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Bugatti 100P Rebuilt: The Plane That Could've Turned the Battle of Britain
concertina226 writes "A team of engineers is working together to recreate the Bugatti Veyron (or Bugatti 100P), an art deco-era fighter plane designed for World War II that would have broken the air speed record in 1940 — only the plane was never flown. Featuring forward pitched wings, a zero-drag cooling system and automated flight control assistance, plane was capable of reaching an air speed of 500mph, which would have made it the fastest and most advanced plane of its time."
It was already beat by the RAF.
Right.
"Bugatti, who had gained French citizenship between the two wars, decided to hide the craft in pieces in crates in a barn in the French countryside to prevent it from being discovered by the Nazis."
Learn to read.
If the main thing about this aircraft is it's high speed, it seems odd to me that the replica is going to be powered by engines which will only allow it to reach a fraction of the quoted max speed
Dimensionally identical to the original, but will only go 200mph instead of 500mph. I'm sure they could source an engine(s) to make it go the original 500mph if they wanted to.
... the allies had Christopher Plummer!
I get the computer controlled part, since forward swept wings are inherently unstable, but not how such control was going to be accomplished in 1939. Also, this 500mph historical plane, with modern fabrication and knowledge, is going to be limited to 200mph because they could only manage to fit 400HP of engine in it. And yet the original was supposed to fly 2.5 times as fast with only 2.25x the horsepower? Drag doesn't scale that way.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I'm curious - what exactly does "computer-directed flight control" mean for a plane from 1939?
I bet maintenance would've been a bitch. I might have been able to fly fast, but there might also have been a lot of "hanger queens" too. The design is meaningless if you can't keep the planes in the air.
Proverbs 21:19
Even by Slashdot standards, this is one of the dumbest headlines, ever.
Bugatti was no Nazi. He lived and worked in pre-war France, and was not a Nazi supporter at all. The reason the thing did not fly back then was because Bugatti, who had build the plane in France prior to it being invaded by Nazi Germany, successfully hid it from the invaders so they would not get their hands on it. Or rather, the technology used in it: in any case, the plane in the form it was built was never, ever, a "Nazi plane". Nor would it have been useful at all as a warplane: this thing, amazing as it is, is a pure racer, with zero capabilities for being armed. Nor would it probably have been much good in a dogfight, either: that crate was built to be fast, with everything else being a secondary consideration.
This headline is pure drivel, and really should be corrected ASAP.
From TFU:
"The Bugatti 100P was not ready in time for the September 1939 deadline to enter the Coupe Deutsch aircraft race, ... If the Germans had been able to get hold of the Bugatti, it is believed that the plane could have outperformed the British Supermarine Spitfire planes during the Battle of Britain."
Incredible how unrealistic/sensationalist how people can be. The prototype was not ready in Sept 39, it was hidden in France and hence can only be found there by the Germans after May 1940 and still it is assumed to take part in the Battle of Britain on the summer of 1940? And according to the title it is even supposed to win the war at that time???
The caption for the lead photo in the article, showing a sleek, double-propeller-driven aircraft:
"A group of airplane enthusiasts have rebuilt the Bugatti 100P, an advanced fighter jet from 1940".
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
...was that its 1940 flight control computers were not exacty available in a flight-friendly form-factor.
It's as if the internet is full of wack jobs. Do you not know when to use its? Do you know it exists, its?
As usual, linking to the people who actually know what they are talking about would have helped.
Instead we have a story with the headline "WWII Bugatti 100P Plane Rebuilt: Jet Fighter that Could Have Won Battle of Britain for the Nazis" in bold print directly over a photograph of a plane with a propeller.
Amazingly enough, even the Daily Fail article which the International Business Times cribbed for this story contained more accurate information.
"an airplane that never flew and for which there are no known plans and few relevant drawings"
The source is suspect, TFA is sloppy/mushy in terms of its pitching this as a warplane (and the caption calls it a 'fighter jet'), the summary here repeats it's a "fighter plane designed for World War II" when it seems to be designed to be raced once, over a course, to break an air speed record.
Whatever. 'Maybe' some or all of the claims could have been borne out had this ever been built or had managed to fly. Most likely? NO.
Computer directed flight control in 1940? Must have been a very large plane.
Germany had, for all intents and purposes, won the Battle of Britain before Hitler decided to change the successful tactic of attacking primarily military targets to civilian targets.
Why all this hyperbole? It was a little air racer. Small in stature means no armor or armanent. Limited visability for the pilot means he never saw the plane that killed him. Loaded with shortcomings not loaded for bear. 900 hp was so 5 years before the Bug. No stretch in the design so it would not be able to handle 2000 hp motors later on. A French company not a Nazi one. The French fought the Nazis, remember. Ettore was great but no reason to think he would make a world beater with his first airplane. A cool item from the past. Not The Nazi Plane That Could Have Won The Battle Of Britain. Please be more circumspect in your postings.
It wasn't a Nazi plane.
it was Italian
History, facts and performance from the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) which has the original on display.
http://www.airventuremuseum.or...
Mary-Ann Russon, Technology Reporter for the International Business Times UK, believes in them, while both don't exactly exist.
Twin props on a jet. Now that's innovative.
I guess pusher props would get too hot from the jet wash.....
If the picture is true to the original design, this aircraft has very little to recommend it as a fighter. Machine guns, even the .30 cal or 8mm types used in the early days of WW2, are big and heavy. Add a couple of hundred rounds per gun. If you decide to add a 20mm cannon or two because rifle caliber machine guns really aren't heavy enough to do significant damage to an enemy aircraft the weight goes up again. Don't forget some armor plate around the pilot so that your expensive aircraft and well trained pilot can make it home after a dogfight (ask the Japanese navy about what happens when you don't think about survivability). Put enough fuel into the aircraft for at least a 500 mile range and some endurance during the fight. Make sure that the fuel tanks are self sealing and heavy. Raise the cockpit canopy so that the pilot can see and more importantly take off and land. Then throw the legendary Bugatti eccentric engineering into the mix which would just about guarantee that the aircraft couldn't be maintained or serviced.
It might be a good plane for your enemy to fly,
Unbelievably bad !
The Bugatti 100 wasn't a JET , much less an "advanced fighter jet". (Note to the author: Jet isn't synonym with combat aircraft).
It wouldn't be computer controlled . No computers with the right size and speed for controlling an aircraft where available (also, for the size, the control surfaces would be "muscle" powered, as where all aircraft of comparable size and era).
Being on the prototype stage, it would not ever be combat ready and in wide operational use for it to make any difference on the Battle of Britain (The prototypes for the Spitfire and the bf109 had first flights in 1936 and 1935 , operational around 1938 and 1937).
Compared to the previous issues, the "zero-drag cooling system" is of little consequence.
Also, no excuse for the author not being an "expert" on the subject .
Some basic fact checking ("oh, look it s got a propeller" or "when was the first flight control computer introduced ?") would keep the piece honest. (but would certainly intrude upon the the sensationalist tone).
The Germans lost the battle for many reasons. They were losing aircraft fast, not just in combat but due to maintenance needed. Planes have to be pulled out of the line and refurbished every so often. They can't fight forever. Unknown to the Germans, the British were far out producing them in fighter aircraft. Almost double the production. The problem the British faced was a lack of pilots to man those aircraft, and a degradation of the support infrastructure. Same as pilots, the ground crew, maintenance and airfield engineers were wearing out. But, so were the German ones. It turned into a battle of attrition. The Germans were deeper to begin with, but the British were losing less over time. The Germans eventually broke first. Their change in tactics was to cover the wearing out of their air force.
From the looks of it, it would have a fuel range barely enough to cross the Channel.
I also have doubts about the top speed, given the wave drag of the leading edges. However, that's a maybe. With the motorcycle engines instead of (for instance) a pair of turbocharged racing engines the replica is going to be flying at only 40% of the original's planned Mach number so a lot of things are going to be very different. On the other hand, some aeronautical engineering grad student could probably do a nice paper on simulated performance of the original.
By the way: the Spitfire cooling system was not only dragless, it produced thrust.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
My God, Slashdot has gone to shit over the years. That kind of unresearched clickbait nonsense would not have made a post 10 years ago.
The aircraft in the picture is:
1. Too small.
2. Unarmed.
3. Unarmored.
Let's explain:
Once you add armament and armor, the Bugatti would be a LOT slower. Probably slower than the Bf-109 that set the 469mph record.
To compensate, you'd need a bigger engine. The 109, which was a small fighter to begin with (half the size of a P-51 and a third the size of a P-47), was already running a big engine for its size and barely had enough room to upgrade to the DB605 during the middle of the war. This Bugatti is tiny. It's powered by two 4.9L engines that produce 450hp each. In 1940, the 109 had the DB601 with a displacement of 34L and produced ~1200hp. By 1945, the DB605 was up to 37L and produced about 1800hp.
The Bugatti wouldn't be big enough to run an engine that big, and while I'm sure one of you is going to ask "but it doesn't need to"... yes it does. If it's to carry enough fuel, armaments, and ammunition, it needs to have an engine that can propel it forward at combat speeds with all that extra weight, and an airframe that can hold all that. You don't get a lunar lander to the moon in Kerbal Space Program with a pair of solid fuel boosters, and you don't get an armed and armored fighter to loiter over Britain for an hour with two 4.9L engines. Not happening. Physics disagrees.
Incidentally, the 109's already small size was one of the major problems for the Germans during the Battle of Britain. It didn't have the fuel capacity to stay over London for anything more than 15-20 minutes and still be able to return to France.
I'm a little segfault, short and stout.
Not a veyron (never had that name applied)
Not a jet (prop driven)
Not a fighter (never planned to have weapons of any kind - the 110p was a proposal to make it a pursuit craft but that was never finished)
Not capable of 500 mph (claims based on production estimates, not field-tested accurately measured top speed)
Not built for the Nazi's (and specifically split up and hidden from them)
It's a shame they went for sensationalist exaggeration instead of detailing the already-interesting-enough story about discovering and reproducing a lost piece of aviation history. It doesn't have to be the fastest in the world or capable of winning the war for the Nazi's to still be very very interesting.
I'm actually surprised they're trying this; I wouldn't want to be the first one to take it up. Two things that are almost guaranteed trouble in aircraft are counter-rotating propellers and especially shaft-driven propellers. I see insufficient rear control surfaces (what are they going to do when they start to hit compressibility?), poor-to-no stability, and almost impossible emergency exit. The concept of an aircraft with poor visibility and no room for fuel or weapons as a fighter is laughable. They're not testing Bugatti's concept, because they're not powering it sufficiently to test the one thing it might have been good at - speed.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
FUCK BETA.
Yes the Bugatti beta from 1939 is designed to dupe anon cowards into registering as /. members. This design is to win the "Beta Battle" for smart phone interfaces. If /. had this "Beta" back in 1939 it could have won the iPad/iPhone forum interface wars!
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why does the submitter think the Veyron is this airplane (the 100p)? Even the linked site acknowledges that the Veyron is a car:
http://google.com/search?q=site%3Abugatti100p.com+Veyron
That's the first time I've ever heard that. The British basically knew where the Germans were going to attack every time, because they had already cracked the enigma code. That helped them choose the correct time to engage, and by the time the Germans really focused on bombing cities, the main battles had been won, the RAF had clearly established superiority.
That is thanks to Alan Turing et al.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Having only 900hp total with 2 engines while other fighters of that era had between 1000hp and 1500hp with only one engine.
In times of war you don't want some high tech complex machine like this, you want clever and simple design, easy to repair and reliable.
Try it! Library of Babel
I cant find any record of it being called Veyron anywhere. They know something we don't?
woulda-shoulda-coulda.
It's a valid contraction, so why the hissy fit?
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
First, thanks for linking a page with autoplaying video, LOVE THAT.
Second: combat aircraft are about much, much more than speed. Note this line: "...The reigning air speed record of the time was 469mph, set by a German Messerschmitt plane in 1939...." That was the plane that LOST the Battle of Britain, by the way.
The Bf109 was 10% faster than the Spitfire during the Battle of Britain anyway, an even faster plane - assuming it would remain so, after the addition of reasonable fuel tanks, armor, guns, ammunition, and a fighting canopy - would have helped how?
Note, the power/weight ratio for this racing plane, 3.44 lbs/hp, is precisely the same (curious?) as the unloaded combat Spitfire. Wing loading is much less, but if we presume the addition of 1000+ lbs of combat-necessary weight, that would be rather worse.
No, this is a clever design, a very pretty bird, and will be interesting to see fly. I would be a little nervous, without seeing the wind-tunnel results, of flat spins and yaw control generally, not to mention forward-swept wings being notoriously twitchy in practice.
-Styopa
It kinda reminds me of a Goa'uld Death Glider. So it's really a good thing the Nazis didn't find it.
Wrong.
They were rarely able to decode messages quickly enough for what you describe.
OTOH they had two coastal radar systems and the observer corps one the planes had crossed the cost.
And a master strategist in Hugh Dowding, head of Fighter Command.
I yield to nobody in my admiration of Alan Turing, but this is overstating the case.
b/c itz k00l 2 talk like this lol
And don't forget the limited range of the German fighters.
The Battle of Britain was more the battle for southeast Britain. Unless RAF Fighter Command cooperated, by staying in a losing fight, there was basically no way for the Luftwaffe to seize and maintain air superiority in support of a seaborne invasion.
The RAF had plenty of bases north or west of the Luftwaffe fighter's effective range; so if the attrition started going too badly against the RAF they had the option of temporarily pulling back to train up additional units, but could still surge forward if / when the invasion began. And Luftwaffe bombers would get shredded trying daylight unescorted raids against those more distant airbases.
Ultimately, as painful as it might have been to people on the ground in that southwest portion of Britain, the Luftwaffe could only inflict a level of attrition that the RAF was willing to accept. It would be quite different if the Luftwaffe had the range to put fighters over any part of the UK, because then the RAF has to come up and fight, or its units get destroyed on the ground by fighter sweeps or escorted tactical bombing missions; though at least it would still have the option of training new pilots in Canada - so it wouldn't be quite as bad off as the Luftwaffe was by the end of the war where there was a good chance a trainee pilot would be shot down by Allied fighters before finishing flight training.
The USA held back the use of VT (proximity) fuses over enemy territory until the Battle of the Bulge. To prevent a dud from being recovered and reverse engineered by the Germans. There would have been less risk of this when used over British territory.
Have gnu, will travel.
Just a comment on the comments... plz 'scuse.
This is interesting history and technology, and I love articles about them both. However, all the posts here seem to be arguing the finer points of whether some difference in technology, such as this plane, would have spurred a different outcome to the Battle of Britain if not the entire war. Well, short answer, no. The simple fact about why Britain, with American help, won the Battle of Britain as well as the war in Europe hinges on one giant fact. Massive manufacturing. They could build more planes in a day than Germany could in a month. Ask any pilot in England at the time about that. They will tell you, though they saw all their planes destroyed one day the very next morning brand new ones would be ready to go. Ask them if they were ever, ever, without a plane and they will tell ya, never. Not once.
Arguing the finer points of technology is always fun, but don't let that muddle your sense of reality or history.
Its actually lack of fuel. Since the US Air force is no longer flying high compression/ high powered piston engine planes, the availability of proper fuel is extremely limited. Leaded fuel plus toluene (I think).
TODO: create/find/steal funny sig.
Planes had to have a significant range - even drop fuel tanks had to be planned for (complicated plumbing + extra drag/weight at takeoff). .50 caliber only - and 6 to 8 of those in a plane - that is a lot of weight. The ME262 had 4 20 mm guns/cannons. Are you going to shoot through the props? if not, then you needed wing mounted guns. If so, you needed mechanism to keep from shooting the prop off the plane OR an engine/gearbox that allowed shooting through the tip of the propeller.
Need to carry significant armament - like a few 30ish calibre machine guns (7.62 mm). By the end of the war the US was pretty much
Finally, naturally aspirated engines might make for a good low level racer, but at 30,000ft, you need turbo or supercharging to keep things alive. More weight, more cooling
TODO: create/find/steal funny sig.
It would be quite different if the Luftwaffe had the range to put fighters over any part of the UK, because then the RAF has to come up and fight, or its units get destroyed on the ground by fighter sweeps or escorted tactical bombing missions; though at least it would still have the option of training new pilots in Canada
Or Arizona. Falcon Field is now Mesa Municipal Airport, but they kept the old hall as a historical site. The hassle of getting flight trainees clear from Britain to Arizona 70+ years ago is minor compared to having more than 300 days of flying weather every year.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
it would still have the option of training new pilots in Canada
Which they were already doing (Which you probably knew or you wouldn't have mentioned it.)
I actually grew up within walking distance of one that stayed operational as a municipal airport. Coincidentally 15 years ago I met a British veteran who had trained there towards the end of the war. He had fond memories of his posting to Canada.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
The speculation involved in this story is absurd. The first issue being the "what if?" discovery of the aircraft after the fall of France in June 1940. Even if the Germans had found the aircraft the first day of occupation they wouldn't have had time to test it let alone find uses for any discoveries during the period of the Battle of Britain. If the author is suggesting that the aircraft itself would have been easily converted to a fighter aircraft that suggestion is beyond absurd. This was an aircraft intended for racing and adding the necessary equipment for conversion to a fighter aircraft is not a trivial matter. The Spitfire lineage traces back to racing aircraft of a different breed than those that followed such as the 100P.
FUCK BETA
wow... what has become of slashdot..
this is absolute garbage..
Not a nazi plane (the person that designed was so anti nazi that presumably some risk to himself he hid it from them).
Not a fighter plane ... not remotely suitable for this application actually. .... wow this place is a mess, y'all need to fix this soon.
It wasn't a Nazi plane. it was Italian
French, Italian, whatever.
I am not a crackpot.
It wasn't a Nazi plane. it was Italian
Bugatti was Italian, living in France and proposing to build his plane for the French. So it might have been in use against the Luftwaffe in the fight for France. I don't know how the person who wrote the headline gets from there to the Battle of Britian unless the only things he or she knows about the time is that and Pearl Harbor and the bomb.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
It's worth looking to the history of the Bell P-39 as a good real-world example of such a design. The P-39 was also a mid-engine plane; it also tried to minimize the drag of the cockpit, had retractable landing gear and so on.
It also turned out to be severely underpowered and could not meet its design goals without an absurd amount of post-production finishing (including 20 coats of meticulously sanded primer). It killed a quarter of the American pilots unlucky enough to fly one in the Pacific, and the British, who had originally ordered it, dumped them in less than 8 months. The Soviets, however, loved them.
Bell improved the design with the P-63 Kingcobra, but ultimately I think the plane should be regarded as a failure, unable to compete with its enemy designs in air-to-air combat and plagued with development troubles that took years to correct.
I would argue that the Germans would have had similar problems adapting the Bugatti's similar design, particularly noting that the Bugatti's twin internal engines COMBINED did not match the wheezy performance of the P-39's 1200 hp Allison.
To reach the incredible performance advertised, the Germans would have had to focus on weight reduction, and thus eschew cockpit armor, heavy armament, and self-sealing fuel tanks, which suggests that it may have been subject to the same critical limitations that doomed the Mitsubishi A6M Zero. By 1941 both the British and the Germans had learned that armor, armament, and fire suppression were non-negotiable additions to fighter planes which could only be carried through dramatically increased engine performance--performance which could NOT be duplicated by a couple of hot V8s.
This is the laziest article ever. the Bugatti 100P was a purpose built RACING aircraft, not a fighter.
The wops were on the krauts' side.
For a while, at least.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
There is a thing called a motorjet or thermojet which was invented in the early 20th Century and was a fore-runner of the gas turbine.
In the days before most people realised that a self-sustaining gas turbine was possible, someone came up with the idea of using a reciprocating piston engine with a ducted fan or propeller to compress air and to inject fuel and burn in in the compressed air stream (like an afterburner on a modern jet engine).
Stick Men
RTFA. It was a French plane. Buggati had moved to France, and the plane's development was paid for by the French.
Will
RTFA. Bugatti hid the plane before the Germans invaded. If they had found it, and made use of the technology Bugatti had developed, the Germans would probably have succeeded in their attacks on London.
Will
Props... ha ha ha... I see what you did there
Coulda is slang; -'ve is far from
could've
've
You sir, are obviously not an American!!
Delta-Mike November Bravo Tango
If they had found it, and made use of the technology Bugatti had developed, the Germans would probably have succeeded in their attacks on London.
German raids failed for a number of reasons. The problem is, even had they succeeded in bombing London more, it still wouldn't have changed the course of war. As far as I remember, Nazis were extremely lousy at picking military and industrial targets - e.g., they never concentrated on a single branch of British industry, but bombed them rather randomly, thus effectively guaranteeing that the British war effort would never be completely deprived of any single kind of resource (beyond the need of import stuff from the US, of course).
Ezekiel 23:20
But even with that, they were reportedly pretty close to breaking the RAF, when they decided to change tactics and let them rebuild near the end of 1940.
So it would have had about 900 hp, required two enormous drive shafts (never good for your P/W), used fixed pitch props, was built of wood so you're compound curves suck, and this was supposed to reach 500 mph?
Total BS.
Props, pistons and shafts don't like each other, every aircraft that tried it either failed to mature or was a mediocre performer. P-39. BD-5. etc. The singular exception is the Pfiel, which took the most of war to get working.
Spitfires would have eaten this thing's breakfast.
If it was not built at the time, it could not have been built at the time. Simple.
Yes. I should have used "ability to train", or "ability to continue to train", instead of "option of training".
I did know they did flight training in Canada, and didn't mean to imply otherwise.
. One of the great things about tubes is, when they go, you just plug in a new one. Try doing that with a transistor.
Ask any gray-haired geek who played with early transistors and they will recall transistor sockets. I used one on my first transistor - a CK722 marvel for only $1. However sockets were rapidly abandoned because of transistor reliability. (I also recall miniature vacuum tubes with soldered-in wire leads used in RC aircraft.) This was all c. 1960.
he headline is awkward:
WWII Bugatti 100P Plane Rebuilt: Jet Fighter that Could Have Won Battle of Britain for the Nazis
but I can see where it comes from.
FTA:" ...so when the Second World War began, Bugatti, who had gained French citizenship between the two wars, decided to hide the craft in pieces in crates in a barn in the French countryside to prevent it from being discovered by the Nazis.
The French government knew about the plane, and it is believed that one of Hitler's ministers, Albert Speer, also knew of the plane's existence.
If the Germans had been able to get hold of the Bugatti, it is believed that the plane could have outperformed the British Supermarine Spitfire planes during the Battle of Britain."
if the Nazis got a hold of it, they could have defeated Britain in the air
the technology to build jet engines was available in the 1940s? I thought they were invented in the 1960s.. or maybe I am thinking of passenger airplanes. I learned something new.
The original Bugatti aircraft is hanging on display at the EAA museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. I had the opportunity to see it in the late 90's and it was unforgettable and breathtaking. The curves toward the x-shaped tail of the plane make this the sexiest plane ever - a design inconceivably far ahead of the world of the late 1930's. I thought they should make a fiberglass kit back then. I'm glad to see that with the help of Kickstarter it's actually happening - sort of. From the look of it I'm not so sure this kit does the original much justice. A lot of the mind-blowing curves look like they are gone - maybe I'm just looking at a bad picture. The original had a tiny cockpit where the pilot rested his elbows on driveshafts of big Bugatti engines covered by the tiniest, lightest covers possible. The new one has a couple of hayabusa engines putting out about 200-horse each- sounds light about 500-horses in total. I'm surprised a couple of big turbos didn't come into play - seems like a shame to try to get only 200mph our of a 500mph shape. Then again, they can always do something really wild with it later on.
The article states:
"The recreation of the plane is aerodynamically and dimensionally identical to the original plane, with similar materials and elements of the original patents meant for the Bugatti 100P, as well as a gearbox specially designed by Lawson."
So I hope I'm completely wrong on the design level. I'm quite sure that most people who've seen the original in person fell in love with it. At the end of the day I'm more delighted to read about this project than just about any other plane imaginable.
And that theoretical speed is with minimal fuel, no weapons, no armor, no maneuverability, no military radios. In short,
Right.
Then there's that crap about being a jet fighter.
two eight-cylinder 4.9 litre race car engines producing 450 horsepower each
which is only half the horsepower available in real fighter airplanes 5 years later which could only manage 450 mph.
This is one of the more idiotic articles to come down the pike in quite a while.
Infuriate left and right
The Germans invaded France in May then attempted Britain in July of 1940. Even by WW2 rapid development standards, 2 months is awfully quick to turn an unflyable race prototype into a fully fledged battle-ready fighter aircraft. This is zero chance this would have made a difference to the Battle of Britain even if found.
The fire control computer on the USS North Carolina is a true work of art.
The Navy thought about replacing it with a digital system but decided the extra effort just wasn't worth it as the WW2 system was so darn good.
"would have broken the air speed record" BUT "was never flown"
Bull feathers. Make one and fly it, only then will you know what it can actually do. Not "Woulda".
A combat plane needs to be able to take a punch as well as to strike out at the enemy. Just like a boxer. Some boxers have "bad" skin and cut easily and take long to heal. That means they can't fight often at all. Some boxers somehow need a huge support staff. Some aircraft are like that as well. They can be high maintenance and require frequent, expensive attention. Some boxers have weak bones in their hands and wrists. They can fight but they can't punch hard enough. And some types of boxers are harder to get in the first place. Bantam weights and heavy weights are rare compared to more mid-range body types. If one views a war plane as one views a boxer things become obvious rather quickly. I wonder how quickly either England or the US could have tooled up to produce large numbers of Bugatti war planes.
Succeeded in attacking London? In a thing built by Italians? Now there is a man who has never owned an Alfa Romeo!
This plane was purely designed to break speed records. No intention to use it as a fighter, and impossible to be converted to one as is.
The only relationship with WWII is the time, and that Bugatti hid it from the Nazis just in case some of its technologies (I suspect his fears were mostly about the automatic hydraulic flap system) had some war potential.
If the two engines rev at different speeds, the whole plane will start to roll, faster and faster.
Consider this scenario:
Engine 1 stalls.
Engine 2 has its throttle stuck at wide open (Aircraft engines do this e.g. when linkage breaks: full throttle is safer than no throttle.)
Then the pilot will die a horrible death EVEN BEFORE HITTING THE GOUND.
You can do this with electric engines, not with IC engines.
It's a death trap, and it will not fly.
Bram Stolk http://stolk.org/tlctc/
"Jet fighter", well, no, it's a propellor fighter.
"Computer-directed flight controls" - no computer existed in 1939, except for the people whose job title was "computer" (and who probably used adding machines).
Then there's the question of how it would perform in heavy cloud cover, or rain.
Oh, yeah, and finally, the journalist's enTHUsiasm makes it seems as though they would have wanted the Nazis to win WWII, which I take some exception with.
mark
It takes a hell of a lot more than a plane to win a war like the Battle of Britain.
Also consider if a German pilot was shot down, bailed over the UK he became a POW, the same for an allied pilot, he could be back in the air again a few hours later.
Except the Germans' problem throughout the war was not technology (they had models more advanced than British planes at different points) but production. The British were able to consistently out-produce them in fighters and trained pilots. There were close runs for the British (nearly a shortage of fighter pilots during the heaviest part of the Battle of Britain) but the German losses in men and materiel in proportion to their production were consistently higher throughout the war, and the difference only kept increasing in Britain's favour.
er I think you mean French, Paris is traditionally considered part of France
B-36 Peacemaker
the B-36D specifically
Yes, in the right Universe this plane would have turned the Battle of Britain in favour of the French. Napoleon, Vercingetorix and Joan of Arc would have been standing in Blenheim Palace on top of Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria and Disraeli's dismembered body parts, as they lay strewn amongst the wreckage of their Hurricane, Spitfire and Vauxhall Chevette ornithopter. The giant spice mammoths of the Russian tundra would have been no more after Trotsky's successful assassination of Joseph Stalin left Russia rich and defenceless, and the Japanese giant Iguana monster would be running rampant across Northern America smashing San Francisco to fine dust and weeing on the Washington monument turning the Potomac a bright radiated yellow colour. Cats sleeping with dogs, children refusing to obey their parents and every man wanting to write a book about it.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)