Re: CEV to be made commercially available

Dale wrote:

> On Wed, 26 Oct 2005 05:05:21 GMT, fairwater@xxxxxxxxx (Derek Lyons)
> wrote:
>
>>I took a stab in the dark - I knew it was either the -15 or the -19.
>
> The -19 was the Douglas one- the "world's largest aircraft" at the
> time, I think. Did it ever go into service? The period magazine
> articles I have about it don't even show it with retracts- just
> fixed gear.

It flew, was pretty badly underpowered with the 4 R3350s that it was
originally engined with, and it was re-engines with Allison V3420s
(Twinned V1710s) It spent most of the war as a transport.
It also provided very useful information on servo-tab controls. The
Pilot's yokes weren't attached directly to the control surfaces
(Which were free-floating), but to tabs on the surface. Deflecting
the tab moved the control surface. (It sounds funny at first, but
remember that you're not sticking a vane into the wind, you're
affecting the flow field over the entire stabilizer/elevator (or
fin/rudder) combination. It lightened the effort needed to point the
thing around, but at the cost of a bit of delay in the time between
moving the yoke and moving the airplane. There's a film of the B-19
landing on one of its early flights where it gets into a massive PIO
about 100' off the ground. The nose is pitching up & down through
about a 60 degree angle. Once they got it sorted out on the B-19,
Servo tab controls were used on other large airplanes, like the B-36
and C-99.

> Reading the Boeing website today I was surprised that the XB-15
> was put into service as a cargo ship for the war (XC-105- one only)
> It's certainly a capable-looking plane. In the late '30's/early
> '40s, photos of it and the B-17 seemed to be used almost
> interchangeably in ads. Why did it take so much longer for the 294
> (XB-15) to be built than the 299 (YB-17)? I guess the former is
> sorta a predecessor of the latter even though the latter flew two
> years earlier...

Well, the biggest reason for the lack of production for the B-15 was a
lack of engine power. It's a very big airplane, but the powerplants
put out just about as much as those of a B-17. It was the 1930s, and
money for production was low. The Air Corps had to go get a special
appropriation in order to by the 13 Y1B-17s (That's what the Y1
means). It wasn't all wasted. The B-15's wing design and
aerodynamic data were instrumental in the design of the Boeing 314
Flying Boats used by Pan AM and BOAC for the long ocean runs.

>
> http://www.boeing.com/history/boeing/xb15.html
>
> I think The War would have ended at least 11 days earlier had we
> gone with the -15 over the -17 :)

Of course, they may also have decided that they didn't need a
follow-on, and we wouldn't have had the B-29. The B-29 was a real
turning point in performance, structures, and systems. More than
other airplanes, it made the big jets workable.

--
Pete Stickney
Java Man knew nothing about coffee.
.

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