Bristol's Gull-Winged Failure | Bristol Type 133 [Aircraft Overview #96]
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- Опубліковано 2 лип 2024
- Today we’re looking at the Bristol Type 133, a single-seat, all-metal, low-wing monoplane fighter from the mid 1930s. It was one of several unlucky designs that tried to usher in the era of the sleek monoplane fighter for the RAF, a task that was eventually completed by the Hawker Hurricane, and because of the Hurricane’s success this innovative design, like that of the Gloster monoplane fighter that we covered several months ago, is mostly ignored by aviation historians.
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Sources:
Sinnott.C.S. (2014), The RAF and Aircraft Design: Air Staff Operational Requirements 1923-1939.
Barned.C.H (1964), Bristol Aircraft Since 1910.
Meekoms.K.J & Morgan.E.B (1994), The British Aircraft Specifications File.
Bristol 127, 128, 129 drawings - dingeraviation.net/bristol/br... - Наука та технологія
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F.A.Q Section
Q: Do you take aircraft requests?
A: I have a list of aircraft I plan to cover, but feel free to add to it with suggestions:)
Q: Why do you use imperial measurements for some videos, and metric for others?
A: I do this based on country of manufacture. Imperial measurements for Britain and the U.S, metric for the rest of the world, but I include text in my videos that convert it for both.
Q: Will you include video footage in your videos, or just photos?
A: Video footage is very expensive to licence, if I can find footage in the public domain I will try to use it, but a lot of it is hoarded by licencing studies (British Pathe, Periscope films etc). In the future I may be able to afford clips :)
Q: Why do you sometimes feature images/screenshots from flight simulators?
A: Sometimes there are not a lot of photos available for certain aircraft, so I substitute this with digital images that are as accurate as possible.
When i see anything with "Rex's hangar " really
Could you do a video on the mug 15?
My friend you are the best........Thanks 👍
Shoe🇺🇸
I'd very much like to see a video about the gypsy moth, I've loved it since building a model of one in the '70s, just never learned anything about it's history or development.
@Aqua Fyre Its on the list :)
Bristol really was the master of missed opportunities, wild designs and incredible 'what-ifs'!
The Beaufighter was the Axis' multiple-missed-opportunities to score.
This was definatelly a lost opportunity that makes you wonder about what the RAF would have looked like in 1939.
plus the RN would have been made to adopt it too
@@Knight6831 Hmmm .... That is a reach.
@@WALTERBROADDUS Jesus you get everywhere dont you😮
@@hughgordon6435 It's a Small World after all...🌎🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶
@@WALTERBROADDUS why
I have to give that aircraft my highest award..."The I want to fly it" rating... it just look like it would be an awesome plane to fly.
Well done Rex - another almost completely unrecognised or covered aircraft.
Huh, i did know ABOUT this plane, but i hadn't realised how ridiculously unfortunate it was in being written off.
The RR Goshawk killed off more fighter designs in the early '30s than pretty much anything else.
Did air ministry people have stock in Rolls Royce ? They wanted Rolls to power nearly everything .
@@garyhooper1820 They were actually trying very hard to find alternatives capable of supplying similar power:weight ratios in order to diversify supply & in case serious faults became known (some of the early Merlins had issues with cylinder blocks cracking & porous head castings).
The Merlin was just so bloody good it was hard to beat
I think a deep dive into the Hawker Hurricane is in order.
She doesn't get enough love.
Looks like a cross between a Zero and Corsair ! :D
I'd say more like a cross between a P-36 and a Corsair.
Reminds me of the interwar designs of Jiro Horikoshi (designer of the Zero). He also liked inverted gull wings.
@@user-do5zk6jh1k That design has a great pair of advantages for naval designs. Short robust landing gear combined with room for a larger propeller. I am honestly surprised that more people did not use it. With single engine naval fighters/interceptors at least. I get that the main disadvantage is visibility during landing. Still the advantages are so big for machines of the time, I am surprised by how few designs even attempted it.
@@whyjnot420 Vis is only a result of the Corsairs long nose. Has nothing to do with the wing and gear arrangement.
@@user-do5zk6jh1k It is always going to push the nose up compared to having no anhedral there. How much of a downside that is (pun very much intended) , that is dependent on other aspects of the design. The long nose of the Corsair simply exacerbated it. At least when talking taildraggers.
This has always been one of my interwar favourites since playing WoWP, where it features prominently. Would love to build a model kit of it and maybe do a What-If? Scheme for it. I can see these taking the historical place of the Gloster Gladiator in places like Finland, the Middle East or China
Ah, one of the other five people who played WoWP! I loved flying this little thing.
@@OnboardG1 Once I realised it featured the Vickers Venom I went crazy
I was just saying in another comment above that I wished someone did a model of this aircraft to do what-if markings of it in the service of the SAAF or RAF Colonial markings, Singapore, or what have you. ;)
@@athelwulfgalland If I had the money to run a kit manufacturer, it would so be happening
@@benhooper1956 I know, right?! Lately I've gotten to know a few people that run 3D printing businesses including one stateside, one in Greece & another in Hungary. The Hungarian fellow does do full kits but his prices make my wallet weep. lol I only have one of his kits & I got it at 1/10th retail price on eBay.
If I could afford to run an injection modeling company I think I'd first want to make a high quality B-32 injection molded model kit though. It's the only US Strategic/Heavy Bomber that saw combat service that has never appeared as an injection molded kit. It also holds the ignominious record as having been the last US aircraft shot down by the Japanese.
It was a very beautiful aircraft at a time when biplanes were the norm. A very lost chance due to only one air frame being made. You should always have a back up. The air frame is very reminiscent of a Corsair with its gull wings, but it fuselage shows hints of Seversky /Republic models
The similarity was there because of all of the same thinking that was going on at that time, raindrop format to lessen drag resulting in the familiar fuselage format with a radial engine and also with the wings where it was recognised that a right angle join to the fuselage gave the least drag. Both of these were challenged with the development of effective and efficient wing filleting at the fuselage intersection and the use of inline engines which naturally encouraged the arrow type of fuselage.
Beautiful? What ? It is one of the most ugly aeroplanes the British designed (they had a knack for designing ugly aircraft yet produced some of the nicest, like the Spitfire and the Lancaster, and some others of note).
Inverted gull wing aircraft look so attractive to me even if this planform is not particularly aerodynamically advantageous. If for no other reason, thank you for this discourse on a poorly known, potential Battle of Britain fighter. From your detailed coverage of the plane and its teething problems, I rather think that the crash of the single prototype due to a really pretty basic pilot error was a blessing. Had there been competition from the Bristol plane there might have been less Hurricanes produced. The Spitfire might well have still been developed and ordered in numbers, but IMO the Bristol would have been even less competent than the Hurricane against the ME109. As we know, the Hurricane bore the brunt of the battle in the early part of the Battle of Britain.
Some of my favourite subjects all together.
Awesome presentation Sir. Thank you Rex
Great video!
Really fascinating, as are all
Your videos, thanks for all the hard work
Another cracking video,Mr Rexy👍👍👍
Welcome back. Thank you for the great video and hope you enjoyed your break.
Never heard of it. Thanks
Rex, check the specs again at 9:05, the metric equivalent of the length and wingspan are mixed up with the imperial measurements.
Very interesting story.
What I’m learning is that you should just start with a large rudder.
They always try to skimp on the rudder. 🤷♂️
Neato. Thanks for posting this.
Thank you for another very informative plane that I did not know about. Well done! Looking forward to your video on the Fiat CR 42.
The one that really intrigues me is the Blackburn B.20, which seemed to be a really good solution to lots of problems with flying boats or floatplanes. Imagine a 300mph flying boat bomber. It was scuppered (word fully intended) by using Vulture engines.
The Vulture was aptly named. It picked the bones clean of aircraft that got saddled with it.
Love your work
That smiley face on the Bristol 123!
I really love your videos on the (mostly unknown) aircraft of the Interwar period!
👍👏
You are a real strong (subsonic?!) wind of fresh air to the Aviation video scholarship.
I am a little bored on the interminable rehashing on the more famous WW2 airplanes ... 😴
Understandable forgetting the undercart was down at that time period. Many pilots trained on the Tutor and Gladiator forgot to 'Lower' their wheels while flying their new Hurris and Spits.
Thanks, Rex.
Love these interwar planes, Golden Age. Anything was on the table.
Another aircraft I never heard of! Great video!
Have you covered the Swedish stop gap fighter J22 of WW2? There's a restoration project ongoing in Sweden right now, where they are trying to get one back flying. The aircraft was a real hotrod, down low. They claimed it was the fastest aircraft with a 1000 hp engine in the world. Unfortunately, not everyone else was restricted to a 1000 hp engine in October 1943 when it entered service... Still, a very impressive stop gap fighter.
Looking forward to your hawker history part 2, and hoping it covered the Hart and its variation.
"A British Corsair"? A closer comparison might be as "a British Seversky P-35".
Look at those Bristols!
Interesting video
As usual, Air Ministry involvement proved damaging. Those companies that managed to privately develop projects without government involvement fared better.
The lovechild of a Seversky P-35 and an F4U Corsair!
The side view at 8:42 conjured up the early P-47 Thunderbolt for a brief moment.
Neat!🐿
Fascinating! You give ed nash a run for his money!!
That 129 was fantastic.
Thanks
Good luck with the house hunting! 👍
If you want massive range, one way to do it is through the use of a 'wet' fin, or building internal conforming fuel tanks between the cockpit and rudder if possible.
OK, you're right, I hadn't heard of it, but that's why I watch your (excellent) channel. A serious leap forward in design and concept which could have changed the whole RAF paradigm, but had to sit back and watch Hawker's Hurricane do that instead. Bristol just didn't get the breaks, did they?
Dora Wings. Your next idea for a kit.
0:45 This Gloster G.38 F.5/34 metal monoplane looks very similar to the PZL P.50 "Jastrząb" (pol. Hawk). She has also similar armament and performance
Both used the same Bristol Mercury engine which does give some similarity in appearance. The Jastrzab had a significantly shorter wingspan and length than the F5/34 but very similar weight. With higher wing loading, half the armament, lower maximum speed, and substantially lower maximum ceiling the Jastrzab clearly needed more development. PZL had, by 1939, already started design work on the PZL53 Jasztrzab II with an engine with 30% greater power and adding 2x20mm cannons.
The follow up, the Type 146, was much sleeker, with an 'almost bubble canopy'. It too had no chance to enter production.
This prototype was 18mph than the prototype that became the gladiator with the same engine. I can imagine with the uprated mercury that was used in the production version of the gladiator it could have topped 280mph with a supieror climb and dive rate. Thus of 150-200 of these were ordered instead of the gladiator the early stages of the desert campaign and the defence of malta would have been rather more successful/less costly. It would also have got the RAF ground crew familiar with repair and maintenance of stressed metal airframes a good three years before the arrival of the spitfire.
"Extended the rudder after initial trials showed a lack of directional control" seems to be a recurring theme with these interwar aircraft. Was this due to some basic principle that wasn't yet understood or was it just an attempt to make a drag-inducing element as small as possible and incrementally expand it to what was determined to be the minimum viable size?
Hard to say, my guess is the increased weight in the front end with heavier engines, more guns, and metal is what required more surface area to push the tail left or right.
It would be amusing if there is one aircraft somewhere in the period that looked at how everyone had to make the tails bigger every time, and decided to go with a tail that ended up being too big.
As a 'What could have been' aircraft, it is interesting to note the similarities it has with the Seversky P 35, & then consider how this aircraft evolved through the P 43
Lancer and into the P 47 Thunderbolt!
Imagine a similar genesis occuring with the Bristol 133! A bubble canopy, cranked wings, and Centaurus 18cylinder engine!
Model scratchbuilders. Your challenge awaits!
The _Type 129_ might not have performed well as a fighter, but IMO it looked _COOL._
i really appreciate your content. i was wondering if you might do a review of the Northrop model 3A? ive always been fascinated with this aircraft in that there's no longer any example in existent. typical stubby fighter of the time in development during WW2. thak you
regards Brian
It does look a lot like the American Seversky P-35, and that spawned a whole series of successful radial engine fighters, so that is interesting to think about what could have been if the 133 had survived.
Great job! I am surprised again ;-) This is not easy considering that I am flying since 1986, and started to be interested in aviation at least 10 yeas earlier . Your way of presenting , speech , fun and comments are exceptional. Please keep up your great work. All the beast! W.R.
Please do one on the he 100, bf 109, f4f
My favourite ride in World of Warplanes
It reminds me of the P-47A
Okay then Now I know where the Pitts came from, the Bristol 123 actually looks like a what if the Pitts was made back in the 30s.
Ah that was absolutely fantastic. 1934...
Mr. Rex's Hangar,
have you treated what could have been the WW2 Italian "Stuka" made by Piaggio ?
I believe it's the Piaggio P119.
Let us know. Thanks !
That Gloster aeroplane looks a bit like the Gloster Whittle.
I have noticed that many aircraft that failed not because of the basic design or concept of the aircraft but the failure of the power plants. I would be interested in the reason or reasons for so many power plants not reaching their expected specs. Was it the metallurgy, engineering knowledge or capability or other factors that were involved.
Just imagine if they had built two airframes for the testing program.
Stability problems apparently from an undersized rudder, really. That is not a rudder, that is a bump in the rear fuselage.
I wonder if anybody's got a list of all the aircraft programs that went t$ts up because of a prototype crash. XB-70, this thing, etc.
The XB-70 was already cancelled by the time it had its crash. The concept had been undermined by the emergence of surface-to-air missiles. The two prototypes were relegated to experiment duty for several years
@@pavarottiaardvark3431 Yeah, the only reason it was flying at all at the time of the crash was that NASA got its grounding postponed so they could use it as a high-speed test aircraft for the SST and other projects. If not for that, it would have already been grounded for a couple of years.
@@pavarottiaardvark3431 Ah? Didn't know. Thanks! (But why was it flying, then?)
@@MM22966 Used as a testbed for high-flight-speed experiments, run jointly with NASA. Even if a plane isn't going into production it'd be silly to waste a Mach 3 airframe.
On the day of the crash it was actually doing some publicity filming for General Electric, who wanted footage of it flying beside their other planes.
@@pavarottiaardvark3431 Neat! Thanks!
This aircraft would have most certainly been obsolete once the Hurricane started flying. Any fighter saddled with a British radial engine would be, given how under-powered British radials were at the time. Perhaps with an inline engine it might have amounted to something, similar to the evolution of the unspectacular Hawk 75 into the ubiquitous Warhawk series.
Who knows, a radial-engined monoplane fighter in service may have pushed for earlier introduction of a Hercules or even the Centaurus.
Or perhaps not, considering the relative difficulties with sleeve-valve designs at the time, a more traditional poppet valve variant.
@@whtalt92 What's really interesting to me is that, even after the Hercules engine became successful, Britain didn't build a radial-engine monoplane fighter until the Tempest II in late 1944. The Hercules was powerful enough to be used as a fighter engine (going from 1,290 HP in the Mk. I to 1,650 HP in the Mk.VI) but, it was mostly used in multi-engine aircraft. An earlier introduction of the Hercules wouldn't have changed anything; the Air Ministry had already made up their minds about radial-engine fighters and wouldn't be dissuaded of their view until the arrival of the truly outstanding Centaurus much later.
One look at this lovely design & the air service clearly would have had the potential of a great carrier based airframe ahead of time.
Sheesh…
Oh to be able to go back in a Time Machine to the 1930’s and have a few quiet words in the right ears to:
1: Build several test airframes.
2: Make sure test pilots remember to retract undercarriage after takeoff
3: develop an automated system for said undercarriage!!!
This aircraft clearly was by implication a decade ahead of its time.
Pretty sure all the British Corsairs came from Vought. They worked out pretty well, too, aside from the accident rate.
Brewster-built Corsairs too (Mk.III), however due to the relatively poor quality they were not used in frontline service.
Seems stupid not to equip the plane with some kind of reminder of the position of the undercarriage. This incident seems so familiar . Losing your only prototype over such a silly mistake is so disappointing.
In ways it kinda looks like the Breda Ba.27 Metallico but with Gull wings
I get shit happens, but as a test pilot how do you just "forget" your landing gear is down, or forget to raise it on the first place.
Retractable undercarriage was a new thing. The pilots of the time just weren’t used to it. The pilot who wrote the plane off was not the guy who’d done most of the flight testing.
So, this wasn't actually a failure, but unfortunate.
ERROR: at 9:20, the length and wingspan of the wings is wrong, either in Imperial units or in metric units
True, He's got the metric units the wrong way around - The Span should be 11.89 metres and the length 8.53 metres.
I reckon the gull wing design would have soon disappeared from successive models (with stronger undercarriage strut design) and essentially became sea fury like in the same manner the P-35 became the Thunderbolt. The F4U never really needed its fancy wing after 1940, it was just Chance Voughts own stubborn fetish. Willy Messerschmitt with his gawdy undercarriage et all.
Wekcome back 👍
Corsair and a Zero had a baby.
Had a crap, more to the point. It was ugly and yes, I know, it was to be a warplane and didn't have to be beautiful but this thing didn't come close to anything much above "ugly". Surely the British could have done better.
The Hurricane was streets ahead.
I never understood the British fascination with steam cooling.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the inverted gull-wings?
The most important advantage is, it keeps the undercarriage short, lightweight and sturdy. It improves the vision from the cockpit, forward down over the wing leading edge. It gets the wing guns further down, making access to them a bit easier. It gets the center of gravity lower than a straight wing, which improves roll stability. It increases the vertical distance between the wing and the elevator, improving elevator efficiency (if the fuselage doesn't disturb the airflow back there anyway). When the undercarriage fails, the wings act as skids, reducing the change of the engine to hit the ground in a belly landing and slightly reducing the change of the aircraft from flipping over in a belly landung.
The major downside is the way more complex, more expensive, heavier, harder to repair, wing spar design. Other downsides are more complex aileron and flap actuator mechanisms. A possible downside is, there can be aerodynamic interferences on the top side of the wing kink, messing up handling characteristics or even performance. If that happens, it's hard to get it right without starting from scratch. The aerodynamic stability of an aircraft with inverted gull wing is a bit harder to calculate, especially when you have to do it with pencil and paper.
@@Itsjustme-Justme
Wow.
Thank you.
You know your stuff.
INTERFERENCE DRAG REDUCTION. SEE GREGS AIRPLANES.
@@donaldbowen5423
Thanks.
@@Itsjustme-Justme "It gets the center of gravity lower than a straight wing, which improves roll stability. "
I'm trying to understand why that would be true but I'm having trouble.
First of all, lowers the CG with reference to what? Maybe with reference to the fuselage waterline, but with reference to the wing is raises the CG. Either way it more importantly changes the location of the wing with reference to the fuselage, placing it further below the CG. This has the effect of adding negative dihedral angle to the wing, reducing lateral stability. One can see a noticeably large positive dihedral angle in the outer wing panels of the F4U corsair to compensate for this effect.
And that were the days of I-16 production. How can GB be so down?
Underfunding.
Oh Britain...
The semi-flush landing gear is similar to the p-35's. Also, lesson learned: if there's any promising British designs that never made it passed eyes of RAF *and* RAE, *BLAME THE RAF AND RAE FOR THEIR CHILD-LIKE SHORT-SIGHTEDNESS*
Compare that one page requirements sheet to today's fighter requirements volumes.
Some test pilot SKIMPING the Hasell checks 🙄
Interesting sidenote to British Aero development for all that
looks like a lockheed aircraft
The 146?
The only reason why I've heard of this plane before today is World of Warplanes.
Imagine if they had fitted a Merlin II to it .....
Enlarge the rudder to get the spin characteristics right, put in a 800+ hp version of the Mercury engine and it will be at least on par with the first generation of Italian low wing fighters and superior to the very last generation of Polish high wing fighters and to the whole last generation of biplane fighters.
Even if the RAF didn't want it, it could have been a successful export aircraft.
Lol not surprised to see something like this
Ugly little bugger that one.
It is hard to say if it was a blessing or a curse that this aircraft crashed. By the time it was flying we had F.5/34 issued. Bristol put forward the Type 146 which was basically a Type 133 only completely different. To me this suggests that despite the moderate success of the Type 133 in the trials Bristol had already decided this aircraft was a bit of an evolutionary dead end.
Also to be considered in the timeline is that Hawker is starting to push the 'Fury Monoplane' and the RAF are starting to push for 6 or 8 gun fighters and the word 'Hurricane' is going to soon start being popular closely followed by the word 'Spitfire'. Sure the RAF got the Gladiator, but less so because it was great improvement they had been hoping for, but more that F.7/30 had been a bit of a fizz.
So... what if it hadn't been? Let us say the Type 133 hadn't crashed. I would argue that the RAF were already looking towards the F.5/34 and the associated evolution and that Gladiators may still have been ordered to take up some slack while waiting for Bristol to move from prototype to production. As shown with the Type 146 Bristol was probably wanting to move past the Type 133 and so production numbers of the Type 133 may have ended up being relatively small.
So... best case for the Type 133 was limited production and squadron service with the aging aircraft being regarded unfavorably c.f the newer Hurricanes by 1939. The aircraft would have limited combat during the first year or so of the war but, not being a biplane, would never get the romantic respect the Gladiator managed to collect.
Worse case would if the type had gone into massive production to become the prime single seat fighter for the entire RAF. With funding going to this aircraft there would have been limited funding to go towards Hurricanes and Spitfire. The RAF had just received 1000 of the type, and they were only a few years old. Waste of money to throw them out straight away and all that. This would end up in a similar state to what happened historically with the Battle and Blenheim. Technically advanced bombers that were a big leap up from the biplanes they replaced and put into service in great numbers... but aging quickly and due to the numbers invested in, delaying development of a replacement.
Maybe. Maybe not. Hidesight is a great thing and pretending cost nothing, but like I said, the Battle and Blenheim showed what happens when you get the 'timing wrong' in a rapidly changing tech field.
Great video.
And speaking of the Gohawk engine, 20 (twenty) were built. LOL. Fail on the entire idea.
:)
Wow, that Type 129 looks like something out of a "Smilin' Jack" comic strip. I wish we'd stop getting more kits of stupid Luft '46 stuff and weird, never happened German tanks and get some kits of stuff like this!
Next war thunder premium
The looks like somebody had half a kit for a He112 and a French MB15x series planes and just say "eh good enough"
Its not a British Cosair it's a British Sea Ruffian
Air Ministry told all the AC manufacturers, "you can use any engine you please, as long as it's made by Rolls-Royce". Another clever British design sandbagged by dependence on the Government darling, RR.
Its a myth that they specified only the Goshawk. Quite the reverse, Dowding, who was in charge of the committee to draw up F7/30, wanted a radial engine specified, to boost the developments of Bristol and Armstrong Siddeley. But it was decided that they couldn't be partisan so the specification just says "A British engine of the latest type" - But because Rolls-Royce was so successful they could afford to loan Goshawk engines at virtually no cost to anyone who wanted them to build their prototypes. That's why most companies used it.
That's not a gull wing but an inverted gull wing.
It's still a gull wing.
Accurate, but borderline nitpicking.
@@Mishn0 no gull has a wing that leaves its body and goes downwards before going upwards. They have wings that go up wards from the body before going downwards. Hence this aircraft has an inverted gull wing. If you want a gull wing aircraft then I'd recommend the PZL P.11 fighter of the Polish Air Force that served valiantly against the German aggression of September 1939.
@@WALTERBROADDUS not so. All aircraft wing designs are named so that people can compare then. You would samd that an aircraft with anhedral wing is one with dihedral would you? There are many examples of gull wing aircraft out there, such as the PZL P.11 and the Martin PBM Mariner, but this isn't one of them.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 Taking an object and turning it upside down does not make it a different object. Just an object that is upside down. An inverted gull wing is a gull wing still, just inverted. Your saying that calling it a gull wing is wrong, is an incorrect statement. It is still a gull wing.