught in it's slipstream.

That means 10+ kilo of difference in the airplane's balance per second...
How are 'simple' pumps going to solve that?
 
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'.
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...":cool:
You might also be able to use bunches of these planes with torpedoes to do lots and lots of sub hunting.
As proposed for the Atlantic, obviating the need for special VLR B-24s. And they'd carry DCs, not torpedoes.
The twin-engine Armstrong-Whitworth Whitley (more than 2,000 were built) was being withdrawn from frontline service in early 1942.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.
There's something else to consider: increasing the bombload at the expense of fuel on takeoff, & fuelling enroute.
The 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.
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 Anson:eek: might be suitable. (I confess, I wouldn't want to fly a 12-16hr mission in one, tho.:D)
 
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 Anson:eek: might be suitable. (I confess, I wouldn't want to fly a 12-16hr mission in one, tho.:D)

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.
 
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.

IIRC the whole use airships as tankers came up in a thread some time ago. There are a few problems however, one of which is that the stalling speed for an aircraft (especially for a fighter) could very well be higher then the cruising speed of a zeppelin.

Googling around a bit the topspeed for zeppelins appears to be around a 150 kmph. You could very well end up with zeppelins being a possible tanker in the '30s when aircraft speed wasn't very high yet, but impossible as soon as you enter the jet-age and maybe even the WWII aircraft.


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