Update for "The end of Forked Ghosts"

[Brian da Basher]

I'm not sure how I managed to be on the same wavelength with you Tophe, but I am very honored I was! Those are some interesting ideas and definately very worthy of being modelled! That cargo plane reminds me of a Fairchild C-82. If I could find a couple kits of this one cheap I think I could even pull it off!

Brian da Basher

[Tophe]

A friend sent me a wonderful new German source*, illustrating the Junkers EF.135.0 as having 1 central jet + 1 piston nose engine, like a related EF 130.0, more classical, Fireball like, not twin-boom. This is completely different from my previous sources (German jet genesis, Paper Planes of the 3rd Reich) presenting the EF.130 as a flying wing with 4 lateral jets. From them, and to meet the EF.135 description as EF.130 + piston, I had drawn a probably wrong EF.135 in 1998, with those 4 lateral jets and 2 booms with tractor propellers, P-38 way... Sources are not sure enough to prove I was completely wrong. Maybe there has been completely different designs with the same code, like 130.0 then 130.1, 135.0 then 135.1.

*: Die Luftwaffe : projekte der Deutsche Luftwaffe. Band I: Arado-Junkers
by : Ingolf Mayer. No publisher (maybe published by the author)

[elmayerle]

So when do we see the ultimate in twin-tailed dangerousness - a twin-Gee Bee?

[Tophe]

A friend sent me from the Russian book "Seaplanes and WIG 1910-1999" this interesting derivative of the famous Nikitin PSN-2 (developped in 1938-1940, see the models at http://www.ussr-airspace.com/catalog/produ...roducts_id=1814 ) and this unknown shape was explained as "Dvukhbalochniy variant" meaning "Twin-boom variant" (confirmed from a Web-friend in Lithuania).
So, while the standard built PSN-2 was falling outside my scope (genuine twin-boomers 1939-45), this unbuilt derivative falls perfectly inside. One more! ^_^

[Tophe]

Still in a German new book was presented the Focke-Wulf Entwurf 4 leading to the Flitzer family, this one was coded Flitzer Projekt IV in the sources I had before. But a variant was brand new : "Entwurf 4 alternative" with a much narrower fuselage and most of all a low tailplane – below the jet exhaust instead of above.
I present now the Flitzer family with the 3 main different designs – apart of the turboprop one in almost another family.

[Tophe]

The picture legend below reads (thanks to Babel Fish translator): "The draft of the infantry airplane Fi 168 did not come over this mockup outside". So this multiple-beam Fieseler 168 is just a scale 1 model, with maybe extra sluts to make it solid enough while built in cardboard... I imagine the Real one may have used a strong pylon to hold the nacelle and rear post without a single transverse beam, in a pure twin-boom layout – this is unlikely anyway, as such planes for rough runways near the frontline used to be highly consolidated. But if a high speed version was ever designed, unofficially, for an observation role like the Fw 189, maybe Fi 168B... I would be happy to draw it if someone finds a 3-view drawing of the Fi 168.

(thanks to http://www.luftarchiv.de/index.htm?http://...seler/fi168.htm )

[Tophe]

On the page http://v3.espacenet.com/origdoc?DB=EPODOC&...0&QPN=US2368288 is the Patent 2,368,288 filed in 1942 for a twin-boom cargo: "Means for transporting men and/or material" by Kibbey W. Couse (Couse Laboratories, Newark).
The booms include a pilot each, and the central part is made by 2 identical trucks back to back, removable (the front one simply going away, the rear one requiring the tail to be raised up). There were 4 radial engines: one in the front of each boom and one at the rear of each truck.

Two other versions were considered: one with a high wing, one with a triplex boom layout and 2 pods for 4 trucks.
The removable pod reminds the XC-120 PackPlane while the 2 half-pods back to back have never been anywhere else, as far as I know. Nice!

[Tophe]

The variable-sweep Lockheed P-38VG Lightning featured in "The end of Forked Ghosts" was a joke, with an obvious  centering problem: when the lift center moves backward, the nose would pitch down...
Swept wing have been considered seriously by the Lockheed design bureau, leading to the composite-sweep W-wing of the L-153-11. The twin-boom layout of this project may have come from work on a high-speed Lighting with swept wing. The simple-swept P-38V (Vightning?) is clearly out of balance, so the best was the P-38W (Wightning?), direct progenitor (hypothetical though, unconfirmed...) of the Lockheed L-153-11.

[Deltafan]

Do you know ?


http://www.flugzeugforum.de/forum/attachme...57&d=1145792454


http://www.flugzeugforum.de/forum/showthre...ead.php?t=32038 (bottom of the page)

[Tophe]

Yes I love this German double-Starfighter, while it is not new for me. I
presented it at
http://www.whatifmodelers.com/forum//index...?showtopic=1300
Thanks.

[Tophe]

I have read today, in the old magazine Le Fana de l'Aviation Nr 125, that 16 copies of G-1B has been transferred in Germany in 1940, with deep interest. Maybe they were seen as very good two-seat fighters, better than Bf 110s, and considered for German production, with standard German engines of that time: Daimler-Benz DB.601.

Nice discovery at http://www.airwarfareforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=5686 : 2 views of a Merlin-engined Fokker G 1... mentioned as a considered version before 1940 war:

So maybe it was considered in 1939 rather than 1938, anyway it could have been built in 1945 after war... Seriously.

[Tophe]

More and even better at http://www.airwarfareforum.com/viewtopic.p...er=asc&start=15
- a Fokker G 1 DB601 far better than mine
- a Fokker D XXI Z answering my words saying I may draw it
- an improved D XXI Z with reduced drag

The genius author's nick name is Kiwi123, using Modo software, that I have considered very seriously getting today...  but maybe this is sad: if I had known this software before, maybe I would never had turned back to modelism...
Well, knowing now the price , and the amount of work per plane , I am still a modeller , till retirement probably in almost 20 years.  

[GTX]

Tophe,

Not sure if you have this one already - A couple of twinned C-5s.  The first is a porposal for a Shuttle Ferry Aircraft, whereas I think the second was simply a heavy freighter:




Regards,

Greg

[Tophe]

Thanks for these posts, while I knew them, found on the Web.
(As Webmasters don't answer the questions I have posted here or there (how to change topics titles/sub-titles?), I am going to create a special topic for such twin-boom discoveries not related to 1939-45.

[Tophe]

Our friend Lark sent me, from AAHS Journal Winter 1995, a 3-view drawing of the Vultee Model 70, a kind of preliminary XP-54 with a nose mounted radiator. The line V.70/78/84 (below) that grew larger and larger, heavier and heavier, leading to an almost "giant" single-engined fighter: P-54. Several different 70s were proposed: Model 70, 70 Alt.1, 70 Alt.2, all with the P&W X-1800 engine but with either 3-bladed counter-rotating propellers or a single 4-bladed propeller. I have presented below the V78 and 84 in their versions with single propeller, not to duplicate completely the ones featured in my E-book Forked Ghosts.