Seriously Bad We’ve had several discussions recently about aircraft with bad reputations. But in most of those cases, the conclusion has been that those aircraft were not as bad as popular history suggests, but were faced with impossible tasks for which they were not designed or for which they had become outdated. As an aircraft enthusiast I am inclined to believe the best of any aeroplane. My favourite aeroplane is the one that I have just been reading about. Of course some are better than others. But, can any of you think of any WW2 aircraft that made it into production that was seriously, irredeemably bad? Bear in mind that in the period 1935-1945 aviation development was extremely fast and an aircraft that was great in 1936 was hopeless by 1940. One example of a type that has a bad reputation that was perhaps not altogether deserved would be the Brewster F2A, known to the RAF as the Buffalo, virtually wiped out in the Far East in early ‘42. But, we discovered (well, Kyt discovered) that the Finnish Brewsters had a kill: loss ratio of about 22:1, virtually the highest of any type in the war. And even the RAF, RAAF and RNZAF Buffaloes had a kill: loss ratio of 3.74:1. (I’m not sure if this excludes the large numbers of Buffalos destroyed on the ground). There is a suspicion that these aircraft and their engines were built to inferior standards than the US and Finnish ones, and their early-model 0.5inch guns gave a lot of trouble. But, not all their opponents were Zeros - the IJAAF were using a large numbers of the Nakajima Ki27, which was even more obsolete than the Buffalo. In the end, virtually all the Buffalos were lost - but the Hurricanes faired hardly better in that situation. Then there is the Defiant. Hopeless in a dog-fight, but it was designed as a bomber-destroyer and was remarkably successful at that, and very successful (by the standards of the time) as a night-fighter. It had been ordered on the assumption that France would not be defeated so the Germans would not be basing Me109s close enough to be able to reach the UK. The Battle and Blenheim had horrendous loss rates but so did many light day bombers. If the Mosquito had also had a two or three-year gap between entering service and the war starting it would also have fared badly. By 1945 it was becoming vulnerable to the ME262 jet and the He219 Uhu. (Many German Generals and Admirals were planning for a war to start in 1944, in order to have the equipment they really wanted). The ME262 is also an aircraft with a bad reputation, mainly on the basis that some were shot down by piston-engined fighters. But this often happened as they were coming in to land. The ME262 actually had a kill: loss ratio of 5:1 - admittedly most of its victims were bombers, but that was its mission. Post-war tests suggested it was superior to the Meteor III and the Lockheed P80, and the Czechs were using it until 1957 (presumably with longer-lasting engines?). So what would be my example of an irredeemably bad aircraft? The Blackburn Roc must come close. All the Defiant’s bad points and none of its good points. At least the Defiant had a Merlin engine and could catch bombers. The Roc had a 905hp Bristol Perseus and, in the only encounter it had during the Battle of Britain, it could hardly keep up with a Heinkel 59 biplane floatplane, and the ensuing combat was indecisive. So, even if its raison d’etre was to protect the fleet from enemy spotter planes, it would have been hard put to do so. On the German side, the ME163 Komet rocket fighter was a bad career move for its pilots. After a huge amount of time and effort in development costs, the principal unit that used it, JG400 is thought to have brought down sixteen allied aircraft for the loss of six ME163 due to enemy action and nine in accidents. Not good, but until I actually saw these figures I had got the impression from simplistic accounts that the losses were much higher. Aerodynamically, even in glider mode, it was very good indeed, but of course in terms of its power plant it was an evolutionary dead end. So, any other ideas, and why? I have one or two more….. Adrian
Yes, good one - or rather bad one- you know what I mean! It must have had something going for it in terms of aerodynamics and structure in order to be basis for the Lancaster. But the crews who flew would just have seen an aircraft with untrustworthy engines which needed both of them working to stay airborne. The Lockheed Ventura was as bad for slightly different reasons: They almost doubled the horsepower of the Hudson, but didn't increase the tail area, so on one engine if you used full power you flew in circles; if you throttled back you lost height.
It's a difficult one because during the war the RAF tended to be quite focussed on development. However, it tended to be the case that the aircraft itself seem rubbish because of the resources allocated to it. A classic example would be the Whirlwind which had the makings of an excellent aircraft if the right engines had been allocated. For those who argue that that is the nature of war, and the Whirlwind should be judged on its achievements and not of "what ifs", I would ask what of the Mustang. If teh RAF hadn't changed the engine and the USAAF had retained the original engine then it too would have been relegated to the historical scrap-heap. However, for the RAF there are 3 or 4 aircraft that really shouldn't been on the front-lines, even in 1939: Blackburn Botha Intended to be introduced across the RAF in RAF it became obsolete as soon as the war started. Very under-powered. Withdrawn soon after introduction and only served with one squadron Saro Lerwick Developed after the Sunderland but inferior in every way, it was withdrawn the limited operational usage it had because of its terrible handling. Most were lost in accidents rather than in combat Bristol Bombay Gawd awful aircraft which would have disappeared into obscurity if hadn’t been used as a transport and ambulance aircraft in East Africa (and then only because no other aircraft were available) and then there's the infamous Blenheim V which was a real step back in development of the aircraft. Intended as a ground attack variant with extra armour, and a solid nose weapons system, it used the same engines as the IV and thus lost a lot of its performance. The crews who flew it, mainly in the Middle East, hated it.
I suppose the Italian Breda Ba 88 deserves to be here. When an aircraft has a problem even getting off the runway one has to wonder whether it should have been used operationally at all!!
Often wondered about that. I mean, when the same company has developed the Beaufighter, why would you persist with a heavier Blenheim?
I had intended to keep this to aircraft that actually entered service, and I must admit that I wasn't aware that the Botha did so, albeit briefly. I think it was this aircraft that least ten of were lost in crashes during development, most because one particular rigger was connecting the ailerons incorrectly. Yes, seriously bad, it tended to "porpoise" badly even on the surface, thus leading to some of the accidents when this happened at speed. The Bombay was an unhappy combination of transport and bomber, though to be fair it was intended to police the Empire, rather than fight a European war. It was supposed to succeed the Vickers Valentia biplane transport/bomber in this role, which in fact remained in service in small numbers until 1942, slightly after the Bombay, despite being not all that distantly related to the Vickers Vimy of WW1. Apart from anything else, the Bombay easily became tail heavy; the rear compartment had to be locked in flight and the rear turret was virtually unuseable. Most infamous as the aircraft in which Lt-Gen Gott was shot down and killed - unlucky for him but a good career break for Montgomery who got his job. I thought of the Breda 88 but needed to research it a bit before mentioning it. Blenheim V/ Bisley. Probably it was cheaper than Beaufighters - Pegasus engines rather than Hercules etc. And of course it would have carried a larger bombload, though the Beau's cannon would have been more useful. But, I suspect the fault lay with the Air Ministry's Procurement Executive rather than Bristol
Yes, the Procurement Executive, that's what I was getting at AR, not Bristol. Some of the South African squadrons in North Africa were lumped with Bisleys before getting secondhand Beauforts and, ultimately, Beaufighters...just another avenue I will follow one of these days!
They must have been really desperate if they replaced the Bisleys with Beauforts. The Beaufort wasn't bad in itself but by the middle of the war it would have been far too ponderous to survive in the North African war, without a very effective fighter escort. It was as a result of leading a formation of Bisleys of 18 sqdn on a raid on an airfield in Tunsia on 4/12/42 that Wg Cdr H W Malcolm was posthumously awarded a Victoria Cross. All ten Bisleys of that formation were shot down. Hugh Gordon Malcolm - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Another one that caused more problems than contributions to the war effort Heinkel He 177 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
And reading Nemesis it appears the B-29 had an atrocious service record, with more aircraft lost to technical problems than enemy action. Hastings interpretation seems to be that the entire fire-bombing campaign was based on the USAAF needing something to use the most expensive weapon of WW2 against, rather than any strategic necessity. Most of industral plants targetted were running at minimum capacity because the raw materials were being lost at see. So a white elephant.
OK this is more tongue in cheek as it never flew operationally but still there were flight tests! Blohm und Voss BV.40 By 1943 the enormous swarms of US bombers raiding German cities and factories spurred the Reich Air Ministry (RLM) to seek interesting technical solutions from industry: jet fighters, rocket fighters, surface-to-air missiles and a glider fighter. The theory behind the Blohm und Voss BV 40 was that a tiny glider, armed with powerful cannon, could swoop through a formation of bombers and knock one or two down almost before it was detected. After its firing pass it was proposed that the BV 40 make a second pass towing a bomb on a cable, but this was rejected in favour of a second 30mm cannon. Despite losses of several prototypes, the flight test programme proved the basic functionality of the BV 40, but not the feasibility of the concept, and the idea was abandoned in late 1944.
It was a typical example of how Ministry requirements issued in the early months and years of the war took too long to be realised in pracice. Due to many tecnical problems in adapting the aircraft into a ground-attack aircraft (which was more than just sticking a few guns in the nose) by the time the aircraft were ready for manufacture other aircraft, like the Beaufighter and Mosquito had appeared. So not only was the Bisley a failure because of lack of performance (even compared to the IV), but aircrews were aware that they were flying an inferior aircraft to ones available to their European-theatre brethern. And the Bisley also faced a different enemy to the one originally envisaged because the Germans were the main opponents in North Africa by the time it appeared. Just shows that North Africa, like Burma, was considered a sideshow, where a "make-do" attitude dictated decisions in London.
One that I'd only heard of in passing but seems to have been a failture was the Curtis SO3C Seamew: SO3C Seamew - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The He 177 and the B29 were both highly ambitious attempts to create an advanced bomber, and were pushed into service far too soon. Political interference prevented the He 177 from having four separate engines rather than two coupled twins which created huge problems. They did succeed in sinking the surrendered Italian battleship Roma, using the Fritz X guided missile (and was it He 177s that came close to sinking HMS Warspite in the same way, except that the missile failed to explode?) As for the B29: you could say it worked alright in the end. Was it really necessary for winning the war? That would lead to a debate on using the A-bomb! I wonder if a Lancaster or Lincoln could have carried "Little Boy?" And it could be argued that the nuclear-armed B29 was the only thing that prevented WW3 in the first post-war years, by being a deterrent. Though I'm not sure that the Russians really had any stomach for another war in the late '40s, whatever Curtis Le May and Strategic Air Command thought.
Fairey Albacore Ok, another contestant: The Fairey Albacore. Some of you may remember me being a bit heretical about the Swordfish, which was although it's crews achieved some great successes, they did so despite the aircraft rather than because of it. Of course, the Stringbag's saving graces were its ruggedness, and great low-speed handling, which made it the only the bomber that could use the small MAC and Escort carriers later in the war. But the latter was fortuitous - no-one had thought of Escort carriers when the Swordfish was designed. It is not something to be proud of that Britain was the last major country to produce and use combat biplanes. The US and Japan had managed to produce monoplane torpedo bombers that were just as rugged. It is a measure of the RAF's neglect of the Fleet Air Arm that this was allowed to happen (the FAA was part of the RAF until 1939). And if the Swordfish had frequently been used within range of enemy fighters, its reputation would have been worse than the Battle's. True, a bomber had to be only slightly less slow than enemy fighters to be vulnerable; the TBD Devastator and the Nakajima B5N showed that. But some extra horsepower and better streamlining would have been very welcome on the operations against Bismarck,; there were times when the Swordfishes could barely make headway against the wind. (Having said all that, I'd still love to fly in the RN Historic Flight's Stringbag!) So, the Albacore. A negligible increase in performance. And compare the wing planforms of the two aircraft. The Swordfish's is carefully designed for optimum handling at low speed. The Albacore's is two straight-edged boards, as simple as a wing can be. It was designed for cheapness and ease of production. Consequently, the Albacore's handling was terrible and it was very heavy on the controls - not good in a carrier aircraft, therefore it was mainly used from land-bases. It had an enclosed cockpit unlike the Swordfish - and lo and behold it was mainly used in North Africa, where an enclosed cockpit was least useful. Not a well-loved aeroplane at all.
The Fairey Seafox wasn't well-loved either. A seaplane to be catapulted from light cruisers that were too small to carry the Walrus. It was underpowered and could barely get off the sea fully loaded. It had a Napier Rapier H-type engine; a smaller percursor of the Napier Sabre as fitted to the Typhoon, and just as complicated, two sparkplugs in each of the sixteen cylinders, etc - not what you need on a small warship with no hangar. And being smaller than the Walrus, it wasn't nearly as versatile - no good for ASR work for instance. Fairey Seafox - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
True, as a delivery system for the A-bombs it was probably the only aircraft capable of doing it, though the Lanc was adapted for the Tallboy and the bombs were about the same weight. But the US wouldn't have allowed that for political, as well as logistical, reasons. But the B-29 was specifically designed for use from Chinese and Indian bases, and that failed miserably. The resources required to carry the fuel alone over the Hump was nonsensical.
I think the Swordfish was actually a good aircraft for the role it ended up playing. It was indeed obselete by the time the war started, having been in service since 1933. But leaving aside the high profile operations like the one against the Bismarck, it played a vital role in its "secondary" role - that of convoy protection. As a Recon/AS aircraft it was very successful, especially on the smaller aircraft carriers assigned to that role. In fact the biplane required less take-off run up and yet could carry a respectable weapons load. For the Bismarck attack, I still think the more modern aircraft would have failed as well because the weather would have affected them too. Yes, the Swordfish was affected worse but the overall outcome would probably have been the same. The Albacore was a reletive failure. But that was probably because the FAA had finally decided that any development work would now concentrate on monoplane designs and so never really took to it. There are conflicting reports about its flying characteristics - I have read reports that it was actually quite a nice aircraft to fly. Not brilliant but not as bad as some have since said.
