What destroyed a lot of B-17s?

[johnm]

as discussed before - why didn't the yanks just make DH Mosquitos ? - they could deliver 4000 lbs a lot safer for their aircrew

 

faster, higher ? less people, fuel, motors ............. and there was still a big 'bang' half way in the journey

[Old Koreelah]

Smaller profits? It’s Un-American to not use made-in-USA machinery!

The Americans have only ever adopted British designs when they had nothing remotely suitable;

The Canberra (still in use) and the Harrier.

[kgwilson]

The Mustang was a British design as well. Originally a RAF specification. It was only ever built in the US but only came in to its own when they put a Rolls Royce Merlin in to it & later Packard made thousands of Merlins under licence. The US had the raw materials and workforce plus the mass production facilities of their motor vehicle industry. There were no civilian cars made in the US between 1942 & 1945 as production was shifted totally to the war effort. 

[Thruster88]

I think it is a bit of a stretch to say the North American  p51 mustang is a British design.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_H._Kindelberger

[rgmwa]

The Mustang was designed by Edgar Schmued.

[Old Koreelah]

11 hours ago, rgmwa said:

The Mustang was designed by Edgar Schmued.

…who had imigrated from Germany.
A few hundred were built in Australia, but thousands were mass produced in America.

At war’s end, acres of shiny new Mustangs were bulldozed into piles for scrap.

[kgwilson]

16 hours ago, Thruster88 said:

I think it is a bit of a stretch to say the North American  p51 mustang is a British design.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_H._Kindelberger

The P51 was designed from a specification produced by the British Direct Purchasing Commission to replace the P40 Kittyhawk and went into service first with the RAF so it owes its origin to that original specification and excelled with the RR Merlin engine.

[onetrack]

Kevin, I'm sorry, despite your normally good information, there was no BDPC specification issued for the P-51 Mustang. When a Govt issues an aircraft specification, they state their requirements as to speed, range, armour, weight, HP, and other military features regarded as useful or necessary.

 

The true story is, the British went to NAA to see if they could build P40 Tomahawks for them, as Curtiss were flat-out, and the entire Curtiss production of P40's was all destined for the U.S. military, and Curtiss could not supply the British requirements.

 

James Howard "Dutch" Kindelberger, the President of NAA at that time, offered to build the British an "entirely new aircraft with improved performance over the P-40".

The British accepted his offer, and NAA  produced the P-51 from a basic design idea of Schmueds, in under 4 months. As rgmwa correctly stated, the primary P-51 designer was Edgar Schmued - but he was ably assisted by at least 7, and possibly up to 10 or 11, other American engineers, designers and aerodynamicists - all aided by 3 test pilots. 

 

These people also relied on aircraft design ideas and principles produced previously by British engineers and scientists - in particular, work by Sir Bennett Melvill-Jones, who produced the principle of the laminar flow wing in 1929, and Beverley Strahan Shenstone, a Canadian/British aerodynamicist who produced the idea of the Spitfires distorted elliptical wing.

 

NAA's greatest achievements were in designing and redesigning the P-51 to suit factory mass-production by relatively unskilled workers (remembering that around 35% of Americas WW2 domestic workforce was female, and in aircraft production, it was up to 65% of the workforce at its peak) - and by designing the P-51 with anal attention to smoothness of the wing and fuselage surfaces.

 

Also, it's important to remember that the P-51 was in continuous development all through the War, and as with most warplanes, there is no "standard" P-51, the design was changed and refined constantly.

By far the greatest move that established the P-51's outstanding abilities, was NAA's design change of power plant from the Allison V-1710, to the Packard-Merlin - which was produced at exactly the right time, as NAA were having problems with Allison reliability and its lack of high-altitude performance.

This change to the Merlin was believed to be initiated by the RR test pilot, Ron Harker. The British converted 3 early Allison-powered P-51's to Merlins with outstanding success, and then advised NAA of the major performance improvement, and requested that all British P-51 orders then be Merlin-powered.

 

https://www.mustangsmustangs.com/p-51/history/

 

https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/p-51-mustang-a-36-apache-time-it-took-to-design.57666/

 

"Flying" Magazine - Sept 1944 - https://books.google.com.au/books?id=VqavV_QLOcwC&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&dq=NAA+Project+Engineer+Ken+Bowen&source=bl&ots=wXga848w60&sig=ACfU3U1aB9rw5iYaqgjBFCRM-rZuUqPbPA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiqlPy9t5T6AhW0R2wGHRouDl8Q6AF6BAgDEAM#v=onepage&q=NAA Project Engineer Ken Bowen&f=false

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvill_Jones

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverley_Shenstone

 

Edited September 14, 2022 by onetrack

[kgwilson]

I stand corrected but the Wikipedia page on the BDPC states:-

 

"The requests by the Board to US manufacturers stimulated production and design including the development and production of what would become the North American Mustang, which was designed for the Commission."

 

And from Fighterworld.com Mustang page

 

"One of the finest American fighter aircraft of World War II, the North American Mustang owed its origin to a Royal Air Force (RAF) specification for a single-seat fighter to replace the P-40 kittyhawk. The first flight took to the air in October 1940, with production Aircraft in RAF service by the end of 1941. The original 1,150 hp Allison engine lacked performance and once it was replaced by the proven Rolls-Royce Merlin, the aircraft excelled."