Float planes of WWII

Plans! Ha! I wish.

We got a bunch of scale drawings of a C-47 on Thursday. I've spent the last 5 days trying to draw out what I see in the pictures on the drawings. It's tough but I'm getting closer. Now I'm at the stage where I'm tweaking it and it's almost right. By Wednesday I should have a decent set of scale drawings that we can FedEx to John for his approval. I may have 50 hours in this before I even cut one piece of aluminum or stitch one weld. The mechanics have been scratching their heads over the retractable landing gear. We have technical manuals scattered all over the shop too. I'm taking a few aeronautics classes this semester so I can ask my professors to take a look at the figures. It's definetely a challenge for our little shop. We think we're working on a big plane when a Cessna Caravan shows up! Mike has some experiece working on amphibs, about 15 years ago in Alaska!

Harry, bless his heart, just can't say no to work. It would be nice if he wasn't so enthusiastic. Were skilled mechanics and fabricators, but we're not exactly "WW2 airframe specialists". Heck the only thing from that era I've seen come through our shop was a P51 landing gear strut. Anyway. So it's up to the welding department (me, myself, and I) and the mechanics (Mike and Fred) to deliver. At least Fred can weld a little, that will be nice when it comes time to build the frame and skin it. Fred, Mike and I already said Harry can have the job of crating and shipping the damn things.

There's probably a reason John called dozens of shops before Harry said "Sure! No Problem!".

I don't usually throw my weight around, but trust me, this is not even a remotely good idea! Given my experience in the industry and my education, I wouldn't touch this problem with a 10' pole on a real warbird.  If it was on a bird that was a dime a dozen, maybe...but nothing old. No way. Forgetting for a moment all the layout issues that others have mentioned, you have real issues with the hydrodynamics of the step on that big of a float. Unless you have access to whatever plans Boeing and Douglas drew up and used for their respective midwar wackjob ideas, don't even think about trying to reverse engineer one from pictures. Especially if you expect it to work and not just be for static display.

However, there have been examples of large, multi-engined seaplanes with a low-mounted monoplane:

The Cant Z.511:

I'd love to find and build the O'Neil vacuform kit.  

The Ha 139

One day, I'll tackle the Mach 2 kit of this baby...

Just my  here...

Cheers,
Alex

The B-17 is a few years down the road at least. The one he has hasn't flown since 1951 and is a total project. He found it at an airplane salvage yard in southern California. For the last 2 years he's been researching the project and doing the FAA red tape dance to find out what's required in getting it recertified when the time comes. John said it would cost roughly $3.5 million to restore the aircraft to a flyable B-17 floatplane with U.S. Navy markings.

The C-47 is going to be redone in U.S. Army markings and is also getting a complete restoration. Budget on that is $1.8 million.

Figure our shop will have 1,500 hours at least in (I think it may run much higher than that) fabricating the floats from scratch. Our fabricating rate is $135/hour plus the cost of materials.

It must be nice to be a history buff with money to spare. He also has a P-38 and P-51 in the final stages of restoration. Farther down the road he also wants to do a PBY Catalina.

It's like modeling I guess. Except Johns stash is bigger and much more expensive.

I'm excited about doing my own little part. Harry (my boss) never turns down work. Which is funny considering we mainly work on single engine general aviation. Nothing commercial or very big. This is going to push our capabilities to the max. If it's cool with John I can post pics of the floats as I build them. Have to ask though, it's his dime and he may not want pics of his birds all over the internet. He does have some on his MySpace page and I will ask if I can link to it here for your viewing pleasure.

Neat photos Dew. But there is a really really huge problem,. The successful seaplanes, which is what this really is since each float is bigger than a Curtiss Seagull or a Vought Kingfisher, have high wings, and even then often have their engines mounted higher still. I've wracked my brain and cannot find a single example of a large low winged monoplane seaplane design, with multiple engines, that worked.

Something like a Cessna thats been converted to a floatplane, or an Otter, has an engine that is relatively high off of the water compared to the length of takeoff, and can survive a little of the wet stuff. A C-47 or God help us a B-17 has oil cooler intakes under the cowl, leading edge radiators etc. that are going to get drenched on a long takeoff. And obviously both have to have their COG shifted forward, or at least compensated for  so that they sit level on the water. And the Fortress has those superchargers under the nacelle, oh my.

I'm sorry but in IMHO this is a bad idea.

 

I may have to look around for sources a bit, but I think that the float-equipped C-47s were the largest float-planes ever built.  The only other plane that could fit that title would be the Zeppelin Staakens built in WWI that had floats.  When the term "largest" was used, it may have been by weight, though, which is what gave the C-47s the edge.

Just FYI. 

I gotta admit, never new they did that to a plane that large that wasnt designed for it. Pretty cool.

I also must admit, I'm curious to see how a B-17 with floats would look. But I'd MUCH rather see a model of one built as opposed to a real B-17. I'd really hate to see an airworthy B-17 airframe wasted in a crash (not to mention any loss of life) considering how few of them exist. To each his own, especially when there is deep pockets but I'm not for possibly wasting a valuable piece of history on either of these aircraft.

Very interesting, sounds like a fun project to replicate.