Have the Short Stirling be more successful as a bomber aircraft for the RAF especially against the Halifax & Lancaster
Much obliged!
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Have the Short Stirling be more successful as a bomber in RAF service
- Thread starter Fuzzy Dunlop
- Start date
Have the Short Stirling be more successful as a bomber aircraft for the RAF especially against the Halifax & Lancaster
Much obliged!
For a start don't shorten the wings and artificially limit its maximum altitude. Also don't divide the fuselage Bomb bay and use the wing bomb cells as additional fuel tanks. The extended range will make the Stirling a very useful bomber in the Far East.
La Rouge Beret
Donor
Do you know how much more that would increase the aircraft's range, perhaps the RAAF could use the alt Sterling ITTL rather than the B - 24 Liberator. As perhaps the Stirling's greater ceiling could make it largely immune to most IJNAF and IJAAF fighters.
May I humble suggest you look at the Stirling as flown in the Peerless Air Ministry TL. This is built to the original S29 specification, long wingspan, powered by four Fairey monarch H24 engines providing 2000hp each in 1939. A very different beast to OTL. The LRMP aircraft variant had fuel in the wings instead of bomb cells and range comparable to the OTL long range Liberator!
Shorten the fuselage a lot (3-4m); Stirling have had considerably longer fuselage than Lancaster or Halifax. (saves weight)
Remove the front and dorsal turrets and respective gunners. (saves weight, lessens drag)
Have the flight crew being stationed in the nose, replace the greenhouse with the navigator's cupola. (saves weight, lessens drag)
Shorter and lighter undercarriage.
Lower weight improves service ceiling, range/radius and cruise speed, lower drag improves the improvements. The take off and landing characteristics will also improve.
As noted above, instead of the segmented bomb bay go for the unrestricted one, so the cookies can be carried.
Remove the front and dorsal turrets and respective gunners. (saves weight, lessens drag)
Have the flight crew being stationed in the nose, replace the greenhouse with the navigator's cupola. (saves weight, lessens drag)
Shorter and lighter undercarriage.
Lower weight improves service ceiling, range/radius and cruise speed, lower drag improves the improvements. The take off and landing characteristics will also improve.
As noted above, instead of the segmented bomb bay go for the unrestricted one, so the cookies can be carried.
While probably good ideas the resulting aircraft wouldn't be a Stirling but a completely different aircraft.
It's reminiscent of the S.36 Super Stirling designed to meet Specification B.8/41.
Barnes in Shorts Aircraft since 1900 says...
This is confirmed by the entries on Specifications B.12/36 and P.13/36 in Air Britain's The British Aircraft Specifications File.
Specification B.12/39 that required a maximum bomb load of 14,000lbs as follows:
- 14 - 250lb GP or AS or SAP or BO or LC or SC1 apparatus, or;
- 14 - 500lb GP or AS or SAP, or;
- 7 - 2,000lb AP.
- 16 - 250lb GP or AS or SAP or B or LC or SC1 apparatus, or;
- 16 - 500lb GP or AS or SAP, or;
- 4 - 2,000lb AP, or:
- it may be possible for a limited number of aircraft to carry two torpedoes internally of 18 inch diameter, 18ft 2.5in in length.
Therefore, if the TTL Specification B.12/36 includes a requirement to carry two 18in torpedoes the TTL Stirling won't have a segmented bomb bay.
Barnes says that the Stirling's wingspan had to be reduced from 112ft to 99ft 1in so that it could fit into existing aircraft hangars. The entry on Spec. B.12/36 says that the British Aircraft Specifications File says that the wingspan should not exceed 100ft.
I believe that Kaiser Wilhelm II said something along the lines of, "The Germans build their docks to fit the ships and the British build their ships to fit the docks." Which can be paraphrased as the "Germans build their hangars to fit the aircraft and the British build their aircraft to fit the hangars." Therefore, the Air Ministry has to rebuild it's existing hangars to accommodate "long span" Stirling, which I suspect would be at great expense. However, they might have rebuilt them at great expense later on anyway so the same amount of money is spent, but at a different time. However, the simplest thing would be that the hangars were built to accommodate larger aircraft in the first place.
I looked the wingspans of the B.12/36 and P.12/36 aircraft up in my copy of Thetford's Royal Air Force Aircraft since 1918 and the wingspans of Halifax, Lancaster and Stirling are about the same.
Manchester Mk I - 90ft 1in
Lancaster Mk I - 102ft
Halifax Mk I - 98ft 8in
Stirling Mk III - 99ft 1in
That makes me think that the designers of the Halifax and Manchester/Lancaster had to restrict the wingspans to about 100ft when they were allowed to change the designs from two Vultures to four Merlins in order to fit into existing hangars. Therefore, had Short been allowed to give the Stirling a bigger wingspan ITTL, would Avro and Handley Page been allowed to give the Lancaster and Halifax longer wingspans and would that have made them better aircraft? For example would the TTL Lancaster been similar to the OTL Lincoln.
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The Stirling in the PAM TL has the universal bomb bay as specified for all heavy bombers in the TL. This gives the Stirling, Manchester and the Halifax the ability to carry any single bomb up to the Maximum size carried by the OTL Lancaster MkI.
Coulsdon Eagle
Monthly Donor
Ahhhh - the old Airfix kit. Looking at mine now, gathering dust on top of a display cabinet.
That's news to me. It could have been to save the money needed of build larger hangars rather than the cost of longer wingspans.
How much money would reducing the wingspan by 12% save? I think that the cost of another 13 feet of wingspan would be insignificant in relation to things like the engines and gun turrets. It's the aircraft equivalent of the "steel is cheap and air is free" theory for warships.
Looks like it, it's quoted in Salamanders: "Bombers of WWII"
Unless it's on of those 'urban myths'
But as you said, why didn't they expand the hangers?
La Rouge Beret
Donor
If you're going down that route and it's a good option.
What did you mean by replacing the greenhouse by the navigator's cupola, would that look like the Lancaster's cupola except on the Stirling?
Why not add in swept wings too.
IIRC the specification limit on wingspan wasn't related to the width of the doors on the aircraft hangars but was a misguided attempt to keep the aircraft weight down. Easiest solution there is to simply specify, and enforce, the maximum weight allowed and let the designers get on with things.
It is worth remembering that at the time these aircraft were specified, runways were grass. Keeping size and weight down was as much about preserving this infrastructure as it was about the aircraft.
And there was also the requirement that the B.12/36 and P.13/36 aircraft be capable of catapult assisted take-offs. That may have been so that they could take-off from existing grass runways and thus avoid the expense of building long concrete runways.
According to Barnes on Page 371 of Shorts Aircraft since 1900.
The next sentence was.
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Its mentioned in Goulding and Moyes RAF Bomber Command and its Aircraft also in British Secret Projects and a number of other places.
IIRC Goulding and Moyes specifically mention issues with the earlier C.16/28 spec and BSP points out there was a requirement for maintenance out in the open and many hangers were already at least 120ft wide.
When the Lincoln was designed with its 120ft wingspan they solved the issue of narrower hangers by putting it on skates and pushing it in pulling it out sideways.