Allison-powered Brewster Buffalo

[GTX]

MEW
Mounting the radiator on the extreme nose will exacerbate balance problems.

You are probably right. I see two options:

1. Do as you have suggested and have some form of rear mounted or wing mounted radiators/oil coolers
2. Possibly go for a tricycle undercarriage

 

[riggerrob]

MEW
Mounting the radiator on the extreme nose will exacerbate balance problems.

You are probably right. I see two options:

1. Do as you have suggested and have some form of rear mounted or wing mounted radiators/oil coolers
2. Possibly go for a tricycle undercarriage

Moving radiators aft will help with balance.
BUT installing a nose wheel will improve balance on the ground, it will worsen balance in the air because you are substituting a heavy nose-wheel a short distance forward of the C. of G. to replace a light-weight tail wheel a long way aft of the C. of G.

 

[GTX]

Not a lot of room in the rear fuselage unless one somehow does a fuselage stretch (which might be needed anyway). An alternate arrangement might be to do the radiator(s) on the side of the rear fuselage somewhat similar to the Ki-78:

or potentially submerged aka the P-39:



I don't see much room to go for something akin to a P-51 set up.

Another more radical solution would be to go for an evaporative cooling arrangement.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

You'd have to do some serious rearranging of things...

 

[riggerrob]

Dear T.A. Gardner,
That cutaway drawing can be deceiving.
The aft fuselage is essentially hollow. All those radios are mounted to the walls of the aft fuselage, still leaving enough room in the middle for a technician to sit and work on them. If the radios are mounted above the upper longeron, they would free plenty for space for a radiator and ducting. Yes, that would require more access hatches, but mechanics love access hatches.

 

[jcf]

Yep, and that's the "long nose" F2A-3. Lining up the firewall of a P-40 type installation to the firewall
of the Buffalo turns up all kinds of issues. If the engine could be set further aft by removing the cowl
guns and ammo tanks some of W&B issues could be adressed - but the landing gear design makes
that a non-starter.

 

[iverson]

Or you could just order a new design, preferably from a different contractor.

I cannot see any reason why an Allison would be attractive in the Brewster airframe. With the radial, the F2A had a broadly similar performance to a conteporary P-40. Both had the same core problem: too much weight for the power provided by the available engines, exacerbated by inefficient manufacturing processes and mismanagement, in the case of Brester. When stripped of armor and carrier fittings, Brewster fighters did well in Finland. But with the equipment they needed for fighting more modern opponents, they suffered.

 

[southwestforests]

(spoiled drawings from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brewster_F2A-1_Buffalo_fighter.svg
and https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Curtiss_P-40_3-view.svg)

T

... Has anyone ever seen drawings of this proposal?

No ! Perhaps an installation similar to the P-40 may have been used ? But the R-1820 radial
was wider, than the Allison, adapting the fuselage to the inline engine probably would have
been no mean task. And the considerable bigger length ahead of the wing quite probably
would have demanded a longer tail.
(spoiled drawings from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brewster_F2A-1_Buffalo_fighter.svg
and https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Curtiss_P-40_3-view.svg)

That bird in the attached GIF drawing is one REALLY odd duck ...

 

[riggerrob]

Yep, and that's the "long nose" F2A-3. Lining up the firewall of a P-40 type installation to the firewall
of the Buffalo turns up all kinds of issues. If the engine could be set further aft by removing the cowl
guns and ammo tanks some of W&B issues could be adressed - but the landing gear design makes
that a non-starter.

Tghe other problem is that Buffalo firewalls are in line with the leading edge.
OTOH, the majority of World War 2 fighters had their firewalls much farther aft, almost to the wings' main spar (Hawker Fury, Me-109, P-51, Spitfire, etc.).
A LONG inline engine (e.g. Allison) would probably need its firewall near the main spar to balance properly.
Moving a Buffalo firewall aft would require a major re-design of the center fuselage. By then, you are talking about such a major re-design - with so many new components - that it ceases to be a Buffalo.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

Yep, and that's the "long nose" F2A-3. Lining up the firewall of a P-40 type installation to the firewall
of the Buffalo turns up all kinds of issues. If the engine could be set further aft by removing the cowl
guns and ammo tanks some of W&B issues could be adressed - but the landing gear design makes
that a non-starter.

Tghe other problem is that Buffalo firewalls are in line with the leading edge.
OTOH, the majority of World War 2 fighters had their firewalls much farther aft, almost to the wings' main spar (Hawker Fury, Me-109, P-51, Spitfire, etc.).
A LONG inline engine (e.g. Allison) would probably need its firewall near the main spar to balance properly.
Moving a Buffalo firewall aft would require a major re-design of the center fuselage. By then, you are talking about such a major re-design - with so many new components - that it ceases to be a Buffalo.

Part of the reason for that was the USN at the time had a requirement for a window in the bottom of the fuselage the pilot could look down through.

 

[tallguy]

True. One possibility is an export pitch to France. (The French regarded the Allison as a foreign backup to their HS 12Y - hence the Arsenal VG-32 fighter powered by a V-1710C-15.) To put it mildly, such a pitch would have been a long-shot ...

The French were buying every fighter that flew in 1939

 

[Nicknick]

We should concider wing tip radiators for the water cooled Buffalos:

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/augmented-cooling-radiators.38612/post-513020

This could have been a viable option, no additional space in the fuselage is required and it could also be aerodynamically efficient.

 

[BROF]

The French were buying every fighter that flew in 1939

You mean France?

 

[tallguy]

You mean France?

If you want to be pedantic, the French Purchasing Commission.

 

[Archibald]

The French were buying every fighter that flew in 1939

That's an understatement ! They were in a state of panic, with only mediocre MS-406s available in numbers. The Curtiss H-75 was a very good choice and did wonders, obviously. But procurement of US aircraft then went crazy. France ordered P-38s and P-39s and P-40s, had plans for Allison and Pratt variants of french fighters... overall, a very messy procurement plan.

 

[Foo Fighter]

It strikes me that the solutions here, mirror another aircraft already in productions. So, why not build/buy that? Actually they did.

Any alternate should Shirley have a pretext like the Mustang not being produced or not available etc, etc.

The thing that blows my cornflakes into dust is the failure to settle on a design early and produce the CA-15, getting it into production and supporting local enterprise more efficiently. As we all know, that is how these projects go a lot of the time.

 

[BROF]

If you want to be pedantic, the French Purchasing Commission.

No more pedantic than when you wrote Canada, and not "Canadians", or Australia, and not "Australians".

 

[tallguy]

No more pedantic than when you wrote Canada, and not "Canadians", or Australia, and not "Australians".

I can see why your access is restricted

 

[T. A. Gardner]

Another problem with the area right aft of the radial engine is how the wing is constructed. Brewster didn't use a conventional spar design but rather a box beam (see post 44 items 10, 129). This box beam had the rest of the wing structure attached around it and it extends across the fuselage as a single piece. It limits the depth behind the engine and cannot be gotten around other than redesign the entire wing structure.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Relocating the radiator aft, like it was done on Italian radial->V12 conversions would've probably be the best - there is a lot of volume to play with, drag from radiators might be lower, and there is no messing with airflow around the wings.

As mentioned, that would also help with your CG issues. And help keep the cockpit warm.

 

[sienar]

Excluding things like the P-39, was there a single production fighter that had the firewall aft of ~25% chord?

The obvious thing to do is what Focke Wulf did with the 190; create a short fuselage plug for the center and keep the rest of the fuselage, and wings, the same.

 

[Jjr]

Hei
Almost everybode is writing about the Brewster Buffalo.
BUT ONLY the British used the Brewster Buffalo, after they ordered this aeroplane the Air Ministry gives these aeroplane the name Buffalo.
NOT the Americans, the Finish and the Dutch (NEI) used the name Buffalo.

 

[GTX]

Hei
Almost everybode is writing about the Brewster Buffalo.
BUT ONLY the British used the Brewster Buffalo, after they ordered this aeroplane the Air Ministry gives these aeroplane the name Buffalo.
NOT the Americans, the Finish and the Dutch (NEI) used the name Buffalo.

Semantics