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Post by timothylane on Jul 7, 2019 9:47:13 GMT -8
The Wildcat was the F4F (i.e., the fourth Navy fighter designed by Grumman) and the Hellcat the F6F, so the Tigercat was their next design. According to wikipedia, it was initially to be called the Tomcat (late used for the F-14, also a Grumman design), but they decided that was too suggestive. It was available in the final year of World War II but may not have been deployed. They didn't have much need for night fighters (which was its initial use) by then.
The B-24 was less heavily armed than the B-17 but had a longer range. It was used especially in the Mediterranean theater, and was involved in the Ploesti raids of 1942 (the little-known Halpro mission -- I've only seen it mentioned in the book Ploesti by James Dugan and Carroll Stewart, which details the American efforts against the oil center) and 1943.
I don't know which model was involved, but in the Japanese bombing raid on Dutch Harbor that initiated the Midway campaign, a single attacker was shot down, joint credit being shared by the AA defenses and a PBY that happened to be in the air there (probably either setting out on or coming back from a reconnaissance mission).
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Post by kungfuzu on Jul 7, 2019 9:51:58 GMT -8
I had never seen nor heard of the Tigercat until your post. Another case of R&T's educational value.
I have some photos of the B-24, which I will try to find. You would be amazed how small the pilots' area is.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jul 7, 2019 9:55:07 GMT -8
The B-24 also carried a heavier bomb load than the B-17, but it couldn't sustain the damage a B-17 could and still fly. The different wing design had something to do with this.
B-24s were used as recon planes in the Atlantic for sub-hunting as well.
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Post by timothylane on Jul 7, 2019 11:53:01 GMT -8
Martin Caidin had a picture of one nearly-fractured B-17 in his book Flying Forts. He pointed out that they were unarmored and therefore easily damaged -- but also extremely sturdy, so all that danage didn't always lead to being shot down. It often probably didn't lead to being disabled -- the bombers weren't sealed to the (cold and thin) air, so a few extra holes didn't matter if nothing important was damaged.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jul 7, 2019 14:20:31 GMT -8
I hope these photos give you an idea of just how tight the cockpit was in a B-24.
I am not large, but I would find the cockpit of the B-24 tight, especially on 8-9 hour flights.
And the B-17 was no better. This photo does not do justice to the smallness of the plane. Perhaps the ball turret in the front gives the best indication of how tight things were.
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Post by timothylane on Jul 7, 2019 16:13:32 GMT -8
That is a tight fit. Have you ever seen the U-505 in Chicago? If you have, you'll know why I ask.
That B-17 photo would work better for your purpose if you had a person on each side to be able to shoot the guns at enemy fighters. That would show the crowding better. Imagine spending several hours standing at those guns and shooting at any enemy planes within reach.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jul 7, 2019 19:13:27 GMT -8
I have not been in U-505, but I have been in U-995. They have spruced it up since I was there some thirty years or more ago, but I can tell you it is extremely tight inside. I don't know how the crew could even use the one head at the rear of the sub. I was just under 5'10" and 160lbs at the time and it would have been very uncomfortable.
I checked to compare the two subs and the U-995 was only 759t, 220'2" long, with a pressure hull beam of 15'7" while the U-505 was 1,120t deadweight and 251'10" long with a pressure hull beam of 14'5".
I had seen the USS Bowfin prior to visiting the U-995 and there was no comparison. The US vessel of the same period had it all over the German one.
The Bowfin was 1,550t deadweight and 311'3" length. The beam was 27'3". I don't know if this was the pressure hull beam or overall, but either way it is several feet wider than either German vessel.
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Post by timothylane on Jul 7, 2019 19:28:25 GMT -8
I don't recall the details of the U-505 tour, though it did include an Enigma machine. (I've read a number of works on code-breaking, most notably David Kahn's The Codebreakers. One interesting story in it involves the Italian penetration of Yugoslav military codes before World War II. When Germany et al declared war on Yugoslavia, some Yugoslav units attacked poorly defended northern Albania. So the Italians sent them orders to retreat, which the Yugoslav units obeyed.)
Note that the Type IXC U-boat was a good bit larger than the Type VIIC. We still went through it single file.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jul 7, 2019 19:48:11 GMT -8
Unfortunately, we couldn't go into that part of the plane.
On the other hand, if one had money to throw around, one could be taken on a flight of the B-17, B-24 and B-29. The husband of my wife's good friend flew in both the B-24 and B-29. As I recall, he got to sit in the nose area of the B-29.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 8, 2019 9:05:15 GMT -8
I think the reality of the hardship of riding around in a cramped, noisy, always-vibrating space — combined with the danger — must have been extreme. And what a marvel that made this all possible in the first place: Aluminum and production abilities that had been unforeseen by any enemy. They had aluminum collection parties during the war as well. 90% of aluminum production went to the war effort. Aluminum smelters were thrown up in less than a year, greatly assisted by New Deal hydro-electric projects. (Aluminum productions takes a lot of electricity.) In 1944 alone, the United States built more aircraft than Japan did during the entire war. As this link notes: At peak production, we were turning out 11 planes an hour. With the hydroelectric dams (which take years to build) having been fortuitously put into place, combined with new smelting techniques, massive quantities of electricity could be produced and thus huge quantities of cheap alumimum. I found this part interesting as well: Grumman F6F Hellcat   19 Facts About the Grumman F6F Hellcat |
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Post by timothylane on Jul 8, 2019 9:38:05 GMT -8
Before the war, Germany led the world in total aluminum production, about 250,000 tons a year. They had no bauxite, but Greece exported it, and Hungary and Yugoslavia exported even more. So did France, but that probably didn't do Germany much good. Italy was at least self-sufficient. Churchill found it mordantly amusing that the sanctions against Italy over the invasion of Ethiopia included aluminum but not oil, which Italy badly needed to import.)
There is a story, which I first encountered in Brian Garfield's The Thousand-Mile War about the Aleutians campaign (which includes the Battle of the Komandorskis, the Battle of the Pribilofs, and the Battle of the Pips -- embarrassments respectively to the IJN, the USAAF, and the USN), that the F6F was specifically designed to beat the Zero because of a nearly undamaged Zero found on an Aleutian island after the Dutch Harbor bombing raid that initiated the Midway campaign. A Japanese pilot named Koga crash-landed on the island and was killed on impact. His Zero undoubtedly provided valuable intelligence about the plane's capabilities, but it's not clear that it had anything to do with the actual design of the Hellcat.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jul 8, 2019 10:47:15 GMT -8
Sadly, the glory days of the American aluminium industry are long gone. Today, China and Russia have much larger production that the USA, as does Canada. The Chinese industry is by far the world's largest and its growth came about in the last 20-30 years.
At one time, the USA and Canada were the world's leaders in this industry. All of this was at first controlled by Alcoa, but anti-trust laws split the company into Alcoa in the USA and Alcan in Canada.
I spent a couple of decades dealing in aluminium (as it is spelled overseas) and loved it.
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Post by timothylane on Jul 8, 2019 11:43:38 GMT -8
The Alcoa action was blatantly political; the company was basically controlled by Andrew Mellon, whose low-tax policies and great wealth were anathema to FDR. No one accused them of any wrong behavior, but it had a monopoly on primary aluminum, and that was enough -- even though there were producers of secondary aluminum (i.e., from scrap metal). The Supreme Court decision confirming it (in 1946) was much attacked later by Ayn Rand, and I think deservedly so.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 8, 2019 11:44:26 GMT -8
Maybe in Trump's second term he can do something about bringing more heavy manufacturing back here.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jul 8, 2019 12:05:12 GMT -8
Secondary and primary aluminium production are very different. To begin with, very thin foils are generally made with pure or very slightly alloyed aluminium. And while secondary production has become more sophisticated, it generally does not allow for alloys with very tight specs for impurities as the nature of scrap collection does not alloy for extremely clean feed stock. I don't know of any producer making airplanes using secondary feed stock and doubt if it is even allowed. Certainly not for the aviation-grade skin sheet/plate used in the airplane industry.
Another example of this is the aluminium canning industry. UBCs (used beverage containers i.e. coke cans) are a big item in the recycling industry. You might suppose that these could be recycled for making more can stock. But this is not the case, unless something has changed over the last decade or so. To begin with, the cans are made from two different alu alloys, one for the top and another for the can body. Furthermore, when collected, UBCs contain all sorts of impurities from soft-drink residue to dirt. They are simply crushed into bales and remelted into secondary ingot which is then used for alloying purposes.
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Brad Nelson
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עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 8, 2019 12:09:20 GMT -8
As Thomas Sowell points about about this horrid incident with Alcoa in one of his books, Alcoa by no means had a monopoly on materials. If their "monopoly" made aluminum more expensive, manufacturers were free too choose another material.
What we have here is deep hostility toward business by Democrats who are then more than happy if American jobs are lost to Communist countries. And it gets so tiring that no Republican will call a spade a spade in this regard. Oh...maybe Trump does. I don't listen to him all that much though.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jul 8, 2019 12:25:52 GMT -8
One can only hope so. One of the most important things he has done is to cut the amount of regulations and red-tape imposed by the federal government. These are probably a worse impediment than taxes to the growth of industry in the USA. Of course, one shouldn't forget the role lawyers play in depressing the growth of industry here.
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Post by artraveler on Jul 9, 2019 8:31:36 GMT -8
Twin boosters I bet
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Post by artraveler on Jul 9, 2019 8:35:12 GMT -8
My mother was a WAC stationed with MacArther. The office staff called him "dugout Doug".
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Post by timothylane on Jul 9, 2019 8:55:47 GMT -8
The nickname originated with the "Battling Bastards of Bataan". They wrote short poems about him, many of them unfair (but they didn't know that, since he stayed on Corregidor so they never saw him).
Dugout Doug's not timid, he's just cautious, not afraid. He's protecting carefully the stars that Franklin made. Four-star generals are rare as good food on Bataan, And his troops go starving on.
Dugout Doug, come out of hiding! Dugout Doug, come out of hiding! Send to Franklin the glad tiding That his troops are starving on.
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