It may be an overblown concern, I'll agree. It crossed my mind, & any chin ducts like that make me wonder.Could stones from the nosewheel reach the engine nacelles? Seems like an extreme angle for the nosewheel, especially if taxiing or rolling at high speed. Anyhow I think the intercooler is pretty robust and a dent or two in the cooling fins from a stone or shell casing isn't a show stopper. And I would truly like to see what kind of aerobatic maneuver could cause gun exhaust or shell casings from the nose guns to be ingested by one or both of the intercooler intakes. The lomcevak is not a recommended combat maneuver.
Not so overblown, phx1138. You make a valid point. Foreign object damage is a real and ongoing problem with jet engines. Just consider Captain Sullenberger's famous water landing after the unfortunate encounter with some Canada Geese or the constant "walking of the flight deck" routine on aircraft carriers. Fortunately the P-38 isn't as susceptible to FOD.
One of my great pleasures with this has been when a new AHF member starts to read the thread and drops "Likes" along the way so I can keep up with where in the story they are. For example a member has been catching up all week and just today finshed Another Thursday, liking some of the discussion posts between. It feels good knowing people are enjoying my efforts
Absolutley. As you had pointing out though in the P-38 the chin duct is just for the intercooler and (IOTL) oil coolers and they aren't as sensitive to FOD as a Turbofan or Turbojet, etc.
That's what I meant: the V1710, even TC, wouldn't be as vulnerable.
When it comes to pure turbines, I like the Sov approach: air inlet doors that shut on the ground, with top-mounted inlets that open for taxiing. More complex, yes, but no FOD hazard. It makes me wonder if civil airliners couldn't be (retro?) fitted with "sidewinder" intake "noses"; AIUI, stones & such won't make sharp turns.
AFAIK, that's never been raised for fuel cars, but I wonder how many blower pops were FODs....
Yeah, for some reason I was thinking that was a direct feed to the turbine(s).
And "like"s? Wait awhile; I've gotten some on thread comments so old I'd forgotten I even made them.
I've been bad.
Instead of writing like I should be, I've been playing...
Would anyone care to see a completely theoretical c. 1960's designed "Turbo-Lightning" derived from TTL Convair F-81? Well, if not, too bad. Here it is (at least side and top. I haven't finished the front view yet.). And, yes, it has a Scorpion tail, turboprops, and tip tanks (though the side view does not show them because I didn't want to completely hid the wing). It will be armed with either two M39 20mm Revolver Cannons in the wing roots, or M61...one or two depending on just how much space there is. I doubt this will ever appear ITTL but is still a fun little study of what it could look like.
Instead of writing like I should be, I've been playing...
Would anyone care to see a completely theoretical c. 1960's designed "Turbo-Lightning" derived from TTL Convair F-81? Well, if not, too bad. Here it is (at least side and top. I haven't finished the front view yet.). And, yes, it has a Scorpion tail, turboprops, and tip tanks (though the side view does not show them because I didn't want to completely hid the wing). It will be armed with either two M39 20mm Revolver Cannons in the wing roots, or M61...one or two depending on just how much space there is. I doubt this will ever appear ITTL but is still a fun little study of what it could look like.
It's a hot looking COIN airplane. It puts me in mind of the OV-10 Bronco.
Definitely. I wonder if a second pilot could be added, and what the potential munitions load of such an aircraft would be (aside from the main armament).
The OV-10 was a bit of an inspiratiin for it, no doubt. I have always liked that one.
The section of the forward booms that houses he main gear. That is all that's left of the P-38. The props, outer wings, and the booms aft to the empennage are from the P-81 as well as the aft half of the center section wings. Everything else (gondola/cockpit, forward half of center wing, engines and nacelles, empenage) are new.
This one won't easily be adaptable to a two-seat version just because of where everythingis located. One possibily would be to make a wider center section and have the two sit side-by-side rather than tandem.
Like I said, I haven't tackled the specific armament load outs yet. Note, however, I got rid of the outer wing tanks with the idea of increasing the internal structure so we can add larger or more hard points out there.
Anyway, this is not really pertitnent to the TL but I was having fun with it and wanted to share. I am out and about today, away from the computer, so I won't be able to post the next TL chapter quite yet.
That was a gorgeous P-38 grandchild. Too bad COIN, which frankly given the geopolitics of the OTL postwar period strikes me as the guys in black hats far more often than not, would be the main mission.
How to have an insurgency that deserves countering? Mind I recognize that a whole bunch of them that have the right enemies to be good guys nevertheless are not--this applies on both sides of the Cold War ideological divide too. At the end of the day insurgency is a dirty business; the trouble is the parties of property and order are typically just as dirty.
So who would be bad guy insurgents? Basically I'd think we'd have to blow WWII, leaving the Axis sitting pretty after some sort of white truce in which Hitler owns Russia and so forth, with all the horror that portends, and then we have them projecting power, perhaps via ultra stealthy U-boat landings, in the soft form of aiding fascist insurgencies in Latin America and the Philippines. In short screw the pooch in the 1940s, in order to play the beleaguered boy scout hero in the 60s. And even given the global setup I so pessimistically offer, which is Thank God clean out for this ATL with the Axis on the run, it is most likely to boil down to a noir sort of story of hats of various colors of dark grey with variable size and sources blood splatters all over each, no Boy Scouts to be found. Or to be found but the kind Tom Lehrer sings about.
I have a complete schizophrenic split between the gorgeousness of airplanes and the sort of missions they are meant for; let's face it, by and large civilian operations rarely call for beauty. Or we don't see the beauty of a conventional tube with wing & podded engine layout because it is so mundane--a Lockheed Constellation had gorgeous lines to be sure. But it lacks the sort of rakish look of a true thoroughbred performance plane. The DeHavilland Comet was a pretty airplane too, but part of that related to why it proved uneconomic even allowing for it being crippled by an unforeseen engineering error--with the engines buried, upgrades were quite difficult to manage, and I suppose routine maintenance was more difficult, slower and more costly too. DeHavilland in general often achieved planes that were gorgeous as well as of iconic functionality--such as the Mosquito. But in the jet age, one of the greatest economic assets of converting to a jet fleet for an airline was that turbine engines needed less maintenance time, and turbojets less than turboprops. They also were quieter from a passenger point of view and faster than anything not specifically designed to go supersonic. Even if the Comet design had been perfect from the get-go its potential was limited by the buried engine philosophy--even if that had allowed them to go faster and be quieter the difference in maintenance costs, and lower flexibility as to engine upgrades would always be a drawback.
I suspect that the greater isolation of the engine in a podded design was offset by its noise radiating freely through the air around the overall noise profile for passengers would have been a push, the noise in a Comet being more a matter of stuff transmitted through rigid structure FWIW, so for passengers there would not be a sonic noise advantage, though the Comet, in a given state of the art, might be quieter for bystanders. The problem there being that the Comet being an early generation design which could not be sustained to 1970 or so always had early state of the art engines--turbojets were inherently noisier than turbofans, and early versions needed thrust augmenting expedients for takeoff including for the Comet built in hydrogen peroxide JATO rockets and later water injection--all of these were noise issues as well as the latter producing infamous trails of soot. Trying to get buried turbofans into a clean sheet late '60s Comet derived design would turn into a nightmare I would think, though if anyone could tweak the aerodynamics to make it worthwhile it would be DeHavilland. That company did not exist as such by 1970 though.
Anyway pretty and functional are often not the same thing, and with the development of the jet engine the basic Lightning design became--well, still a major thing in the hands of none other than DeHavilland! But Vampires and their Vixen derivatives, though apparently functional, are quite goofy looking jets. Anyway you didn't want an American Vampire, you wanted a P-38 layout descendant that looked good the way the Lightning did, and for that it requires a military mission, and in the jet age there is not much call for a prop plane for the romantic stuff like interception or strike escort; it comes down to roles like COIN.
To some mentalities that is romantic enough I suppose. It just makes me sad though.
If only Just Leo were here, he could paint it up in California Highway Patrol colors and do one of those funny "Traffic Regulations Enforced by Aircraft" pictures...
How to have an insurgency that deserves countering? Mind I recognize that a whole bunch of them that have the right enemies to be good guys nevertheless are not--this applies on both sides of the Cold War ideological divide too. At the end of the day insurgency is a dirty business; the trouble is the parties of property and order are typically just as dirty.
So who would be bad guy insurgents? Basically I'd think we'd have to blow WWII, leaving the Axis sitting pretty after some sort of white truce in which Hitler owns Russia and so forth, with all the horror that portends, and then we have them projecting power, perhaps via ultra stealthy U-boat landings, in the soft form of aiding fascist insurgencies in Latin America and the Philippines. In short screw the pooch in the 1940s, in order to play the beleaguered boy scout hero in the 60s. And even given the global setup I so pessimistically offer, which is Thank God clean out for this ATL with the Axis on the run, it is most likely to boil down to a noir sort of story of hats of various colors of dark grey with variable size and sources blood splatters all over each, no Boy Scouts to be found. Or to be found but the kind Tom Lehrer sings about.
I have a complete schizophrenic split between the gorgeousness of airplanes and the sort of missions they are meant for; let's face it, by and large civilian operations rarely call for beauty. Or we don't see the beauty of a conventional tube with wing & podded engine layout because it is so mundane--a Lockheed Constellation had gorgeous lines to be sure. But it lacks the sort of rakish look of a true thoroughbred performance plane. The DeHavilland Comet was a pretty airplane too, but part of that related to why it proved uneconomic even allowing for it being crippled by an unforeseen engineering error--with the engines buried, upgrades were quite difficult to manage, and I suppose routine maintenance was more difficult, slower and more costly too. DeHavilland in general often achieved planes that were gorgeous as well as of iconic functionality--such as the Mosquito. But in the jet age, one of the greatest economic assets of converting to a jet fleet for an airline was that turbine engines needed less maintenance time, and turbojets less than turboprops. They also were quieter from a passenger point of view and faster than anything not specifically designed to go supersonic. Even if the Comet design had been perfect from the get-go its potential was limited by the buried engine philosophy--even if that had allowed them to go faster and be quieter the difference in maintenance costs, and lower flexibility as to engine upgrades would always be a drawback.
I suspect that the greater isolation of the engine in a podded design was offset by its noise radiating freely through the air around the overall noise profile for passengers would have been a push, the noise in a Comet being more a matter of stuff transmitted through rigid structure FWIW, so for passengers there would not be a sonic noise advantage, though the Comet, in a given state of the art, might be quieter for bystanders. The problem there being that the Comet being an early generation design which could not be sustained to 1970 or so always had early state of the art engines--turbojets were inherently noisier than turbofans, and early versions needed thrust augmenting expedients for takeoff including for the Comet built in hydrogen peroxide JATO rockets and later water injection--all of these were noise issues as well as the latter producing infamous trails of soot. Trying to get buried turbofans into a clean sheet late '60s Comet derived design would turn into a nightmare I would think, though if anyone could tweak the aerodynamics to make it worthwhile it would be DeHavilland. That company did not exist as such by 1970 though.
Anyway pretty and functional are often not the same thing, and with the development of the jet engine the basic Lightning design became--well, still a major thing in the hands of none other than DeHavilland! But Vampires and their Vixen derivatives, though apparently functional, are quite goofy looking jets. Anyway you didn't want an American Vampire, you wanted a P-38 layout descendant that looked good the way the Lightning did, and for that it requires a military mission, and in the jet age there is not much call for a prop plane for the romantic stuff like interception or strike escort; it comes down to roles like COIN.
To some mentalities that is romantic enough I suppose. It just makes me sad though.
If only Just Leo were here, he could paint it up in California Highway Patrol colors and do one of those funny "Traffic Regulations Enforced by Aircraft" pictures...
Bad boy! You deserve a smack.
The answer to that would be "no" why?
I'm thinking Cavalier Mustang, here.
Very nice, in any case. Anybody any good at scratchbuilding?
(I"m not...)The idea of side-by-side works for me. Think AT-37.
And he'd have had it done & posted here before anybody could even comment on the original. That man was fast.
That deserves about 100 likes.
Since yesterday was D-day I thought it would be appropriate to post this famous picture of a Lightning adorned with Invasion stripes flying over the French countryside. It's an interesting study in patterns.
The P-38 was probably the least likely airplane in all the Allied inventory to be mis-identified. But regulations are regulations so they all got their stripes. This example here is actually a F-5 photorecon Lightning but they earned their stripes too.
No worries at all.....My goodnes... What a thing to screw up.
I will fix it at my earliest convenience. So very sorry about that.
Jeff
Good eye on the ID. I didn't think to look until you mentioned it but it clearly does not have the gun nose and you can see the shadow of the top mounted aerial (rather than the bottom mounted one which was standard).
Thanks for understanding. It should be fixed but feel free to go back through and confirm I didn't miss any other references in there.
To all, the next chapter should be up in a couple days. I'm hoping to get a post up to celebrate the TL's / Thread's 1 year anniversary. (I know, hard to believe it has been so long).
No, it doesn't seem that long. And every time I see the page count, it startles me. (Really?
)