F.A.Q Section Q: Do you take aircraft requests? A: I have a list of aircraft I plan to cover, but feel free to add to it with suggestions:) Q: Why do you use imperial measurements for some videos, and metric for others? A: I do this based on country of manufacture. Imperial measurements for Britain and the U.S, metric for the rest of the world, but I include text in my videos that convert it for both. Q: Will you include video footage in your videos, or just photos? A: Video footage is very expensive to licence, if I can find footage in the public domain I will try to use it, but a lot of it is hoarded by licencing studies (British Pathe, Periscope films etc). In the future I may be able to afford clips :) Q: Why do you sometimes feature images/screenshots from flight simulators? A: Sometimes there are not a lot of photos available for certain aircraft, so I substitute this with digital images that are as accurate as possible. Feel free to leave you questions below - I may not be able to answer all of them, but I will keep my eyes open :)
I would like to see a video of yours on flying the hump in WW2 specifically on the C46 commando's roll. Or design and development of the C46. My grandpa was a C46 hump pilot, so it holds special interest to me.
@@anonymous12345678935 that being true, you will be aware of the several video programmes detailing this courageous event that are already available to view. Yet, is there still more unaired material that we can learn more from?
Heavier than air aviation at least. Arguably all of powered aviation. But not all of aviation history itself, which includes things that do by definition cannot have engines such as hot air balloons. That said I think the sentiment in the OPs statement is spot on.
The J7W1 was actually intended to be powered by a jet type engine. The propeller version was used basically for testing the concept. Propeller version would have been built and flown until the intended powerplant was ready, if it ever would have been. I always thought that the J7W1 was the most beautiful of all of the concept plane that anyone else ever made.
@@steveproctor1748 I think it is a beauty contest between the Kyushu J7W1 and the Lockheed Starjet L-133. The Starjet project was sadly cancelled before it was flown.
The sole surviving Curtiss XP-55 Ascender (#2 of 3) has been restored and sits in the Kalamazoo (Michigan) Aviation History Museum, aka, The Kalamazoo Air Zoo. I've seen her up close and personal several times; she's a beauty.
The trajectory of the aircraft from when the Wright Brothers first flew in 1903 to what was being done by the end of WW2 is unbelievable. I heard once that the entire distance of the Wright Bros first flight could have been done inside Hughes H4 Hercules aka the Spruce Goose that was assembled and "flew" 44 years later.
And 22 years after that, humans reached the moon. Kinda feel we lost momentum since then. On the other hand, we take flying for granted now and I guess that is a milestone as well.
@@stianberg5645 The problem is that the difficulty of advancement does not scale linearly. It's easy to design aircraft that can travel 500 mph when they currently travel 100 mph. It is much much, much difficult to design an aircraft that travels 2500 mph when current aircraft travel 500 mph.
@Steel Ringer IIRC it didn't have enough engine power to get out of ground-effect flight (WIGE long before the Russians!) so it was arguably not a "real" aircraft. OTOH that was just a power problem. The short flight distance was AFAIK just because of the limited testing area. Incidentally, it was so large it might well have crossed the Atlantic as a WIGE... Now that's an interesting start for an alternate history!
@@stianberg5645 We 'lost' momentum thanks to ultra-rich bankster scum stealing public money. In 1960s, the top earner tax was 90%. Yes, this is not a mistake, you wanted to live like king, you were taxed properly and the state could afford stuff like technological progress or Apollo program easily. Now? These scum pay 10-12%, if that, even Buffet complained he pays less tax than his secretary without even trying. There is like FIVE TRILLION $ of stolen money in tax havens, no wonder we "lost" momentum...
@@rubiconnn There's also the question for the need of such fast aircrafts : modern fighter are actually slower than late Vietnam war fighters. We're also thinking of making airliner slightly slower. We can make hypersonic aircrafts, NASA has done it, they're just so expensive that beyond science and missiles, they're kinda useless. And very hard to fly for a human.
The thing that most people don't get is that most of our technologies existed in various formats before they became the thing they are. IN this case, all the basic tech regarding airplanes, was already in existence from cars, boats, and gliders. Then at some point, various people across the planet had the thought to put motors on gliders, then they figured out that beyond wing lift this air thing has another effect on bodies so they began skining them using tech like kayak making, then moved on to metal skins, and so on. As for the shape, well, we didn't invent anything regarding that, we just mimicked what nature already did. Slower airplanes have slower profiles, faster airplanes have faster profiles. The funny thing is that once you reach the limit of what you can piece together (the variations on a theme as they were) you reach a bottleneck. SO that's why airplanes can go only so fast, and have shapes that match those speeds, because for example, we still haven't figured how to not turn humans into goop that needs to be scooped up at high speeds, nothing past pressure suits and maybe training and meds.
Lockheed was working on a Jet Fighter prior to the US's entry to WWII as well... but the USAAF turned them down, claiming the design was "too advanced".
Gigantic budgets that allowed for elaborate r&d along with a bunch of technologies and industries that came into being just in time for the aviation industry to take flight, pun intended
So many stories like this in ww2. A lot of teething problems with early jets but they had less complexity than late piston engines. A great "what could have been"
The Westinghouse J40 similarly sank a few otherwise promising designs, so it was far from unusual for engines to doom projects. The problem with the piston engines was that sizes & power outputs were so different, so it wasn’t always easy to just stick a rival power plant in. With early jets, there were often a few options in the same rough size class, so it was slightly easier.
@@edsutherland8266 As a Vietnam era Naval Flight Officer, I can confirm that reports of the weak performance of the Westinghouse J40 were still then passed around. Oh for an F7 with a 12,000 lb thrust turbojet!
That photo showing the XP-54 being maintenanced and checked by all those personnel, really hammers back the message that after each failed project, there are many professionals that tried their utmost, worked off their asses, to try and make it succeed.
I bet the aircrews would have come up with some choice nicknames for this thing had it gone into full production. That "ejection seat" is horrifying. Baling out at low level in some planes was possible (two members of John Hopgood's Dambuster Lancaster crew baled out at around 200ft as the plane disintegrated, and survived, albeit injured) but jumping from the Goose at low level would be a guaranteed death sentence. Mind you, with all that magnesium, the funeral pyre would have been bright.
It would have been a terrifying thing to fly, cant bail out low, cant get out if you make a gear up landing, i find it more scary than an me163. At least its theoretically possible to get out of that haha
Magnesium alloys are widely used in jet engines, in the structures of military and civilian helicopters, and in hundreds of auto components, without flammability issues
@@kyle857 yes - it's not clear if "magnesium" refers to pure magnesium or alloys. Probably alloys as magnesium's known engineering properties are generally poor for most purposes. People used to refer to some car alloys as "mag alloys" as they were magnesium alloy wheels.
@@Rapscallion2009 Still burns like a mofo if it gets hot enough. I've worked with firefighters, SOP for a magnesium fire is to just stand back and watch it burn, because water only makes it worse -- it's so hot it breaks the water into hydrogen and oxygen, which then burn back into water.
Loving the videos, Rex. Just a note on the name "Swoose" that others may have already pointed out. Swoose was pinched from a cartoon which featured a half-swan, half-goose, hence Swoose. It was first used for a salvaged B17 in the Pacific theatre that was a combination B17c and e, hence it was neither one thing or the other, a hybrid. By the sound of it whoever called the Vultee that thought much the same about it!
I love pusher aircraft. I know they often had problems with cooling and other issues, but they were often beautiful. This one combines aspects of two of my favorite fighters, the XP55 and P38. The XP55 is a monster of a plane in War Thunder. At least in Sim mode.
Yeah, pushers are prolific in video games. They look like they should be faster. But they ain't in real life. I'm old enough to remember what a B-36 sounded like when it took off overhead, six turning and four burning. Even with four jet engines bolted on and five cannon-armed turrets, it didn't have a chance in hell against a Mig-15. But it was great for Texas, where they were built! Back in 1988 I sat through a lecture about where they were going to build the Superconducting Supercollider. After the lecture, I talked to the physicist who had delivered it, and set him straight: If it was built at all, it would be built in Texas. Why? Because thanks to the Electoral College, the Federal Government is a life support system for Texas. And guess what, I was absolutely right. The best thing that came out of the failed project was the hilarious Herman Wouk novel *A Hole in Texas*. Billions of dollars for a hole in the ground. Well, a BIG hole in the ground.
Another great video. Note: As one with experience in burning magnesium, I would not call using a torch or similar to ignite it, "extremely flammable". Gasoline and oil can be set alight with a match, but an airframe of magnesium, not so much. In comparison, finely divided steel wool can be lit with a match, but one does not call steel extremely flammable.
From the context of the video, I believe he meant in the circumstances compared to other airframes. You mention magnesium requiring a decent amount of heat to ignite, and while that shouldn’t be extremely flammable on its own, in a combat vehicle it may be so. What I mean is the potential for engine or fuel fires are possible, and even more so in aerial engagements. If the engine catches fire, the normal aluminum airframe still retains most of its structural strength, whereas it sounds like magnesium would ignite the plane at a much more rapid pace. Though he really may have meant it in your sense, too. Interesting, nonetheless.
Magnesium alloys are widely used in jet engines, in the structures of military and civilian helicopters, and in hundreds of auto components, without flammability issues
@@soberedsoldier2578 Magnesium melts at 650C, Aluminum at 660C. Oil/gas mixtures used in aircraft engines burn at over 2500C, aluminum ignites at around 2000 and whereas magnesium is lower, it does not matter since both will be burning. I've worked an aircraft accident where the engine melted out of the fuselage, after which the movement of CG aft caused it to stall. Both people died. BTW, shredded aluminum in oxygen was used in old flashbulbs (it was not magnesium as was popularly thought).
I kept waiting for Rex to say "Unfortunately, a careless army officer flicked a cigarette butt within sight of the aircraft and it went up in flames." 😄
One of many problems was by the time it was ready it was not needed. The US had no need for a high-altitude interceptor by that point in the war. The P-47 did that job well if needed and the P-80 was being developed. If they had needed that plane they could have possibly used the Chrysler IV-2220 but why bother to put another engine and aircraft type into production at that point in the war?
I really like the looks of it. One of my favourite planes from the era looks wise. But it had stiff competition, even if it did not have any engine problems. (And the magnesium structure do freak me out a bit. Yeah... I paid attention in chemistry class, at least when we did pyrotechnics. ;) )
Thanks for shedding light on the many XP’s built during the war years….not much is generally known about these many interesting aircraft except to us die hard old timers! Well done.👍👍
''Half Swan. Half Goose, Alexander is a Swoose...'' Novelty hit by Kay Kyser and His Orchestra.. ''Swoose'' was also the pet name of an early model B-17.
Great looking unusual plane, shame it didn't work out. Interestingly Vultee joined up with Consolidated to become Convair and built the mighty legend, the B-36. About magnesium, it has commonly been used in the aviation industry for parts of planes, especially in the engines, from the Bf109 up to Airbus and British Aerospace, the main concern has always been corrosion. People know the thing from school, the magnesium ribbon put in a flame, but solid magnesium is a lot harder to burn, it has to be heated to melting point with continued sustained heat to catch fire. Aluminium has the same sort of melting point, aluminium powder has been used in rocket propulsion.
As a former Air Force O-2 guy, that one strikes a chord. If only it had held on long enough to have a turbine engine installed, it might have been a terrific "fast FAC" plane. Or at least "faster FAC."
This whole design seems terrifyingly needlessly complex. The dangerous ejection system, the unnecessary seat lowering system, the cabin pressurisation, and the moving guns. I'm surprised it wasn't thrown out because of the cost and complexity.
Yeah they broke one of the cardinal rules of aircraft development. When you need something soon, never try out a bunch of brand-new ideas on the same plane or you're gonna run outta time troubleshooting everything.
You've discussed one of my favourite planes!!! 😄👏👏👏 Thanks Rex. Since the day it piqued my interest, I have made a complete redesign as a modern, low cost, ground attack version powered by Lycoming/Honeywell t-55 spinning a 4-bladed wide prop taken straight out of skyraider.
The F-104 also had a downward firing ejection seat because of it's high vertical tail. In air craft designed to take off and rapidly climb to altitude to intercept Warsaw Pact intruders - this was not considered a problem. Then - some of the nations buying them - such as Germany - wanted the F-104's to serve as ground attack aircraft as well ... Of course ... all aircraft must land and take off - which pretty much by definition happens at "low altitude" and thus people eventually saw the need for Zero Altitude Ejection Seats. .
Clarification: Some nations, such as Germany, had a requirement for a ground attack jet. And Lockheed bribed their officials into selecting a high-altitude interceptor for the role.
An upward firing soft launch rocket ejection seat replace the downward ejection seat. Please note that the word soft is comparable to acceleration of a gun type ejection seat.
@@RedXlV The F-104G was a good ground attack plane. Lockheed was burned on the bribery scandal because they were the winner and American not European. Everyone was offering bribes.
^ Nope. The F-104 was not good in the GA role, as illustrated by the fact it was not even popular with the USAF, as a Day Interceptor. (a role that unlike GA, requires different [and heavier] avionics, and a larger weapons load) The F-104 had an underpowered engine (one reason for its lightweight build), couldn't carry the radar the USAF wanted, and originally had none of the features of an All Weather Interceptor. The FRD regime in Bon was bribed into accepting an inferior product; one that various Luftwaffe pilots would pay for with their lives, and also resulted in a weaker air defence against airspace incursons by the GDR/USSR, than alternatives could have provided.
Hi Rex, your commentary has reminded me of the "Thunderbird 6" movie where "Brains" loses his temper over proposed models of this new addition to the International Rescue fleet being repeatedly rejected.
I knew 2 out of the 4 planes from this contract/specification - not this one. A very interesting story. When the original engine was cancelled, why wasn't Vultee allowed to switch to the Allison engine? It would get the plane flying, the design's aerodynamics were the real thing that needed to be explored.
@Cancer McAids I'm...not entirely sure what you're getting at. The 1710 was quite a bit lighter, but they could have pretty easily adjusted the CG while they were in the prototype phase. It probably came down to the fact that it was just not feasible in budget or timeline to continue work with the design, considering the much faster P-51 first flew three years prior, and had already been in service for a year by the time the XP-54 first flew.
Was there ever a successful fighter fielded with independently aim-able guns like those seen here? I feel like we’ve seem quite a few of them in the reject pile.
SAAB J21(J=Jakt=Pursuit) served whit the Swedish Air Force from 1945 to 1954. Same designphilosophy and using the same engine as the German Bf 109, built under licence. Was the first aircraft to use an ejection seat devoloped but not patented by Bofors. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAAB_21
Saab was able to make something similar to this design work in 1945, the Saab 21. However it was pretty short lived as it ceased production within 4 years was decommissioned in 9 as the Saab 21R variant had a jet engine.
0:18 Anyone else get the vibe of the Japanese "Baka Bomb" from this simple view? The long bomb-like body with the glazed cockpit sticking up out of it, and the twin tails, makes for a surprising resemblance.
My grandfather worked in management for Fisher Body throughout WWII. Now that you’ve apparently moved into reviewing rubbish American aircraft, I would pleased if you were so inclined to detail the dumpster fire that was the P-75 Eagle.
It would be interesting to see the Curtiss XP-55 in a future video because it makes a appearance in the War Thunder video. The game gives a vague history of the aircraft to players and I thought it was a captured Japanese Shinden, until now when I watched this video. I picked this aircraft because it was designed by Curtiss which I'm working on a book on the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk and I find it interesting that Curtiss participated in the contest while continuing with the development of the XP-40 (I don't know if the company did both at the same time before the US officially entered WW2) and I say officially because of the Flying Tigers that helped defend China from Japan until the attack on Pearl Harbor that changed the future of the mercenary group known as the Flying Tigers and the ultimate disbandment of the group (I got off tracked). Please consider making a video on the Curtiss XP-55 Ascender in the future and keep up the excellent work.
Can you make a video on the XP-55, XF5F or the XP-50? (and for those who will ask, yes, I know of these aircraft from war thunder, however I am curious about them.)
I look forward to the video on the Ass-Ender. It always seemed like the best of the options and might have been a success with a rear mounted R2800 engine.
I've always wondered about a turbojet with the airframe cleaned up. Another possible engine if it worked could have been the Wright 42 cylinder Tornado.
The XP-54 was beautiful. But I think the concerns about the magnesium frame are over blown. Yes, scraped down magnesium will burn, but the same applies to aluminum and that isn't a whole lot harder to catch on fire. Both have an ignition point below that of av gas or burning ordinance if you are talking shavings, but if you have big chunks they aren't going to burst into flames randomly or even just from some bullet holes. Of course, both will burn as part of a crash. And a garbage engine can lead to that.
It is very simmilar in apearence to the SAAB j21 (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAAB_21) but the SAAB made 400MPH on only 1,455HP. (from a Daimler-Benz DB 605B )
The XP54 is a design very close to the successful Saab J21/A21. It was produced in a couple of hundred examples and the only major problem was cooling on ground.
One of the few pusher designs ever to see service was the SAAB J21 fighter, that turned out to be less of a fighter but a stabile attack platform instead, incidentally it is possibly the only piston engined aircraft to be successfully be jet converted and entered service as the J21R. The J21 also required SAAB to develop their own ejection seats roughly at the same time as Germany did during WWII
@@larryjacobsen4079 True, Yak-15 (based on the Yak-3 fuselage) and the Swedish Saab 21R were the only two jets to be successfully converted from piston-power to enter production. Mig-9 was a clean sheet design afaik
Incredible that they started developing this aircraft and continued until stopping only near the end of the war. And even more incredible the long row of problems they faced, most of which were not fault of their own. 2:39 That plane down to the left looks a bit like the German Me-163 only with piston engine instead of rocket engine.
"Swoose" was a popular song of the Era about a creature that was a cross between a swan and a goose. Additionally the actress Swoosie Kurtz is the daughter of heroic ww2 aviator Frank Kurtz who had a hybrid plane cobbled together from a couple wrecks to get back in action. That plane was very successful and as the progeny of 2 different designs was dubbed the "Swoose" like the bird in the song.
Magnesium alloys are widely used in jet engines, in the structures of military and civilian helicopters, and in hundreds of auto components, without flammability issues
In Germany the very/too advanced Heinkel 177 bomber also had two engines coupled along the propeller axle in each wing and when "Dicke Herman", Herman Göring saw the engine, he became furious, as he knew they would be very difficult to maintain in the field. It also had a very advanced cooling system below the plates on the wings, making the plates flex in the cold, high altitudes. But it was faster than the fighters, so it didn't need much protective armament by that.
"Tail sitters and the Allison YT40". "The Westland Whirlwind". "Early G.E. turbojets". Whirlwind (and a lot of others) had more problems than just its engines, but an undeveloped or "bad" engine design kills more aircraft proposals than the opposite.
The plane being made out of magnesium is crazy. When that burns it is so bright it can blind you temporarily. Thank goodness they never had to deal with that.
I wonder how hard it would have been to keep working on the design given all those difficulties and then watching the rest of the industry slowly make it redundant.
Is structural magnesium really that flammable? Its used in airplanes and car structures all the time because its relatively high strength-to-weight ratio and high temp properties. I mean, sure, if you grind it into a powder and ignite it with something super hot it'll burn like crazy, but I don't think you'll realistically get that kind of environment in a plane crash.
Glad to hear you are on the mend. I really enjoy the a/c you choose and your story telling style. Do you need research material? I have more than a couple gigs of .pdf's of it. Happy to try to work out a way to get it out to you.
Prior to WW II, there was a song called "The Swoose". Half SWan and half gOOSE. The song was the cause of an US actress getting named Swoosie by her father. Kurtz wrote "Part Swan, Part Goose", an autobio.
I've always loved this one, it looks like something from Anime. I'm sure there's a Japanese aircraft of similar configuration but I can't remember the name (with push/pull props). A video on the XP-67 Bat would be cool. It also came from R40C and is one of the most beautiful aircraft ever built imo.
@@allangibson2408 it was probably the reason they had flight worthy issues other than the experimental engine. I can imagine what a bad idea it would be to have magnesium tailbooms near the jet wash from a gas turbine engine
Remember the Air Forces philosophy. “Even a brick will fly if you put a big enough engine on it.” I loved the look of the POND racer that Burt Rutan developed. Sadly it failed.
Without all these problems perhaps it could've worked, don't understand why using magnesium for the build, the downward ejection seat was really idiotic (oh wait, the early F104s), the design was similar to the SAAB 21, with the difference that it worked. So well that it was modified in the SAAB 21R, the first swedish jet fighter, and it had an ejection seat from the early versions. Perhaps also the P54 could've been modified with a jet engine.
The Rolls Royce R Series engines designed in 1929 and 2800 hp. They were used to win the Schneider Trophy outright. The development of RR V12's went on through Spitfires, Hurricanes, Lancasters, Shackletons and even the P41, etc. Not bad for a piddling little island stuck in the North Sea. My father said if you went through the gate (an emergency only throttle setting) all hell broke loose.
Seems like the one constant with all these potentially great planes that never got their day in the sun was military commissioners not letting the engineers do their jobs.
It might be interesting to know more about results and even comments from it's flight testing. Designers keep "seeing" theoretical potential for higher efficiencies of pusher propellors, but few pushers have become successful aircraft. The clean air the flight surfaces and fuselage skins are supposed to benefit from because the propellor isn't trashing the air seems to be largely offset by the propellor not seeing clean air entering the prop disk. Many pushers (notably the Beech Starship) are god-awful noisy because of the propellor cutting through the different pressure areas from the lifting surfaces. and generating that noise has to have an impact on efficiency. The Molt Taylor Mini-Imp and the Lesher Teal seem to have made pushers work, but even though plans were offered tor the Mini-Imp, I don't think many were constructed.
Had they ditched the 'hyper engine' for a couple of early jet engines, raised the horizontal stabilizer- end up with an extra-large version of a De Havilland Vampire. Might have worked.
Shame about the XP-54, but I am glad the other two exist. The XP-55 is only about an hour away from me in fact, out in the Kalamazoo Air Zoo. I don't have hopes for a XP-56 restoration, though. Not only was that made of magnesium as well, pretty much the entire airframe is WELDED. Yes, you can weld highly flammable magnesium. Apparently, Problem is, this is a bit of a lost art (for good reason), so even if one wanted to restore the XP-56, there's not really anyone who CAN.
*NOTE:* Bailing out of any plane from low altitude was possible but it meant certain death in all cases. So it wasn't just the primitive ejection mechanism of this fighter that was prone to causing death at low altitudes. It wasn't untill 1961 the famous company Martin Baker developed the even more famous 'zero-zero' Mk. 12 ejection seat. It could succesfully launch a pilot from zero feet altitude at a speed of zero knots. And the pilot would most likely also survive. Previously, if a pilot had to get out fast while the plane was still on the runway, he would have to open the cockpit, get out of his seat and climb down before the plane caught fire/exploded. With the 'zero-zero' seat, the pilot could eject, then be shot upwards to a survivable altitude till his seat auto disconnected and his chute was deployed automatically. So even if the pilot lost consciousness after initiating the ejection procedure, survival chances were still excellent.
Elegant as a Girraf, no doubt the first of the designs that lead to monstrosities like that of the Douglas egg-beater powered flying barns and Hugh's twin boom job that would have impressed the designers of the Dreamliner.
![The Super-Fighter That Was Betrayed By Its Engine | Vultee XP-54 [Aircraft Overview #68]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
