ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ม.ค. 2024
- In this video, we talk about the Douglas XP-48, a pre-World War 2 fighter design from Douglas Aircraft made to combine the best of racing aircraft and interceptor aircraft to form a teeny tiny little plane. We first talk about small aircraft, like the Soviet Yak-3, why some aircraft are smaller, and where the bulk of a fighter aircraft's weight comes from. We look at two example fighters, the Vought F4U Corsair and the Focke Wulf FW 190, and see where a good deal of their weight comes from.
We then compare that to the XP-48 design, with its extremely small engine and horribly small fuel tank. We also look at the projected performance Douglas gave the design and why, shortly thereafter, the design and contract was cancelled, never to reach a mock-up or a prototype. We end by figuring out what the performance may have been by comparing it to a similar project, the Bell XP-77. - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
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Its a Dora! A Dora 9! I'll bet folk are saying to themselves with the comparison between the Corsair and the FW 190D-9. Surely there were images of FW 190A's or F's? I love this prog. No matter how much I think I know about aviation, I always learn something new when I these. Thanks. Keep up the good work dude.
The Fw 190 Dora has a Junkers Jumo 213A V-12 inveryted liquid-cooled piston engine 1,750 PS (1,726 hp; 1,287 kW) not the radial BMW 801 as in the video. The dry weight of this powerplant is noted as 1040 kg (2,072 lb) in Wiki. Not sure if this weight includes the cooling lines and radiators which would not be required for the aircooled 801.
The XP-48 was dragged to 500mph by tiny invisible dragons that the wizard summoned that is how it was able to be that quick.
Thank you for this interesting episode, Mr IHYLS. Generally speaking, no light-light fighter ever became a true success. The Japanese Zero and Oscar, although initially very successful, were a class heavier than the XP-48 and XP-77. Even these Japanese planes had to succumb to heavies like Hellcat and Corsair. The only useful application for a light-light fighter would be as a ground-controlled day interceptor. But even then if would be hard with its light armament to make an impact on any intruder. The French skipped the lightweight Mirage I and II, to settle with the heavier and more flexible Mirage III. Bottom line, a fighter needs to possess armament, armour, target finding equipment and enough fuel to be of sufficient use, and all those goodies add weight and thus require sufficient power which adds to even more weight.
Every so often the idea of overwhelming enemy bomber formations with hordes of light fighters that can take off from ordinary streets or dirt runways and thus become true "people's fighters" makes it into government plans. Obviously Germany tried it, but I remember there was some weird American Cold War idea by some Libertarian think tank about having American citizens with small F-86 Sabre like aircraft with short ranges and guns only that could be hidden in their garages and take-off from the streets in front of their own homes, and this would be a more effective defense against Soviet Cold War bombers than having to rely on expensive RADAR and AAM defenses.
The Yak-3 was the hottest little crotch rocket of WWII. Big fun, but not much ammo.
I think one of the big considerations that made Soviet fighters smaller is because they were fighting a mainly defensive war, so fuel capacity was much less of a concern. Fuel capacity and things like radar tend to really inflate planes, which is why escort fighters are usually pretty big.
Night fighters and submarine chasers are the only planes to use radar in WW2. He is correct russian engine tech was terrible back then.
A problem with very light fighters, is that avionics and armament take up a large part of the total mass, hence it need to be kept to a minimum to preserve the performance, compare to a normal fighter.
. . . and armour, self-sealing tanks . . .
Surely you could build something workable smaller than a Thunderbolt.
@@geoffreypiltz271
Yes….
It’s called a Spitfire!
;)
@@georgewallis7802Zero's having none of those
@kellybreen5526 Mustang, you mean.
The Douglas P-48 was pre-war while the Bell XP-77 was very near the end of the war, and the biggest problem with either of them, as well as with the Fairchild AT-21 Gunner and the Curtis SO3C Seamew was the failure of the air cooled inverted V-12 Fairchild Ranger V-770, in any of it's iterations, to produce the design-rate power output or to operate within an enclosed fairing at more than half throttle without drastically overheating. It was one of the most thorough failures of any American aircraft engine!
It reminds me French Caudron C.714. With 4 7.5mm machine guns and gross weight of 1880kg... I think a few Air Forces toyed with idea of extra light fighter plane...
The Caudron C. 714 had a 500 horsepower engine but was only capable of 283 miles per hour, which was poor by the standards of 1940, when it entered service.
It had obvious similarities to the C.460 racing plane which had won the Greve and Thompson Trophy races in 1936, which likely also provided inspiration for this Douglass proposal.
The C.460 did achieve 1 mile per hour per horsepower (310 miles per hour from 310 horsepower) but did that by being barebones, as racing planes were.
Pretty sure one of the designers on the XP-48 was related to P.T. Barnum with the sales pitch Douglas gave to the Army.
Love any reference to P.T. Barnum 👍
Another reason that Soviet fighters like the Yak 3 were smaller than American fighters was that their focus was air superiority over a fairly small battle field, Most of the well known American fighters, like the P-47 Thunderbolt and the P-51 Mustang, were used as bomber escorts and needed to carry extra fuel for longer range. The Mustang may not have been designed as a bomber escort, but if it had been as small as a Yak 3, it probably wouldn't have had the range to be used as an escort fighter and would have been built in smaller numbers.
Before props were replaced by jets most of the successful fighters tended to design the smallest practical airframe around the most powerful engine.
Even the P-47 was as small as it could be given all the equipment it had in it.
Even the YAK sourced the most powerful engine that it could.
More power rather than less weight was usually the answer.
This tendency did not change until the jet age and even then the lightweight jets are relatively rare.
Gnat, Skyhawks (technically a bomber) and the F-5 /20 are the only examples that spring to mind.
I'm rather surprised that you didn't mention the Caudron 710 series of lightweight fighters that actually *were* designed directly from a series of French 1930s racing aircraft.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caudron_C.714
"explicit reason for this"
Very simple, USSR got kinda caught in between development cycles for aircraft engines, similar to Italy and to a lesser degree France.
And most of the more powerful engines they DID have in the pipeline were ones that eventually did not enter production due to various problems.
So, while their aircraft early in the war was comparable in size, they didn't have the time to develop the engines they needed during the war, so they shrunk the fighters instead.
The Spitfire Mk1 had an 80 gallon tank and about a1,000 horsepower. The XP-28, with 550 horsepower and 50 gallons, actually had a better fuel capacity to horsepower ration, so it isn't as bad as it sounds at first.
I've always appreciated the axiom "under-promise and over-deliver", something sorely missing in this case😉
Great video on an obscure little fighter.
As a little point of nitpicking, in the video you talk about an FW 190 and its BMW radial engine. But the picture you show seems to be a FW 190D or similar, with an Jumo V12 engine. The point about the engine being a mayor source of weight is still correct, its just a unfortunate choice of picture.
Ta152
@@johnhagemeyer8578 google image search points to it being a Fw190 D9, but yes the Ta152 has some similarities in the fuselage.
Not gonna lie, I saw the thumbnail and thought the USAF got their hands on a Morane-Saulnier from France. Great little planes.
Very interesting video. Thanks!
Excellent stuff bro
The long, thin wings would reduce wingtip vortices which would reduce drag at higher angles of attack. This would be helpful in climb and could be helpful when turning, allowing the smaller plane to turn inside of a plane with normally proportioned wings. The price was that the longer thin wing wouldn't roll as quickly as a shorter winged plane. I have heard that, while the P-40 wasn't able to turn as quickly as the Japanese Zero and Hyabusa, it was supposed to have a faster roll rate.
Turn rate is also about wing loading. The XP-48 with its small wings would at gross have a wing loading of 181 kg/sq m (37 lb/sq ft), which would make its turning capability inferior to the Spitfire and even to early Me 109s. The low induced drag due to its high aspect ratio wings would serve to overcome drag at high angles of attack (i.e. maintaining a steep bank on low horsepower), but not to reduce the turning radius.
I wonder if that 525 mph was terminal dive speed or a typographical error and they meant 425 mph?
One can at least hope! 425 MIGHT be excused as overhype, but 525 was just pure lying.
@@DIREWOLFx75 I can’t imagine the plane coming close to 500 mph in a dive without coming apart due to those high aspect ratio wings.
But I am not an aerospace engineer.
The C 714 didn’t work out well either.
525MPH on a dive, maybe. It'll have already shed those ridiculous wings, and auger into the ground. "LAWNDART!" 😅
@@kellybreen5526 "But I am not an aerospace engineer."
I'm pretty sure you don't have to be, because it's pretty damn obvious that that design is not going to hold up well.
I'm fairly certain that Soviet fighters were smaller and lighter compared to Western Allied fighters because Soviet fighters had the benefit of not having to deal with seas/oceans, high-altitude combat, long-range missions, or having very limited strategic depth to fall back on. The Soviets could build airfields almost anywhere across the entire theater in many directions, and their primary missions were defensive air superiority against low-altitude threats.
The Western Allies had a far greater and more demanding set of mission types. They needed the range, altitude, maneuverability, speed, armament, and protection to carry out missions across large distances and still go toe to toe with lighter, smaller fighters and beat them at their own game, consistently. They had to defend swarms of allied bombers and conduct interdiction missions deep into enemy territory, and much more.
Soviet carrier aviation never got off the ground, but even if they really tried, it would have meant a total paradigm-shift from their usual designs because they would need something rugged enough to handle carrier operations, long-ranged enough to range far from the carrier, armed enough to reliably make their sorties count, and protected enough to keep their precious carrier aviators alive, all while having to contend with enemy land-based fighters and bombers.
.32. That's the Shuttleworth Collection in England on a model day. It's a great place to visit! (Don't worry, they have full size aircraft, vintage cars, bikes and buses!)
The Fw-190 you showed in your illustration was a D model and didn’t have a BMW 801 radial but rather a Junkers Jumo V-12 with an annular radiator, which gave it a round cowling, somewhat reminiscent of a radial engined aircraft.
Funnily enough, the Soviet Union mandated a 1000 km range for all its (early-WW2) airplane designs. That's why many know of the I-301 and it's successor, the LaGG-3, but few know of the LaGG-1 - the I-301 with fuel tanks glued to it to fulfill the range requirement. That went as bad as one might assume, so they had to rework the LaGG-1 into the LaGG-3. Yak-1, the predecessor of the Yak-3, had this problem too, but they solved it by talking Stalin into making an exception. Possibilities are endless if you're a president of the Peoples' Committee of Aviation and Stalin's friend, lol.
The French with their Caudron CR714 would love this aircraft tho.
"Funnily enough, the Soviet Union mandated a 1000 km range for all its (early-WW2) airplane designs."
They too had got caught up with the Douhet rubbish about strategic bombing, so they expected and aimed for themselves, high altitude fighters and long range heavy bombers.
It's one big part of why they had serious problems against Germany in 1941, all the fighting in the air was focused on altitudes where most Soviet aircraft were at their worst.
Poland or Finland would have bought some. Thanks for the great videos!
Possibly they meant it could reach 525 MPH in a high speed dive
Don't forget the fuel will change weight up to a 1/3 to a 1/2 a pound per gallon depending on temperature. This could be more significant on the smaller fighters, because the temperature weight difference would constitute a larger percentage of the weight difference than I in the larger aircraft, potentially.
An interesting comparison would be the Curtiss-Wright CW-21 Interceptor. Similar concept that actually entered production... Sort of.
Sort of looks like a Vultee and Bell ... maybe Tucker?
I would love to see you do an episode on the GeeBee R .
Performance is a question of end goal, and the most important variable is compromise. Same applies when building an engine, purpose built vehicle etc
I bet the wing loading was interesting at best
Remove the heavy armour shielding for the pilot and you end up with a very light aircraft. Mass produce the aircraft and supply fodder in the form of the pilot and you save weight.
Would make a great kit plane. Any surplus engines lying around?
The Soviets did not have the range requirements that the US/Great Britain had, so they didn't have to build nearly as large (and heavy) aircraft. The YAK 3 never had to penetrate deep into enemy airspace: most of their action happened within a 100 miles of their bases, bases being moved forward as the front moved west. Contrast that with the US requirement for a fighter to be able escort bombers all the way "to Berlin" and back from bases in Great Britain...well you end up with big planes like the P-47. Ironically, the ME-110 was built as a German escort fighter--a "Fighter Destroyer" intended to escort bombers; the ME-109 didn't have the range to loiter over enemy territory--not even Great Britain only 90 miles from France--and dogfight for an extended period of time. Had the USSR tried to fight an extended air-war from the distances that the US and the RAF did, they wouldn't have gotten away with "Small Fighters" either.
I would really like to see someone build this aircraft to the specifications that Douglas laid out and see what it is actually capable of. To be perfectly clear, I'm not expecting anything NEAR 500 mph, but it would still be fun to know the truth.
I have to agree with @malcolmcarter, I love your channel, you do a great job my friend, but that was indeed an FW190D with Junkers Jumo 231E inverted V12 liquid cooled engine:-) keep up the great work though, well give you a pass on this one! LOL
*realizes upgraded 60 gallon tank in my F350 gives me more fuel than a fighter plane* 😬
I think McDonnell was not lying.
Good! But if your going to talk about a BMW-powered Fw-190, maybe you should illustrate one.
Folkerts jupiter or speed king, and bell xp77, among others. The travel air 'mystery ship' was a kick in the pants to military designers, who went bigger using the design ideas to take bigger motors, where racers went smaller with the same engines from chevrolair, menasco, franklin, and ranger, with 6 and even 12 cylinders. One may remember the t35 temco buckaroo, and the t34 mentor by beechcraft, which were about as small as were actually flown with armaments in the u.s., and even the mooney mite was proposedbwith guns as the 'cub killer" ( humourously typo'd as the 'lub killer').
"Just summon lightning, and be done with it" = the p47 thunderbolt.
All designs were a compromise, frequently too many compromises. Some shore looked purty, too.
Not knowing the sources used, could the top speed be the top diving speed, not top level at height? If it’s seen as a diving speed, with its small wings etc it might just be able to dive at that speed.
12:11 if those are soviets, they have what look like Lebel, and possibly Berthier rifles..
(I know it's a photo in example of the subject, not necessarily The subject)
4:08 Nit Picking that’s a FW190-D … so, that’s a Jumo not a BMW 4:08
They only said 525 mph because the mathematical curves would support it with such a small aerodynamic airframe. Design an 800 hp air cooled straight 6 for it and the P-48 may have hit 525.
Maybe a good export fighter for smaller countries?
Yak-3 and Bf-109 almost twins in size....
Ultra light P47?
It is funny just how different the air war was over the eastern front vs the western front. So much of western war was fought at 20 k and above. In the east, just the opposite, usually 10-15 k and below. Western planes, at least by 43, were all using advanced two stage, two speed supercharges. In the east, operating out of whatever passed as an airport on that massive front, planes with sophisticated engines requiring high maintenance, forget it. Yak 3s make a lot of sense. Couldn't be more different. What is the best plane of ww2? The one that worked for you.
It hinges on mechanical details and quality of materials. Glaringly obvious, except to fighter engineers is airfoil. They wanted something for nothing and they flunked. Guns and pilot armor were outside items, and many planes wound up way overweight. The Yakelev 3 performed well because it had to.
The FW 190 model had a junkers engine not a BMW engine.
The Germans produced a directive not to dogfight with the Yak-3 below 5K meters, due to its speed and maneuverability advantages at low level.
The Yak-3 was a great little aircraft and performed super well below 5000m. However the Bf109 wasn't much bigger or heavier, had superior vertical and high altitude performance and was more versatile. In low level curving dogfights, the Yak-3 and probably also the bigger Yak-9 outperformed the 109.
The reason the Russians made the Yak 3 so small was for the sake of manoeuvrability and nimbleness. And hell did they succeed.
What does IHYLS mean?
That "silver-finish" XP-48 looks like a European light fighter, which were "slow paint scratchers" when the Luftwaffe invaded.
Dewoitine D.520?
neat
The soviet fighters were partially made with wood and textile fiber, hence the moderate weight... not a reproach !
0:17 such as the P-47
A pipe dream. No way it would get 500
I thought the engine would be way more than 20~ percent tbh
But; could it make a decent omelet?😁
Xp-48 cast fireball !!!! no need for machine gun when you got magic !!!!
It's an airplane made for ants!
Or, they need to enlist a bunch of "Little People", keep pilot size and weight severely limited. Save silk/nylon on parachutes too. 😅
early gang
If they had built it and it met that performance promise it would have been a real competitor, particularly against the Zero. Being 200mph faster and all.
To be fair, what American fighter didn't have a favorable kill ratio against the zero?
Douglas didn't mind doing a little lying about projected performance.
No coolant, the engine is air-cooled.
The
You lost credibility when you posted a pic of an FW190D while discussing the totally different power plant of the -A model. you didn't note that in 1939, the AAF was looking for fighters to support the ground forces, only requiring good speed at lower altitudes. These service requirements also applied to almost all Soviet fighters and goes a long way to enabling their great performance. Finally, you neglected to mention similar fighters in France and Italy tat did see service.
maybe someone with a whack of spare cash just lying around
should build one, and see if it lives up to the hype...
Just think Douglas saying this plane could do Mach 1. Douglas and McDonald amalgamated then were bought out by Boeing. Is this buy out when Boeing started to have all its problems?
indeed 525 mph is a Kelly Johnson level of bullshiting...
7:13
That’s one ugly ass car…….
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