Slashdot Mirror
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."
"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
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?
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.
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.
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_Do_335 could potentially beat the shit out of RAF .. and so could ME 262 . Just consider the allies lucky .. they were not built in large numbers ...
History, facts and performance from the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) which has the original on display.
http://www.airventuremuseum.or...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_Do_335 could potentially beat the shit out of RAF .. and so could ME 262 . Just consider the allies lucky .. they were not built in large numbers ...
They also lacked range. By the time they flew to London, they only had enough fuel to stay for a matter of minutes before returning to base. The RAF Spitfires were flying from local airfields, so could spend much more time in the fight. The really decisive fighter of WWII was the American P51 Mustang, not because it was the fastest, or most maneuverable, but because it could carry large external fuel tanks, greatly extending its range. It could accompany bombers from England to Berlin, or from the Marianas to Tokyo. It is not the best fighter than wins, but the best fighter that actually shows up for the fight.
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.
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.
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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And the P-51 also happened to have plenty of fight in it, aside from the range. Superb aircraft.
Perscriptio in manibus tabellariorum est.
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.
One other fact of serious consideration is this, how many could the Germans have built if they went all in on building them? One of the decisive factors in WWII was the greater production capability of the U.S. over Germany. By the end of the war, the U.S. was building more tanks each month than Germany had over the course of the entire war.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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.
The P-51 also shot down quite a few ME 262's because the tactics and maneuverability limitations made the ME 262's predictable. They brought overwhelming speed to the fight but little else. The P-51's even downed a few Russian Migs at the beginning of the Korean war before the US fielded jet fighters in any numbers.
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
And it also helped that the Luftwaffe was just about out of skilled pilots, chronically short of fuel, lacking in materials for the jet engines, etc. A case of "plenty good enough" combined with every other advantage except nose to nose superiority.
Note however that GP's post was wrong in ignoring the fact that the ME-262 also brought serious stooping power to the fight with FOUR 30mm cannon, along with rockets. You really, really did not want to be in front of one of these.
Perscriptio in manibus tabellariorum est.
Superb aircraft.
Oh, indeed. And the story of its origin is wonderful. In 1940 the British wanted North American Aviation to produce Curtiss P-40 Warhawks under license, but NAA thought they could make a better aircraft faster. And the first P-51 rolled out 102 days after the contract was signed, and first flew 47 days after that. It took a few years of upgrades and revsions to turn it into the best piston-engined fighter of the war, but compare that initial design and development cycle to the years and even decades it takes to get anything built these days.
Interesting tech note: the P-51's distinctive radiator/oil cooler actually added speed to the plane: cool air came in the front, and the hot air exiting the back added some jet-like thrust.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
In 1940? How, by dropping blueprints of it and making the RAF laugh themselves to death?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
And yet, they succeeded to launch over 3,000 strategically ineffective V-2s, which were complex to build, expensive, and used materials and chemical production capacity that could have been put to "better" use. Freeman Dyson famously said "the V-2 program was almost as good as if Hitler had adopted a policy of unilateral disarmament", and according to Albert Speer, if Germany would have steered the V-2 research more towards development of their radar-guided SAMs, and used the resources made available by doing so (as well as by scrapping the V-1s) to build more Me 262s, it might have been able to prevent the allies from gaining air superiority over its territory and bombing its military production capacity into pieces. This in turn would have made it much harder for the allies to waltz through Germany. Even then, there's no way the Germans alone could have won against most of the rest of the world, but they might have been able to make the battle for Germany expensive enough to negotiate more favorable conditions for surrender, or perhaps even an armistice. (Assuming they also succeeded to keep airplane-dropped nukes out through military or diplomatic means.)
Its seems like the world has to thank Hitler's maniacal obsession with offensive strategy, tactics and weaponry for the relative quick ending of fighting in Europe.
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
Its seems like the world has to thank Hitler's maniacal obsession with offensive strategy, tactics and weaponry for the relative quick ending of fighting in Europe.
One of the oddest things we see when we get into these conversations is that way too many people seem to think "If Hitler had done this, the Nazi's would have won the war."
Its as if the Allies were somehow not capable of any innovation, and would just stood still for the superior German technology to tear them apart. Not too many seem to acknowledge that the Allies were developing jet fighters also.
Britain had the Gloster Meteor and de Havilland Vampire. The US had the Lockheed P-80, (eventually the F-80) which had come close to being deployed in the war, some were in Europe right before VE day.
Point is, resources won the war. If the war had continued, the Allies would have been able to counter the ME262 in short order - the first P-80's were designed and built in 143 days. War makes for fast evolution of fighting machines, and the Germans were not the only smart people.
Any air superiority the Nazis would have gained using an air force of jets would have been quickly lost as the Allies could have swamped the ME262's, with jet fighters of their own. A longer war perhaps, but similar results.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Also, the CAD was done minus the C and the A.
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.
Hitler lost the day he started the war, for the simple reason that none (or very few) of the territories he invaded actually accepted German rule. All the rest of Europe considered themselves "occupied".
Conquering terrain with your military is easy to do. Conquering the people living there, making them happy and accept your rule as the new, legitimate government, that's the real challenge. It normally won't happen when the people you try to conquer were happy with their previous government. It only happens when they were happy to have their original government overthrown or when they did not have a government, and are happy with the new government. Then and only then did you "win" a war.