The Design of High-Speed Military Airplanes

T DESIGN of present military airplanes is changing so fast that any discussion of the subject is likely to be very far behind the latest trends by the time it is published. At the beginning of the war this was particularly true. I t seemed that in a period of a few weeks many factors which should have been apparent in military designs made themselves known. The lack of armor, fuel tank protection and ample armament required hasty revision of many outstanding types. After a short while, the air forces of the major military powers could be evaluated in terms of their outstanding shortcomings or merits. The success of Great Britain's eight-gun fighter and power turrets was one of the dominating factors in turning back Hitler's attacks last fall. The foresight of the British in providing such fundamentally sound design elements cannot be too highly praised. Perhaps the outstanding features of the German air force were its great use of the dive bomber, the highly coordinated tactical coordination between the air forces and ground troops and its successful use of fuel injection engines and protected fuel tanks. As the war developed, it became apparent that our own air force had called the turn very successfullly with its development of the long-range four-engined bomber, which had been greatly criticized in Europe, the turbo supercharger, and its prize bomb sight. While all countries had in some measure at least experimented with most of the above features, and in some cases had carried the respective developments (such as dive bombing) to high degrees of perfection, it is believed that the items indicated above were the outstanding elements in the air forces of the countries named from a point of view of technical development. When the early war experience showed up the shortcomings of many service airplanes in armor, tank protection and armament, a great hue and cry was raised in the United States bemoaning the fact that our aircraft were so far behind the European types in these factors. Properly analyzing the facts in the case, however, shows that, with the exceptions noted above, all of the major air forces were very nearly on a par in being caught without proper protection and hitting power. In this paper, the discussion will be limited to a discussion of design trends of the high-speed military