Using the Power of Hindsight to Design the Best WW2 Fighter 

A 109, a P51 and an F4U walk into a bar ... just kidding it was a motel room, and the stuff they did there led to THIS.

This man is slowly starting his own Air Force

not sure if its just because of the livery, but i cant stop seeing a westland wyvern that went on a diet

When Rex Beisel designed the Corsair they used the inverted gull wing to provide for shortening the landing gear while still maintaining prop clearance. Then they found that they had gained a measure of aerodynamic relief by having the junction of the wing be 90 degrees to the angle of the fuselage side, thus enhancing the speed. Seems to me that any superprop being designed today would make use of that knowledge, as you did. Nice aircraft!

You should do a dogfight competition between various planes you've made. Love the content, glad I could be here so early!

Another automation would be automatic flaps, like what the Kawanishi N1K2 had. It used a simple mercury switch that extended flaps automatically as pilots slowed down in turns to prevent the aircraft from stalling in a dogfight. It was more tempermental to fly but it could keep up with even the best of the late-war US aircraft such as the P-51, F4U, and the F6F.

8:28 the Spitfire, Mustang, & Bf 109 are all supercharged (either 1 stage, 2 stage, 2 speed, etc) not turbo charged. That would be the Thunderbolt, Lightnings, and a few experimental planes (it was rare in that period outside of prototype).

“My name is Monsoon, of the Winds of Destruction.” -This plane if it could talk.

Almost looks like a mash between a Ta-152 and the Corsair with maybe a bit of VG-33

Would be cool if you built a strategic/supersonic bomber, like those during the Cold War before ICBM’s were really a thing.

This really reminds me of the late war Focke-Wulf designs like the Fw-190d9 and Ta-152 crossed with a P-51. Great video and thinking!

For survivability, you need not only armor and self-sealing gas tanks, but a radial engine. Add a gull wing to a Bearcat, and you're good to go. A land-based variant without folding wings, beefed up landing gear and tailhook would have been even lighter and faster. Four 20mms was a F8F common armament.

You should really change the way wheels claps closes. Now they act as a HUGE airbreaks. Landing gear produce a lot of drag as it is

Wonder if the radiators in the wings will end up being the Achilles heel of this plane, like it is on the HE-100

Can you give us some specifications of the plane i.e. top speed, max altitude, rate of climb, turn rate, etc. so we can compare it to some actual WW2 designs?

This is a very sleek and interesting design. The biggest doubt I have about it is the turbo. Using an unintercooled turbo set up would limit the gas quality you could use and reduce top end performance because of increased risk of knock. There is no way this thing could be intercooled the way the P47 and P38 are. The only reason the tail booms of the P-38 are so skinny is because the cockpit was located in between them. The P47 got its massive size not just from the Radial engine (which it shared with the much slimmer Corsair and Hellcat) but from all of the massive intake and exhaust plumbing from the engine to the turbo and intercooler. Also, you're aircraft features open exhaust like a supercharged inverted V-12 of a Bf-109, but with a turbo this would be impractical/impossible because you would have needed to plumb all 12 exhaust tubes down to one to feed the turbo and back to the engine bay, split into 6 pipes on each side and routed back to the front of the aircraft. This would all be easily rectified with a Two-stage supercharged Merlin the P-51D was equipped with although it would not have the advantage of the constant level of boost provided by the turbo wastegates.

Man your videos are so instructive! I learn so much about basic aerodynamic and airplane making just by watching you, thanks for this quality content.

Wow, this video was great, I think you did a great job on explaining everything about why you are doing what you are doing, and how it effects the plane, I also just think the plane itself was incredible, it really does look like a person just found parts of p-51s and 109s and just kind of put them together into a really cool plane.

Great work on both the plane AND the video. A very informative, detailed, formidable, and gorgeous build. 10/10

Any day now we will have this masterpiece of a game

This resembles the Sky Crawlers Skyly J2 that is flown by The Teacher! The regular variant seen in the anime is the Skyly D. Looks similar to this design as well.

This looks sick! Keep up the good work.

I think you'd run into compressibility problems before anything else. Fully articulated control surfaces would be the way to go here, as well as differential spoilers to augment ailerons. Only other thing I'd do different to try out would be to straighten the wing, sweep it slightly, and get it up where the center of action for the ailerons is close to or conjugate with the longitudinal CG, and then try and get the tail surfaces neutralized so there's no adverse pitch/yaw from a high roll rate. Consider the A4 Skyhawk, blisteringly fast roll rate but if you did it's 720 degrees/second for more than two rotations you were on the bare edge of departing controlled flight from adverse pitch.

I LOVE this content concept. Now do tanks, trucks, ships, subs, rifles, smgs, mgs, pistols, armor, uniforms, boots, food and whatever else i cant think of!

DUDE! Yes! I love old warbirds and this is something I’ve theorised and fantasised about quite a few times!

I love this concept! Next you should design more aircraft of different eras using the power of hindsight!

Really nice piece of work. One thing I would have personally added would be contra rotating props. This design as is would have the same vice that most heavy, fast WWII fighters had, namely, the pronounced torque twisting that plagued the P-51, Fw-190D, and other high powered fighters. Eliminating that torque is a tremendous boon to dogfighting capability, allowing the pilot to eke out even tighter and faster turns.

After the launch of Flyout, can you make a video about what this game simulates and what it doesn't do. For example, does it simulate vortex,tire wear, laminar flow...

i like the inverted V12, the idea of using it to get better forward visibility is great

This has elements from a lot of planes. The outline mostly reminds me of the Ta-152. The total burst mass (relevant in a head-on or intercept situation) might be a little on the low side with only two nose-mounted cannons

As a long-time player of Simpleplanes, which recently received it's last ever update and is essentially forgotten about now, this game looks to be the perfect spiritual successor. Looking forward to the early access release!

One thing people had to consider during WWII was cost and manufacture time. They could have made better designs but probably couldn't have produced them on the scale needed.

As much as cool as jet fighters are, prop fighters are more interesting to me, thanks for making one!

About the supercharger boosting. In modern airplanes it's called ground boost. In modern reciprocating engines, a turbo is used to keep the same engine power up to a certain altitude, this was done with a type of wastegate which would close as altitude increased. But during ww2 you could not really leave any performance on the table. So many planes, especially late war ones, used superchargers which could change gears and therefore spin faster and deliver more air to the engine. This was done manually on some airplanes and automatically in others. The p-47 is an odd example as it featured both a turbocharger and a supercharger. This gave the aircraft pretty good high altitude engine performance On the other hand, the germans used extensive use of MW-50 as well as GM-1 mixtures. Basically GM-1 mixture is just nitros oxide injected into the manifold of the engine(at very high altitudes) and coupeled with MW-50(50% water 50% methanol) injection could keep up with mustangs at high altitudes A little sidetrack but i hope this clears things out. I maybe missed the part where you said it's ground boost it is still morning here afterall...

and after a long day ill sleep another quiet night because the night king messier is still uploading

Are there multi-stage variable speed supercharging systems in flyout? I feel like it would suit this plane better than the turbo, mainly because turbocharging systems back in the 40s were enormous and hard to fit into a compact fighter like this. Think of how big the P-38 and P-47 were compared to their contemporaries

Honestly I think it's a better looker than most real planes of the period. The subtle gull-wing and the slim V-engine cowling, plus the tail shape make it look kind of like someone made a prop version of an F-4

These videos are so good man keep it up. Btw when is the game coming out

They did this for real, the reasult was the F8F Bearcat. Meant to replace the FM wildcat on smaller carriers. It ended up performing more like a Jet fighter and was used for Jet conversion in the Marine corps and U.S. navy for a few years.

dude pretty awesome, flyout is available on steam now. fun times. big warbird fan also. can't wait to check out designs like prop era experimental or if the software simulates ground efx to see if giant skimming sea planes is a thing

Very cool concept. Might recommend modifying the underbelly scoop with a cooling door in the rear. That way you take advantage of the Meredith Effect to reduce drag/increase overall thrust. Also the engine cowling, while very sleak, probably does not offer enough space around the engine block for adequate heat dissipation. The Luftwaffe had this issue with the He-177, where they tried shoving two engines into a nacelle that was far to tight, and had huge problems with overheating, bursting into flames and killing the crew. Still a great concept, just needs a bit of refinement.

Very cool. Love the weapon config and overall design. Fwiw here are my observations, although I don't if these are relevant to Flyout though. - moving the intake to the wing roots may reduce drag - the rear fuselage, v stab, rudder etc don't look beefy enough to handle a powerful engine and big prop. Late war fighters needed to strengthen these areas as power increased. - alternatively, contra-rotating props would adress torque and p-factor. - high position of the horizontal stabilisers - looks like they might get interference from the fuselage or blanked out by the wings at high AoA.

Ed Heinemann once said that the best way to make an aircraft is to design it around the engine you want to use. Radials were popular during the war for a reason because they had a higher power/weight offering compared to V-12's, and some of the later R-2800's had similar superchargers to the Merlin which gave them good performance at altitude. This also meant no radiators and coolant on board to cut back on weight even more. Additionally, gun convergence will still be a factor, although not as much as wing mounted guns. Height over bore from the sights will still play into the accuracy of the guns, and there's something to be said about a wider shot pattern when you aren't using targeting computers to give you a gun solution. Nose mounted guns also severely cut back on your ability to carry ammunition which also adds complexity for the maintainers every time they need to tear into something under the cowling. But, this is purely about performance and not logistics. I'm interested to see how this design will do. I must admit though, it looks really good.

Great video! I love all of your content, and I would love to try Flyout one day. Are torque, P-factor, and spiraling slipstream simulated in the game yet? If not, do you know if the developers have plans to implement them? Spiraling slipstream in particular seems like it would be the most difficult to simulate accurately in a plane building game.

I wish there was an RTS game that allowed to you to import builds from this, Sprocket and whatever the Naval equivalent would be to essentially build your own faction from the ground up. Your units would be separated into different tech levels based on what they have, something more similar to a Sopwith Camel or an Interwar monoplane would be placed in Tech 1, while stuff similar to an F-14 would be tech 4 or something.

I love your fighter; it's as cool to see as I bet it would be to fly. Build one, and let me be the first to strap it on and take it for a ride. Great video! Great idea, too.

The most important factor is that the operational requirement to which the aircraft will be designed is correct, both in terms of the correct requirement for the combat it will need to undertake plus actually deliverable using the technology available at the point in time at which production is required. An example might be the Bolton-Paul Defiant - a perfectly good expression of a flawed operational requirement. As such you could view it as an excellent aircraft as it delivered on the requirement, or a terrible one as a consequence of it being the wrong operational requirement.

So, in a very recent video by the Imperial War Museum they talked about the development of armament on the spitfire. From that I learnt that pilots sometimes used the machine guns to "spray rounds" and only used the cannons when they were more confident of a hit because of the slower rate of fire. Apparently four cannon Spitfires were trialled but the pilots preferred two cannons. So I guess I'm saying that assuming more cannons = better isn't necessarily correct

As a matter of interest. black stripes very similar to the later invasion stripes were added to the British Typhoon fighters due to recognition problems resulting in friendly fire incidents. This was around 2 years before the Normandy campaign.

This is the kind of Prop plane I kept thinking about

dear god, i love absolutely everything about this aircraft. it's almost a combination of the mustang, the bf 109 with the wing design of the b7m2, although i've finding strange the use of a inverted v engine instead a regular one, but since this problably not a German engine (wich will burn as the sun) and i'm anyone for talk bullshit just gonna say that the design it's a true dream of aviation. i was also thinking that with the guns in the nose u can have a lot of setups in the wing such bombs, rockets and addition guns like the 109 and the 190. Let's make with a radial engine next time, or not who i am to say?

I actually miss the pun "and we were ready to _fly out_ ", I really liked it 😅 Anyway, every build you make is a pleasure to see!

why can't I like this video multiple times. Love the music

I would love to see something like the bf109 but making it improved where it main weaknesses were

I would love to see more ww2-style fighters from you.

God damn this thing is beautiful

As for U.S. design the F8F Grumman Bearcat (nickname; engine with a pistol grip) was the culmination of piston engine fighter/interceptor development by 1944. Core values or Hard Factors need to be complimented with Soft Factors, such as mission adaptability, part/service commonality, reliability, ease of transitional training. It would be interesting to have a 'what if' of using a Wright R3350 radial that was developed for the Boeing B-29 and later for the Douglas Skyraider to power a Super Bearcat that would have a larger airframe not a conversion like the Reno racer named, 'Rare Bear'. It would be the ultimate Zoomiest-Boomiest plane with excellent hard/soft factors and could be put into service more quickly than a radical prototype based project. The Grumman Hellcat is a good example of that.

Now there's a pretty plane, exquisite!

Best videos ever man

You're basically designing a gull winged P51H with a griffon engine and gull wings. The Merlin was 27L and capable of 2.200hp. The Griffon was 37L and potentially much more power. It was used with dual 3 blade props, contra rotating. If you planned to use a P47 style Turbocharger the fuselage would no doubt have to be larger. You have a great thing here, but I think it would have to look different to fit everything in. Not a bad idea here, a big V12 with a mustang style cooling setup, combined with Corsair wings, and a thunderbolt style forced induction system. It would work, but would look somewhat different. Even the griffon would require a larger nose. I still think my first sentence applies. Martin Baker MB5 comes to mind.

Truthfully, i think ease of production and ease of training are important here. Wars are won through logistics, being able to reliably supply plains and (crucially) pilots to the front lines is what wins wars.

So an HE-100 that actually got some love. Nice!

That thing looks so nice well done. aslo can you crate like a mid50's jet aircraft like early jets would love to see what you come up with

I do not know if Flyout models things like self sealing fuel tanks or material properties (in terms of armor), but i think there might be a core point missed about air combat. Survivablilty/defensive capabilities (as the fourth point). If not, this is an amazing sales pitch

I saw that someone had already mentioned the fact that a turbo-supercharger necessarily needs to duct the engine exhaust to a turbine to drive a supercharger. Clearly the exhaust stacks of this 3D design are not collected and ducted to do that. However, there are a lot more issues with this design. There's no intercooler, nor mention of a first-stage mechanical supercharger (which P-38's V-1710 and the P-47's R-2800 engines both had in addition to the turbo-supercharger). I'm not sure where the storage for 900 rounds/510-lbs of 20mm ammunition (not including belt links) is supposed to be, but that's trivial compared to the fact that the space left for fuel tanks is very limited. And you can't just pretend that you could put a bunch of fuel in the tail end, because that would totally unbalance the aircraft's CG. It was fun little design exercise, but it's not much more realistic than Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Gundam mechs, or Reaganomics.

Beautiful aircraft, and well thought out too. I prefer radial engines but i like the justification for yours. I would of gladly flown your aircraft in war.

This design reminds me on the Heinkel He 100, it has a lot in common

I'd love to see some construction and maintenance proposals. They were a major factor on aircraft design

The interceptor was popular in the 60s and 70s because its mission was to fly fast and far to fire missiles at bombers and come home. Air-to-air with other fighters wasn't really considered. (try a 2-circle with an F-104)

Hey aerospace engineering student here, great video! I liked the level of detail you put in, unfortunately you didn’t take about the wing profiles (maybe it due to software limitations). It’s a very cool design, I especially liked the Corsair-like wings because I didn’t know they improved visibility! If I may add something to improve a bit the design would be to add flaps and slats if possible (latter are very important for low speed flight envelops). Also you might want to change the wing shape (seen from above) to an elliptical shape, similar to the one on the spitfire. It’s the absolute best shape for aero efficiency and wasn’t used much because of how hard it was to build. And you could tilt (rotation from above) the vertical stabiliser a bit to counter gyroscopic effect from the torque generated by the engine.

The addition of stripes could be a way to make identifying this fighter fom an adversary with a similar silloute easier. After a few incidents of friendly fire maybe stripes were added.

Fuselage mounted cannon means that the rate of fire has to be carefully governed to reduce the risk of propellor strike - while doing away with convergance issues, it means your rate of fire may be considerably reduced. For example, in WW1, the twin-gun Albatros had a rate of fire not much above that of the single (un-synchronised) gun of the DH2 (a "pusher-prop"). Swings and roundabouts....

I'm pleased with the nice slim wings

Beautiful! Really like it, the gull wings are always interesting, and I personally love an all nose mounted uniform canon armament. Overall though this is a sleek and aesthetic design. I can't wait to fly this thing out myself when flyout is released!

God I need this game to come out already. The community’s pent up enough!

You make the fuselage smaller then add turbocharged and three 20mm cannons. One of the reasons the p47 fuselage was fat throughout was the turbo also the turbos was the reason for twin booms on the P38.

You had me going in the beginning, I almost thought this was a real plane. One of those canceled designs that couldn't compete with jets.

Seems like one of the plane that would feature on Ed Nash's forgotten aircraft. Perfect on paper, but scuttled by engine or bureaucracy or the like.

this game youre using is just like a really in-depth version of simpleplanes

Gotta show this to Göring as soon as a time machine becomes operational.

pretty cool ended up looking like a Hawker Seafury

That stock vid of a F-35 with wing mounted sidewinders hurt to look at.

Looks like something straight out of The Sky Crawlers

Yeah, man new upload

Just small correction to an otherwise very informative video! At 8:04 you mentioned the term: “overboosting” Your explanation was spot on however what you are referring to is an altitude boosted system. Overboosting is where you are actually in a state of boost exceeding the maximum rated. Awesome video nonetheless!

I think you missed a few things. By 1945 a lot of the proposed designs put the engine behind the pilot a la P-39 and moved the pilot just behind the prop. This would increase visibility over the nose, especially for taxiing and landing. Tricycle gear was also catching on. Everyone was starting to think this way - Rolls Royce was designing a fighter for its Crecy engine. General Motors had its P-75. The Germans had a proposed Me-509. And if you think about it.. practically all jet fighters use this general layout to this day.

Yooooo second time bring early lez goooo Love your vids

I've always favored the F6F Hellcat. Range, armor, durability, and cost were always top tier. The Reno Air races showed you get spectacular results stuffing a Wright R-3350 into an F8F Bearcat. I don't see why that wouldn't work with a Hellcat. From there updating the armament to rotary cannons would be a good idea. I find the Russian Yak B interesting. It's the only gas operated rotary gun I know of. It's weight, length, and rate of fire all lend well to fighter craft.

It has some similitudes in design to the BV-155B-1 and the Ta-152 H1

This is great you should do the same for making the best WW1 fighter too.

A few concerns (for a real-world application): Liquid cooled engines tend to be heavier & less reliable than air cooled. The inverted gull wing on the Corsair proved to be heavily limiting for low speed control, landing, & safety in the event of damage. There's a reason pilots preferred the F6F. 3 20mm cannons would've been pretty light armament. Many cannon-armed fighters had 2 or 4 cannons plus MGs. The 8 .50 cal on a P-47 had a much longer firing time plus a higher likelihood of hitting a fleeting target. "Nothing bad comes from being lighter"... tell that to all of the Zeroes that were shot down as soon as Americans learned how to fight. Even the F4F had a positive kill ratio against it, let alone the F4U, F6F, & P-38. The canopy looks to have a limited rear view arc compared to the later versions of the P-47 & P-51. The majority of fighters shot down by other fighters were pounced on from behind & had no idea they were being targeted.

I’ve always wanted to see what the best aircraft designs of ww2 would perform like if made exactly the same except with modern materials and components. Essentially same look on the outside but better materials.

You might look into the new Toroidal Propeller designs that are out there. They are showing a huge increase in efficiency across the board. If your building a fighter that needs range and high altitude performance its worth looking into. The earliest of thier designs go back to the 30s even tho they are only really taking off now as a concept

The f8f bearcat was essentially the existing pinnacle of piston engine gunfighters built with hindsight and too late to join the war in the pacific.

I love these videos

i cannot wait to get this game and immediately design the most cursed aircraft conceivable to man

I can tell just from looking at it that you'd have all sorts of trouble with stability if it were a real plane. The wings need a lot more dihedral, and in turn, the vertical and rudder would need to be larger to maintain good directional control. It'd be like balancing on top of a drum.

by the end of the war every major project shift to rear mounted engine to reduce nose frontal section, tricycle landing gear and free up the nose to armament (concentration of fire). this plane looks conceptually old even with hindsight. it refined an old formula.

Love this video concept. The DH Hornet would’ve been a good place to start. It had WW2 technology. More power than this model. All armament in the nose and best looking piston fighter aircraft ever built.

My big gripe with this weapon configuration is that you're trading volume of fire for greater concentration on the airframe - and while not having to worry about convergence isn't a bad thing by any stretch, lower weight of fire means that more time on target is required to ensure a kill, which isn't great for dealing with fighters and is especially problematic for dealing with bombers with defensive armaments. There's a reason why the Germans would pack as many autocannons of as great a caliber as possible onto their fighters, to try and destroy American bombers before the defensive armaments of the bombers (or the escorting fighters) could force the fighter to break off.