Who Likes Aircraft ?

[polywideblock]

 

[polywideblock]

 

[polywideblock]

 

[polywideblock]

 

[polywideblock]

 

[Photon440]

The very first Hawker Hurricane prototype in 1935.

 

[64BEL]

We saw and toured this B-29 yesterday at a small airport in Colorado. It's 1 of only 2 left that are still flying. Rides were being sold for $725 - $1995 depending n the seat. The top price was for the bombardier's seat. We didn't take a ride but we did tour the inside. Pretty cool.

 

[AR67GTX]

I toured through FiFi about 30 years ago in Little Rock. I’m still amazed by the radar controlled gun turrets considering the state of technology back then.

 

[64BEL]

Yes, that remote controlled machine gun system was incredible for its time!

 

[Dave6T4]

Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum at Hamilton, Ontario. I had a flight in the Dakota that took us over nearby Niagara Falls. Both Canadian side Horseshoe Falls and U.S. side Niagara Falls shown in photo. Hamilton Museum also has 1 of 2 flying Lancaster bombers in the world.

 

[Photon440]

Because the Me-262 was first used as a bomber or fighter bomber, it didn't have an impressive kill average for much of it's service.

Although the jets entered active duty in April 1944 and started to be used against bombers by July of that year, new tactics had to be developed due to high closing speeds with targets. Flying so much faster than the bombers and escorts was useful for evading return fire, but also left very little time to line up, target and shoot. So from July 1944 to February 1945 there are only four bomber losses credited to the Me-262.

That changed dramatically when they started using air-to-air missiles (see polywideblock's link Who Likes Aircraft ? ) but by then the war was nearly over. In March, using the R4M rockets, 24 bombers were destroyed. Another 24 in April, plus a few more with rockets also mounted to FW-190 piston engined fighters. At that late stage of the war the Luftwaffe had already accepted over 1,200 of these jets, had they arrive just one year sooner then the air war would have looked quite different.

This was a B-24 hit by a R4M rocket. With just over a pound of ammo in the warhead (510 grams) the extremely powerful detonation usually meant one hit was enough.

 

[polywideblock]

 

[polywideblock]

 

[Photon440]

 

[Photon440]

Canadian built Avro Lancaster, powered by four Packard Merlin engines. It could carry 14,000 pounds of bombs.

 

[polywideblock]

 

[polywideblock]

 

[Photon440]

The swept wing fighter. Although the Me-262 had swept wings, it wasn't originally designed to be that way. The original concept showed conventional wings. Note also that the fuselage was also rather conventional, being oval in this drawing rather than the triangular cross section that we're familar with.

The reason for the triangular fuselage was to accommodate a more conventional main landing gear layout. Folding inward without rotating the wheel assembly (as shown above) would have meant a large bump on top of the wing, and the wing was too thin for the wheel and strut. Simply widening the bottom of the fuselage covered that problem.

As for the wings being swept back, balance problems came about when the anticipated BMW 003 engines proved to be heavier than originally planned for, and so the wings were swept back 18.5 degrees to allow the engine pods to move rearward. The inside wing root was still unswept at this time as shown here:

The original flying prototype also included a front piston engine and propeller, which proved fortunate when both BMW engines failed on the first flight. The first six flying test aircraft were tail draggers, as the tricycle landing gear used on production models was still being developed.
This version showed wing stall problems at the straight section, and wind tunnel tests showed that it would fly better if the whole wing was swept. So fairings were added to the wing root section starting with prototype #7, ending with the final production wing looking like this:

Due to further promising results with wind tunnel testing, further swept angles were tested; The VII version with both conventional and V tail designs had a 30 degree sweep, while VIII went further with a 45 degree wing.

The VIII also had the engines moved to the wing roots, and was going to use the newer and more powerful Heinkel HeS 011 engines. Neither of the later two designs had flown, they were in the wind tunnel test stage when the war ended.

 

[polywideblock]

Britain’s Greatest Flying Ace in WW2 Was Actually An Irishman “Spitfire Paddy”

 

[polywideblock]