Jun 222010
From February, 1940, a concept similar to the B-25 “Mitchell” bomber from North American, but somewhat cleaner, aerodynamically. As designed, with a minimum of defensive armament, limited solely to a tail-turret.
9 Responses to “Consolidated LB-26 Twin Engined Bomber”
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Looks like a lot of extra space in the fuselage, behind the bomb bay.
I wonder how it would look area-ruled.
Jim
Mmm…. a sort of “mini Liberator”.
I’ve never heard an explanation why end-plate vertical stabilizers were such a rage in the 1930s. It can’t be just for gun field of fire, because planes like the Lockheed Electra and Constellation had them.
It lowers the overall height of the aircraft. A single tail would have twice the area (or more) of the two endplate, and would stick up higher. Thus your hangar has to have a taller door.
At high angles of attack, a central stabilizer is somewhat shadowed by the fuselage, and is somewhat less effective than two endplates.
OK, and the height would have been more of an issue with nose-wheel landing gear designs like this. I think the original B-36 mockup had this style verticals too, I wonder why they dropped them.
Also, if you look at the 3-view, the fins are in line with the engines, meaning that they are bathed in the slipstream. It’s supposed to increase rudder control power, especially in the engine-out case.
(that’s what i’ve read, anyway…)
The thing that hits me about the design is the paucity of defensive armament; it looks like it has two tail guns and that’s it.
Unless it’s only for antiship work where no carrier-based aircraft can expect to be encountered, it’s going to be a sitting duck target.
Regarding sticking the twin tailfins into the engine slipstream, they tried that on both the Ar-240 and the competing Me-210, and it didn’t work right on either aircraft.
I think the airflow was still spiraling from going through the props and that screwed up the effectiveness of the fins and rudders
You know, since there is nothing in that fuselage between the bomb bay and the tail turret, it would have made a lot more sense from a weight viewpoint to skinny the whole rear fuselage up, like on a Handley-Page Hampden:
http://www.aviastar.org/air/england/handley_hampden.php
…and move the turret to the top of the forward fuselage.
Maybe they designed it the way they did anticipating that at some future point it was going to get a turret or two back behind the wing, as well as waist gunners.