This NG is turning

"David Wallace" wrote in message
...
George Z. Bush wrote:

I remember reading stories about the air war in WWI, and I always wondered
why
Fokker included a third wing on that unique three-winger fighter the Germans
used and why. I don't believe any other aircraft manufacturer built a line
model with three wings, but I could be wrong about that.

Probably to increase wing area and still maintain a small profile. They
are tiny planes even when compared to the small size of the Sopwith Pup
and Camel. Sopwith came out with a 3-decker prior to the Fokker, but
neither of them remained in service very long. The DR1 was mainly active
between Nov 1917 and May 1918 and of the 320 or so made a large number
crashed due to structural failures. They sure look cute in the flesh
though.

Out of curiosity, did you ever fly the C-46 at all, and if so, how did
it compare to the C-47? I've often wondered what the difference in run
length for take offs and landings was.

Finally.....somebody asked me something I can speak about from personal
experience. Yes, I had about a thousand hours or so in C-46s, most in the left
seat. In its day, the C-46 was the Mack truck of the airborne trash hauling
business. From my failing memory, the max gross on the gooney bird was around
28,000 lbs, whereas the same limitation on the 46 was 35,000, although we pretty
much routinely took off with 40,000 lbs. (or even a little more) during active
operations. Needless to say, it required a bit more run length for T/Os and
landings. In the air, unless the hydraulic control boosters were operable, it
handled about like what I imagine picking up a horse one handed might be.
However, it did have two of those P-47 sized R-2000 engines, which had a lot of
muscle compared to the goonie's R-1280s.

The gooney bird, OTOH, was God's gift to any pilot who needed to fly a
transport. She handled well in the air, flew well on one engine (and could even
climb 2-300 fpm on one engine if you weren't loaded, and was the most forgiving
airplane ever designed by a human being. It was able to haul two CG-4(?)
gliders in a twin tow pretty easily if you didn't mind staggering through the
air at about 90-85 mph, and could also handle one of those big RAF Horsa
gliders. I recall once (as a lark) taking off a PSP runway in Italy on a
training flight with the wind directly on the nose at about 25 mph on cruise
settings just to see if it would do it. Needless to say, since I'm telling you
about it, it did. Pretty stupid, right? But then, I was young then and never
bothered to think of what the options were going to be if it couldn't break
ground. With clear headed thinking like that, I'd probably have become a
statistic if I'd ended up in fighters.
(^-^)))

George Z.