Talk:Consolidated PB2Y Coronado

B-24 Liberator
Per this Great Planes documentary, the development of the B-24 Liberator design shared similarities to that of the subject of this article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMkYzO0_By0 .--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 19:51, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 12:12, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

"Removed superchargers"
I'm always willing to learn something new, but to the best of my knowledge, all military radial engines had superchargers, which were integral with the rest of the engine (usually integrated into the rear crankcase housing, powered by the crankshaft). First, operating without any supercharger would severely limit your operating altitude to well under 10,000ft, which is very inefficient and can cause lots of problems when it comes to mountains. There is a difference between avoiding higher altitudes and not being able to fly over 8,000ft at all because your engines just won't keep you in the air over that altitude. Second, being an integral part of most radial engines, it is difficult to just "remove" the supercharger. I've seen lots of mistaken articles which refer to aircraft "lacking superchargers" (or turbochargers) and making it sound like they didn't have any form of forced induction, when the truth is that what those planes were lacking was TWIN STAGE supercharging. Single-stage supercharger is basically stock, regular format for military radials for the era, and high-performance models were given 2-stage/speed or turbocharging. This is what is actually lacking from most aircraft described as "lacking superchargers". I don't know exactly what causes someone to say that they "removed the superchargers" from the PB2Y, but as it's actually written I find it pretty unlikely. There are much better ways to save weight than by removing all the forced induction from your aircraft. Turrets, guns, radios, extra crew, all of these can go much easier than all your blowers. Removing second stages would make sense...if they had them to start with. But that doesn't seem all that likely. So although it seems unlikely to me, I cannot say what they actually could have done that someone would have mistaken for "removing the superchargers to save weight". If it's built on the same design as the B-24, they may well have removed the TURBO charging system, which I believe still leaves each engine with a single-stage blower (IIRC they are stacked in series, turbo into intercooler into blower into engine, vs on a 2-stage/speed system stage-2 to intercooler to stage-1 to engine). The weight of the turbos and intercoolers would indeed be worth ditching if you didn't plan of trying for over 20,000ft at all.

64.222.158.24 (talk) 06:58, 15 October 2018 (UTC)