The "Wonderplane" Slapped Together With Spare Parts: Fisher XP-75 Eagle 

Aviation and amp vids collide... Especially intersted in tube amps and WW2 aviation. My great uncle was one of the few Americans shot down in the battle of the Phillipine Sea.

Now that, that's a beautiful story!

@FlitzerFlash even during world war II they conducted accident investigations. Those were their findings after examining the pilot radio communications and wreckage.

Almost the same thing happened to Howard Hughes when he was test flying the large recon bomber in 1947.His had contra props too and on one side one of the two contra props went into reverse pitch and down he went .Honestly who would test fly a new plane over Beverly Hills ?

I had the honor of meeting a Flying Tiger who also had been in the eagle Squadron

The "volunteer" was being a condescending ass, possibly the single worst response one could make to a knowledgeable and enthusiastic pre-teen. Been there, suffered similar. Always fantasized about rolling up a newspaper and smacking these arrogant fools upside the head (I'm almost 70 now!). Eventually realized that you can't fix stupid and his response to you was possibly the epitome of stupid.

I saw, and photographed, it in 1988 at the USAF Museum, tucked away in a storage hangar. I had no idea what it was till I got back home to Oz so I could look it up. (no internet back then!)

I have a picture of it from the late 70s.

The Brewster Buffalo comes to mind as a bad aircraft. From what I've read it never gained respect from any pilot who flew it.

@michaelcagle5938 the Finns loved it. They got the earlier, lighter airframe with the later more powerful engines. Also being as they didn't need to land theirs on a carrier, ditched all the carrier gear, making the aircraft quite formidable against the Russians.

And sometimes is turns out amazing. The Voyager space probes for instance were builds from left overs.

Except the highly qualified dead bodies you have to clean up 😢😢😢😢😢

the lego /meccano philosophy : excellent in case of dire emergency

Sounds like Chief Tyrol did when he built "Laura" she was a recon craft cobbled together from spares from ruined fighters.

I did find it annoying that the narrator said that each change to existing parts ruined the assembly line process. It did no such thing. What it destroyed was a larger supply of spares, taken from a common parts bin.

Good points, well made. 😁👍

I had no idea GM built aircraft. Assuming you mean General Motors.

It's mentioned in Bill Yenne's "The World's Worst Aircraft" book. He makes a good case that the reason GM (Fisher) took the XP-75 project on was as a counter project to participating in the B-29 assembly program (they did make components).

That's their plan. GM was overworked/overburdened with building avengers & hellcats, aside from the contract of building wildcats (FM-1s & -2s) When GM was given *another* contract of building B-29s, GM was like *"nooo, thank you. We've got our hands full, I don't want ANY part of that"*

Was coming here to say this.

In the 1990s company I work for was a supplier of parts for General Motors. Other than Ford, the worst company I ever had to deal with. I’m an engineer and they are incredibly stupid!

This was my second thought upon seeing the plane. I agree completely.

Most of the Grumman aircraft ended up in the Pacific theater. With the exception being the P-38. (I'm not referring to the John Wayne either)

Luftwaffe procurement was a cluster

Coupled engines on the 177 too.

And yet the vulture engine in a prototype superprop fighter didn't cause the overheating problems that the Manchester installation had.

FW 200 Condor check out the video of when Hitler's plane landed in Finland for his meeting with Mannerheim, and the nonchalant way one of the German crew extinguishes the engine fire. Apparently, the FW 200 was prone to engine fires.

The firey Grief. Killed more crews than any targets the bomber could find.

The Fairey Albacore gets replaced by the plane that it was supposed to replace. (The Fairey Swordfish, which was eventually succeeded by the Fairey Barracuda and Grumman TBF Avenger.) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Albacore

I really think they got into a mindset of designing stuff just to see if they could , and one up other companies. Almost everything they came out with could have been simpler, more reliable and cheaper

I think it had a turbo-supercharger. You can see what I think is the downstream exhaust just behind the cockpit.

@@iskandartaib I'm afraid I don't see that. I have looked at many photos of the exterior and interior, and all I see are eight separate exhaust pipes that lead from 4 exhaust manifolds, one for each bank of cylinders. It looks like it has a pipe from each manifold to the outside of the aircraft for each of 8 groups of 3 cylinders. Whatever the number of stages and speeds in the supercharger it must have been mechanically rather than exhaust driven. If it had a turbosupercharger the exhaust manifolds would have fed a common pipe to the turbine, and we would see a large one outlet for exhaust form the turbine, and one or two wastegate exhausts somewhere else upstream. But it would make perfect sense for an airplane designed as high-altitude fight/interceptor to have a turbosupercharger. One might speculate that a turbo of adequate output for the V-3420 was not available. Other engines of large displacement, such as the R-3350, needed 2 turbosuperchargers. Perhaps there was insufficient space in the XP-75 for two turbos, so they resorted to the best mechanically driven supercharger then available, which I'd bet was also inadequate for this engine at high altitude. In fact, I just looked it up in Wikipedia (doh!), and early versions of the V-3420 did have a turbo in addition to a single stage mechanical supercharger, but the version installed in the XP-75 had a mechanically driven supercharger with 2 variable speed stages. My guess is that it was still not enough for this airplane to perform as desired. It's one thing to get 2,880 HP in a test cell, but another to get it above 30,000 feet. It's a shame they wasted all that time and money to learn what they probably should have expected. But perhaps they did suspect it from the start, which is why they put so little money and effort into design of the airframe in the first place.

F-35 is not the fastest, nor the most maneuverable, but it's low RCS makes up for it. Unless of course, a pilot with machine guns can see it, and shoots it.

How did I know I was gonna see this comment under that title?

V1 was in service in 44, B 29 first flight was in 42.

The b52 could only cruise at 350 with no bomb load.

This plane looks a lot like the Thunderscreech. In fact thats what I thought this was when I saw it.

@@davidthomas1467 lol same

If we're talking any plane and not just planes that were accepted and used in combat then yes the Thunderscreach has my vote too.

Not that I'm big on the flying tentpin, but the F-104 wasn't a bad plane. The bad rep it got was mostly caused by an in debt panicked Lockheed that promised it was a multirole aircraft to export countries which was a bit of a stretch, especially as a low level strike aircraft.

​@@KapiteinKrentebollook at the Japanese F-104. They insisted on additional safety measures and removing the ground strike capabilities. They also had less than 10 lost to accidents

The Christmas bullet would be my pick of worst plane...ever.

​@@trevorpom Does The Christmas Bullet actually *_count_* as a plane? Any scammer with big enough balls, minimal shreds of morality and gullible targets could glue a pair of wings onto a boot, *_call_* it a plane and try and sell it as a functional design, but it wouldn't mean it actually _was_ a plane.

Well, it did actually fly. It didn't fly for long before the wings and fuselage had a violent disagreement and parted ways, but it did fly. Unfortunately, the pilot/sucker didn't survive the disagreement and even more unfortunately, his mother got to watch the whole event unfold. So, it did taxi, it did take off under its' own power and it landed, as all things do eventually. It wasn't a great landing, to say the least, so technically yes, it was a plane. Would I get in it and try to fly it...hell no.@@stickiedmin6508

The I-225 worked out well but was too late lol.

The British mosquito worked well

The Mosquito had two merlin's, one on each wing. Not two merlin's bolted together, like the Allison monstrosity.@@MrLukedanger

Try looking up the Fairey Monarch engine, in effect it was a combo engine based on two previous designs that worked and performed fairly well, though I think its one of those rare exceptions than the rule.

While not absolutely two v-12s bolted together, the 24 cylinder Napier Sabre engine that eventually powered the Typhoon and the Tempest became very powerful and reliable. Because of the supercharging system on it, these planes were combat limited below 20,000 feet, but they were the fastest low level fighter bombers of the war and made great ground attack missile trucks.

Reminds me of Johnny Cash's car: One piece at a time.

The bald guy with the beard thinks he is more amusing than he actually is. I agree with you about those cheesy headers to grab attention.

Today I found Out is just a scripted channel about whatever subject he reads out on video. Simon is the dudes name and if you've seen enough of their videos, you soon find out that he hasn't a clue about the subject he's talking about. He just reads the text. The whole channel is click bait really.

@@trevorpom I remain unimpressed, and do not watch his videos.

I've watched a few videos of his, he has other channels as well, and they're all the same. If the text is wrong, so is he. It's obvious he hasn't a clue and is just doing it for the views.@@Sublette217

​@@trevorpomSimon Bidon't is reading from a teleprompter?

That is an excellent video.

@rhondohslade No kidding. It blew my mind! (Well, it quite obviously didn't, as I'm still alive, but u know what I mean!😂)

North American Aviation was owned by GM during the War.

That's because it's P40 wings. They were trying to use up spare parts stockpiled for soon to be discarded aircraft.

@@billdurham8477 Which is one thing that leads me to suspect that this waS not a really serious airplane design, but a test of a concept, sort of like the X-29 and X-31 would be. I think Fisher got the contract because everybody else was too busy, and I would be interested in knowing the backstory on that. I suspect that if the concept showed promise there would be 'refinement' of the design, and perhaps opening it up to a better proposal from an experienced manufacturer. This thing looks like it was bodged together by Sanford and Son.

GM = General Monkeys (or Generally Mismanaged, take your pick).

Long known for the Badge Engineering school of design. Slap a new name on an existing product and voila, instant 'new' product.

Wasn’t it Stalin that coined that phrase?

The Me 163 wasn't really a bad aircraft. It was a good airframe with a bad engine and propellant combination. The "positive" side of all the German wonder weapons from WWII (so many W's!) is that resources spent on them didn't go into other weapons that had proven effective against the Allies.

Burning your pilots alive with high test hydrogen peroxide is never a good thing. Not to mention the rocket motors tendency to just explode.

@@1959Edsel Even if it wasn't prone to blowing up, it was not a practical aircraft and as you say, a complete waste of time and time and resources. As with the Me 262, the closing speed made it completely ineffective as any sort of interceptor. At best the Me 163 was analogous to the X planes of the 1950s and '60s but during a war that is not something you need to be indulging in. Like all of these "Luft '46" aircraft, they were not going to be effective weapons until the 1950s and when you are a country like Germany who already lost the war just by starting it you don't need to be spending any resources on things that aren't going to at least allow you to reach some sort of armistice or peace. People say "if they had only had the Me 262 earlier things would have been different". That is so ridiculous and shows a complete lack of understanding of Germany and the rest of the world in the 1930s and 1940s. A telling stat is that at the end of the war Germany had about 4000 serviceable aircraft and the allies had close to 300,000.

It's there. It was on the base with the presidential aircraft. But I believe they moved it to the new hanger when that opened

Time for you to make another trip and catch up. It is parked as indicated behind and to the right of the XB-70.

@@williamhudson4938 I don't remember it, either, but I think the last time I visited was in 1998 or 99. They've added quite a few new exhibits since then. Back then the only Mustang on display was a A-36 (itself a very rare bird indeed).

I understand that the Komet fuel would essentially eat the pilot like acid if he got any on him.

Not quite the same thing but the Sopworth Camel got very close to killing more of its pilots out of combat then in it - about 400 Camel pilots dying in combat and 385 in non combat accidents. People seem to forgive it because it shot down more enemy aircraft in WW1 than any other aircraft type did.

Nope. The Corsair gull wing was a direct result of the decision to use the P&W R2800 radial with the biggest prop available to take advantage of that power. The gull wings raised the nose up high enough that the prop didn't hit the ground when the tail came up on takeoff and the plane accelerated to take off/fly off speed.

@@boydgrandy5769 Yes which they had to do because the wing is mounted higher up on the fuselage. They could have just used longer landing gear but that would eat up a lot of wing space for weapons and fuel, plus the gear would have to be built stronger and thus increase weight. All that would have negated the small aero benefits from the higher wing mounting so they went with the inverted gull instead. Many other aircraft used that engine and prop, none of them needed inverted gull wings to make it work.

Wicked take-off roll in FW 190 could have used contrarotating props.

Quite a few operational planes used contra rotating props. The UK had a sub hunter post war with them.

The Fairey Gannett with its Double Mamba coupled turboprop engine. Basically, two Mamba engines fitted side by side and linked to a common gearbox, enabling cruising with one engine shut down.

Loop0777 No@@blitzkrieg2142k

It could barely fly on two.

Best plane Blackburn could make!

@@robertoroberto9798 At that time very much so, but they redeemed themselves later with the Buccaneer.

The Boulton-Paul Defiant. Was a RAF aircraft not RN. The RN turret fighter was the Blackburn Roc. Which made the Defiant look good.

I stand corrected! Both were by all accounts awful. Easy to get confused. 😁

​@@tinkertalksguns7289 Despite being underpowered and slow The Defiant was a pretty good nightfighter.

Allison was known post-war for building heavyduty truck transmissions. I think they're still making them.

Fun factoid...the Allison V-1710 started life as the Liberty engine of WWI fame.

@@rhondohslade Never heard that one before (I like engines and have a couple of books specifically on aircraft piston engines, Herschel Smith 5th printing (1994) that 'everyone' knows about and the development of Piston Aero Engines by Bill Gunston (1996 re-print)

As a F-16 factory mechanic, even changing the engine from a GE to a PW, which all the later Block 30s and on could do, was a royal pain in the ass. The only common mounts between the 2 engines were the aft thrust mounts and the PTO shaft. The fuel, throttle, electrical and bleed air had different hook-ups. I've only seen the change made once when I was in the MOD department and then just to prove it could be done.

Hypothetically, yeah. Just don't be the guy in charge of that particular design.

If you have a decent understanding of geometry it's actually not quite as complicated as it sounds. As the propellers spin there will be points in their rotation where the blades will always overlap, so if you stick the guns at these points you only have to calculate for the barrel being blocked "once" instead of twice, if that makes sense.

Exactly so. But you also have to account for the flight time of the bullets between the time they exit the muzzle and the time they pass the blades. It's a straightforward problem but also seems like quite a pain in the ass.@@pyronuke4768

Except for the later turbo turbosupercharged engines they were inadequate

Shhhh. Don’t tell the Finns

​@@johnreed9435But then again, the Finns made a very good weapon from the bones of the Mosin Nagant with a bit of foresight and engineering acumen.

The P40 was an excellent plane if well flown at low altitude (below 15,000ft) best suited to the ground attack role (Ask anyone who was in North Africa for example.