#1 Jet of World War II

In article ,
(The Revolution Will Not Be Televised) writes:
On 29 Jun 2003 15:59:14 GMT, nt (Gordon) wrote:
On another subject, you couldn't give me a realistic cruising speed
for B.IX/B.XVI mossies in '44'45, could you? I mean a real one,
including bombload, etc? Many thanks if you can, if not don't worry
about it.

Best range cruise speed fpr any type of Mosquito would be 'bout 170
kts/196 mph IAS. At 20,000' that would be a bit over 266 mph TAS, at
25,000', it would be 290 IAS, and at 30,000' it would be 320 mph TAS.
At a slight cost in range, you could bump these speeds by about 15-20
mph - the Mossie had a fairly flat L/D curve.

Best cruise speed is largely independant of the engine power
installed. What's most important is the drag on the airframe, and the
point on the Drag Polar plot that shows the point of minumum drag.


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

Subject: #1 Jet of World War II
From: (Peter Stickney)
Date: 7/14/03 6:36 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

Best range cruise speed fpr any type of Mosquito would be 'bout 170
kts/196 mph IAS.

That is a very interesting number. I can't help but compare it to the B-26
which got its best range at 180 IAS loaded with steel plate armor and bristling
with machine guns and carrying a crew of 6. Take off the armor, take off the
guns and top turret and cut the crew to two and the B-26 may well have
outperformed the Mosquito by a large margin..

Arthur Kramer
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

In article ,
(ArtKramr) writes:
Subject: #1 Jet of World War II
From: (Peter Stickney)
Date: 7/14/03 6:36 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

Best range cruise speed fpr any type of Mosquito would be 'bout 170
kts/196 mph IAS.

That is a very interesting number. I can't help but compare it to the B-26
which got its best range at 180 IAS loaded with steel plate armor and bristling
with machine guns and carrying a crew of 6. Take off the armor, take off the
guns and top turret and cut the crew to two and the B-26 may well have
outperformed the Mosquito by a large margin..

Well, not quite, perhaps.
To a certain extent, best economical cruise speed was independant of
the top speed. Best economical cruise is the airspeed that gives the
minumum power required to maintain level flight at that altitude. Max
Speed depends on the total power available. That being said, a
cleaned-up B-26 would go pretty danged fast. According to the USAAF
Characteristics Summary for teh B-26C, which is derived from flight
test data, a combat-equipped 'C' topped out at 282 mph TAS at
15,000', or about 225 IAS. That's quite a bit over the 180 IAS cruise
that you guys used. As I remember it, one pf the postwar Bendix
Racers was a cleaned-up Martin B-26C (For you kids, the Bendix was an
Unlimited Transcontinental Air Race. ) I don't recall how it fared.
Given the way things went at that time, the winner that year would
have been either Paul Mantz in his slicked-up P-51 (No pylons, no drop
tanks, and the gun and ammunition bays in the wings sealed and used
fro more fuel, allowing a non-stop trancontinental flight at Maximum
Continuous Power). But for an old lady (A prewar design, after all,
the B-26 could really move, when it needed to.

I just double checked, he numbers I gave are a bit muddied-up, too.
I've two Pilot's Handbooks for the Mosquito, one for the FB.6
(Fighter-Bomber) from 1950, and one for the various single-stage
Merlin Night Fighters, published in 1945. The numbers I quoted were
from the FB.6 handbook, and the NF.12 handbook is different. The NF.12
book lists best cruise as 220 mph IAS, which is nudging 330 TAS at
25,000'. and 360 TAS at 30,000'. It's possible that the FB.6 numbers
are for an airplane carrying external bombs and rockets, but it
doesn't say.
Of course, these a Brit P.O.H.s, and the philosopy there is a bit
different. The sum total of cruise instructions are "Try to fly at
this airspeed, withoug exceeding that power setting. Yo should get
thus fuel consumption." The equivalent American -1 would have an
entire chapter of graphs, charts, formulae, and tables to precisely
duplicate every condition. (You'd asked about differences in Aircrew
Training. It could well be we've stumbled onto one). Which method is
better? Who knows. The U.S.Anian one is certainly more exact, but
the natural variation between aircraft, especially after they've been
bashed around for a while, makes that level of precision a bit
dubious.

And just what is Max Speed for a bomber, anyway? 5 Minutes of War
Emergency Power doesn't make too much sense, or even 15 minutes at
Military Power. You can get some amazing numbers that way, that will
never show up in real life.
An example would be the Italian Breda 88 Attac Bomber. It was a
damned serious looking twin engine light bomber that went into service
with a fantastic reputation. The prototype set quite a number of
speed/load/distance records, and it sure seemed fierce. When they
were finally issued to the Regia Aeronautica units in North Africa,
they discovered that they had an airplane that couldn't climb out of
ground effect on takeoff with a full fuel load, and was in danger of
colliding with the Libyan sand dunes.

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

Subject: #1 Jet of World War II
From: nt (Gordon)
Date: 7/14/03 9:18 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

Best range cruise speed fpr any type of Mosquito would be 'bout 170
kts/196 mph IAS.

That is a very interesting number. I can't help but compare it to the B-26
which got its best range at 180 IAS



I'd have to wornder, what was that "best range"? I was under the impression
that the Mosquito could fly several times as far as the B-26 with a full
4,000
pound bombload.

Take off the armor, take off the
guns and top turret and cut the crew to two and the B-26 may well have
outperformed the Mosquito by a large margin..

Art, the Mosquito was designed to save strategic materials, so factor that in
as well. How well would the B-26 perform if it were made out of wood? I
think
its quite difficult to accurately compare widely dissimilar aircraft, with
different design constraints and resource restrictions, unless grant some
leeway in your bias toward the B-26. Its natural and I'm not saying you are
wrong in being a fan of the Marauder, but there WAS a B-26 version without
the
turret and armor, and a crew of two or three -- its performance was such that
it was determined most useful to the AAF and USN in the role of target tugs.

v/r
Gordon



The way the USAAC operated planes that were unarmored and unarmed were of no
value. We flew into flak in broad daylight and depended on armor and guns for
defence, And we carried 4,000 pounds of bombs every time.

Arthur Kramer
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

Peter Stickney wrote in message ...

I just double checked, he numbers I gave are a bit muddied-up, too.
I've two Pilot's Handbooks for the Mosquito, one for the FB.6
(Fighter-Bomber) from 1950, and one for the various single-stage
Merlin Night Fighters, published in 1945. The numbers I quoted were
from the FB.6 handbook, and the NF.12 handbook is different. The NF.12
book lists best cruise as 220 mph IAS, which is nudging 330 TAS at
25,000'. and 360 TAS at 30,000'. It's possible that the FB.6 numbers
are for an airplane carrying external bombs and rockets, but it
doesn't say.

Sounds like the time to add the information from the book Mosquito
by Sharpe and Bowyer.

The FB6 used Merlin 21/22/23/25, the NF12 merlin 21/23.

Appendix 8, performance of the B35 (merlin 114) versus the FB6
(merlin 25).

B35, 22,000 pounds, bomb load 1,500 pounds including 2 x 500
pounds bombs under the wings, 539 gallons of fuel, still air range
1,600 miles at 25,000 feet at 300 mph TAS, 1,250 miles at 37,000
feet at 375 mph TAS. Top speed 425 mph at 30,500 feet.

FB6 21,700 pounds, bomb load 1,500 pounds including 2 x 500
pounds bombs under the wings, 453 gallons of fuel, still air range
1,120 miles at sea level at 250 mph TAS, 960 miles at sea level
at 296 mph TAS. Top speed 378 mph at 13,200 feet.

The Merlin 72/73 or 76/77 versions (VII, IX and XIV) outward
recommended cruising speed 220 mph IAS, economic cruise
in clean condition was 295 mph TAS at 20,000 feet and 350
mph at 30,000+ feet, maximum continuous cruising, clean,
349 mph TAS at 20,000 feet, 378 mph TAS at 30,000 feet.

For the merlin 21/22/23/31 equipped versions maximum
continuous cruise was 341 mph TAS at 20,000 feet but this
fell to 329 mph at 25,000 feet, I assume in clean condition.
Again outward bound recommended cruise was 220 mph
IAS at around 25,000 feet.

The return flight recommendation was for around a 5% reduction
in cruise speed compared with outbound, 210 mph IAS.

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.

On 15 Jul 2003, ArtKramr wrote:

The way the USAAC operated planes that were unarmored and unarmed were of no
value.

Well, certainly the recce, weather, and cargo aircraft were of some
considerable value? I seem to dimly recall that Eisenhower proclaimed
the unarmored and unarmed C-47 as one of the three most important weapons
of WW2 (along with the jeep and the M-1 rifle, IIRC).

And, didn't LeMay end up stripping his B-29 of all their armament
save the tail guns?

Cheers and all,

On 15 Jul 2003, ArtKramr wrote:

That is a very interesting number. I can't help but compare it to the B-26
which got its best range at 180 IAS loaded with steel plate armor and bristling
with machine guns and carrying a crew of 6. Take off the armor, take off the
guns and top turret and cut the crew to two and the B-26 may well have
outperformed the Mosquito by a large margin..

But, as you say, an unarmed and unarmored B-26 would have been of
"no value".

OTOH, the Brits found the Mosquito of some considerable value in a
variety of roles. As did the USAAF which acquired quite a number of
mosquitoes.

Cheers and all,

Peter Stickney wrote:

snip

I just double checked, he numbers I gave are a bit muddied-up, too.
I've two Pilot's Handbooks for the Mosquito, one for the FB.6
(Fighter-Bomber) from 1950, and one for the various single-stage
Merlin Night Fighters, published in 1945. The numbers I quoted were
from the FB.6 handbook, and the NF.12 handbook is different. The NF.12
book lists best cruise as 220 mph IAS, which is nudging 330 TAS at
25,000'. and 360 TAS at 30,000'. It's possible that the FB.6 numbers
are for an airplane carrying external bombs and rockets, but it
doesn't say.

This site should clear up some of the confusion (you need to scroll down quite a
ways):

http://www.home.gil.com.au/~bfillery/mossie02.htm

"Recommended" cruise is 220 IAS outbound, 210 IAS return, for both single and
two-stage a/c. The post-war limits (weight etc.) seem to have been dialed back
considerably from wartime.

Guy

Thanks for the references, Geoffrey and Guy.

Gavin Bailey


--

"...this level of misinformation suggests some Americans may be
avoiding having an experience of cognitive dissonance."
- 'Poll shows errors in beliefs on Iraq, 9/11'
The Charlotte Observer, 20th June 2003

Subject: #1 Jet of World War II
From: Bill Shatzer
Date: 7/14/03 11:19 PM Pacific Daylight Time

And, didn't LeMay end up stripping his B-29 of all their armament
save the tail guns?

Cheers and all,

But he sure didn't use them over Germany.

Arthur Kramer
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer