tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568915967186844196.post4933031848015305422..comments2024-03-26T14:19:33.332-07:00Comments on Bench Grass: Fall of France, VI: Traction Avant!Erik Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05728486209757153685noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568915967186844196.post-22564908639162461172012-05-17T09:12:20.119-07:002012-05-17T09:12:20.119-07:00I'm going to provisionally say that the French...I'm going to provisionally say that the French problem was, first, that they didn't have an adequate counterforce (not enough heavy bombers). Second, it's what everyone says. Their fighters weren't fast enough. They <i>could</i> have been fast enough with engines that were designed to be re-engineered for higher performance at higher cost. <br /><br />That didn't happen, and, I'd add, would probably have made them pretty dangerous planes. <br /><br /><br />What were the consequences of this? Well, first, they problems in air combat. In particular, most shootdowns happen by surprise, and so the key fighter ability is to escape from a disadvantaged position. Sometimes, you can use superior handling to do that, but just plain being faster is far more important. <br /><br />So, that said, let's look at these planes. Sure, we have published Vmax, but these range from being a bit misleading to being outright fraudulent. So I'll look at power loading based on empty weight. (Which can be problematic, too, but you can only go so far into epistemic crisis!) <br /><br /><a href="http://kurfurst.org/Tactical_trials/109E_FrenchCEAMtrials/french_109e_tt.html" rel="nofollow">Bf109E</a>:lb/hp (empty weight): <a href="http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/messerschmitt-bf-109e-3" rel="nofollow">4.01</a><br />Bloch MB-151: 4.40<br />Hawker Hurricane:4.53<br />Morane-Saulnier MS 406: 4.87<br />Dewoitine D. 520: 5.08<br />And for comparison's sake: Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat:4.91 <br /><br />That the 520 had an inferior thrust-to-weight to the 406 and especially the MB-151 is an illustration of the importance of aerodynamics to the Vmax figure. However, viscous drag is proportional to the square of the speed. The slower you're going, the less important it is. <br /><br />What that means, on the one hand, is that acceleration out of Vcruise (and thus out of disadvantage) is going to be higher for a plane with a higher thrust-to-weight ratio, all other things being equal.<br /><br />It also means that the sweet spot of efficient cruise is going to be higher for the plane with the higher thrust-to-weight ratio. Vcruise, and V(max safe engine-rating power) are rarely published for WWII fighters, but they are the operationally crucial speeds, along with climb rate, which is a function of wing-loading, which is also very intermittently published in splat books.<br /><br />Given the low weight of the French fighters, I can say with some small confidence that their wing loading is likely to be high --very high in the case of the D 520, as there is no other way of getting that speed out of it.<br /><br />The French planes will have difficulty getting to the fight, and in capitalising on initial advantages in air combat. They will have trouble getting out of disadvantaged positions, and they will suffer a relatively high rate of ground accidents. <br /><br />Not that the Bf109E is the queen of the landing strip, either!Erik Lundhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05728486209757153685noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568915967186844196.post-4603900641154133072012-05-14T07:50:38.216-07:002012-05-14T07:50:38.216-07:00OK, so the French had a lot of aircraft and some o...OK, so the French had a lot of aircraft and some of them were pretty neat, and the production flow was quite impressive as well. I think we knew that.<br /><br />So what happened?<br /><br />Strategically, they were OK (they built a lot of aeroplanes and deployed the great majority up north in the battle area).<br /><br />Operational art: ? Was it that they weren't concentrated where they were needed and when, within the ZOAN?<br /><br />Tactics: ? Was it that for some reason they tended to lose section-level dogfights?<br /><br />Logistics: ? Was it that they couldn't be adequately supported, and therefore couldn't keep up the sortie rate?<br /><br />We know the French had some sort-of radar, and the RAF brought over quite a bit of mobile radar in 80 Wing, but it never really worked. <br /><br />So, was it Colonel Mustard in the billiard room with the lack of a telephone? (Note that the collaborators chose Vichy as their capital because it was the one city outside Paris whose local telephone exchange could make international calls.)Alexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17153530634675543954noreply@blogger.com