It's so easy nowadays to say "that was a bad idea, why even bother?" Well, first off failure is the best teacher, and second hindsight is 20/20. That's why I like to look at failed projects and try to go in with an open mind, try to understand their thought process, try to see the vision behind it.

As an aircraft the P-59 was a dud. But as an active duty aircraft in squadron service. Even if that was limited non combat service in the Continental United Ststes it provided a very valuable service. It allowed the USAAF to learn how to operate jet aircraft without having to try to rush them into combat. And while the P-59 may have been the first US jet fighter. It was quickly followed by aircraft from Lockheed, Mcdonnell, Vought, Republic, North American and others. Some of these follow on aircraft were good examples of early generation jet aircraft. And some were not.

I live just up the street from the Pierce Arrow building here in Buffalo. They had to break down an outside 2nd story wall of the building to remove the P-59. It's hard to believe this was 80 years ago now 😮

It was called Muroc, not Murdock. Muroc is the reverse of the original brother owner's names, Corum. Later changed to Edwards AFB after pilot Glen Edwards had a fatal crash in a Northrop YB-49 flying wing bomber.

Thrust is measured in pounds-force, not foot-pounds, which is a torque.

Firstly, another really informative vid, thanks. Also firstly, extra thanks for being about the only American channel to admit that Britain essentially gave you jet technology on a plate (albeit that it was really sort of a bribe, to ramp up lend-lease, which at that time we couldn't really pay for). What surprises me, though, is that the USAAF would actually order this as a production craft, rather than asking Bell to take what they'd learned and produce something new - rather like Gloucester going from the E.28/39 to the magnificent Meteor. As a front-line aircraft it was a dud, sure, but as experimental proof of concept, it surely did what was needed. Meanwhile, all that tight secrecy seems a little OTT when you consider that the enemy - Germany - was actually well in advance with its own jet technology. Of course, they weren't technically 'enemy' until the end of 1941, but still, how much could they have learned from these newbies to the field?

You need to tell the story of the Lockheed L-1133 jet fighter design that the USAAF rejected before the war started.

For those who may not know it, "Major Bong" was Richard Bong, America's highest scoring ace of WWII. He was killed test flying a P-80 Shooting Star the day America dropped the first A-bomb on Japan.

What was with Bell's Aira-Branding? I can imagine if they didn't kind of suck at fixed wing aircraft we could have gotten the Airapython, the Airatigerfish or the Airamuskelunge. Also, the reason the .50 calibers were staggered had to do with the feed and the ammunition storage in the nose alongside the cannon. The P-38 also staggered its fittys because they had to share space with a 20mm in a similar design.

I may be in the minority here but, I think the XP-59 was a wonderful design. Beautiful flowing lines. A few modifications such as swept wings and the next generation of jet engine and it probably would have been quite formidable.

Knocking a wall out to get things out wasn't that uncommon back then. If you can build a plane, you can build a wall.

Totally unrelated to that topic, but I had the same childhood experience as in the intro! I don’t know how many days I missed because of my gut. I’m subscribing for that reason alone.

The secrecy thing kinda reminds me of the BuOrd and the Mk. 14 torpedo. Basically the oversimplified version is in the late 1920's they pulled up an old German magnetic mine from WWI, went "wow, a magnetic detonator, that's a pretty good idea, we should look into that," and proceeded to act like their version had been developed completely independent and was of utmost top secret classified importance (despite the fact they'd reverse-engineered it from a fifteen year old foreign mine). They went as far to write a manual on how to operate it only to lock that manual up in a safe and refuse to let anyone see it. They also didn't want to destroy any of these high-tech detonators and refused to do any live-fire testing, all the while insisting the thing was perfect. Surprise surprise, the mk. 14 sucked hard, and it's why for about the first two years of involvement in WWII US submariners could barely sank any ships.

It's obvious it overall isn't a good aircraft now but back then there was no set template on how a jet aircraft was supposed to Iook it be designed. Good, trained engineers made do with the engine they had and the tech they had. The Fokker Eindecker is objectively not a good monoplane single engine fighter but it did have a forward synced gun which was the way of the future. The P-59 had a jet engine and while it could never have the impact of the Fokker monoplane it was a sign of where things were headed.

As in earlier jet video, thrust is measured in pounds-force. Not pounds-feet.

Now wait for people to claim the X15 isn’t an aircraft

With respect, I think it was pretty clear the Bell XP-59 was mostly an engine test bed, with little prospect of being an operational fighter. Useful for seeing how jet engines worked, and giving pilots some experience in engine handling / characteristic. Lockheed’s XP-80 was a more realistic project. Bell was a good choice, not overworked, an with a history of being willing to try unorthodox configurations.

Love the photo of the P-51 in a wind tunnel 👍

19:10 The YP59 was still on charge in England in September / Octrober 1945 when Eric Winkle Brown was at Boscombe Down looking for a trial Jet aircraft to do a trial for deck landing on an Aircraft Carrier (Brown being a Navy pilot). Out of the four types available the Gloster E28/39 A Meteor, the YP59 and a Spider Crab (code name for the DH100 Vampire). He chose the Vampire and after modifications to the undercarriage and an arrester hook that stowed above the tail pipe😲 and a number of trials on a airfield (probably Yeovelton) he took the little plane out for the first truely jet powered landing and take off from a Carrier - HMS Ocean on Dec 3rd 1945. No idea what they did with the P-59 though. As to your thoughts on the cannon being on the left - that was probably because it was easier to keep the existing mounting and spar for the 37 mm cannon - probably a lot less effort than to redesign the nose and the spar to get it on the centre line - the P-39 and P-63 were designed for hub mounted centre line from drawing board stage. There would also have been problems wuth relocaring the updated M10 loading system with a disintegrating belt feed. A sensible alterntinative might have been 6 x 50 cal AN 2/3. Chances are had the P-59 had the performance to be a combat aircraft the USSAC would have dropped the 37 mm and 3 x 50 cal AN 2 /3 for a mores sensible layout like that on the P-38. Significantly the P-400 had a 20 mm cannon and numbers were used in Pacific and North Africa by USAAC - but 37 mm cannon were a thing with Bell, they probably had some sort of Licensing Rights thing on going with Colt Oldsmobile.

Aloha! Excellent content that is fun to listen to. Mahalo and all hail the algorithm!

USA - Can we have a look at your jet stuff? UK - Of course, here you go UK - Can we have a look at your nuclear stuff? USA - Er?…We’ll get back to you

19:39 where was this photo taken? Because that kind of looks like Hangar 109 on NAS Patuxent River, which is *still* standing today and is *still* in use despite being over 80 years old. Minus some remodeling. I have stood exactly where that photo was taken, on that pad. I just found out last week that Hangar 109 is from WWII. Kinda blows my mind

From the Wright bros 1st flight, to Frank Whittles 1st patent for a gas turbine engine was 27 years. In 1928 Frank Whittle put down his vision for jet powered aircraft, a mere 25 years after the Wright bros 1st flight.

There were several people developing jet engines based on Frank Whittle's design that he patented in 1930. A German engineer designed one that was really close to Whittle's design. He was hired by Heinkle in 1937 and had a flying jet fighter prototype by 1939. It was small with a single engine that only achieved 372 mph during it's 6 minutes of flight using hydrogen as fuel. The German Air Ministry wasn't impressed so Heinkle went to work on a larger twin engine jet fighter. They had the airframe ready by 1940 so used it as a glider until 1942 when the gasoline fueled jet engines were ready to install. It flew at 508 mph at 19,000 feet to outperform dogfighting a FW 190. Heinkle didn't get any orders from the Air Ministry due to lacking political connections. During that time GE was developing their turbojet while Westinghouse was developing an axial flow turbojet.

Great Channel! Thank you! One thing: find out a TRUE cool logo🤣! Jokes aside, you'd deserve many more subs! Keep on your hard work and thank you again!

When did Bell call it Airacomet? Like Britian's Meteor, the name suggests something special. Calling it the Airateacher and adding that it was a new type of training airplane might have been more secure. I liked this video. I've seen a static-display Airacomet in a museum, but I can't remember which museum.

If they had put it in a P-63 airframe in a conventional fashion it would look cooler, but probably the fuel capacity would have been ridiculously low. And the engineering changes would have been tremendous so, a clean sheet of paper was a better idea.

The P-59 is seemingly the result of writing all requirements around the powerplant. In many ways it was an x-plane before the X-1, proving a propulsion system without much chance of ever being suitable for combat.

The original design @ 4:55 looks very much like the Swedish SAAB J21

Why are some of your visuals so dark?

Lockheed had previously submitted the gorgeous L-133 that was considered too advanced to be a certainty so the US gov went with "safe" with the P-59. As it was, things turned out all right as we didn't let the Germans breathe enough to get the 262 fully operational. The enemy Jet scare did effect future US aircraft development.

Thrust is measured in just lbs or newtons. Torque is measured in pound feet and newton meters.

Given the infancy of gas trubine techology of the tiem, the P-59 no less relibale than any other jet aircraft. The Me-262 engines had a life of just 20 hours if you were very gentle with them. The P-59 was arguably the USAAF/USAFs first jet trainer. The Gloster Metoer and Lockneed P-80 were notorious pilot killers even well after the war was over.

It would be interesting to see how it would have performed with axial flow engines vice the centrifugal flow. Say a J 85, 900 more pound-force each, more reliable, more efficient and manageable. True, more modern engines, which comes back to the ‘first attempt’. We have to remember, the Wright brothers first flight was only about 800 feet…

Would you think it would have been a better fighter if it had 20mm instead of a 37mm and 50 cals?

Kind of a shame this aircraft wasn’t that successful . I personally think the P-59 is a beautiful aircraft albeit the armament selection and placement does kind of throw off the looks but not a huge deal for me. If the US had a successful 20mm cannon program and used like four 20mm’s or even just stuck with something like six 0.50 cals in the nose, that would look and perform greatly I’d assume.

Thrust is pounds force - lbf. Torque is foot pounds - ftlb. Nobody bothers measuring the torque on jet engines but really sweats thrust.

well, they had to start somewhere. next stop was the p-80 shooting star, which was a lot better.

Shame was it held up the first flight of the Spider Crab (DH Vampire) because the engine was sent to tue US. The Vampire would probably have been a better choice as a wartime jet than the Meteor

i never understood what thise cylinders are on the early allied jet engines, are they combustion chamber? and if so why are they external?

Lbf from your reference materials (wikipedia) means pounds force, not foot pounds. Thrust is not measured in foot pounds.

The plane had too much wing area causing drag. Wing area sets the stalling speed and that requirement likely set by the USAAF. Diminished wind tunnel test didn’t help either.

Love these tales. To be ultra-finicky lbf is pounds force, not foot-pounds. 2000 lbf was about par for the first jet engines (both British and German), the lowest thrust that would provide decisive advantages over prop planes.

With the Tizard Mission, sharing the jet technology actually was small fry compared to what was in a small memo and a very very important report that Sir Mark Oliphant brought with him... Can you guess the name of the memo and the name of the report??!! ..and what is was about??!!

"Muroc" dry lake, not "Murdock".

So they basically utilised the Gunny Sgt Gibbs method of aircraft construction.

I dig it it's got that early age of jets Prop-punk look down pat.

First generation will always look awful to us just as the first powered flights do compared to late propellor aircraft. Think it was the Germans, then Italians, Germans again then Britain who made pre or early war prototype jets.

Mr Toohey? My DUSD Drafting Teacher! was "bell"? as "I recall?" Dude was Hard! I see my work 50 yrs later with a "b" and it's perfect? Yes I'm of the trades, Dad tought me, and I can read any, or all prints? from about 12 of age?

It’s a little silly to stand here after 70’s of development and declare it was a dud. It’s like criticising the Wright flyer for a lack of payload.

don't get why they didn't copy the swept wings of the ME 262

Thrust is in lbs, not ft-lbs. Good video though!

i think they fly one as the latest thing in an episode of the six million dollar man

second!!!

Not in warthunder though. It’s possibly the most OP plane in the game

LOL, not only me the one who thinks that guns were arranged quite in lash-up order.

6:25 how to not arouse suspicion weld up and paint over windows in an abandoned building and post an armed guard.

Not the first to mention this, but...Lockheed had the L-1000 axial flow engine and L-133 aircraft designs up in 1941/42. Mock-ups, models, etc. Chino air museum has a collection that belongs in the Smithsonian. Maybe no flying prototypes, but the centrifugal flow jet engine was a supersonic dead end, and Nathan C. Price was well ahead of the curve. Thank goodness for the napkin P-80 design that blew the Bell effort off the table...

It's a shame that it was such a dud, I love the look of it!

Nicee video.

It was a test bed.

Never should have been a design for production. It should have been considered the first of the X planes

OCD❤

I wouldn't call it a dud. A dud is an aircraft created with existing technology that fails to measure up to expectations. The P59 was entirely new technology, and a lot was learned from it. It undoubtedly spurred innovations and applications that were unknown in propeller aviation and it fostered design and performance knowledge. It was also used as a trainer for pilots aspiring to be jet fighter pilots, and despite engine delays from GE, it broke an altitude record. And subsequently more sophisticated aircraft like the P80 benefitted from the technology gleaned from the P59. In essence it was the first step in the long history of American jet aviation. Some dud!

Why go straight to building a big twin engine job, instead of a small, light single engined one?.

lbf does not stand for foot pounds, it stands for pounds force!

What a bunch of dopes. Had they used the XP-52/59 airframe instead of that dud of a plane, they might have had a winner. Oh well. At least Lockheed came through with the P80 Shooting Star.

It’s pounds-force, not foot-pounds. It’s Muroc (Murh-och) not Murdock. It’s Moh-ha-vee, not Moh-Ha-Veh. It was quite common in the era to baby-steps the flight testing in the States, where they had the luxury of infinite runway, to take “short” straight-ahead hops on the lakebed, in, and just out of, ground-effect. Aircraft design was still an art. IHYLS, I really enjoy your content otherwise. 👍😃

That would be "pounds". Foot-pounds would be a measure of torque, not thrust.

X-15 has the record for the fastest manned atmospheric flight. Space shuttle went much faster.

i find the ego trip of the opening minutes rather thpical. US jet technology stands firmly on the shoulders of the gisnt of British research.

Foot - pounds is torque (as in a piston engine) Jet thrust is measured in pounds.

22:14 It was still the US Army Air Force, the Air Force was not formed until 1947.

It wasn't a fighter. It was a research aircraft to study jet powered aircraft. To say that it was a dud is rediculous. Foot Pounds of thrust makes no sense. Ft/lbs is a measure of torque, not thrust.

1:53 Didn't Nathan Price start developing the L-1000 in 1938 and Kelly Johnson started designing the L-133 in 1939? Unaware? Maybe as far as British and German research/progress but certainly not the concept of the turbojet.

p-59 is a beast in warthunder!

🤣🤣🤣 Brilliant. But I like that the armament is asymmetrical, from a modeller’s point of view. Draws attention to the nose. 😅

The P-59 Bell Airacomet still gets a bad rap. It was cutting edge technology of its time in 1942-44 and American airplane designers and jet engine engineers were working from scratch. Considering that they had to start from ground zero, the P-59 was a valiant effort. The P-59's legacy then was just that, getting the USAAF's jet fighter and jet engine programs up and running. The USAAF could have elected to deploy small numbers of P-59s into combat just to obtain invaluable initial information on how jet fighters perform in aerial combat. The Soviet Union would later deploy small numbers of its first jet fighters, the Yak-15 and Yak-17, just to get their own jet fighter program started and jet pilot training program established. The USAAF could have deployed small numbers of P-59 Airacomets operationally with the intent to continuously improve the P-59, such as introducing improved jet engines, refinements to the air frame, replacement of the 37mm cannon with a practical Hispano 20mm cannon, and such. The end of WW2 might have seen an advanced version of the P-59 flying perhaps at 450 mph, enough to stay competitive with the latest Allied prop engine fighters and still able to deal with the final generation of German prop fighters and the Me-262 jet fighter. The introduction of the better P-80 Shooting Star, however, would have seen the fast replacement of the P-59, relegated to the role of advanced jet trainer.

I just finished watching this video and have only skimmed the comments. Did anyone mention that one of the test pilots to fly the XP-59 was a Women's Airforce Service Pilot (WASP)? If you're interested, you can find out more about the WASP program and the women who taught others to fly, towed targets for ground and aerial gunners to shoot at, and shamed men into flying aircraft that sometimes had bad reputations -- like the "One a day into Baltimore Bay" B-26 and the later B-29. The official WASP archive is in the Blagg-Huey Library's Women's Collection at Texas Woman's University in Denton, Texas.

Eye lernded mulcly im skule!

It was a prototype. Did not go into prod.

Thrust is not measured in foot pounds

Have to learn to walk before you can run.

Are you referring to the American education system being actually bad as it would take the maximum number of students with the minimum number of stages and expect the biggest bloody result. Schools of America maximum number of students minimum number of results just through so they know how to hold a gun

1250 pounds. Not foot pounds.

8:59 I would STRONGLY disagree with this statement it looks nothing like the Cobra's the wing's planform and eppenage are different the shape of the fuselage and cockpit are not even close to the Corba's.

Maj Bong dies... Was he Chinese? 😂

Nice breakfast for FW-190 D.

It was a dud, but a nice looking one. Always liked it's lines.

Pretty much everyone's first gen jets were terrible.

Dud? Did it fly? Yes. How many jets had the U.S. build before it? The engine was the problem. It may not have lived up to expectations (which quite frankly were overly ambitious) but it was a start. You build and learn. Ten years before, biplanes were still a thing. Without the Airacomet how much better would the P 80 have been? You have to walk before you can run.

Thrust is not measured in foot pounds! Foot pounds is a measure of torque!

That looks suspiciously German.

It was made in America so what do you expect? 😂

This video is so wrong I don't even know where to begin

Christ is risen.