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If I remember correctly, the nose down full throttle was a tactic used to escape the zero's. They knew they would not
break the plane and the enemy often did. Same was true of the Wildcat, no limitation, plane would reach terminal velocity... -- Dan D. .. "Big John" wrote in message ... Corkey The P-40 wouldn't go supersonic. Had a few hours in bird and took one to about 20K and rolled over at full thottle. Huffed and puffed on way down and I started my pull out about 10K and was level about 3K. Bird did not have a Mach meter, only a ASI. As I remember only got a little over 400 mph max (high drag, low power). That one dive conviced me it was a subsonic aircraft ![]() Big John On Mon, 23 Feb 2004 19:45:15 GMT, (Corky Scott) wrote: On 23 Feb 2004 09:32:01 -0800, (Jay) wrote: For props, bigger is better for static thrust (look at a helecopter) but what about for top speed, a more desireable figure of merit for fixed wing aircraft? I seem to remember hearing somewhere that for top speed there is an optimal prop length that is not infinite. You need to generate a stream of air that is going faster than the speed that you want to fly. You just described the reason no piston engined WWII fighter ever flew faster than the speed of sound. The prop needed to produce enough thrust to pull the airplane into supersonic speed, but the prop was running into the wall of drag as the tips neared supersonic speed and the fuselage was producing enormous drag too. The prop tips would have to go supersonic if the airplane was to go that fast too, and props of that era were not designed for supersonic speeds. Even going straight down at full power, just too much drag. They went fast enough to scare the bajeebers out of a number of pilots though. :-) They also went fast enough to lock up the controls and in some cases, cause the destruction of the airplane... and the pilot. Corky Scott |
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Dan
The P-38 had high speed dive problems. After a number crashed they went back and retrofitted them with 'dive' brakes (narrow strips on top of wing that could be raised to increase drag). These slowed the bird down enough it could be pulled out The P-47 also had some dive problems. It wanted to tuck at high speed in a dive. To recover you kept full throttle on and when you got to a lower altitude you slowed down in the thicker air and regained enough control to recover. The P-51 was red lined at 505 mph. I have had it up to that speed and didn't have any problems recovering from dive. I have friends who were in Europe and told of far exceeding the 505 red line when getting away from 109/190's. The 109 had a structural problem in their tail and it would come off if they got too fast in a dive (per word passed to our fighter jocks). All of this in a time and land far away ![]() Big John On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 11:58:03 GMT, "Blueskies" wrote: If I remember correctly, the nose down full throttle was a tactic used to escape the zero's. They knew they would not break the plane and the enemy often did. Same was true of the Wildcat, no limitation, plane would reach terminal velocity... |
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![]() "Big John" wrote in message The P-38 had high speed dive problems. After a number crashed they went back and retrofitted them with 'dive' brakes (narrow strips on top of wing that could be raised to increase drag). These slowed the bird down enough it could be pulled out Wasn't part of that fix also a mass balancer on the elevator, that was a blob raised up on an arm above the elevator? -- Jim in NC --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.593 / Virus Database: 376 - Release Date: 2/20/2004 |
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Morgans wrote:
"Big John" wrote in message The P-38 had high speed dive problems. After a number crashed they went back and retrofitted them with 'dive' brakes (narrow strips on top of wing that could be raised to increase drag). These slowed the bird down enough it could be pulled out Wasn't part of that fix also a mass balancer on the elevator, that was a blob raised up on an arm above the elevator? -- Jim in NC More likely the mass balance was used to raise the flutter speed of the elevator. Get it up above the airplane's speed range. Also, while on the subject of P-38 lore... I thought the dive brakes retro on the P-38 was on the bottom of the wing? Part of the problem was that even though the airplane was traveling at less than transonic speed, there were places that the "air" was getting supersonic and creating shock waves. (I put that in quotes, because it's really the airplane that's moving, not the air. The air just gets out of the way - rapidly. Can't blame it.) Then, as speed builds, the shock waves move aft? The Bell X-1 had some problems with the shock waves moving aft on the elevator. Moved right back to the elevator hinge line and elevator control was rather - uhm - nonexistent? The airplane also had a variable incidence stabilizer for elevator trim. Chuck tried flying the airplane with the trim switch and the "all flying" tail, or stabilator was born. If this is happening on the wing, as the pressure point moves aft the nose tucks down very nicely! As pressure increases due to decreasing altitude, the airplane might slow enough to return to normal subsonic conditions, and regain control. But you'd best be hauling that nose up now! Let's say you recover control at 25,000 feet? You are pointed straight down at 500 mph. You are going a little faster than 8 miles a minute, and you are slightly more than 4 miles up... I think it takes about 1.6 seconds from initiation for the seat to clear the airframe... Richard |
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Richard
You talk like you have been in the business. Your right, the speed brakes were at about 30% chord on the bottom of the wing. The mass balance was directed by the AAC to correct elevator flutter but Kelly Johnson said they were not needed and tests they ran proved him right. However AAC said put on so they did. Kelly said that a number of Pilots were killed when they bailed out and hit the weights ![]() My roommate bought the farm turning final on his second flight checking out in '38 at Kimpo Air Base, Korea. Probably got slow and stalled the bird? Big John On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 21:39:43 GMT, Richard Lamb wrote: Morgans wrote: "Big John" wrote in message The P-38 had high speed dive problems. After a number crashed they went back and retrofitted them with 'dive' brakes (narrow strips on top of wing that could be raised to increase drag). These slowed the bird down enough it could be pulled out Wasn't part of that fix also a mass balancer on the elevator, that was a blob raised up on an arm above the elevator? -- Jim in NC More likely the mass balance was used to raise the flutter speed of the elevator. Get it up above the airplane's speed range. Also, while on the subject of P-38 lore... I thought the dive brakes retro on the P-38 was on the bottom of the wing? Part of the problem was that even though the airplane was traveling at less than transonic speed, there were places that the "air" was getting supersonic and creating shock waves. (I put that in quotes, because it's really the airplane that's moving, not the air. The air just gets out of the way - rapidly. Can't blame it.) Then, as speed builds, the shock waves move aft? The Bell X-1 had some problems with the shock waves moving aft on the elevator. Moved right back to the elevator hinge line and elevator control was rather - uhm - nonexistent? The airplane also had a variable incidence stabilizer for elevator trim. Chuck tried flying the airplane with the trim switch and the "all flying" tail, or stabilator was born. If this is happening on the wing, as the pressure point moves aft the nose tucks down very nicely! As pressure increases due to decreasing altitude, the airplane might slow enough to return to normal subsonic conditions, and regain control. But you'd best be hauling that nose up now! Let's say you recover control at 25,000 feet? You are pointed straight down at 500 mph. You are going a little faster than 8 miles a minute, and you are slightly more than 4 miles up... I think it takes about 1.6 seconds from initiation for the seat to clear the airframe... Richard |
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![]() Morgans I remember reading something about the mass balancer as you call it but can't remember what it was the solution for. It could have been to prevent the elevator from causing trouble when in the shock wave at high mach? Here is what I found on Internet. They say the strip was on the bottom of the wing but I thougth I remembered it to be on the top. In any event it stopped the dive problem. Quote Earlier Lightnings had problems with high-speed dives. When the airspeed reached a sufficiently high value, the controls would suddenly lock up and the Lightning would tuck its nose down, making recovery from the dive difficult. In the worst case, the wings of the Lightning could be ripped off if the speed got too high. This problem caused the Lightning often to be unable to follow its Luftwaffe opponents in a dive, causing many of the enemy to be able to escape unscathed. The problem was eventually traced to the formation of a shock wave over the wing as the Lightning reached transonic speeds, this shock wave causing the elevator to lose much of its effectiveness. The problem was not cured until the advent of the P-38J-25-LO, which introduced a set of compressibility flaps under the wing which changed the pattern of the shock wave over the wing when they were extended, restoring the function of the elevator. Unquote Big John On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 16:03:44 -0500, "Morgans" wrote: "Big John" wrote in message The P-38 had high speed dive problems. After a number crashed they went back and retrofitted them with 'dive' brakes (narrow strips on top of wing that could be raised to increase drag). These slowed the bird down enough it could be pulled out Wasn't part of that fix also a mass balancer on the elevator, that was a blob raised up on an arm above the elevator? |
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According to Warren Bode in his definitive book on the P-38, the bob weights
in the center of the elevator were mandated by the Army after one of the YP-38's shed its tail in a dive. Further dive tests seemed to indicate that the problem was tail flutter at certain speeds. The bob weights were added but did not solve the problem. Wind tunnel tests eventually traced the "flutter" problem to buffeting from turbulence off the joint between the wing and the center fuselage pod. After a fillet was added to soften this joint, the "flutter" problem disappeared, but the Army would not let Johnson remove the bob weights. He hated them (the elevator was already counterbalanced by concealed weights in the tail cones) and felt that their only contribution was to kill a few pilots who hit them in bailouts. The "compressability tuck" problem was investigated at the same time, but was only solved by means of the dive brakes that were added to the P-38J-25-LO and subsequent models. As it turned out, the compressability problem could not occur in any P-38's if dives were initiated below 25,000 feet. Since most P-38 operations during the war were below that altitude, few pilots encountered the problem in combat. -- Bob (Chief Pilot, White Knuckle Airways) "Morgans" wrote in message ... "Big John" wrote in message The P-38 had high speed dive problems. After a number crashed they went back and retrofitted them with 'dive' brakes (narrow strips on top of wing that could be raised to increase drag). These slowed the bird down enough it could be pulled out Wasn't part of that fix also a mass balancer on the elevator, that was a blob raised up on an arm above the elevator? -- Jim in NC --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.593 / Virus Database: 376 - Release Date: 2/20/2004 |
#10
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![]() Bob Your right I posted a follow on to thread covering essentially what you said and it never made it? I have had several disappeared like that and need to find out what is happening. I thought at first someone was going in and deleting my posts but I normally don't get into a Peeing contest with most posters and need to be censored ![]() In any event, glad you posted so some of the young ones will know what happened a long time ago in a land far away ![]() Big John On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 10:37:57 -0500, "Bob Chilcoat" wrote: According to Warren Bode in his definitive book on the P-38, the bob weights in the center of the elevator were mandated by the Army after one of the YP-38's shed its tail in a dive. Further dive tests seemed to indicate that the problem was tail flutter at certain speeds. The bob weights were added but did not solve the problem. Wind tunnel tests eventually traced the "flutter" problem to buffeting from turbulence off the joint between the wing and the center fuselage pod. After a fillet was added to soften this joint, the "flutter" problem disappeared, but the Army would not let Johnson remove the bob weights. He hated them (the elevator was already counterbalanced by concealed weights in the tail cones) and felt that their only contribution was to kill a few pilots who hit them in bailouts. The "compressability tuck" problem was investigated at the same time, but was only solved by means of the dive brakes that were added to the P-38J-25-LO and subsequent models. As it turned out, the compressability problem could not occur in any P-38's if dives were initiated below 25,000 feet. Since most P-38 operations during the war were below that altitude, few pilots encountered the problem in combat. |
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