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Thread: Two engines one seat?

  1. #1

    Default Two engines one seat?

    Strictly speaking, not a WoW question, but.....

    I know the Brits had the Westland Whirlwind for some of WW2
    The Yanks had the P-38
    (And yes the Brits had the Meteor as well and a Westland Whirlwind replacement/development under development)

    But until the ME 262 was there an Axis twin engined single seat fighter?

  2. #2

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    Not that comes to mind, I'll keep looking. :|

  3. #3

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    Quote Originally Posted by David H View Post
    But until the ME 262 was there an Axis twin engined single seat fighter?
    In full-production: No, not a fighter.

    The only production single-seat twin was the Henschel Hs129 ground-attack unit:

    http://www.militaryfactory.com/aircr...ircraft_id=439 .

    Prototypes, or scheduled production interrupted by war's end, were the Dornier Do 335:

    http://www.militaryfactory.com/aircr...ircraft_id=104

    and the Focke-Wulf FW 187:

    http://www.militaryfactory.com/aircr...ircraft_id=573

    tho' this was later converted to a 2-seater.

    There was also a night-fighter modification of the Arado Ar 234, but this was modified from a bomber, and wasn't meant to engage other fighters.

  4. #4

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    Yes, there was a fighter: the Imam Ro.57.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMAM_Ro.57

    Prototype in 1939, production (not so many - 200 ordered, then order reduced to 90, then 50/60 actually made) in 1942. First planes to squadrons in february 1943 at Ciampino (near Rome), to the 97o Gruppo that then moved to Crotone (on the sole of the Booth, in Calabria).

    Several photos there:
    http://www.airwar.ru/enc/fww2/ro57.html

    The Ro.58 was better, but no more a single seat plane:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMAM_Ro.58
    Last edited by Angiolillo; 03-14-2011 at 16:35.

  5. #5

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    Speaking of unproduced planes...

    In late 1942, Reggiane did the project of the Re.2005 Bifusoliera (Twin-boomed). Hard to tell from the profile down there from the regular 2005...

    Imagine something like the Twin Mustang made with the Re.2005, but with only one cockpit and pilot on the right boom. It should have been a heavy fighter with 4 x 20 mm cannons + 2 x 12,7 mm machineguns and the possibility for a 1000 kg torpedo or two 500 kg bombs.



    After the first official jet flight in 1940 in Italy (actually a motorjet plane, and actually not the first jet flight ever since Germans secretely flew a jet before)...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caproni_Campini_N.1

    ...Caproni did a project for a single seat jet aircraft with two turbines (but powered by a single engine) as "Caccia '42" ("Fighter 1942"). Some details at the bottom of this page:

    http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/foru...ic=791.0%3Ball

    Last edited by Angiolillo; 03-14-2011 at 16:35.

  6. #6

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    Excellent. Thankyou all. It's a shame the good Italian planes were rather overshadowed by the German and Japanese ones.
    It looks like the Ro 57 and the Campini CS10 had a lot of similar design cues.

    I've always wondered why twins weren't used more as they offer advantages in reliability and perhaps durability. Certainly with the P38 longer range and good combat ability - just ask Mr Bong and the Japanese he faced. But they did cost more to build and put two engines where one was seen to be sufficient.

  7. #7

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    Well, Italian planes were often elegant and agile... but not always "good" in general. Often they were underpowered, and the German DB engines helped a lot later in the war. But they were too scarce.

    After the winning experience in the Spanish Civil War, Italians believed in agility and sacrificed armament to it. Increasing weaponary would have made planes slower, worse climber and less agile, so in the field they even modified them in the opposite way to make them lighter (as some C.R.42 biplanes in the Battle of Britain, with two 12,7 MGs but with sometime one replaced with a 7,7 to decrese their weight). So trying to develope a two engine fighter was a way to increase power and be able to increase weaponary too (but the first Ro.57 did not do that keeping just two 12,7).

  8. #8

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    Cheers Angiolillo

    From my reading the Germans got the equation right in 36/7 and that gave the British and others a hurry up to "get it right". The British just made it, thanks in part to the phony war in the French campaign.
    The French too were getting there with the Dewotainne and other planes, but too little too late.

    On my side of the world the Japanese were out front and it took some time to catch up. I do wonder how the CAC Boomerang would have done in front line fighter service against the Zeroes - not well I suspect, but certainly better than the Brewster Buffalo....

    It makes you wonder when you read about the central command flyers ideas about air tactics and how they forgot the lessons of WW1 and disappeared off after crackpot theories, like "the bomber will always get through!" And that cast fighters into a very secondary role.

    While over here it was pure dismissive racism that wouldn't see the reality and wrote off the Japanese for all sorts of inaccurate stereotypes.

    Gotta say the MC 202 is one of the nicest looking WW2 fighters.

  9. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by David H View Post
    The French too were getting there with the Dewotainne and other planes, but too little too late.
    The Dewoitine D.520, like all French acft., had a problem: Those godawful 0.295-cal. machine guns had no hitting power whatever; and 20mm cannon are suboptimal for dogfighting due to low ROF.

    Quote Originally Posted by David H View Post
    On my side of the world the Japanese were out front and it took some time to catch up. I do wonder how the CAC Boomerang would have done in front line fighter service against the Zeroes - not well I suspect, but certainly better than the Brewster Buffalo....
    Correct -- the book I have on the topic says the Boomerang handled about like one would expect a fighter derived from the AT-6 to handle; speed wasn't brilliant, either.

    Quote Originally Posted by David H View Post
    It makes you wonder when you read about the central command flyers ideas about air tactics and how they forgot the lessons of WW1 and disappeared off after crackpot theories, like "the bomber will always get through!" And that cast fighters into a very secondary role.
    OK, two points here:

    1) "The bomber will always get through" was a hyperbolic remark by Ramsay MacDonald intended to communicate an anti-war message -- in short: "If you start a war, your cities will be bombed, your children will be killed; so don't start a war".

    2) At the time MacDonald made the remark, Fighters were fixed-gear biplanes with 2 0.30-cal. MGs -- but the first retractable-gear monoplane bombers were coming on-line. Put another way: Bombers were, for the first time, *Faster* than Fighters. So it's easy to see how the notion of "the bomber will always get through" could be created. But then,the various National Air Races of the late '20s and early '30s saw civilian-built monoplanes humiliating the military-bought biplanes, and the pols suddenly realized they needed to reboot their fighter programs; thus we start seeing retractable-gear monoplane fighters, which (you guessed it) were faster than the bombers.

    So, *at the time it was said*, "the bomber will always get through" was viable -- what no one ever thought to do was look at the idea again to see if it *remained* viable.

    One more point: The Ro.57, according to my references, was never used operationally -- it was deployed to Rome, and then Crotone, with 90th Independent Group, but none saw combat (save for several being destroyed in US bombing raids). Also, those units were ground-attack models, not fighters. So the Ro.57 cannot be included as a 1-seat 2-engine fighter.

  10. #10

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    Another twin engine single seat fighter that didn't see production is McDonnell's XP-67 Moonbat. It was that company's 1 try at producing a plane of its own design during WW2. It featured a number of very advanced features but was unfortunately saddled with the Continental XI-1430 engine that was not only not successful but caught fire while doing it.
    It would have been a powerful aircraft had it been made with an armament of 6 37mm cannon.

    Pooh

  11. #11

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    Quote Originally Posted by Pooh View Post
    Another twin engine single seat fighter that didn't see production is McDonnell's XP-67 Moonbat.
    Officially, it was supposed to be a "bomber destroyer" (hence the cannon -- see also P-38), not a "true" fighter.

  12. #12

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    The British also had the de Havilland Hornet a single seater derived from the Mosquito.

  13. #13

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    How about the Gruman F7F Tigercat? It was intended to stop kamakazis if I recall, hence another bomber destroyer.

    Pooh

  14. #14

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    Quote Originally Posted by Pooh View Post
    How about the Gruman F7F Tigercat? It was intended to stop kamakazis if I recall, hence another bomber destroyer.
    The -2Ns were 2-seaters (night fighter: Pilot; Radar operator); the -3s just missed out on the war proper, mainly due to failing carrier certification tests (at any rate, I can't find any data on combat deployment of -3s during the War).

  15. #15

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    [QUOTE=csadn;55359]The Dewoitine D.520, like all French acft., had a problem: Those godawful 0.295-cal. machine guns had no hitting power whatever; and 20mm cannon are suboptimal for dogfighting due to low ROF.



    Correct -- the book I have on the topic says the Boomerang handled about like one would expect a fighter derived from the AT-6 to handle; speed wasn't brilliant, either.



    OK, two points here:

    1) "The bomber will always get through" was a hyperbolic remark by Ramsay MacDonald intended to communicate an anti-war message -- in short: "If you start a war, your cities will be bombed, your children will be killed; so don't start a war".

    2) At the time MacDonald made the remark, Fighters were fixed-gear biplanes with 2 0.30-cal. MGs -- but the first retractable-gear monoplane bombers were coming on-line. Put another way: Bombers were, for the first time, *Faster* than Fighters. So it's easy to see how the notion of "the bomber will always get through" could be created. But then,the various National Air Races of the late '20s and early '30s saw civilian-built monoplanes humiliating the military-bought biplanes, and the pols suddenly realized they needed to reboot their fighter programs; thus we start seeing retractable-gear monoplane fighters, which (you guessed it) were faster than the bombers.

    So, *at the time it was said*, "the bomber will always get through" was viable -- what no one ever thought to do was look at the idea again to see if it *remained* viable.

    Yes at the time it was said it was believed and the Germans in the Spanish civil war helped it along a bit too.

    From what I have read it was Dowding and Beaverbrook that ignored the bomber proponents and built the fighters England needed when Churchill ordered re-armament.

  16. #16

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    Quote Originally Posted by csadn View Post
    The -2Ns were 2-seaters (night fighter: Pilot; Radar operator); the -3s just missed out on the war proper, mainly due to failing carrier certification tests (at any rate, I can't find any data on combat deployment of -3s during the War).
    My recollection is that F7F wasn't ready in time for world war 2 and had a career which lasted to Korea when they were phased out in preferrence to jets.

    Tim

  17. #17

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    Quote Originally Posted by David H View Post
    Yes at the time it was said it was believed and the Germans in the Spanish civil war helped it along a bit too.
    Given the general ineffectiveness of the "proper" Spanish air forces (hence all the mercenaries and "fellow travelers"), it's not surprising most bombers got through

    Quote Originally Posted by David H View Post
    From what I have read it was Dowding and Beaverbrook that ignored the bomber proponents and built the fighters England needed when Churchill ordered re-armament.
    Funny you mention this -- there *was* one bomber which almost always got through: The De Havilland DH98 Mosquito. Two crew; very low overall weight; very high power; not overburdened with guns and gunners. One wonders what could have been accomplished had this line of development been followed, rather than the "flying fortress" (excuse the pun) concept. (And if it did get shot down, you're out two crew, not *10*.)

  18. #18

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    Its tough to say. Whichever choice you make, the enemy is going to try and counter that choice. If the allies had gone with a low altitude high speed bomber, the German counters would have been to that and not to high altitude heavy bombers.

    Pooh

  19. #19

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    Quote Originally Posted by Pooh View Post
    Its tough to say. Whichever choice you make, the enemy is going to try and counter that choice. If the allies had gone with a low altitude high speed bomber, the German counters would have been to that and not to high altitude heavy bombers.
    Well, while every strategy has a counter, some are easier to counter than others.

    For ex.: The "flying fortress" concept only worked under one of two conditions: A) little to no enemy-fighter presence, and/or; B) presence of friendly escort-fighters. Given the relative slowness of the "flying fortresses", it was a relatively easy matter to find and catch them -- and as the kill-scores for unescorted missions indicates, killing them was only a matter of "when do we run out of fuel and/or ammo". OTOH, the "mosquito" concept required having a fighter which was faster than the bomber -- something the Germans never quite managed with piston engines; they needed Swallows to catch Mosquitos . Thus, a force of "mosquito" bombers would have been, if not immune to enemy fighters, then very much more difficult to deal with.

  20. #20

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    You might be right but as with anything, if you go changing major parameters surprising things might happen. The Germans did have some very fast prototypes which never went into service, they might have developed these with more urgency. I've heard the ME-262 could have been available sooner except Hitler wanted a bomber (thank you Adolf). They would have undoubtably changed the way their AA defenses were organized so as to meet the low level threat.
    Also remember, that in the later stages of the daylight bombing campaign, the puropose was as much to attrit the German fighters by drawing them up to meet the Allied escorts as destroying ground targets. If the Germans had been forced to accept that they were going to be bombed with little their fighters could do about it, they might have pressed development of their more advanced bomber concepts and begun a campaign of mutual destruction through aerial bombardment.

    Who can say!

    Pooh

  21. #21

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    For all-round bad-assness you can't beat the Do335 What an amazing looking aircraft!! I've had a few 1/300 models (modified slightly) as the centrepiece of a low-tech SF ground attack unit for many years now.

  22. #22

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    IIRC the FW 190 was rushed into service because they could catch the Mosquito. The earlier 109's couldn't catch them, but the later versions could. I mean she was a fast ship but not the fastest, not by a long shot.

  23. #23

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    Quote Originally Posted by Pooh View Post
    I've heard the ME-262 could have been available sooner except Hitler wanted a bomber (thank you Adolf).
    Not *quite* the case -- Adolf's interest in quantity over quality was a major factor, as was a bombing raid which leveled the 262 production facility; the decision to make it a bomber came in '43, relatively late in the game.

    Even then, there was the simple fact that Germany lacked the resources to build jet engines which didn't have prohibitively-short lifespans (the time-between-overhaul on a Jumo 004 was something like 20 hours, and that was *before* engaging in high-speed combat).

    Quote Originally Posted by Pooh View Post
    Also remember, that in the later stages of the daylight bombing campaign, the puropose was as much to attrit the German fighters by drawing them up to meet the Allied escorts as destroying ground targets. If the Germans had been forced to accept that they were going to be bombed with little their fighters could do about it, they might have pressed development of their more advanced bomber concepts and begun a campaign of mutual destruction through aerial bombardment.
    One major problem with this: The Nazi leadership had one guy who understood the need for long-range strategic bombing, Walther Wever -- and he died in an airplane crash in 1937. Germany's air force, then, was a shining example of what happens when one allows advanced technology to be placed under the control of Infantrymen (infamous, the slowest-thinking, most-conservative branch of any military).

    Also: When the German fuel supplies dried up, and they stopped responding to every bombing raid, this didn't stop the Allies attacking them -- "the mountain came to Mohammed". Martin Caidin's _Fork-Tailed Devil_ mentions an example of this -- a P-38 group commander was informed his escort mission had been scrubbed due to poor weather; his response was to get permission to take his group over the Channel anyway, and inflict as much damage on the Luftwaffe *on the ground* as possible (I want to say the GC's name was Charles Rau, but don't quote me on it). So even if the Germans had done as you proposed, it wouldn't have prevented them getting tac-aired to death (and worse: The Germans would have been coming in unescorted against acft. which could chase down V1s -- like, say, the fighter version of the DH98... ).

  24. #24

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    Quote Originally Posted by HardRock View Post
    IIRC the FW 190 was rushed into service because they could catch the Mosquito. The earlier 109's couldn't catch them, but the later versions could. I mean she was a fast ship but not the fastest, not by a long shot.
    Mosquito topped out at 415-420; FW190 at 400 (the D-models could hit 426, but couldn't reach the altitudes the DH98s flew in).

  25. #25

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    Quote Originally Posted by csadn View Post
    OK, two points here:

    1) "The bomber will always get through" was a hyperbolic remark by Ramsay MacDonald intended to communicate an anti-war message -- in short: "If you start a war, your cities will be bombed, your children will be killed; so don't start a war".
    Except that the remark was made by British PM Stanley Baldwin.

    Quote Originally Posted by David H View Post

    From what I have read it was Dowding and Beaverbrook that ignored the bomber proponents and built the fighters England needed when Churchill ordered re-armament.
    Except that RAF Rearmament began in 1934, and Beaverbrook was only appointed to lead that brand-new Ministry of Aircraft Production on 14 May 1940, barely 3 months before the start of the BofB. While the MAP did greatly increase fighter production right from its inception, Churchill also had only come to power that month, so RAF Rearmament had been underway for some years before his appearance.

    You might want to check your references.
    Last edited by Baldrick62; 03-22-2011 at 18:21. Reason: formatting

  26. #26

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    Hmmmm this thread kinda deviated from the initial question, but interesting nonetheless. Ans I guess I'm at least part responsible for the deviation.

    I guess we all read our books and have different takes on things. As they say put two experts in a room if you want three opinions......

    All of which leaves us with the result that while there were operational twin engined single seaters they were, with the exception of the P38, few and far between.

  27. #27

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    Quote Originally Posted by Baldrick62 View Post
    Except that the remark was made by British PM Stanley Baldwin.
    Yeah -- I get those two confused all the time. My fault.



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