Aircraft of the UASR in the Great Revolutionary War - Part I

Four Engine Success - The B-19 Story

B-19A on display at the Santa Ana Aviation Museum. Note the nose art featuring the Termite Terrace character “Elmer Fudd.” ​

As the guns fell silent following the Second Revolution, the Workers and Farmers Revolutionary Army Air Force were forced to evaluate themselves against a new geopolitical reality. With Great Britain having sided with the Whites and the MacArthur regime in Havana, it was a new reality that in the event of a European conflict, the United Republics could not count on Britain’s help and instead must assume that they would be forced to fight with only the USSR at their backs, or worse, that Great Britain would be actively assisting the fascist powers in a bid to install a fascist government under MacArthur.

The lessons learned from the Civil War were taken to heart. When MacArthur had made his escape to Havana with several battleships, a flight of Keystone B-4 bombers had been routed to intercept them. Unfortunately, due to the plane’s short range, the flight was forced to turn back before engaging with MacArthur. The bitter truth learned was that should MacArthur make good on his promise to return, or should Great Britain take up a counterrevolutionary crusade, the WFRAAF needed a long range bomber that could attack Cuban or British warships before they entered shelling range.

To that end, the WFRAAF laid out a set of requirements for a new Long Range Heavy Bomber in 1933.

The design mission profiles that were given were one of coastal defense against an enemy fleet, and of long range bombing of continental Europe from the American homeland before continuing on to friendly territory in the USSR, in addition to being able to defend convoys on the sea lanes between Seattle and Vladivostok.

For the coastal defense mission, the LRHB must be capable of flying 2000 km out to sea, loitering for a time, making precision bomb drops on an enemy fleet and returning to base. Due to the extended overwater operation, the aircraft must be able to continue flying with one or two engines non-functional.

For the escort profile, the new aircraft must be capable of flying from Seattle to Vladivostok on a single load of fuel, while for the bombing mission required the plane to carry a 1000 kg bomb load from the east coast of the UASR to London, dropping it before landing in friendly Soviet territory.

Thus the Long Range Heavy Bomber was given the following requirements:

• Range : 8000 km
• Bomb Load : 1000 kg
• Cruising Speed : 320 km/h
• Circular Error Probable : 150 meters.

Having put the requirements out, the WFRAAF received two design proposals, one that came in from EDB-21 “Red Star” located in Seattle[1] that was a four engine bomber that was loosely derived from Boeing’s pre-revolution Model 247 airliner.[2] The prototype for this flew out of the Seattle Aircraft Plant in July of 1935.

The Maryland-based EDB-16,[3] colloquially known as “Orange Grove,” submitted a twin boom design with the crew compartment and bomb bay in a central nacelle built to blend smoothly with the wing. The Initial design called for a 6 engined plane, with two of the six engines located at the front of the twin booms, while a pair of nacelles on the wing would each have two engines in a push-pull configuration.[4] In the final configuration, the pushing engines were deleted from the design in order to improve serviceability. The prototype for this, the XB-16 would make its first flight from the Baltimore Aircraft Manufacturing Plant in September of 1935.

XB-15

Role : Very Long Range Heavy Bomber
National Origin : UASR
Designer : Red Star Aircraft Design Bureau
Introduced : 1935
Primary User(s) : UASR
Produced : 1935
Number Built : 1

Specifications (XB-15):
Crew : 10
Length : 26.70 m
Wingspan : 45.43 m
Height : 7.87 m
Wing area : 258.4 m2​
Empty weight : 17,141 kg
Max takeoff weight : 32,139 kg
Powerplant : 4 × 14-cylinder East Hartford Engine EDB R-1830-11 radial engines at 634 kW each

Performance
Maximum speed : 317 km/h at 1,500 m
Cruise speed: 245 km/h at 1,800 m
Range : 8,260 km
Combat range : 5,474 km
Service ceiling : 5,760 m

Armaments
**Guns :
**3 × MG-7-Br1 machine guns
3 × MG-12-Br2 machine guns
Bombs : 5,000 kg

In an ode to crew comfort for the long-duration missions, the XB-15 was equipped with many first-of-a-kind features, including an autopilot, deicing equipment, two gasoline-powered auxiliary power units to provide power to the plane’s electrical system on the ground, a galley & a lavatory for the crew, and the ability to inspect or repair engines in-flight thanks to the crew access tunnels built into the wing.

The XB-15 would prove itself in trials, flying from the Seattle “Biennio Rosso” Factory to Langley Field in Virginia without refueling. The initial trials would prove to be disappointing though, with the airplane falling short of the promised 320 km/h cruising speed under a 1000 kg load, instead, cruising at a disappointing 233 km/h.

The bombing accuracy tests also proved to be a disappointment, with test based on the conditions experienced during the civil war showing the the bombsight had a Circluar Error Probable (CEP) of 400 m, a far cry from the 23 m promised by the design bureau.

Payload testing, however, proved to be more promising, with the XB-15 able to carry 10,000 kg of a dummy payload to an altitude of 2,500 meters, and a dummy load of 14,136 kg to an altitude of 2000 meters, in both cases being able to set a world record.

On January 25th, 1939 the XB-15 was put to a real-world test. The hours before, at 23:32 local time, a magnitude 8.3 earthquake struck the Chilean city of Chillán, minutes later the seismic waves would reach Concepción, destroying 95% of the homes there. With untold damage across the fledgeling Socialist Republic, the call for aid was answered across the Comintern. The XB-15, with its ability to ferry 5,000 kg of bombs would be retasked to ferry 2000 kg of medical supplies from the UASR all the way to Santiago, making only two stops along the way in Panama and Peru. The pilot, Caleb B. Haynes would later be awarded the Hero of Socialist Labor for his actions.

Despite these impressive achievements, the XB-15 was difficult to fly and suffered from frequent malfunctions, during testing of the prototype, two flights had a fire break out on board the aircraft, and several times the electrical system would fail completely.

Even before the issues with the XB-15 prototype had become apparent, the WFRAAF had elected not to pursue further development of the XB-15, the sole aircraft being considered a proof of concept prototype. Instead, the Stavka at the WFRAAF had put forth a gentler set of requirements for the Next Generation Heavy Bomber. The new aircraft had the range requirement reduced from the highly demanding 8,000 km to a more relaxed 3,200 km and with a speed requirement of 400 km/h.

Red Star EDB would refine the XB-15 into a new aircraft, adding more elements of the planned pre-revolution Boeing Model 247 airliner design mixed with the lessons learned from the XB-15.

The new project, given the internal model number of Na-299 at Red Star, was in essence a stripped-down XB-15. The prototype, built at the Biennio Rosso Aircraft Factory in Seattle, would roll off the assembly line in 1936.

The early test flights by Red Star and WFRAAF pilots had shown that the Na-299 easily met and in many cases exceeded the design requirements laid out by the WFRAAF’s Stavka. A reporter for the Seattle Worker had likened the Na-299’s large armament of guns to a “15 ton flying fortress.” Red Star EDB quickly jumped on the name, officially giving the Na-299 the nickname of “Flying Fortress.”

After the successful tests of the Na-299 prototype in 1937, the WFRAAF quickly ordered 13 more Na-299’s, under the official designation of YB-19 for service testing, with the Na-299 retroactively receiving the designation of XB-19. The YB-19 added a turbo-supercharger that increased the aircraft’s cruising speed from 406 km/h to 501 km/h and also raised the service ceiling to 12,000 meters.

The YB-19, being designed from the ground up for mass production, had quickly rolled off the assembly line in Seattle in time to see the fascist invasion of Czechoslovakia. With war on the horizon, it is seen as only a matter of time before the United Republics would be forced to defend the revolution.

Mock bombing runs of the YB-19 over the Nevada desert had tested and refined different ways of increasing accuracy and bomber defensability. From 1938 to 1940, the YB-19s were pushed to their limit, dropping dummy bombs onto targets and participating in mock aerial battles against the WFRAAF and VVS. These mock battles proved immeasurably helpful to developing the UASR’s precision bombing doctrine. Red Star EDB designers would take careful notes and interview the air crews after each test flight, finding new design tweaks to improve the effectiveness of the plane.

The final production design would incorporate these lessons. Design improvements included offsetting the left and right waist gunners from each other to alloth both gunners freedom of movement.

Under the precision bombing doctrine, bombers would approach their target in four tightly-formed groups of three, with the most experienced bombardiers in the lead bomber group. The rest of the bomber groups would then not sight the target in their own bombsights but would focus on maintaining formation and drop when cued by the lead aircraft. While this improved accuracy in tests, it still did not reach the precision required for the munitions that the B-19 was capable of carrying.

The breakthrough needed for truly precise bombing would come from the Camden Radio Laboratory in New Jersey. With their work to develop a radio early warning system, a test had been done with a radar set mounted on an aircraft pointed dowards. Early tests showed that it could image the coastline below, showing a clear difference between the ground and sea. Further tests showed a stark difference between the ocean and ships at sea.

Further refinements of the concept led to the WFRN, who after being shown the concept of radio-sighted bombing, ordered Camden Research Laboratory to start work on the development of a radar bombsight.

When the WFRAAF got wind of this project, Curtis LeMay ordered that his bombing groups also be given access to these radar bombsights under development. As his own experience with the Nevada drills had shown only an improvement to a CEP of 200m, closer to the goals of the precision bombing doctrine, but not close enough. Unfortunately for LeMay, the WFRN would get priority for the radar bomb sights, under the reasoning that a near-miss on a ground target would still damage it, but a near-miss against a ship wouldn’t cause any damage.

Nevertheless, in 1942, B-19s with radar bombsights would start to roll off the assembly lines in limited numbers. Integrating an entirely new radar sighting system proved too technically challenging for a retrofit to the B-19, so it was decided to save the radar bomb sighting for a new aircraft that would be designed around it and capable of flying at even higher altitudes, the B-23 SuperFortress.

B-19 (Na-299)
Role : Long Range Heavy Bomber
National Origin : UASR
Designer : Red Star Aircraft Design Bureau
Introduced : 1938
Primary User(s) : UASR, Soviet Union, Chile, Argentina, Mexico
Produced : 1939-1946
Number Built : 30,919
AFS Reporting Name : Bart

Specifications (B-19A):
Crew : 10
Length : 22.26 m
Wingspan : 45.43 m
Height : 5.82 m
Wing area : 258.4 m2​
Empty weight : 17,141 kg
Max takeoff weight : 32,139 kg
Powerplant : 4 × Parsippany R-1820-97 “Cyclone” turbosupercharged radial engines, 895 kW each

Performance:
Maximum speed : 462 km/h at 1,500 m
Cruise speed : 293 km/h at 1,800 m
Range : 3,719 km with 3000 kg bomb load
Service ceiling : 10,850 m

Armaments:
Guns : 13 × MG-12-Br2 machine guns in 9 positions (2 in the Bendix chin turret, 2 on nose cheeks, 2 staggered waist guns, 2 in upper Sperry turret, 2 in Sperry ball turret in belly, 2 in the tail and one firing upwards from radio compartment behind bomb bay)

Bombs :

• Short range missions; Internal load only ( <700 km) : 3,500 kg
• Long range missions; Internal load only (≈1400 mi) : 2,000 kg
• Max Internal and External load : 7,500 kg

Variants:

XB-19 : Original Prototype built to fulfill the WFRAAF requirements for a long range heavy bomber.

YB-19 : Development prototypes used for acceptance testing by the WFRAAF and VVS. Changes included more powerful engines with a turbosupercharger added to increase performance at high altitudes. Other changes included a larger rudder and flaps

B-19A : First production model of the B-19. Changes include a larger, redesigned, vertical stabilizer, the waist and ball turret guns were longitudinally staggered so allow greater freedom of movement for the crew, a remotely operated “chin turret” was added to the nose, in addition to the forward facing guns in the “cheek” of the aircraft. Other additions included an extra gun turret in the forward section of the fuselage that covered the top of the aircraft, providing defensibility for attacks from above.

• CB-19A : Troop transport version, capable of carrying 64 troops.
• DB-19A : Drone variant
• MB-19 A: Missile launcher
• QB-19L : Target drone
• QB-19N : Target drone
• RB-19A : Reconnaissance variant
• SB-19A : Rescue version, later redesignated B-19C: Featured A-1 lifeboat under fuselage. After the World Revolutionary War, armament on the B-19Cs was removed; it was reinstated when the Horn of Africa War began.

B-19B : Slightly modified design for production in the USSR. Notable changes include the use of Shvetsov ASh-62TK engines.

BA-19D : Ground attack variation on the B-19. The turret guns were replaced with 20mm cannons and extra ammunition along with hardpoints on the wings for use with rocket ammunition. This would come at the expense of a reduced bomb load.

B-19E : Escort gunship version of the B-19. Adds an additional turret on top in place of the radio operator. Added additional ammunition for guns. Meant to act as an escorting gunship against enemy fighters.

XB-20 : Experimental variation of the B-19, which replaced the air cooled radial engines with liquid cooled inline engines. While it showed a slightly higher top speed, the engine manifold developed cracks after a few uses and had to be repaired. After the repairs, the XB-20 continued for several more test flights before one of the engines caught fire, which forced the crew to bail out and caused the prototype to be destroyed. The WFRAAF would decline to pursue the B-20 concept further as it would have disrupted the production lines of the B-19 for marginal gains and the inline engines were more urgently needed for fighter aircraft.

Altitude is Victory - The B-23 SuperFortress

Surviving B-23A SuperFortress on display at the National Air Force Museum in Monino, USSR. ​

The B-23 SuperFortress can be traced back to the development of the B-19. Red Star EDB’s initial order of YB-19’s had included a turbosupercharger which had allowed the aircraft to fly at far higher altitudes than its contemporaries. Initial trials of the YB-19 had found that the crews would quickly suffer from oxygen deprivation. Flights above 8000 m would be lethal to the crew, as the ambient pressure was too low to allow for the crew to breathe. With the B-19, the aircraft designers solved the issue by adding bottled oxygen to the aircraft with breathing masks to be worn above 3000 meters.

The bottled oxygen system had its limitations, and it meant that flight crews were limited in how long they could fly above 3000 m. While some early concepts towards a pressurized version of the B-19 were considered and even assigned an internal model number of Na-334, the complexity of retrofitting pressurization onto the B-19 had far too little in the way of parts commonality with the unpressurized B-19 that was already in production to make it worth pursuing further. Faced with these challenges, Red Star EDB went back to the drawing board for a long range bomber that could remain at high altitudes indefinitely.

Across the Pacific, the Soviet Air Force (VVS) was running into the same need as their American comrades. While the VVS had fielded the Petlyakov Pe-8 and the Tupolev TB-3 for the purposes of flying morale raids far behind enemy lines in the dark days of Operation Teutonic, the attrition rate due to mechanical failures and enemy action had whittled down the already limited number of aircraft to unacceptably low levels. The VVS Stavka put out a requirement to the Soviet OKBs to develop a new bomber with a long range and high altitude capability.

In Seattle, the requirements for a radar bombsight had proved to be too arduous to retrofit into the B-19’s design, so it was decided to do a clean sheet design for a radar-guided bomber. The use of radar to spot targets on the ground had meant that planes could bomb in all weather conditions and at night, something that the B-19 was restricted from due to the reliance on an optical bombsight.

As soon as the design team for the B-19 had made the decision to do a clean-sheet design for a bomber that would use radio-guidance for target-finding, the requirements were merged into a single new aircraft that was given the model number Na-345.

In the Soviet Union, Andrei Tupolev had seen the test flights for the XB-15 and YB-19 and realized that the American “Red Star” EDB had the design experience for a high altitude long range aircraft that would meet the VVS requirements. So in 1940, he reached out to Red Star with the VVS’s requirements to see if they could offer technical assistance based on their experience with the XB-15 and B-19 projects.

At the Seattle design offices for Red Star, Tupolev’s letter had set off a firestorm of ideas. The WFRAAF was disinterested in further study on the Na-345, viewing it as redundant compared to the role that the B-19 filled. However, America’s comrades across the Pacific had a need for such an aircraft and the Red Star Seattle office had the perfect design to fill the role.

Tupolev was surprised to see his letter to the Red Star Design Bureau being answered with the designs for an entire aircraft. His engineers pored over the designs and whitepapers that Red Star had provided, Tupolev and several engineers would even visit the Red Star offices in Seattle and Los Angeles, as well as touring the manufacturing plants in Renton, Long Beach and Wichita. Likewise, engineers from Red Star would pay a visit to the Tupolev manufacturing plants that had been set up east of the Urals.

With great secrecy, the first Na-345 would roll off the assembly line in Novosibirsk in 1942.

The Na-345 would be one of the most technologically advanced aircraft ever built for its time. The forward and aft sections of the fuselage were pressurized, with an access tunnel above the bomb bay connecting them. The cabin pressurization system was designed to run automatically, switching on once the aircraft reached 2500 meters in altitude, causing the internal pressure to fall away more slowly until the plane reached 4000 meters in altitude, where it would maintain a pressure differential of 17.23 kPa.

The final design then was a long cigar-shaped fuselage 2.84 meters in diameter paired with an impressive 43 meter wingspan. The plane’s high altitude capability was a closely-guarded secret, with the official documentation suggesting that it could only climb to 7,500 meters.

The Na-345 was capable of flying at higher altitudes for longer than the B-19, and with a heavier payload. The massive 18 cylinder radial engines that would be needed to power it were a joint collaboration of the Parsippany Aircraft Engine EDB and post-revolution design collaborator Arkady Shvetsov. Following the Red May Revolution, Shvetsov had taken the opportunity to visit the UASR and was able to design the Shvetsov M-25, a locally-manufactured version of Parsippany’s Cyclone 9 radial aircraft engine. OKB-19, Shvetsov Design Bureau, therefore, was the best-positioned design bureau in the Soviet Union to build the engines.

In late 1941, the first production units, given the Tupolev model number of Tu-4, began to roll off the assembly lines. With the initial production batch though, quality problems had taken their toll. Of the first 100 Tu-4’s delivered, only 15 were airworthy. Engineers from Tupolev, Shvetsov, Parsippany and Red Star worked day and night to troubleshoot the issues with the early Tu-4s. By the spring of 1942, however, the production issues were, for the most part, worked out.

The Tu-4 would first see action flying bombing raids deep behind enemy lines, destroying railyards, bridges, and other forms of infrastructure-denial. It was the game-changing bomber the VVS needed, having the range and the high altitude capability to bomb Axis targets with near-impunity, with the Luftwaffe’s Bf-109 and Fw-190 fighter aircraft only able to operate at the Tu-4’s speed and altitude for minutes at a time.

Once the Japanese had entered the war in 1942, the WFRAAF Stavka found itself in need of a longer range aircraft for a war in the Pacific. Red Star EDB took the opportunity to dust off the Na-345 designs, and incorporate design improvements based on the experience of the VVS with the Tu-4. The Na-345 was ready and mature, already being in production across the Pacific. The WFRAAF approved the Na-345 as the B-23, retroactively designating the Tu-4 as the B-23A model and Red Star’s tendered design as the B-23B.

The Manufacturing Secretariat would assign the aircraft plants in Renton, Wichita, Omaha, and Marietta to the production of the B-23B, with the first ones rolling off the line in September of 1942.

Engine problems, however, would continue to haunt the B-23. While the improvements born from the collaboration between Shvetsov and Parsippany would provide incremental improvements, it wouldn’t be until the up-engined B-23C which would swap the 18 cylinder engines from Parsippany for a 28 cylinder engine built by the East Hartford Aircraft Engine EDB.

Additional improvements to the C model included a larger vertical stabilizer that was capable of folding down for hangar storage, a hydraulically boosted rudder, and lighter & stronger alloy wings. The B-23C would enter into production in 1943 and would become a mainstay of the UASR’s bomber fleet for the next decade.

B-23 (Na-345/Tu-4)
Role : Long Range Heavy Bomber
National Origin : Designed in the UASR, first built in the USSR
Designer : Red Star Aircraft EDB & Tupolev OKB
Introduced : 1941
Primary User(s) : USSR, UASR
Produced : 1941-1956
In Service : 1941-1965
Number Built : 18,638
AFS Reporting Name : Buck

Specifications (A & B Models)
Crew : 11 (Pilot, Co-pilot, Bombardier, Flight engineer, Navigator, Radio operator, Radar observer, Right gunner, Left gunner, Central fire control, Tail gunner)
Length : 30.18 m
Wingspan : 43.05 m
Height : 8.46 m
Wing area : 161.3 m²
Aspect ratio : 11.5
Zero-lift drag coefficient : 0.0241
Frontal area : 3.824 m²
Empty weight : 33,793 kg
Gross weight : 54,431 kg
Max takeoff weight : 60,555 kg (61,000 kg combat overload)
Powerplant :

• A Model: 4 × Shvetsov ASh-73TK 18-cyl. air-cooled turbosupercharged radial piston engines, 1,600 kW each
• B Model : 4 × Orange Grove R-3350-23 Duplex-Cyclone 18-cylinder air-cooled turbosupercharged radial piston engines, 1,790 kW each.

Propellers : 4-bladed constant-speed fully-feathering propellers, 5.05 m diameter

Performance
Maximum speed : 575 km/h
Cruise speed : 350 km/h
Stall speed : 169 km/h
Range : 5,230 km
Ferry range : 9,000 km
Service ceiling :

• Stated : 7,500 m
• Actual : 9,710 m

Rate of climb : 4.6 m/s
Lift-to-drag : 16.8
Wing loading : 3.30 kPa
Power/mass : 0.120 kW/kg

Armament

• Guns :
  • 10 × MG-12-Br2s in remote-controlled turrets.
  • 2 × MG-12-Br-1s and 1 × MG-20-M2 cannon in tail position (the 12.7 mm guns were later replaced by 20mm cannons in the B model)
• Bombs :
  • 2,500 kg over 2,600 km radius at high altitude
  • 5,500 kg over 2,600 km radius at medium altitude
  • 9,000 kg maximum over short distances at low altitude

Specifications (C Model)
Crew : 8-10 (Pilot, Co-pilot, Bombardier, Flight engineer, Navigator, Radio/electronic countermeasures operator, Two side gunners, Top gunner and Tail gunner)
Length : 30.18 m
Wingspan : 43.05 m
Height : 9.96 m
Wing area : 160 m²
Empty weight : 38,426 kg
Gross weight : 55,270 kg
Max takeoff weight : 78,471 kg (max overload weight)
Powerplant : 4 × East Hartford R-4360-35 28 Cyl. four-row air-cooled radial piston engine, 2,600 kW each
Propellers : 4-bladed constant-speed fully-feathering propellers, 5.05 m diameter

Performance
Maximum speed : 634 km/h
Cruise speed : 393 km/h
Stall speed : 169 km/h
Combat Range : 3,853 km
Ferry range : 12,470 km
Service ceiling :

• Stated : 7,500 m
• Actual : 11,200 m

Rate of climb : 11 m/s
Lift-to-drag : 16.8
Wing loading : 3.36 kPa
Power/mass : 0.189 kW/kg

Armament

• Guns :
  • 13 × MG-20-M2s in remote-controlled turrets. (omitted from Silverplate B-23s)
• Bombs :
  • 9,000 kg internally over 3,853 km radius
  • 3,000 kg on external hardpoints.
  • [CLASSIFIED PAYLOAD]

Project Unthinkable

Even before Germany launched Operation Teutonic, American war planners were considering a worst case scenario, a war in which the Soviet Union fell to fascism and the United Republics would be forced to defend the revolution alone against a menace that took it upon themselves to exterminate America’s chief partner in the revolution, or worse, replaced the government of the proletariat with a puppet state.

American war planners were forced to assume that the neutral Britain and France would sit out of the war and let their Nazi attack dogs destroy them before they’d intervene.

To that end, in 1939 Project Unthinkable issued a set of requirements for the most ambitious bomber design yet. The Unthinkable Bomber was designed to do one thing, fly bombing missions against Berlin, Paris or London and returning back to American soil without stopping.

The requirements for the Unthinkable Bomber were:

• Combat Radius with Full Bomb Load : 8,000 km
• Maximum Range : 19,000 km at 7,600 meter altitude
• Bombing Payload : 30,000 kg
• Cruising Speed : 450 km/h
• Top Speed : 700 km/h
• Service Ceiling : 14,000 meters

When the requirements for the Unthinkable Bomber were sent out, many of the design bureaus in the UASR had balked at the ambitious requirements and at the implications that the Stavka was assuming the conquest of an ally as a fait accompli.

Nonetheless, two concepts were submitted to the WFRAAF. One from Red Star’s design office in Downey, California, and the other from the Skunk Works Experimental Design Bureau’s design office in Hawthorne, California.

Downey’s design would have called for a massive bomber with six 28-cylinder engines in a pusher configuration. Unlike the B-19 and B-23, Downey’s proposal for the Unthinkable Bomber carried almost no defensive armament save for the tail gun, a design decision that would be repeated on the Silverplate B-23s. The proposed bomber was a hairs’ breadth short of 50 meters long, and had a wingspan of 70 meters. The six 28-cylinder air-cooled engines were built into the wing itself, while the propellers were placed behind the engines.

Hawthorne’s design by contrast was a flying wing that would have a length of only 16 meters, and would have a wingspan of 52 meters. The flying wing would have four engines, each one powering an 8-bladed contra-rotating propeller. The Hawthorne flying wing was such a radical departure from the norms of aircraft design that many wondered if it could even fly.

In 1941 as things looked bleak, the WFRAAF approved the plans for the Unthinkable Bomber, and assigned them the designations of XB-27 and XB-28 as the two design bureaus began a crash program to get the prototype Unthinkable Bombers into production.

It would take the better part of a year, but the sole prototype for the XB-27, nicknamed by its designers as “Unthinkable,” would make its first test flight in April of 1942 from Palmdale Airfield. Security concerns had the airplane hidden in a hangar during the day and the test flights only performed at night. By then though, the progress on the Eastern Front and the entry of the Franco-British Union into the war had meant that the XB-27 was no longer a necessity, and the sole prototype was mothballed.

Meanwhile, the XB-28 was plagued by setbacks and engineering issues caused by the overly ambitious design. Tests of the contra-rotating propellers had shown significant issues with vibration, the gearboxes chosen had frequent malfunctions and reduced the effectiveness of propeller control. The setbacks and delays eventually led to the XB-28’s cancellation, with only a skeletal airframe ever built.

XB-27
Role : Ultra Long Range Heavy Bomber
National Origin : UASR
Designer : Red Star Aircraft Design Bureau (Downey Office)
Introduced : 1942
Primary User(s) : UASR
Produced : 1942
Number Built : 1

Specifications
Crew : 9
Length : 49.40 m
Wingspan : 70.10 m
Height : 14.25 m
Wing area : 443.3 m2​
Empty weight : 75,371 kg
Max takeoff weight : 185,973 kg
Powerplant : 6 × East Hartford R-4360-25 Wasp Major 28-cylinder 4-row air-cooled radial piston engines, 2,200 kW each for take-off
Propellers : 3-bladed Parsippany constant-speed fully-feathering pusher propellers

Performance
Maximum speed : 557 km/h
Cruise speed : 348 km/h
Combat range : 6,196 km with 35,000 kg bomb load (est.)
Ferry range : 16,000 km
Service ceiling : 11,000 m
Rate of climb : 8.8 m/s

Armament
Guns : None
Bombs : 35,000 kg

Tactics Win Battles, Logistics Wins Wars - The C-39 Dakota

A C-39 lands in a field outside of Moscow to ferry supplies to the besieged defenders. ​

The Red May Revolution came at a particularly difficult time for the American aircraft industry. Prior to the revolution, the aircraft industry had been undergoing a massive economic contraction brought about by the consolidation of the then-integrated aircraft building and aircraft operating businesses.

Before the revolution, aircraft manufacturer-operators made a large proportion of their revenue through the transportation of US Mail, with passenger service almost being an afterthought. Pre-revolution airmail service was rife with corruption, with air service operators mailing large heavy items back and forth for the sake of additional revenue from the US Post Office Department.

It soon became apparent that the existing air mail system was not working as it was intended, with a large number of crashes due to the heavily incentivized nature of the air mail system with next to no oversight. In 1929 that would change though, with what would later go on to be called the “Spoils Conference.”

The then-Postmaster General of the United States, Walter Folger Brown, sat down with the presidents of the three largest aircraft manufacturer-operators: United Air Transportation Company[5], Transcontinental & Western Airlines, and American Airways and had them divide up the transcontinental air mail routes between them. Under this arrangement, airlines would be paid for the total cargo capacity of their aircraft, regardless of how much mail they carried, giving favor to airlines that could field larger aircraft, favoring manufacturers that operated their own airlines.

The new triopoly on air transportation forced the pilots to work longer and longer hours with the wages being paid only while the plane was in the air, with the time spent on the ground being unpaid, even if the pilots were doing important work in keeping the aircraft flying. The aircraft themselves began to dedicate larger volumes of space to passengers, with cargo and mail transportation being a secondary concern.

The existing planes at the time generally consisted of wood and canvas construction with two winged designs still common. They were inexpensive to build and their light weight meant that they could take off and land on nearly any piece of flat ground.

This would literally come crashing down on March 31, 1931. On that day, a Fokker F-10 Trimotor operated by Transcontinental & Western Airlines would break apart mid-flight, killing the crew and all passengers on board, including Lieutenant Governor of California Chaim Shapiro. The investigation would eventually conclude that the breakup and crash was caused by water seeping into the joints connecting the wings to the fuselage, causing the glue attaching them to weaken, which in turn caused a structural failure of the wing and a total loss of aerodynamic lift.

Despite the popular outrage at Shapiro’s death, the Department of Commerce’s Aeronautics branch refused to do more beyond a temporary grounding of the Fokker F-10 for additional inspections. California’s Governor at the time, Lena Morrow Lewis, was particularly incensed at what she called the “assassination by attrition” of the Workers Communist Party. In the end, the Hoover government refused to place what it called an “undue burden” on the airlines, a line they would hold until the end of the Second Republic.

The Red May Revolution brought a sea change to the aircraft business. Under the new People’s Secretariat for Aeronautics, the airlines and aircraft manufacturers were reorganized into a more equitable system. The business of aircraft passenger operations was consolidated under a new nationalized airline known as “Pan American Airways,” who would handle all non-military aircraft transportation, be it cargo, mail, or passenger. Meanwhile the designing of new aircraft would be handled by the “Red Star Experimental Design Bureau” based out of the former offices of the massive aircraft design monopoly, UATC along with several design offices that UATC had acquired over the years such as Vought, Hamilton Aero, Avion Corporation, North American Aviation, and Wright-Martin. The production plants where the aircraft assembly lines were would be organized into the Biennio Rosso Aircraft Plant in Seattle, and the Red Star Production Group that would organize the multitude of aircraft factories in the Los Angeles Basin.

One of the first new directives that the Secretariat for Aeronautics handed was a requirement for all future transport aircraft to be built using all-metal construction.

With the requirements for an all-metal airliner set, the new Experimental Design Bureaus had their first major aircraft project.

Red Star’s Seattle Offices had the unbuilt design for the Boeing Model 247, an all-metal airliner that UATC had been planning to switch their fleet to before Red May.

For Donald Douglas, his experience at trying to manage the Davis-Douglas company had radicalized him towards the Socialist cause. In 1920, Douglas had partnered with David R. Davis in order to build the Douglas Cloudster, a wood and fabric biplane that was designed to fly from coast to coast without stopping. Unfortunately, the sole aircraft built suffered from mechanical problems and was forced to make an emergency landing in Texas on its maiden voyage.

Davis, fearing that his investment in the aircraft designer was a dead end, sold his majority stake in the company and the sole aircraft prototype to Boeing while Douglas was visiting a sick relative. Outraged by this, Douglas attempted to sue his former business partner to stop the sale, but the courts ruled that it was a perfectly legitimate transaction.

With the avenue of redress now closed to him, Douglas quietly sold his stake in Davis-Douglas to Boeing as well and then subsequently resigned. Due to the no-competition clause that was included in the terms of sale, Donald Douglas had thought that his days of designing aircraft were over. For the rest of the 20’s Douglas would drift around the country, before settling down in Long Beach, where he attempted to find work in Hollywood as a set and prop designer, before eventually settling down as an aircraft mechanic in Santa Monica.

When the Red May Revolution came, Douglas took up arms with the Reds, helping to maintain and modify the Red Army’s fleet of aircraft, and by the time the dust settled, he was ready to get back in the saddle at designing aircraft.

Douglas would team up with Jack Northrop, Alan Loughead[6], and Ed Heinemann to start the Skunk Works design bureau. Douglas would be the only committed socialist among them, as while the rest had been treated poorly by American capitalism under the Second Republic, none were true believers in communism, but pragmatism won out, and if embracing socialism would mean that they could get back into the business of building aircraft, then Northrop, Loughead and Heinemann could tolerate it.

The new design bureau was called “Skunk Works” and would have design offices in Long Beach, Santa Monica, and Burbank (though later on they would consolidate the design offices into a single building in downtown Los Angeles). The manufacturing would be done by the Red Star Aircraft Production Group, which had taken control of all the aircraft plants in the LA Basin.

In response to the Secretariat for Aeronautics requirement that all new passenger planes be made of all-metal construction, Skunk Works proposed a 14 passenger all metal design that was 18 meters long with a 26 meter wingspan. The proposed design, the Lo-2 was considered by Pan-American, but they came back to Skunk Works and asked for a scaled up version that could accommodate more passengers or be converted to a sleeper configuration.

The new design, the Lo-3, would have a 29 meter wingspan with a 19.7 meter x 2.3 meter fuselage, taken together, this plane could carry between 21 and 32 passengers across the country in 15 hours with only three stops for fuel.

Douglas, along with a cadre of aircraft builders would hand assemble the Prototype Lo-3 at the Red Star Aircraft Factory in Long Beach, California. The prototype would make its maiden flight on December 17th, 1935. Pan-Am’s testing of the Lo-3 showed that it beat their expectations for a passenger aircraft, and the Stavka for the airline quickly put in an order for 400 of the Lo-3, to be mass produced at the Long Beach Plant.

When word of the Lo-3 had reached the Workers and Farmers Revolutionary Army Air Force however, they quickly took interest in it as a cargo and troop transport, and requisitioned one from Pan-Am.

The WFRAAF put their Lo-3 prototype through its paces. While it performed to expectations, the testing program nonetheless came back with a list of changes to make it more suited for military purposes.

Given the service designation of C-39, the militarized Lo-3 would feature a slightly shorter tail to make landings on short or rough airfields easier, the engines were replaced with more powerful ones, a rear cargo door would be added, and the floor would be strengthened. Overall a relatively minor list of changes, but with the drums of war on the horizon, the C-39 was put into production in Long Beach, Santa Monica and Oklahoma City, with additional production for the VVS being performed at the State Aviation Factory 84 in Khimki. By the time production of the C-39 ended in 1950, it had become the single most produced airliner in the world.

C-39 Dakota (Lo-3)
Role : Passenger/Cargo Transport
National origin : UASR
Designer : Skunk Works Aircraft Design Bureau
First flight : 17 December 1935
Introduced : 1936
Primary users : UASR, Soviet Union
Produced : 1936-1950
Number built : 34,981
AFS Reporting Name : Cog

Specifications (C-39)
Crew : 4 (pilot, co-pilot, navigator, radio operator)
Capacity : 28 troops
Length : 19.43 m
Wingspan : 29.11 m
Height : 5.18 m
Wing area : 91.7 m2​
Empty weight : 8,226 kg
Gross weight : 11,793 kg
Max takeoff weight : 14,061 kg
Powerplant : 2 × East Hartford R-1830-90C Twin Wasp 14-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engines, 890 kW each

Performance
Propellers : 3-bladed constant-speed propellers
Maximum speed : 360 km/h at 3,000 m
Range : 2,600 km
Ferry range : 5,800 km
Service ceiling : 8,000 m
Time to altitude : 3,000 m in 9 minutes 30 seconds
Wing loading : 1.25 kPa

Comintern Variants

C-38 : Type designation for the civilian model of Lo-3 that were pressed into service for VIP transport.

C-39 : Initial military version of the Lo-3 delivered to the WFRAAF. Modifications from the C-38 are a shorter tail section for glider towing, 24 volt electrical system, reinforced floor, large cargo door at the rear, a hoist attachment, and an astrodome in the cabin roof for celestial navigation purposes.

C-39A : Variant modified for construction at State Aviation Factory 84 in Khimki. Modifications include replacing the engines with Shvetsov ASh-62 engines but otherwise identical to the C-39.

XC-39B : C-39 modified with floats attached for use over water. Only one prototype was built.

C-39C : Engine modification to replace the two speed superchargers with a one speed supercharger.

• AC-39C : Gunship variant of the C-39 with three side firing 20mm automatic cannons. Initially an improvised field modification by American and Russian troops in 1941. It was given an official type designation and proper weapon mounts in 1942.
• EC-39C : C-39C equipped for the Airborne Early Warning role.
• RC-39C : C-39C equipped with equipment for photographic reconnaissance and electronic intelligence (ELINT) missions.
• HC-39C : C-39C Equipped for aerial search and rescue.

C-39D : Modified cargo variant with space for 27–28 passengers or 18–24 litters.

C-40 : Troop transport version of the C-39 that lacks the reinforced floor, cargo door and hoist attachment. Could carry 28 passengers in fixed metal seats.

• C-40A : Winterized version with extra fuel tanks and a separate navigators station.
• C-40B : Modified C-40 with a larger port side door.

C-41 : C-39 modified with airliner style interior for staff use with 24 seats.

XC-139 : Proposed postwar refurbishment of the C-39 with a stretched fuselage, updated avionics, a structural strengthening and turboprop engines replacing the original piston engines. Only one prototype was built.

Export Variants:

Skytrain I : RAF Designation for C-39s received from the UASR under Lend-Lease.

Skytrain II : RAF Designation for C-39C.

Vickers Voyager : Unauthorized copy of the C-39 built by Vickers-Armstrong, powered by two Bristol Hercules engines.

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[1] Formerly Boeing before the Revolution.
[2] OTL this is what the XB-15 was which eventually was developed into the B-17.
[3] Glenn L. Martin before the Revolution.
[4] OTL This was the XB-16.
[5] OTL they would become Boeing and United Airlines
[6] Pronounced ‘Lockheed.” IOTL he would go on to found Lockheed. *[WPA]: Works Progress Administration *[NBI]: National Bureau of Investigation