Dixie-45
F-381 Thunder Hound
By 1943 the writing was on the wall for the CSA but admitting defeat was not an option In Featherston's Confederacy and so designers and weapons makers strived to come up with newer and more powerful weapon systems.
The F-381 Thunder Hound started life as a simple and interesting idea which was to take the venerable F-38 Hound dog and increase it's horsepower by adding a second engine.
As novel as the idea was it wasn't really feasible, the Hound Dog was designed to be as small and sleek as possible for speed and agility. there simply was no room for a second engine but a new proposal was made to remove the engine from the nose and mount an engine in each wing, this would double the horsepower and make room for more weaponry in the now vacant nose.
The idea while a simple one was not as easily executed, the wings needed to be enlarged and redesigned to take an engine and the tail required redesigning as well, it was also decided to give the new design a tricycle landing gear which again required more re-engineering.
Another problem arose when government officials in charge of supplies and acquisitions protested the new design that required two expensive inline V-12 engines for a single seat fighter when one engine was all that was needed for a fighter already in production and so the designers settled for two slightly less powerful but less expensive radial engines, radial engines were used primarily for bomber aircraft and the CSA was doing very little bombing by 43.
A new design was finally settled upon by late 1943 but the new plane bore only a slight resemblance to the once vaunted Hound Dog and used very few common components.
In the end a single prototype was completed the day before the CSA officially surrendered and the Thunder Hound prototype was destroyed without ever taking to the sky.
Like Featherston's dream of a larger more powerful CSA , the Thunder Hound went up in smoke.
F-381 Thunder Hound
By 1943 the writing was on the wall for the CSA but admitting defeat was not an option In Featherston's Confederacy and so designers and weapons makers strived to come up with newer and more powerful weapon systems.
The F-381 Thunder Hound started life as a simple and interesting idea which was to take the venerable F-38 Hound dog and increase it's horsepower by adding a second engine.
As novel as the idea was it wasn't really feasible, the Hound Dog was designed to be as small and sleek as possible for speed and agility. there simply was no room for a second engine but a new proposal was made to remove the engine from the nose and mount an engine in each wing, this would double the horsepower and make room for more weaponry in the now vacant nose.
The idea while a simple one was not as easily executed, the wings needed to be enlarged and redesigned to take an engine and the tail required redesigning as well, it was also decided to give the new design a tricycle landing gear which again required more re-engineering.
Another problem arose when government officials in charge of supplies and acquisitions protested the new design that required two expensive inline V-12 engines for a single seat fighter when one engine was all that was needed for a fighter already in production and so the designers settled for two slightly less powerful but less expensive radial engines, radial engines were used primarily for bomber aircraft and the CSA was doing very little bombing by 43.
A new design was finally settled upon by late 1943 but the new plane bore only a slight resemblance to the once vaunted Hound Dog and used very few common components.
In the end a single prototype was completed the day before the CSA officially surrendered and the Thunder Hound prototype was destroyed without ever taking to the sky.
Like Featherston's dream of a larger more powerful CSA , the Thunder Hound went up in smoke.
