Alternate History Combat Aircraft
- Thread starter S. Marlowski
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- aircraft helicopter
Morane_Saulnier M.S.-406 with Rolls-Royce Merlin XX V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine, 1,185 hp (884 kW), same engine used on the Hawker Hurricane with 325 more HP's. than the MS Hispano Suiza engine.
It would still be underarmed, but with 325 extra horses under the hood, that should be a match for anything of its peers.
I think it would be possible to replace the MG's in the wings with 20mm cannons giving the Morane a total of three cannons, for 1940-41 that's some pretty decent firepower.
Some Union Air Force aircraft from TL-191
P-70 Screaming Eagle
P-46 Super Shark
P-27 Sky Shark.
P-70 Screaming Eagle
P-46 Super Shark
P-27 Sky Shark.
BlackDragon98
Banned
Is that a He 100 and Fw 190 thrown together into some sort of Luftwaffe Uberjager?
Yes with some 109 thrown in too.Is that a He 100 and Fw 190 thrown together into some sort of Luftwaffe Uberjager?
Challenge accepted!
The Swiss Saurer D.3800- series.
In 1938, as the first of the Morane-SaulnierMS.406 fighters entered servicer in France, Switzerland obtained a license to build and improve the aircraft for their own air force. Although the aircraft was assembled by EKW as the 'model-38', the bulk of the development was done by Saurer, who itself had obtained the license to build the Hispano-Suiza 12Y engine that would power the craft. the initial D.3800 prototype was followed by an initial batch of 74 D.3800. Eventually improvements incorporated by the Swiss were shared with France and used for the proposed ms.410.
OTL, after the fall of France, Saurer continued refinement of its YS-1 license-built 860hp Hispano-Suiza engine into the 1250hp YS-2 and 1500hp YS-3. However fitting the new engines into the D.38 airframe caused problem after problem. In the end only 17 YS-2 powered D.3802 were built and the YS-3 powered D.3803 stayed a prototype only. By the time it was ready for production, 1945, the war was over and the aircraft now had to compete with second-hand P.51 Mustangs which the US were offering to anyone interested for $4000 apiece, cash and carry, buy-as-is. From 1940 to 1943 Switzerland DID however build another D.38 development of the MS.406, in he Swiss Subsidiary Dornier-Altenrhein. And to add insult to injury, those D.3801 were powered by a 1050 hp. Hispano-Suiza hs51-12Y, which Dornier-Switzerland itself built under license. Altghough the D.3801 had its own share of problems with its engine, still a total of 224 were built, more than all EKW- and Saurer-built versions together.
So here is what COULD have happened.
In 1942 Saurer was not in a good mood. Not only did their 1200 hp YS-2 engine struggle with teething problems, their competitor Dornier-Altenrhein kept cranking out the DoFlug. D.3801 fighter although by now it was clear that Dornier's license-built Hispano-Suiza engine was having the same troubles as the new Saurer engine. However the Swiss government stubbornly choose Dornier's D.3801 over Saurer's D.3802 although the latter was getting better every day. To them, apparently Saurer had overplayed their hand and a miracle was needed to restore their trust .
This miracle came. And it came out of Russia.
The miracle was the new Lavochkin La-5 fighter, a strong, capable, well-armed tide-turner, but in fact just the old rather mediocre LaGG-3 fighter fitted with a 1200 HP Klimov radial engine. The Klimov engine itself was an improved Russian version of the American 1200 hp Curtis-Wright R.1820 Cyclone and while Saurer had no access to the Russian engine, it DID have a subsidiary that overhauled the Curtis-Wright engine for Swissair's DC-3 flagship planes. So one day the blueprints for the R-1820 engine disappeared out of the overhaul subsidiary's vault and -again as if by miracle- were found the next day in the Saurer Aeronautics office where they were used to calculate the -theoretical- installment of a Wright 1810 in a D.3800 fuselage. Then a demonstrator model D.3800 fuselage was rebuilt to the new design and a DC-3 engine currently being serviced at the maintenance subsidiary was 'borrowed' and installed in the prototype.
The resulting D.3804 prototype was as much an advancement over the previous Ms.406 versions as the La-5 was over the LaGG-3 and Saurer set out right away to acquire licensing rights for the CW 1820 engine. The Swiss air force could not help but noticing either and enquired Saurer about a series production of the craft as the D.3805. Now however it was Saurer's turn to be cocky and rather than accept the government's offer, instead proposed a completely reworked version of the Ms.406 design as the Saurer D.3820. In the end Saurer walked away with a developement contract for two D.3820 prototypes asn an option for 200 D.3801 series models. In the menatime, production of the D.3804/3805 would continue as a stopgap measure.
In retrospect this was a wise decision because once halfway through setting up a CW.1820 assembly line, Saurer decided to produce the 1600 hp R-2600 double Cyclone instead, which prompted an almost complete retooling of the line and when in late 1944 the first Saurer R.2 engines started rolling off the production line, the prototype of the D.3820 was already flying. In the meantime 21 D.3804/3805 had been built: the prototype, four aircraft using spare engines from Swissair and another 16 powered by overhauled American engines taken from a number of American C.47 transports and B-17 bombers that all were interned after making an emergency landing on a Swiss airfield. Rather then form a proper D.3805 squadron, those aircraft were sent on a demonstration tour across the various Swiss D.3800/3801 squadrons to give the pilots a chance to familiarize themselves with the new craft so they would be ready when the new D.3820 would arrive.
Yet, the D.3805 stayed a stopgap measure. On one occasion, in one of the squadrons a flight of 3 D.3801 and one D.3805demonstrators 'intercepted a badly shot-up B-17G that strayed into Swiss airspace and escorted it to the Altenrhein airfield. after a rather passable emergency landing, the pilot of the D.3805 came over to congratulate the American pilot of the B-17 on his flying skills and his lucky landing and then proceeded to ask if any of his plane's engines had a carburetor that wasn't shot up completely. If there was one, he'd like to swap it for the one in his D.3805!
The prototype D.3820 flew in August of 1944. At that time no Saurer-built engine was available yet, so the craft was powered by a 1200 hp Cyclone from an abandoned Lockheed Lodestar. Yet even with 400 horses missing, the D.3820 easily outdid the D.3805 planes it flew against and although not quite a match over the modern FW.190 or P.51 airplanes in staged combat definitely could hold its own as an interceptor over Swiss territory where it held the homefield advantage. Hopes for the series production D.3823 with the 1600 hp R-2600/Saurer R-2 were therefore high. However, even as in 1944 the first R-2engine was installed in the second D.3820, it was clear that before too long the war would end, Switzerland would no longer have the need for a fromtline fighter and Saurer could never hope to sell enough D.3820 versions and R-2 engines to turn a profit. Therefore the company decided to cut its losses, stop work on the D.3823 and dismantle the engine production line after just 20 D-2 produced. The capacity freed was now used to gear up the production of truck engines, electric trolleys and omnibusses, all of which were expected to be in great demand once the war ended and reconstruction started. This time, history proved them right.
Other than being optimized for the installation of a modern radial engine from the design phase on, he D.3820 prototype differed from the D.3800 series by having a completely new monocoque fuselage built out of aluminum alloys rather then the fabric-covered metal fuselage of the 1938 MS.406. Other changes included a new all-metal tailplane that did away with the MS.406's stabilizer struts and a round-view canopy cut down at the back. The proposed D.3823 series production would have the carburetor intake moved forward and integrated with the engine cowling. Sources differ on whether it would have a modern one-piece plexiglass canopy or if it would retain the three-piece canopy of the prototype. The wings however were still a strengtened and modernized variant of the original MS.406 wings.
A completely new wing of laminary profile and a one-piece blown plexiglass canopy were proposed for a further improved D.3830 series. However other then some preliminary calculations on wing profiles, no work on this design seems to have been done. A D.3830 however pops up as 'premium content' on the 2018 second series of the MMO computer game 'World of Warplanes'.