My father retired in the mid-1950s from 20 years in the Navy as a radioman on four different patrol/reconnaissance bombers. He related the story of one flight in which a Ryan Fireball pulled up alongside their aircraft, shut off its piston engine and feathered the prop, then proceeded to pull ahead and leave them behind.
I know I replied to your comment earlier but it's not showing up, so excuse me if you seem to get two replies here: Anyways, I've read stories about FR-1s harassing P-38s with the same stunt. Honestly it would make a great airshow stunt too! The closest I can think of is the Jack Links biplane that's got a jet engine attached to the belly.
On the Curtiss. Curtiss Inc. was a disaster. They bean counters hated spending money on R&D apparently. To the point that NACA and the USAAC torn them a new one for not using NACA data on laminar flow. It was their local congressmen that pressured AAC to continue to buy the now obsolete P40. There was so much turmoil in the company that the XF15 was dropped, along with a 4 engined night fighter for the airforce. I got to watch the beautifully restored XF15 deteriorate ouitdoors at the Quonset Air museum that pretty much only had enough money to keep the lights on. Dunno where it is now.
That was really well done.! Definitely continue with this series. Only suggestion, when introducing the next model, give the viewer more time to read the engine specs. I had to keep pausing the video at just the right time to read it. Looking forward to the next installment!
Thanks for the support! Yeah I felt like that was a bit sloppy on my part, but I didn't want to leave a void of silence between each aircraft. Trying find a balance for the transition time. I think it'll come across better in Pt.2, which I'll release this Thursday/Friday. Thanks for the feedback!
Great video, thank you. My dad flew in the USN 1956-60, his operational service in the Skyraider. As a kid growing up in the late sixties, we asked him " Didn't they HAVE jets then?" He said "Oh they had them, alright. - in the military, you fly what they tell you to fly. That's the deal." Gotta say that the old man had good instincts about serving and moving on, they sure lost a lot of "Spads" (his nickname for the AD-1) over Vietnam ( right around the time my brother and were born in the mid-60s)
The Skyraider has a most impressive service life for a piston driven combat aircraft, considering the XBT2D prototype first flew in '45. Versatile machine.
@AviationGeek1903 Yes, I've long had the print he had made of one he'd flown - he's been gone some time now. I just find it interesting to learn how much his sentiment wasn't really " I didn't GET to fly jets." but more like " I was happy not to fly those things" the more you learn about the early Navy jets. All he wanted to do was be a fighter pilot - and being 10 at the end of ŴW2 how can you be surprised, he flew Piper Cubs in high school. But after leaving the service got out of flying altogether- no interest at all in owning a Cessna after flying the Skyraider. Also understandable
Welcome to the channel! I've always enjoyed these mixed power aircraft as well. You see a lot of them talked about here and there, but I haven't come across a thorough collection of them in a single video. And I felt like that needed to change, so here we are.
That definitely cover alot of types you rarely hear about! Also, having the wing of the P4M stall at the tips first is certainly a questionable decision!
Thanks for your channel!! Lol learned something I've OFTEN wondered about with duel powered aircraft. They burned the same fuel. My number one question was how in the world can you fit both types of fuel in such a small airframe (Fireball), and have any type of longevity in range. Now I know there was only one type of fuel. Love your videos! ❤
Having finished watching the video, I have to add to my previous comment that one of the planes my father flew in (in addition to the PBY, PBM, and PB4Y2) was the P4M Mercator. He told me that his plane carried the designation number "1" on the nose, seen here in some of the photos.
That's awesome! It's a shame the P4M didn't see the same use the Neptune got, but at least it wasn't terminated entirely. In my opinion, the P4M is certainly the cooler of the two.
The Me262 was originally a mixed propulsion aircraft - it had a piston engine in the nose because the Ju004 engines were horribly unreliable (with a mean time to failure of less than five hours).
I think you're right. I know the earliest flights were under piston power, wtihout the jet engines Installed. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that it retained the piston engine for the reasons you mentioned, but I'd have to do some digging to confirm that. For now, this series will focus on the US mixed propulsion aircraft, but if there is enough interest, I may to a part 3 going over non-US aircraft. Based on technicality, the 262 would be the first mixed propulsion aircraft ever. Thanks for the comment!
That was mostly because the airframe was ready far before the engines were, so it needed testing. Saying that, the engines in production variants had a mean time between failures of roughly 25 hours, not because the design was bad, but because Germany had severe shortages of alloying agents for high-quality steels by that point in the war.
@@onenote6619 The “severe shortage of alloys” as a cause of failure was largely a myth. The first 5000 engines built had an even number of turbine blades, as the blades passed behind the four support struts it induced vibrations that caused resonance and fracturing at the base of the blades. This was finally identified in late 1943 and meant that every engine manufactured to the earlier designs had to be scrapped to accommodate a new turbine and compressor with a different prime number of blades on each stage to avoid resonance. The British engines had this designed in from the start and consequently had an order of magnitude higher reliability. Most car transmissions use a similar technique to avoid gearbox noise from resonance so two teeth rarely mesh on each rotation of the gears. Postwar Russian and Czech copies of the Ju004 and BMW003 had no restrictions on materials but also found the designs to be “problematic” from a reliability perspective which is why they switched to cloned derivatives of the British Derwent and Nene. Similarly the Americans used mostly clones of the British engines (including the axial flow AS Sapphire (J65), De Havilland Goblin (J36), Power Jets W.1.X (J31) etc.) The axial flow J35 was an exception being developed in parallel with the J31 by GE and Allison (note - without German input but with knowledge of the Beryl engine.)
Comments: Longer duration on the title cards. Softer/smoother transitions between images (sometimes they seem to flick over sharply, which is a bit jarring). But those two little points aside, very enjoyable 🎉 Oh, and just one more thing.... Keep your eyes open for other rare oddities hiding in the background. Did you spot the pair of Arado jets?
I think the title cards came across a but better in Pt.2, and I have a new video coming out soon that" (hopefully) been further refined. I'm working in a video editing software that I've not really used much (as I'm not fluent in any video editing software) so still refining the technique. Hopefully the transitions aren't so rough. Thanks for taking the time to provide feedback, I greatly appreciate it!
@@AviationGeek1903 no probs 😁 I've done a few videos myself. My editting "skills" are limited to a picture/video slide show with music over the top 😂 So I feel your pain. @mittam.Motorsport
At the 18:00 minute mark the Martin P4M Mercator is photographed in color with a 1960 or later white 2-door Corvair in the background. Good longevity for a 1946 aircraft with only 21 units produced.
The Mercators were withdrawn from service in 1960. In 1951 the remaining 18 were modified for the SIGINT role, with Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron One (VQ-1) patrolling the coasts of North Korea, China, Vietnam, and the eastern Soviet Union, sometimes masquerading as P2V Neptunes with false serial numbers and fake radio communications. One was shot down by Chinese fighters and another heavily damaged by North Korean Mig 17s in 1959. The Mercators replacementin its role was tbe EA-3B Skywarrior which also had the advantage of being carrier capable.
In your write-up, you iterated: A paid "Text to Speech", service. What is that, exactly?? You mean, Al??? I could not tell, if that was Al, it was that good. Thanks for introducing me, to types of mixed-propulsion aircraft, I was unaware of!!! I'll be watching, part 2, shortly.
Yep, it's an AI powered service called ElevenLabs. It's not perfect, but it's good enough. A few years ago, I would have never considered using a text to speech system as it was too unnatural.
@@AviationGeek1903 My two cents: It's not good enough. Viewers hate AI narration. There are things only humans should be allowed to do and this is one. AI should be confined to controlling traffic signals, analyzing the properties of experimental molecular structures and designing space vehicle components. Stuff like that. No arts, no images, no human performances.
I'd completely agree with you. I did this merely as a trial run, and didn't expect it to be anywhere near as successful as it has been. The only reason I chose to do it this way is I was spending way too long trying to record it myself. I've never narrated anything, nor done any speeches or anything along those lines. On top of that, I lack confidence in my speech abilities. I plan on narrating my next video, but it'll be a lot of work on my part. There is another channel called Dark Skies that covers aviation history and has good production quality. But personally (no hate - just preference) I won't watch his videos due to the unnatural way the narration comes across, and almost rushed. But the channel has been pretty successful. So, I agree, a natural human narration is ideal. Also, just wanted to Thank you for your constructive, and non biased criticism. It would have been very easy to just trash talk my work for using an AI narrator, but you chose to express your opinion in a friendly manner. A skill a lot of people lack.
The only things that made me think it was AI before I saw your comments were the audio quality being so good and the pronunciation of “avgas”. This is by far the best ai narration I’ve heard, and it doesn’t bother me at all since it seems that you are still doing a lot of work to write the scripts and find all the footage. I’ve never heard of any of these planes, so please keep it up
Me-262 footage is often used to reference _"the first jet engines"_ but Germany had been using Pulse jet engines on its V1 Buzz Bombers and Rockets on its V2's Germany had switched from offense to defense in 1945 whereas the Allied Air Forces had become offensive. Jet engines are, to this day, thirsty engines. It was therefore, impractical to install the Whittle (Turbofan Jet) Engine into any Allied Aircraft when a flight from London to Berlin and back is more than 1100 miles. Germany meanwhile, had become desperate and was hoping for an advantage over the skies of Germany. Their engines were so inefficient that they made very few attack runs with the Me-262 before having to Land. Germany is often credited with the Turbofan Jet Engine but I remain skeptical that they did any development of their own. People like to also credit Germany with smokeless gunpowder when that was invented by Alfred Nobel. In short, Germany had a network of spies. The Enigma machine was apparently their own, they made other contributions to technology as well but they were no more remarkable than any other well educated, egalitarian society.
You'd have to give me some examples, as off the top of my head, I haven't come across any commercial aircraft that used mixed propulsion, outside of the occasional DC-3 mod. For now, the series is focused on US built mixed propulsion products but if there's enough interest, I may do a part 3 going over foreign designs. I'd still need to compile a list of such aircraft.
@@AviationGeek1903 My Dad wrenched on Mid Continent and Braniff DC-3's that had high altitude second stage supercharger clutches bronze-wired in the "off" position.* Those planes and some other similar also had JATO bottles they used on hot days in La Paz. *When flying passengers within the US.
Nothing about the airfoils of the P4M is exotic. Combination of thicker airfoils at the root for structural stability with a thinner of the same family at the tip for less drag is done in near every wing. If that lead to tip stalls, the wing did not have the proper amount of washout. Also, NACA is pronounced as one word, just like its sucessor NASA.
I know, it was an experiment while I lacked thr courage to narrate it myself. I didn't expect to draw in so much attention so I plan on narrating the next video myself.
My father retired in the mid-1950s from 20 years in the Navy as a radioman on four different patrol/reconnaissance bombers. He related the story of one flight in which a Ryan Fireball pulled up alongside their aircraft, shut off its piston engine and feathered the prop, then proceeded to pull ahead and leave them behind.
I know I replied to your comment earlier but it's not showing up, so excuse me if you seem to get two replies here:
Anyways, I've read stories about FR-1s harassing P-38s with the same stunt. Honestly it would make a great airshow stunt too! The closest I can think of is the Jack Links biplane that's got a jet engine attached to the belly.
On the Curtiss. Curtiss Inc. was a disaster. They bean counters hated spending money on R&D apparently. To the point that NACA and the USAAC torn them a new one for not using NACA data on laminar flow. It was their local congressmen that pressured AAC to continue to buy the now obsolete P40. There was so much turmoil in the company that the XF15 was dropped, along with a 4 engined night fighter for the airforce. I got to watch the beautifully restored XF15 deteriorate ouitdoors at the Quonset Air museum that pretty much only had enough money to keep the lights on. Dunno where it is now.
Thank you, very well done, looking forward to the next episode.
I really enjoyed your video. It is fascinating to learn about these forgotten aircraft.
That was really well done.!
Definitely continue with this series.
Only suggestion, when introducing the next model, give the viewer more time to read the engine specs.
I had to keep pausing the video at just the right time to read it.
Looking forward to the next installment!
Thanks for the support!
Yeah I felt like that was a bit sloppy on my part, but I didn't want to leave a void of silence between each aircraft. Trying find a balance for the transition time. I think it'll come across better in Pt.2, which I'll release this Thursday/Friday. Thanks for the feedback!
Peer reviewed papers
Peer reviewed journals
overlooked
Great video, thank you. My dad flew in the USN 1956-60, his operational service in the Skyraider. As a kid growing up in the late sixties, we asked him " Didn't they HAVE jets then?" He said "Oh they had them, alright. - in the military, you fly what they tell you to fly. That's the deal." Gotta say that the old man had good instincts about serving and moving on, they sure lost a lot of "Spads" (his nickname for the AD-1) over Vietnam ( right around the time my brother and were born in the mid-60s)
The Skyraider has a most impressive service life for a piston driven combat aircraft, considering the XBT2D prototype first flew in '45. Versatile machine.
@AviationGeek1903 Yes, I've long had the print he had made of one he'd flown - he's been gone some time now. I just find it interesting to learn how much his sentiment wasn't really " I didn't GET to fly jets." but more like " I was happy not to fly those things" the more you learn about the early Navy jets. All he wanted to do was be a fighter pilot - and being 10 at the end of ŴW2 how can you be surprised, he flew Piper Cubs in high school. But after leaving the service got out of flying altogether- no interest at all in owning a Cessna after flying the Skyraider. Also understandable
Excellent channel! Subscribed!
Have always been fascinated by mixed -power plant aircraft…
Welcome to the channel!
I've always enjoyed these mixed power aircraft as well. You see a lot of them talked about here and there, but I haven't come across a thorough collection of them in a single video. And I felt like that needed to change, so here we are.
Very Good Little Video!!! 😊😊😊
That definitely cover alot of types you rarely hear about! Also, having the wing of the P4M stall at the tips first is certainly a questionable decision!
This era of aviation is all about questionable decisions!
Rare and unique aircraft, when engineers and designers could really roll the dice.😎
Thanks for your channel!! Lol learned something I've OFTEN wondered about with duel powered aircraft. They burned the same fuel. My number one question was how in the world can you fit both types of fuel in such a small airframe (Fireball), and have any type of longevity in range. Now I know there was only one type of fuel. Love your videos! ❤
Thanks for the support!
Having finished watching the video, I have to add to my previous comment that one of the planes my father flew in (in addition to the PBY, PBM, and PB4Y2) was the P4M Mercator. He told me that his plane carried the designation number "1" on the nose, seen here in some of the photos.
That's awesome! It's a shame the P4M didn't see the same use the Neptune got, but at least it wasn't terminated entirely. In my opinion, the P4M is certainly the cooler of the two.
Great video dude!
The Me262 was originally a mixed propulsion aircraft - it had a piston engine in the nose because the Ju004 engines were horribly unreliable (with a mean time to failure of less than five hours).
I think you're right. I know the earliest flights were under piston power, wtihout the jet engines Installed. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that it retained the piston engine for the reasons you mentioned, but I'd have to do some digging to confirm that. For now, this series will focus on the US mixed propulsion aircraft, but if there is enough interest, I may to a part 3 going over non-US aircraft. Based on technicality, the 262 would be the first mixed propulsion aircraft ever. Thanks for the comment!
That was mostly because the airframe was ready far before the engines were, so it needed testing. Saying that, the engines in production variants had a mean time between failures of roughly 25 hours, not because the design was bad, but because Germany had severe shortages of alloying agents for high-quality steels by that point in the war.
@@onenote6619 The “severe shortage of alloys” as a cause of failure was largely a myth. The first 5000 engines built had an even number of turbine blades, as the blades passed behind the four support struts it induced vibrations that caused resonance and fracturing at the base of the blades. This was finally identified in late 1943 and meant that every engine manufactured to the earlier designs had to be scrapped to accommodate a new turbine and compressor with a different prime number of blades on each stage to avoid resonance. The British engines had this designed in from the start and consequently had an order of magnitude higher reliability.
Most car transmissions use a similar technique to avoid gearbox noise from resonance so two teeth rarely mesh on each rotation of the gears.
Postwar Russian and Czech copies of the Ju004 and BMW003 had no restrictions on materials but also found the designs to be “problematic” from a reliability perspective which is why they switched to cloned derivatives of the British Derwent and Nene.
Similarly the Americans used mostly clones of the British engines (including the axial flow AS Sapphire (J65), De Havilland Goblin (J36), Power Jets W.1.X (J31) etc.) The axial flow J35 was an exception being developed in parallel with the J31 by GE and Allison (note - without German input but with knowledge of the Beryl engine.)
Comments:
Longer duration on the title cards.
Softer/smoother transitions between images (sometimes they seem to flick over sharply, which is a bit jarring).
But those two little points aside, very enjoyable 🎉
Oh, and just one more thing.... Keep your eyes open for other rare oddities hiding in the background. Did you spot the pair of Arado jets?
I think the title cards came across a but better in Pt.2, and I have a new video coming out soon that" (hopefully) been further refined. I'm working in a video editing software that I've not really used much (as I'm not fluent in any video editing software) so still refining the technique. Hopefully the transitions aren't so rough.
Thanks for taking the time to provide feedback, I greatly appreciate it!
@@AviationGeek1903 no probs 😁 I've done a few videos myself. My editting "skills" are limited to a picture/video slide show with music over the top 😂 So I feel your pain.
@mittam.Motorsport
@gavindavies793 it's all a work in progress. Practice makes perfect, right? I appreciate the feedback! Cheers.
wonderful History, thank you....
At the 18:00 minute mark the Martin P4M Mercator is photographed in color with a 1960 or later white 2-door Corvair in the background.
Good longevity for a 1946 aircraft with only 21 units produced.
The Mercators were withdrawn from service in 1960. In 1951 the remaining 18 were modified for the SIGINT role, with Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron One (VQ-1) patrolling the coasts of North Korea, China, Vietnam, and the eastern Soviet Union, sometimes masquerading as P2V Neptunes with false serial numbers and fake radio communications. One was shot down by Chinese fighters and another heavily damaged by North Korean Mig 17s in 1959. The Mercators replacementin its role was tbe EA-3B Skywarrior which also had the advantage of being carrier capable.
Good stuff.
In your write-up, you iterated: A paid "Text to Speech", service. What is that, exactly?? You mean, Al??? I could not tell, if that was Al, it was that good. Thanks for introducing me, to types of mixed-propulsion aircraft, I was unaware of!!! I'll be watching, part 2, shortly.
Yep, it's an AI powered service called ElevenLabs. It's not perfect, but it's good enough.
A few years ago, I would have never considered using a text to speech system as it was too unnatural.
@@AviationGeek1903 My two cents: It's not good enough. Viewers hate AI narration. There are things only humans should be allowed to do and this is one. AI should be confined to controlling traffic signals, analyzing the properties of experimental molecular structures and designing space vehicle components. Stuff like that. No arts, no images, no human performances.
I'd completely agree with you. I did this merely as a trial run, and didn't expect it to be anywhere near as successful as it has been. The only reason I chose to do it this way is I was spending way too long trying to record it myself. I've never narrated anything, nor done any speeches or anything along those lines. On top of that, I lack confidence in my speech abilities. I plan on narrating my next video, but it'll be a lot of work on my part.
There is another channel called Dark Skies that covers aviation history and has good production quality. But personally (no hate - just preference) I won't watch his videos due to the unnatural way the narration comes across, and almost rushed. But the channel has been pretty successful. So, I agree, a natural human narration is ideal.
Also, just wanted to Thank you for your constructive, and non biased criticism. It would have been very easy to just trash talk my work for using an AI narrator, but you chose to express your opinion in a friendly manner. A skill a lot of people lack.
The only things that made me think it was AI before I saw your comments were the audio quality being so good and the pronunciation of “avgas”. This is by far the best ai narration I’ve heard, and it doesn’t bother me at all since it seems that you are still doing a lot of work to write the scripts and find all the footage. I’ve never heard of any of these planes, so please keep it up
A tail dragger 262, wow.
Airframe testing before the jet engines were ready to go. Taildragger configuration kept the prop off the ground.
Me-262 footage is often used to reference _"the first jet engines"_ but Germany had been using Pulse jet engines on its V1 Buzz Bombers and Rockets on its V2's
Germany had switched from offense to defense in 1945 whereas the Allied Air Forces had become offensive. Jet engines are, to this day, thirsty engines. It was therefore, impractical to install the Whittle (Turbofan Jet) Engine into any Allied Aircraft when a flight from London to Berlin and back is more than 1100 miles. Germany meanwhile, had become desperate and was hoping for an advantage over the skies of Germany. Their engines were so inefficient that they made very few attack runs with the Me-262 before having to Land.
Germany is often credited with the Turbofan Jet Engine but I remain skeptical that they did any development of their own. People like to also credit Germany with smokeless gunpowder when that was invented by Alfred Nobel. In short, Germany had a network of spies. The Enigma machine was apparently their own, they made other contributions to technology as well but they were no more remarkable than any other well educated, egalitarian society.
Not bold enough to name an airplane today. Fireball 2'd b hard to get excited about flying in
1"07 So, enter the magnificent Sea Fury...."We don't need no stinkin' turbines!".....
Are you going to cover mixed power commercial aircraft?
You'd have to give me some examples, as off the top of my head, I haven't come across any commercial aircraft that used mixed propulsion, outside of the occasional DC-3 mod. For now, the series is focused on US built mixed propulsion products but if there's enough interest, I may do a part 3 going over foreign designs. I'd still need to compile a list of such aircraft.
@@AviationGeek1903 My Dad wrenched on Mid Continent and Braniff DC-3's that had high altitude second stage supercharger clutches bronze-wired in the "off" position.* Those planes and some other similar also had JATO bottles they used on hot days in La Paz.
*When flying passengers within the US.
The Lancastrian comes to mind
Nothing about the airfoils of the P4M is exotic. Combination of thicker airfoils at the root for structural stability with a thinner of the same family at the tip for less drag is done in near every wing. If that lead to tip stalls, the wing did not have the proper amount of washout.
Also, NACA is pronounced as one word, just like its sucessor NASA.
Pity manufactures don't build planes on a "Pretty" scale, there are so many that would have been better
salt lake
Walter c Dove
Propelsion
Turbo jet
Carier
Rolex Rolex Rolex .....
The AI voice is annoying.
I know, it was an experiment while I lacked thr courage to narrate it myself. I didn't expect to draw in so much attention so I plan on narrating the next video myself.