OT: Warbirds

[Old Guy]

This weekend in Columbus:

http://www.gml2007.com/

I have no connection. Will be there, but no connection.

[LICORNE]

Nice event, Are those planes like the spitfires of WW II ? I wonder if they have some of those old bombers to.Have a dood time.

............

[Old Guy]

The P-51 D was the hottest plane to come out of WWII.

the Americans really were in the doldrums in the 30's, we were coming out of a recession, our technology had slid, especially compared to Germany.

North American Aviation got a contract to build a high performance fighter. This resulted in the P51C which was a good plane. Very maneuverable, could out turn the Spitfire, and most importantly- every inch of the P-51 was hollowed out. The wings were completely hollow, and filled with strings of 50 caliber bullets. Long after a Spitfire was out of ammo, the P-51 was still shooting down the enemy. A Spitfire actually carries enough ammo for 6 minutes of combat, according to an interview with a Spit pilot.

About this time, Rolls Royce came up with the Merlin engine for the Spitfire. A couple of British mechanics transplanted the Merlin into the mustang_ and created a fighter that was faster than anything but a German jet, carried lots of ammo, and had the best high altitude performance of any WWII fighter.

The decision was made for the US to license the Merlin, it was built by Packard. A 1600 or so horsepower V-12. Packard's and Merlin's are still raced to this day- if you Google the Merlin engine you'll see thay set a lot of records in speedboats.

Anyway, the P51/Merlin hybrid became known as the P51D- experts consider it THE most successful fighter of the era. Not as fast as the German Me-262 jet, but did a lot more damage. The P-51 had wingtip drop tanks. Filled with fuel, the fuel in these tanks was burned first. the tanks were dropped before going into combat. This allowed the P-51 to escort bombers all the way into Germany and back- something no other fighter could do.

As I understand it, the first mission the P-51's hid inside the swarm of bombers. When the German fighters came up expecting sitting ducks, the bombers opened up and a stream of American fighters, high powered ones at that, poured out.

Might be interesting to have a recording of what the German pilots said...

[Ronald Lee]

No fun to be on the business end of 6 50 BMGs.

[Old Guy]

If my gray matter still works, each 50 slug was about four ounces of lead.

Watching the history channel, a pilot being interviewed said the trick was to get your guns to all come together at a point- from the factory they were set to fire in parallel lines.

The idea being get on the enemy's tail, open fire and hit the gas. When you reach a certain point some 3000 of those 4 ounce slugs are hitting a minute. Not many aircraft could handle more than a split second of that.

To get an idea how many bullets went into one wing..here is a pic of a crew loading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Abi_sized.jpg

[Audio_by_Goodwill]

Originally posted by Old Guy:
The decision was made for the US to license the Merlin, it was built by Packard. A 1600 or so horsepower V-12. Packard's and Merlin's are still raced to this day- if you Google the Merlin engine you'll see thay set a lot of records in speedboats.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Packard wasn't the only company, Ford built them too. Someplace I read that the Ford built engines were better than the RR built engines. The reasoning was that the assembly line was routine at Ford, but was a new concept for RR. I'm not sure how true that was, but interesting none the less.

[Ronald Lee]

Anybody heard of the phrase "give 'em the whole 9 yards?" I believe each one of those belts of 50BMG ammo is 9 yards long. So if you got hit with all 9 yards, you were truly in a world of hurt.

Old Guy: Each 50BMG( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.50_BMG ) bullet weighs a bit less than 2oz, but be more precisely ~750 grains which is not quite 1.75oz, but close enough for govt work. And when you got 6 M2 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Browning_machine_gun ) guns firing roughly ~500 rounds per minute, you ain't going to be too picky.

BTW: There are 7000 grains to 1 pound.

[Old Guy]

I stand corrected. the 4 oz figure was from an interview, I never fact checked it.

Still a lot of lead coming at ya.

[Ronald Lee]

BTW: I've heard that small ships were sank with 50BMG fire.

[Old Guy]

Originally posted by Audio_by_Goodwill:
Someplace I read that the Ford built engines were better than the RR built engines. The reasoning was that the assembly line was routine at Ford, but was a new concept for RR. I'm not sure how true that was, but interesting none the less.[/QB]

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I remember reading an interview with a Japanese engineer inn the 1960's. He was talking about "zero defect" manufacturing. His claim at the time was the steel in a Ford was better than the steel in a Rolls Royce.

Lot's of cross manufacturing was done at the time.

Bantam (now defunct) designed the Jeep. They won the competition since they were the only ones who submitted a prototype. The Jeep however was made in numerous plants.

Some manufacturers actually built competitor's aircraft designs.