I did a paper on human factors in Aerospace Engineering for my senior paper. One of the 3 professors who graded it HATED the idea that Engineering could be influenced by human factors. He scored my paper with the precise lowest score he could give without preventing me from graduating and slapped a comment on it that real Engineering is not impacted by human whims.
So he's one of the guys responsible for crap like a friend's car that has to have the front tires taken off to change the freaking headlights... I wish I were kidding.
So he was NOT a good professor and NOT a good engineer. A good engineer considers the humans that have to maintain and operate the machinery they’re designing.
@johngregory4801 you have no idea. I had a PZEV Focus that had to have the left wheel and fender liner pulled to change the lifetime sealed AIR FILTER.
Kurt Tank, designer of the FW-190 series said "Everything for the pilot". Hence the excellent ergonomics. He also made his planes as easy as possible for ground crew to work on. There are sight guages in the wings to see fuel status, the engine can be removed with just 4 bolts and the list goes on. I guess when you have a very experienced/good aviator who is also a designer this what you get.
Tank was tasked with production of the 109 as demand ramped up so he knew every inch of the 109, so everything he did on the 190 was to avoid the mistakes of the 109, such as the heavily framed canopy, narrow landing gear, small cockpit and a host of other things.
Martin Baker added to "everything for the pilot" with "and don't forget the maintenance/ground crew" when designing the MB5. I've an old monograph lying around somewhere detailing the lengths the company went to to ease the pilot/maintenance burden - for example, the covers over the ammo bays had seats built into their interiors for the loaders to be able to more comfortably (and quickly!) reload the guns when they were flipped open. Now that's a GOOD engineer.... :)
Another problem with no cockpit floor: Frank Tallman wrote about an aerobatics routine in a Corsair where everything either dropped or forgotten in the belly of the airplane fell into the canopy the first time he went inverted, including a half eaten apple, a half inch wrench, a copy of the pilot's handbook, and a dead mouse.
😂 An old A&P told me of his first flight in a Navy SNJ trainer back when he was brand new. He was being ferried to a location to fix another downed trainer in 1945. The pilot, a young hot shot, decided it would be cool to do some aerobatics with the young mechanic. He looped the plane, the mechanic's tool box went right through the floor, and they were forced to bail out of the critically damaged aircraft!
I was told a story when I worked at McDonnell Douglas in St Louis in the 1990s that during WWII Curtis Wright pilots first maneuver in new airplanes was to roll inverted with canopy open to let FOD fall out. Don't have any way to validate that story, but it seems plausible.
For human factors and general flyability, a look at the Blackburn Botha should be worthwhile. That immortal report: "Climbing into this aircraft is difficult. It ought to be made impossible."
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles G'day, I suspect that the British regarded "higgledy piggledy" Cockpit Layouts as being governed by economic convenience and ease of construction for the Builder - and if the Pilot or other Aircrew Can manage to View and access and operate the User-Interface of such items and Systems..., then that'll be fine - not quite ideal perhaps, but not any kind of a problem requiring redesign and rectification. In fact such quirks were often thought of as being Character-building..., and Instructors could "grade" a pupil's skill-level and progress by how well (or badly) they coped with the inbuilt difficulties... The Spitfire Undercarriage Up/Down Selector on the extreme Right side of the Panel, comes to mind ; changing hands on the Stick to use the Right hand on that Selector Switch generally caused bit of a "Wobblie", when climbing over the Fence. Experience made the observable Wobblie shrink in amplitude, with practice ; and anyone who failed to lock the Friction Nut on the Throttle could find their Throttle vibrating back towards Idle, as their Left Hand moved over onto the Stick (!). Camel Pilots used to learn how to fly with the Stick held between their Knees - any time 2 hands were required to do anything else while airborne... It was still a thing, in 1981; in that before being cleared to fly in an IS-28 (Czechoslovakian built entry-level Aluminium Sailplane), I was taken up in a particular Airframe which had had it's Ailerons recently re-covered - and the Fabric had been "over-doped", and thus had shrunk slightly too much, resulting in Under-Cambered Ailerons... Bilaterally symmetrical, but Equally slightly the wrong Aerofoil - both sides. Which meant that there was a "Dead-Spot" in Roll-Control, Whenever the Stick was Central... One could deflect the Stick about 5 mm (1/5 of an inch ?) Either side and get no response...; but if one went another 2 mm further (1/4 of an Inch all up), then the Ailerons acted as if they had Servo-Tabs on them & they "Snatched" and tried to go to Full-Deflection... Which took a bit of getting used to. Part of the Briefing was looking at the "correct" Aileron Undersurfaces, on the one which I had been flying, dual & solo ; before being observed from the back seat while figuring out how to fly smoothly, with the deceptively Twitchy Ailerons.... I found them to be interesting but not scary, and for the next 3 days ; that was "my" Sailplane..., my final flight in it was a 2:13 Solo, bringing me to about 15 hrs Unpowered... after two 5-day weeks, starting off with Ab-Initio at a commercial Soaring Centre (Narromine, NSW). Eccentric Aeroplanes may actually be perceived as being rather "More fun" to fly... ; than are some Thoroughly de-fanged, well-mannered, and politely Modern Consumer-friendly Designs..., Once their eccentricities have Bin-Mastered (!). So it is said, and I don't disagree. Anyway, For a bit of a giggle, you might consider backtracking me to my Videos to see, "Pilot Debrief Versus TH-cam ; The WarblesOnALot Analysis..." I've rarely if ever seen a sense of successful greedy self-entitlement manage to Snooker itself so rapidly and so suddenly. The bloke who got all his Flying Licences in the Military, at Taxpayer expense, now flying for the Airlines - didn't want to pay Income Tax as a private CitiZen (!?!), so he told YT that he was Incorporating himself to become a Limited Liability Dodo-Eater... And they demonetised him, totally. Then when he appealed he was told that he stays demonetised for 35 days while they ponder his temerity... Lesson learned, eh, what (?) ; Pay thy Taxes, CitiZen...; Do not attempt to Incorporate One's YT Channel. Apparently. I had quite some fun trying to explain it all to my viewers, and also to poor young Mister SuckBroom ("Hoover"...!). If he hadn't blocked me, then he wouldn't have merited a dedicated Video ; when he's currently running around, clueless as to what he did to trigger YT into that response, and I'm the mangy-looking recovering Zombie who could (perhaps ?) enlighten him. Ah well, such is life. Today is my father's 115th birthday, if he hadn't died in 1982 (!). Have a good one, Stay safe.... ;-p Ciao !
As someone who used to teach human physiology, I think your description of the inner ear problem was nicely done. Nothing inaccurate, but obviously very simplified. I remember a while back, I think it was the FAA had a simulator that rotated as an educational tool for this very issue. They demonstrated how the pilot was just fine until they had him or her lean their head forward quickly: instant disorientation.
That's funny you would mention that machine. It was called the Vertigon, and I flew it at the Reno Air Races in the early 1990s. The FAA had it set up there and it was free to try. I did pretty well in it because at the time I was flying a lot of single pilot IFR, no autopilot so I was really strong on the gauges. I almost talked about this in the video. Oh, and I saw Dreadnought there too.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles Hi Greg, there is a P-47M with a well restored original cockpit. I did photos for the owner of many of their airplanes, and would share these for your use. Don’t want to post my email address… maybe you can provide contact method privately?
The human balance system is an adaptation of an earlier version designed to avoid falling out of trees. It's a miracle we can walk and chew gum at the same time. Don't get me started on the pelvis.
As a truck driver I know that ergonomics have a huge factor to do with fatigue when you operate machinery for long hours and my favorite trucks to drive have been determined by the ergonomics of the cab switch and gauge layouts as well as foot well room shifter location ect
About 2 years ago there was an article in a British aviation magazine (The name escapes me.) by the chief test pilot at Grumman. During the war the navy had Grumman and Vought trade an F6F and a Corsair to improve each type. Grumman was to study the F4U to increase the power from the R-2800 and lighten the aileron forces in a roll. Vought was to study the F6F for ease of maintenance and to improve COCKPIT LAYOUT! Looks like Vought might have learned something from Grumman.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobilesEveryone seems to have learned from Fock Wulf. The FW-190 wasn’t the best fighter of the war performance wise, especially as the war continued, but it really did well on the ‘boring’ bits😅
Greg's method of scanning the instruments is pretty much the Old Spice meme. "I'm the attitude indicator. Now look at the altimeter now back to me. Now the VSI now back to me..."
That's very tiring for long periods of time, as in cruise. There, I think a circular scan across the instruments is better. Also it works easier with non standard instrument layouts.
I wish my father was still around to comment on this work. He started designing in the mid 1930s and saw a lot of this stuff. He had worked his way through Univ. of Ill by working the line in International Harvester factory and appreciated "thoughtful" design. In his early days he would come up with a design idea and then go on the line to show it to fabricatiors and mechanics to get feedback on how hard it would be to make and maintain things. He really enjoyed that team interaction and was not happy with the way things had changed by the time he retired.
I was taught in college that human factors was recognized in WWII when they realized that the placement of the gauges in different positions on the training aircraft as they progressed to the ones that they would use in combat was causing accidents when under stress they reverted to what position they first learn and were using the wrong information. By standardizing the position of the critical gauges their eyes were in the cockpit for a shorter duration.
According to the pilots at VWC this was a common problem when transitioning from the Harvard to the P-40. The Harvard's landing gear control is a standard position selection lever, but the P-40's selects the direction of motion of the landing gear. If you forget to put the P-40's landing gear control back in the neutral position after lowering the gear, the struts won't actually lock in the down position. In that state if you touch the brakes on landing the gear will fold back and dump the plane onto its nose.
I remember reading how the P-38 was particularly difficult to transition from cruise configuration to combat, in think it had to do with the engine management being rather difficult to hurry through
@@scullystie4389 Gun sight on, Gun heater on, fuel selector to primary tank, dump the drop tanks, mixture to auto rich, rpm to combat power, throttle to combat power. But being a twin engine fighter most of that stuff is X2. And I don't know if it was all period aircraft or if the Lightning was particularly sensitive to this but you do that out of order and the engines quit, or worse blow up
@@spindash64yes, all those actions while not necessarily being able to feel your fingers. There were a whole load of other human factors of this sort, like needing to always be on oxygen in a Typhoon to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning or the P-39 filling up with cannon fumes. Or trying to juggle cannon ammunition drums in a Beaufighter.
@@GMdrivingMOPARguy from what I read, some air groups actually forego dropping drop tank as they considered endurance was far more important than performance in Pacific
Although not instrument related, I read an article on all of the different steps it took to switch a P-38 from cruise mode to be ready for combat. The point was that to took a significant amount of time to be ready to fight if the P-38 pilot suddenly saw an enemy plane closing on him and it was easy to miss a step. It involved dropping tanks, switching fuel source and changing the mixtures for the engines. In one of the interviews of a P-38 pilot, he noted that he had forgotten to properly switch to internal tanks and his engines died just before he shot down a German plane. The pilot joked that he was the only pilot to ever shoot down an enemy fighter from a glider.
@@themadinspector Thanks, I thought it was either Olds or Yeager, but it has been a long time since I saw the show where it was discussed. I found the article I mentioned. It is on an Australian site and titled: "Der Gabelschwanz Teufel Assessing the Lockheed P-38 Lightning"
I wonder if this difficulty in prepping the P-38 to fight was the reason Tommy McGuire decided to break his own rule and not get rid of his drop tanks in the fight where he was killed.
@@jfess1911 Another P-38 pilot who was really too tall for that small cockpit, told of a situation in the ETO where he had stretched out his feet BEHIND the rudder pedals while in cruise. One tank suddenly ran dry, one engine quit, and the plane rolled off toward the dead engine while the rudder pedal slammed down on his foot trapping it! Both his feet were blocked UNDER the rudder pedals while the now single engine plane went over on its back into a spin! By the time he could recover., he was dealing with the infamous P-38 compressibility problems, so he's lucky to have survived!
@@fazole In the article I referenced, the author said he witnessed 4 p-38's that took no evasive action after being "bounced" and were shot down. He suspected that the pilots were too busy re-configuring the controls to save themselves. I recall another story regarding the poor placement of the headphones connector. One pilot who had bailed out in the PTO remained tethered to his plummeting plane for a while by this cord. Apparently Lockheed had developed numerous improvements but was told by the Powers That Be to not shut down production to change the tooling, parts and processes.
Early on in this video you mentioned Diego Garcia. I've been there many times and the only time I've experienced vertigo was taking off from there on a cloudy night and we had to do an air turn back shortly after takeoff. I'm a flight mechanic so nothing drastic happened except I lost where we were at. So from that experience early on in my career I learned a valuable lesson. Keep your eyes on the instruments. Yes, your flight mechanic also watches flight instruments and engine indications, unless he's not very good at his job.
Preach it, bro! I got the leans a few times in the C-130, but that's not a big deal in the flight engineer seat. The pilots were still doing fine, so no issues.
I heard on british airplanes like the Spitfire the cockpit layout was more of the chaos type, "oops, we have still another lever forgotten, where is a gap?" But the best for the "human factor" is in the Mosquito - a rubber tube with a funnel at the end for "excretive" resource management. And on the BMW 801-Fw 190s, I heard that a real change was that you just had one throttle lever, no mixture control you had to tune constantly. The fuel injection system had an outright mechanical computer with multiple parameters that were processed "automatically". I know, that will be handled in a future video anyhow ..
I've been waiting for a video about this in some form after you brought it up with the Fw 190 series about just how much better the 190 was laid out compared to it's contemporaries. It was a relatively subdued part of the video but it was something that I definitely thought merited a deeper look. The more I've learned about human factors with work (A&P) the more it's helped with finding the flow of things to make life easier, like how to set up the 787 cockpit for expedient maintenance.
Just operating the engine of a WW2 era aircraft was crazy complicated and changed depending on your priorities, altitude, speed, need for long perm reliability, and other factors. Charles Lindberg was able to teach pilots to greatly economize their fuel usage (resulting in greater range) in the Pacific theater towards the end of WW2. In modern military aviation, a lot of attention is given to 'Cognitive Load'. Making it easy to do the right thing results in people doing the right thing more regularly.
This is where the engine management in the FW-190 stood apart. The pilot only had to set the desired "thrust" and the mechanical computer took care of the rest. Mostly. 😊
Lindbergh taught them to go against their training and set the propeller pitch to 1900 RPM and manifold pressure left at cruise power, which went against normal practise. This meant that the P38 cruised at a much slower speed than normal but used far less fuel, especially when they leaned the mixture according to his instructions. The Japanese were already doing this with the Zero.
I remember watching a documentary years ago about an RAF officer who was given the job of investigating accidents during WWII, and he said that there were twice as many planes lost to accidents as there were from enemy action.
More US pilots were lost in training than in combat. They were 19 or 20 yr olds given 2000hp hotrods! Ira Kepler of VF-17, Jolly Rogers fame used to fly his Corsair upside down and run trucks off the road!
Excellent review Greg…as a student pilot I get what you are telling. Lot’s to learn here too. Loved it. I have been through so many books on WWII aircraft and all the analog instruments they had. A far cry from the Garmin Flatscreens these days. But we are still trained to fly without them and navigate on a chart and with the classic E6-B Flight Computer…just like the old days. I am early sixties now and finally got around getting my Licence…still having problems fitting that big grin on my face in the cockpit..love it!
@@jaym8027 Yep first solo is awesome...first solo landing...greased it...by coincidence a big social in the evening...it felt as if I was celebrating my birthday!
A great addition to add to these examples of ergonomics would be the P-40. The cockpit of a P-40 reminds me of a utility room in an old house, a maze of pipes and valves scattered at random.
Lots of stuff on the P-40 were a direct reflection of the aircraft design ethics of the early 1930s. It was ridiculously hard to deal with its myriad of silly complexities, which probably got a lot of airmen in trouble and which made the aircraft much less combat-efficient than it could have been.
I haven't watched more than ten seconds of this, but just had to say that as soon as I heard the line "Hi there, this is Greg" I am like a kid before Christmas... I know that the next forty four minutes and thirty six seconds will be a sheer delight for me. Thanks for the best videos on TH-cam Greg!
Someone at Republic saw this video. I understand the cockpit layout of the F-105 was considered to be one of the best for the time. In fact F-4 pilots preferred the Thud cockpit to the Phantom cockpit. The debate is just as skewed in favor of the Phantom in terms of flying characteristics. And I've heard it said the F-15 fixed this layout issue from pilots who converted to the Eagle. And they hadn't mentioned the Heads Up Display yet.
From reading "Thud Ridge", I recall that the F-105 cockpit filled with jet fuel fumes while refueling. I also read that Vietnam era pilots SMOKED in their cockpits!
A very interesting topic. There are so many points to consider when talking about combat equipment. Performance is generally what people look at, but there are so many more topics. This is a really important topic. It does not matter if you have the most powerfull fighter of all time, if you can not see anything because the canopy is all fogged up. Another important topics is flight vs service hours. If you can not keep your fighters in the air, you will loose. Another related topic is ease of service. How quick and easy is it to do service and battle damage repairs. Then the most important thing in any war, logistics. How quickly can you get spare parts, how much is interchangable between different planes. Ammo, how many different weapons do you use on your planes? Coolants, lubrications, different type of oils do you have. One detail, spark plugs, how many different type spark plugs did the us army air core stock?
American pilots were given a basic scan of "Needle, Ball, Airspeed" if they inadvertantly flew into cloud. It was the onset of mass mobilisation for war that prompted a huge increase in proper instrument flight training, because of the consequent soaring loss rate in training. Hence, every available flight school was enroled into the Flight training system and huge amounts of things like Link Trainers were built.
The Mustang's fuse tank gauge sounds pretty good for the guy filling it. The pilot would burn it first until the engine stumbled or fuel pressure fluctuated then consider it empty for the remainder of flight.
I've thought about this topic almost every day since the P-39 video when it was mentioned that one pilot liked it because it was easy to get in and out of the cockpit. Great concept for a full video. The guys flying these things weren't in air-to-air combat every day, but they did have to take-off, land and navigate every day. Ergonomics would have been top of mind.
@@wbertie2604That's why the P-39's door was able to be jettisoned in an emergency. Ideally to get out you'd trim the aircraft for straight and level flight (or glide), roll out of the cockpit and slide off the wing.
Greg, having watched nearly all of your presentations, you always show that you are blessed with the ability to communicate whichever subject chosen. Thanks for doing what few other classroom type clinics are; the difference is that you stay on point, not wavering to teach and demonstrate everything said.
Another gem Greg. Your research, presentation and style are second to none. I’m particularly interested in WW2 Japanese aircraft and your presentations on those got me hooked on your channel. Kudos Sir ! Also as a follow up , I am 59 years old and when I looked at the thumbnail I thought that guy on the right wing was looking at his iPhone lol
Excellent vid Greg. Thank you. Engineers design aircraft for performance numbers, and as far as I can tell after many years as an A&P, they completely ignore the fact that the damn things will have to be maintained or repaired.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles I have a beautiful black/white photo of my grandfather in front of his F4U-4. I am trying to get into aviation because of him, and so I want it ALL!!!
I towed gliders for a club back around twenty years ago, now. There were some fascinating older guys in the club at the time. One gentleman had worked for Vought and had been involved in the landing gear design for the F4U. How I wish I had known enough to ask him about the placement of the emergency blow down valve. Thanks for another in a long line of fascinating videos, Greg.
Eric Browns Book about german fighters he flew is very interesting regarding cockpit layouts. He highly praised the FW190 and ME262 with lots of insider informations. Looking forward to your vids 👌👍♥️
I’m not an engineer, aviator or anything professional like that but I love your videos. They’re obviously very technical most of the time but still even I feel like I can understand 95% of the time during the technical stuff.
More DCS Greg. Your commentary is an excellent learning tool. My air battles have changed a fair bit by your commentaries teaching the strengths and weaknesses and I get shot down less. A P-47 commentary on the K-14 would be good now you've done the Dora Gyro sight. I know the principal is similar but you might have a better gauge on the nuances of it.
Thank you so much for these videos. It's not hyperbole to say you're probably one of a very very few who actual make videos on human factors like this and even a smaller amount that do it in WW2 aircraft AND in the style you do. I'm appreciative and grateful for your videos.
Greg, have you ever thought about making videos about the development and effectiveness of the Yak-3 or Yak-9U? I would love to see you get into the nitty gritty on those airplanes
I like all the videos on this channel so much. Watching these videos over the years has given me a new appreciation for pilots and aero engineers, especially for the pioneers of the industry.
Awesome video! It's so great to just get beyond numbers on a page, with max speed, ceiling, range, etc. to find out the subtle things that makes one plane better than another. Really makes you wonder what a commitment to ergonomics could have done to make any given aircraft a better performer. I especially liked your answer to which is better P51/P47. I've answered questions similarly, "Are you asking a front line user or a rare echelon general".
Thanks for your videos as always Greg. Learning these things about the some of the main fighter aircraft of WW2 is interesting as well as showing the differences in cockpit configuration. I always go back to the statement of some fighter pilots recalling what combat was like speaking of how normal turns into adrenaline charged, snap decisions, and flying is done from a deep, automated responses. Speaking about tasks needed, even in standard level flight, and then add the task of setting a receiver/transmitter, sending a message to base or controllers with the use of a morse key mounted on a knee board and I would assume a pencil/note pad for receiving messages in earlier years of flying. This puts another level concentration for the pilots to do while flying. Pretty sure even fighter pilots of Vietnam era and later had to have a working knowledge of morse/CW.
There's a great video on how to operate the turbosupercharger on the P-47 on Zeno's Warbird Drive-in. It's "P-47 Thunderbolt Aerobatics & High Altitude Flight - 1943 Restored." Classic WWII stuff. In searching for that one, I saw your video on "P-47 Thunderbolt Pt. 1A Throttle and Boost Lever Use." I'll have to watch that one again. And, while we're at it, how about assembling your own P-47 out on the back 40? Here it is: "How to assemble a P-47 Thunderbolt Fighter in a field with unpowered hand tools (Restored -1944)."
@13:30- talking about the "Heading Indicator"- it may be because I'm a submariner and I'm used to "instrument flying" as an everyday skill driving a submarine, but the "heading indicator" illustrated here and described by Greg isn't confusing to me at all. When looking at the compass heading being displayed I can literally see where we're at on the compass rose. Granted, it's not visually displayed on the panel, but I can visualize a heading from a call-out relative to my current heading and know whether a port or starboard turn would get onto that bearing faster.
Great points. I know nothing about aircraft but being a lifelong motorcyclist and one-time professional mechanic, I 100% get it. If the controls are set up for left-handed people, then they're not ideal for the majority of right-handed people. When you are talking about split second reactions, and absolute control it matters. Royal Enfield 650 motorcycles have a speedo designed for style. It's white faced and almost impossible to read.
@@offshoretomorrow3346Maneuver wise, yes, armament wise, no, It had only 2 machine guns on the engine deck and no wing guns. It might be due to thin wings.
Great video. 👍. I've kind of been waiting for it. I've always wondered if the layout of the North American Texan T-6 (which was their advanced trainer) helped pilots that transitioned into the P51 Mustang. Also, I wonder where the Hellcat is in this mix. So many pilots really raved about the Hellcat.
Greg, I haven't flown in a long time now but I used an instrument scan just like yours and it worked well. I found that during some manoeuvres I would scan a particular periphery gauge more often than the others but always coming back to the AH. I remember that learning instrument flying was a particularly tiring process as it took sustained concentration on long flights, I can't imagine how difficult it must have been for low hours pilots with less than ideal instrument layouts in WW2 combat conditions!
I’m glad you covered the layout of the P-47. In either 1944 or 45 my father had been flying P-39 & P-40’s. Either during or shortly after P-47 training, he reached to retract the flaps while taxing in after landing. He accidentally grabbed the gear handle, retracting the gear causing a prop strike. He was fined $100. He said that the gear & flap handles were opposite of what he was accustomed to.
Our multi-engine aircraft started putting all dial gauges so the normal operating range all pointed up, so a pilot could scan for problems. The Germans added the multi-throttle control. The US standardized on lever styles (round disk for throttle, airfoil for flaps...).
Years ago I saw a motivational poster with an aviation theme. I don't even remember the picture, it was probably an instrument panel. But, I still remember the message. " Instrument flying is what happens when your mind gets a full grasp on the concept that there is vision beyond sight."
Chuck Yeager in his autobiography reported that when he got to fly all the German fighters as a test pilot right after the war that the only one that could hold a candle to the P-51 was the Fw190. The reason was the excellent human factors deliberately engineered into the 190 cockpit. The 190 chief designer Kurt Tank was a test pilot and a design engineer who understood he was trying to maximize the performance of the combined system of aircraft and pilot. Greg, great job here and in your superprop series in explaining that.
Fantastic content. Your deep dive into the P 47 Thunderbolt was a tour de force. Would you be interested in producing some videos on Italian aircraft from WW2. This subject has been grossly overlooked. Keep the great work.
I read somewhere, that early in WWII, they were grounding a lot of pilots due to accidents. To reduce that number, they did a study, and found things like two nearly identical switches, side by side, one for landing gear, and one for flaps. They changed the ergonomics, and lost fewer pilots and planes. That's why today, you don't see rows of identical knobs in cars anymore.
Another great video greg. One of the first planes i know of whose design took ergonomics seriously was the martin baker mb5. It remained a prototype only. Martin Baker is a fascinating company to go down a rabbit hole to if you're looking for a few days work. The post war Saab aircraft were also pretty good, something they extended to their cars.
An interesting topic for a video or book would be the high accident rate, non combat losses, beginning in the inter war period to the 1960s. When seeing statistics for non combat loses the numbers are truly staggering. The wide range of factors that influenced these losses and how the accident rate finally declined would be a great story.
Finnish Air Force found that British sprinkled controls with non what so ever logic. Flying Blenheim needed almost circus body distortion movements. Our German planes were 1 or 2 generation ahead. There had been actual carefull thought how controls and instruments were situated.
I pilot ROVs, one of the first time I dove with no viz, I was so focused on following the cable detector that I ended up crabbing at 25deg - so that was quick free lesson… But that was nothing, I had a pilot somehow end up at 90deg next to the product because they tried following the camera in mixed viz conditions, total loss of spacial awareness. And that’s at 250m per hour. So yeah, instrument positioning and setup is primordial, also learning to dive using only instruments is extremely important. The visibility from outside should be a backup - not the other way.
On the side topic of which of the P-51 or the P-47 was the best fighter, my opinion perfectly aligns on Greg's conclusion. I'm glad I met a man of great wisdom. 😎
Absolutely hit the nail on the head with the P-47 vs P-51 debate when it comes to pilot perspective vs military acquisitions. I'm really curious where you would place the P-38 and its later war upgrades compared to the P-51? I'm biased and I love the P-38, the P-38k would have been a real monster, Its real downfall is it's extraordinarily more expensive compared to a P-51, the P-51 was good because it was cost effective, like a MiG-21 during the cold war.
I know he's commented before, accurately, that the P-38 was designed in the 1930s and many features were finalized immediately before certain revelatory NACA papers that influenced later designs. The Lightning had great performance and was a terrific heavy fighter, but should be considered under the "of its time" label where it was quickly being surpassed by newer designs. Like the P-40 and B-17, the P-38 was an older workhorse that remained relevent throughout the war but were retired almost immediately after. The P-51 was not a particularly revolutionary plane, mostly it just took advantage of the best design practices of the new decade, but this meant it was a very modern plane when compared to older designs like the P-38. On top of excellent performance (eventually) and cost efficiency, the sheer quantity of small advances in the Mustang outweigh any niche advantages for the Lightning.
@@ChrisSmith-mi2zo See, I don't agree with that at all, the performance of the P-38 was far superior to that of the P-40 for instance, with a much greater climb rate, top speed and armaments, and the K variant even out performed the P-47 and P-51. As well as having fantastic lift capacity for carrying bombs (P-38H carried over 1,000lbs more bombs than a P-47). The P-38 wasn't of its time, it was far ahead of its time, it was like the F-22 of its era. The real downfall of the P-38 and why it was stopped while the P-51 and other aircraft lived on is simple cost. You could build far more P-51 compared to P-38 and it was half as expensive to maintain them too, with only 1 engine per aircraft. The P-38 cost over twice as much as a P-51 to produce. The late war P-38 could and did out perform the P-51 but it just wasn't justifiably cost effective to produce. The P-38K for instance had 2 engines Allison V-1710-75/77 (F15R/L) powerplants rated at 1,875 bhp each. That's 3750 bhp, which pushed the P-38 test platform to 432mph, and its top speed was estimated to be in excess of 450. On top of this it would have had a incredible bomb lift capacity. "The initial climb rate was 4,800 ft (1,500 m)/min and the ceiling was 46,000 ft (14,000 m). It reached 20,000 ft (6,100 m) in five minutes flat; this with a coat of camouflage paint, which added weight and drag." If you're not aware of the numbers comparatively to other fighters of the time, the P-38K was faster in top speed and climb rate to virtually all other allied fighters of the time. Not surprisingly too the two top American aces of the war Majors Richard I. "Dick" Bong and Thomas B. "Tommy" McGuire both flew P-38.
The P-38 was revolutionary, and incorporated the best of the best of its time. It also paved the way for Turbocharged fighters, hydraulic boosted control surfaces, compressibility considerations. Plus utilized the best concepts of the day like constant speed propellers, inline liquid cooled engines, tricycle gear, concentrated heavy firepower. Etc. It was a world beater. And could easily match or beat anything in the sky at any given time in the war. BY THE NUMBERS. But it was exceedingly difficult to fight with and rarely performed at its best. A common issue in Europe was pilots would be frostbitten and numb by the time they reached Germany at altitude. They would get bounced, as they were in long-range cruise configuration and relatively slow. The process to reconfigure to combat ready was so long and laborious, the P-38 pilots would be shot down before they reacted. These were ALL human factor related, and not performance related. Kelly Johnson learned and gravitated toward Simplicity and re-use of components and even designs. "Never re-invent anything that isn't necessary" ~ Kelly Johnson. And keep in Mind. The P-80 Shooting Star was the first frontline jet fighter in history. It flew into the last days of WWII in 1945. And that distinctive fuselage, nose, and cockpit still fly on the U2 spy plane. Not only that, they built new models in the 1990s. So it's one of the newest and oldest airplanes in the USAF inventory. *Edit, P-80 was the first frontline US jet fighter* naturally the 262 and Meteor beat it by weeks and months.
Greg. I've seen a document in some book that originated from the Test Pilots at Boscombe Down as a consequence of more than a few taxiing and flying accidents, simply due to a haphazard instrument layout. When pilots are jumping from one plane to another and each have the primary instruments in a different place causing hesitation and sometimes confusion. This letter, written in 1941 I believe, recommended all new aircraft to have a ''standard T'' instrument layout (which is shown in your video). Your scan method is used by most British rotary pilots afaik, though there's not many aircraft left with the old analogue instruments, which is a pity. p.s. I vaguely remember the book might have been one written by Captain Eric Brown (RN).
My father was a human factors engineer for much of his career, starting as screener for bomber pilots at Ent AFB in Colorado Springs during WW2 as a member of the Army Air Corps. He later worked for ESD (Ross Perot), Raytheon, and TRW.
An interesting topic for a video or book would be the high accident rate, non combat losses, beginning in the inter war period to the 1960s. When seeing statistics for non combat loses the numbers are truly staggering. The wide range of factors that influenced these losses and how the accident rate finally declined would be a great story.
Human Factors are important in aircraft maintenance too, entire chapter on it in Noland and Heap. I wonder how many planes and pilots were lost due to maintenance errors. ME 109 is great example of airplane design with maintenance as critical factor, maybe overkill vis landing gear.
Took a "Design for Manufacture Course" where it was drilled into us that if it could be assembled incorrectly, it would be assembled incorrectly at some point. Good design allows things to only go together one way.
@@fafner1 *" Good design allows things to only go together one way. "* I remember reading about a part that had a protruding pin to do just that. The accident report found the pin had been sawed off so the part could be installed incorrectly!
I've seen an M1 Garand fire out of battery which should be impossible due to the design of the firing pin. When we found all the parts, someone had ground off the l-shaped tail that prevented such a thing from happening. @@feathermerchant
The overhead photo of the P47, with the pilot sitting in it, is one of the best photos showing just huge that air plane was. It was a monster fighter, and, in my opinion, maybe the best of the war.
As always Greg, this was fascinating. The subject of ergonomics for WW II machinery is somehow mentioned in few books, but never really covered. Being an aviation enthusiast since childhood and private pilot, I was quite surprised when I had a look at Bf-109G and Spitfire mk IX cockpits in our aviation museum. With 188cm and rather strong built I wouldn't even get into the Messerschmidt, in Spitfire even if I got in I'd rather not be able to move the controls. Ju 52 on the other hand seemed quite manageable ;)
11:26 The P-47D (with a big "B4" painted in the cowling) from the Brazilian Air Force Museum (MUSAL), still have its original WWII instrument panel. And its is kept in flying condition.
Welcome back! And well done, as usual. I've never been in the cockpit, obviously, but my dad flew an F4U-4 from January 1945 to just past the end of the war as the engineering officer of VBF-150. They were training - a lot - for the upcoming Operation Downfall, which became unnecessary with the Japanese surrender. I'm happy to see you address the ergonomics issue - even in primitive flight/combat sims (I'm a survivor of two different Hellcat sims), and as a civilian, I could see that instrument placement was important. Moreover, since you're a car guy, too, you're certainly aware that there are very good reasons why IndyCar and F1 and NASCAR and "Legend" cars have their instruments on or in front of the steering wheel. Having to take your eye off the road course at 180 mph, just like taking being distracted in a Corsair or Mustang at a similar speed, could quickly prove fatal. Flying those planes in real life is a challenging task. Finally, my own limited warbird experience was half an hour in the front seat of a T6. The flying part was great, but a T6 lacks a floor, too, and I found that very disconcerting.
God bless you for talking about this, human factors and setting up my workflow so that I am less likely to screw up under pressure occupies way more of my time and brain than I like to admit.
The P-38 incorporated an innumerable list of good ideas crammed into one aircraft. It was also a world beater in performance. But not often in practice.
Fascinating stuff as usual, Greg. From my own experience, Lockheed made the flight engineer panel of the C-130 a lot more intuitive when they redesigned it between the E model and the H3. For your future cockpit reviews, I'd love to learn about the layouts of the P-38, Mosquito variants (bomber, recon, fighter-bomber, and night fighter) and the Grumman 'Cats.
Fascinating presentation...thank you. One minor quibble, I would have like to have seen you include the P-38 as well. Given its very specific mission set, it would have made a fascinating comparison to the other three aircraft.
That's a fair complaint and actually quite a compliment. You're saying the video was good but needed more. There will be more, I make new videos all the time, and I do have a bit of P-38 stuff up already.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles Outstanding! Please do not consider my comment a complaint in any way, however. Your fine work leaves me hungry for more, and in this case more context!
Ergo is so important. To put it into a motorsport analogy, the Ford GT40 that beat the Ferrari factory at Le Mans in 66 was a very comfortable car for a racecar according to several racers who raced it, and in an endurance race (somewhat like a long air mission though to a far lesser degree, of course) that helped immensely with reducing driver fatigue which meant less chance of missing a shift or making a mistake, and also having more in reserve if one needed to drive 10/10ths if the competition was right there with you.
Hello Greg, not related to your topic but I am finishing up "Sustaining the carrier war" by Naval Institute Press. Its very interesting in seeing how the US Navy worked to sustained the increasing size of naval aviation and may warrant a video. Possibly a collab with someone from the naval side. This video was pretty good, thank you for bringing the topic to light. Cheers
We just need the F4U module to release for DCS so we can compare screwing up in the Jug vs screwing up the Corsair in real time! Great content as always!
Nice video as always! Also, it seems the N model thunderbolt did introduce a more modern looking DG to go with the autopilot--though I don't know how well it compares to later ones.
Thanks for your efforts on all these videos. I've enjoyed quite a few of them. Have you considered making one on the Douglas Skyraider? That would be interesting to me.
I know I know, I'm also getting questions about the P-38, Soviet stuff and more. I'll probably try to include more human factors stuff in the future as I go through these airplanes.
I totally get this. I remember reading the autobiography of a Spitfire pilot who was griping about having to switch the control column to his left hand immediately after takeoff to raise the undercart. That's just one example of a bad design. I'm sure there are worse.
Great video! Often overlooked as a topic, but very important!!! It is interesting to note that in the -5 Corsair (not a WWII aircraft) Was often not liked as much as the -4 mainly because it had an early "computer" that would coordinate manifold pressure, throttle, propeller, blower, etc. similar to that of the FW-190, but it was a bit slow to react at times which could put a pilot at risk. While a great idea the technology just wasn't there quite yet to execute it properly...
Great video. You teach me something about the P-47 Thunderbolt pretty much every time you mention it. As we have become more familiar you and I, I'm sure I have mentioned (as if I needed to) that I am not an actual pilot IRL and Spoiler Alert:: I'm not really a WW1 Canadian Aviation War Hero as name sake and avatar would suggest. So its not all that surprising to me that every time I learn what another gauge indicates the better grasp, I have on sim piloting my virtual aircraft from point A to point happy landing or point ball of flame. What has become a bit of an eye opener just recently as well as a bit surprising to put it mildly is that I had any l success at all before learning as much as I have from watching yours, and to a lesser extent other youtubers videos on the subject at hand. To be fair I've had some experience decades ago with PC combat flight sims but none came close to the complexity of the Jug in DCS. Sorry for the long post Ill end with a thank you once again for the lesson. P.S. That sure is a nice shot of the Corsair you have ending the video.
At first blush that P-51 drop tank selector made sense to me and didn't seem backwards. It looks like you move it by grasping the tail of the lever. If running on the left tank moving your hand to the right selects the right tank and the lever tail is to the right. (and vice versa). But then the main tanks would be wrong. They could have at least made them agree with each other.
Greg, do you know of any USN field maintenance crews modifying the -1 Corsairs to remedy accidental emergency gear extension by re-routing the tank? I am curious if there were ever any field modifications to the cockpit, officially from Vought or ad hoc; it appears there were modifications to other areas of the aircraft type during its service. Did strict standardization of layout, due to multiple pilots possibly using the very same aircraft, dictate that field modifications to the cockpit were absolutely forbidden?
In his book on testing the Corsair, Vought test pilot Boone Guyton relates the anger of an old (former?) friend who lost a squadron mate due to accidentally grabbing the wrong cylinder and dropping the landing gear during combat as you described.
I did a paper on human factors in Aerospace Engineering for my senior paper. One of the 3 professors who graded it HATED the idea that Engineering could be influenced by human factors. He scored my paper with the precise lowest score he could give without preventing me from graduating and slapped a comment on it that real Engineering is not impacted by human whims.
So he's one of the guys responsible for crap like a friend's car that has to have the front tires taken off to change the freaking headlights...
I wish I were kidding.
So he was NOT a good professor and NOT a good engineer. A good engineer considers the humans that have to maintain and operate the machinery they’re designing.
@johngregory4801 you have no idea. I had a PZEV Focus that had to have the left wheel and fender liner pulled to change the lifetime sealed AIR FILTER.
@@jacobrzeszewski6527 Engineers - pissing off mechanics and owners without repercussions. 🤬
@@tdhawk7284 Those without a clue, teach.
Kurt Tank, designer of the FW-190 series said "Everything for the pilot". Hence the excellent ergonomics. He also made his planes as easy as possible for ground crew to work on. There are sight guages in the wings to see fuel status, the engine can be removed with just 4 bolts and the list goes on. I guess when you have a very experienced/good aviator who is also a designer this what you get.
Tank was tasked with production of the 109 as demand ramped up so he knew every inch of the 109, so everything he did on the 190 was to avoid the mistakes of the 109, such as the heavily framed canopy, narrow landing gear, small cockpit and a host of other things.
Totall agee, and I think he was sending a message about the landing gear, at least.@@michaelbevan3285
Martin Baker added to "everything for the pilot" with "and don't forget the maintenance/ground crew" when designing the MB5. I've an old monograph lying around somewhere detailing the lengths the company went to to ease the pilot/maintenance burden - for example, the covers over the ammo bays had seats built into their interiors for the loaders to be able to more comfortably (and quickly!) reload the guns when they were flipped open. Now that's a GOOD engineer.... :)
Another problem with no cockpit floor: Frank Tallman wrote about an aerobatics routine in a Corsair where everything either dropped or forgotten in the belly of the airplane fell into the canopy the first time he went inverted, including a half eaten apple, a half inch wrench, a copy of the pilot's handbook, and a dead mouse.
😂
An old A&P told me of his first flight in a Navy SNJ trainer back when he was brand new. He was being ferried to a location to fix another downed trainer in 1945. The pilot, a young hot shot, decided it would be cool to do some aerobatics with the young mechanic. He looped the plane, the mechanic's tool box went right through the floor, and they were forced to bail out of the critically damaged aircraft!
I was told a story when I worked at McDonnell Douglas in St Louis in the 1990s that during WWII Curtis Wright pilots first maneuver in new airplanes was to roll inverted with canopy open to let FOD fall out. Don't have any way to validate that story, but it seems plausible.
For human factors and general flyability, a look at the Blackburn Botha should be worthwhile. That immortal report: "Climbing into this aircraft is difficult. It ought to be made impossible."
A land version of the Botha would be the Vickers Valiant tank. Used for decades in tank school as a lesson on "how not to design a tank".
:-D
Many aircraft of this era had cockpit layouts that were "user hostile".
Yup, some of the Soviet stuff seems to be trying to kill the pilots.
It would be fun to see someone do a WW2 cockpit layout tier list
My favorite hostile controls are the big garden spigot handles common in 30s soviet designs.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles
I can't wait until the Soviet cockpit layout video then!
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles
G'day,
I suspect that the British regarded "higgledy piggledy"
Cockpit Layouts as being governed by economic convenience and ease of construction for the Builder - and if the Pilot or other Aircrew
Can manage to View and access and operate the
User-Interface of such items and Systems..., then that'll be fine - not quite ideal perhaps, but not any kind of a problem requiring redesign and rectification.
In fact such quirks were often thought of as being
Character-building..., and
Instructors could "grade" a pupil's skill-level and progress by how well (or badly) they coped with the inbuilt difficulties...
The Spitfire Undercarriage Up/Down Selector on the extreme Right side of the Panel, comes to mind ; changing hands on the Stick to use the Right hand on that Selector Switch generally caused bit of a
"Wobblie", when climbing over the Fence.
Experience made the observable Wobblie shrink in amplitude, with practice ; and anyone who failed to lock the Friction Nut on the Throttle could find their Throttle vibrating back towards Idle, as their Left Hand moved over onto the Stick (!).
Camel Pilots used to learn how to fly with the Stick held between their Knees - any time 2 hands were required to do anything else while airborne...
It was still a thing, in 1981; in that before being cleared to fly in an IS-28 (Czechoslovakian built entry-level Aluminium Sailplane), I was taken up in a particular Airframe which had had it's Ailerons recently re-covered - and the Fabric had been "over-doped", and thus had shrunk slightly too much, resulting in
Under-Cambered
Ailerons...
Bilaterally symmetrical, but
Equally slightly the wrong
Aerofoil - both sides.
Which meant that there was a
"Dead-Spot" in Roll-Control,
Whenever the Stick was
Central...
One could deflect the Stick about 5 mm (1/5 of an inch ?)
Either side and get no response...; but if one went another 2 mm further (1/4 of an Inch all up), then the Ailerons acted as if they had Servo-Tabs on them & they
"Snatched" and tried to go to
Full-Deflection...
Which took a bit of getting used to.
Part of the Briefing was looking at the "correct" Aileron Undersurfaces, on the one which I had been flying, dual & solo ; before being observed from the back seat while figuring out how to fly smoothly, with the deceptively
Twitchy Ailerons....
I found them to be interesting but not scary, and for the next 3 days ; that was "my" Sailplane..., my final flight in it was a 2:13 Solo, bringing me to about 15 hrs Unpowered... after two 5-day weeks, starting off with Ab-Initio at a commercial Soaring Centre (Narromine, NSW).
Eccentric Aeroplanes may actually be perceived as being rather
"More fun"
to fly... ; than are some
Thoroughly de-fanged, well-mannered, and politely
Modern
Consumer-friendly
Designs...,
Once their eccentricities have
Bin-Mastered (!).
So it is said, and I don't disagree.
Anyway,
For a bit of a giggle, you might consider backtracking me to my Videos to see,
"Pilot Debrief Versus TH-cam ; The WarblesOnALot Analysis..."
I've rarely if ever seen a sense of successful greedy self-entitlement manage to
Snooker itself so rapidly and so suddenly.
The bloke who got all his Flying Licences in the Military, at Taxpayer expense, now flying for the Airlines - didn't want to pay Income Tax as a private CitiZen (!?!), so he told YT that he was
Incorporating himself to become a
Limited Liability
Dodo-Eater...
And they demonetised him, totally. Then when he appealed he was told that he stays demonetised for 35 days while they ponder his temerity...
Lesson learned, eh, what (?) ;
Pay thy Taxes,
CitiZen...;
Do not attempt to
Incorporate
One's YT Channel.
Apparently.
I had quite some fun trying to explain it all to my viewers, and also to poor young
Mister SuckBroom ("Hoover"...!).
If he hadn't blocked me, then he wouldn't have merited a dedicated Video ; when he's currently running around, clueless as to what he did to trigger YT into that response, and I'm the mangy-looking recovering Zombie who could (perhaps ?) enlighten him.
Ah well, such is life.
Today is my father's 115th birthday, if he hadn't died in 1982 (!).
Have a good one,
Stay safe....
;-p
Ciao !
As someone who used to teach human physiology, I think your description of the inner ear problem was nicely done. Nothing inaccurate, but obviously very simplified. I remember a while back, I think it was the FAA had a simulator that rotated as an educational tool for this very issue. They demonstrated how the pilot was just fine until they had him or her lean their head forward quickly: instant disorientation.
That's funny you would mention that machine. It was called the Vertigon, and I flew it at the Reno Air Races in the early 1990s. The FAA had it set up there and it was free to try. I did pretty well in it because at the time I was flying a lot of single pilot IFR, no autopilot so I was really strong on the gauges. I almost talked about this in the video. Oh, and I saw Dreadnought there too.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles Hi Greg, there is a P-47M with a well restored original cockpit. I did photos for the owner of many of their airplanes, and would share these for your use. Don’t want to post my email address… maybe you can provide contact method privately?
@@briansilcox5720 there is an Email is listed in this video description above.
Maybe host the photos online and link them over.
The human balance system is an adaptation of an earlier version designed to avoid falling out of trees. It's a miracle we can walk and chew gum at the same time.
Don't get me started on the pelvis.
Hear hear!
As a truck driver I know that ergonomics have a huge factor to do with fatigue when you operate machinery for long hours and my favorite trucks to drive have been determined by the ergonomics of the cab switch and gauge layouts as well as foot well room shifter location ect
About 2 years ago there was an article in a British aviation magazine (The name escapes me.) by the chief test pilot at Grumman. During the war the navy had Grumman and Vought trade an F6F and a Corsair to improve each type. Grumman was to study the F4U to increase the power from the R-2800 and lighten the aileron forces in a roll. Vought was to study the F6F for ease of maintenance and to improve COCKPIT LAYOUT! Looks like Vought might have learned something from Grumman.
They did, but they learned even more from Focke Wulf.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobilesEveryone seems to have learned from Fock Wulf. The FW-190 wasn’t the best fighter of the war performance wise, especially as the war continued, but it really did well on the ‘boring’ bits😅
Corky Meyer.
Greg's method of scanning the instruments is pretty much the Old Spice meme. "I'm the attitude indicator. Now look at the altimeter now back to me. Now the VSI now back to me..."
I'm not the only one waiting for "I'm on a horse"
That's very tiring for long periods of time, as in cruise. There, I think a circular scan across the instruments is better. Also it works easier with non standard instrument layouts.
LOL!
Ah yes - Old Spice's racist ad campaign. Hope that went well for them.
🤣
I wish my father was still around to comment on this work. He started designing in the mid 1930s and saw a lot of this stuff. He had worked his way through Univ. of Ill by working the line in International Harvester factory and appreciated "thoughtful" design. In his early days he would come up with a design idea and then go on the line to show it to fabricatiors and mechanics to get feedback on how hard it would be to make and maintain things. He really enjoyed that team interaction and was not happy with the way things had changed by the time he retired.
Very similar to time-and-motion studies.
I was taught in college that human factors was recognized in WWII when they realized that the placement of the gauges in different positions on the training aircraft as they progressed to the ones that they would use in combat was causing accidents when under stress they reverted to what position they first learn and were using the wrong information. By standardizing the position of the critical gauges their eyes were in the cockpit for a shorter duration.
According to the pilots at VWC this was a common problem when transitioning from the Harvard to the P-40. The Harvard's landing gear control is a standard position selection lever, but the P-40's selects the direction of motion of the landing gear. If you forget to put the P-40's landing gear control back in the neutral position after lowering the gear, the struts won't actually lock in the down position. In that state if you touch the brakes on landing the gear will fold back and dump the plane onto its nose.
P 38 cockpit layout would be interesting as well due to all long distance flying in the Pacific pilots had to do
I remember reading how the P-38 was particularly difficult to transition from cruise configuration to combat, in think it had to do with the engine management being rather difficult to hurry through
@@scullystie4389 Gun sight on, Gun heater on, fuel selector to primary tank, dump the drop tanks, mixture to auto rich, rpm to combat power, throttle to combat power. But being a twin engine fighter most of that stuff is X2. And I don't know if it was all period aircraft or if the Lightning was particularly sensitive to this but you do that out of order and the engines quit, or worse blow up
Apparently it got REAL chilly in there...
@@spindash64yes, all those actions while not necessarily being able to feel your fingers. There were a whole load of other human factors of this sort, like needing to always be on oxygen in a Typhoon to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning or the P-39 filling up with cannon fumes. Or trying to juggle cannon ammunition drums in a Beaufighter.
@@GMdrivingMOPARguy from what I read, some air groups actually forego dropping drop tank as they considered endurance was far more important than performance in Pacific
Although not instrument related, I read an article on all of the different steps it took to switch a P-38 from cruise mode to be ready for combat. The point was that to took a significant amount of time to be ready to fight if the P-38 pilot suddenly saw an enemy plane closing on him and it was easy to miss a step. It involved dropping tanks, switching fuel source and changing the mixtures for the engines. In one of the interviews of a P-38 pilot, he noted that he had forgotten to properly switch to internal tanks and his engines died just before he shot down a German plane. The pilot joked that he was the only pilot to ever shoot down an enemy fighter from a glider.
That was Robin Olds.
@@themadinspector Thanks, I thought it was either Olds or Yeager, but it has been a long time since I saw the show where it was discussed.
I found the article I mentioned. It is on an Australian site and titled: "Der Gabelschwanz Teufel
Assessing the Lockheed P-38 Lightning"
I wonder if this difficulty in prepping the P-38 to fight was the reason Tommy McGuire decided to break his own rule and not get rid of his drop tanks in the fight where he was killed.
@@jfess1911
Another P-38 pilot who was really too tall for that small cockpit, told of a situation in the ETO where he had stretched out his feet BEHIND the rudder pedals while in cruise. One tank suddenly ran dry, one engine quit, and the plane rolled off toward the dead engine while the rudder pedal slammed down on his foot trapping it! Both his feet were blocked UNDER the rudder pedals while the now single engine plane went over on its back into a spin! By the time he could recover., he was dealing with the infamous P-38 compressibility problems, so he's lucky to have survived!
@@fazole In the article I referenced, the author said he witnessed 4 p-38's that took no evasive action after being "bounced" and were shot down. He suspected that the pilots were too busy re-configuring the controls to save themselves.
I recall another story regarding the poor placement of the headphones connector. One pilot who had bailed out in the PTO remained tethered to his plummeting plane for a while by this cord.
Apparently Lockheed had developed numerous improvements but was told by the Powers That Be to not shut down production to change the tooling, parts and processes.
Early on in this video you mentioned Diego Garcia. I've been there many times and the only time I've experienced vertigo was taking off from there on a cloudy night and we had to do an air turn back shortly after takeoff. I'm a flight mechanic so nothing drastic happened except I lost where we were at. So from that experience early on in my career I learned a valuable lesson. Keep your eyes on the instruments. Yes, your flight mechanic also watches flight instruments and engine indications, unless he's not very good at his job.
Preach it, bro! I got the leans a few times in the C-130, but that's not a big deal in the flight engineer seat. The pilots were still doing fine, so no issues.
I heard on british airplanes like the Spitfire the cockpit layout was more of the chaos type, "oops, we have still another lever forgotten, where is a gap?"
But the best for the "human factor" is in the Mosquito - a rubber tube with a funnel at the end for "excretive" resource management.
And on the BMW 801-Fw 190s, I heard that a real change was that you just had one throttle lever, no mixture control you had to tune constantly.
The fuel injection system had an outright mechanical computer with multiple parameters that were processed "automatically".
I know, that will be handled in a future video anyhow ..
I've been waiting for a video about this in some form after you brought it up with the Fw 190 series about just how much better the 190 was laid out compared to it's contemporaries. It was a relatively subdued part of the video but it was something that I definitely thought merited a deeper look.
The more I've learned about human factors with work (A&P) the more it's helped with finding the flow of things to make life easier, like how to set up the 787 cockpit for expedient maintenance.
I get a paid snowday off from work, my son visiting, and a Greg video in the same day!!! Enough said. 😊
Just operating the engine of a WW2 era aircraft was crazy complicated and changed depending on your priorities, altitude, speed, need for long perm reliability, and other factors. Charles Lindberg was able to teach pilots to greatly economize their fuel usage (resulting in greater range) in the Pacific theater towards the end of WW2.
In modern military aviation, a lot of attention is given to 'Cognitive Load'. Making it easy to do the right thing results in people doing the right thing more regularly.
This is where the engine management in the FW-190 stood apart. The pilot only had to set the desired "thrust" and the mechanical computer took care of the rest. Mostly. 😊
Lindbergh taught them to go against their training and set the propeller pitch to 1900 RPM and manifold pressure left at cruise power, which went against normal practise. This meant that the P38 cruised at a much slower speed than normal but used far less fuel, especially when they leaned the mixture according to his instructions. The Japanese were already doing this with the Zero.
I remember watching a documentary years ago about an RAF officer who was given the job of investigating accidents during WWII, and he said that there were twice as many planes lost to accidents as there were from enemy action.
That's probably about right.
😮 Certainly true in the case of the Bf-109.
I doubt that is remotely the case for the Spitfire Mk.II as it was far easier to maneuver and land.
More US pilots were lost in training than in combat. They were 19 or 20 yr olds given 2000hp hotrods! Ira Kepler of VF-17, Jolly Rogers fame used to fly his Corsair upside down and run trucks off the road!
Excellent review Greg…as a student pilot I get what you are telling. Lot’s to learn here too. Loved it. I have been through so many books on WWII aircraft and all the analog instruments they had. A far cry from the Garmin Flatscreens these days. But we are still trained to fly without them and navigate on a chart and with the classic E6-B Flight Computer…just like the old days. I am early sixties now and finally got around getting my Licence…still having problems fitting that big grin on my face in the cockpit..love it!
Congrats and welcome to the club! I still remember the first time I lifted the nose and the plane left the ground.
@@jaym8027 Yep first solo is awesome...first solo landing...greased it...by coincidence a big social in the evening...it felt as if I was celebrating my birthday!
A great addition to add to these examples of ergonomics would be the P-40. The cockpit of a P-40 reminds me of a utility room in an old house, a maze of pipes and valves scattered at random.
Lots of stuff on the P-40 were a direct reflection of the aircraft design ethics of the early 1930s.
It was ridiculously hard to deal with its myriad of silly complexities, which probably got a lot of airmen in trouble and which made the aircraft much less combat-efficient than it could have been.
I haven't watched more than ten seconds of this, but just had to say that as soon as I heard the line "Hi there, this is Greg" I am like a kid before Christmas... I know that the next forty four minutes and thirty six seconds will be a sheer delight for me.
Thanks for the best videos on TH-cam Greg!
Can relate, hearing that first line is always great.
Human factors was a class I had to take in the process of getting my A&P, a very serous topic.
Someone at Republic saw this video. I understand the cockpit layout of the F-105 was considered to be one of the best for the time. In fact F-4 pilots preferred the Thud cockpit to the Phantom cockpit. The debate is just as skewed in favor of the Phantom in terms of flying characteristics. And I've heard it said the F-15 fixed this layout issue from pilots who converted to the Eagle. And they hadn't mentioned the Heads Up Display yet.
From reading "Thud Ridge", I recall that the F-105 cockpit filled with jet fuel fumes while refueling. I also read that Vietnam era pilots SMOKED in their cockpits!
A very interesting topic. There are so many points to consider when talking about combat equipment. Performance is generally what people look at, but there are so many more topics. This is a really important topic. It does not matter if you have the most powerfull fighter of all time, if you can not see anything because the canopy is all fogged up.
Another important topics is flight vs service hours. If you can not keep your fighters in the air, you will loose.
Another related topic is ease of service. How quick and easy is it to do service and battle damage repairs.
Then the most important thing in any war, logistics. How quickly can you get spare parts, how much is interchangable between different planes.
Ammo, how many different weapons do you use on your planes? Coolants, lubrications, different type of oils do you have. One detail, spark plugs, how many different type spark plugs did the us army air core stock?
American pilots were given a basic scan of "Needle, Ball, Airspeed" if they inadvertantly flew into cloud. It was the onset of mass mobilisation for war that prompted a huge increase in proper instrument flight training, because of the consequent soaring loss rate in training. Hence, every available flight school was enroled into the Flight training system and huge amounts of things like Link Trainers were built.
The Mustang's fuse tank gauge sounds pretty good for the guy filling it.
The pilot would burn it first until the engine stumbled or fuel pressure fluctuated then consider it empty for the remainder of flight.
I've thought about this topic almost every day since the P-39 video when it was mentioned that one pilot liked it because it was easy to get in and out of the cockpit. Great concept for a full video.
The guys flying these things weren't in air-to-air combat every day, but they did have to take-off, land and navigate every day. Ergonomics would have been top of mind.
Not so easy to get out of in flight, I thought. Certainly, early Typhoons were not easy.
@@wbertie2604That's why the P-39's door was able to be jettisoned in an emergency. Ideally to get out you'd trim the aircraft for straight and level flight (or glide), roll out of the cockpit and slide off the wing.
@@martijn9568 with the Beaufighter you folded down the seat and slid out of the floor. Unless you were carrying bombs. Oops.
@@wbertie2604 Yeah, the Beaufighter and most WW2 bombers were really bad to bail out of.
@@martijn9568 Blenheim gunners rarely got out as the turret was in their way until Bristol changed it fairly late on.
Greg, having watched nearly all of your presentations, you always show that you are blessed with the ability to communicate whichever subject chosen. Thanks for doing what few other classroom type clinics are; the difference is that you stay on point, not wavering to teach and demonstrate everything said.
Many of those tiny switches were activated while wearing heavy gloves.
Great again Gregg .I don't know how you have the time to go into so much detail great job
Another gem Greg. Your research, presentation and style are second to none. I’m particularly interested in WW2 Japanese aircraft and your presentations on those got me hooked on your channel. Kudos Sir !
Also as a follow up , I am 59 years old and when I looked at the thumbnail I thought that guy on the right wing was looking at his iPhone lol
Thanks, and that's funny. We all see things through the prism of our own experiences.
Excellent vid Greg. Thank you. Engineers design aircraft for performance numbers, and as far as I can tell after many years as an A&P, they completely ignore the fact that the damn things will have to be maintained or repaired.
I agree, and I think it's true to an even greater extent with cars.
I am ABSOLUTELY here for a human factors conversation!!!!
That makes me happy. I didn't expect many people to care about this topic, I just felt it had to covered.
This is an extremely important topic. Human factors are not only ergonomics related, but also psychological.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles I have a beautiful black/white photo of my grandfather in front of his F4U-4. I am trying to get into aviation because of him, and so I want it ALL!!!
I towed gliders for a club back around twenty years ago, now. There were some fascinating older guys in the club at the time. One gentleman had worked for Vought and had been involved in the landing gear design for the F4U. How I wish I had known enough to ask him about the placement of the emergency blow down valve. Thanks for another in a long line of fascinating videos, Greg.
Eric Browns Book about german fighters he flew is very interesting regarding cockpit layouts. He highly praised the FW190 and ME262 with lots of insider informations. Looking forward to your vids 👌👍♥️
I’m not an engineer, aviator or anything professional like that but I love your videos. They’re obviously very technical most of the time but still even I feel like I can understand 95% of the time during the technical stuff.
More DCS Greg. Your commentary is an excellent learning tool. My air battles have changed a fair bit by your commentaries teaching the strengths and weaknesses and I get shot down less. A P-47 commentary on the K-14 would be good now you've done the Dora Gyro sight. I know the principal is similar but you might have a better gauge on the nuances of it.
Thank you so much for these videos. It's not hyperbole to say you're probably one of a very very few who actual make videos on human factors like this and even a smaller amount that do it in WW2 aircraft AND in the style you do.
I'm appreciative and grateful for your videos.
Greg, have you ever thought about making videos about the development and effectiveness of the Yak-3 or Yak-9U? I would love to see you get into the nitty gritty on those airplanes
I'll finish my IL2 series and then consider if it's worth it to cover the Soviet stuff any further.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles I see, that makes sense. Thanks for your continuous and detailed uploads! There’s no other aviation channel like yours
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles Please do. Convergent/Divergent design philosophies are fascinating.
Fuel selectors on the P-38 were just like the P-47. Many field modifications often confused the situation even more, especially when non standard.
I like all the videos on this channel so much. Watching these videos over the years has given me a new appreciation for pilots and aero engineers, especially for the pioneers of the industry.
I actually watched this in 1440 resolution on my phone, couldn't believe the detail, simply amazing. Great video by the way👍
Awesome video! It's so great to just get beyond numbers on a page, with max speed, ceiling, range, etc. to find out the subtle things that makes one plane better than another.
Really makes you wonder what a commitment to ergonomics could have done to make any given aircraft a better performer.
I especially liked your answer to which is better P51/P47. I've answered questions similarly, "Are you asking a front line user or a rare echelon general".
Thanks for your videos as always Greg. Learning these things about the some of the main fighter aircraft of WW2 is interesting as well as showing the differences in cockpit configuration. I always go back to the statement of some fighter pilots recalling what combat was like speaking of how normal turns into adrenaline charged, snap decisions, and flying is done from a deep, automated responses. Speaking about tasks needed, even in standard level flight, and then add the task of setting a receiver/transmitter, sending a message to base or controllers with the use of a morse key mounted on a knee board and I would assume a pencil/note pad for receiving messages in earlier years of flying. This puts another level concentration for the pilots to do while flying. Pretty sure even fighter pilots of Vietnam era and later had to have a working knowledge of morse/CW.
There's a great video on how to operate the turbosupercharger on the P-47 on Zeno's Warbird Drive-in. It's "P-47 Thunderbolt Aerobatics & High Altitude Flight - 1943 Restored." Classic WWII stuff. In searching for that one, I saw your video on "P-47 Thunderbolt Pt. 1A Throttle and Boost Lever Use." I'll have to watch that one again. And, while we're at it, how about assembling your own P-47 out on the back 40? Here it is: "How to assemble a P-47 Thunderbolt Fighter in a field with unpowered hand tools (Restored -1944)."
@13:30- talking about the "Heading Indicator"- it may be because I'm a submariner and I'm used to "instrument flying" as an everyday skill driving a submarine, but the "heading indicator" illustrated here and described by Greg isn't confusing to me at all. When looking at the compass heading being displayed I can literally see where we're at on the compass rose. Granted, it's not visually displayed on the panel, but I can visualize a heading from a call-out relative to my current heading and know whether a port or starboard turn would get onto that bearing faster.
Awesome! Would love to see this done for others like the P-38, P-39, P-40, F6F.
Great points.
I know nothing about aircraft but being a lifelong motorcyclist and one-time professional mechanic, I 100% get it.
If the controls are set up for left-handed people, then they're not ideal for the majority of right-handed people.
When you are talking about split second reactions, and absolute control it matters.
Royal Enfield 650 motorcycles have a speedo designed for style. It's white faced and almost impossible to read.
The A6M2 cluster looks very nice, it's all neatly laid out and easy to look at everything.
I didn't get into the Japanese stuff, but the short version is that the Japanese Navy had it together. The Japanese Army didn't.
Wasn't the Oscar just as good as the Zero?
Yes, artificial horizons, which Army plane lacked, are welcomed addition in heavy cloudy conditions.
@@offshoretomorrow3346Maneuver wise, yes, armament wise, no, It had only 2 machine guns on the engine deck and no wing guns. It might be due to thin wings.
I've been looking forward to this one since you first mentioned it. It's an important but largely overlooked factor in an aircraft's efficiency.
Great video. 👍. I've kind of been waiting for it. I've always wondered if the layout of the North American Texan T-6 (which was their advanced trainer) helped pilots that transitioned into the P51 Mustang. Also, I wonder where the Hellcat is in this mix. So many pilots really raved about the Hellcat.
Greg, I haven't flown in a long time now but I used an instrument scan just like yours and it worked well. I found that during some manoeuvres I would scan a particular periphery gauge more often than the others but always coming back to the AH. I remember that learning instrument flying was a particularly tiring process as it took sustained concentration on long flights, I can't imagine how difficult it must have been for low hours pilots with less than ideal instrument layouts in WW2 combat conditions!
I’m glad you covered the layout of the P-47. In either 1944 or 45 my father had been flying P-39 & P-40’s. Either during or shortly after P-47 training, he reached to retract the flaps while taxing in after landing. He accidentally grabbed the gear handle, retracting the gear causing a prop strike. He was fined $100.
He said that the gear & flap handles were opposite of what he was accustomed to.
Yup, a lack of cockpit standardization was a big problem back then. Retracting the gear on the ground was actually pretty common because of it.
Our multi-engine aircraft started putting all dial gauges so the normal operating range all pointed up, so a pilot could scan for problems.
The Germans added the multi-throttle control. The US standardized on lever styles (round disk for throttle, airfoil for flaps...).
Years ago I saw a motivational poster with an aviation theme. I don't even remember the picture, it was probably an instrument panel. But, I still remember the message. " Instrument flying is what happens when your mind gets a full grasp on the concept that there is vision beyond sight."
Chuck Yeager in his autobiography reported that when he got to fly all the German fighters as a test pilot right after the war that the only one that could hold a candle to the P-51 was the Fw190. The reason was the excellent human factors deliberately engineered into the 190 cockpit. The 190 chief designer Kurt Tank was a test pilot and a design engineer who understood he was trying to maximize the performance of the combined system of aircraft and pilot. Greg, great job here and in your superprop series in explaining that.
Good post, and thanks for your kind words.
Would love to see more cockpit design videos like this! One for the British planes would be awesome 🙂
Superb job, Greg! In-depth as always.
Fantastic content. Your deep dive into the P 47 Thunderbolt was a tour de force. Would you be interested in producing some videos on Italian aircraft from WW2. This subject has been grossly overlooked. Keep the great work.
I read somewhere, that early in WWII, they were grounding a lot of pilots due to accidents. To reduce that number, they did a study, and found things like two nearly identical switches, side by side, one for landing gear, and one for flaps. They changed the ergonomics, and lost fewer pilots and planes.
That's why today, you don't see rows of identical knobs in cars anymore.
Another great video greg. One of the first planes i know of whose design took ergonomics seriously was the martin baker mb5. It remained a prototype only. Martin Baker is a fascinating company to go down a rabbit hole to if you're looking for a few days work. The post war Saab aircraft were also pretty good, something they extended to their cars.
An interesting topic for a video or book would be the high accident rate, non combat losses, beginning in the inter war period to the 1960s. When seeing statistics for non combat loses the numbers are truly staggering. The wide range of factors that influenced these losses and how the accident rate finally declined would be a great story.
I believe there were around 8 HUNDRED crash deaths in the Gloster Meteor alone. (Known as the Meat Box) Horrific.
Finnish Air Force found that British sprinkled controls with non what so ever logic. Flying Blenheim needed almost circus body distortion movements. Our German planes were 1 or 2 generation ahead. There had been actual carefull thought how controls and instruments were situated.
I pilot ROVs, one of the first time I dove with no viz, I was so focused on following the cable detector that I ended up crabbing at 25deg - so that was quick free lesson… But that was nothing, I had a pilot somehow end up at 90deg next to the product because they tried following the camera in mixed viz conditions, total loss of spacial awareness. And that’s at 250m per hour.
So yeah, instrument positioning and setup is primordial, also learning to dive using only instruments is extremely important. The visibility from outside should be a backup - not the other way.
From 'inside'?
@@offshoretomorrow3346 Outside, as in the 3 to 8 cameras outside the ROV.
But yeah, form inside the control van... Brain hurts now, your fault.
On the side topic of which of the P-51 or the P-47 was the best fighter, my opinion perfectly aligns on Greg's conclusion. I'm glad I met a man of great wisdom. 😎
Glad to hear from you again, interesting and informative as always
Absolutely hit the nail on the head with the P-47 vs P-51 debate when it comes to pilot perspective vs military acquisitions. I'm really curious where you would place the P-38 and its later war upgrades compared to the P-51? I'm biased and I love the P-38, the P-38k would have been a real monster, Its real downfall is it's extraordinarily more expensive compared to a P-51, the P-51 was good because it was cost effective, like a MiG-21 during the cold war.
I know he's commented before, accurately, that the P-38 was designed in the 1930s and many features were finalized immediately before certain revelatory NACA papers that influenced later designs. The Lightning had great performance and was a terrific heavy fighter, but should be considered under the "of its time" label where it was quickly being surpassed by newer designs. Like the P-40 and B-17, the P-38 was an older workhorse that remained relevent throughout the war but were retired almost immediately after.
The P-51 was not a particularly revolutionary plane, mostly it just took advantage of the best design practices of the new decade, but this meant it was a very modern plane when compared to older designs like the P-38. On top of excellent performance (eventually) and cost efficiency, the sheer quantity of small advances in the Mustang outweigh any niche advantages for the Lightning.
@@ChrisSmith-mi2zo See, I don't agree with that at all, the performance of the P-38 was far superior to that of the P-40 for instance, with a much greater climb rate, top speed and armaments, and the K variant even out performed the P-47 and P-51. As well as having fantastic lift capacity for carrying bombs (P-38H carried over 1,000lbs more bombs than a P-47). The P-38 wasn't of its time, it was far ahead of its time, it was like the F-22 of its era. The real downfall of the P-38 and why it was stopped while the P-51 and other aircraft lived on is simple cost. You could build far more P-51 compared to P-38 and it was half as expensive to maintain them too, with only 1 engine per aircraft.
The P-38 cost over twice as much as a P-51 to produce. The late war P-38 could and did out perform the P-51 but it just wasn't justifiably cost effective to produce. The P-38K for instance had 2 engines Allison V-1710-75/77 (F15R/L) powerplants rated at 1,875 bhp each. That's 3750 bhp, which pushed the P-38 test platform to 432mph, and its top speed was estimated to be in excess of 450. On top of this it would have had a incredible bomb lift capacity. "The initial climb rate was 4,800 ft (1,500 m)/min and the ceiling was 46,000 ft (14,000 m). It reached 20,000 ft (6,100 m) in five minutes flat; this with a coat of camouflage paint, which added weight and drag." If you're not aware of the numbers comparatively to other fighters of the time, the P-38K was faster in top speed and climb rate to virtually all other allied fighters of the time.
Not surprisingly too the two top American aces of the war Majors Richard I. "Dick" Bong and Thomas B. "Tommy" McGuire both flew P-38.
The P-38 was revolutionary, and incorporated the best of the best of its time. It also paved the way for Turbocharged fighters, hydraulic boosted control surfaces, compressibility considerations. Plus utilized the best concepts of the day like constant speed propellers, inline liquid cooled engines, tricycle gear, concentrated heavy firepower. Etc.
It was a world beater. And could easily match or beat anything in the sky at any given time in the war. BY THE NUMBERS. But it was exceedingly difficult to fight with and rarely performed at its best.
A common issue in Europe was pilots would be frostbitten and numb by the time they reached Germany at altitude. They would get bounced, as they were in long-range cruise configuration and relatively slow. The process to reconfigure to combat ready was so long and laborious, the P-38 pilots would be shot down before they reacted.
These were ALL human factor related, and not performance related. Kelly Johnson learned and gravitated toward Simplicity and re-use of components and even designs. "Never re-invent anything that isn't necessary" ~ Kelly Johnson.
And keep in Mind. The P-80 Shooting Star was the first frontline jet fighter in history. It flew into the last days of WWII in 1945.
And that distinctive fuselage, nose, and cockpit still fly on the U2 spy plane. Not only that, they built new models in the 1990s. So it's one of the newest and oldest airplanes in the USAF inventory. *Edit, P-80 was the first frontline US jet fighter* naturally the 262 and Meteor beat it by weeks and months.
The P 38 had lethal dive characteristics until eventually sorted out.
Greg. I've seen a document in some book that originated from the Test Pilots at Boscombe Down as a consequence of more than a few taxiing and flying accidents, simply due to a haphazard instrument layout. When pilots are jumping from one plane to another and each have the primary instruments in a different place causing hesitation and sometimes confusion.
This letter, written in 1941 I believe, recommended all new aircraft to have a ''standard T'' instrument layout (which is shown in your video).
Your scan method is used by most British rotary pilots afaik, though there's not many aircraft left with the old analogue instruments, which is a pity. p.s. I vaguely remember the book might have been one written by Captain Eric Brown (RN).
My father was a human factors engineer for much of his career, starting as screener for bomber pilots at Ent AFB in Colorado Springs during WW2 as a member of the Army Air Corps. He later worked for ESD (Ross Perot), Raytheon, and TRW.
FASCINATING to see Greg's analysis of German instruments!!
An interesting topic for a video or book would be the high accident rate, non combat losses, beginning in the inter war period to the 1960s. When seeing statistics for non combat loses the numbers are truly staggering. The wide range of factors that influenced these losses and how the accident rate finally declined would be a great story.
Human Factors are important in aircraft maintenance too, entire chapter on it in Noland and Heap. I wonder how many planes and pilots were lost due to maintenance errors. ME 109 is great example of airplane design with maintenance as critical factor, maybe overkill vis landing gear.
Took a "Design for Manufacture Course" where it was drilled into us that if it could be assembled incorrectly, it would be assembled incorrectly at some point. Good design allows things to only go together one way.
@@fafner1 *" Good design allows things to only go together one way. "* I remember reading about a part that had a protruding pin to do just that. The accident report found the pin had been sawed off so the part could be installed incorrectly!
I've seen an M1 Garand fire out of battery which should be impossible due to the design of the firing pin. When we found all the parts, someone had ground off the l-shaped tail that prevented such a thing from happening. @@feathermerchant
Greg, I want you to know that your videos fascinate me while simultaneously boring me to tears. Make of that what you will
Replay at 1.25x
The overhead photo of the P47, with the pilot sitting in it, is one of the best photos showing just huge that air plane was. It was a monster fighter, and, in my opinion, maybe the best of the war.
As always Greg, this was fascinating. The subject of ergonomics for WW II machinery is somehow mentioned in few books, but never really covered. Being an aviation enthusiast since childhood and private pilot, I was quite surprised when I had a look at Bf-109G and Spitfire mk IX cockpits in our aviation museum. With 188cm and rather strong built I wouldn't even get into the Messerschmidt, in Spitfire even if I got in I'd rather not be able to move the controls. Ju 52 on the other hand seemed quite manageable ;)
11:26 The P-47D (with a big "B4" painted in the cowling) from the Brazilian Air Force Museum (MUSAL), still have its original WWII instrument panel. And its is kept in flying condition.
Welcome back! And well done, as usual. I've never been in the cockpit, obviously, but my dad flew an F4U-4 from January 1945 to just past the end of the war as the engineering officer of VBF-150. They were training - a lot - for the upcoming Operation Downfall, which became unnecessary with the Japanese surrender. I'm happy to see you address the ergonomics issue - even in primitive flight/combat sims (I'm a survivor of two different Hellcat sims), and as a civilian, I could see that instrument placement was important. Moreover, since you're a car guy, too, you're certainly aware that there are very good reasons why IndyCar and F1 and NASCAR and "Legend" cars have their instruments on or in front of the steering wheel. Having to take your eye off the road course at 180 mph, just like taking being distracted in a Corsair or Mustang at a similar speed, could quickly prove fatal. Flying those planes in real life is a challenging task. Finally, my own limited warbird experience was half an hour in the front seat of a T6. The flying part was great, but a T6 lacks a floor, too, and I found that very disconcerting.
God bless you for talking about this, human factors and setting up my workflow so that I am less likely to screw up under pressure occupies way more of my time and brain than I like to admit.
Like the p38 layout in sims. Never a pain to find what im looking for. Would love your input to its cockpit.
The P-38 incorporated an innumerable list of good ideas crammed into one aircraft. It was also a world beater in performance. But not often in practice.
Another fine episode Greg. Thanks for sharing Your time and efforts.
Best Wishes to You and Your Family.
Fascinating stuff as usual, Greg. From my own experience, Lockheed made the flight engineer panel of the C-130 a lot more intuitive when they redesigned it between the E model and the H3.
For your future cockpit reviews, I'd love to learn about the layouts of the P-38, Mosquito variants (bomber, recon, fighter-bomber, and night fighter) and the Grumman 'Cats.
Fascinating presentation...thank you.
One minor quibble, I would have like to have seen you include the P-38 as well. Given its very specific mission set, it would have made a fascinating comparison to the other three aircraft.
That's a fair complaint and actually quite a compliment. You're saying the video was good but needed more. There will be more, I make new videos all the time, and I do have a bit of P-38 stuff up already.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles Outstanding! Please do not consider my comment a complaint in any way, however. Your fine work leaves me hungry for more, and in this case more context!
Woohoo! A new video from Greg!! Thank you!
Thanks for putting out another interesting video Greg.
Ergo is so important. To put it into a motorsport analogy, the Ford GT40 that beat the Ferrari factory at Le Mans in 66 was a very comfortable car for a racecar according to several racers who raced it, and in an endurance race (somewhat like a long air mission though to a far lesser degree, of course) that helped immensely with reducing driver fatigue which meant less chance of missing a shift or making a mistake, and also having more in reserve if one needed to drive 10/10ths if the competition was right there with you.
Hello Greg, not related to your topic but I am finishing up "Sustaining the carrier war" by Naval Institute Press. Its very interesting in seeing how the US Navy worked to sustained the increasing size of naval aviation and may warrant a video. Possibly a collab with someone from the naval side. This video was pretty good, thank you for bringing the topic to light. Cheers
We just need the F4U module to release for DCS so we can compare screwing up in the Jug vs screwing up the Corsair in real time!
Great content as always!
I'm excited about that too.
Most creators do not have the real world knowledge to address this. Thank you.
The "floating flight attendants" bit makes me think real life experience.
On the plus side, it's one way to get them to answer the damn intercom.
😅
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles
"This is your pilot speaking. Please return the flight attendant to the vertical position"
Nice video as always!
Also, it seems the N model thunderbolt did introduce a more modern looking DG to go with the autopilot--though I don't know how well it compares to later ones.
Thanks for your efforts on all these videos. I've enjoyed quite a few of them.
Have you considered making one on the Douglas Skyraider? That would be interesting to me.
As ever, a brilliant watch Greg. Love this sort of stuff, thanks!
Starting to think Greg given up on aviation, nice to see him back with a video.
Be interesting to hear your opinion of the Hellcat cockpit layout.
I know I know, I'm also getting questions about the P-38, Soviet stuff and more. I'll probably try to include more human factors stuff in the future as I go through these airplanes.
I totally get this. I remember reading the autobiography of a Spitfire pilot who was griping about having to switch the control column to his left hand immediately after takeoff to raise the undercart. That's just one example of a bad design. I'm sure there are worse.
Imagine the poor Wildcat pilots who had to hand crank the main gear up and down with their right hands!
@@jaym8027and control the throttle with their left and the control column with their knees?
Immediately after being launched from a catapult off a heaving carrier deck into 30 foot swells...
You'd want to make sure the friction lock on the throttle was good and tight.@@wbertie2604
Great video! Often overlooked as a topic, but very important!!! It is interesting to note that in the -5 Corsair (not a WWII aircraft) Was often not liked as much as the -4 mainly because it had an early "computer" that would coordinate manifold pressure, throttle, propeller, blower, etc. similar to that of the FW-190, but it was a bit slow to react at times which could put a pilot at risk. While a great idea the technology just wasn't there quite yet to execute it properly...
I remember reading about how teaching the P-38 cockpit was difficult because Lockheed kept changing the layout. Any insights into this Greg?
Great video. You teach me something about the P-47 Thunderbolt pretty much every time you mention it. As we have become more familiar you and I, I'm sure I have mentioned (as if I needed to) that I am not an actual pilot IRL and Spoiler Alert:: I'm not really a WW1 Canadian Aviation War Hero as name sake and avatar would suggest. So its not all that surprising to me that every time I learn what another gauge indicates the better grasp, I have on sim piloting my virtual aircraft from point A to point happy landing or point ball of flame. What has become a bit of an eye opener just recently as well as a bit surprising to put it mildly is that I had any l success at all before learning as much as I have from watching yours, and to a lesser extent other youtubers videos on the subject at hand. To be fair I've had some experience decades ago with PC combat flight sims but none came close to the complexity of the Jug in DCS. Sorry for the long post Ill end with a thank you once again for the lesson.
P.S. That sure is a nice shot of the Corsair you have ending the video.
Thanks Bishop. I haven't been on DCS in a while due to my work schedule. I really enjoy flying with you and the other guys on Wolfpack Normandy.
At first blush that P-51 drop tank selector made sense to me and didn't seem backwards. It looks like you move it by grasping the tail of the lever. If running on the left tank moving your hand to the right selects the right tank and the lever tail is to the right. (and vice versa). But then the main tanks would be wrong. They could have at least made them agree with each other.
I think it was done for some manufacturing or assembly reason, but I don't know what it was.
Greg, do you know of any USN field maintenance crews modifying the -1 Corsairs to remedy accidental emergency gear extension by re-routing the tank? I am curious if there were ever any field modifications to the cockpit, officially from Vought or ad hoc; it appears there were modifications to other areas of the aircraft type during its service. Did strict standardization of layout, due to multiple pilots possibly using the very same aircraft, dictate that field modifications to the cockpit were absolutely forbidden?
I haven't seen any indication of field mods to the bottles.
In his book on testing the Corsair, Vought test pilot Boone Guyton relates the anger of an old (former?) friend who lost a squadron mate due to accidentally grabbing the wrong cylinder and dropping the landing gear during combat as you described.