Boulton Paul P.37 High-Speed Day Bomber Project

[hesham]

Hi,


the Boulton Paul P.37 was a high-speed day bomber sesquiplane project of 1929,
there were just single V interplane struts in each side,powered by two Rolls Royce
F.IIS engines mounted at the upper wing.


http://warfiles.ru/show-83763-predki-mosquito-chast-1-proekt-skorostnogo-bombardirovschika-boulton-paul-p37-velikobritaniya.html

 

[cluttonfred]

Interesting that it apparently had no wheels, just the big skid and outrigger skids, seems an odd choice, that skid and the associated structure behind it couldn't have weight that much less than ordinary landing gear.

 

[Stargazer]

A candid question I guess, but could the skid arrangement have to do with the kind of terrain to be expected in the potentially bombed areas? (in case of emergency landing for instance)

 

[Schneiderman]

Apparently it was nicknamed 'streamline' and the use of a skid was to reduce drag. Little appears to be known about it, including important information such as how it was to take-off, where the bombs were stored and whether it was to be armed.

 

[Stargazer]

how it was to take-off

Perhaps I was wrong thinking it had to do with the landing. Maybe it was to take off from mountain areas, towed by smaller aircraft?

 

[cluttonfred]

Thanks to Google translate I see now that the linked page in Russian specifies that the main skid was to be retractable, which makes much more sense back in 1929 when retractable landing gear was still a dicey proposition for a relatively large and heavy military aircraft. The linked page also draws a conceptual comparison to the Mosquito as a bomber intended to survive through speed not defensive weapons. The original source appears to be Boulton Paul Aircraft since 1915 (Putnam) by Alec Brew. I don't have that one, perhaps someone who does could check to see that nothing was lost in translation. Cheers, Matthew

 

[Schneiderman]

Yes its pretty much Brew's words. There's only a couple of paragraphs and most he acknowledges to be speculation. He suggests that it would have taken off using jettisonable bogies, but I would have thought that catapulting is equally plausible. The RAE began experimenting with that in the mid 20s and continued right through until the outbreak of war.
There were no AM specifications requiring such a machine in 1929, when the drawing was made, although they were contemplating one for a high speed bomber carrying 1000lb of bombs over 1000 miles. Initial thinking was that this would have twin engines but this was soon downgraded to a single engine and eventually dropped. Elements of these thoughts came back in P.27/32, the Fairey Battle.
The RAF never really know what the role was for twin-engine bombers in the 1920s so maybe this speculative design was aimed at showing what could be achieved with a radical rethink

 

[redstar72]

From the book by Alec Brew (Putnam):

 

[cluttonfred]

Wonderful, thanks very much for the Brew excerpt.