Looking at culture, news and gossip through an aeroplane window. Featuring contributions by the finest writers and artists.
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Unusual looking, yes, but I think ‘bizarre’ is a bit unfair, especially for the fastest piston-engine medium (and bordering on heavy, for the time) bomber I’m aware of.
A truly amazing aircraft of WW-II! Think of it this way: It would carry a little more than the average mission bomb weight of a four engined Lancaster bomber about thrice as far and return at speeds a Mosquito with less than half the bomb load could not match!
I know this last sentence is going to stir up some ire and other accusations of various forms of incompetence, but if you look up the TOTAL weight of bombs dropped by Lancs and divide by the number of sorties flown by Lancaster bombers, it comes out to about 7,800 pounds and less than 700 miles out and back on AVERAGE! The XB-42 could carry 8X1000 pounders with a actual weight of just under 8,144 pounds for over 1,800 miles at a service ceiling over 29,000′! Which is about 10,000′ higher than a LOADED Lancaster could manage. If losses to AAA is proportional to the CUBE of altitude difference, then the XB-42’s losses would have been less than 30% of those suffered by Lancaster’s in the war! It’s a good thing that the A-Bombs prevented the use of such an awesome weapon.
Contra rotating pusher props! I wonder about the drawbacks vs advantages.
[…] is for Mixmaster (Douglas […]
Unusual looking, yes, but I think ‘bizarre’ is a bit unfair, especially for the fastest piston-engine medium (and bordering on heavy, for the time) bomber I’m aware of.
A truly amazing aircraft of WW-II! Think of it this way: It would carry a little more than the average mission bomb weight of a four engined Lancaster bomber about thrice as far and return at speeds a Mosquito with less than half the bomb load could not match!
I know this last sentence is going to stir up some ire and other accusations of various forms of incompetence, but if you look up the TOTAL weight of bombs dropped by Lancs and divide by the number of sorties flown by Lancaster bombers, it comes out to about 7,800 pounds and less than 700 miles out and back on AVERAGE! The XB-42 could carry 8X1000 pounders with a actual weight of just under 8,144 pounds for over 1,800 miles at a service ceiling over 29,000′! Which is about 10,000′ higher than a LOADED Lancaster could manage. If losses to AAA is proportional to the CUBE of altitude difference, then the XB-42’s losses would have been less than 30% of those suffered by Lancaster’s in the war! It’s a good thing that the A-Bombs prevented the use of such an awesome weapon.