AH Challenge: have the Douglas B-42 Mixmaster in service by early 1944

The Douglas XB-42 is a little known but rather unusual US bomber that first flew 1944. The plane was unusual for being a twin engined pusher with engines buried in the fuselage and the two propellors located at the planes tail. There really was unusual or advanced in its construction or in the technology used beyond the layout.

The XB-42's performance was amazing. In December 1945 the XB-42 set a transcontinental speed record flying from Long Beach, California, to Washington, DC, a distance of about2300 miles in 5 hours 17 for an average 443 mph. Joe Baugher's site states the following:
performance of the XB-42 was outstanding. Speed was within a percent of that predicted, and range and rate of climb exceeded expectations. The XB-42 was as fast as the Mosquito B.XVI but carried twice the maximum bombload (8000 pounds versus 4000 pounds over short ranges or a bombload of 3750 pounds versus 1000 pounds over a range of 1850 miles). Moreover, the XB-42 carried a defensive armament of four 0.50-inch machine guns in two remotely-controlled turrets whereas the Mosquito was unarmed.
The hitch: Douglas proposed the plane in early 1943 and the prototype first flew on May 1944. This is about 12-15 too late. This needs to come sooner, obviously.

How do we get the plane ready 12-15 months earlier.

What then happens if it is ready by early 1944?

Here are the specification of Douglas XB-42 Mixmaster:

Engines: Two Allison V-1710-125 liquid-cooled V-12 engines, each rated at 1325 hp for takeoff and 1800 hp war emergency.

Performance: Maximum speed 410 mph at 23,440 feet, 344 mph at sea level. Cruising speed 312 mph. Service ceiling 29,400 feet. Normal range 1800 miles, maximum range 5400 miles.

Dimensions: Wingspan 70 feet 6 inches, length 53 feet 8 inches, height 18 feet 10 inches, wing area 555 square feet.

Weights: 20,888 pounds empty, 33,208 pounds gross, 35,702 pounds maximum loaded.

Armament: Four 0.50-inch machine guns installed in remotely-controlled turrets on the trailing edges of the wings. The bomb bay could carry a maximum load of four 2000-pound bombs.

B-42_Mixmaster.jpg
 
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If Douglas dropped all other projects in favor of this design. The trouble is that would delay or stop the introduction or more conventional designs that did see service.

Also much of the technology used (remote controlled guns, engine gearbox for co-axe prop) was at the bleeding edge of what was possible in 1944. So even if Douglas had done a crash development program it still would have been available only very late in the war and even then it would played a minor role to the Boeing B-29.
 
If Douglas dropped all other projects in favor of this design. The trouble is that would delay or stop the introduction or more conventional designs that did see service.

Also much of the technology used (remote controlled guns, engine gearbox for co-axe prop) was at the bleeding edge of what was possible in 1944. So even if Douglas had done a crash development program it still would have been available only very late in the war and even then it would played a minor role to the Boeing B-29.
I think you are definitely right about the remote control guns being new. I am not so sure about the gearbox, as it is not the usual contraprop type.

Of course, Douglas is needed for making transports--the C-47/DC-3 and C-54 are very important. Perhaps if Curtiss-Wright was better at ironing the issues with C-46. Curtiss-Wright was such a mire.

Just Leo, where are you?
 
I think you are definitely right about the remote control guns being new. I am not so sure about the gearbox, as it is not the usual contraprop type.

Of course, Douglas is needed for making transports--the C-47/DC-3 and C-54 are very important. Perhaps if Curtiss-Wright was better at ironing the issues with C-46. Curtiss-Wright was such a mire.

Just Leo, where are you?

I'm right here. The Mixmaster was an unsolicited private venture from one Edward F Burton, presented on May, 1943 to the USAAF, and the Air Force bit. One year later, it flew. It was designed to be fast, and it was. It had good range and good payload. The NACA airfoil was developed around 1941. I don't have the exact date, but the wind tunnel used to develop the airfoil was built in 1939. It boils down to Burton designing it sooner, and offering it for a contract sooner. It's adoption for service would be subsequent to a more thorough service evaluation and testing than was done OTL. The original twin canopies were gone. The rear facing machine guns were limited in field of fire and of dubious value except, perhaps, in imparting a false sense of security. The Handley Page Hampden had two forward firing MG, albeit only .303 instead of the XB-42's twin .50, but enemy fighters probably wouldn't be too challenged in devising proper tactics to defeat it. The bombay doors caused turbulence in the propellors, meaning poor bombing accuracy. The pusher configuration meant limited rotation on take-off, and more extreme danger on landing due to AoA limitation. The biggest challenge was doctrinal. The Air Force had no preconceived mission for the bird, meaning that an evaluation unit would have to be established to figure out the exact roles to be performed, and to write the book on it. If the book said it was the greatest thing, it would proceed from batch production to mass production by either building a new facility, or ending production on something like P-40s and using that facility. From an initial design in mid 1941 to service evaluation trials in mid 43 used to seem like a super-human effort to me, but in light of recent achievements by the FAA, perhaps the fall of 1942.

xb-42-2.jpg
 
Cruciform tail aircraft are a poor idea. They are hard to taxi on uneven ground which limits their use ,and, as just leo rightly points out have an unusual take off profile. Also any undercarriage problems after take off leaves the pilot with the choice of bailing out or quite literally 'ploughing in' as the lower vertical stabiliser does a fair immitation of a ploughing competition at a county fair:eek: .Any landing carried out like that would, at best, result in your maintenance crew chief wondering where he will find the labour and parts to put your aircraft back in the sky .

However all is not lost.Its a fast aircraft and can carry a fair ammount of ordinance which gives it the makings of an excellent interdiction bomber or even with a redesigned nose a good night fighter
So early on in the design process have Douglas redesign the tail. If you want to go all futuristic try a butterfly tail like the FOUGU Magister this would work well with that propellor arrangment, though there is no reason why a conventional tail of sufficient surface area would not work. As a bonus the problems with stability on opening the bomb doors are gone.
So a 'B' version could just maybe make it earlier with no percieved problems except the rather obvious one of what role would it play that wasnt already being performed at least reasonably well by other aircraft?
My guess as to What then happens if it is ready by early 1944? is that polite noises are made by the army air force with a recomendation that the aircraft be sent to the Navy for 'further evaluation'.
It is an inovative aircraft ,but by 1944 it is in a crowded market that is being met by other aircraft that are being built in expensivly built new factories. The B- 42 has the potential to be a good aircraft ,but not so good as to warrant the disruption of carefully planned production


 
Would they not have huge resistance to what is almost an unarmed bomber earlier in the war? The Mosquito faced heavy resistance for precisely that reason (although the fact it could be built without a heavy use of strategically-limited materials helped it in the end).

I'm also a bit dubious as to the performance; US planes have a long history of underperforming their design spec, and it has to keep ahead of the steadily-faster fighters.
 
Would they not have huge resistance to what is almost an unarmed bomber earlier in the war? The Mosquito faced heavy resistance for precisely that reason (although the fact it could be built without a heavy use of strategically-limited materials helped it in the end).

.
Yep thats a point there is no room for half a dozen gunners on that aircraft is there!
 
I'm right here. The Mixmaster was an unsolicited private venture from one Edward F Burton, presented on May, 1943 to the USAAF, and the Air Force bit. One year later, it flew. It was designed to be fast, and it was. It had good range and good payload. The NACA airfoil was developed around 1941. I don't have the exact date, but the wind tunnel used to develop the airfoil was built in 1939. It boils down to Burton designing it sooner, and offering it for a contract sooner. It's adoption for service would be subsequent to a more thorough service evaluation and testing than was done OTL. The original twin canopies were gone. The rear facing machine guns were limited in field of fire and of dubious value except, perhaps, in imparting a false sense of security. The Handley Page Hampden had two forward firing MG, albeit only .303 instead of the XB-42's twin .50, but enemy fighters probably wouldn't be too challenged in devising proper tactics to defeat it. The bombay doors caused turbulence in the propellors, meaning poor bombing accuracy. The pusher configuration meant limited rotation on take-off, and more extreme danger on landing due to AoA limitation. The biggest challenge was doctrinal. The Air Force had no preconceived mission for the bird, meaning that an evaluation unit would have to be established to figure out the exact roles to be performed, and to write the book on it. If the book said it was the greatest thing, it would proceed from batch production to mass production by either building a new facility, or ending production on something like P-40s and using that facility. From an initial design in mid 1941 to service evaluation trials in mid 43 used to seem like a super-human effort to me, but in light of recent achievements by the FAA, perhaps the fall of 1942.

In a rational world if the USAAF had a need for an aircraft like this in 1943, wouldn't they build two Mosquitoes under license instead of one Mixmaster?
 
In a rational world if the USAAF had a need for an aircraft like this in 1943, wouldn't they build two Mosquitoes under license instead of one Mixmaster?
In a rational world ...maybe... but war is only occasionaly rational and politics is never rational and I think that regardless of any alliance/ relationship that the USA had with the UK and regardless of the sense of the idea, questions would be asked if a British aircraft was prefered over an American one
 
Dropping the XB-19 could free up some resources.

Wikipedia said:
The purpose of the XB-19 project was to test the flight characteristics and design techniques associated with giant bombers. Douglas Aircraft Company strongly wanted to cancel the project, because it was extremely expensive. Despite advances in technology that made the XB-19 obsolete before it was even completed, the Army Air Corps felt that the prototype would be useful for testing. Its construction took so long that competition for the contracts to make the XB-35 and XB-36 occurred two months before its first flight.

I've always liked the Mixmaster myself. Image the reaction of the Germans to a bombing raid of B-42's escorted by F5U's.
 
production of this design goes against the strengths of American industrial might. This machine like the XP-55 and XP-56were great research projects but would have been nightmares to introduce into volume production. Some folks do not seem to realize how long it takes to move a design from drawing board to prototype to production to field service.

For example The A-26 Invader another Douglas product used the new laminat flow airfoil. The prototype was funded in 1941 (You can tell from the 'tail number' the first digits on Air Corps/Air Force aircraft designate the budget year it is funded in) and first flew in July 1942. First production examples rolled out in August 1943 and first combat was in June of 44 in the Southwest Pacific. Although sharing the same basic layout as the plane it was to replace (The A-20) the A-26 was not liked by 5th Air force who asked that they not receive any more and the ones they had be replaced with A-20s. The aircraft was better received in Europe where it arrived in September 1944. There were not enough aircraft to fully convert units initially and mixed A26/A20 units were the norm into 1945

The reason I bring all this up is that inspite of many advances the A-26 was very much like the aircraft it replaced in production and service. Twin radial engines in a conventional configuration and it still took about a year from funding to prototype and abother two years to service introduction. The XB-42 used a very unconventional engine system that would require much more testing, was subject to reliability problems (a much more complex drive train) and with a configuration that would not have inspired confidence in moderatly trained aircrews that would nbe asked to fly it. Even if it had been proposed at the same time as the A-26 (about the earliest that the new airfoils were available) and it had no more than the usual teething problems it would have been late 1944 before it would have been ready in squadron numbers for active service.

I suspect that there would have been more than the usual teething problems with the complex gear train, safety issues (bailing out into a cruciform tail with a propeller, look at the Do-335) and organizational bias. The bias comes from the 'It doesn't look like anything we have ever used in the past' to the fact that all US bombers in operational use used radial engines.

I think this design had potential but it was only realized in the XB-43. This replaced the engine/geartrain with jet engines and I think would be a better implementation of the design in the early cold war, especially if the Cold War would have immediatly followed the end of WWII instead of having the 3-5 year malaise that occured in the U.S. until the Berlin crisis and the Korean War restarted military concerns
 
I think you are definitely right about the remote control guns being new. I am not so sure about the gearbox, as it is not the usual contraprop type.

Of course, Douglas is needed for making transports--the C-47/DC-3 and C-54 are very important. Perhaps if Curtiss-Wright was better at ironing the issues with C-46. Curtiss-Wright was such a mire.

Just Leo, where are you?

Can the US government force Curtiss to make C-47, and force Douglas to let them?
 
In a rational world ...maybe... but war is only occasionaly rational and politics is never rational and I think that regardless of any alliance/ relationship that the USA had with the UK and regardless of the sense of the idea, questions would be asked if a British aircraft was prefered over an American one

B-57s (in similar role)?
 
In no particular order:

The C-46 was a strategic transport superior to the C-47. Like the P-38 Lightning, it's production was rushed beyond wisdom. Being the best aircraft for the mission, they decided not to wait until the flaws were fixed. War is hell.

Cruciform tails are required to aid in the avoidance of propellor strikes. Stability problems were caused by unstable air through the propellor, not the fin, and was a factor in bomb aiming, not flight stability. The lower fin was dropped on the all-jet version.

The entry into service of the Douglas Invader was as a replacement for the B-25, at least in Italy where my uncle Ed made the transformation. The Mitchell's qualities precluded another hot machine, the NAA XB-28, from entering service. A 370 mph high-altitude bomber, with full turrets, pressurized, with the power of two Thunderbolt engines. Decisions on what enters service when are based on factors which can be swayed to prove anything. The Mitchell was good, but the Invader served in Vietnam.

Is the Mosquito better than the Mixmaster? Is wood better than metal? In the Tropics? Is the Mixmaster easier or harder to mass-produce than the Mossie? To a country that planned to produce the Aluminum Overcast, the B-36, is aluminum shortage a problem? Too conjectural and subjective a question for me.

Re: dubious performance. Speed and payload/range were tested, quantified and recorded. They were not estimates.

It's a beautiful day, and my dog needs a walk.
 

CalBear

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The classic role for it would have been that assumed IOTL by the B-25. Move a few bits around and you can fill the nose with .50 cals and use the weight allocated for bombs partly to ammo.

They might also have beeninteresting in a bomber escort role similar to the one envisioned for the YB-40. They were faster than most fighters and with a heavier nose armament would have been terrific against the head on attacks that the Luftwaffe liked to use to break up the bomber boxes. They would also have had no trouble keeping up with the rest of the bomber formation after the bombers made th bomb run (which was what really doomed the YB-40).
 
You know what this thing's biggest issue was? The name, I mean, Mixmaster, really?:D Why didn't they call it Tumbledryer? I bet if they'd called it the Skyshark or something like that the brass would have agreed.
 
Basically, it appears that even an extremely well run company such as Douglas realistically would not have been able to produce the XB-42 by early or mid 1944. This, despite the fact that Douglas was skilled at building and developing successful aircraft, such as the A-26, C-54, and the Skyraider.

It's not surprising.

I did have a vision of what the navalized version of the XB-42 might have looked like.

xb-42r-b.jpg
 
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