Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: est1895 on July 22, 2012, 04:47:40 pm
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I have enclosed a link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK8ydLY5QHQ
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Had a fact file thing on this years ago, very interesting design, though I question how vulnerable the rear engine would have been in a dogfight.
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I doubt the rear-engine would have been a liability in combat... more like a reliability advantage. If it was to be used as a dogfighter though, its greatest liability would have been pilot visibility.
As a point of fact however, there were piston engined fighters of WW2 that exceeded the Do-335, which topped out at 474 mph. The P-51H (http://www.answers.com/topic/north-american-p-51-variants-1#P-51H) model had a higher-powered Merlin variant which, after boosting, could reach 487 mph, though it did not see service in combat. The fastest that I am aware of however, was an experimental model of the P-47 (http://www.answers.com/topic/p-47-thunderbolt#XP-47H_.2F_XP-47J), the "J" model, which could hit 505 mph. It had a bulbous propeller spinner with a fan mounted ahead of the engine, similar to the FW-190 early variants. It also had a much narrower engine cowling with special engine boosting to 2800 hp, and had 2 of its machine guns removed. It was intended to shoot down V-1s, but it didn't proceed beyond the prototype.
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Honorable mention is the Supermarine Spiteful. The Mk 16 could hit 490+ mph. It came along too late to see any real combat, but then again, so did the Dornier.