why was seaplane speed record nearly 100mph faster than land based?

Discussion in 'Boat Design' started by Squidly-Diddly, Jan 19, 2017.

  1. dinoa
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    dinoa Senior Member

    They also had radiators in the fuselage but as engines got bigger more area was needed so they used the floats
     
  2. kach22i
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    kach22i Architect

    Great topic, I feel like I learned a little something today.:)
     
  3. alan craig
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    alan craig Senior Member

    Last edited: Jan 23, 2017
  4. tom28571
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    tom28571 Senior Member

    Italian fighter aircraft are generally not well remembered compared to German, British and American types of the period. Digging a bit deeper shows that the Fiat and Macchi fighter did compare well with Spitfires, P47 and P38 fighters when they met in the air. Russian fighters, especially the Yak 3 and Yak9, were also formidable opponents.

    Fiat and Macchi fighters both used engines developed from the 1931 Fiat V12s but they were operated inverted, probably in order to get greater ground clearance for propellers. As Italians are well known for high technology in all types of motive vehicles and machine tools, it should not be a surprise that their aircraft were also good.
     
  5. dinoa
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    dinoa Senior Member

  6. Zulu40
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    Zulu40 Junior Member

    but not in Europe, where most 1940s development occurred.
    At the commencement of WW2 all RAF strips were grass field, most improvised Luftwaffe strips the same. My recall fails me but I think the airports in Paris and Berlin where the only sealed runways.

    It made the transition from tail-dragger aircraft naturally lifting off runways, to flying off and onto runways and stopping by brakes with 'front wheel' trike under carriage. It was a huge development in weight carrying (despite massive 20 tonne payload Avro Lancaster designed by Roy Chadwick), speed (where stall speed and top speed are inter-related) and safety. If you look at US developed B17 bomber force, they were likewise tail draggers, much later B29 were trikes.

    The previous Schneider Trophy races (the nemesis of the Supermarine Spitfire, Supermarine S.6B designed by R.J. Mitchell ) occurred on water because land strips were not long enough to accommodate the race planes long take off runs (again the relationship between stall speed and take-off speed ).
     
    Last edited: Jan 26, 2017
  7. Lurch723
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    Lurch723 Junior Member

    The original Yak 3 engines only were supposed to last like 25 hours before overhauling, they were a flipping nightmare for the Russian engineers - proper nasty to work on. The Yak 50's 52's and 18's I get to work on are nice and easy compared to the 3 and 9's Incidentally my old chief overhauled the Battle of Britain Lancaster back in in the 1990,s and its flying around now after having a set of mainspars machined from original solid billets found at the back of an old RAF hanger 20 years ago.
     
  8. tom28571
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    tom28571 Senior Member

    Russian military aircraft are designed for a different set of circumstances than ours and many put them down in comparison. My first view of them was some 65 years ago in Korea and have learned not to be disdainful of their capabilities. They do tend to take a brute force attitude and service life or efficiency is often not a major priority.

    I think Lancasters could carry as much as 20 thousand pounds of bomb load, not 20 tonnes but that was still the largest load of any other plane of the time. I also think that modifications were needed to carry that much and normal loads were smaller but still greater than B17 or B24 contemporaries.
     
  9. Zulu40
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    Zulu40 Junior Member

    So there I was trusting my mind again, and getting it wrong. I looked up the MTO and empty weight, 68,000lbs and 36,900lbs for a disposable load of 31,100lbs, so it would never make my tonnage any way you cut it. The largest bomb hauled was the 22,000lb 'Grand Slam' (Barnes Wallis) at reduced speed and altitude. Although probably the most famous was the 'Upkeep Mine' at 9,250lbs.

    thanks for setting me straight
     
  10. Scot McPherson
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    Scot McPherson Senior Member

    So I found out why Seaplanes had higher speed records than land based craft.

    Runways; runways are/were too short to support aircraft that could go as fast as sea based planes. It is due to two factors:
    1) Wing Designs for high speed craft are cambered for higher speed which also means they have a much higher stall speed (i.e. you need a longer runway to reach speeds necessary to develop enough lift.)
    2) you need a higher horse power engine, which generally speaking means a lot more weight, which in turn means you need to more speed so the wings can generate enough lift to carry the extra weight.

    This all really boils down to wing design. A wing designed to take off sooner (lower stall speed) will not allow the aircraft to travel as fast as a wing designed to stall at higher speeds (allowing the wing to cut the air without generating too much lift which translates to drag).

    Apparently, seaplanes were known to be able to have higher top speeds, until of course we built planes that generated enough thrust and runways long enough to support planes that needed more speed before they could take off.
     
  11. Zulu40
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    Zulu40 Junior Member

    In the great speed battles of pylon racing era, aircraft of the day were still generally biplanes transitioning to monoplanes. This because as speeds increased there is much more drag associated to biplane rigging struts and wires. Monoplanes of all types were still in their infancy, and there were several competing technical arguments for thick and thin wings, at a time when actual data was not freely available as it is today. Aircraft design was still pretty much trial and error, some would say trial by ordeal.

    What Mitchell was to prove with the Supermarines radical S.6B was that ultimately the thin wing concept monoplane would carry the day. The 'secret' to speed was asserted to be an issue of drag, thus lessening the wing area became an obvious necessity. Smaller wings on the same weight mean higher wing loadings (lbs per sq ft), so technology would need to satisfy a wider speed envelope between stalling and top speed if the lessons learned were to be of military value. For the infant airforces the goal was for a high speed aircraft that could land on existing land based airfields.

    Meanwhile among society of the 1930's there was a feeling that WW1 hadn't resolved all it should, and people became uneasy about developing tensions in Europe. With a lack of civil contracts this had an impact on aircraft designers, procurement planners and ultimately aircraft constructors seeking military contracts in the fiscally tight circumstances of the day.

    After some spectacular failures, monoplanes inherited variable wing geometry (in the form of flaps) which became better devised and more common. Higher wing loadings could be sustained because wings could be artificially cambered to generate higher lift coefficients (ClMax) necessary for landing; and when the flaps were returned to park the wing achieved its smaller area lower drag profile for speed.

    With both sides of the equation satisfied, the need for sea borne high speed flying was soon to become extinct, and aerodynamically cleaner machines without floats would be free to expand the speed horizon all the way to the speed of sound.
     
  12. tom28571
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    tom28571 Senior Member

    I simply had a fuzzy memory of the comparison between the B17 and Lancaster armament loads. When I did a quick search, it showed that the Lancaster had to have significant modifications to carry a Grand Slam of 22,000 pounds. Anyway, discussions of WW2 aircraft always offers interesting thoughts and opinions but seldom solid conclusions. As a teen ager during that time, I soaked up everything about aircraft but some of it was undoubtedly propaganda and hard to forget. B 25s training for the Tokyo raid flew right over our house but I did not find out about that until 60 years later.
     

  13. Zulu40
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    Zulu40 Junior Member

    As it had such a long life the Lancaster went through many development types and engine fits, after all it began as the failed twin engine Manchester to the ultimately successful Lancaster. The genius of the Lancaster was the efficient structural connection between the main wing centre section, and what became the fuselage floor, from which the bomb load was suspended. Funny in a way how obvious solutions are only obvious after someone pens them.

    Somewhat like you, I have all those memories. I lived near Avro's manufacturing facility, and later development Lancasters then renamed Shackleton's often buzzed the house. I have a memory of one late one night, doing circuits to burn off fuel, and in the light of its landing lights one could see there were only 3 running engines. The vibration and racket these things make going over your house has to be seen and heard to be appreciated.

    Avro Vulcans too were making an appearance, as they received their electronics suite at Ferranti's factory next door to my school . These monsters were hauled by road with push pull low loaders which raised some interest in themselves. Also row after row of Bristol Bloodhound tactical missiles could be seen on their trailers outside the factory, some with accompanying Land Rovers.

    All around was evidence of damage from the blitz, from damaged buildings to combat scarred destroyed factories. Where you could drive among those infamous terrace houses familiar to people perhaps in the British series 'Coronation Street. Then suddenly about a block of flat open space denoting areas too badly bombed to repair, or the deployment of parachute aerial mines which would take out several streets at a time. Children being what they are, would find bits of ordnance, be it a discarded bofors shell to an unexploded bomb. It was so common it barely rated a mention in the press, if indeed any mention at all.

    Add to this many of my relatives had their own war stories, while my uncle flew Hurricanes in 242 squadron, and his boss was the legless pilot Douglas Bader, whom I was happy to meet somewhere around 1969. Its difficult to properly express the emotions felt revisiting a time and place just a decade or so from the war. To re-quote Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, such a damn close run thing.
     
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