Never Retired

[Joe C-P]

The USN had many leftover ships post WW2. Let's say they decided not to use and convert so many of them, instead keeping many mothballed and pulling them out a few at a time to replace those that wear out or are sold off to other countries. Then we end up with Essex CVs, Baltimore CAs, Cleveland CLs, and Fletcher, Sumner, and Gearing DDs with new and newer weapons and equipment.

[Weaver]

Lets say that after WWII Czechoslovakia, instead of joining the Warsaw Pact, becomes an "enforced neutral" like Austria. With arms exports from both sides strictly forbidden, they have to make do with what the Germans left them whilst building their industry up, which helpfully includes an Me-262 production line. In real life they flew new production 262s ("Avia S-92s") for a while after the war: in this version, they keep developing them much further and for much longer. The immediate priority would be thinner, more swept wings and better engines, which is a particularly intriguing thought for anybody who happens to have a glut of crappy Airfix 262s and a 1/100th Vautour hanging about.......

[Ian the Kiwi Herder]

How did a thread like this go for three pages with no mention of the C-130 Hercules?!

Or the C-47/DC3, and let's not forget the airliners..... BAC 1-11 with fuselage stretch and pusher props (the old Airfix kit is still around), six engined 707's as Boeings last 'narrow-body'. Turbo-prop Heron (Airfix's little S3 kit with 'Pucara' engines ?).

A-7's as back-up for the USMC F/A-18 fleet, or better still, snapped-up on retirement by any number of Sth American or Nth African countries to supplement or replace their aging A-37's.

Then there was that mountain of Phantom FGR2 profiles that our (much missed) friend Gekko 1 produced.....

Lots and lots to choose, eh ?

Ian

[PR19_Kit]

Or the C-47/DC3, and let's not forget the airliners..... BAC 1-11 with fuselage stretch and pusher props (the old Airfix kit is still around), six engined 707's as Boeings last 'narrow-body'. Turbo-prop Heron (Airfix's little S3 kit with 'Pucara' engines ?).

Ian,

Oooh, don't tempt me, I have enough on my plate already. That pusher propped BAC 1-11 makes me think of a THREE pusher propped Trident III, or go totally bananas and make a four pushered VC10?

A six engined 707 sounds awesome too, who needs 747s anyway?

[Spey_Phantom]

you know what elso would look good modern, the T-6 Texan, and i mean the North American texan, not the US's Pilatus xerox copy.
maybe modified with a turbopop engine to replace its radial 

[Mossie]

Hmm, Airliners.  Was there ever such a beast as a Turbo-Connie?  You can probably add the Beech Model 18 & Ju-52 to the longevity list.  A twin Ju-52 with more powerful engines sounds like a goer.  I guess the Comet is still flying as the Nimrod, but what about civil variants?

[Weaver]

Hmm, Airliners.  Was there ever such a beast as a Turbo-Connie?  You can probably add the Beech Model 18 & Ju-52 to the longevity list.  A twin Ju-52 with more powerful engines sounds like a goer.  I guess the Comet is still flying as the Nimrod, but what about civil variants?

The Nimrod MRA.4 has BR.715 engines in MUCH thicker nacelles in a totally new wing. These are basically BR.710 business jet engines with re-arranged accessories and maritime mods, so you could imagine a never-retired airliner version with a similar mod. Would be a bit of a pig to model though.....

[JayBee]

Hmm, Airliners.  Was there ever such a beast as a Turbo-Connie?[/i]  You can probably add the Beech Model 18 & Ju-52 to the longevity list.  A twin Ju-52 with more powerful engines sounds like a goer.  I guess the Comet is still flying as the Nimrod, but what about civil variants?

Yes two were built. Originally ordered as R7V-1s but modified during construction as R7V-2s. They were powered by four P&W T34-P-6 turbo-props and were opewrated by the Service Test Squadron MATS (USAF) as YC-121F-LOs at Kelly AFB, Texas.

[Mossie]

The Nimrod MRA.4 has BR.715 engines in MUCH thicker nacelles in a totally new wing. These are basically BR.710 business jet engines with re-arranged accessories and maritime mods, so you could imagine a never-retired airliner version with a similar mod. Would be a bit of a pig to model though.....

I wonder if you'd need such powerful & bulky engines for an airliner, maybe just a slight change to the bulges?  Either that, or swap them for Caravelle style engines?  That might make people look twice!

Yes two were built. Originally ordered as R7V-1s but modified during construction as R7V-2s. They were powered by four P&W T34-P-6 turbo-props and were opewrated by the Service Test Squadron MATS (USAF) as YC-121F-LOs at Kelly AFB, Texas.

Great.  Just enough to give us an idea of what it might be like in wider service!

[B777LR]

BAC 1-11 with fuselage stretch and pusher props

six engined 707's as Boeings last 'narrow-body'. 

The BAC 1-11 modernisation was proposed by RomBAC in the 1990s. Involved RR Tays, glass cockpit and a number of improvements. BAe never allowed it to go ahead, because it would have outcompeted the RJ-85/-100 series.

As for 707s, i think there are better ways than to fit extra engines. I was thinking 4 CFM-56s from the Revell 737-800, slight stretch and winglets from the 737 And blanked over eyebrow windows.

And the VC-10, stretched, reengined with 2 RB-211s, longer wingspan, etc.

[PR19_Kit]

The BAC 1-11 modernisation was proposed by RomBAC in the 1990s. Involved RR Tays, glass cockpit and a number of improvements. BAe never allowed it to go ahead, because it would have outcompeted the RJ-85/-100 series.

But if RomBAC were involved they'd have never finished the prototype, let alone get it into production. A more shambolic operation I have yet to see. (Awful memories of trying to work there in the early '80s  )

[Weaver]

The Nimrod MRA.4 has BR.715 engines in MUCH thicker nacelles in a totally new wing. These are basically BR.710 business jet engines with re-arranged accessories and maritime mods, so you could imagine a never-retired airliner version with a similar mod. Would be a bit of a pig to model though.....

I wonder if you'd need such powerful & bulky engines for an airliner, maybe just a slight change to the bulges?  Either that, or swap them for Caravelle style engines?  That might make people look twice!

It's not so much the power as the bypass ratio. Comets were designed for Avons, with round holes in the front and rear wing spars. When they went to Speys for the Nimrod, they had to ovalise those holes: the change of intake section over a short distance is quite dramatic, to the point where you have to think them lucky it didn't give problems. Pushing the bypass ratio, and hence engine/intake/exhaust diameter, any further was quite impossible with this arrangement, hence the new wing. The latter has structurally separate "spectacle frames" in the wing spar between the centre box and the inner wing, giving wide, circular intake/exhaust ducts again.

[PR19_Kit]

......Comets were designed for Avons, with round holes in the front and rear wing spars. When they went to Speys for the Nimrod, they had to ovalise those holes: the change of intake section over a short distance is quite dramatic, to the point where you have to think them lucky it didn't give problems......

Presumably reversing what they'd already done once when converting from the centrifugal flow Ghosts of the Comet 1 to the axial flow Avons of the Comet 3 and onwards?

If I was a de Havilland/Hawker-Siddley/BAe intake engineer I'd have been tearing my hair out by the time the Nimrod 4 came along. 

[Daryl J.]

Were Junkers corrugated aircraft quite durable?    Excluding the Ju-52 of course.   

TIA,
Daryl J.

[B777LR]

Were Junkers corrugated aircraft quite durable?    Excluding the Ju-52 of course.   

TIA,
Daryl J.

I have no idea. Looking through the wikipedia page on Junkers, they did'nt even produce anything that would be of great succes after WWII. At most we might see some aerobatics planes, cropdusters based on the Ju-87 and turboprop Ju-52s