New Airplanes in WWI (ISOT)

"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message ...
"Eunometic" wrote in message
...



At a speed of 123mph it was far to slow and suffered form Albatross
attacks even with its rear lewis gun. Only the realisation that it
could dog fight as well as most fighters saved this scout from being a
flop.


Which is like saying the only thing that save the Me-109
from being a flop is that it was a good fighter.

A decisive advantage in WW1 would have required a speed of 160-170 mph
which would be decisevly beyond anything. It would also require a
bomb load of over 2200lbs as this would allow large torpoedoes and
sticks of bombs and a range of up to 1000 miles for a bomber.
Sufficient of these could shift the balance at sea, be able to destroy
logistics, bridges, docks, etc and factories I think.



I doubt it, as WW2 showed you need much more range
and payload than that for the strategic mission.

Better aircraft such as the He-111 and Do-17 failed
in that role

Keith



However both these fine aircrat, virtualy invulnerable in the Spanish
civil war and against Polish aircraft, had to face of against
spitfires and hurricanes. In this hypothetical situation our
technology would provide enough of a leap to make them immune to any
interception. The performance I mentioned, perhaps the range is a
little short, would allow attack as low as 5000 feet with freedom from
interception by biplane and with a very low chance of being hit by the
AAA of the day. Level bombing at 5000 feet even without computing
bomb sights is very accurate and at 1000 feet even moreso.

Without the need to attack at night or high altide with low accruracy
they would deliver great and accurate destruction. I've heard it said
that a squadran of Ju 87 Stukas could do more damage than a squdran of
Lancasters as long as they were either escorted or not heavily
opposed.

"Nicholas Smid" wrote in message ...
"Eunometic" wrote in message
...

"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message
...

"Eunometic" wrote in message
om...
"Charles Talleyrand" wrote in message

I suspect if an engineer of the capability of Hugo Junkers had of
produced a light weight air cooled radial for mating with an
Junker J1
style airframe an immensly fast and tough aircraft would have
resulted. (I would say speeds of 160-170mph).

What you are describing is basically the Bristol F2b Fighter
of 1918, except that it had a water cooled engine.

The type remained in service until 1932

Keith


At a speed of 123mph it was far to slow and suffered form Albatross
attacks even with its rear lewis gun. Only the realisation that it
could dog fight as well as most fighters saved this scout from being a
flop.

A decisive advantage in WW1 would have required a speed of 160-170 mph
which would be decisevly beyond anything. It would also require a
bomb load of over 2200lbs as this would allow large torpoedoes and
sticks of bombs and a range of up to 1000 miles for a bomber.
Sufficient of these could shift the balance at sea, be able to destroy
logistics, bridges, docks, etc and factories I think.

The Atlantic/Fokker B-8 from 1929/31 pretty much fills that order, top speed
of 160 mph, 950 mile range 1600 lb bomb load, steel tube and wood
construction. It had 600 hp V-12's, a fair step up from the Liberty but
probably not an impossible jump, though you're probably going to have mass
production problems.
For a fighter you could start with the PW-8, top speed of 171 mph and a 435
hp V-12, structure is wood and fabric and its a bi plane so not too many
nasty shocks for the pilots, from 1922/24, one of them flew with a
turbocharger, one of the first though building them might be a bit tough,
and not really needed for WWI.


It would seem to me that the engine and aircraft constructors would be
able to quickly produce superior aiircaft with their then current
fabrication and knowledge becuase.

1 The vibration and cooling problems they had would be solved by the
plans given them.
2 The alloys would have to be made but would have the appropriate
properties.
3 Some issues such as fuels and maybe oils (some vegetable oils are
superior to synthetics) but

4 I suspect that they engine designes could be adapted for the lower
grade fuels but still achieve superior performance.

The aircraft would have to be hand made by craftsmen and this would
slow down production.

5 Devices such as accurate altimeters and artificial horizons did not
yet exist but I believe these shouldn't be to difficult.

alfred montestruc wrote:

"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message ...

"alfred montestruc" wrote in message

Point of fact, I am very sure that alloys needed either existed, or
reasonable substitutes did.

Evidence please

Artillery gun tubes of that era. They were (obviously) subjected to
high stresses for many thousands of repititions. Obviously the
pressures in a gun tube near the breech during fireing of an artillery
gun are much larger than in an IC engine that has a peak compression
ratio of 10:1 at most.

Imagine if you will I take say a 75mm cannon, hone the bore free of
rifling, then cut it into 6" section to make cylinders for a radial
engine. I can make the engine block out of a ductile iron casting,
the pistons, rods, and shaft from forgings of the same alloy as the
gun tube is made from.

I can then machine fins on the outside of the cylinders and bolt them
to the block. See any showstoppers?

Weight? We do want to fly, rather than tow, this thing around.

What is the thickness of a cannon barrel wall compared to an
engine cylinder?

What happens to the strength of that cylinder when we reduce
its thickness with machined cooling fins?

What would the weight of an engine built in this manner be,
compared to the engines of the day?

They've been making cannons for 600 years. Not certain I'd
want one as a cylinder in my truck, let alone a combat
aircraft.


SMH

On 8 Jun 2004 04:16:21 -0700, (Jack
Linthicum) wrote:

Flamethrowers need someone on the cold end to run it, IIRC in WWII
this was an aiming point for the Japanese who were being assualted by
them. Napalm is more fluid, ie runs along trench lines, and less
personal, drop it and forget it. If you need a second dose, bring in a
second raid. With those large trench complexes it would seem to be a
weapon without defense.

Vietnam certainly demonstrated napalm could be effectively delivered
in bomb form though I question whether it was available in large
enough quantities to cause grief to miles and miles of trench lines.

The Horny Goat wrote:

Vietnam certainly demonstrated napalm could be effectively delivered
in bomb form though...

That was proved (again?) in Korea.


I question whether it was available in large
enough quantities to cause grief to miles
and miles of trench lines.

Napalm was available in sufficient quantities to turn targets such as trenches
into graves, once we found them. "Shake and bake" also worked on other related
targets

Napalm was a bit more expensive to apply than the targets and their defenses
were to construct, of course. But we solved that problem nicely by avoiding the
highest value targets. We became expert at killing trees and dirt in the South,
and avoiding ships, port facilities, and dams in the North.

Heaven forbid we should destroy the enemy's ability to resist when it is so much
more convenient to destroy the environs of our allies. But then war being
diplomacy by other means, the so-called "diplomats" had their way, just as they
are doing today.



Jack

The Horny Goat wrote in message . ..
On 8 Jun 2004 04:16:21 -0700, (Jack
Linthicum) wrote:

Flamethrowers need someone on the cold end to run it, IIRC in WWII
this was an aiming point for the Japanese who were being assualted by
them. Napalm is more fluid, ie runs along trench lines, and less
personal, drop it and forget it. If you need a second dose, bring in a
second raid. With those large trench complexes it would seem to be a
weapon without defense.

Vietnam certainly demonstrated napalm could be effectively delivered
in bomb form though I question whether it was available in large
enough quantities to cause grief to miles and miles of trench lines.

You don't have to do miles and miles. Pick one juncture with a command
post nearby and hit it for two or three days. You will find Swedish or
Netherlands diplomats making telephone calls in Paris and London
asking if there isn't some way we could reach a mutual understanding.

"Charles Talleyrand" wrote in message ...
Lets suppose you get to give a single new airplane design and a single prototype
to a participant of World War One. You can offer the Austro-Hungarians the
design for a B-52 if you wish. However, that might prove a manufacturing
challenge to them (and one can only wonder about their supply of jet fuel).

Your goal is to change history. You can hope for a German victory or just that the
Allies win faster. It's up to you.

So, what design do you offer, remembering that this design must be manufactured, fueled,
and armed by the natives?

Any such aircraft could, I suggest, have a decisive effect in only two
circumstances.

One would be if the technology behind it were so difficult for the
other participants to knock off that it became and remained dominant
for long enough to provide air supremacy. This assumes that air
supremacy would have been decisively useful, and I'm not sure it would
have been with anything built in 1914-18 (and given that you've used
your trump card to achieve the supremacy in the first place).

Getting the supremacy sounds like a job for a fighter, eg the Fokker
E-I in 1915. Using it decisively sounds like one for a bomber, and if
I think about bombers that have had a decisive effect on surface
campaigns, I struggle to think of any that did not rely on other
factors. Eg the Stuka was arguably a decisive weapon but only if you
had the Bf109 to clear its path, and I doubt if you could have built
one in 1914-8 anyway.

The other circumstance in which the aircraft would be useful is if its
availability enabled an attack, or the threat of an attack, that would
severely discourage further participation in the war by the attackee.
In this context, it seems to me that the best candidate would be an
effective long-range torpedo bomber. A version of the Handley-Page
0/400 deployed in Malta, say 24 strong, might have been able to sink
Goeben before she escaped to Constantinople in 1914. This in turn
might make it more difficult for Germany to get Turkey into the war on
her side, thus removing the need for the Triple Entente to fight on an
additional front.

From the German perspective, a wing of Zeppelin-Staakens deployed in
1914 within range of Scapa Flow might have presented enough of a
threat to the Grand Fleet that it would be reluctant to occupy that
anchorage. The threat of U-boat attack drove the Grand Fleet back to
the west coast of Scotland, so this does not seem improbable. If the
threat of severe dreadnought loss was sufficient, it might deter
Britain from joining in in the first place, or at least until a
countermeasure had been evolved. This would of course have offered
Germany a window in which to secure the early defeat of France.

This would, though, require a port attack. I doubt whether such a
squadron could have executed an effective attack on a fleet at sea.
PoW and Repulse were despatched by 50 torpedo bombers carrying larger
and more effective torpedoes than Germany possessed in 1914. They were
also about 6 times faster than the ships they were attacking. A 1914
60-knot Gotha might have trouble threatening a division of WW1
battlecruisers doing half their own speed. You'd also need a lot of
them because if took 50 WW2 era bombers to sink one WW1 BC and one WW2
BB, you'd need still more to offset the fact of fewer less potent hits
distributed among many more targets.

(John Redman) wrote in message . com...
"Charles Talleyrand" wrote in message ...
Lets suppose you get to give a single new airplane design and a single prototype
to a participant of World War One. You can offer the Austro-Hungarians the
design for a B-52 if you wish. However, that might prove a manufacturing
challenge to them (and one can only wonder about their supply of jet fuel).

Your goal is to change history. You can hope for a German victory or just that the
Allies win faster. It's up to you.

So, what design do you offer, remembering that this design must be manufactured, fueled,
and armed by the natives?

Any such aircraft could, I suggest, have a decisive effect in only two
circumstances.

One would be if the technology behind it were so difficult for the
other participants to knock off that it became and remained dominant
for long enough to provide air supremacy. This assumes that air
supremacy would have been decisively useful, and I'm not sure it would
have been with anything built in 1914-18 (and given that you've used
your trump card to achieve the supremacy in the first place).

Getting the supremacy sounds like a job for a fighter, eg the Fokker
E-I in 1915. Using it decisively sounds like one for a bomber, and if
I think about bombers that have had a decisive effect on surface
campaigns, I struggle to think of any that did not rely on other
factors. Eg the Stuka was arguably a decisive weapon but only if you
had the Bf109 to clear its path, and I doubt if you could have built
one in 1914-8 anyway.

The other circumstance in which the aircraft would be useful is if its
availability enabled an attack, or the threat of an attack, that would
severely discourage further participation in the war by the attackee.
In this context, it seems to me that the best candidate would be an
effective long-range torpedo bomber. A version of the Handley-Page
0/400 deployed in Malta, say 24 strong, might have been able to sink
Goeben before she escaped to Constantinople in 1914. This in turn
might make it more difficult for Germany to get Turkey into the war on
her side, thus removing the need for the Triple Entente to fight on an
additional front.

From the German perspective, a wing of Zeppelin-Staakens deployed in
1914 within range of Scapa Flow might have presented enough of a
threat to the Grand Fleet that it would be reluctant to occupy that
anchorage. The threat of U-boat attack drove the Grand Fleet back to
the west coast of Scotland, so this does not seem improbable. If the
threat of severe dreadnought loss was sufficient, it might deter
Britain from joining in in the first place, or at least until a
countermeasure had been evolved. This would of course have offered
Germany a window in which to secure the early defeat of France.

This would, though, require a port attack. I doubt whether such a
squadron could have executed an effective attack on a fleet at sea.
PoW and Repulse were despatched by 50 torpedo bombers carrying larger
and more effective torpedoes than Germany possessed in 1914. They were
also about 6 times faster than the ships they were attacking. A 1914
60-knot Gotha might have trouble threatening a division of WW1
battlecruisers doing half their own speed. You'd also need a lot of
them because if took 50 WW2 era bombers to sink one WW1 BC and one WW2
BB, you'd need still more to offset the fact of fewer less potent hits
distributed among many more targets.

One ISOT story from Analog about a guy flying a cross between an SR-71
and and a F-35, hyper sonic and VTOL. He joins the Allies, can't get a
lock on his missiles against the WWI Germans but eventually does a
mach 3.0 sweep through a German circus. He needed to filter the 1917
kerosene through chamois for fuel.

In article ,
(Jack Linthicum) writes:

One ISOT story from Analog about a guy flying a cross between an SR-71
and and a F-35, hyper sonic and VTOL. He joins the Allies, can't get a
lock on his missiles against the WWI Germans but eventually does a
mach 3.0 sweep through a German circus. He needed to filter the 1917
kerosene through chamois for fuel.

"Hawk Among the Sparrows" (Dang, I forgot who wrote it).
The aircraft was the Pika-Don, a carrier-based hypersonic VTOL (It had
skids, rather than wheels, so it wasn't a VSTOL) used for intercept
ICBM warheads.

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

(alfred montestruc) wrote

Imagine if you will I take say a 75mm cannon, hone the bore free of
rifling, then cut it into 6" section to make cylinders for a radial
engine. I can make the engine block out of a ductile iron casting,
the pistons, rods, and shaft from forgings of the same alloy as the
gun tube is made from.

I can then machine fins on the outside of the cylinders and bolt them
to the block. See any showstoppers?

The gun tube is not a homogeneous metal casting though. WW1-era guns
were of wire-wound construction, which is as it sounds; i.e. a series
of inner tube segments around which a thick wire was wound under
tension in a tight spiral with a further metal casing on top.
Effectively it was a like a barrel with one long continuous hoop
around it.

You couldn't literally slice one of these into cylinder lengths and
have a usable tube, nor could you machine cooling fins into it, for
obvious reasons. Nor can I see how you could use the same "alloy" to
make pistons, rods, or crankshaft, since there is no single alloy
involved.