WesWorld

Or to point to a more potent example for our game, using a Stirling diesel in submarine engines for early AIP propulsion. After all, the technology did exist, nobody just coupled it together and did the legwork to put it aboard a submarine, riiiiight?

Yes, my pretties, soon Bulgaria will field a fleet submarine with fourteen-day underwater endurance at five knots! And wait until I get my grubby little mitts on some Long Lances for them to shoot at your puny battleships, mwahahah!

*Now returning you to your regularly-scheduled insanity.*

Hmm wonder who he's going to be firing his grubby little Long Lance torpedos at? Russia? Good luck with that son, he'll just fire some more torpedos back at you. Considering Bulgaria has a non-aggression pact with one Black Sea power, an alliance with another, and is on fair terms with the last, Romania wonders who he's going to be firing his torpedos at?

Answer, all those SATSUMA bad-boys, well in that case GO BULGARIA

I think the idea is that if he has that type of sub available he's got a good force multiplier to use against the bigger nations. A better bet would be to sell them to larger nations with target rich environments!

The problem with a 14 day underwater endurance is you need a 14 day underwater supply of oxygen for your crew, unless you introduce oxygen producing tech!

All kidding aside I think Kirks touched on a few points and a few more of which I have no comprehension. I'm no engineer and thats not a big secret and I'm also not fond of shooting down peoples idea's that have been made in an effort to spice things up in the sim but when we have several people stating "Woh thats abit advanced" I have to take notice.

The problem with Non-historical is its very easy to make things go your way and put all the pieces together needed to produce a great design.

I stepped back from commenting on advanced aircraft design, propulsion and ship design some time ago. There are several designs - ship or plane (including propulsion) - that are way beyond all agreements we had. I won´t comment on a single one but I´d like all of you to consider this:

Technical developments were in general driven by need. This need comes from inservice/field/combat experience with equipement that seems to lack something. Need also steems from wishes to counter/balance out foreign developements. This sometimes has more to do with politics, megalomania or simply prestice than any technical reason to follow a trend.

On the other hand the most limiting factors were the lack of money, time, manpower (availability of pioneers and brilliant engineers) and bureaucrats (either incompetence away from the drawing boards or lack of political will).

During wartime part of these limitating factors are ruled out or limited while the need for advanced technology increases. Hence there is a much steeper learning and development curve. There had to be a steep learning curve to avoid loosing a war or at least loosing more men than necessary. That´s what we see when looking at Worl War Two.

In WesWorld several powers have developed bleeding edge technology, and they did so much faster than historical, without any need. None of these powers have been in a war that would ask for a steep learning curve and of course there are many more brilliant minds around in WesWorld than there were historically. And most of them did not become desperate due to bureaucrats shooting their ideas down or the lack of funding.....

So to me this is not only a discussion of technical details even though I really appreciate and enjoy it. It´s important to keep that in mind but like Gavin said, most technical failures and problems could be solves - assumed there is the will, the money and the manpower. To me these latter three factors are where reality kicks in. Here a sense of proportion is required but it´s lacking now and then.

So the question to me is not "Can Italy build such plane?" but "Why should Italy build such plane, spending the money, material and manpower?". I don´t see why but that´s probably just me.

I can see why the performances might be a little hair-rasing. Still this is only estimated speeds, who says the fighter will actually reach those speeds in service? I think a degree of wait and see is needed in this. Maybe the engine won't work as advetised, maybe the airframes will need extensive re-working, we don't know RA's future plans and stories.

In my recent carrier contest comparing figures is interesting, so nations fighters have only just got over the 300mph mark while others (some I've designed for other nations even) are approaching 385mph. Of course speed ain't everything in a fighter if it handles like a pig and the pilots are too scared to push it to the extreme limits.

Please lets not assume anything about the Griffon and Sabre in WW. Those engines are now under my control in terms of developments and timeframes. It may prove the Griffon replaces the Merlin much earlier and that the Sabre gets abandoned. Anything may happen here so direct comparisons mean little (I doubt Italian engineers even know what Napier and RR are working on at the moment).

RA seems to have the know-who here and he's put a lot of work on this engine and fighter over a couple of years, this is not just some hair-brained scheme out of thin air. I feel if he had offered a conventional twin-engined fighter few would have even noticed or complained. As I think of the G.50 it is an over-enginered twin-engined heavy fighter with a serious attempt made to cut drag.

Twelve Fiat G.50 pre-production prototypes will be ordered in 1936 and extensives testing carried out before being adopted for squadron service. It'll be 1939-40 before the problems are close to being sorted out, most notably when mach effects are encountered during dives.

In the meantime, Fiat will be focusing on the Fiat CR.36, a larger and updated version of the CR.35.

Fiat CR.36
A single-seat, low-wing aircraft of conventional tailwheel configuration developed from the CR.35. It has a very light construction, being manufactured from moulded wooden composites. Experience in South America showed that the armament of 4x7.7mm machine guns was too light to be effective against modern bombers. With this in mind, various options were looked at to improve the armament but all added considerable weight which considerably hurt performance. Instead a thorough redesign was initiated with a view to reconditioning some of the existing airframes, of which there are over 500. The most notable change was a new forward fuselage, mounting a Alfa-Romeo Vortice RC.20/50/76 inverted vee engine with more power, development of the previous Isotta-Fraschini Asso XI having been terminated in 1934. This neccessated a few airframe changes, a plug being inserted aft of the cockpit and a larger tail to restore stability. A larger ventral radiator bay was installed in place of the previouis nose intake. A larger wing with greater aspect ratio went some way towards maintaing the good maneuverability given the increase in weight. The armament was increased to two 20mm Oerlikon in the wings with drum feeds and a Gebauer GKM machine gun in the nose cowling. The changes added considerably to the weight, which increased to 2300kg with the same wing. Manuverability and climb were found to be inferior, but the CR.36 retained the good flying characteristics of the previous CR.35.

Year: 1936 Crew: 1 Engine: 1 * 1270hp Alfa-Romeo Vortice RC.20/50/76
Wing Span: 34ft Length: 25ft Wing Area: 167sq ft
Empty Weight: 4309lb Max Weight: 5060lb
Max Speed:
411mph@25000ft
381mph@6000ft
Ceiling: 46,000ft but lack of pressurised cockpit would reduce this
Climb Rate: 3850fpm Wing Loading: 30lb/sq ft
Armament: 2 x 20mm Oerlikon FFL in wings, 120rounds
1 x 7.7mm Gebauer GKM in nose cowling, 2000rounds
5mm armoured pilot's seat

Quoted

Originally posted by Hood

RA seems to have the know-who here and he's put a lot of work on this engine and fighter over a couple of years, this is not just some hair-brained scheme out of thin air. I feel if he had offered a conventional twin-engined fighter few would have even noticed or complained. As I think of the G.50 it is an over-enginered twin-engined heavy fighter with a serious attempt made to cut drag.

Actually this a Dreadnought, making every other design obsolete. I dont know about the other players in WW but a 750Km/h aircraft with that heavy armament in 1936 would make me take notice what ever configuration it is in. I also believe that this will spark a lot of investments in Jet R&D by various Nations and Firms (Jets being possible in 1936+3) to be able to deal with the Italian aircrafts.

Quoted

Originally posted by Hood
Please lets not assume anything about the Griffon and Sabre in WW. Those engines are now under my control in terms of developments and timeframes. It may prove the Griffon replaces the Merlin much earlier and that the Sabre gets abandoned. Anything may happen here so direct comparisons mean little (I doubt Italian engineers even know what Napier and RR are working on at the moment).

RA seems to have the know-who here and he's put a lot of work on this engine and fighter over a couple of years, this is not just some hair-brained scheme out of thin air. I feel if he had offered a conventional twin-engined fighter few would have even noticed or complained. As I think of the G.50 it is an over-enginered twin-engined heavy fighter with a serious attempt made to cut drag.

References to engines such as the Griffon or Sabre are about real world production engines to be used as benchmarks to evaluate the +3 to +5 year agreement, and thus marking the outer limits of Tech.

RA has a great deal of knowledge and very detailed concepts, and that has already led to allowances for limited production of "Handworked" engines that exceed the limits allowed every other player.

I disagree that this exception should in some way be a standard. That would be comparable if we had a player with deep knowledge of steam plants, and so that individual was allowed to have his nation starting to lay down ships with engines dating from +3 years ahead of everyone else.

As for the engine layout vs. conventional twins, we haven't addressed that as much. Though we should probably ask for real world production examples of that layout. Coupled real world engines like the vulture were not arranged in that manner.

The layout presented has significant advantages over a conventional layout and one must wonder why it was not in fact done and other engine arrangements were used.

I went away and looked thorugh my books again as I thought I was missing something. I was, in the form of the Supermarine 324,325 and 327 fighters that were designed to the same spec as the Typhoon in 1937/38. They didn't get built as Supermarine had enough on it's hands with the Spitfire and the 317 bomber. They are conventional two engine configuation, all with Merlin engines that give 1265hp apart from the 325 that uses pusher props. Size and weight are fairly similar, speeds range from 450mph @ 18250ft to 465mph@22,000ft. Armament is 12x0.303 or 6 x 20mm cannon.

Quoted

I also believe that this will spark a lot of investments in Jet R&D by various Nations and Firms

Unless Whittle has been cloned I can't see that being an option. The other option is to look at his freely available patent and then go and build it yourself as Von Ohain did. People don't know that jets will work, how heavy they will be, and how much power they will produce. The more sensible reaction is to build a fast twin engined plane that'll have similar performance to those above. The Fw 187 with DB605 engines would have similar performance.

And why would Whittle have to cloned? Is that a WW twist that all other engineers working on jets have been struck by a plague?

Please tell me which other gas turbines engineers were close to having a working design in this time frame. Von Ohain doesn't count as he simply copied Whittle.

Coanda and Schmidt.

Quoted

I went away and looked thorugh my books again as I thought I was missing something. I was, in the form of the Supermarine 324,325 and 327 fighters that were designed to the same spec as the Typhoon in 1937/38. They didn't get built as Supermarine had enough on it's hands with the Spitfire and the 317 bomber. They are conventional two engine configuation, all with Merlin engines that give 1265hp apart from the 325 that uses pusher props. Size and weight are fairly similar, speeds range from 450mph @ 18250ft to 465mph@22,000ft. Armament is 12x0.303 or 6 x 20mm cannon.

I'm pretty sure I've seen different specs for thos planes with much lower numbers. Even the late war P-38s with turbocharged V-1710s didn't manage those numbers. Once you reach 400mph efficiency of propellers starts dropping rapidly, it is very hard to reach speed over 500mph. You need either a very clean (and light) fuselague, a very powerful engine, or both. And I don't see that as possible with 1935 technology except for specialized racing planes.

Quoted

Coanda and Schmidt.

Precisely.
Used the Coanda-1910 in an article here.

Quoted

Originally posted by Red Admiral
Please tell me which other gas turbines engineers were close to having a working design in this time frame. Von Ohain doesn't count as he simply copied Whittle.

Oh, please tell me a reliable source that says Von Ohain copied Whittle. What timeframe? WW 1936+3 or RA 1936+10?

Quoted

Originally posted by Kaiser Kirk
References to engines such as the Griffon or Sabre are about real world production engines to be used as benchmarks to evaluate the +3 to +5 year agreement, and thus marking the outer limits of Tech.

RA has a great deal of knowledge and very detailed concepts, and that has already led to allowances for limited production of "Handworked" engines that exceed the limits allowed every other player.

I disagree that this exception should in some way be a standard. That would be comparable if we had a player with deep knowledge of steam plants, and so that individual was allowed to have his nation starting to lay down ships with engines dating from +3 years ahead of everyone else.

As for the engine layout vs. conventional twins, we haven't addressed that as much. Though we should probably ask for real world production examples of that layout. Coupled real world engines like the vulture were not arranged in that manner.

The layout presented has significant advantages over a conventional layout and one must wonder why it was not in fact done and other engine arrangements were used.

I have to agree here, we all should benifit from the 3-5 year rule equally, without additional special advancements for those with more knowledge.

Coanda didn't build a jet engine. He built an afterburning ducted fan like Campini.

Schmidt built a pulse-jet. I'm talking about turbojets that are actually useful. Pulsejets are simple to build, extremely noisy, produce not much thrust, burn vast amounts of fuel, have terrible vibration problems.

Those stats come from BSP1:Fighters and Bombers 1935-1950 by Tony Buttler, which is pretty reliable. Propellers begin to loose efficiency at M0.75, but increasing chord and decreasing pitch can get this up to M0.85. Then things gets more exotic, but supersonic propellers have been built.

Quoted

Oh, please tell me a reliable source that says Von Ohain copied Whittle.

Wilhelm Gundermann who was the Heinkel engineer underneath Von Ohain. It was only Von Ohain who denied that he'd copied Whittle's patent. Its rather a coincidence that the same day Whittle's patent comes out (in 1931) that the German Embassy took copies of it and distributed it to the relevant institutions in Germany. Is it also a coincidence there is very little difference between Von Ohain's engine and that pictured in Whittle's patent?

Timescale, up to 1938-39ish after the first jets demonstrated the concept and projects were handed out to other companies in Britain and Germany.

I've almost never commented on aircraft designs, and I think the reason why is the crux of why this is a problem.

90%, or if not...all of us are fairly well educated in matters of ship history and construction, and can converse more or less as equals, because this is (or was) primarily a Naval sim, and it drew in people with that kind of interest and education.

However, when it comes to aircraft, there seems to be a very small number of us with comparable expertise and education in the finer points and in-depth history of aircraft, engines, superchargers, and all the other aeronautical technobabble that gets thrown around.

Red Admiral is, I think, far and away the leading man on aerospace history and technology. But there are many of us with almost no acumen in this field, especially people who really do need to be delving into fictional and extrapolated design...including myself.

Canada is supposed to have a domestic aircraft industry, but I can't do much with it because I completely lack the ability to be creative enough with aircraft design to do anything other than copy things here, and steal things there. But then we have Gavin running a nation that did have a historical aircraft history and industry, but he's putting out almost entirely off-the-wall fictional and bleeding-edge aircraft. And then the rest of us have to try playing catch-up with that, and we end up with Spitfires and P-51s in 1936, and the less Aero-skilled players who have no historical designs to advance are kind of getting shafted here. :\

As Hoo and others have pointed out....does Italy need alll of these widely disparite aircraft designs? What purpose do they serve that a more contemporary or historical design does not, given the lack of warfare in Italy's recent past to spur these advances? How is Italy able to afford all these cost-inefficient prototypes and limited-run high-performance designs?

At this rate, expect to see Candian CF-105s in the next 5 years or so, since I don't have much else to latch on to. :\

Quoted

Originally posted by ShinRa_Inc



Canada is supposed to have a domestic aircraft industry, but I can't do much with it because I completely lack the ability to be creative enough with aircraft design to do anything other than copy things here, and steal things there. But then we have Gavin running a nation that did have a historical aircraft history and industry, but he's putting out almost entirely off-the-wall fictional and bleeding-edge aircraft. And then the rest of us have to try playing catch-up with that, and we end up with Spitfires and P-51s in 1936, and the less Aero-skilled players who have no historical designs to advance are kind of getting shafted here. :\

:\

I have to agree with ShinRa here, especially considering I am running two countries, both of which run out of historical designs that I can use around 1940 in OTL. The only way I can compete is to buy foreign aircraft, something that while I don't mind doing to supplement existing aircraft, its not something I want to rely on. The very reason that I combined the design houses of IAR and PZL was so that I would only have to concentrate on two indegious fighter designs, rather than having to make four, the main reason for not wanting to concentrate on four designs being my limited aerospace knowledge and resources, as well as not having acess to Planebuilder to get some experience building planes. I realize that Poland and Romania will probably be around 3 to 5 years behind the Great Powers (ive still got Bi-planes for goodness sakes.) However, this engine and the competition it will spring will put me 10 years behind even if the aircraft doesn't go into production until 1940.

Agreed. Now, I'm in a slightly different spot... historically, Bulgaria did buy most of its fighter and bomber aircraft from foreign suppliers, for a variety of reasons - treaty limitations that had suppressed the Bulgarian aircraft industry, money woes, and Nazi pressure to buy German and not Czech... but the situation will remain roughly the same.