A-10 in WWII??

"David E. Powell" wrote:

Did western antitank planes rely
more on bombs and rockets? (Outside the P-39 of course?)

DEP

Of course not. There were upgunned Hurricanes, and numerous fighters and light
and medium bombers outfitted as strafers/gunships. The 37mm gun on the
Airacobra/Kingcobra was a contraversial weapon to the Americans (some pilots
liked it and many didn't), and it was generally thought that anything bigger
than 20mm on a combat airplane was effete. Perhaps it was more of a logistics
issue than anything else...since the .50 caliber machine gun seemed to be
adequate in a general-purpose sense, why upgrade?

The Allies (in particular the Americans) never fielded a specifically anti-armor
airplane in spite of going through dozens of designs. Simply fitting bomb racks
and rocket rails on a day fighter--or packing extra machine guns on a medium
bomber--made more sense from a production standpoint than having a specialized
type created and put into action.

Allied wartime CAS thinking ultimately resulted in the Douglas Skyraider. We'll
never know what a plane like that would have done on the Western Front, but to
me it would have done what the Thunderbolt, Typhoon, Tempest, Beaufighter,
Mosquito and Mustang did...and more of it.

Stephen "FPilot" Bierce/IPMS #35922
{Sig Quotes Removed on Request}

Alistair Gunn wrote:

Kristan Roberge twisted the electrons to say:
Well columbia's solution would have been to park to the ISS and stay
there until NASA can get their arse in gear and rush another orbiter
into orbit...

... and where does Columbia find the fuel to do this?

there's no rule that says you have to RUSH to a higher orbit.

Kristan Roberge wrote:
Alistair Gunn wrote:

Kristan Roberge twisted the electrons to say:
Well columbia's solution would have been to park to the ISS and stay
there until NASA can get their arse in gear and rush another orbiter
into orbit...

... and where does Columbia find the fuel to do this?

there's no rule that says you have to RUSH to a higher orbit.

Delta-v is delta-v, and Columbia didn't have enough to get to ISS, period.
The speed of the proposed manuver is irrelevant. To go from Columbia's
original orbital inclination to the orbital inclination of the ISS would
have demanded a plane-change maneuver requiring far more fuel than the
shuttle's Orbital Maneuvering System carries (at least 4 times as much,
fuel, as it happens).

This proposal has of course come up before, and George Herbert was kind
enough to do the math:

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm...utput =gplain
--
Tom Schoene Replace "invalid" with "net" to e-mail
"Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right, when
wrong to be put right." - Senator Carl Schurz, 1872

(Stephen "FPilot" Bierce) wrote:
"David E. Powell"
wrote:

Did western antitank planes rely
more on bombs and rockets? (Outside the P-39
of course?)

DEP

Of course not. There were upgunned Hurricanes,
and numerous fighters and light
and medium bombers outfitted as strafers/gunships.
The 37mm gun on the
Airacobra/Kingcobra was a contraversial weapon
to the Americans (some pilots
liked it and many didn't), and it was generally
thought that anything bigger
than 20mm on a combat airplane was effete.
Perhaps it was more of a logistics
issue than anything else...since the .50 caliber
machine gun seemed to be
adequate in a general-purpose sense, why upgrade?

The Allies (in particular the Americans) never
fielded a specifically anti-armor
airplane in spite of going through dozens of
designs. Simply fitting bomb racks
and rocket rails on a day fighter--or packing
extra machine guns on a medium
bomber--made more sense from a production standpoint
than having a specialized
type created and put into action.

Allied wartime CAS thinking ultimately resulted
in the Douglas Skyraider. We'll
never know what a plane like that would have
done on the Western Front, but to
me it would have done what the Thunderbolt,
Typhoon, Tempest, Beaufighter,
Mosquito and Mustang did...and more of it.

Stephen "FPilot" Bierce/IPMS #35922
{Sig Quotes Removed on Request}
First appearance of the Skyraider would have been early '46, just in time
for CORONET; the invasion of the Kanto Plain after OLYMPIC (the invasion
of Southern Kyushu).

Posted via www.My-Newsgroups.com - web to news gateway for usenet access!

"John Mullen" wrote in message ...
"Steve Hix" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Kristan Roberge wrote:

As to Challenger, my understanding of post accident
investigations were that the crew were pretty much
all recovered together, and still strapped to their seats
in the cabin, and that they may have still been alive
post explosion (though unconscious). An ejection
seat system that could have blown them clear
of the crew compartment in such a major system failure would possible
have been useful.

So much for any useful payload...

Yeah, seven ejector seats would not have worked.

On the other hand, it is mind-boggling that they had not even given any
thought to the possibility of abandoning it in flight...

It is at least possible that simple parachutes and a bail-out pole might
have saved them, such as are now installed.

John

The US had a series of clamshell ejection seats for the B58 Hustler,
XB70 Valkyrie and X15 that could handle Mach 5.5. They worked to.
Plans for even more capable ejection seats based on this series were
afoot. Surely these would have saved the crew?

The Gemini Style ejection seats of the Gemini Capsule and SR71 handled
in excess of Mach 3.

The EGRESS system based on these clamshell seats added a heat shield
to the rear and was capable fo full re-entry from orbit. It is
difficult to imagine the seat not managing most situations except a
very rapid disintegration.

This is EGRESS:
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/egress.htm

http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/rescue.htm

The lack of ejections seats on the shuttle was purely an economic one:
it allowed either more crew or more payload.

(Stephen "FPilot" Bierce) wrote in message ...
"David E. Powell" wrote:

Did western antitank planes rely
more on bombs and rockets? (Outside the P-39 of course?)

DEP

Of course not. There were upgunned Hurricanes, and numerous fighters
and light and medium bombers outfitted as strafers/gunships.
The 37mm gun on the Airacobra/Kingcobra was a contraversial weapon
to the Americans (some pilots liked it and many didn't), and it was
generally thought that anything bigger than 20mm on a combat
airplane was effete.

This weapon was a fairly low velocity weapon I believe.

Perhaps it was more of a logistics
issue than anything else...since the .50 caliber machine gun seemed to be
adequate in a general-purpose sense, why upgrade?

The Western Allies seem to have had pretty rotten anti-armour weapons.
They only had small number of the 76.2mm/17 pounder AT guns and
relied on heavy and clumsy howtizers to stop a Panther or Tiger, The
Kill ratio of Sherman versus Panther was 5:1, the 66mm bazooka was so
ineffective against a German MBT and even lighter tanks that the
troops relied on captured Pazerfaust and 76.8mm Panzerschreck, The
British PIAT was as usefull as a Medieval crossbow and even harder to
load, while the rocket firing typhoons, Tempests and Thunderbolts
Generaly missed their targets as latter analysis showed. (Less than
5% of tank kills were infact tank kills)

Hans Rudel, himself detroyer of Some 350 tanks in Stukas and FW190s
had a low opinion of rocket firing aircraft for anti-tank duty.

Most German tanks simply ran out of fuel and ammo. The power of the
allied fighter bombers of Jabo's was that they seem to have destroyed
German logistics, support and supply vehicles.

If there was a breakthrough by the minimal number of German tanks it
was dealt with by simply by overwheming numbers of Allied tanks and I
expect of a tank is attcked often enough by enough aircraft the
rockets might strik home.

The 0.5 inch machine gun certainly was a powefull weapon. Firing
tungsten cored ammunition with the extra forward motion of the aicraft
it must have had good penetration. Aginst an MBT it might acheive a
mobillity kill against radiators etc of suspension components. Against
thin skined or lightly armoured vehicles it must have penetrated often
enough.



The Allies (in particular the Americans) never fielded a specifically anti-armor
airplane in spite of going through dozens of designs. Simply fitting bomb racks
and rocket rails on a day fighter--or packing extra machine guns on a medium
bomber--made more sense from a production standpoint than having a specialized
type created and put into action.

Allied wartime CAS thinking ultimately resulted in the Douglas Skyraider. We'll
never know what a plane like that would have done on the Western Front, but to
me it would have done what the Thunderbolt, Typhoon, Tempest, Beaufighter,
Mosquito and Mustang did...and more of it.

Stephen "FPilot" Bierce/IPMS #35922
{Sig Quotes Removed on Request}

It seems that allied thinking relied on modified fighter aircraft and
massive numerical superiority to overcome their lack of heavy
anti-armour performance.

Sorry for taking so long, but I was lining up some ducks...

In article ,
"John Mullen" writes:
"Peter Stickney" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"John Mullen" writes:
"Emilio" wrote in message
...
Actually they admitted they copied the US Shuttle.

More I think about Buran, it is clear that the politician who decided
to
"copy" the shuttle and not the engineers. Russian industry simply was
not
setup to produce space qualified $20 nuts and bolts like we do. If
they
made special run to make such nuts and bolts it would have cost them
$100
a
peace. Buran must have been reengineered to be able for them to build
it
there. That's a problem though. It's going to get heavier than a US
shuttle. Reentry and flight parameters will no longer be the same do
to
added weight. It's amazing that they made it to work in the first
place.

Actually, it was a superior design to the STS it was copied from.
Heavier
payload, more crew space and less rinky-dink stuff to blow up like the
ET
and the SRBs.

Just teh Big Honkin' booster it was hooked to. Both configurations
have their advantages, and their risks.

I can't think of any advantages to the STS's layout. What did you mean here?

Just off the top of my head - better alignment of teh Main Engine's
thrust lines with the CG of the entire stack. This gives you less
problems with control, and more tolerance of off-normal
conditions. (Such as losing a Main Engine - it's happened once on STS)
Concentration of teh Guidance & COntrol systems in a single,
integrated system, rather than having two independant systems that
have to try to talk to each other. Keeping the expensive, reusable
bits in one place, and throwing away the cheap stuff. (As it turns
out, this didn't work out as well as originally expected - rather than
a clear advantage wrt reusing STS SSMEs vs. the Energia's cheaper,
(but still not cheap) expendables, it seems to be pretty much of a
wash.


Well, the Astronauts never flew it. That tells you something.

Buran: 1 unmanned flight, total success.

Not a total success - teh flight article was structurally damaged on
re-entry. I don't know if repair was possible.

That is news to me. See for example:

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/buran.htm

Mark Wade quote excized

Could you be mistaken? Or is this fairly new info? If the latter, I would be
interested in knowing your source.

No, I'm not mistaken. It's not new info, although teh (then) Soviets
weren't too big on publishing it. There are various sources, but the
best place to go, if you can read Russian, is the Official Buran
site:
Http://www.buran.ru/

Even if you don't read Russian, here are some post-flight images of
Buran:

http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/posle01.jpg
http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/posle02.jpg
http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/posle03.jpg
http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/posle04.jpg
http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/posle05.jpg
http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/posle06.jpg
http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/posle07.jpg
http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/posle08.jpg
http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/posle09.jpg
http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/posle10.jpg
http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/posle11.jpg
http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/posle12.jpg
http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/posle13.jpg
http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/posle14.jpg
http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/posle15.jpg

While most of them are pretty ordinary - some damage occurs on any
flight, pay special attention to image 15. That's a breach of teh
wing structure, caused by poor joints between the Carbon-Carbon
Leading Edge and the Ceramic Tiles that cover most of the wing skin.
The Russians were fairly coy about the internal damage, but from the
scarring and marks left by hte exiting material, it wasn't trivial.
At best, you're talking about rebuilding/replacing the wing. At
worst, it goes to Monino and you fly the #2 flight article. Thay're
lucky that it occurred out toward the wingtip. If it had been where
the chine & the wing come together, where the shock impingement from
the bow shock occurs, (And where Columbia's damage occurred), it would
have been much, much worse.


STS ~100 manned flights, two total losses, 14 deaths.

A hair over a 98% success rate, a bit better than Soyuz (Which also
had 2 fatal flights, with 100% crew loss on each, (But smaller crews),
and several launch aborts. And a number of nasty landing incidents.

Really? I cannot easily find a total for the number of Soyuz missions but
feel sure it must be way over the 100-odd of the STS. Do you have better
figures?

Currently, the number is 90 Soyuz flights, and 112 Shuttle flights.
http://space.kursknet.ru/cosmos/english/main.sht hads been keeping a
running total, valid through late May, 2004. (no flights since then)

And to me the survivable aborts are an indication of the robustness of the
1960s design. The people on Challenger would have loved a surviveable abort
system. The people on Columbia would have loved merely to have suffered a
nasty landing incident.

They're not really relevant - every vehicle, from a Skateboard to a
Shuttle, has failure modes which are not survivable. If the aborts
had taken place at a slightly different time, or the reentry and
landing incidents, like the time a Soyuz Service Module didn't detach
after retrofire, causing the Soyusz to reenter not heatshield first,
but Aluminum hatch cover first (The SM burned away, allowing the
spacecraft to reorient itself before the crew was lost), and the
guidance problems that have caused some reentries to occur hundreds
of miles off from their targets could very easily have been much worse.

Aviation, and especially Spaceflight, is all about tradeoffs. What
sorts of system could have been aboard Challenger that would have
extended the survival envelope significantly, and wouldn't have been a
hazard during most of the flight? And which wouldnt' require some
compromise of the stucture? What system could possible have turned
Columbia's loss to a nasty landing incident? I don't see any systems
that would allow a successful bailout at Mach 25/200,000'. (You
could, I suppose, postulate something like MOOSE, but that's only
useful before the retro burn occurs)


(I never mentioned Soyuz btw!)

Whenever the "Two Accidents, 100% crew loss" line comes up, a
comparison with Soyuz reliability is not far behind. There's no
reasonable comparison to anything else, after all. Buran made 1
limited flight, got broken, although the full extent still isn't
known, during that flight, and sat in the assemble building until the
building collapsed on it.

There's no objective indication that the expendable Soyuz capsule is
any safer than the STS.

Er.. how about the fact that the STS is currently grounded for safety
improvements after the last fatal crash? Leaving Soyuz as the world's only
manned orbital vehicle, other than the Chinese and maybe Bert Rutan!

That's not objective, it's subjective.
Because the Russians, (and for that matter, us) are willing to accept
the risks that flying Soyuz right now represent. That doesn't make it
risk-free. Anytime you fly anything, whether it's a kite or a 747
with 500 people aboard, or a spacecraft, you run the risk of a fatal
crash. If you fly something enough, it becomes pretty much certain
that you'll crash it. To a large extent, it's a question of whether
the risk is perceived to be sufficiently minimized. Here in the U.S.,
we see that there are steps that can be taken to reduce the risk of
Shuttle flights, and we'er willing to take the time to implement
them. I don't think there's a lot that you can do to make a Soyuz
less risky. (Which does not make it risk free).

As for Burt Rutan, please don't make the mistake that SpaceShipOne is
the harbinger of entry into orbit. It's not. The design is very
heavily optimized for a single, very limited goal - getting an X-prize
equivalent mass to 100 km altitude. The peak Mach Numbers for SS1 are
down around Mach 2, the materials are all conventional, and the
"shuttlecock" re-entry profile isn't going to hack Mach 25. Don't get
me wrong, it's an excellent achievment, but useful Space Travel it
isn't.


I'd say the Russians realised they had no need of a shuttle and quit
while
they were ahead.

More like they couldn't afford it. Both Buran and Energia (The
booster)

Well sure. It is true that their country did collapse during the devlopment
of the Buran and Energia projects, leading to their cancellation. My point
was that this wasn't because they were inferior kit, quite the contrary.

But there also isn't enough sample size to claim with any validity
that it was superior, either.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

On 13 Jun 2004 10:52:07 -0700, (robert arndt) wrote:

The Hungarians may have had their own indigneous project. Don't
forget they did have the worlds first turboprop in the 1930s. It
worked but had problems with the combustion chamber burn through.
Someting that could only be solved with hard work on the test stand or
good alloys.

And which turboprop would that be? My understanding is the british did it first, and it
was in the 1940s.

The Jendrassic CS-1 designed in 1938 and tested in August 1940. The
war stopped its production even though a specific aircraft was
designed to fly with it- the Hungarian RMI-1 X/H which was fitted with
DB engines instead and destroyed in a bombing raid.

Rob
\
In other words, it never flew and was just another failed project.

Al Minyard

On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 06:25:55 GMT, Kristan Roberge wrote:



Alistair Gunn wrote:

Kristan Roberge twisted the electrons to say:
Well columbia's solution would have been to park to the ISS and stay
there until NASA can get their arse in gear and rush another orbiter
into orbit...

... and where does Columbia find the fuel to do this?

there's no rule that says you have to RUSH to a higher orbit.

The orbits are radically different, the Shuttle could not have come
close to the ISS. Not even "slowly" (as if that would matter).

Al Minyard

Alan Minyard wrote in message . ..
On 13 Jun 2004 10:52:07 -0700, (robert arndt) wrote:

The Hungarians may have had their own indigneous project. Don't
forget they did have the worlds first turboprop in the 1930s. It
worked but had problems with the combustion chamber burn through.
Someting that could only be solved with hard work on the test stand or
good alloys.

And which turboprop would that be? My understanding is the british did it first, and it
was in the 1940s.

The Jendrassic CS-1 designed in 1938 and tested in August 1940. The
war stopped its production even though a specific aircraft was
designed to fly with it- the Hungarian RMI-1 X/H which was fitted with
DB engines instead and destroyed in a bombing raid.

Rob
\
In other words, it never flew and was just another failed project.

Al Minyard

Hungarian, Gyorgy Jendrassik who worked for the Ganz wagon works in
Budapest designed the very first working turboprop engine in 1938.
Called the Cs-1, Jendrassik's engine was first tested in August of
1940; the Cs-1 was abandoned in 1941 without going into production due
to the War. Max Mueller designed the first turboprop engine that went
into production in 1942.

He will forever be remembered for making the worlds first turbo-prop.

At the time the little nation of Hungary was well ahead of the USA and
the UK in this field. One wonders what would have happened had the
USA and UK had a Soviet army 10 times the size bearing down on them.

Their turbo-prop engine worked but had combustion difficulties and
power and life were well down. Wheras the Germans had the resources
to build the massive test chambers (complete with multimega****t
refrigeration, water spray, alitude, instrumentation, wind tunnels
etc) to make the adjustments the Hungarians did not.

There is a picture of it he
http://tanks45.tripod.com/Jets45/Lis...ginesOther.htm

I believe the very influential German Engineer Max Mueller designed
the first turboprop engine that went into production (for a test
program) in 1942 most likely under Heinkel. (he changed employment
from Junkers, Heinkel and Porche)
I'd have to check my sources though.