A plane that could have changed the battlefor the skies in WW2

The Bugatti 100p........ a repro is nearing completion in the USA. If the Germans had got their hands on this, who knows what would have happened... www.bugatti100p.com

 

Just noticed....could a nice moderator put a space after "battle".......please..

 

It was an out and out racer so it does not mean that it would have made a good fighter. Once the armament, armour plating and other equipment had been installed then performance would have been lower than the racing version and tis assumes there would have been room for such stuff within airframe as built. Nice looking it of kit though.

 

I've been following the construction of this repro on Facebook,very much a racing/sports aircraft,not a military aircraft at all.
Colin.

 

The german air ministry was beset by infighting, so its hardly likily that it would have been built, hienkel had a fighter prototype that was better than the early models of the Me109, but it never got built in numbers because Hienkel was not liked by the top nazi brass, where as Messerscmitt was , yet the Hienkel was a far better at the time machine.

 

Hmmm - given general German history during the Second World War, the answer may have been something like:

1) There would have been a period of infighting between generals as they squabbled over who should develop this "prestige" project
2) Complexity of power plant would have led to long delays in getting even a prototype flying (Heinkel 177, anyone?)
3) The wrong company would have been chosen to develop the project (Junkers, for example, being asked to tender for an all-wood tank transport plane that ultimately emerged as the Me323, but not before the Junkers contender, from the pioneers of all-metal construction, but not noted for their carpentry skills regularly got reduced to piles of splinters whenever a tank got anywhere close)
4) Hitler would then have given his backing to the project, but only on the presumption that it was turned into a bomber plane, ruining its key feature (great speed) and further delaying the project. (Me262)
5) Finally, a very small number of aeroplanes would have reached the front line in the winter of 1944/45, but would be plagued by reliability problems that, after the war, were found to be caused by deliberate and brave acts of sabotage by workers making the planes in slave labour camps.
6) The remaining aircraft would have been largely confined to the ground due to lack of fuel, where swarms of 8th Air Force Mustangs, deprived of the opportunity to use up their ammunition in the air, would have shot them to pieces on the ground.
7) The Russians and the Americans would have raced across Europe to try to secure one of the few survivors for evaluation purposes. The Russians would be alleged to have created a reverse-engineered version in 1946, but little is known of it and in any case the coming of jets rendered it obsolete. The US flew their version a few times and then donated it to the Smithsonian Institute, where it slumbers out of sight in a reserve collection.

Well, that's my answer to "if the Germans had got their hands on it, what would have happened". Anyone got a better one?

Tom

 

Agree there, but remember Mitchell drew on his experience with the Schneider seaplanes in designing the Spitfire. The point about the 100p is that it had features on it that could have been incorporated into a fighter plane to improve it's performance. Drawing on work by Fred Meredith, an English engineer, he had discovered that if you pulled cool air in through a high pressure area on an aircraft and duct it through the radiator, if ducted correctly it expands on exit and it creates a negative drag, improving thrust at certain speeds. This was long before the Mustang made use of it. Another innovation on this plane was the use of analogue sensors to automatically adjust flaps. It's great to see a British company involved in this project. www.jlawson.com

 

However technologically advanced, I still think it would have been an irrelevance.

The Germans weren't short of good fighters during the war. Arguably, at least in some aspects, the Bf109, FW190 and Me262 were the equivalent of, or in some respects superior to, the contemporary allied fighters.

But fighters alone aren't enough: becuase they can't loiter hoping to intercept an enemy, they require good ground control. The German radar was also arguably technologically superior to the British system, at least early in the way before the British developed the centimetric radar for airborne interception. Where the Germans were chronically lacking was the flexibility and speed with which they turned their ground radar data into a being able to vector their fighters onto the enemy, which was - fortunately for us - not a patch on the Dowding system. The German system was cumbersome, meaning fighters were slow to react and were very vulnerable to spoofing operations. The Germans could have had the fastest, most powerful fighter in the world, but that would be of no use if they were constantly slow to react to the presence of the allied bombers.

So my slightly tongue in cheek response above still stands: if the Germans had acquired this aeroplane after the invasion of France in 1940, it would ultimately just have ended up as another of their technologically fascinating, but ultimately useless, secret projects.

Tom

 

Maybe he did but the Spitfire was a different beast entirely to his seaplanes. The Spitfire had ducted radiators by the way.

 

As has already been stated "thankfully for us" the German Top Brass within their Air Ministry with ReichMarshel Gerring at the top spent more time bickering and arguing amongst themselves over their pet projects. They were in turn "aidded and abetted" by the Furher Herr Hitler himself as it kept them from joining forces and toppling him! The German Aircraft Carriers were a case in point, there were 2 under construction of which only Graf Zepplin was any where near completion the other scrapped as little more than the keel was laid. Not only did Goring insist that the aircraft be under his control as head of German aviation, but bickering within the German Navy as the money spent on these "flat-tops" could be used to provide quite a number of U boats not to mention the proposed crews manning several dozen 'Boats. When Dernits [not sure the spelling] became head of the German Navy he ordered work to stop on the unfinnished hull of the 2nd Carrier and put the other onto the back burner. Ironically the Russians captured the Graf as spoils of war in 1945, by all accounts it wouldn't have taken much to make her seaworth and put into service under the Red Flag. Even taking into account the various modifications that had taken place on the hull. In the end the Graff was used for target practise in the Baltic and still exists on the bottom.

 

Yes I forgot about the Spitfire.....mea culpa.....

 

The old divide and rule approach.
Dönitz was the U-Boat commander you were unsure of and the Luftwaffe commander was Göring.
Had the Graf Zeppelin carrier been finished and put in to service, I doubt it would have lasted long in the face of Allied naval superiority.

 

Indeed the carrier may not have lasted long but could as with Tirpitz, could have tied down many allied ships and planes keeping her under observation. Equally Reader Donitz predessor had been planning [admittedly] a smaller but well balanced fleet of warships and navy of about a third the size of the British Navy all modern new vessels, the oldest being the likes of the Graf Spee or Admiral Sheer, both built in the early '30s. As he'd been lead to believe by Hitler that any major war wouldn't start ironically until 1945......

It was the spelling of Donitz' name I wasn't sure of, he'd been a successful U boat commander in his own right during the Great War and Goring a fellow member of the Red Barons squadron during the same war. Goring went on the command the squadron later on after the Baron was shot down. hadn't noticed I'd misspelt Goring's name to by the way!

 

A certain Colin Chapman noticed this and being a great believer in 'size and weight reduces performance' ducted all the rads on his F1 cars as well as some of the sports cars.

"Common sense" will try and convince you that a larger entry area into a rad* will be more effective than a small one but duct and seal the duct and make the exit area greater than the entry area and 'the laws of physics' will take over and chuck the common sense aside.

* Same applies for induction systems to carbs etc. so the funnel like addition to the American's engine in 'Those Magnificent Men' actually worked against him.