Blended-wing landing craft: Onshore breeze, or ASBs in flight?

You will notice I didn't say "unchanged", so "similar in concept" to, frex, the P5M...
Which is longer and narrower, and can thus carry less cargo

Amphibulous, you are exagerating a bit. With the 71' span of the UB-14 compared to the 10' beam of the Higgins boats, even with a full wingspan allowed between aircraft you'd only be able to land 14 boats where you can land one plane (averaged over the coast under attack). That's bad enough, you don't need to exagerate it to "hundreds."
Aeroplanes - particularly seaplanes - are not real manouverable when on the ground/water, so you end up taking a lot of room, or turning slowly.

The safety regulations do tend to get thrown out the nearest window, since getting shot at tends to be a bigger hazard....:rolleyes:
Get in and out at top speed is fine, but fast manoeuvring again requires a lot of room. therein, you've got to give them more room, and you can thus land less at any one time.
 
It is impossible to guard every Beach and every river , lake etc . could you imagine a series of preinvasion landings 25 to 50 miles inland by aircraft that hugged the terrain and landed cohesive units with antitank and artillery . or even just para the men and bring in heavy equipement . Their definately would be uses for two or three squadrons of these style of aircraft .
 
Yes I can imagine, and it's not pretty, the aircraft may be able to go over quietly, but there's going to be a big fleet there, and a god-awful amount of radio chatter, so you're not going to be able to keep a lot of secrets. Also how exactly were you planning to get fuel and other supplies in there, and/or evacuate them when the enemy rolls up his heavy equipment?
 
Here's an artist's depiction of an air-cushioned landing gear-equipped Burnelli-style aircraft landing on a beach, delivering "1000 troops in 8 hours". Again, nice looking beach, no obstacles or enemy fire.

While both Burnelli's designs and tactical military transports in general were poorly served at this time, this concept doesn't seem to be wallowing in viability, at least in the context of D-Day. It seems to address a call for a rapid response commando operation somewhat. However, Burnelli had influential enemies which his engineering prowess could not defeat. A fairly common story.

burnelliaircushionlandinggear.jpg
 

amphibulous

Banned
Originally Posted by e of pi
Amphibulous, you are exagerating a bit. With the 71' span of the UB-14 compared to the 10' beam of the Higgins boats, even with a full wingspan allowed between aircraft you'd only be able to land 14 boats where you can land one plane (averaged over the coast under attack). That's bad enough, you don't need to exagerate it to "hundreds."


1. There is no way you land aircraft with only a wingspan between them - it sounds a lot, but over a landing run of hundreds of yards it is easily eaten up. Especially with poor visibility, the distraction of fire, aircraft being damaged and losing control, etc. If a single aircraft is hit it might slew over the paths of half a dozen others.

2. Landing craft formations are TWO DIMENSIONAL. You can stack then behind each other without serious collision risk. With aircraft, no - you need a gap of a mile or so.

3. With aircraft you have to have to have a whole wave land, turn a round, take off - the beach is blocked for this entire cycle.

4. Turnaround is agonizing: the tighter aircraft are packed, the more one has to delay for another

...One fixed wing aircraft really does use the same amount of beach space as hundreds of LCTs. If you try to do crazy formation flying stuff while landing, with wingtips only a wingspan apart, you're going to lose horrible numbers of aircraft. Really: stop imagining this is an airport and remember that you're inserting these things into the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan - this is ***combat.***
 
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amphibulous

Banned
Originally Posted by phx1138
The safety regulations do tend to get thrown out the nearest window, since getting shot at tends to be a bigger hazard....


I think what you're not getting here is that the safety regulations for flying **are there for a reason.** If you try to land huge numbers of fixed wing aircraft in close proximity, people will die unpleasantly often even in optimal circumstances. If you add aircraft losing control due to destroyed control surfaces, dead pilots, lost engines; poor visibility due to smoke and water spouts; crashed aircraft and uncleared obstacles... you're looking at catastrophe.

And this is only a minor problem, compared to the small first wave size.
 
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