proptop

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I know the answer...
That round was made on June 7th 1987 in Kokomo Indiana by a 5' 9" woman named Dawn...a blonde...wearing jeans and a pink sweatshirt that said "I Love Rock -N- Roll" on it...she had a PBJ sandwich for lunch...and was day-dreaming about Bon Jovi...

I've known the answer all along, but I was just waiting to see if any of you all would get how "esoteric" E-M can be...

wingspar

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Your on the right track Prop but I think Evil was also looking for shoe size.

proptop

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Oh heck....thanks for reminding me...13EEE

wingspar

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Darn, you are good!!!

Dave

wingspar

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How about an easy one.

What am i and what aircraft was i used on?

Ernie P.

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Hard to tell from the drawing, but it looks kind of like a WWI Lewis machine gun. It couldn't be synchronized to fire through the propeller, because of it's open bolt firing cycle; but it was mounted above the propeller arc on the Nieuports and SE-5's; as well as any position that didn't require synchronization; e.g., the FE2d. Thanks; Ernie P.


The Lewis Gun has the distinction of being the first machine-gun fired from an airplane; on 7 June 1912 Captain Charles Chandler of the US Army fired a prototype Lewis Gun from the foot-bar of a Wright Model B Flyer.

The Lewis Gun was extensively used on British and French aircraft during World War I, either as an observer's or gunner's weapon or as an additional weapon to the more common Vickers. The Lewis' popularity as an aircraft machine-gun was partly due to its low weight, the fact that it was air-cooled and that it used self-contained 97-round drum magazines. Because of this, the Lewis was first fitted on two early production examples of the Bristol Scout C aircraft by Lanoe Hawker in the summer of 1915, mounted on the port side and firing forwards and outwards at a 30º angle to avoid the propeller arc.

The open bolt firing cycle of the Lewis prevented it from being synchronized to fire directly forward through the propeller arc of a single engined-fighter, only the British Airco D.H.2 and Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.8 pusher fighters could readily use the Lewis as direct forward-firing armament early in World War I. For the use of observers or rear gunners, the Lewis was mounted on a Scarff ring, which allowed the gun to be rotated and elevated whilst supporting the gun's weight. Lewis Guns were often employed in a balloon-busting role, loaded with incendiary ammunition designed to ignite the hydrogen inside the gasbags of German Zeppelins and dirigibles.

Later, on the French Nieuport 11 and Nieuport 17 and the British S.E.5a and some versions of the Sopwith Camel and Bristol F2b fighter aircraft, the Lewis was fitted above the top wing on a Foster mount, which allowed firing directly forward outside the propeller's arc. The gun could be swung back into the cockpit on a rail to allow the ammunition drum to be changed in flight but fighter ace Albert Ball V.C. also discovered that the weapon retained its original trigger and could thus be fired upwards. He used the upward firing Lewis to attack solitary German two-seater aircraft from below and behind where the rear observer could not see him or fire back. It was his use of the weapon in this way, in a Nieuport, that led to its later introduction on the S.E.5/S.E.5a. Ball had acted in a consultant capacity on the development of this aeroplane.

Lewis guns were also carried as defensive guns on British airships. The SS class blimps carried one gun. The larger NS class blimps carried two or three guns in the control car, and some were fitted with an additional gun and a gunner's position at the top of the gasbag.

Ernie P.

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E_M asks some great questions. But some, like this one, require some hints. Or at least, some answers. Any one know where E_M got off to? Thanks; Ernie P.

wingspar

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Excellent quess but wrong

Dave

psb667

m2 for spit fire?

wingspar

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Another good quess but wrong

Dave

proptop

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Was it used in the P-38 and / or P-39?

Ernie P.

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Hispano Mk. V, 20mm cannon? As used on the British Tempest? Thanks; Ernie P.

wingspar

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Ernie No. Proptop Yes

Which plane and what Gun?

proptop

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Ah...thought it looked familiar...

I'm gonna leave that clue for the next guy (s ) cuz I'm gonna be away for a while...won't be back until late tonight.

Ernie P.

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Well, if Proptop can't play.... Thanks; Ernie P.



The P-39 Airacobra was one of the most unusual single-seat fighters ever ordered by the Army Air Corps. It had been a standard practice among manufacturers to design an airplane around an engine. However, this was the first time a plane had been designed around a gun; the American Armament Corporation's 37-millimeter cannon.

The Bell engineers wanted to mount the cannon so it would fire directly through the propeller shaft. This meant the engine would have to be located deep in the fuselage, behind the pilot, so he would have access to the breech mechanism of the cannon. This dictated that the machine would have a tricycle landing gear, which was the first such gear ever used on a production fighter.

The 37 mm Automatic Gun, M4, known as the T9 during development, was a 37 mm (1.46 in) autocannon designed by John Browning[1] and used in the Bell P-39 Airacobra and P-63 Kingcobra fighters, as well as experimentally on other designs. It provided interceptors with a weapon that could shoot down any bomber with as little as one hit. It was a compact design with a relatively low muzzle velocity and rate of fire.

As the gun was originally designed, ammunition could be fed by a 5-round clip, a 15-round link belt, or a non-disintegrating 30-round endless belt magazine. The 30-round endless belt version was used exclusively in production. The M4 gun fed only from the left.

The 30-round Endless Belt Magazine, M6, was an oval-shaped framework (nicknamed a "horsecollar magazine", from its shape) providing a track for the endless belt. The articulated link belt actually contained 33 rounds: consisting of 30 HE and/or AP shells and 3 tracer rounds (one at the end of each 10-shell section) to improve accuracy.

wingspar

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And right you are Ernie. Take it away.

Dave

Ernie P.

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I wouldn't have gotten that one without Proptop's input. If he wants this question, it's his. Otherwise, I'll ask my next question in a couple of hours. THanks; Ernie P.

Ernie P.

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Okay; Proptop still can't play. I'll give him a shot later. Thanks; Ernie P.



This should be an easy, or at least a fun, one. Not about the planes, or even the pilots. This is about one crewman.


Question: He was probably the most famous crewman of all time. But who, exactly, was he?

Clues:

(1) He applied for pilot training, but was turned down because he was color blind.

Ernie P.

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This should be an easy, or at least a fun, one. Not about the planes, or even the pilots. This is about one crewman.


Question: He was probably the most famous crewman of all time. But who, exactly, was he?

Clues:

(1) He applied for pilot training, but was turned down because he was color blind.

(2) He was fortunate to survive WWII. He failed to make an ordered movement among a group of replacements, because his pilot had an ear infection. The remainder of his detail reported as ordered; and all of them died in action.

Ernie P.

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This should be an easy, or at least a fun, one. Not about the planes, or even the pilots. This is about one crewman.



Question: He was probably the most famous crewman of all time. But who, exactly, was he?


Clues:

(1) He applied for pilot training, but was turned down because he was color blind.

(2) He was fortunate to survive WWII. He failed to make an ordered movement among a group of replacements, because his pilot had an ear infection. The remainder of his detail reported as ordered; and all of them died in action.

(3) Although not everything he touched was a picnic, he was always dedicated to winning; and was noted for being really cool.

deatonbt

Paul Newman

Ernie P.

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You got it, and you are up, Sir! A lot of people didn't know about Newman's wartime service. His acting career started on Broadway with "Picnic", before he switched to movies. He was always one of my favorite actors, and "Cool Hand Luke" one of my favorite movies. I followed his racing career (which started when he did the movie "Winning") and his philanthropic activities were notable. A great man and well worth remembering.

Your question, Sir? Thanks; Ernie P.


This should be an easy, or at least a fun, one. Not about the planes, or even the pilots. This is about one crewman.

Question: He was probably the most famous crewman of all time. But who, exactly, was he?

Clues:

(1) He applied for pilot training, but was turned down because he was color blind.

(2) He was fortunate to survive WWII. He failed to make an ordered movement among a group of replacements, because his pilot had an ear infection. The remainder of his detail reported as ordered; and all of them died in action.

(3) Although not everything he touched was a picnic, he was always dedicated to winning; and was noted for being really cool.


Answer: Paul Newman



Newman served in the United States Navy in World War II in the Pacific theater. Newman enrolled in the Navy V-12 program at Ohio University, hoping to be accepted for pilot training, but was dropped when it was discovered he was color blind. He was sent instead to boot camp and then received further training as a radioman and gunner. Qualifying as a rear-seat radioman and gunner in torpedo bombers, in 1944, Aviation Radioman Third Class Newman was sent to Barber's Point, Hawaii. He was subsequently assigned to Pacific-based replacement torpedo squadrons (VT-98, VT-99, and VT-100). These torpedo squadrons were responsible primarily for training replacement pilots and combat air crewmen, placing particular importance on carrier landings.

He later flew from aircraft carriers as a turret gunner in an Avenger torpedo bomber. As a radioman-gunner, he served aboard the USS Bunker Hill during the Battle of Okinawa in the spring of 1945. He was ordered to the ship with a draft of replacements shortly before the Okinawa campaign, but by a fluke of war, was held back because his pilot had an ear infection. The men who remained in his detail were killed in action.
On the morning of 11 May 1945, while supporting the Okinawa invasion, Bunker Hill was hit and severely damaged by two kamikazes. An A6M Zero appeared from a low cloud, dived toward the flight deck and dropped a 551 lb (250 kg) bomb, which went through the vessel and exploded in the sea. The Zero then crashed onto the flight deck, destroying parked planes full of fuel, causing a huge fire. The remains of the Zero went over the deck and dropped into the sea. Then, a scant 30 seconds later, a second Zero, piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, plunged into a suicide dive. The Zero went through the AA fire, dropped a 551 lb (250 kg) bomb, and crashed into the flight deck near the control tower, as kamikazes were trained to aim for the island superstructure (as was the case with Sangamon). The bomb penetrated Bunker Hill's flight deck and exploded. Gasoline fires flamed up and several explosions took place. The ship suffered the loss of 346 men killed, 43 missing, and 264 wounded. Although badly crippled, Bunker Hill managed to return to Bremerton via Pearl Harbor.

After the war, he completed his English degree at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, graduating in 1949. Newman later studied Drama at Yale University, graduating in 1954, and later studying under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York City.
Oscar Levant wrote that Newman initially was hesitant to leave New York for Hollywood: "Too close to the cake," he reported him saying, "Also, no place to study."[

Newman made his Broadway theater debut in the original production of William Inge's Picnic with Kim Stanley. He later appeared in the original Broadway productions of The Desperate Hours and Sweet Bird of Youth with Geraldine Page. He would later star in the film version of Sweet Bird of Youth, which also starred Page.
His first movie for Hollywood was The Silver Chalice (1954), followed by The Rack (1956) and acclaimed roles in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), as boxer Rocky Graziano; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), opposite Elizabeth Taylor; and The Young Philadelphians (1959), with Barbara Rush and Robert Vaughn. However, predating all of these above was a small but notable part in an August 8, 1952 episode of the science fiction TV series Tales of Tomorrow entitled "Ice from Space", in which he played Sergeant Wilson, his first credited TV or film appearance. In the mid-1950s, he appeared twice on CBS's Appointment with Adventure anthology series.

deatonbt

As soon as you mentioned Cool, Istarted looking for actors and singers.

What is the first plane to have the area rule fuselage? Test planes don't count. Hint, it has been mentioned before in this thread.

Ernie P.

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"First" is often arguable; but I'll go with the F-102 and it's successor, the F-106. Thanks; Ernie P.


The area rule was discovered by Otto Frenzl when comparing a swept wing with a w-wing with extreme high wave drag [2] working on a transonic wind tunnel at Junkers works in Germany between 1943 and 1945. He wrote a description on 17 December 1943, with the title “Arrangement of Displacement Bodies in High-Speed Flight”; this was used in a patent filed in 1944.[3] The results of this research were presented to a wide circle in March 1944 by Theodor Zobel at the “Deutsche Akademie der Luftfahrtforschung” (German Academy of Aeronautics Research) in the lecture “Fundamentally new ways to increase performance of high speed aircraft.” [4]
Subsequent German wartime aircraft design took account of the discovery, evident in the slim mid-fuselage of aircraft such as the Messerschmitt Me P.1112, P.1106, and the indisputably wasp-waisted Focke-Wulf Fw 1000x3 type A long range bomber, but also apparent in delta wing designs like the Henschel Hs 135. Several other researchers came close to developing a similar theory, notably Dietrich Küchemann who designed a tapered fighter that was dubbed the “Küchemann Coke Bottle” when it was discovered by U.S. forces in 1946. In this case Küchemann arrived at the solution by studying airflow, notably spanwise flow, over a swept wing. The swept wing is already an indirect application of the area rule.
In late 1951, the lab hosted a talk by Adolf Busemann, a famous German aerodynamicist who had moved to Langley after World War II. He talked about the difference in the behavior of airflow at speeds approaching supersonic, where it no longer behaved as an incompressible fluid. Whereas engineers were used to thinking of air flowing smoothly around the body of the aircraft, at high speeds it simply did not have time to "get out of the way", and instead started to flow as if it were rigid pipes of flow, a concept Busemann referred to as "streampipes", as opposed to streamlines, and jokingly suggested that engineers had to consider themselves "pipefitters".
Several days later Whitcomb had a "Eureka" moment. The reason for the high drag was that the "pipes" of air were interfering with each other in three dimensions. One could not simply consider the air flowing over a 2D cross-section of the aircraft as others could in the past; now they also had to consider the air to the "sides" of the aircraft which would also interact with these streampipes. Whitcomb realized that the Sears-Haack shaping had to apply to the aircraft as a whole, rather than just to the fuselage. That meant that the extra cross-sectional area of the wings and tail had to be accounted for in the overall shaping, and that the fuselage should actually be narrowed where they meet to more closely match the ideal.
The area rule was immediately applied to a number of development efforts. One of the most famous was Whitcomb's personal work on the re-design of the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger, a U.S. Air Force jet fighter that was demonstrating performance considerably worse than expected. By indenting the fuselage beside the wings, and (paradoxically) adding more volume to the rear of the plane, transonic drag was considerably reduced and the original Mach 1.2 design speeds were reached. The culminating design of this research was the Convair F-106 Delta Dart, an aircraft which for many years was the USAF's primary all-weather interceptor.
Numerous designs of the era were likewise modified in this fashion, either by adding new fuel tanks or tail extensions to smooth out the profile. The Tupolev Tu-95 'Bear', a Soviet-era bomber, has large bulged landing gear nacelles behind the two inner engines, increasing the aircraft's overall cross section aft of the wing root. Its airliner version has been the fastest propeller-driven aircraft in the world since 1960. The Convair 990 used a similar solution, adding bumps called antishock bodies to the trailing edge of the upper wing. The 990 remains the fastest U.S. airliner in history, cruising at up to Mach 0.89. Designers at Armstrong-Whitworth took the concept a step further in their proposed M-Wing, in which the wing was first swept forward and then to the rear. This allowed the fuselage to be narrowed on either side of the root instead of just behind it, leading to a smoother fuselage that remained wider on average than one using a classic swept wing.
One interesting outcome of the area rule is the shaping of the Boeing 747's upper deck. The aircraft was designed to carry standard cargo containers in a two-wide, two-high stack on the main deck, which was considered a serious accident risk for the pilots if they were located in a cockpit at the front of the aircraft. They were instead moved above the deck in a small "hump", which was designed to be as small as possible given normal streamlining principles. It was later realized that the drag could be reduced much more by lengthening the hump, using it to reduce wave drag offsetting the tail surface's contribution. The new design was introduced on the 747-300, improving its cruise speed and lowering drag.
Aircraft designed according to Whitcomb's area rule looked odd at the time they were first tested, (e.g., the Blackburn Buccaneer), and were dubbed "flying Coke bottles," but the area rule is effective and came to be an expected part of the appearance of any transonic aircraft. Later designs started with the area rule in mind, and came to look much more pleasing. Although the rule still applies, the visible fuselage "waisting" can only be seen on a few aircraft, such as the B-1B Lancer, Learjet 60, and the Tupolev Tu-160 'Blackjack' — the same effect is now achieved by careful positioning of aircraft components, like the boosters and cargo bay on rockets; the jet engines in front of (and not directly below) the wings of the Airbus A380; the jet engines behind (and not purely at the side of) the fuselage of a Cessna Citation X; the shape and location of the canopy on the F-22 Raptor; and the image of the Airbus A380 above showing obvious area rule shaping at the wing root, which is practically invisible from any other angle. Antishock bodies are likewise mostly "invisible" today, often serving double-duty as flap actuators, which are also visible on the A380.

deatonbt

You got it. It is the F-102.

Iknew that this one was easy, but I thought that it would at least take a few tries for somebody to get it. I thought that since designs, test planes, and production planes were leap frogging each other all over the place, it would trip somebody up. Iposted this to a question last year but got wrapped up in the answer and didn't realize that I wasn't answering the question.

It is arguable. Here is mine on why the F-102 is the first production plane.

The design of the F-102 was in response to a specification by the Air Force in 1950.
The first flight of the YF-102 with the area rule fueselage was in 1954.
The first production F-102 was delivered in 1955.

The area rule was also applied on the F105B and the F-106.
The F105flew in 1955.
The F105B flew in 1956.
The first F-106 that was delivered flew in 1956. It became operational in 1959.

The specification for the Buccaneer's was written in 1952. That is after the specification for the F-102.
The Buccaneer's first flight was in 1958; which I consider a test flight. This is after the test flight of the YF-102. It is also after the first production F-102 was delivered.
The Buccaneer became operational in 1962. This is after the the F-106.