Alternate History Combat Aircraft
- Thread starter S. Marlowski
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- aircraft helicopter
Hello.
Long time lurker, small time poster.
Just watching a Youtube vid in the F4U and the tale of how suitable/unsitable such a machine was for carrier service.
So... with out reducing the engine size (And the probiscus problem such present) would shifting the design to a more 'Classical' tricycle undercarriage have helped with putting such a bird onto American carrier decks?
Cheers.
Long time lurker, small time poster.
Just watching a Youtube vid in the F4U and the tale of how suitable/unsitable such a machine was for carrier service.
So... with out reducing the engine size (And the probiscus problem such present) would shifting the design to a more 'Classical' tricycle undercarriage have helped with putting such a bird onto American carrier decks?
Cheers.
You are right in that tricylce landing gears are better suited for carrier operations than conventional wheel arrangements, as they not only improve the visibility problems you mention but also improve ground handling in general, especially under adverse wind condiditions. The problem is that the kind of piston engined fighter aircraft used in WW2 are mostly unsuited to tricycle landing gear arrangements: Single engine fighters usually had the engine mounted in the nose which leaves no room for a retractable landing gear. If you look at single engine fighters of that era the only (mass produced) one with tricylcle gear is the P-39 Airacobra, which had its engine mounted in the center of the aircraft behind the pilot leaving the nose free for both a cannon and the retracted nose wheel.
I dont think shifting the Corsair to a tricycle undercarriage would have been possible: You cant realy try for a P-39 esque middle-engine mounting as the large air cooled radials as used by the Corsair are not realy suited to that type of installation, due to their very large diameter and need for a strong and constant airflow over the cylinders to prevent overheating. The other alternative would be to use a very large diameter fuselage to somehow cram the landing gear bay beneath the engine, but I would expect this to lead to serious drag issues that would significantly hurt the performance of a fighter.
There was a proposed carrier version of the Airacobra (which used a liquid cooled V12 engine which is much less "choosey" about its position), the XF-1 Airabonita, but it saw a very slow and troubled development and was ultimately rejected in favour of the F4U (which also has better performance figures).
Also, the problem with fitting a nose wheel to a F4u Corsair is that the Corsair already had it's typical inverted gull wing design so that the main landing gear could be of reasonable length (at least for the designers at Vought) and still give enough ground clearance to the propeller. By that measure, the strut for a nosewheel must have been ginormous.
On the other hand, if somehow word came out about 1944-45 that testing with the sea-aeracobra or the Grumman F7F prototype indicated that tricycle airplanes were indeed easier to land and to handle than taildraggers, I would like to see the English incorporate it in their new Supermarket Sea Fang, Hawker Sea Fury, Blackburn Firebrand or even the Fairey Spearfish project. Alternate History potential galore.
On the other hand, if somehow word came out about 1944-45 that testing with the sea-aeracobra or the Grumman F7F prototype indicated that tricycle airplanes were indeed easier to land and to handle than taildraggers, I would like to see the English incorporate it in their new Supermarket Sea Fang, Hawker Sea Fury, Blackburn Firebrand or even the Fairey Spearfish project. Alternate History potential galore.
"Supermarket" Sea Fang is my new favorite autocorrect error
The planes in question are all driven by single, large, nose-mounted engines so for all of them it will be difficult to impossible to actualy incorporate a nose wheel, so I dont think any knowledge gained from the Airabonita or Tigercat with regards to tricycle landing gear effectivness will influence them.
The problem of cockpit being so far aft still remains, continuing to impair visibility over the nose - that was a driver for the curved approach when landing the F4U.
"Supermarket" Sea Fang is my new favorite autocorrect error
YESTERDAY, December 7, 1941 a date which will live in infancy.......
.........
Oh, damn you, autocorrect.
Hawker Hurricane Mk. II D with Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp 14-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engine.
A request by La Rouge Beret.
A request by La Rouge Beret.
Been a while since I last posted, but here's a Luftwaffe Hughes Hound Dog fighter just for fun.
We have done quite a few of those here, can't give you any specific pages but if you surf thru the thread you'll come across them.
In the meantime here's a couple of designs I did in the past with swapped engines as you described.
P51 Mustang with BMW radial engine from the Fw-190.
Focke-Wulf Fw - 190 with Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engine.
Driftless
Donor
I think I tossed in a backstory upthread for Kurt Tank having to hastily depart Germany in the 1933-34 timeframe, when he was still in his salad days as a designer. He eventually relocates to the US where he goes to work for any of: Hughes, Bell, Seversky, Vought, Douglas, etc. Just probably not Lockheed or Grumman (different technology tracks)
I think that might have been what inspired the Fw with Pratt & Whitney engine
ctayfor
Monthly Donor
There was a RL experiment by the Germans who did the opposite of the Spanish Bf109-with-a-Merlin by fitting a captured Spitfire ( I think a Mk.V, although it might have been a Mk.IX) with a DB 602 from a 109 and found it had better performance at all altitudes than the stock Spit OR 109! Maybe that's what Adolf Galland had in mind with his famous crack about wanting Spitfires.
The infamous "Messerspit" (based on a MK Vb). Pretty good plane but only the one "build". I think the brits also tried the reverse in fitting BF 109s with Merlin engines but at the moment I dont have the time to look that up.
Source: https://www.nevingtonwarmuseum.com/germany-messerspit.html