Comments on: RUMPLER Designs Largest Plane (Feb, 1929)

By: Jari

Jari — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:12:32 +0000

jayessell: That’s the Kalinin K-7 I mentioned in #8. Here’s more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalinin_K-7

By: jayessell

jayessell — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:55:18 +0000

Here’s a webpage with photos of the gigantic Russian aircraft that may or may not have been used in WWII.

http://englishrussia.com/?p=2231

Not sure about the pictures with the Flying Saucer.

By: Firebrand38

Firebrand38 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:28:49 +0000

Tracy B: Nice of you to mention it. You’re quite welcome.

By: Tracy B

Tracy B — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:49:05 +0000

Firebrand38–

Those are great websites.

By: William Deering

William Deering — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:15:46 +0000

Thanks Eamonn and Firebrand38 for leading to the respective good links of http://www.flightglobal.com and http://www.air-and-space.com

By: Firebrand38

Firebrand38 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:12:41 +0000

Harry: It was something http://www.air-and-space.com/n.....re%20l.jpg
Those were the first tires on the XB-36 http://www.air-and-space.com/n.....ht%20l.jpg
From a terrific B-36 website http://www.air-and-space.com/b-36%20variants.htm

By: Harry

Harry — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:48:44 +0000

Toronto and Tracy B; I remember playing on a B-36 inner tube in the early 1960s. It was HUGE! We took it out in the ocean and nearly floated away. Great fun, but more dangerous than we realized.

By: Tracy B

Tracy B — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:49:21 +0000

I wonder what the gross weight of the plane was using those 10 foot tires. The first two B-36 planes also had those huge single wheel main landing gear. Only three airport runways could handle that airplane with out buckling the pavement. Later B-36 aircraft went to a four wheel landing gear assembly similar to what is used with many aircraft these days. Interestingly, the B-36 was also tested with track-type landing gear.

By: Toronto

Toronto — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:37:38 +0000

I, for one, intend to use one of the inner tubes from those ten foot tires on my next vacation trip.

By: Joshua A.C. Newman

Joshua A.C. Newman — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:45:22 +0000

Yeah, the lack of fuel tanks was what struck me first. There’s a hallway where there should be fuel. Fuel for the 40-some hours it would take to cross the Atlantic at that speed. So we can assume that the interiors are speculative. The asymmetrical wings and off-center vertical stabilizer are rendering errors that probably come from the same lack of care.

But the model seems like a real model, which doesn’t strike me as something Modern Mechanix would have made.

By: Eamonn

Eamonn — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:26:17 +0000

Newman, from what I’ve been able to read, that seaplane was what he was working on. There were numerous designs, and he even toyed with more than 2 hulls but it was always intended to land on water. There wouldn’t have been a runway in the world long enough to handle this beast and transoceanic planes were almost always seaplanes.

Where the magazine got the idea of wheels I don’t know, but as others have pointed out it isn’t the most accurate diagram in the world. Modern Mechanics was known for writing up stories based on third hand accounts without any fact checking. Rumpler was a aircraft engineer, I don’t think he would have designed a plane with uneven wings and no fuel.

By: Firebrand38

Firebrand38 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:27:42 +0000

Joshua A.C. Newman: 1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: What? A swallow carrying a coconut? King Arthur: It could grip it by the husk! 1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: It's not a question of where he grips it! It's a simple question of weight ratios! A five ounce bird could not carry a one pound coconut. King Arthur: Well, it doesn't matter. Will you go and tell your master that Arthur from the Court of Camelot is here? 1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: Listen. In order to maintain air-speed velocity, a swallow needs to beat its wings forty-three times every second, right? King Arthur: Please! 1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: Am I right?

By: Joshua A.C. Newman

Joshua A.C. Newman — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:12:29 +0000

It’s a great link, but I don’t see the plane in question, just a giant seaplane by the dude.

Jayessel, I’m afraid not. That’s why there are engineers. It’s a matter of mass to accelerate; mass to lift; lift produced by a particular 3d shape of wing; and drag produced by the whole system.

The guy *did* produce a lot of airplanes, though. We can assume that, while the logistics may have been out of whack, the theoretical construction of the planes was reasonably sound, particularly since planes get more aerodynamically efficient as they get larger.

By: jayessell

jayessell — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:02:59 +0000

Photoshop allows nearly anyone to show a VW towing a Battleship.
Is there an app that says wings like so needs engines like so to fly?

By: Firebrand38

Firebrand38 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:32:36 +0000

Eamonn: All Hail Eamonn! Reject the shoe and follow the gourd!
That’s a great link.

By: Eamonn

Eamonn — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:54:41 +0000

http://www.flightglobal.com/pd.....01553.html

Behold! I bring the gift of diagrams, numbers, and actual technical specifications!

By: Joshua A.C. Newman

Joshua A.C. Newman — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:08:37 +0000

It’s no wonder it’s so huge. It carries 28 passengers!

Those wingtips are total nonsense. The planform is one that was designed from experience, present on many biplanes of the day. That weird cantilevered space underneath is not only unnecessarily complex, but it eliminates much of the functionality of the wing. On the other hand, that dead space seems to only be present on the 3/4 view and not the elevation view, so clearly, someone was makin’ shit up.

Herr Rumpler did, indeed, make a bunch of aircraft. All are more elegant than this thing, though they’re much closer to the model than the drawing.

By: Toronto

Toronto — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:08:18 +0000

Yeah, I agree – a photo of a model.

Seemed to spend a lot of time and effort on what amounts to the storage system, didn’t they? Lessons learned from the airship industry, I suppose.

By: Firebrand38

Firebrand38 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:47:38 +0000

Warren: Looks like a photo of a scale model to me.

By: Warren

Warren — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:01:31 +0000

“A gigantic hangar is shown in the photo below with the big ship on the track.”

¿Que? I see no “photo”, just another artist’s rendering of what the plane might have looked like next to a hangar that clearly didn’t exist.

Oh well. The design is wonderfully 1930s fanciful. One imagines adventure stories being whipped up that featured a cast of brave heroes engaged in derring-do in just such an aircraft-cum-portable headquarters.

By: Firebrand38

Firebrand38 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:15:34 +0000

Tracy B: The flying Ford Pinto may be found here http://www.transeum.com/weird-.....pinto.html with video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzv4q5EEy1k

By: Tracy B

Tracy B — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:18:43 +0000

I never thought of comparing this bird to a KIA, but there was a case when they added wings, tail, engine, etc., to a Ford Pinto and made it fly if not crash on the first try. I’ll have to look up that Russian engine. Pratt & Whitney made the R-4360 28 cylinder Wasp Major “corncob” engine that powered the KC-97 tanker, C-124 globemaster transport and B-36 Peacemaker bomber. The latter had six of those engines and later added four jets, for a total of 10 engines!

By: Don

Don — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:35:18 +0000

It’s just a drawing! It’s not like it ever flew or anything, is it?

By: Firebrand38

Firebrand38 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:12:06 +0000

Actually you can see that the port rudder is on the center line of the fuselage while the starboard rudder is slightly inboard. Also, if you look at the oblique drawing at the top of the page, the wing tips are scalloped under at the ends and that would create the effect when the top skin is removed.

However as I said earlier the distance from the lounge to the outermost blade on the port side of the plane is 0.9 inches (on my monitor) while it’s an even 1.00 inch on the starboard side. Whoever drew this was probably a crummy artist.

The feature I was talking about showing was fitting in the landing wheels on the left side of the paper. To me, it was like the whole top view drawing had to get “slid” to the right to make room to show the wheel on the side view.

By: Firebrand38

Firebrand38 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:01:01 +0000

Toronto: Fair enough….then it was probably drawn on a Friday afternoon and approved on a Monday morning.

By: Toronto

Toronto — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 01:36:11 +0000

Firebrand38: That would make sense if the longer side was the cutaway, but it’s not.

The horizontal stabilizer also looks asymetric in the drawing.

By: Firebrand38

Firebrand38 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:19:00 +0000

Harry: Hold a ruler up the screen, one wing is definitely longer than the other. Probably just artistic license to fit all the features in one drawing.

By: Harry

Harry — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:43:31 +0000

Is it just my eyes, or did anybody else notice the asymmetry on the first page? It appears that the right wing is longer that the left.

By: Eamonn

Eamonn — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:30:52 +0000

Harry, that’s the smokestack.

By: Harry

Harry — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 16:37:31 +0000

I’m still trying to figure out the big Sousaphone bell above the galley.