Douglas Y1B-7

[Tim Wescott]

Oooh -- this one sure rings most of my "unique airplane" bells.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Y1B-7.  (It's the Plane-a-day for November 14th -- http://www.planeaday.com/)

[Bill Little]

Hmmmm..... a gull wing twin taildragger with open cockpits and the engines in pods under the wings.  Naw, it ain't too unique!!!!! LOL!! (I wonder what those guys were smoking or drinking??)   

Big Bear

[wwwarbird]

 Neat old stuff for sure.

 That's the kind of stuff they'd design back in the day before some knew any better. It's all relative in business to this day though, the guys that designed this type of thing and sold it off enough for it to actually get it built had their bosses BS'ed enough to get it done. Then, they either got figured out and canned, or went somewhere else and started the whole process again. OH, did I just say that out loud???

 On the other hand, it is truly amazing though how we as a country and society designed, built, developed, and flew, so many completely different designs from the 30's all the way through the 50's and 60's. Those were the days, they need to come back.

[Tim Wescott]

That's the kind of stuff they'd design back in the day before some knew any better. It's all relative in business to this day though, the guys that designed this type of thing and sold it off enough for it to actually get it built had their bosses BS'ed enough to get it done. Then, they either got figured out and canned, or went somewhere else and started the whole process again. OH, did I just say that out loud???

You should read the article -- odd as it looks to us, it was the first monoplane bomber in the US and just walked away from anything the Army had in its inventory at the time.  For the time, none of the design features are "BS" -- everything major feature on that thing was either coming into or already recognized as good practice.  The braced, gull-wing monoplane was a recognized design trend for high-performance monoplanes at the time -- look at the Hall Bulldog racer and the PZL P-11.  The then-current thinking on proper engine mounting was in streamlined nacelles off the wing, and no military airplane had enclosed cockpits, b'god -- you had to be able to see the enemy, after all.

It fell victim to the Martin B-10, which looks a lot more conventional to us now -- but the B-10 certainly didn't look "conventional" at the time -- it was part of the first wave of planes that used the then-recent research by the NACA on cowlings and engine position, both of which had results (the NACA cowling, and the nacelle buried in the wing).

All in all, it's a nifty example of the sort of design efforts that folks were making in the transition from biplanes to monoplanes, and all the issues of drag reduction that were cropping up once you didn't have to pull all those wires through the air.

[john e. holliday]

I check the site every morning when I first get up.  I seen the plane and thought what a candidate for the 1/2A Multi Engine contest in Tuscon town.  But, I also noticed another site off to the right.  It is not airplanes,    http://www.wheelsaday.com/    .    Yahoo couldn't find but google did.

[wwwarbird]

 I just took another look at the picture and noticed something a little odd, the engines on it turn counter-clockwise. I don't know what the engines were in the plane, maybe it was standard for that powerplant. At first I thought maybe the negative was backwards but the ARMY reads correctly under the wing, hmm.

[john e. holliday]

I think several planes during the early days had reverse rotation.