Five engine aircraft

[Logan Hartke]

I don't mean any with APUs or testbeds or a 747 carrying a spare engine.  I mean aircraft designed to be powered by 5 engines of roughly equivalent power.  I can only think of four:

Zeppelin-Staaken R.XIV/R.XV



Felixstowe Fury



Tupolev ANT-14



Heinkel He 111Z Zwilling



Can anyone think of any others?

Cheers,

Logan

[GTX_Admin]

Got me stumped...I keep thinking of testbeds.

[elmayerle]

I think it had more than five, but there's the Barling Bomber of the 1920's.

[GTX_Admin]

Yeah, I can think of a number with more than 5 engines, but those with only 5 is few.

[Daryl J.]

Stretching the SM-79 into a Pentamotor has passed through my mind crime time to time.

[Logan Hartke]

Alright, let's open it up to concepts and proposals, then.  Testbeds, etc.

Cheers,

Logan

[elmayerle]

Okay, going to an absurd extreme, one of those three PT6A conversions of the DC-3 with a pair of smaller engine booster pods (J85s perhaps) under the wing for improved performance under extreme conditions.

[Logan Hartke]

That gives me an idea!  How about one of these Catalinas...



...converted for use as a firebomber with an added C-119-style J34 "Jet-Pack" on top of the wing mounted on the central pylon to increase the amount of water it could carry and give better lift in tight spaces.



A Catalina with five engines?  Hmm...

Cheers,

Logan

[elmayerle]

I like that 5-engined Catalina, though  you might need some changes to the tail assembly to protect it from exhaust impingement.  Perhaps use a turbofan with a good mixer of fan and core flows?

[Logan Hartke]

Or just go twin tail?  Anyway, here's another idea that's pretty plausible given Fokker's use of trimotors:

Fokker F.32 + 1 in the nose



Heck, it's practically made for it.  I bet someone that's good at photo manipulation like Stéphane could whip something up with that in no time.

Cheers,

Logan

[elmayerle]

Damn, that's crying out for it.  It also suggests the "obvious" move of adding pusher engines to, say, the Ford-Stout Trimotor.  Also, ISTR a French design of the same period (A Potez, perhaps?) had a similar configuration of four engines in two nacelles and would be a suitable subject for such a modification.

[Logan Hartke]

The Farman F.220 series is probably what you're thinking about.  I think the Boeing 80 would do well with the addition of pushers in the nacelles, too, if beefed up to compete with the Fokker F.32, for instance.  Finally, how about a Handley-Page HP.42/45 with three engines on the top wing instead of just the two?







Cheers,

Logan

[elmayerle]

*laughs* I like all three of those suggestions.  Yeah, it was probably the Farman as it's been quite a while since I looked over French aircraft of the 1930s.  On the other hand, consider some of the French twins, such as the Bloch MB-200 or Potez 540, with pusher engines added to the nacelles and a fifth engine in the nose.  Stepping back farther than the Catalina in the US, a Consolidated P2Y with a centerline engine and pusher engines added to the existing engine nacelles would work as would a stretched version, in length and span, with a centerline and two more outboard engine nacelles.

[GTX_Admin]

Speaking of testbeds:

[Rickshaw]

Weren't there several early Soviet aircraft that had five+ engines?

[Logan Hartke]

That looks great, Greg.  I've always loved that one.

Weren't there several early Soviet aircraft that had five+ engines?

There's the Tupolev ANT-14 that I mentioned in the first post, but all the others I'm aware of had more than 5, like the ANT-20 (eight) and Kalinin K-7 (seven).

Most of the B-17 testbeds look pretty crazy, but this one's not bad.



Cheers,

Logan

[arkon]

how about a d0-24 with the outboards as push - pull instead of just pull?

[Daryl J.]

I just looked at the Matchbox Stranraer kit as a possible 5 engined project.   It defeated me immediately.

[Logan Hartke]

I can imagine.  Plastic isn't my medium, but I think one of the most interesting five-engine configurations for a Stranraer would just be a row of 5 Rolls-Royce Kestrels evenly spaced across the front on the upper wing.  You're looking at a readily available and reliable engine that Supermarine was familiar with, along with a modest increase in power as a tradeoff for the greater weight.



Cheers,

Logan

[Weaver]

One of these would look good with pusher engines on the back of the nacelles:



(Fokker F.XX)

[GTX_Admin]

Oh yeah!

[Logan Hartke]

I wonder if you saw fewer push-pull aircraft because tricycle landing gear hadn't yet become popular.

Cheers,

Logan

[jcf]

Add the center engine of the Farman F.120T Jabiru to the nose of a Farman F.121 Jabiru.





Five engines and fugly to boot. What's not to love?

The push-pull arrangement was not uncommon through the twenties - early thirties, however,
it was not very efficient. The slipstream from the forward propeller reduced the effectiveness
of the trailing unit and as engines became more powerful it fell by the wayside.

Five Kestrels would be a tough fit on a Strannie, as it actually aint' that large of an aircraft.

[Logan Hartke]

Where is Brian?  I get the feeling that he'd build half of these.

Cheers,

Logan

[Daryl J.]

Where is Brian?  I get the feeling that he'd build half of these.

Like button pushed.