Spitfire "crash": pilot pulled wrong lever

The engines would be the least of my worries in that thing - like Bob says, it just screams aero instability.

It is rather pretty, though...

 

Sorry for the delay in responding about the F-82's. There are 2 being restored to fly, one in Minnesota and one in Georgia. One of them came from the Walter Soplata collection and a gentleman named Tom Reilly is the main restorer on one but i can't remember which is which.

XP-82 Twin Mustang Project: History

Here is a link for the propeller's

Prop Tested For F-82 Restorations

My guess is that we are 2 years away from a first flight.

My experience with composite props is A +, they accelerate faster and in my Extra 300 it seems as if the airplane jumps forward even in a vertical climb.

My experience with new airfoils for WW2 propeller's is also positive. My Mustang came with blades from an Albatross from the 50's and the acceleration was much better and the propeller was also smoother. The current paddle blade has a horrible harmonic as do all of the original WW2 propellers on Mustang's

I can see the composite props becoming very popular and it is a very good sign for the Warbird movement.

I was at the airshow where the last F-82 landed gear up Harlingen 1982, saw it make the turn to final and never saw it roll out.

I have also witnessed 2 Warbird fatal accidents were the airplane flipped over and the pilot was killed.

So at least on the T-28 I know it is in the Pilot's manual to pull the gear up, if you are going to go off the side or end of the runway. A friend of mine did just that about 4 years ago. Much more desirable then flipping on your back.

There was a big hoopla over the CAF F-82 that geared up in 1984. The story was that it was to be traded to a famous celebrity (Tom Cruise) and when the government found out they decided that the paperwork issued over 40 years ago wasn't correct and they took it back. Now they have 3 at the same museum.

 

What if there were two pilots in an F-82 which was landed too hot on a runway, and was nearly to the end of the pavement...and one pilot selects gear up, but one pilot wants to leave it gear down?

 

Same thing could have happened when Sully landed in the Hudson.

In short, there's only ONE pilot in a given plane.


I think I read that only the first couple F-82 prototypes had 2 cockpits. The later planes had a pilot and navigator (without flight controls).

 

Horrible way to die if the pilot with control had a heart attack.

Which side did the man in charge sit on?

 

Left, as usual.



Why die? Not really any different than the 'guy in back' in a Tomcat, or whatever...

That's what parachutes are for.

 

I keep thinking about scale effect, lower mass, lower inertia, higher power to weight ratio that a model would have to make it fly successfully. It still doesn't look right and is typical of the creative and rather flamboyant art style of Etorre Bugatti. One thing that bothers me is the swept forward wing and the possible adverse stall progression. Three gear boxes and two CV joints in the power train doesn't thrill me either. Just my old fashion uneducated gut feel that could be totally wrong.

 

Does anybody know if the real thing ever actually made it into the air?

 

Development was arrested before the start of WW2 and never reached flight status.

 

Which I think saved the test pilot. If the Germans had thought it had any merit, they would have not hesitated to exploit it.

But, as said before - it was indeed very pretty.

(but then - so were some of the Jack Northrop flying wings...)

 

At any rate, it is now just an anecdote to history - but a very interesting one.

It no longer matters to anyone sane, but somehow - I still like this weird airplane.

 

There are many R/C models of the Bugatti flying - but one must remember that models are typically over-powered when compared to full scale. And, as MacAir has shown, with enough power...

 

A brick can be put into the air...

 

You are right on, Russ. Any kind of model including mail boxes can be made to fly. Low Reynolds numbers and scale effect have a great effect on models that doesn't reflect full scale flight. You diminish the size of the vehicle but you can't diminish the viscosity of the fluid in which you fly the model. Model power is greater than the full scale counterpart and, again, the fluid environment is unchanged and the results do not mimick full scale flight.

 

Also, you do not have to ride in it - one can always claim "Radio Failure" when the bad thing happens.

 

I'm no expert, but with the weight of the two engines and associated drivetrain, the wing loading on the Bugatti looks to be quite high.

 

Pretty sure more aircraft lost to accidents than combat in WWII.

 

It seems to me that I read somewhere that around 1/3 of all the Me-109s were wrecked in ground accidents because of the narrow gear.

 

From Dec. 1941 to Aug. 1945 the U.S.Air Forces lost 14,903 pilots and crew and 13,873 airplanes---- inside the U.S. We witnessed this in our neighborhood in Fla. when there were training crashes almost every day. In combat 22,948 airplanes were lost and another 20,633 were lost to non combatant causes. Over the length of the war 220 service men died per day, 6600 per month.
Willy Messerschmit refused to change the splayed out landing gear a set up with some camber because it would have caused a bump in the upper surface of the wing when the gear was retracted. I recall something like 8000 fatal landing accidents in new ME109 pilots when they ground looped and flipped over. The trunnion support forging was also weak and contributed to some ground accidents.

 

Bob- Spitfire had a similar problem, not really cured until the Spiteful came out.

 

One of the good things about the FW-190; the gear folded inward... very wide stance. I read that Grumman looked very closely at a captured FW-190 when they were designing the Bearcat, which has similar gear layout.

Of course, also with our Navy's absolute insistance on an air-cooled engine, and the plane was a lot lighter than the previous Hellcat. (Not all FW-190's had air-cooled engines).