BETTY

[Commander Stormwolf]

Myrt and Dinah torpedo planes would have helped to reduce the number of
*turkey shoots* in 1944/1945

.. also would have been good to put the Ha-33-62 in the zero in early 1943 as was possible, instead of mid 1945

(P-51 would have sucked if they kept the allison enigne until 1945)

[dwg]

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf
Myrt and Dinah torpedo planes would have helped to reduce the number of
*turkey shoots* in 1944/1945

Entry into service for the basic C6N1 Myrt is September 1944, you aren't going to to get a torpedo derivative into service until Spring 1945 at the earliest, by which time you have no carriers to operate them off and no experienced crews to use them to best effect. A good plane with a bad pilot is still subject to turkey shoots.

You still haven't demonstrated a Dinah TB is even feasible. The points YankeeAirRat raised about torpedo compatibility with the airframe and airframe compatibility with the mission aren't optional, the laws of physics don't give you a waiver because you think something would be cool. If you want a Dinah TB, then you are likely looking at a new wing and engines, and I'm not convinced the fuselage is stressed for a 2000lb centreline load. Look at the design history of the Bristol Brigand for a parallel example of the difficulty we're dealing with, it started out as the Buccaneer, using Beaufighter wings and engines, which were already stressed for the mission, but giving it any sort of growth margin meant swapping in Centaurus for Hercules, and therefore a new wing, and even being able to borrow that wing from the Beaumont couldn't get it into service before the end of the war.

(P-51 would have sucked if they kept the allison enigne until 1945)

Just like the P-82 didn't suck when they reverted to the Allison post war? The advantages the Merlin had over the Allison V-1710 when it was first added to the Mustang in 1942 weren't as clear cut by 1945. The Merlin was still the better engine, but the V-1710 now had the high altitude G versions that were acceptable if not great.

[Commander Stormwolf]

Dinah carried a giant drop tank that looks (and weighs) pretty close to a torpedo.. so did the Saiun (Myrt)

you can stick a torpedo on practically anything.. from a 1TB triplane the japanese used in the 1920s to a Heinkell 115 floatplane, to a Mavis flying boat,
to a Skyraider, to a Jean biplane, italians even had the idea to stick them onto MC. 205 fighters

[Dili]

G.55 not MC.205. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fiat_G.55_Torpedo.jpg

It is a high powered aircraft already with armor, but certainly it is a expense of a nice fighter in torpedo role.

You still didn't disputed anything i and others have criticized about your Myrt torpedo version.

[Crackaces]

Applying your logic, it's like saying a Cessna172 is a bad plane because it's older and lower performing than a Cirrus SR22.

Actually the SR-22 has a rather high operational loss rate [:'(]

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: Crackaces

Applying your logic, it's like saying a Cessna172 is a bad plane because it's older and lower performing than a Cirrus SR22.

Actually the SR-22 has a rather high operational loss rate [:'(]

Hey, hey, hey !! Don't you all go messing with us puddle jumpers. I fly a Piper, but I would take a Cessna. You are intelligent about it and do your checks religiously, there's no reason for an ops loss.

Never flew an SR22; seems a rather dumb idea. You want performance, go buy (or rent) a twin. A single engine, four seat, hotrod, is almost a contradiction in terms. Why in the world would you want that (unless your gonads are bigger that your brain). It's like putting a 409 in a Honda Civic. This ain't the Schneider Cup. Gee, maybe that's why Cirrus isn't selling many of these (Limited time offer - Demo sale !!).

And if it isn't sufficiently clear from automobiles, the more hi-tech you get, the less the owner/operator can maintain their own craft. The more you trust Bozo, the friendly mechanic, and his cart-load of computer diagnostic equipment, the greater your chances of augering in some day.

[YankeeAirRat]

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf


Dinah carried a giant drop tank that looks (and weighs) pretty close to a torpedo.. so did the Saiun (Myrt)

you can stick a torpedo on practically anything.. from a 1TB triplane the japanese used in the 1920s to a Heinkell 115 floatplane, to a Mavis flying boat,
to a Skyraider, to a Jean biplane, italians even had the idea to stick them onto MC. 205 fighters

Except that the Skyraider had evolved from an aircraft called the BTD Destroyer and its single seat version the BT2D, all of which were designed to carry a torpedo.
There was not 1TB triplane in Japanese service unless you meant the Mitsubishi 1MT; however according to library resources it was hard to fly with just the crew in it and when they strapped a torpedo to it they had a fatal tendency to desecend into the water while taking off from the carrier Honsho because it was woefully underpowered. They only built about 20 of them and they were soon replaced by the B1M.
The He-115 was built from the ground up as a float plane that was going to be a torpedo capable and the same was true of the Mavis
The Yokosuka B4Y "Jean" biplane IJNAF attack aircraft was designed with the expressed purpose of replacing the Mitsubishi B2M2 as the fleet torpedo bomber.

There is a distinct difference between developing something to carry a weapon and just strapping something on to it and see if it will work. As Dili noted, it wasn't a MC.205 but rather a G.55 fighter that was converted to replaced the SM.79's in the Regina Aeronautica as the front line torpedo bomber. However, to do that the designers had to modified the engines and oil cooler placement to properly carry the torpedo (along with modifying the torpedo in service to fit the aircraft). In the G.55's case they had to split up the Oil cooler and move it to a different location to accomidate the torpedo and rack. With the movement of the oil cooler they had to redesign the oil cooler system on the engine to handle being feed to two different coolers.
Again I cite the example of the B-26 at Midway. It was believed that they would be better at torpedo bombing then trying to attack with Semi-Armored Piercing or even Armored Piercing bombs from altitude. So the aircraft were jury-rigged up with gear to carry the Mk.13 Torpedo and guys from VT-8 and the VP squadrons gave them a chalk board explination of how to attack a ship with a torpedo. Out of the four that took off only two survived the initial run in to return to Midway. They were eaten alive by the CAP and the AAA. The B-26 was fast and sleek aircraft that was pretty nimble too, but once they strapped a torpedo under it, the drag from that slowed it down and made it a easier target to track and kill. Which is why most everyone started to try and carry a torpedo inside a bomb bay to reduce the drag coefficent from the torpedo. Even then after the war the torpedo fell out of favor as a primary aerial anti-shipping weapon; which why we never made a follow on to the Mk.13 after the war.

[dwg]

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf
Dinah carried a giant drop tank that looks (and weighs) pretty close to a torpedo.. so did the Saiun (Myrt)

The Ki-46-III was the only drop-tank equipped version, so that limits you to development starting in 1943 or later before you start. The size of the -III's drop tank is variously given as 101 or 120 gallons, with avgas at 6lb/gallon, that gives a rough weight of 600 to 720 lbs (caveat, I'm not clear if the drop tank size is in Imperial or US gallons, if Imperial increase the weights to 720 to 864lbs). However the Type 91 aerial torpedo had a minimum weight of over 1,700lbs on the Type 91 Mod 1, increasing to over 2,000lbs on the Type 91 Mod 7 and the Type 4. Your drop tank that supposedly proves the Ki-46 was stressed to carry a torpedo actually turns out to be half the weight.

you can stick a torpedo on practically anything..

And yet strangely I was reading just this afternoon how the Westland PV.3 torpedo bomber had to be abandoned as a military aircraft when the Admiralty stopped development of the lightweight 1,000lb aerial torpedo it was supposed to carry. This was a purpose-designed torpedo bomber, but it simply could not carry a full size aerial torpedo.

An aircraft is roughly speaking two girders, one the wing, the other the fuselage. The lift on the wing acts on both to hold them in the air, but they can easily be overstressed and fail. Think of a plank balanced between two supports, if you hang weights on it then it will start to bend, hang enough weight on it, and it will fail catastrophically. It's even more complex for aircraft, because they aren't dealing with a static 1G straight down load, they have to account for manoeuvering and turbulence too. The dominant part of designing an aircraft up until quite recently wasn't the aerodynamics, it was the stress calculations, which had to be done by hand for every joint in the structure, every time the design changed, until computers became able to handle the calculations. Aircraft structures are designed for their operational loads, a limited growth margin (often part of the spec) and a design margin to cover sudden stress on the fuselage, whether that be from microbursts, windshear or plain old pilot stupidity. And that additional strength is kept to a minimum, because strength in the structure translates directly into extra weight in the structure, and either lower performance, or the need for a bigger engine and wing to carry them. The feedback loops in aircraft design are vicious.

Exceed the stress margins and your aircraft is now at risk of quite literally falling apart in the air due to overstressing the fuselage or wing, and I can list a substantial number of aircraft that have done just that. There are very few WWII aircraft below medium bomber size that could freely have 2,000lb added to their load without taking them over their design margins, and even if they were capable of having that load added, it would need to be transmitted into the fuselage along a load path capable of taking that stress level, which would require a considerable redesign if that load path didn't previously exist. (As a current example, India is having to specifically modify Su-30MKIs with a purpose-designed belly hardpoint in order to carry the air-launched BrahMos cruise missile, the standard hardpoints for the Su-30, which can carry the big 1,300Kg Kh-31, simply can't handle the mass of the BrahMos)

Equally you have to consider the stressing of the wing design versus the operational environment. The stresses on a high-altitude wing are quite different to the stresses operating on a wing at low level, which experiences much more buffetting (and even if the two wings are operating at identical speed over the ground they'll be operating at substantially different Mach numbers, which means different designs are optimal). Put a wing in the wrong environment, especially with substantial extra load hung from the aircraft, and you are inviting it to fail. Similarly engines are optimised for specific operational heights.

[dwg]

ORIGINAL: JWE
And if it isn't sufficiently clear from automobiles, the more hi-tech you get, the less the owner/operator can maintain their own craft. The more you trust Bozo, the friendly mechanic, and his cart-load of computer diagnostic equipment, the greater your chances of augering in some day.

As a flight control system development engineer I feel I should object to this

I once explained to a noted warbird display pilot (she'd just done a display at the company open day), that if she was flying our bird, then when she moved the stick the flight control computer would look at that, decide what she had really meant, and then decide where it wanted to move the control surfaces. She didn't seem impressed - to be honest neither did our MD, who was standing behind her

[Commander Stormwolf]

The Ki-46-III was the only drop-tank equipped version, so that limits you to development starting in 1943 or later before you start

Yes. Dinah-III torpedo plane would be available starting in 1943.

[Commander Stormwolf]

Again I cite the example of the B-26 at Midway.

20 years ago, everyone knew that USN torpedoes didn't work until 1944

Mark 13 torpedoes dropped at midway

a) broke in half on contact with water
b) didn't detonate on impact (shoho at coral sea)
c) dove straight down into the ocean floor

and they had to be dropped from 50 feet at less than 100 mph

USN torpedoes didn't work, it had nothing to do with the planes dropping them
TBF Avenger was great with British Mark 12

[Commander Stormwolf]

[Commander Stormwolf]

Saiun Pilot "No Grummans Can Catch Us" [:)]

USN Navy Admirals [:@]

Nakajima Designers "do we add a torpedo sight to the cockpit?" [:)]

IJNAF air admiral "No! Give it a range of 30 hexes and make it take pictures of
the essex carriers... i like pictures.. i can put them on my wall" [:D]

Saiun Pilot [&:]

Nakajima Designers [&:]

US Navy Admirals [&:]

[mdiehl]

Mark 13 torpedoes dropped at midway

On the other hand, the Mark 13 torpedoes dropped at Coral Sea worked quite well, vis a vis the IJN Shoho. So I am not sure you can draw an accurate generalisation just by looking at the battle of Midway. IIRC, a total of 5 US torpedoes were dropped at Midway (the rest of the torpedo bombers shot down before release). Of those, one hit and detonated (dropped by a PBY against a Japanese auxiliary vessel).

[Commander Stormwolf]

There always was doubt whether the torpedoes dropped at coral sea detonated or not
pilots reported torpedoes going into the carrier.. probably it was the SBD that caused the damage and the mark 13s that scratched the paint

[mdiehl]

Seven torpedo detonations were reported by Shoho's survivors. I think they were in a good position to know.

[Commander Stormwolf]

since Dinah was structurally unsound to carry an 800kg payload,

IJN had decided to put this one back into service [:D]

[Commander Stormwolf]

also planning to license-build these from the Sopwith Company