WOW. Beautiful work Bob. Knew a guy from Vacaville that used to fly those across the Pond. John Mack was Chief Pilot for Them in the 30's. Had lots of stories to tell.
From what I've read, they were the aerial equivalent of a luxury ocean liner. No doubt expensive, but classy. It's fitting that one of them was the first aircraft on which a President flew.
My old boss who is now in charge airplane development said, "Nice painting. UGLY airplane." From early accounts, the 314 was a bear to fly and required special techniques. Not enough tail area and too much hull hanging down out front. Luxurious, though.
Great work Bob!!! The lighting is incredible. Do you use a model for reference, in additional to photos? in flight: [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRYzFjift2Q[/ame]
Beautiful, Bob, This is a nice video. Boeing: Romancing the Skies The 314 started out with one vertical stabilizer; would not turn during the test flight; had to use the engines to turn. So they removed it and installed two at ends of the horizontal stabilizer. Still not enough, so they ended up with three verticals. It was still sluggish with the huge hull, but it was OK.
I don't know about that. I think it's beautiful. And your rendering is absolutely spectacular. Well done!
It was 685 dollars then. I think that it would be a bit more now. To fly from San Francisco to Hong Kong you would leave on a Wednesday and arrive in Hong Kong the following Wednesday. But you would have been well fed and comfortable the whole way while you cruised at 1500 feet at 170MPH. Wrong price. I was quoting a flight across the Atlantic. I'll look up the Pacific cost. probably twice the cost plus all the over night stays that you would have to do.
A one way trip from SFO to Hong Kong was 975 dollars, round trip was 1710 dollars. I don't know what that would be in todays dollars but I'll bet it would be at least ten times that now. BUT, you would get a hot cup of coffee with your peanuts.
CPI in 1939 was 13.9, today it is 237, so the ratio is 17.1. $975 then would be $16,700 today and $1,710 then would be $29,240 today, as best as CPI can be used as a measure of price levels between time periods.
...and I'm pretty sure the stu's pouring your coffee and handling your bag of nuts were still hot back then!
I think a better way to measure is how many hours an average employee or worker would have had to work for the ticket back then and today for a comparable first class ticket.
From the web: How Much things cost in 1939 -Average Cost of new house $3,800.00. Average wages per year $1,730.00. Cost of a gallon of Gas 10 cents. Average Cost for house rent $28.00 per month. A loaf of Bread 8 cents. A LB of Hamburger Meat 14 cents. Average Price for new car $700.00. Toaster $16.00.
There were several tail configuration on the prototypes before they settled on the final version with 3 vertical stabilizers.
You are correct regarding the tail configuration. On the initial test flight the pilot radio'd that he couldn't turn the airplane and had to use differential thrust to do so. Even after adding the three fins, they still weren't enough and a pilot was forced to use different techniques when flying the 314. I have a picture of the prototype with the starboard wing down six feet in the water because the sponsons were too short and lacked buoyancy required. Anyway, most Boeing airplanes had tail area problems that is now referred to as tail volume, a formula that is based on the relationship of span, tail moment arm, and lateral areas. An engineer named George Schairer (spl) devised the formula for tail size that first appeared on the B-17E with the big fin and long dorsal. The 314 Clipper had one third of the tail volume that it should have had.
I hate to sound professorial when I'm not a prof or an orial. My discussing "tail volume' was meant to simply point out that Boeing engineers never really had a handle on tail design until the B-17E. Up until that time it was a not-too-educated guess. having worked with some well educated and very talented aero guys, the subject of tail configuration and volume was always an important job.
What are the symptoms of a tail that's too large? Would a tail that's too small be better at long range cruising- quartering winds would have less effect. Or am I overthinking it?
The vertical tail on the early B-17s and 307 Stratoliners even looked too small to the eye, and the crash of the first 307 was attributed to that, right? I think that the new, larger tail on the B-17E and the later 307s was probably larger than necessary, but better to be safe than sorry. I think, though, that they repeated the mistake on the first C-97s, which had the tail from the B-29, and it also looked too small. There they quickly did the right thing and replaced it with the B-50's larger tail (and engines). I believe the first tail on the 314 was copied (like the wings) from the XB-15, and the middle tail in the three-tail configuration had the same shape, but no rudder.
Tails on multi-engine airplanes are sized to maintain adequate control when an engine(s) fails on take off..at least at Boeing. Tail arm, wing span asymmetrical thrust are figured into it. The shorter the tail arm, the bigger the tail (Curtiss SB2C) and the longer the tail arm, the smaller the tail(ME109). To me, the two airplanes that ignored sensible plan form were the SB2C and the B-24. The engineer that designed the B-24 (Ladd) had it pretty well done until he thought that it would look better with 6 feet added to the nose. Then the Air Force added more when they put in the nose turret. Then when the Navy got it, they did a similar thing and the nose of a Privateer was as long as the tail arm. Then they had to put a vertical fin on it that looked like it was 5 stories tall and added a lot of horizontal tail area too. Two very ugly airplanes(I think).
I saw a line of B-32's at Pine Castle Air Base (now Orlando International) when we landed in 1945. They weren't anywhere near as pretty as a B-29 and had the same B-24 disease. They weren't a very good airplane and nothing worked on them the first time. Convair did not build a good airplane.
