New Airplanes in WWI (ISOT)

"Guy Alcala" wrote in message
. ..

No, and just as importantly, they probably couldn't produce fuel of
sufficiently high octane to allow it to
produce the higher power it's capable of, even if they could build the
engine, and chances are the oil would be
inadequate as well (petroleum engineers with a history minor should now
weigh in). If you want to postulate time
travel for a one-time deal, fine, but if you're looking for something that
could actually be produced 20 years
earlier and be supported for the long term, it just ain't gonna happen.

Guy

Simple, just put some information on how to make a catalytic cracker in the
cockpit.

-E

--

To reply, get the 5 out as if I were my own ISP.

"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?

Probably a Japanese Zero. The Zero could land and take off on a
relitivly short grass runway as long as the ground is not soft. The
engine should be within their capacity to build, and that is the main
thing, a late 1930's evolved internal combustion aircraft engine with
lots of power.

The airframe had lots of wood and nothing very sophisticated in terms
of metal parts. The 20mm cannons would make it's firepower something
to be feared.

A Zero would be a terror of the sky in 1918, it can outrun and out
climb everything else. A small number with fuel and ammunition can
rout the other side's airforce and do nasty things in ground attack,
and recon especially given their speed and range.


-snip

"Charles Talleyrand" wrote in message ...
"Eunometic" wrote in message om...
My feeling is that knowledge of materials for engine development was
what kept engine weight up and kept down the performance of most of
these aircraft. For instance an engine of the quality of the cyclone
seen on Charles Lindbergs Spirit of St Louise would have immeasurably
improved the performance of these aircraft especially if fitted with
NACA style cowlings. It most certainly was easily buidable by the
fabrication techniwques of the day. Prior to that engines were bulky
liquid cooled models or clumsy rotaries.

Suppose someone gives them a construction manual and a prototype
of a radial engine (probably without the turbocharger) for any common
radial engine of the 1940s. Can they get the correct alloys and build to
the needed tolerances?


I think they would have to make the aluminium alloys for the heads of
the cylinder from scratch but given the proportions they could make
them.

Might have to drop the compression ratio a bit to make use of the
lower grade gasolines and fit an oversized oil cooler and change the
oil more often.

The engine would still be superior to what they had.

"alfred montestruc" wrote in message
om...
"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?

Probably a Japanese Zero. The Zero could land and take off on a
relitivly short grass runway as long as the ground is not soft. The
engine should be within their capacity to build, and that is the main
thing, a late 1930's evolved internal combustion aircraft engine with
lots of power.


It wasnt, the engine was at least 2 generations beyond
anything achievable in 1918.

Keith




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(alfred montestruc) 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?

Probably a Japanese Zero. The Zero could land and take off on a
relitivly short grass runway as long as the ground is not soft. The
engine should be within their capacity to build, and that is the main
thing, a late 1930's evolved internal combustion aircraft engine with
lots of power.

The airframe had lots of wood and nothing very sophisticated in terms
of metal parts. The 20mm cannons would make it's firepower something
to be feared.

A Zero would be a terror of the sky in 1918, it can outrun and out
climb everything else. A small number with fuel and ammunition can
rout the other side's airforce and do nasty things in ground attack,
and recon especially given their speed and range.


-snip

problem: that aluminum wing spar

In article ,
Keith Willshaw wrote:

/Mitsubishi Zero../

It wasnt, the engine was at least 2 generations beyond
anything achievable in 1918.

I'd thought of the Ishak, but again the engine was well beyond anything
possible in 1918. Best engines available were the Cosmos (later Bristol)
Jupiter and the Napier Lion - hurrying these along by a few metallurgical
nudges might have been possible, and it's not too much of a leap from the
technology required for those to being able to build the Curtis V12
of the middle 1920s - which leads to my suggestion:

The Fairey Fox

2 seat light bomber, first flew in IIRC 1926, when it was close on 50 mph
faster than any fighter. Carried a decent load for its time (1.5 times or
so the DH9A load, I think) and was also available as a heavy 2-seat
fighter. Trying to deal with Foxes in 1917 or 18 with the fighters
available then would be like trying to stop Canberras with 1944 fighters.
Just not on. I'd suggest the Fox as one possibility. Another might be
one of the big 1920s commercial transports plus gliders (the Lion, Jupiter
or Curtis V12) could give enough power for glider tows. That would allow
rapid re-supply of troops after advances across no-mans land (this was
being done with smaller aeroplanes and parachute drops by 1918) and
would mean that you could provide recently-advances troops with artillery
pieces, heavy machine guns, wire entanglements and probably even light
armoured vehicles - tankettes - by glider before the enemy could arrange
a counter-attack. That would probably have the greatest effect of all.
Perhaps something like a more powerfully-engined Vickers Victoria or
similar?

--
Andy Breen ~ Interplanetary Scintillation Research Group
http://users.aber.ac.uk/azb/
"Time has stopped, says the Black Lion clock
and eternity has begun" (Dylan Thomas)

In article ,
Guy Alcala writes:
Charles Talleyrand wrote:

"Eunometic" wrote in message om...
My feeling is that knowledge of materials for engine development was
what kept engine weight up and kept down the performance of most of
these aircraft. For instance an engine of the quality of the cyclone
seen on Charles Lindbergs Spirit of St Louise would have immeasurably
improved the performance of these aircraft especially if fitted with
NACA style cowlings. It most certainly was easily buidable by the
fabrication techniwques of the day. Prior to that engines were bulky
liquid cooled models or clumsy rotaries.

Suppose someone gives them a construction manual and a prototype
of a radial engine (probably without the turbocharger) for any common
radial engine of the 1940s. Can they get the correct alloys and build to
the needed tolerances?

No, and just as importantly, they probably couldn't produce fuel of sufficiently high octane to allow it to
produce the higher power it's capable of, even if they could build the engine, and chances are the oil would be
inadequate as well (petroleum engineers with a history minor should
now weigh in).

Not a Petroleum Engineer, but some of teh vehicles in the Family
Collection date from that period (In particular, the FWD 3-5 Ton
Truck, and the Van Dorne 6-ton Tank (Renault FT). The Gasoline back
then was a lot better than most people think - it was a byproduct of
Kerosene production, and they'd basically boiled & squeexed anything
that wasn't Iso-Octane out in order to maximize the yeld for teh other
products. Of course, here aren't any good samples lying around, but
I'd place teh Octane Rating at somewhere above 80, so it wouldn't be
too dissimilar from 80/87 AVGAS. Materiels werent' a problem either -
The Engine Block, Intake Manifolds, Transmission and Transfer Case on
the FWD are Alumin(i)um, and nearly pure at that - (I took a sample to
the Materiels Lab when I was working for the World's Largest Producer
of Consumer Batteries and checked it out) much better than most
Aluminum stock these days, but probably as expesive as All Get Out.

A lot of that Octane Rating was wasted, though. Because of the need
to actually get the thing started, and because the Electric Motors of
teh day weren't up to it, the maximum Compression Ratio that was
practical to use was around 4-4.5:1. (It took 3 guys to prop a 1650
cu-in Liberty, for example, and the 400 Cu-in on the FWD is a serious
workout, even with an Impulse unit on teh Magneto to help)
Note that this wasn't just confined to the 1910-1920s - many engines
used flywheel starter systems, either hand-cranked or electrically
driven, to store up enough energy to get the bit engines turned over.

The big drawbacks to producing a high-powered engine at that time were
Carburetion and Ignition. Carburetoes were simple in the extreme, adn
weren't very good at atomizing fuel, or at adjusting to the varying
air densities encountered by an airplane engine.
Ignition systems were crude - they all worked with extremely high
voltage, (70 Kvolts or so), to try to get the strongest spark they
could, with the Spark Plugs that existed at that time. That's all
well and good, but there weren't any good insulators available. This
led to internal breakdowns in the Magnetos, and arcing and shorting of
the plug leads. It's bad enough at Sea Level, and it's horrid at high
altitude, where the dielectric properties of the air are much worse.
(Heat tolerance by these materials was poor, as well.) Insulators
were ceramic, Natural Rubber, and Mica. It took the development of
Plastics in the late 1920s-early 1930s (Most Notably Bakelite and
Formica) to produce reliable high-power Ignition Systems.


If you want to postulate time
travel for a one-time deal, fine, but if you're looking for something that could actually be produced 20 years
earlier and be supported for the long term, it just ain't gonna happen.

Concur - there were a lot of steps that had to be made before you
could build anything more advanced than they were. In fact, teh Forst
World War, and the technology race that it spawned was the major
driver for those advances.

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

In article ,
"Eric Boyd" writes:


"Guy Alcala" wrote in message
. ..

No, and just as importantly, they probably couldn't produce fuel of
sufficiently high octane to allow it to
produce the higher power it's capable of, even if they could build the
engine, and chances are the oil would be
inadequate as well (petroleum engineers with a history minor should now
weigh in). If you want to postulate time
travel for a one-time deal, fine, but if you're looking for something that
could actually be produced 20 years
earlier and be supported for the long term, it just ain't gonna happen.

Guy

Simple, just put some information on how to make a catalytic cracker in the
cockpit.

As pointed out in my reply to Guy's post, fuel quality wasn't the
problem.

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

"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).

Given the lack of high-powered engines, would some of the early autogyro
designs be easier to produce than a more advanced airplane?
--
Zamboni

"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.