"13 Experimental Aircraft That Were Too Weird for Use in WW2" Topic

"More airplanes rolled off assembly lines during World War Two than in any other period in the history of aviation. In fact, between 1939 and 1945, Allied factories cranked out a staggering 633,000 aircraft. That's 288 a day – or one every five minutes for six years straight. For their part, Germany, Italy and Japan manufactured more than a quarter million machines. In all, at least 750 distinct models of aircraft were in production during the war years. And amazingly, more than 250 additional designs, from fighters and bombers to trainers and transports, were evaluated and rejected by the world's air forces. Some of these also-rans were passed over for being too expensive, others were too slow, ungainly or not safe for combat. Yet despite their unsuitability, a number of these experimental aircraft featured designs so innovative and outlandish they call out for recognition even now, more than 70 years later. Let's take a look at some…"
Full article here
link

Hope you enjoy!.

Amicalement
Armand

Good to see the Moonbat on the list. One of my faves. I've always wanted a model or miniature of the Airacuda, too.

EDIT: Well, what do you know, there are 1/72 kits of the Airacuda now. Nice!

The Lockheed L-133 was a design I would like to see in miniature. Since I game Juft46 with 1/600 aircraft I might just have to try to make one some day.

Didn't I read somewhere that the P-82 (or F-82 perhaps) saw some service in Korea?

Doug

Yes, the twin mustang actually served.
-Kle.

Glad you enjoyed the article boys!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

The Moonbat would have been the most terrifying ground-target-annihilator until the advent of the A-10. What isn't really mentioned in the article is that it was to mount six M4 37mm cannon, otherwise used as the P-39's main gun. Forget 'bomber destroyer', this thing would have been quite useful for sawing small ships in half.

The Moonbat was cursed by the engines it was using, Continental IX-1430 'hyper engines'. While they made better than 1 horsepower per cubic inch, they spent so much time in development hell that they were overtaken by simple improvements to existing designs.

I'm really entertained by the 'please save my plane' variant of the Moonbat proposed by the company president: two Merlins and two Westinghouse turbojets(!).

The Flying Flapjack suffered from one critical problem: insufficient horsepower. I've been oddly tempted to build a new version, with the engine out of a C130 providing oomph. Yes, one engine, with a simple gearbox to split the power to two props. Probably go with individual cannons instead of a gatling, but missiles wouldn't be a good option. Very few places for a missile to launch forward, between the props!