Unhealthy Ideas

[Sisko]

Here is some ideas that I really like.

Some future kit bashs I could enjoy doing.

interresting concept

[Kurlan Naiskos]

Yeah, I saw that too.
I'm fond of the P-40Q, it's a pity she didn't go into production and combat.
might this qualify for Luftwaffe 1946 ?

[jcf]

Yeah, I saw that too.
I'm fond of the P-40Q, it's a pity she didn't go into production and combat.
might this qualify for Luftwaffe 1946 ?

USAF '45 is more like it...
if Curtiss had pulled their heads out and had the aircraft available in early '44, but by the time they got it figured out it was too little, too late.
The Q was like just about everything else they did in the '40s...overbudget and behind schedule, at least it wasn't overweight like most of their other projects.

Curtiss seemed to be without a coherent plan or direction for the last decade, or more, of their existence.

Cheers, Jon

[Madoc]

Jon,

I have to wonder about that.  From what I've read, Curtiss was a victim of its own success.  Just as the war started the USAAC turned to Curtiss and handed an absolutely huge (for a peacetime US that is) order for as many P-40's as Curtiss could build.  Curtiss was then the only aircraft company building fighter planes in any large quantity in the US.  The Air Corps did this even though it knew the P-40 was past its prime even before the order was placed.  They reasoned it was better to have a goodly number of somewhat inadequate planes in hand than have a meaningless number of better ones.

Thus Curtiss got stuck producing an outmoded aircraft design that absorbed so much of the company's resources it had too little left over to start something new.  What new projects it was able to start suffered greatly from the quickly changing needs of the Air Corps and Navy as the war progressed.  Thus Curtiss produced a series of prototype aircraft which missed out again and again as the military responded to how the war was changing by canceling those contracts for planes it no longer needed.  That wasn't the fault of the Curtiss Company but it had the effect of killing off any new sources of long term revenue.

So, come war's end, Curtiss had nothing, really, to keep the company rolling with.  The company had also suffered a great amount of "brain drain" through the war as other aviation companies pouched its engineering talent with job offers that had more money _and_ more interesting projects that Curtiss simply couldn't match.  Couple that with a newly seated "Wall Street types" board of directors who took over the company from the aviation engineers and the company found itself without any long term projects to keep the money coming in and no long term aviation vision either.  In short order, Curtiss got chopped up and sold off after the war.

The P-40Q is a classic beauty.  The ultimate refinement and stretching out of the P-36 airframe.  Had Curtiss been directed / allowed to come up with that bird in 1941 then things might have been different.  Instead, the Air Corps told the Curtiss Company to concentrate on cranking out as many P-40C's, D's, E's and F's as it could.

Ironically, one of the reasons the North American bird was able to go from paper to bent metal to flight so quickly was because it capitalized on all the aerodynamic research done before it.  In particular, that research done by the _Curtiss_ Company on the aerodynamics of a belly mounted radiator installation.  Curtiss had expended a lot of time and effort refining that installation and you can see it on the Q.  For North American, this government paid for aerodynamic data was a gold mine that they poured over and quickly incorporated into their own design.

So, in a way, you could say that the P-51 Mustang took to the air with a P-40Q radiator and thus made the Q beside the point and did so several years before it ever came to be!

Madoc

[jcf]

Jon,

I have to wonder about that.  From what I've read, Curtiss was a victim of its own success.  Just as the war started the USAAC turned to Curtiss and handed an absolutely huge (for a peacetime US that is) order for as many P-40's as Curtiss could build.  Curtiss was then the only aircraft company building fighter planes in any large quantity in the US.  The Air Corps did this even though it knew the P-40 was past its prime even before the order was placed.  They reasoned it was better to have a goodly number of somewhat inadequate planes in hand than have a meaningless number of better ones.

Thus Curtiss got stuck producing an outmoded aircraft design that absorbed so much of the company's resources it had too little left over to start something new.  What new projects it was able to start suffered greatly from the quickly changing needs of the Air Corps and Navy as the war progressed.  Thus Curtiss produced a series of prototype aircraft which missed out again and again as the military responded to how the war was changing by canceling those contracts for planes it no longer needed.  That wasn't the fault of the Curtiss Company but it had the effect of killing off any new sources of long term revenue.

So, come war's end, Curtiss had nothing, really, to keep the company rolling with.  The company had also suffered a great amount of "brain drain" through the war as other aviation companies pouched its engineering talent with job offers that had more money _and_ more interesting projects that Curtiss simply couldn't match.  Couple that with a newly seated "Wall Street types" board of directors who took over the company from the aviation engineers and the company found itself without any long term projects to keep the money coming in and no long term aviation vision either.  In short order, Curtiss got chopped up and sold off after the war.

The P-40Q is a classic beauty.  The ultimate refinement and stretching out of the P-36 airframe.  Had Curtiss been directed / allowed to come up with that bird in 1941 then things might have been different.  Instead, the Air Corps told the Curtiss Company to concentrate on cranking out as many P-40C's, D's, E's and F's as it could.

Ironically, one of the reasons the North American bird was able to go from paper to bent metal to flight so quickly was because it capitalized on all the aerodynamic research done before it.  In particular, that research done by the _Curtiss_ Company on the aerodynamics of a belly mounted radiator installation.  Curtiss had expended a lot of time and effort refining that installation and you can see it on the Q.  For North American, this government paid for aerodynamic data was a gold mine that they poured over and quickly incorporated into their own design.

So, in a way, you could say that the P-51 Mustang took to the air with a P-40Q radiator and thus made the Q beside the point and did so several years before it ever came to be!

Madoc

Hi Madoc,
several things I've read show that the problems began before the war with a number of questionable business decisions taken by the then managers and engineering staff.
The CW-20T is probably the most questionable and if the war had not come along with its resultant need for transport aircraft there is a very good possibility that Curtiss would have folded by 1942- 43.

A belly radiator was tried on the P-40 prototype but abandoned and anyhow, aside from sticking down from the bottom of the plane, there is little relationship between that design and the design used by NAA on the Mustang. The Q radiator setup is a completely different animal using wing-mounted intakes.

As to a "brain drain", with such a lack of engineering talent why then did Curtiss waste so many people's time with multiple, and in some cases...parallel, projects? The time wasted on the never-ending thing that was the P-40 replacement and eventually became the pig that was YP-60E is the most egregious example...its not the fault of the Air Force that Curtiss didn't push the Q concept more. Anyhow even at the Q's best, the production P-51s and P-47s were still better.

Cheers, Jon