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ORIGINAL: Nikademus

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ORIGINAL: Sardaukar

There were several eyewitness cases in books where Zero pilots tried too many G's and ripped their wings off etc. IIRC, it usually happened when attempting abrupt recovery from high-speed dive (high-speed dive for Zero, that is)

What are these? I recall an early production Ki-43-I incident over Sumatra, but none involving Zeros.

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ORIGINAL: Sardaukar
Couple of incidents with Zeroes like this are mentioned in Bergerud's book "First Team and Guadalcanal". IIRC, one even killed quite experienced IJNAF pilot. It was not that they were not aware of danger, but got distracted (usually shot at) and tried something radical resulting pulling too many G's.

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ORIGINAL: Nikademus

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ORIGINAL: Sardaukar
Couple of incidents with Zeroes like this are mentioned in Bergerud's book "First Team and Guadalcanal". IIRC, one even killed quite experienced IJNAF pilot. It was not that they were not aware of danger, but got distracted (usually shot at) and tried something radical resulting pulling too many G's.

You mean Lundstrom. I don't recall such from his volume 2. The only such incident i recall from that volume involved an inexperienced Zero pilot who was suprised by an F4F at sea level, tried to conduct a violent maneuver resulting in his wingtip touching the water, resulting in a cartwheel into the sea.

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ORIGINAL: herwin
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2. Low wing-loading at altitude did provide more manoeuvrability. Two issues, though: higher drag so lower dive speeds, and sustained turn rate and climb depended in power to weight ratio, so if you were deficient there, you still lost out.

3. Emergency boost is fine, but was only transient. You didn't have it for very long. So endurance and range were best at some distance down from the service ceiling.

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ORIGINAL: crsutton

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ORIGINAL: herwin
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2. Low wing-loading at altitude did provide more manoeuvrability. Two issues, though: higher drag so lower dive speeds, and sustained turn rate and climb depended in power to weight ratio, so if you were deficient there, you still lost out.

3. Emergency boost is fine, but was only transient. You didn't have it for very long. So endurance and range were best at some distance down from the service ceiling.

I am not such an expert of aircraft but was'nt the P47 the exact opposite of this. That is, a high wing loading aircraft that performed very well at altituded to to massive horse power as a compensating factor.

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I wonder how many g's a Zero's balsa wood wings could take before being torn off.

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ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez

It wasn't the amount of G's pulled that caused the wings to shed so much as it was the high speed attained in the dive. Most of the reports of Zero's shedding their wings was from an aerodynamic condition induced by high speed. The duraluminum skin on the wings was very thin, comparable to soda can in thickness, and once its Vne speed (velocity, never exceed) had been passed the skin began "wrinkling" and produced a severe vibration that caused wing failure within seconds. This speed was in the area of about 375mph. Pilots were cautioned to remain below 350mph to avoid shedding wings.

It should be noted the Wildcat had a similar issue with shedding wings but for a different reason.

Chez

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On an interesting side note, re: Manueverability factors, another one often not mentioned....cockpit size. A subtle positive attribute of the Zero was it's roomy cockpit which allowed the pilot the space to conduct violent maneuvers (this being the time before Fly-by-Wire etc etc....the roominess gave the pilot more leverage to yank the controls around). The 109 in contrast was cramped and I've read in more than one place how difficult this could make it for pilots to conduct violent maneuvers at higher G's. Its like trying to lift a heavy weight without allowing the body the room to set up for it optimally

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Actually the Zero was a very strongly built aircraft and could pull more G's than most contemporary fighters. The problem with the Zero's was it's inability to absorb damage. The Zero gained much of its strength from the duraluminum skin as it was an integral part of the structure. It was one of the first fighters to be so designed. Most fighters of the day had a strong framework to which the skin was attached. In the Zero, the skin was considered part of the framework. It greatly reduced the weight of the aircraft but at a cost.

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ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez

It wasn't the amount of G's pulled that caused the wings to shed so much as it was the high speed attained in the dive. Most of the reports of Zero's shedding their wings was from an aerodynamic condition induced by high speed. The duraluminum skin on the wings was very thin, comparable to soda can in thickness, and once its Vne speed (velocity, never exceed) had been passed the skin began "wrinkling" and produced a severe vibration that caused wing failure within seconds. This speed was in the area of about 375mph. Pilots were cautioned to remain below 350mph to avoid shedding wings.

It should be noted the Wildcat had a similar issue with shedding wings but for a different reason.

Chez

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ORIGINAL: Nikademus
As did the P-38 (again for a different reason) Agreed. Going too fast for any airframe (insert reason) can cause structural failure. The Zero airframe itself however was not "weak"

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ORIGINAL: JWE

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ORIGINAL: Nikademus
As did the P-38 (again for a different reason) Agreed. Going too fast for any airframe (insert reason) can cause structural failure. The Zero airframe itself however was not "weak"

You know, it’s interesting that exactly the same thing happens to modern high-performance racing sailboats. Their keels don’t fall off – straight-line structural integrity is thousands of times more than an aircraft, but still … once you hit boundary separation, the stress goes up hyper velocity; and the Reynolds difference between water and air is pretty big. I’ve seen keels totally stripped down to the epoxy after a gnarly breezy ocean race.

Next time you go sailing, and hear that sweet little huummm coming from down below when you are at hull speed for the conditions, just ask yourself – golly, instead of a bullet-proof brick of lead covered by epoxy, what would happen if it were just a skin on a frame?

Fiziks is wicked cool stuff.

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ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez
Didn't Australia have one of their 10 meter boats sink during a race because the hull cracked in half? I think that was in the 90's.

Chez

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ORIGINAL: LoBaron

Nah I was not commenting anything about the code or the conclusion Schatten was coming to. [;)]

Don´t read more into comments than there is. Durability is not code, its just a variable.

The Air team had to base some values on certain attributes of an airframe. The Elf wrote about the different reasons for assigning +1 service rating for
planes, and one of them was inline engines.
The same musings can be made about which attributes influenced the distribution of durability points. Inline engines where prone to damage where
radial engines kept on ticking. So that might be the reason why the durability of the P-43 is higher than of the P-40.

What do you have against "musings of the black box whatever model"? Thats part of the fun. [:'(]

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ORIGINAL: LoBaron

I see what you mean. [:)]

On the other hand the interesting thing about such threads is that the topic concerned changes. So you
don´t see anything of interest and then suddently after a couple of weeks you read through it and find one gem or the other.

Most topics that have been discussed anyway long ago drop very fast if there is a general agreement. If not it becomes a 10 pager with all the twists and off topics that come with it.

When I think about where this thread has gone from "cancelling the tony program"... [;)]