Random questions

[Dr Jekyll]

Some questions the assembled wisdom of Pprune may be able to help with, or at least have an interesting argument about.


Why did it take UK manufacturers in particular so long to adopt nosewheel undercarriages? Was it that tailwheels were not regarded as causing ground handling problems at the time? Or the extra weight of a nosewheel? Or a bit of both?

Why didn't the Spitfire and Mustang have a decent rear view from the beginnning?

Did anyone seriously consider a turboprop Shackleton?

Are there any bits of Lancaster in the Vulcan?

Why does the total wingspan (upper and lower) of a biplane seem to be so much greater than that of a monoplane of roughly equivalent performance? Something to do with interference between the wings? Or does it just look greater?

[Brain Potter]

Why didn't the Spitfire and Mustang have a decent rear view from the beginnning?

The technology to produce bubble-canopies from from acrylics (US name Plexiglass, British name Perspex) was in it's infancy in the late 1930s when these aircraft were designed.

[virgo]

A Mark 4 Shackleton (before the T4) was proposed using Napier Nomad turbo-compound engines (Two-stroke diesel with power recovery turbine, giving a specific fuel consumpion that is unsurpassed even today) They got as far as trial installations, but I don't think one ever flew.

[Schiller]

Tailwheels were usually necessary to give sufficient clearance for the prop without having a very long, and therefore heavy, undercarriage.
The main design advantage of biplanes is that the two wings with their associated bracing form a stiff but light girder. Once the trick of building strong enough wings cantilevered out from the fuselage had been sorted out, the resultant loss of drag gave greater airspeeds and the excess wing area was no longer relevant.

[Tail-take-off]

Another advantage with tail wheel cofig is reduced weight. ie 2 maingears & 1 tiny light weight wheel at the back.

Even more significant on retractable gear types as the tailwheel does not produce a great deal of drag therefore does not need a retracting mechanism.

[airborne_artist]

Even more significant on retractable gear types as the tailwheel does not produce a great deal of drag therefore does not need a retracting mechanism.

Not much room for a retracting nose wheel on a single engined, prop-driven high-powered fighter. One less thing to go wrong :ok:

[virgo]

How about the P39 Bell Airacobra ????

[Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!]

The P39 Bell Airacobra was a mid engined design


I sense some fishing here, but I'll take the bait as I'm so proud to finally answer a question on AH&N :}

[Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!]

Plus I suspect that there was a certain amount of inertia to design styles that caused a resistance to change.

You say tail wheels are bad for ground handling; maybe they are now they several generations have been trained on tricycle gear, but when that's all there was, perhaps the pilots just naturally handled them better. A bit like "Tailwheel? Looxury! We used to dream of havin 'tailwheel. We 'ad to get our ground crew to push down 'taxiway." "Groundcrew?..." etc etc.

I heard the development of the monoplane was called the 'Thick Wing' design and that once there was enough strength built into a single wing, it became the de-facto design as its thickness provided a place for gear to retract into, guns, fuel etc. Plus there was a benefitial aerodynamic factor as well. but that wasn't your question. Maybe it's because they can be (total wingspan greater) After all if you built a monoplane with the same wingspan as the total wingspan of a biplane, there's be a lot of torque a the wingtips and the wing would need extra structure to be self supporting. I think the size limits of living creatures follow a similar theory.

[Dr Jekyll]

But what about larger aircraft? The americans went nosewheel on the DC4 and B24 while Handley page stuck to tailwheel on the Halifax, and Avro did so through the Lincoln and most of the Shackletons.

[Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!]

We probably just had a massive shed full of tailwheels that we had to get rid of.

I wonder if the non bubble canopy is stronger because it uses a taller bulkhead in the middle of the fuselage. Maybe reducing the height of that bulkhead weakened the overall strength and it took a while for the design to catch up with the idea.

[Ramshornvortex]

Are there any bits of Lancaster in the Vulcan?


H2S radar:)

[Blacksheep]

That's why the NBS was so Top Secret. They didn't want the Russians to know we were using left over WW2 equipment in the front line medium bomber force. A lot of NBS components were date stamped with 1944 or 1945

The B!/B1As were particularly old fashioned and lots of bits would have been perfectly at home in a Lancaster. Indeed, some of them found their way into PA474... :hmm: