YF-17

[KJ_Lesnick]

PR19_Kit[/quote]

I can't find a SINGLE twin engined USAAC fighter prior to the P-38.............

XFM-1/YFM-1 Airacuda.  I think there was one very very early bomber (early 1920's) that was to serve as an escort-fighter role (it was a twin-engined plane).


Kerick

One rationale behind a twin engined design being requested was that the idea of a single engined plane gave (and still gives) some people the heebie jeebies. Twin engined, in some circles, means more reliability.

I understand that -- still I can't really pin down which reason the LWF program came in single-engined & twin-engined designs.

1: A general didn't like the idea of all the lightweight fighters having one engine due to concerns about reliability

2: The LWF program being made to appear as a technology demonstrator program lead to a desire to have a single and twin engine contender to evaluate the benefits of both

3: Some combination of all three

[PR19_Kit]

XFM-1/YFM-1 Airacuda.  I think there was one very very early bomber (early 1920's) that was to serve as an escort-fighter role (it was a twin-engined plane).

But the XFM-1 didn't make it into production!

[Hobbes]

Two engines means twice as much stuff to go wrong! (IMHO)

That's actually true.

When I used to work out reliability figures the MTBF (Mean Time Between Falures) was divided by the number of the components I was considering in the study. So if an engine had an MTBF of 400 hours, two of them had an MTBF of only 200 hrs, and thus the pair of them were more likely to go wrong in theory.

My grandfather used to work for the Dutch pilot training school, one of his tasks was to recover crashed aircraft. He had some chilling stories of pilots training on a twin-engined aircraft (Beechcraft?), who after having an engine problem would shut down and feather the WORKING engine.