Germany's Podracer-esque Bomber: Blohm & Voss P 170
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Published 2023-06-27
All Comments (21)
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We got free coffee at my work. I doubt that whatever Blohm & Voss offered their employees was legal even at the time...
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If Kelly Johnson had designed it, there would be semi-circular winglets outboard of the end nacelles... If Jack Northrop had designed it, the fuselage would be shorter, cockpit forward, and the powerplants reversed to be pushers. If Nikolai Polikarpov had designed it, he would have been ''reassigned'' to the Gulag.
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Got to admit Blohm and Vost built some fascinating weird planes đź‘Ť
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German engineers - "lets see, what kind of bomber platform and we produce that will be really different. Hold my beer while I show you my idea."
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There's a game I used to play called Crimson Skies...one of the planes was called a Curtiss-Wright P2 Warhawk. Amazingly similar!
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One caveat you totally forget to mention and a strong reason TO NOT MAKE the design, is that each frame uses up THREE ENGINES which could be used to build three fighters of which Germany desperately needed to fight the Reich from bomber raids. The three engine design is pretty much why the project would never take off (quite literally) because those resources are too precious to the war effort at that point.
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The deHavilland Mosquito was arguably the only successful Schnellbomber.
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Oh, so that's what inspired that one Crimson Skies plane. I always wondered if it was based on something real, but never thought to look at bombers - the game made it a heavy fighter.
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Remember that the British Mosquito was basically a "schnellbomber" and it was arguably one of the most successful planes of the entire war. This proves that the problem in this case clearly wasn't in the idea, it was in the execution. A lightweight tri-motor fast bomber could have been a fantastic idea if it had been executed more conventionally, with the two outboard engines mounted mid-wing rather than on the ends and a conventional tail.
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Blohm and Voss had some of the wierdest designed aircraft that never made it past the drawing board. This shnell bomber is certainly no exception. There was another Blohm and Voss design where this plane was piloted from a pod at the wingtip. The second pod at the opposite wingtip served as a gunners station. Not sure how this odd aircraft would have flown. It appears that many of Blohm and Voss's designs were rather unique and ambitious.
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The pc version of Crimson Skies had an inspired version of this. That game and Il2 1946 made me fascinated with prototype/never were planes.
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The main problem I can see is the weight at the end of the wings. It would most likely result in a roll rate that is measured in minutes not seconds.
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Something you didn't mention is that plane would have been weird to fly. The initial g forces would be opposite of a normal aircraft as the tail cockpit swings the other way around the CoG. Then It would immediately reverse to the g forces applied to the whole plane. I imagine it would be highly discomforting
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this is a really cool design i don't think that gets talked about enough. same with some of the other Asymmetrical designs that Blohm und Voss came up with, like the P.163, or their asymmetrical flying boats.
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This aircraft has some beautiful lines; thanks for making this “what-if” video. With regards to vertical fin placement, Burt Rutan’s series of canard wing, pusher prop kit planes (the VariEze and LongEZ, etc) put the vertical surfaces out on the wingtips. Beautiful planes, and, like Blohm & Voss, Rutan designed some groundbreaking asymmetric and unconventional airframes. Now I’m going to find the video of the RC version one of your other viewers mentioned!
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Would be interesting to see a simulated view from the cockpit, very unusual. I imagine taxis and take-offs would have been, er, fun.
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Unusual aircraft designs are one of my favorite topics and the P 170 is certainly one of the most.
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Ah yes, the Warhawk from Crimson Skies.
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Definitely B&V getting deeply into weird designs. What a horror to land with all that fuselage in front of you. I would like to build an RC model to see if it would actually fly.
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What were the designers smoking? It certainly wasn't tobacco.
