What to do with a Sterling and a Wimpy

[jcf]

Miles Libelula Bomber
Cheers, Jon

[Runway ? ...]

Verry Interesting.
Shame about that low front wing. Having that spar there will badly reduce the internal bombload.

Change to high front low rear maybe but then you'd run out of ground clearance.

How about a gunship .  A belly full of cannons (BIG cannons). Add 2 or 4 more 303s to the nose turret. Might be interesting to have it beating up occupied French airfields in conjunction with some smaller escorts.

Mmm food for thought .

Cheers

[Runway ? ...]

I've Been thinking.

If you were to make its undercarriage a very long tricycle arrangement with nose and rear wing gear then you could go for a high front, low rear, wing layout.
This could let you give it one huge bomb bay giving it the potential to compete with the Lancaster for supplies of Tallboy and Grandslam.

Also would the B.II, as seems to be standard UK bomber naming convention of the time, be the Merlin engine version?

Ok so there'd be no engines allocated for the merlin version and nothing big for it to drop until 1944 but a big yellow "P" on the side would excuse most of that.

Groovy  

[jcf]

Verry Interesting.
Shame about that low front wing. Having that spar there will badly reduce the internal bombload.

Ahh, but then you are assuming that the spar would need to pass directly through on the same plane as the centreline of the wing, when viewed from the front. The wing spars could simply bolt to large U-shaped frames.

Cheers, Jon

[Runway ? ...]

Good call. An arched forging or somesuch to allow a bit more height.

Got to attack the stash later so might be an excuse to mock one up

Have you got any more material on it?

chris

[kitnut617]

On the front cover of British Secret Projects-Fighters & Bombers 1935-1950 is a rendering of a huge Vickers C Type bomber.  The configuration is very similar to this but all six engines are on the rear wing and had a large cunard wing which supported 40% of the load.  It would have been as big as a B-36.

http://groups.msn.com/TheWhatifandoddballm...to&PhotoID=2203

The point to all this is that the bomb bay is under the rear wing and is very deep and long.  The cunard is set low so the spar would run under the flooring of the forward cockpit area.  The rear defensive armament were to be set in the rear of the middle engine nacelle.  I think this would be where the bomb bay would be on this aircraft.  I would imagine the ventral turret would be further forward instead of where shown in the picture Jon has.

Robert

Edit:  I've just noticed too, that the Vickers Bomber is marked in 617 Sqn.  -- KC --

[Runway ? ...]

Cheers Kitnut  That C-Type is a bit of a beast   and it illustrates your points nicely.

To be honest I just took that ventral turret as artistic licence as that's where you'd want to put a bomb bay.

Without doing the maths, assuming about 40/60 from the wings and waving about a couple of 1:72 kits Jon's discovery looks almost sane.
It looks like there is about 30 feet between the back of the front wing and the centre of the rear one so you could comfortably fit a full sized Lanc bomb bay anywhere back there.

There is now plenty of room for a powered ventral turret further forward.

Compared to a Stirling there's loads of wing area now, a proper bomb bay, it still fits in a standard sized hanger and if there isn't enough power you can always scrounge up some Merlins.

The main problems seem to be any interaction between the front engines and the rear inners and how to hold it up when you stop.

I'm filing this one under the workbench with the "start it in a drunken haze" collection  

[Archibald]

Impressive, fascinating and very interesting concepts!  Glad to know more about the Vickers project, that's really an incredible beast!!!  

[kitnut617]

I had an email chat with Tony Buttler about this Type C bomber and found some interesting things about it.
1.  It was originally concepted with a single Lanc/Halifax main wheel under each nacelle plus a large single nose wheel. A later version had twin wheels (aka B-29 type) under the four inner nacelles with a twin wheel for the nose leg.  Even other versions had four wheel bogies for the nose and the four inner engines.
2. Later versions were projected to have a jet turbine in the rear of each nacelle in addition to the piston engines.
3. The piston engine were to have been Centaurus's with two, four blade contra-props on each engine.
4. Scaling some drawings sent to me by Tony would have the fuselage about the same section as a B-52, and just as long.  The bomb bay was to be able to carry four Grand Slams or Special Bombs (nuclear) internally, like the B-36 could.

Robert

[Archibald]

Wow! I'm really impressed by this project...and ideas are coming!
Ok, Short had this project.
But they also had their huge 6-engine jet bomber (ancestor of the sperrin)
Armstrong Withworth had proposed a huge flying-wing circa december 1942... Vickers also had a huge jet-bomber (with internal engines).

Just imagine the RAF having a pre- V Bomber program circa 1942-1947... (of course you can add to the list Simon R impressive Avro Vengeance )

That Short bomber has really a HUGE whatif potential... just imagine later variants with Proteus or Tyne turboprops...      

[jcf]

Ok, Short had this project.

To which Short Bros. project are you referring?

[Archibald]

Shame on me!!! I wnated to mention the Vickers project (on cover of the book British secret projects)