In effect then, you'd pretty much have the Curtiss XP-55 Ascender .

Problem there, as seen in Herald's but not hit on, is just how eager is a pilot going to be to eject from said aircraft in the days prior to effective ejection seats, knowing that the prop(s) back there are still turning, rather than having the prop(s) out in front where you have no risk of getting critically injured further?

(Crew ejecting in front of aft-mounted pusher props was a serious concern issue in the YFM-1 Airacuda ).

 

Putting any sort of (turbo/super)charger into the nose though, in place of concentrated armament?

 

Rather, in the case of the XP-55, seems there's ample enough room behind the cockpit for any necessary intakage (akin to the P-39's aspiration just behind the canopy).

And it's not like the cooler intakes in the forward inner edge of the Corsair's gull wings really generated so much additional drag or disruptive airflow that it seriously detracted from the aircraft's performance...

 

Agree though about the P-39/63's shortcomings, especially the wings which didn't allow large installs of guns like in the Mustang, Hellcat, or even P-40, all of which could hold 6 x .50's (3 each).

 

Still, even with a relatively low velocity, the nose-mounted 37 (a 20mm in the British aircraft?) was nothing to smirk at (except in high speed air-to-air), especially considering the later XP-67 was once planned to hold 6 guns of that caliber in its forward section, not to mention a pair in a rather odd installation in the XP-54 "Swoose Goose".

 

I'd have eliminated the two MGs in the upper cowl sync'ed to fire thru the prop much sooner though, freeing up that space for extra 37mm ammo, or even extra fuel (or refine CoG issues?)?

Ditto as was done with the later Curtiss Hawks (both radial P-36 and inline P-40), culminating in no cowl armament and the 6 wing-mounted .50s of later P-40s, even if they held a smaller ammo-per-gun count (saw 287rpg somewhere...)

than Mustangs, Hellcats, or T-bolts.

 

And I'll agree that the P-40Q was the most graceful culmination of the line (with its bubble caopy and all), but by the time it was in trials, there were superior competitors (later Mustangs & Spitfires, etc) already in production.

 

  2¢.

 

 

 

I often am tickeled by those who regard my proposals as being "out there:"

 

 

 

\\

 

That is the Lockheed L-133 designed by Clarence "Kelly" Johnson.

 

Want to tell me again that the idea is outrageous?

 

Another history lesson. 

 

 

Oh yeah, bailing out of a P-38 wasn't a picnit either. 

Herald

 

mmmm...........

 

And what does any of that Jet History have to do with YOUR proposal...as LarryCJR once said you like to throw out stuff that doesn't relate to your point, making up in VOLUME, what you may lack in SUBSTANCE...  My question was, "IF your pusher design is such a great idea why didn't Kelly Johnson or Willy Messerschmitt produce an operational plane of this design?"  I might note the L-133 never flew did it?  I didn't ask about axial flow turbo-jet design, did I?

 

No, Herald this isn't an argument...OF COURSE the largest losses were to manned fighters, more deadly than in flight accidents or flak, no doubt...that's like saying the largest cause of traffic accidents is CARS, your "point" however, lacks an important piece of information...the loss rate per raid.  Generally losses of 6%, on a sustained basis, makes a bombing campaign UNSUSTAINABLE, by USAAF and RAF figuring...I submit to you that neither the loss rate over Rabaul nor the Home Islands exceeded 6%.  As I said, No Schweinfurt's no Regensburg's...no 10% loss rates.

 

Uh dude, no one felt that Japanese raids on the Tinian airfields was a giant risk to sustained flight operations.  They were PIN-PRICKS.  Again Iwo Jima was taken because it was a radar early warning post and as an emergency landing field for B-29's.  Lemay never felt that Japanese air defenses were so formidable that he had to have air cover.  P-51's/P-47'N's would have been NICE, but not essential. 

 

So far your history lesson is falling pretty flat...you've mentioned a few pin prick raids and haven't shown one instance where Lemay felt that it was necessary to his bomber campaign to provide air cover.  In fact, he removed a/c weapons and armour, BECAUSE JAPANESE AIR DEFENSES WERE SO WEAK.  He chose low-level night, area bombing because Japanese industry was dispersed, flammable, he had the M-67 Incendiary, low-level increased pay load, increased operational safety by reducing engine work-load, and increased mission safety by avoiding the mid-level flak over Japanese cities.  I have never read he chose that approach because Japanese fighters were inflicting prohibitive losses on XXI Bomber Command.

 

Night fighting is not the same as the Battle of the Bismark Sea which was in daylight, JFKY.

And this is baffling...it means nothing, to this debate.  I'll state again, Catalina's operated throughout the war in their assigned role, especially the South Pacific.  At no point did operational losses require the curtailment of their missions due to the need for air cover.  The PBY's flew during the DAY as well...their role was ASW and Maritime Reconnaissance.  They had long since lost any primary strike role.  I have yet to read of any COMAIRSOL or COMAIRSOPAC or anything from Kinney's South-West PAcific Command that suggested that long-range air cover would have been needed or beneficial to their patrol operations.  I might add, your design is optimized for high altitude work, IIRC.  Well the PBY's didn't fly at 25,000 ft, did they...your long-range air cover wold have been tied to a slow, low level target, and most likely vulnerable to A6M's, bouncing THEM from on high, with the energy advantage...or they would have been so far removed from their cover charges that the PBY's would have been effectively unprotected any way.

 

Bottom-Line: Nice design.  You are a bright person, who can dig around and apply POSSIBLE ideas to the real world.  But this design is unneeded, it does things that weren't called for in the Pacific...and I don't see it working in Europe, either and I don't see you touting it there either.  As an expression of a neat "what if" it's very neat....but it has no bearing on what IS/WAS. 

Further, if this is the best idea you can extrapolate from the engines available, then I'd say you've demonstrated that the P-51/47/40 were about as good as were going to get.  Because your alternative design doesn't score any great points.  As usal your ego is causing you much problem...it's a nice paper design...it wasn't a path chosen, and probably for a godod set of reasons.

You obviously misunderstood me Herald. I was pointing out not that the A20 was a solution to what ever problem you are tackling with your canard plane, but that your canard plane would not significantly improve upon existing designs (including the A20) and in any event would not likely be available any time sooner than the P47 because of the technology leaps inherit in the Herald Canard fighter. You believe in your design, and that is okay with me but the evolution of these aircraft took their own Darwinian course. For good reason I think.

 

If you check you will find allot of work took place in the P38 designs to improve controllability and tail strength.

1. 24 aircraft destroyed on the grpund oin that one pinprick raid  Hmmmmm.

2. The FEAF was wiped out. Kenny had to rebuild from ZERO. That is what 3% losses did to them.

3. Regensburg isn't necessary to destroy an air force. Just simple attrition through use or failure to defend your own base will do. How about the losses of 20th Bomber Command in CHINA?  

4. PBYs did not fly into the teeth of Japanese air cover.

5. The notional canard was designed to fit a 0-25,000 foot operational environment. It is best at its rated service ceiling, but it is not restricted. As I said many times, I run numbers to see if an idea can work  This works. It isn't perfect (for example its landing speed is very high with a long roll out.) but I'm not convinced by your rehash of populist history propoganda.

 

Majpr Raids  

 

You might want to remember that the reason Lemay went low and why he went at night was:

 

1. Japanese night defenses were zilch  (FLAK)

2. He couldn't hit anything.

3. He landed guns because he needed two things, SPEED and PAYLOAD.

 

quote>

 

04 Mar	Musashino Aircraft factory, Tokyo plus one alternate target [Last daylight raid]	159/1
10 Mar	Tokyo	279/14
11-12 Mar	Nagoya [6 hit secondary target]	285/1
13-14 Mar	Osaka [5 hit secondary target]	274/2
16-17 MAR	Kobe [3 hit secondary target]	307/3
18-19 Mar	Nagoya	290/1
24-25 Mar	Nagoya- Mitsubishi aircraft plant	223/5
27-28 Mar	Omura- Oita & Tachiari Airbase, Kyushu	151/0
27-28 Mar	Shimonoseki Strait - mines	92/3
30 Mar	Nagoya- Mitsubishi plant	12/0
30 Mar	Shimonoseki Strait - mines	85/1
31 Mar	Omura Airfield- preparation for Okinawa invasion	137/1
19 May	Hamamatsu	272/4
23-24 May	Tokyo	520/17
25-26 May	Tokyo [largest single mission loss of planes]	464/26
26 May	Shimonoseki, Fukuoka, Fushiki & Karatsu	29/0
27 May	Shimonoseki, Moji	9/1
01 June	Osaka [148 P-51 escorts, 27 lost to weather]	458/10
05 June	Kobe + other nearby targets	473/11
07 June	Osaka [138 P-51 escorts, one lost]	409/2
11 June	Shimonoseki & Tsuruga - mines	26/0
15-16 June	Shimonoseki, Fukuoka, Fushiki & Karatsu -mines	30/0
22 June	Himeji	52/0
26 June	Osaka + target on Kyushu [one P-51 lost]	510/1
3-4 July	Takamatsu	116/2
3-4 July	Himeji	106/0
12 July	Tsuruga	92/0
19-20 July	Fukui	127/0
24 July	Osaka - 2 separate raids	82/1 & 158/0

 

When things went wrong, and sometimes (more often than you think) they did, you could hit 3% easy, sometimes even 6%.raid losses

 

Don't preach to me about history and NUMBERS. JFKY.

 

Not when I run numbers for a living.

 

Herald

 

 

 

 

 

Dog Tag,

I have already rescended my "P39-pusher" idea on the grounds that there were plenty of good aircraft out there without reinventing the wheel with a pusher canard. Still, you have posted the xp55 ascender which just demonstrates that Herald's idea was tested and rejected. More evidence of the Darwin principal at work. The escape from Herald's Canard fighter would be suicide as well, another reason to let it go.

 

The Turbo Systems that were used in the P38 and P47 were too big to be housed in the P39's rear fuselage that is why I said stick it in the nose of my mythical pusher design, the same way the P47's and the P38's were housed way back in the tails of those aircraft, a fact many don't know!

 

Check Six

 

Rocky

1) 24 a/c lost to air attack...on a formation that totaled 20 bomb GROUPS, that fielded 500-1,000 B-29's and air raids destroyed 24 of them....well THAT IS catastrophic it's a wonder anyone continued the bombing campaign against the Home Islands.  Now, your plane, the long-range ESCORT was going to stop these losses, HOW?  Aren't Tinian and Saipan ALREADY under a protective aerial umbrella, provided for by ALL THOSE NON-HERALD A/C?

 

2) FEAF was wiped out? Not sure I'm buying this...but all your evidence shows is that Kinney fought a shoe string war, well into 1943.  Kinney didn't clamour for long-range escorts did he?

 

3) Regensburg/China/CBI...uh Herald this is simply NONSENSICAL.  You have proposed a plane, as a LONG-RANGE ESCORT...not a base defense interceptor.  The CBI losses could have been prevented by more P-40's...you are now trying to shoe horn your plane into a role that you haven't assigned it.  Using spurious historical data to buttress a weak argument.  Rather what you propose how about we ship more P-40's, second-line fighter, to China...mission accomplished...of course the logistics will be a bear...something you ignore in your "point."

 

4) Well as they didn't fly into the teeth of Japanese air cover and STILL ACCOMPLISHED their mission I'd say your point is moot, wouldn't you?  The PBY was NOT a strike a/c, it didn't have to fly into the teeth of Japanese air cover...though it did defend itself, on occasion from A6M's.

 

5) Well, D'UH Herald I never said it didn't work, I said it wasn't NECESSARY...you have an idea, in search of a mission.  And please note, your a/c is surpassed by 1942/43 by American designs and yet you keep talking about missions that don't occur until 1944...Bottom-line here: is by the time Tinian/Saipan/Iwo Jima/CBI become a problem, your a/c is out of service.  It doesn't even meet the need, because it is obsolescent, by the time we "need" it.  You propose it for a set of problems 1942/43 that were not problems caused by a/c, but by the lack of a/c, in FEAF's case...and propose a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist, PBY escort.  This isn't a technical argument, "Will the engines perform as I have specified?"  This is a tactical/logistic/operational argument...I stipulate your technical prowess...I am questioning your your tactical/historical underpinnings.

6) You might want to remember that the reason Lemay went low and why he went at night was:

Jesu Christi Herald, DO YOU EVEN READ WHAT YOUR CRITICS WRITE?!  What have I been saying, Lemay went low because of payload and operational and accuracy concerns...NOT BECASUE OF FIGHTER LOSSES.  Thank you for re-iterating the point I've made in the last 2-3 postings!

 

7) Again, I don't deny that raid losses could hit 3%, and that was considered an acceptable loss rate..it was only when losses hit 6%, on a sustained basis, that an air campaign became untenable.  I don't believe XXI Bomber Command sustained that level of loss, certainly not from fighters...ergo a long-range escort was UNNECESSARY.  XXI Bomber Command's problems were maintenance, engine reliability, and a complex a/c with minimally trained air crew (No knock on air crew, there was a huge demand for air crew, and the system had to churn out thousands of crew very rapidly), but again it was NOT Japanese interceptors.

 

Bottom-Line: nothing you've presented demonstrates a NEED for your a/c, and that's what we're debating the NEED, not the FEASIBILITY.  The a/c you propose would not have been first line by the time we were bombing Japan, any way.

 

 

 

 

 

as long as you stay honest.

 

158 P-51s in escort in one of the heaviest B-29 raids on Japan using LeMay tactics and you still lose 3% of the force??

 

QED, it appears the data supports me.

 

Deal with it: its actual history.

 

Citing another guy, who's wrong on facts doesn't help you either.

 

Herald 

A lot of unnecessary fiddling is what I believe Johnson said. Turned out that everything they (USAAF suggested to Lockheed) tried was actually useless. Anything to keep the customer happy?

 

You may argue that the canard attempt was a late bloomer but the reason the Ascender never made it (this is a real hoot) was:

 

1. Bell screwed up the canard placement and the CG calculations because they bungled the wind tunnel model testing.

2. The X-1800 engine was cancelled. {underpowered Allsion substituted)

3. Vultee produced a better turkey, the XP-54, that was itself canceled when their engine (Lycoming H-2470, another HYPER that went nowhere) was canceled and after they screwed up their aircraft further by adding unneeded armor and changing the wing camber. 

 

Tha Swedish were able to oull off a pusher in the Saab-21 in 1943. They've been canard happy ever since.

 

 

 

 

 

The Japanese attempted it. They weren't slouches in the air you know. Started late on it, and ran out of time.  

Your numbers say that XXI Bomber Command suffered acceptable losses at 3%....and at no time did XXI Bomber Command cease its operations over Japan, due to losses or other causes.  With or WITHOUT fighter cover, Japan burned..in fact the Tokyo Raids occurred without air cover didn't they?  As Iwo Jima was not in US hands.  XXI Bomber Command had the keys to the Kingdom before the advent of P-51 coverage.  The HISTORY doesn't lie Herald...because Lemay NEVER stopped bombing Japan...unlike 8th Air Force which did pull back from daylight deep raids after Schweinfurt and Regensburg.

 

Now further, your a/c is designed for the early war period and has an 800 mile range.  Well it's USELESS in 1944 and the Home Island Campaign.  It's been supplanted by then and/or it's range is too short.  Fighters were NOT essential to XXI Bomber Command over Japan, and your fighter couldn't have gotten there any way...and was surpassed by 1943/44 by US a/c in the pipeline.

 

Just own up to it...it's a nice several hour effort...if that's all it took the world would be over-run with outstanding a/c designs.  Put your ego in "Park" and take a bow for looking at a number of design issues and making some nice leaps of design faith, but also own up to the fact that your pusher-canard, like 90% of ALL designs isn't a world beater.

 

I find it funny that others who worked in this area and era, made "Stupid mistakes" but not Herald, a guy who looked up some references and then did a back of the envelope design, but HERALD is ever so much clever than the folks at Boeing.  OK, tell yourself that if you want, "Everyone else screwed up this concept, but not ME" but for the rest of us I'm thinking it's more reasonable to believe that a pusher-canard is something that the US wasn't going to develop.

 

Bottom-Line: Your ego is pushing this argument...your a/c is a nice idea...but it may not work, no one else got it to work in the era 1937-42...that after 1943, like the P-40 it's surpassed by other a/c, and that at the end of the day many of the roles you posit it for it have already been filled, and that in 1944 over the Home Islands it wouldn't be any better than a P-51, because like the P-51 it didn't have the range to reach the Home Islands, and fighter cover wasn't an necessity over Japan, in B-29's any way.

 

That's history, not populism, not propaganda...that's the FACTS, they may be different from NUMBERS, but like numbers they don't lie, either.  Or as we say in Poli Sci, "Figures don't lie, but liars figure."  You've got some figures, but they don't mean what you purport them to mean...(ED. NOTE:  Yes know there will be a volcanic eruption from Herald, because the words "Herald" and "Liar" appeared in the same sentence.)

Herald, your reply to my last post is a bunch of spin that does not address the issues I have been raising. Mostly irrelevent to the problems inherit with your canard design, which are;

 

1. better options abound.

2. unsafe to exit under any flight conditions. (suicide machine which is unacceptable to western standards)

3. slow, low wing loaded, terribly unmanuverable dog that can barely even run with an A20. A sick and anemic thing.

4. vicious pitch characteristics under combat loads.

5. Canards were experimented with and rejected, for good reason.

6. beyond the rational ability to produce by 1939.

7. can't bomb with it (don't bother with trapezes Herald, planes bobble in 3-D and those props will eat metal regularly)

8.  simply would not achieve the mission you have set for it (LR escort), instead it would kill allied pilots, a-la Me-110.

9. USAAF would not buy it anyway, see 1-8 above.

 

Now so far all you have done is spin this and I don't blame you for that but we'll have to agree to disagree. Bro, I'm fairly well grounded in the technology and clearly your dog ain't gonna hunt.

 

Check Six

 

Rocky

I'd bet that the 3% losses were mainly form aircraft failure or Flak mainly rather than Japanese Fighters...escorts can't prevent that.

Herald.