Airacobra, Kingcobra, and Airabonita Ideas and Inspirations

[dy031101]

P-39Q evolution with a motorjet and twin-boom in an attempt to raise the type's performance (Tophe did a version of it before at my behest).

(I was feeling lazy when I made this one, so no nose prop for now.)

[GTX_Admin]

That could also be a turboprop.

[Geoff]

Or a pusher prop

[Logan Hartke]

Oh wow, that is just...right.

Cheers,

Logan

[GTX_Admin]

A couple I did a while back:

Conventional nose engine:



Push/Pull:



Regards,

Greg

[apophenia]

Not quite P-39 or P-63 but definitely Bell-inspired ... these are part of an AltHist piece I'm working up. The gist is: what if Elsie MacGill had sold Canadian Car & Foundry brass and the RCAF on licenced Airacobras instead of Hurricanes for a new 'domestic' fighter in 1941?

[GTX_Admin]

Interesting.

[elmayerle]

Bell XFL-2 which would bear the same relationship to the P-63 that the XFL-1 did to the P-39.

A fully developed and "productionized" L-39-2, perhaps upgraded to a Merlin or Griffon for power.

[ChernayaAkula]

Diggin' the twin-boom P-39Q! A design that surely warrants further studies in plastic! Soviet Lend-Lease with a 37mm or even N-45 45mm gun per boom for improved ground-attack qualities?

Reminds me a lot of the Saab J-15/21. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[dy031101]

Soviet Lend-Lease with a 37mm or even N-45 45mm gun per boom for improved ground-attack qualities?

37mm, maybe, but the 45mm is reputed to have massive recoil even with a muzzle brake, and therefore I'm a bit reluctant to have two of them......

My primary motive of cooking up this stuff, admittedly, is the question whether that motorjet is gonna help the twin-boom Airacobra at high altitude...... 

[Jeffry Fontaine]

Another option might be to look at scale-o-rama using a 1/48th scale P-39 or P-63 as your 1/72nd scale airframe.  Of course there are going to be limitations on what can be achieved or considered practical but with the larger aircraft parts scaled down you would have room for a much larger engine in your fuselage.  The upside is that your 45mm gun with massive recoil issues would now be controllable and you would have room for a second or third crew member depending on how you arrange things internally. 

[dy031101]

Actually, the more I look at apophenia's CanCar Airabonita, the more I like it.

Title adjusted accordingly.  :)

apophenia, your "new fighter" makes me wonder how far we can go in between- a "less-strategically-demanding" land-based Airabonita!

Also...... how big is the Vickers S compared to the Oldsmobile M4?  And how possible would it have been that the Canadians would be inspired to copy the magazine design of the latter so more 40mm rounds could be carried, if Vickers S could indeed be mounted in the first place?

=================================================

Since the initial pic without the prop did stir up some other imaginations, I'm keeping that one at the top...

... and putting the definitive one with nose prop here.

[Alvis 3.1]

Awesome, the P-39 is my favourite what if subject!

Alvis 3.1

[Weaver]

I always thought the P-39 was an interesting layout, and the more I read about it, the more I become convinced that it's lacklustre reputation is partly myth, partly bad luck and partly due to features other than the mid-mounted engine. Just a few things:

1. The mid-mounted engine forced a relatively long length or fuselage to be rigid, with some weight penalty. However Bell made this much worse by adopting the car-door layout, which denied them the use of the full fuselage depth for strength, thereby forcing the shallow "canoe" underneath it to be heavily reinforced.

2. Adding to the weight problem was the nosewheel, which brought with it a 300lb weight penalty and a number of unneccessary ground accidents when it collapsed. In this respect, the Airabonita is a more logical layout.

3. Much was made of the complicated control runs, but again, the car-door-layout prevented simpler solutions. With solid fuselage sides, the engine controls could have gone "straight back" instead of "forward a bit, down a bit, back a lot, up a bit".

My ideal mid-engined fighter would have the cockpit moved to the forward position (as in the Aircobra trainers), a decent-sized fuel tank between the cockpit and the engine, two synchronised cannons under the cockpit floor with ammo boxes behind it, and two more in the wing roots (FW-190 style) with ammo boxes in the wings.

P.S. - how odd: I've just been considering a scalorama'd 1/48th to 1/72nd Aircobra as the basis of an alternative FAA turboprop fighter to occupy the "slot" of the Wyvern in an alternative timeline....

[dy031101]

Or a pusher prop

This what you have in mind?

[GTX_Admin]

I think the P-39 did so well with the USSR since most of the air battle on the Eastern Front were at low to medium altitude.  I wonder how it would have gone as a pure fighter on the Western Front if they had kept the turbo-supercharger of the original XP-39A.



Regards,

Greg

[jcf]

Bell's original conception:





Re: the turbo-supercharger, the problems were many and the original as-designed installation
was responsible for a number of the issues, including excessive drag. Realistically, the airframe
was too small to make effective use of the available turbos. However, a two-stage engine-driven
supercharger would have made a big difference rather than the standard Allison engine mounted
blower. The P-63 series used a two-speed/two-stage supercharger that was separate from the engine
and driven via a flex coupling.
Now whether having a better supercharger would have made the P-39 a better mid-to-high altitude
fighter is another issue, as you'd still have the relatively small and thick wing attached to an
aircraft that was intended more as a bomber interceptor than a pure fighter.

[dy031101]

Re: the turbo-supercharger, the problems were many and the original as-designed installation
was responsible for a number of the issues, including excessive drag.

I remember that someone suggested a Merlin-inspired supercharger but could no longer find that discussion or remember the details. 

EDIT: No turbocharger for Merlin, either, it seems.  That's what fragmented memory does for ya.

[apophenia]

Actually, the more I look at apophenia's CanCar Airabonita, the more I like it.

Thanks dy! I think that the S gun would've been a non-starter for Canada. The Vickers didn't emerge until almost a year after the RCAF began formulating its 'domestic fighter' requirment. Besides, I doubt that the RCAF would've welcomed a new weapon that would need transport across the North Atlantic. After all, RW CCF-built Hurricanes were adapted to Packard engines and US machineguns, radios, etc.

BTW: the original winner of that RW contest was the Airacobra but it was dropped due to RCAF concerns about mechanical complexity and worries over potential speed of construction. Instead, home RCAF fighter squadrons received imported Kittyhawks and CCF Hurricanes and Sea Hurricanes surplus to overseas requirements.

In the AltHist scenario, CCF builds Canadianized Airacobras at Fort William and Hurricanes for overseas use in the East (components from their Turcot QC and Amhearst, NS plants assembled at an enlarged Dorval facility).

The Vidal components began as a reduction in strategic materials for the in-production CCF Cobra before being taken further in the front-engined design.

[apophenia]

Jon: Thanks for those Model 3 images! Attached is a real old-timer of mine -- boy I wish that I'd seen your drawings first! For starters, the canopy on the real concept was waaay nicer than mine. Oh well ... 

[Weaver]

By all accounts, the Kingcobra wasn't much better than the Airacobra, although the Russians used them quite happily in their theatre.  I think the flaws that made the P-39 ordinary were more than just myth, to say nothing of the propellor's drive shaft sitting between the pilot's legs!

Regards,

John

I didn't say they were all myth, I said they were partly myth, partly bad luck and partly other factors that the mid-engined layout which is often blamed for all the Aircobra's woes.

Under "myth" I'm classing such "factors" as "the engine will squash the pilot in a crash" and "if the drive shaft comes loose it'll mince the pilot". My understanding is that there are NO recorded instances of either of these things actually happening.

Under "bad luck", I'd put the fact that US experience with the Aircobra started at a time when the average Japanese pilot was MUCH more experienced that the average American one, and the Aircobras in question were suffering from poor logistic support and maintenance. In other words, those squadrons would have had a thin time of it flying anything... The P-39 was then withdrawn from front line service and used predominantly for training in the States, which meant that a lot of even more inexperienced pilots got to fly them as their first high-performance mount and a quite a few died as a result. In other words, the P-39's reputation took the hit for the crashes that would have happened anyway, whatever aircraft the rookies were flying under that training regime.

"Other factors" are the car doors, the nosewheel and the missing turbo/supercharging, none of which were integral to the mid-engined layout.

[dy031101]

By all accounts, the Kingcobra wasn't much better than the Airacobra, although the Russians used them quite happily in their theatre.

The only reason why the US didn't take the P-63 is that they already had the P-51 (which was by then displacing every other fighter in the USAAF anyway)......

The Soviets, on the other hand, sure wouldn't mind a bigger P-39 with none of the Airacobra's weaknesses.

[GTX_Admin]

Donny, the P-63 was inferior to the P-51 pure and simple.  That's why it wasn't accepted into the USAAF inventory.  To suggest otherwise is an insult to the capabilities of the Mustang. 

I don't think he was trying to say that the P63 was superior to the P-51.  What think what he was trying to say was that if the Mustang hadn't been available at all then the P-63 may well have been accepted into a greater frontline roll by the USA.

Speaking of which, that does bring some enticing possibilities - P-63s in the same shemes as worn by the various P-51 operated.

[jcf]

According to both Birch Matthews' Cobra!: The Bell Aircraft Corporation 1934-1946 and
Pelletier's Bell Aircraft since 1935, the performance of the sole bubble-top, 1,425hp
V-1710-109 engined P-63D was roughly identical to that of the P-51D. So as the P-63D was no
improvement on the performance of the, all ready in mass production, P-51D, the USAAF
passed on ordering it in quantity.

This may be what Donny was thinking of.

An interesting unbuilt proposal was the XP-63B with 1,400hp Packard Merlin V-1650-5.

[GTX_Admin]

Hmm..P-63D with RR Griffon engine and contra props...