Morgans wrote:
I had always heard that the fuselage tank was the source of the instability,
with it being so far behind the CG, to give it a dangerously aft CG. Today,
in peacetime, I don't suppose they would ever dream of putting that much
weight that far back, but it was war.

Comments?

I'll take that any day of the week over the Bf-109, where you're main
fuselage tank goes under the pilot's seat, or the Me-163 where you're
sitting squeezed in between two tanks of hydrogen peroxide at your sides.
Another "brilliant" move was on the Sukhoi Su-7, where a cylindrical
fuselage fuel tank has a tunnel down its inside in which the jet engine
rests, so that bullets of shrapnel piercing the rear fuselage will
penetrate the fuel tank...and then the engine...letting superheated air
enter the fuel tank.
This led to some wonderful combat shots in the 1973 Yom Kippur war and
the wars between India and Pakistan of Su-7s plunging earthwards with
everything behind the wings ablaze and spraying fire all over the place
like a flamethrower.

Pat