ChuckAnderson
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raravia said:Hi Chuck!
This is great but.....it was a really project? or just a fantasy of J. Miranda?
Raravia
ChuckAnderson said:raravia said:Hi Chuck!
This is great but.....it was a really project? or just a fantasy of J. Miranda?
Raravia
Hi Raravia!
Here's what J. Miranda and P. Mercado said (including their grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc.) in their work:
"In 1942 the engineers of the Curtiss-Wright Corporation developed a twin-engined heavy bighter based on the P.40 model.
The project followed the same philosophy of design used in the Grumman XF5F-1 and XP-50, the I.M.A.M. Ro.57 and the Westland Whirlwind interceptors.
A mock-up was built using the airframe of the P.40C S/N 41-13456, the cockpit of a P.40 D and two Packard V-1650-1/Merlin XX engines and nose cowling from two P.40 F.
There is no additional information available.
Based on the only existing picture we have especulatively drawn the five view scale drawing. Apparently the airplane had a great longitudinal instability and bad landing performance. Perhaps these were the reasons why it was never manufactured.
Biblography
* Curtiss Aircraft, Putnam
*Squadron Signal "Curtiss P.40 in Action" by Ernest R. McDonnell
*Correspondence with Chuck Davis, Ted Nomura and Christophe Meunier
*http://www.kithobbyist.com/IPMSAuckland/Newsletter/2003/May/May03.htm
Technical dataWingspan 11.3 m
Length 9.65 m
Height 3.76 m
Wing surface 21.2 m2"
That's pretty much all they had to say on the subject of the Twin-engine Curtiss P.40.
However, as interested as we are in Alternate History, What If, etc., I guess we can still wonder about how this aircraft may have done HAD they worked out all of the bugs.
Perhaps Claire Chennault's Flying Tigers could have put them to good use!
Chuck
The Putnam book on Curtiss aircraft includes a picture of this mockup.
JC Carbonel said:the picture also appears in "in action" about the P40 . I seem to remember one of the engine pods has a sharkmouth but it seems odd to put engine pods right here without modifying the wings althought the twin-109 "Me 110" is similar in design but with seemingly much smaller designs.
In my zoo of unidentified designs I have a Hurricane (or maybe IK-3) twin (this is coming from a wartime german mag). So the idea was certainly "in the air" in the early fourties ....
JCC
Could you show us this one, dear? (If there is a Copyright issue, could you send it to me by mail?) I know the (what-if) Hurri-Twin story and "photographs" published in the nice fantasy magazine Padded-Cell (I could send you by mail this scan as well) but a source of the 1940s would be completely different...JC Carbonel said:In my zoo of unidentified designs I have a Hurricane (or maybe IK-3) twin (this is coming from a wartime german mag). So the idea was certainly "in the air" in the early fourties ....
JCC
Dummy P-40s
Numerous non-flyable reproductions of 'P-40' aeroplanes have been built for various purposes. Serious consideralion was given in 1941 to the production of wooden dummy P-40s to Uge as airfield decoys to draw enemy fire away from rea] P-40s hidden nearby or to cause confusion as to the actual number on hand. In China, wood-and-straw dummies were actually constructed and deployed on airfields used by the AVG.
maccountrypilot said:This is a very interesting topic. I have seen that pic before. Additionally someone had made a plastic model of that same aircraft ... pictures of which can be found on the net. Now, from an aerodynamic prospective, I don't believe that this incarnation of a twin P-40 would have the proper flight qualities of a fighter. It seems to be to bulky.
I have always had a thing for the P-40's so I did a little digging and uncovered the attached drawing. I do not know where it came from .. but irf there was ever a chance that a production run of a P-40 twin would be undertaken. this seems to be the most plausible to me.
Stargazer2006 said:...but for some reason I seemed to remeber that this mock-up was also mean as a decoy and not a real project.
Jemiba said:Stargazer2006 said:...but for some reason I seemed to remeber that this mock-up was also mean as a decoy and not a real project.
That thing as a decoy may have been quite useless, bringing back memories of a German testpilot on the Do 335,
who parked his aircraft ithe open on an airfield. There it remained unscathed during a low level attack, because
with its strange shape, it seemed to have been regarded as a decoy by the allied pilots !
To me, the most plausible explanation is, that it was a make-shift mockup made by Curtiss to show, that principally
a conversion to a twin engine layout was possible.
Stargazer2006 said:...but the very long horizontal empennage looks extra strange to me.
maccountrypilot said:This is a very interesting topic. I have seen that pic before. Additionally someone had made a plastic model of that same aircraft ... pictures of which can be found on the net. Now, from an aerodynamic prospective, I don't believe that this incarnation of a twin P-40 would have the proper flight qualities of a fighter. It seems to be to bulky.
I have always had a thing for the P-40's so I did a little digging and uncovered the attached drawing. I do not know where it came from .. but irf there was ever a chance that a production run of a P-40 twin would be undertaken. this seems to be the most plausible to me.