Super Bombers for pre-WWII

Just looking for something akin to the maximum-battleship (Tillman?) concept applied to pre WWII bombers from a purely technical approach.

Could a blended wing and body hybird bomber be built in the mid to late thirties? How many engines can you really put on a bomber? Is four really a working maximum, or was it just that military aviation had not concieved of 6+ engines?
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Sure, with a really big budget. The problem is the horrible financial shape cause by WW1. So in any TL where WW1 ends in winter 1915/16 or winter 1916/17, you would see additional weapons whose development moved from the 1940's to the 1930's. A lot of different weapons systems lost a full decade of development.
 
The idea of more than four engines was actually fairly common, particularly in the early days of aviation, due to the relatively low power output from most available engines. The problem isn't an inability to think of the idea, or even an inability to build the idea, it's 'diminishing returns'. Adding an extra engine adds (obviously) the weight of an extra engine, and the weight of extra fuel, and also the weight of extra structure to make room for the engine. That makes a larger aircraft, and that increases drag, which along with the weight, increases fuel consumption. Eventually, you reach the point where that extra engine you added is basically lifting what it added to the aircraft...and the next one you add won't even be breaking even. As engines increased in power and reliability, designers could meet their power requirements with fewer of them, and that let them benefit from the opposite side of the above problems...airframes could be smaller, with lower weight and lower drag.

As for saving the Kalinin K-7, it would've been possible to do so, but why bother? The K-7 first flew in August of 1933. The B-17 first flew in July of 1935. In other words, by the time the bugs would've been ironed out of the K-7, there were aircraft entering service that flew twice as high, carried more payload, were more mechanically reliable, and were much faster, to boot. It's a cool looking aircraft (in a clunky sort of way), but it wasn't a very practical one.
 
The reason I posted this question is I just read a good book upon the evolution of the various B-17 designs, and having enjoyed the 'maximun battleship' article over on wiki, I got the old imagination fired up. when I read that later versions of the B-17 were bigger/heavier than their predecessors, but actually got faster...

IIRC that was due to improvments in the powerplants, and the inclusion of super/turbo-chargers for high altitude performance.
 
The Douglas B-18 got the first service contract, with the B-17 receiving only a development contract. Price was a factor. Elevator locks was another.
 
The Douglas B-18 got the first service contract, with the B-17 receiving only a development contract. Price was a factor. Elevator locks was another.
:D

That, or pilot error.:eek:;)
Didn't the B-17 outperform the B-18 in every way, but crashed on the last test flight with a new test pilot at the controls? And then it got disqualified from consideration as a result. What if the dude had done a proper pre-flight, and the prototype survives?
 
The difference is that instead of 65 model 299's, which weren't totally combat-worthy, 13 YB-17s were ordered and development was continued until the more refined B-17E achieved large production volume. It worked out very well.
 
Didn't the B-17 outperform the B-18 in every way...
That might have had something to do with the fact that it had twice as many engines as the other two aircraft being tested. Not that that was a bad idea, it was a good one in fact, since the aircraft were getting really a bit big for having only two engines, but it must be taken into account.
 
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The fact of history is that the richest, most industrialized country in the world decided it couldn't afford to maintain a fleet of B-17s, and opted to buy the obsolete-before-it-was-ordered B-18 for half-price. When the shooting started, production volume of B-17 and B-24s stripped all previous records, culminating in the eight-engined B-52. An epiphany.
 
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