The Wellesly was actually quite a good aircraft. It had superlative range, flying from Africa to northern Australia without stopping. What it lacked was a fuselage bomb bay 'cause Barnes Wallis had not worked out yet how to create one. The Wellesly was a learning step towards the Wellington and later Vickers' bombers. It was rugged and it did what was asked of it, what else could be expected of it?
Military Aircraft that should have never been built?
- Thread starter S. Marlowski
- Start date
SsgtC
Banned
Despite what a lot of people think, the last S-3 Viking was manufactured 42 years ago. And after the retirement of the KA-6, they were worked hard as tankers. Lockheed was able to extend their service lives, so some of those airframes still have usable life, but the Navy seems uninterested in reactivating them
There's nothing wrong with the Wellesley. Fantastic range, decent bombload for the time and tough as old boots. The only thing it possibly needed was another engine.
A heavy bomber with 4 nacelles for 4 engines makes far more sense than what He 177 used.
BTW - DB 610 performed as advertised, it was DB 606 that was prone to spontaneous fire.
Defiant, Hurricane and Spitfire in 1939-mid 1940 shared the same engine - Merlin III, difference in every-day service being that Defiant was a death trap when enemy fighters are around, unlike the other two. Due to the need to carry the turret, Defiant was wider (= draggier) than Spitfire, and heavier than either of other two. Add the drag and weight of turret, and speed and rate of climb are in problems. By 1941 (= Merlin 45 available), we have Spitfire doing 370+ mph with two cannons, and Hurricane IIC was making 320 mph with 4 cannons. Turret that can handle bigger guns = another money sink. Defiant simply does not offer anything over the cannon-armed Sptfire and Hurricane, it will be more expensive, it will require twice the crew, and it will be bad against fighters (German bombers are already fair game for any Hurricane, let alone Spitfire).
RAF has (an unlikely) surplus of Merlin 61s in 1942-43? Install them on actually useful aircraft besides Spitfire, like Mosquito, Lancaster, or re-engine the Mustangs.
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AZrailwhale
Banned
The Marauder also had a problem damaging prop blades on the rough Pacific strips. The Mitchell had more clearance so it suffered less damage.
AZrailwhale
Banned
The IJN had the best pilots in the world in forty one and forty two. It was incredibly picky about picking pilot candidates and then washed out over ninety percent of the few they picked. Read Samurai by Martin Caiden and Saburo Sakai for a description of the training.
AZrailwhale
Banned
“File and fit”production isn’t mass production in my book. It takes far longer and is less accurate than properly designing and producing parts to fit. Needing scarce skilled craftsmen on a production line wastes manpower and man hours.
A twin-engine Wellesley is effectively a Wellington.
Which could have been a very good thing.
The Wellesley was started a year before the Wellington, the prototype's first flight was a year earlier than the Wellington and it entered service 18 months before the Wellington.
The Wellesley entered service the same month as the Battle and two months after the Blenheim.
This old canard! The Merlin was designed for mass production and was fully mass produced in the UK such as by Ford in Manchester. Original orders were in the low hundreds and were made by Rolls Royce who had skilled staff and insufficient orders to fund full mass production so used the skills they had. The principal difference between US and UK production was the projection of the drawings as the UK used European views and the USA used their own views. A bit like today where the USA uses Imperial units and the rest of the world uses metric. Merlin development was done by Rolls Royce and development engines were hand fitted but UK production was all mass produced. Packard's occasionally got ahead of the game as they got new developments into their production as new lines came on stream whilst UK production maintained existing models to keep the flow going.
Merlins were produced at four separate plants in the UK. These were RR at Derby, RR at Crewe, RR at Hillingdon Glasgow and Ford at Manchester. Of these Crewe and Hillingdon Used British mass production standards, where tolerances were such that some parts would need fettling to fit, Fords used higher tolerances with more single operation/use machines. One advantage of Crewe and Hillingdon over Ford's at Manchester was that the RR factories could just get their operators to adjust their machining to accommodate changes to the engine for a new Mark or other development. Whereas Ford could spam out the same engine in the thousands but had to basically change the machinery to make any changes to the production line. Meanwhile the Artisan production by highly skilled individual machinists at Derby could build prototypes and batches of specialized engines as required which no other existing facility could do at the time. In a wartime environment IMVHO the British government got it about right with RR on how to get the most benefit from what was possible.
Never underestimate the value of a flexible, pragmatic approach. If the RLM had looked at the early problems with the He177 and decided to produce a simpler version with four single engines (maybe by nicking the nacelle design off the He111) and no dive bombing requirement, the Luftwaffe could have had an effective four engined bomber certainly by 1943, maybe sooner. The failed development of the OTL He177 could have continued.
Having recovered both wrecked Manchesters and Lancasters, I am please that no Luftwaffe bod made the connection and suggested the same fix for their problems with the He117 as suggested by oldiornside above.
Far too late for that. Besides, it would mean having the nazi leadership admit their idea was bad, and the enemy's good...
SsgtC
Banned
They may have been the best, but it was by a very small margin. There wasn't this huge gulf between American and Japanese Naval Aviators that some seem to think there was. Both services were highly trained and thoroughly professional.
Two of the main problems with the IJN were the same as the Luftwaffe: their training programs and their mania for not rotating pilots in and out of active duty. German and japanese veterans flew untill they died, regardless of time in duty; meanwhile, training was carried out by instrutors that(for the most) had little combat experience. Alied pilots were rotated back, and many went on to training units, to pass on what they had learned. This meant that new alied pilots had far better tactical training in middle/late war than Axis pilots.
