An air burst from a nuke would not sink an Iowa class BB. A subsurface burst might, it depends on how close the detonation was. Conventional weapon wise it would take around 5 to 10 torp hits to sink her, once again where she was hit makes all the difference. If she were lucky she could concievably soak up up to 21 torp hits and remain afloat for quite awhile. They were(and are for that matter) exceptionally tough ships.

Cheers
Gary

No to change the subject, but I remember my father saying that he read somewhere that for the Russians to “kill” an Iowa class BB it would have to use a nuclear weapon, or hopefully get a large amount of conventional weapons through the “screen” in order to destroy it.

He didnt just make this up, he read/heard it from somewhere, but as he said the main armor belt on the Iowa BBs was thick as a brick (Jethro tull fans) and all but a nuclear warhead would penetrate…..this hold any credence?

(Mission kill is a completely different thing mind you, I am talking about sinking)

I was just wondering as I read this thread, this whole CVN group is held hostage is BS if you ask me, short of un-convential weapons of course.

Hi Sens,

The cheapest alternatives are very rarely the most efficient.

Cheers
Gary

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongdu_JL-8

That has to be beat, when it comes to cost.

UH-60 Blackhawk today’s unit procurement price is about $10M each.
Super Tucano costs $9 million each.

A double engine new “Skyraider” will be ****?

Yes, I understand that too. My point is there is allways an alternative. Bismuth would be a non-toxic replacement for lead that would work quite well in all probability. Also radials can be desgned to run on anything. Just because they were desined 60 years ago to run on 130 AVGAS doesn’t mean that is set in stone. As technology improves so does the design(at least it should!).

Cheers
Gary

The lead in the AVGAS is why its being phased out.
From memory there are only two refineries left who actually add the lead to AVGAS.
The other problem is that is that AVGAS WILL BE phased out in a few years.

The use of lead is banned in fuel production in most placed around the world and AVGAS is the exception.

Most radials i know of were designed to run on 130 with lead. Running them on 100 means a standard engine needs to run on lower boost and or lower throttle. This means less power…

And its a simple fact of life that a radial takes 10times the man hours to service then a turbine.

Turbo props may indeed be as reliable as radials. We simply don’t have the experience in wartime that we do with radials. And while I agree that correlation does not equal causation the evidence is overwhelming that radials did indeed bring back pilots who would never have made it with an inline engine. In the USAAF accident reports(and the causes thereof) were tracked wherever possible and those records are available see http://www.accident-report.com/ for an example of what’s available.
There is a reason radial engines have an excellent reputation, and that is based on real world experience. My experience is limited to Rare Bear and I can tell you that the Bear has flown back to land with damage that would have lunched a Merlin. The Merlin damage pictured below was the result of a broken connecting rod. It required an emergency landing. The piston damage from Rare Bear required a cylinder rebuild but otherwise the engine was fine.

Cheers
Gary

I don’t want to make a point versus the old man’s experience, but you’ve made a statement versus a turbo-prop versus a radial engine. A turbo-prop doesn’t have water cooling, so it may be equally survivable … or not.

The stories from WW2 are sometimes misleading, as the losses are normally not exactly tracked by cause. Dead pilots cannot tell a story. And other influence factors may sometimes mask the conclusion.

Actually I have had the pleasure of working on radials and yes they are a pain in the a**. But they work and work well. As far as AVGAS goes, refineries can spool up for avgas in 24 hours. If there is a need they can make it quite easily.
And clearly I was talking about a new build airframe. With modern tooling and C and C mills the jigs can be remade fairly easily along with the other tooling. Design takes months or years, but that job has allready been done.
We are after all just having fun are we not?

Gary

Gees … obviously no one here has had the mis-fortune of working on a radial engine?

I thought this was going to be a serious discussion here?

ANY radial engine is a labour intensive piece of machinery which is prone to destroying cyclinder heads. Its at least 10 times more work during a service then it would be a turbo-prop.

Not to mention that AVGAS is going to disappear soon from the aviation scene and that high octane 130 hasnt been around for 15 to 20 yrs(?)

The mere fact the airframe is a minimun of 40yrs old shouldve ended this debate as soon as it started….

That is true, however we do know that damage that would cause the immediate destruction of a P-51 or Spitfire was regularly shrugged off by the Jug’s. I have the great fortune of being close friends with Hub Zemke Jr. and had the pleasure of speaking with his father before he passed away. In his opinion(and I think his opinion certainly matters more than mine) the P&W 2800 that they used was responsible for bringing many pilots back who otherwise would have been lost. There are very few recorded fighters flying home and then being scrapped because they are too damaged for repair. Of those very few the majority are radial engined.

Cheers
Gary

The problem with that statement is that you don’t know how many aircraft crashed due to engine damage. If the history tells us of 20 occasions where P-47 returned to base with severely damaged engines, there may be another 100 lost aircraft due to engine damage. Nobody researched the reason for lost aircraft, not in war, when the aircraft crashes somewhere. That is what you call “silent evidence”.
And how would a turbo-prop score, which in the end weights considerably less per produced hp and you could use that saved weight for additional armor.

Materials: please no one claim that any weight can be saved using composites. The nature of its operational environment would make composite aircraft completely unsuitable. Weight savings are secondary issue.

If you were going to go the new build route with the airframe it only makes sense to go the new build route with the engine as well. I kind of look at the Skyraider like I looked at the battleships when they brought them out of mothballs. They are both pretty beefy and in the case of the battleships there is very little that can hurt them other than torpedoes or a nuke. The Skyraider in a new and improved version would do very well. It has the size and the power to do the COIN job superbly well. Modified with an up to date avionics suite you would free up a lot of space that can be used for MANPADS suppression as well as the new improved weapons available…it would be a pretty impressive aircraft. 9 hours of loiter time with a range of 900 miles plus in the original configuration of 8,000 pounds of ordnance plus 4 20mm cannon…put some modern lightweight guns in it instead and you probable would be able to push the payload to 10k pounds.. kind of makes a Pucara look tiny.

Cheers
Gary

I take it you are talking about the Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone? I’m not in a position to judge the combat damage resistance of a turoprop but from what I hear the radial would probably be the better choice. I know of cases were FW-190s and various other radial engined WWII fighters returned to base shot to pieces with bullets and shrapnel embedded in the engine, split cylinders, bleeding oil etc. That has to count as five star reliability. The problem with the Wright R-3350 engine is that it is out of production since what the 50s or 60s? Is there even anything similar still in production in the West? I know the Russians still make radials but that’s hardly an acceptable engine source for a western military aircraft for political reasons. So if you use an R-3350 you would be limited to a finite supply of engines. It seems that purely for reasons of cost, if the Skyraider was to be resurrected, it would probably be with a Turboprop wouldn’t it? How easy is it to find R-3350 certified mechanics? Turboprops have pretty much taken over much of the civilian aircraft industry and maintenance specialists are easy to find. Then there is the issue of jigs and production gear needed for Skyraider productions presumably these have long since been scrapped… but then recreating new jigs and tooling for the Skyraider wouldn’t be that more expensive than creating the same for a new design from scratch and the Skyraider is a proven desing. Personally I’ll still pick a twin if I can get one. 😀

All of your comments are true but the R3350 is pretty damn robust capable of having two cylinder heads shot off and still getting the A/C home. This happened on multiple occasions so is not a random occurence. The one comment you made about having the space to fit your countermeasures really reinforces the advantage of the SPAD. Space is not an issue!

If MANPADS do become an issue it is just as easy to fit IR countermeasures to a PC-9, EMB 312 or an IA 58 as it is to fit them to a Mi-35, AH-64, EC-665 gunship as long as you have the space to fit these countermeasures on your aricraft and money to pay for it. Most of what gets thrown at COIN aircraft are small arms in the 5.45-14.5mm range MANPADS are also used but small-arms fire is the most common dange. Personally I’d just feel safer in a IA-58 than a PC-9 or any other single engine COIN aircraft simply because of the twin engines. If one engine gets shot out I can still get far enough away on the second one before bailing out to give the pilot a chance of being picked up by CSAR forces before the opposition gets to him. The same experience was made by the RhodAF using the Cessna 337 as a COIN aircraft. The 337 was totally unsuited to the COIN role without major modifications but the twin engines were an advantage, if you lost an engine you had to jettison everything you didn’t necessarily need to stay airborne but if you did that you stood a chance of clawing your way back to base on the second engine. If I was shopping for a COIN aircraft I’d pick a twin engine design over a single engine one If I could get one. I don’t see why the EMB 312 or PC-9 are any more suited to the COIN role than an IA-58 or a more modern aircraft designed to the same formula as the IA-58.