French Fighter Competition: Early 1930s

I've probably said it before and will probably say it again: Following the aircraft industry was a lot more interesting before 1960 than since. That's because airplanes became much more complicated, which meant that development times and costs increased considerably. In recent times, airliners and combat aircraft take years to bring to production, but they also stay in production and service much longer than in the old days. For example, Boeing's single-aisle 737 series prototype first flew 45 years ago, and variants will be in production for years to come. So far as the aviation buff is concerned, the amount of interesting new stuff had been reduced to a trickle over the years.

Wars and threats of wars served as spurs for technical progress in aviation. Most striking is a comparison of aircraft entering service at the end of 1918 with those flying mid-1914, just before the Great War started.

A consequence of the war was greatly lessened demand for new military aircraft. Technical progress became relative slow so there was less motivation to rush what new designs there were into production. The main French fighter of the early-mid 1920s was the Nieuport-Delage 29, a design under development in the closing months of the war. The late 20s and early 30s saw production of the Nieuport-Delage 62 series that boasted a top speed only 20 miles per hour (30km/h) faster than the NiD-29.

By the late 1920s the threat of a major new war was still small, but the need to modernize was growing stronger thanks to recent technical innovations. The French initiated a specification in 1930 that was modified in 1931 and 1932, forming the basis for a new generation of C1 category aircraft. (C1 is short for Chasse -- fighter (actually, "pursuit," as the U.S. Army Air Corps also called it) -- single-place.)

It's almost hard to believe from today's perspective, but ten different manufacturers submitted entries. That's because aircraft were pretty simple in those days; the builder basically had to come up with an airframe compatible with "government furnished equipment" such as the motor, weapons, radio, and so forth. Even so, airframes were beginning to require more technology than previously, this largely due to the replacement of wood or metal-tube frameworks covered by canvas with (nearly) all-metal construction.

Here are the planes involved in the concours:

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ANF-Mureaux 170
Although it performed well, this fighter was rejected because the position of the wing interfered with the pilot's forward field of vision.

Bernard 260
The Bernard was unusual in that it had advanced features including slats and trailing-edge flaps on the wings. But it failed to win a production contract.

Gourdou-Leseurre 482
This aircraft suffered from above-average aerodynamic drag, so it fell short of the speed rquirement and was eliminated from contention.

Morane-Saulnier 325
The Morane experienced severe buffeting that was never completely cured.

Wibault-Penhoët 313
Although it offered promising performance, a long development cycle caused the Wibault to lose out.

Blériot-Spad 510
The only biplane in the competition, the Blériot-Spad received a contract for 60 examples. It was the last biplane fighter accepted by the French air arm.

Loire 46
The Loir 46 was an advanced version of models 43 and 45 that, in stages, were in the concours. The 43 and 45 had a wing positioned similar to that of the ANF-Mureaux, but the 46 was an extensive redesign that featured an aile du mouette, or gull-wing. It too saw production. Some 60 were ordered by L'Armée de l'Air while a handful of developmental aircraft were sold to the Republican forces during the Spanish civil war. (These numbers have been disputed, but there is no question that production was less than 100 aircraft.)

Dewoitine 500
This was the winner of the concours and production of variants was in the low-to-mid hundreds.

As noted, the competition dragged on for several years. And then getting the Loire 46 into production took longer than it might have, thanks to the nationalization and consolidation of French airplane builders in 1936; its first-line service life was about two years. By late 1938 this generation of fighters began to be replaced by the Morane-Saulier 406, a monoplane featuring retractable landing gear and an enclosed cockpit, standard features of World War 2 fighter planes.

Gil Cohen: Populating Aviation Art

I chanced upon the above book recently, for some reason never having heard of Gil Cohen even though I'm aware of quite a few other artists of the Aviation Art genre. That might be because Cohen normally doesn't paint aircraft that are airborne. Moreover, his focus is on people associated with aircraft, not the planes themselves. (The only other artist who quickly comes to mind for following the same path is James Dietz.)

The most detailed Internet biographical information that I could locate on Cohen is here. In brief, he was born and raised in Philadelphia (on South Street, for those of you who know the town). His art training was at the Philadelphia Museum of Art School, now the University of Arts, where he later taught part-time for 20 years while carrying on with his career as a professional illustrator. Much of his illustration work was for men's magazines, though he also did book covers for romance novels and some general-interest titles.

This is spelled out in the book, which I found interesting. Besides outlining his career and describing (and showing) the steps he takes when doing his aviation paintings, he discussed the origins of each of the paintings in the book along with accounts relating to his thought process when planning the depictions. My main gripe regarding the book is that, because his paintings tend to be panoramas, they are spread across the inter-page gutter and sometimes important details are lost.

Below are examples of Cohen's work; click to enlarge (some will and others won't).

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Magazine cover: Male - May 1967
Most of the male mag illustrations he did strike me as being rushed. But then the pay probably didn't justify all-out efforts. This one is more finished than many of the others.

Photo of Cohen and Robert Rosenthal with painting
The painting is titled "Rosie's Crew / Thorpe Abbotts, 1943" (2001), showing Rosenthal and his flight crew gathered just before a bombing mission over Germany. For more information on Rosenthal's outstanding Army Air Forces career, click here.

"Coming Home / England, 1943" - 1990
A surviving aircrew at the end of a mission.

"After the Mission" - 1993
Even though aircrews were exhausted and perhaps more then a little shaken after a bombing mission, they had to go through a debriefing process for the benefit of intelligence officers who were looking for any changes in German air defenses as well as potential flaws in Eighth Air Force practices.

"Requiem for Torpedo Eight" - 2004
The scene is the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Hornet (CV-8) on 4 June 1942, the crisis point of the Battle of Midway. The torpedo bombers of Squadron 8 attacked the Japanese fleet at low level and were all shot down. Only one man survived, Ensign George H. Gay shown piloting the TBD Devastator beginning its takeoff run.

Asymmetrical Airplane: Blohm & Voss Bv 141

As Faithful Readers of this blog know, I deal with designs of objects as well as my usual focus on painting and illustration. Today's subject is well enough known to aviation buffs, but might come as a surprise to the uninitiated. It's the Blohm und Voss Bv 141 reconnaissance aircraft of World War 2 vintage that was built in test quantities, but never reached mass production. Go the the link for more information.

The Bv 141's designer was Richard Vogt who thrived on coming up with strange looking airplane proposals; I should really write a post dealing with more of them.

Reconnaissance aircraft in those days ideally should have plenty of visibility from the cabin so as to observe and photograph conditions in a combat zone or enemy rear area. The twist that helped shape the Bv 141 was that it was required to be a single-engine design. A conventional front-mounted engine placement would result in severe constriction of view, something antithetical to the reconnaissance ideal. A pusher-engine placement normally meant a twin-boom feature for supporting the tail. The defects here are decreased visibility (but not so serious as that from an engine in the plane's nose) and the elimination of effective defensive armament (a rear-facing machine gun would have to fire through the propeller arc).

Given those constraints, that clever Vogt came up with this:


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Three-view drawing
Vogt created an asymmetrical design where the main visual obstruction was to the left; visibility ahead, below and to the rear was good.

Probably the prototype aircraft
Note that it has prewar German civilian aircraft markings; it first flew 25 February 1938.

Seen from the rear, above

Seen from 3/4 above

An in-flight view
According to sources on the Internet, the plane flew well despite its odd appearance. It failed to enter production because it was under-powered and better motors were reserved for combat planes. Note changes to the epennage.

The Regressive Curtiss-Wright Condor II

Technology advances, but most products aren't cutting-edge due in part to the timing of development cycles. Then there are new products that have obviously retrograde features, a prime example being the Curtiss Condor airliner that first flew early in 1933.

In order to explain the Condor, I cooked up the following photo essay:

Photo Essay

An Early American Airlines Condor

Marine Corps Condor

Swissair Condor

Boarding a Condor
The photos above are of the Condor II, of which there were several variations among the 43 that were built (note the difference in the engine cowlings between the plane in the top image and the others). Its first flight was 30 January 1933.

Note that the fuselage is rounded and has a somewhat streamlined appearance in line with early 1930s aircraft, though it isn't of all-metal construction which was becoming universal for larger airplanes. What is strongly retrograde is the fact that it is a biplane with wing struts that add to the wind resistance. The Condor II was a slow aircraft compared to other new transports such as those mentioned below. Its commercial advantage was that its large fuselage could be configured to include sleeping berths, a selling-point for coast-to-coast flights; previously, transcontinental passengers would fly a few daylight legs and switch to passenger trains for overnight legs of the trip. Apparently American Airlines felt that eliminating this transportation mode-switching compensated for the slow speed of the Condor.

Boeing 247
This can be considered the first modern airliner. Its first flight was 8 February 1933, a few days after that of the Condor II. Compare it to the Condor.

Curtiss B-2 Condor Bomber
There were earlier Condors, one being the Army Air Corps B-2 which entered service in 1929. It was a primitive design based on an early-1920s bomber.

Condor I
The Condor I was known as the Condor CO or Condor 18, the Condor I appellation is retrospective to distinguish it from the later Condor airliner. This transport was based on the B-2, and the six that were built served with Eastern Air Transport 1931-34. It could carry up to 18 passengers, a large number at the time, but this advantage was negated by its other, out-of-date, features.

Douglas DC-2
The DC-1, essentially a prototype of the DC-2 first flew 1 July 1933 and the first flight of the DC-2 was 11 May 1934. The DC-2 soon became the dominant mid-1930s airliner.

Douglas Sleeper Transport (DST)
The first flight of the DST was 17 December 1935 and it entered service with American Airlines the following summer. Knowing that its Condor IIs were obsolete, American Airlines pressed Douglas to create a sleeper version of the DC-2 to replace the its Condor II sleepers. A non-sleeper version of the DST was the famed DC-3, a few of which are still serving 75 years after its commercial introduction. The visual distinction between the DST and DC-3 is in those small, slit-like windows above the main windows; they were to allow upper-bunk passengers to peek at the outside world.

Gil Spear and the 1942 Chrysler

The son of parents who worked as illustrators, Gil Spear, Jr. made a career as a car stylist; a summary of his career can be found here.

Whenever I think of Spear what comes to mind are a few renderings he made of what many people around 1940 considered to be the shape of cars of the (possibly near) future. Spear was working for Chrysler at the time, and the above link mentions that he might have had a hand in designing the grille for Chrysler's 1942 models.

Obviously, one doesn't see a lot of 70 year-old cars on the road, but 1942 American cars are an especially rare breed from the circa-1940 era. That's because the 7 December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and the county's entry into World War 2 resulted in an order from the government that production of civilian automobiles be curtailed and then should cease by 22 February 1942. Chrysler brand sales for 1941 models were 161,703, but only 36,586 1942 model cars were produced and sold, most of these in the first months after their Fall 1941 introduction.

Below are examples of 1942 Chryslers, the first from an advertisement or a sales brochure, the others are restored vehicles.

So where does Spear come into play? Below is an image I grabbed from the link above that pairs a Spear concept rendering with a photo of the front end of a '42 Chrysler (click on the image to enlarge).

Indeed, the front of the concept car looks pretty similar to that of the production job aside from its hooded headlights and its prow that juts ahead on the main frontal plane. But this rendering was in no way a prediction of the 1942 theme because it is dated September 22, 1941 -- near the time when 1942 Chryslers were appearing in dealers' showrooms.

What I find most interesting are other features of the concept. It has a double-wrapped (horizontally and vertically) windshield not greatly different from windshields on some Chrysler models of the late 1950s. The roof over the passenger compartment seems to be transparent, a not-so-practical styling obsession that has persisted until present times on concept cars built for automobile shows.

But note the general shape that is also shown at a different angle in the car in the background. What we see is a "aerodynamically streamlined teardrop" shape beloved by car-of-the-future forecasters of the 1930s done up in a nicely stylish manner. It's not a pure teardrop because the motor is at the front, so a hood is required as is that windshield. Otherwise it fills the streamline styling bill of those days right down to the parallel chrome strips and the lack of open wheel wells. Note how the trunk lid is a double-opening type. Of course, a functioning version of the concept drawing would probably be more ungainly looking if it were to function at all; as pictured by Spear, the front wheels have no room to turn for steering and this would have to be fixed. Also, the design seems to allow for only one seat; the top slopes too radically for a rear seat. And what about a back window for rearward vision?: I see none.

By the way, those fighter planes look pretty nifty too. Too bad they're nose-heavy (the wings are mounted too far aft) and that the wing area is too small. But this is concept art after all, so why not let a stylist have even more fun than the cars offer?

Here are two more Spear concept renderings from the same period (once again, click to enlarge the images). These designs are variations of the one shown earlier. The cars have the same basic shape and clearly have no rear seat, though headlights are exposed rather than lurking behind doors and there is no top over the passenger compartment for either car. The car in the lower image seems to sport a small tail fin, a style item that would become the rage in the later 1950s, especially for Chrysler Corporation's brands. The diagram below the ladies indicates the position of grille openings and the radiator, so it seems that Spear was paying some attention to practical matters and not going totally blue-sky.

Once again, the aircraft designs are stylish and interesting. The upper image shows four-motor bombers with pusher, rather than tractor, propellers. This arrangement appeared in a number of actual aircraft design studies in those days, but the only American production bomber with pusher props was the B-36 which appeared following the war and served well into the 1950s. Spear's bomber has potent, though perhaps impractical, defensive armament; those guns appear to be something on the order of 37 mm or even larger.

The image immediately above features what appears to be a fighter and includes some interesting features. First, the pilot is in a prone position. This serves to reduce the cross-section of the aircraft and thus should lower drag and increase top speed. It also would lessen the likelihood of a pilot "blacking out" from blood loss to the brain during extreme maneuvering. This arrangement was tried out after the war, but proved impractical in a number of areas including rearward visibility, something important in combat situations. Spear places the propeller amidships in a rotating cylinder faired into the fuselage contour. I don't recall if this was ever actually tried, but defects include mechanical complexity and potentially reduced propeller surface for a given radius. But the propeller arc as shown in the airborne craft is so great that the propeller would scrape the ground on takeoff or landing rotation.

Nevertheless, a lot of fun for both Gil Spear at the time and for us 70 years later.

Cutaway to G.H. Davis

When I was young I used to come across illustrations by the Illustrated London News' technical guy G.H. (George Horace) Davis (1881-1960). I could find little on Davis on the Internet: this link has a biographical squib just below the portrait photos.

Not that I read the ILN anyplace but in the form of bound issues in the college library stacks, it's just that his work would be reproduced elsewhere and I would notice his distinctive signature.

Davis' specialty was cutaway illustrations where exteriors are selectively peeled away to reveal structural and functional interior details. His main subjects were airplanes and ships, though he also used his approach on other items as needed by his editor. And he did non-cutaway paintings on the side.

Here are examples of his work. Click on the images to enlarge.

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HMS Ark Royal - 1939

High-altitude aircraft - 1930s

Bristol Beaufighter - early 1940s

Hawker Hurricane - c.1940

Supermarine Spitfire - c.1940

Photo of a Spitfire and a Hurricane together

I'm pretty sure that Davis "freehanded" most of his illustrations. Compare his Hurricane and, especially, Spitfire with those in the photograph. A charitable explanation is that he had to do these drawings on a tight deadline and lacked time to work up the images mechanically from three-view drawings as an architect would do when preparing a rendering of a structure. This method or something analogous was used in Davis' time by cutaway artists for British aviation magazine who apparently were allowed longer lead-times. Artists who do paintings of aircraft also generally begin with mechanical delineation; failure to do so would run a strong risk of making a distorted image.

Another problem Davis and other aircraft cutaway specialist faced was security; too much detail might be useful to enemies in times before aircraft could be shot down and examined. For example, Davis' Beaufighter is the daytime version. The radar-equipped night fighter flew only over Britain on interceptor missions, so His Majesty's Government would be most unhappy if Davis had spilled any airborne radar-related beans in 1941 or '42.

Paul Allen Collects Flying Objects

Let's say you were co-founder of a tiny start-up company selling a version of the computer language Basic that would run on grossly underpowered small computers with hardly any data storage capacity. And after 20 years that puny company would grow to dominate a new, huge industry by virtue of its operating systems and office productivity software. Which made you filthy rich.

What, then, do you do with your money?

You could have a huge yacht built for yourself. You could buy some professional sports teams -- a basketball team in Portland, Oregon and in Seattle a soccer team and a football team. You could invest in stuff. But aside from that yacht, what about spending on fun things? How about a museum near the foot of Seattle's Space Needle devoted to rock music and science fiction? Done; what else? How about buying a selection a World War 2 vintage aircraft, meticulously restoring them to flying condition and creating a museum for them?

So that's what Paul Allen of Microsoft fame did. His aircraft museum is in a converted hangar at the south end of Paine Field in Everett, Washington. (The north end of the airport hosts Boeing's huge factory that builds 747, 777 and 787 airlines, many of the latter currently parked engineless near Allen's museum.)

It's called the Flying Heritage Museum and here is a page from its web site with a short explanation of how it came to be.

The planes actually do fly on occasion. Not long ago I saw its P-51 Mustang and Supermarine Spitfire cavorting over Lake Washington before the start of unlimited class hydroplane races. A few planes, while flyable, are never flown. That's because they are the only ones of their kind known to exist.

The museum web site has plenty of fine pictures of the collection, but below are some photos I snapped in an attempt to provide a tourist's view. It was a rare sunny Seattle day, so light pouring through the windows made it almost impossible to get top-quality exposures.

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P-47, Fw-190 and B-25
Here is a general view of part of the museum.

B-25 bombardier compartment
A head-on view of the B-25 Mitchell at the right of the first photo. Note how complete the restoration is: bombsight, machine gun ammunition belts and so forth. Something I had never been aware of is the windshield wiper on the bombardier's optically flat center windshield, this for improved perfomance of the bombsight.

Messerschmitt Bf 109 E-3
E-series 109s came on line in time for the Battle of France in 1940 and fought in the Battle of Britain.

Hawker Hurricane Mk XII A
Although more Hurricanes flew in the Battle of Britain than Spitfires, there are fewer survivors. This was probably because the Spitfire was more glamorous and saw first-line service throughout the war, whereas Hurricane production ceased in 1944.

P-40C Tomahawk
Most P-40s I've seen are later versions which are longer, have different cockpit glazing and sometimes Merlin engines rather than their initial Allisons. The similar-looking B and C series and derivatives were in combat in 1941-42 with the British in North Africa, the AVG "Flying Tigers" in China and the U.S. Army Air Forces at Pearl Harbor and elsewhere in the Pacific. Combat capability aside, I always thought that early P-40s such as this one were the best-looking of the lot.

Polikarpov I-16 Type 24 Rata
Allen's Rata was the first I've ever seen. I was surprised any remained, though it seems that more than half a dozen actually still exist. They were used by Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War, Chinese fighting the Japanese invasion and by the Soviet air force in the weeks following Hitler's 1941 invasion.

When Airplanes Wore Spats

To use more technical language, they can be called landing gear fairings, but my dad (who was there when they were in vogue) called them spats, and so do I.

Spats came into vogue in the late 1920s when aerodynamic streamlining became an important design consideration; less drag meant higher speed and/or better fuel economy and/or longer range. But fixed landing gear of any kind add to drag.

There are basically two cures to this problem. One is installation of landing gear that retract into the wings, fuselage or a wing-mounted pod of some kind. But retractable landing gear are heavy because they require mechanisms, additional parts and perhaps tanks of hydraulic fluid. In the early 1930s this additional weight, coupled with comparatively low horsepower motors of the time, could result in reduced speed or range. Retractable gear did not become common until the late 30s when more powerful motors were introduced.

The other solution was to retain fixed landing gear, but add streamlined fairings to reduce (but not eliminate) the drag. This was a tricky business because the fairings themselves added weight to an aircraft. When carefully designed, such spats apparently resulted in net performance gains; otherwise, they wouldn't have been so common.

Spats are not a 1930s thing. Light aircraft of today often have fixed landing gear with spats because their designers decided that they represent the best compromise when dealing with the factors of cost, weight, power and performance.

Below are examples of aircraft from the heyday of spats.

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Boeing F4B
The F4B was the last production fighter for the U.S. Navy from Boeing. Its most advanced aerodynamic feature is the Townwend Ring covering the motor. Otherwise, its streamlining is little better than that for Great War fighter craft. Note the the landing gear design, typical of what spats were intended to cure.

Boeing P-26
America's classic "pursuit" plane of the early 30s, the "Peashooter" (its informal name) was a combination of old and new design features. On the old side were externally braced (with wires) wings and the open cockpit (that Air Corps pilots insisted was the only way to fly). New was the use of metal construction. The landing gear spats fall in the middle: they were an advance over exposed landing gear, but not the ultimate solution of retractable gear.

Curtiss A-12 Shrike
The Shrike was an Air Corps attack plane of the early 1930s. Besides streamlined spats, the plane sports bracing struts from a point above the spats' roots to the fuselage. There are support struts for the spats as well as wing bracing wires. Overall, a pretty draggy airplane.

Northrop Gamma
This was an advanced design for its day. The spats are huge, but their horizontal cross-section was probably something like a symmetrical wing profile -- highly streamlined.

Dewoitine D-332
This French airliner has a dainty passenger compartment that, combined with huge spats, creates an ungainly looking aircraft.

Supermarine 224
This was Supermarine's entry in an early 1930s fighter competition. The designer was Reginald Mitchell who a few years previously graduated from designing pretty ugly flying boats to penning the sleek winners of the Schneiner Cup, one of which raised the absolute world speed record to more than 400 miles per hour. Following the 224, Mitchell designed the famed Spitfire, Britain's mainstay fighter during World War 2. Given the Schneider racers and the Spitfire, it's puzzling that Mitchell and his team came up this rather awkward design that never saw production.

The logic might have been using inverted gull-wings so as to reduce the height and size of the landing gear and the spats; larger spats would have added more drag. The real answers were retractable gear plus an enclosed cockpit, and the Spitfire had these features.

Curtiss Hawk 75
The plane shown here is a prototype of a version later sold to China and Thailand: note the Chinese markings. Hawk 75s exported to France had retractable landing gear, as did the version sold to the U.S. Army Air Corps as the P-36. The spat design here is minimalist to the point of having semi-exposed wheels.