What is not mentioned is that the original request was for a long range torpedo bomber that could take off from West Coast fields, fly 1000 miles to sea, attack a Japanese task force and fly back. It was unknown if Hawaii would remain in U.S. hands after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Navy was afraid they would need to defend the West Coast from direct attack (which, until the Battle of Midway was a possibility). Thus this monster torpedo bomber was designed, built but never needed.

The upward sweep on the outboard section of wing is called polyhedral it makes for a very stable aircraft something important when on a bomb or torpedo for approaching the deck of a carrier.

Being saddled with a name like Skypirate was, alone, the kiss of death!

Somehow I never heard about this massive beast... Holy cow, that ordnance load was really something else!

The first thing I thought was Skypirate sounded like something you'd find in a teen adventure book from WWII. I picture Dave Dawson as the pilot!!

The wing shape would help with level stability , it would have the same effect as a standard dihedral wing but would probably also make production of the centre spar easier

You are a BOSS! The jet era robbed us of some really crazy designs. Not only compound motors and counter-rotating propellers, but also power recovery turbines like they used on the Constellations. Oh man, this thing was HUGE. A squadron could show up with 24 torpedoes all at once! Lights out!!!

It's interesting how many aircraft at this time were being designed with the contra-rotating propellers. As well as those you've covered there was a fighter designed by Martin Baker, better known for their ejection seats,and the Westland Wyvern which saw service with the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm. The Martin Baker aircraft would have been one of the fastest piston engined fight if it had reached service. The problem was that the designer was a perfectionist which meant he kept tinkering with it and the war was over before it was ready.

What a fantastic 1/48 scale kit this would be! This beast, the Boeing monster and the Martin Mauler all in 1/48... well, a respectable twin Mustang (finally!), an equally respectable P-51H (again, finally!) AND, of all things, the Douglas Skyshark have appeared in 1/48th. One can but hope. In a way, this aircraft's reason for existing at all matches that of the B-36 (and both were the behemoths of their kind as a result). How to strike at the enemy when all of your bases outside of North America have been lost? One must remember that this design originated at a time when it was feared that Japan might control most of the Pacific, possibly even the Hawaiian Islands (and likewise England might fall to Germany as well). Hence these long range, huge brutes conceived as a result. Well, Midway and the Battle of Britain saw those threats reduced. The hitherto unimagined horde of fleet carriers, light carriers and escort carriers issuing from the U.S. now meant that this beast, at least in its current form, had lost it's original purpose. Other existing types were handling it quite fine. Ironically, a smaller "sibling" from the same company became the attack aircraft that the Sky Pirate didn't! The Skyraider even dropped the occasional torpedo.

The Douglas Devastator was the most advanced aircraft of its type when it was designed. It’s just that technology surpassed it so quickly. The gull wing aspect was not for landing gear strength. It was for prop clearance. The extended landing gear was in fact an issue, facing weight and strength issues. You might have show how Douglas incorporated aspects of this design into the A-1 skyrader. A very successful design.

It's quite amazing how the A-1 Skyraider simply left it in the dust.

Looks a bit like the Centaurus-powered Blackburn Firebrand.

I suspect the multihedral shape of the wing was probably done to give the stability benefits of a high-dihedral wing while allowing for a simpler center section (pass through, constant chord spar structure, likely), as well as allowing for the wide-set main gear to be shorter than they would be if set mid-span on a constant-dihedral wing. It would also probably simplify ordnance loading, since all the hard points are the same height above the deck.

one thing about the skypirate is that, like Ivan Drago, whatever he hits he destroys. with a 4 torpedo loadout even a single TB2D getting through air defenses would remove all but the largest ships from existence

Left out is how the ultra-successful Douglas A-1 Skyraider relates to this design. It is said the Skyraider’s only flaw is that they didn’t make enough of them.

That's one Cool Logo !

True Megachonker

I’m having fun imagining an alternate Vietnam war where sky pirates were used in conjunction with AD-1s on recon and bombing runs

It's interesting to me that the Skyraider and the Skypirate had their first flights just 5 days apart. Two huge piston singles from the same company at the same time. Who thought that was a good idea?

Thanks, fascinating stuff! Douglas might have profited from this failed project in its later Skyraider - which is also a quite similar name.

Aside from the tail being a bit too chonky, this was a really good looking plane.

Nice work! A lot of pictures I hadn't ever seen of it before, and that one at the end was especially nice. A lot of these failed projects are the planes, but there was a whole team of passionate people behind this thing, and seeing them around it really conveys that.

Why the inverted gullwing style? Maybe the designer simply liked that look.

Never even seen or heard of it. Thank you for the information. Great work once again . 👊💛👍

What a great channel, really glad I found it!

Great job!

The inverted gull wing on the F4U was largely a response to the need for shorter landing gear struts and larger propeller swing and it also improved pilot visibility of the carrier deck on landing.

Great Story. I have a great book that details this plane in parallel with your video content. Well Done Sir.

I enjoy your videos so much. Thank you for your hard work. I love military aviation and ground vehicles. Please keep doing what you do.

Interesting, thanks for making this video.

Holy moly, that group photo really conveyes the sheer size of that thing! Wow! 😮😮

I read the inv. gullwing is for drag reduce and landinggear, same with the junkers 87 and corsair.

New to your channel- really nice work cheers

@7:20 maybe it was to increase stability? Same was done in f4 phantoms

That is a stunning piece of engineering, especially for the time.

The McDonnell-Douglas F4 Phantom II also has a wing dihedral applied at the folding chord section. Dihedral angle applied to the wings helps an aircraft avoid sideslip during low-speed maneuvers, probably beneficial during carrier landings. Most WWII fighters had dihedral wings, but in most cases, the angle was constant from root to tip, such as in the case of the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, the Republic P-47, and the Messerschmitt Bf-109. The Grumman F6F had dihedral wings, but the upward angle was applied at an outer section of the span past a section of flat or zero-dihedral, not unlike the Skypirate or the Phantom II. Why was the Hellcat, a radial-powered, single-engine carrier-based fighter given that sort of "interrupted dihedral" rather than the constant dihedral of the highly successful Zero, another radial-powered, single-engine carrier fighter. Perhaps because the Zero was not originally designed with foldable wings and the Hellcat was.

The dihedral outer wings are for roll stability, effectively making the pilot say "look ma, no hands" while doing something else in the cockpit besides flying. Also helps maintain roll authority. I. E. :you can still roll the plane even with the big-ass wing And, in my opinion, the angled outer wings makes it easier for the hydraulics to fold up with shorter arc than folding up from complete horizontal position. Maybe even for the wings to steer clear of the deck, but not that much 'cuz of how big it is

The Douglas engineers , years later, were rumored to have stated they added the dihedral to the outer wing panels "because it looked so cool".

Now that was a Hell of an aircraft.

Great video! Skypirate sounds like the name of an airplane from a 1930's comic book.

Maybe the up turned wings for extra clearance when landing. With those long wings I can see a strike during a rough landing

Possible reason for the unusual Gull Wing Design was to maximize use of "Wing in ground effect" Assuming you're flying level at nearthe surface, the Sjypirate would be Wing in ground effect, allowing it to expend less fuel and fly further, theoretically. So the upward slant of the Wing tips would alow the Skypirate to maintain a degree of lift should it need to break the effect immediately without substantial loss in energy. I noticed the Sky Pirat had an unsual amount of wing area which allowed it to carry larger stores. Having this large amount of wing area would allow the skypirate to easily enter and stay in "wing in ground " effect while below Radar and on it's way to a target, deliever it's payload the bank and break contact rapidly without haviung too much of delay in power or control. Just an Idea.

The wings likely had the flat centre section to make external stores loading easier by using the same height bomb cart for each station. It also would have put the wing fold hinges just a bit lower than they’d have been on an ordinary dihedral wing which would save space on a carrier’s hangar deck. The tips are raised for stability.

This was a beautiful plane, despite all of its failings.

i LOVE every single one of your videos that I see, so why do I only click the thumbs up once out of every ten times? It's like my standards have adjusted to the quality of video expected instead of judging your videos against everything else that I see. I'm going to have to fix that. My apologies.

very cool

It's curious that the Forrestal class was not included in the list of carrier classes. My father preferred landing his TBM-3 on the Essex class, but had to qualify on the Saratoga after it was commissioned in 1956 (he was in Naval Air Reserve). He found that long deck on an Essex more reassuring that the "short porch" on the Saratoga.

Douglas (and Heinemann) was also working on the XBT2D.

The Corsair's wings give it an aggressive look. Me like many I'm sure has made the F 4U their favorite WW2 aircraft.

Closest to Skypirate are the Blackburn Buccaneer and the de Havilland DH.110 Sea Vixen which wad originally to be called Pirate.

Well,that blows, but Douglas then came out with the A-1 Skyraider

Learn so much from comments as from your download. Thanks all. Dave

7:20 Probably for the same reason the Sopwith Camel's lower wing was angled upward slightly. It's more forgiving on landing for inexperienced pilots if they don't come in quite level.

I think the gull wing is for the folding wing, to strengthen it since it was a longer than typical wingspan for this type of folding wing.

angled wings give you stability. horizontal wings give you efficiency. the effect of dihedral is more pronounced at the tips (same reason the ailerons are there) so I'm guessing the wing design was an attempt to improve efficiency & top speed.

the outer wing sections having dihedral is usually done to give an aircraft roll stability. The strake in front of the rudder and that huge rudder suggests that the aircraft needed to stabilize its yaw.

Looks like an Invader rear-ended a Mauler...but that bottom view in the air suggests an outsize Nanchang CJ6A! The name makes me hear the 80s song "Sky Pilot" in my head...

Reminds me of the XB-52… this plane is huge, but look it has a fighter style cockpit!

There's a utility agricultural aircraft that has almost as exact same design not quite as big though the Fletcher FU 24.

Yup (3:24) , pretty sure that tail fin was later used for the C-124 prototype (😋). A squadron of them on deck would've made the carrier operate more efficiently just on the tail fins tacking the wind alone.

An interesting design with a lot of potential. It was doomed to failure like most of the late war super-props. The combined effect of the Navy's belief of "everything jet", fascination with single seat planes( something that seemingly comes in phases every ten years), and primarily a lack of vision about a different kind of multi-role aircraft for ASW or AEW. The big platform looks very capable of handling those roles. It took the US and Britain half a decade or more to come back with airplanes like the Tracker or the Gannet.

Was the weurd wing configuration intended to help with wing folding?

The Corsair's gull wing was ORIGINALLY designed to completely remove the need for costly gussets on the wings by making them enter the fuselage at a 90* angle

Interesing. Tricycle gear. How does it compare to the Fairey Gannet?

A unique plane - as far as I can tell the largest piston single ever flown (the Soviets had some with larger wing span but not as heavy).

This plane has the same vibes as the P-61. Steampunk-ish cockpit and turret layout, lots of ordnance, forward armament (capable of air to air combat), and looks like something from star wars.

With a shorter tail, it could make the plane more twitchy in yaw and therefore would have a negative effect on the plane's use as a gun platform.

Best guess for straight midsection is structural integrity and having straight wing spars. The midsection is very heavily loaded...

Dihedral stability is the only thing I can think of for the wing configuration.

BIG? How about the Grumman AF? Biggest single engine Carrier landing capable plane I ever saw. My dad herded Savage Nuke Rated turbines too. Had a small jet engine in the fuselage too.

I imagine the dihedral was for similar aerodynamic reasons as the F 4 phantom don't recall what that was but none the less

i wonder who talked the Navy into wanting this behemoth,i suppose it could have been used in a ground support role

This is a good-looking plane.

On that i agree, US Military isn´t really all that good with their naming. However various companies also got specific themes, like Gumman and their famous cat-themed fighters. And Bell seemed to have an "Aira-X" theme going on, at least until the P-63 King Cobra happened...

I think the upswept wings are called polyhedral. I'm not an engineer or anything, but I think its supposed to help with, for what ever reason, level flight. The F4 phantom had the same type of wings. Thats where I read about it when researching the F4.

It doesn't seem like a great leap from this to the Skyraider though.

7:07 this is called polyhedral. What this does is induce a rolling moment when turning just using the rudder. Why they did this I'm not sure of. 14:18 there was a F6U Pirate jet

It's much like the outer wings of the F-4 Phantom (as I recall) - It's needed for stability, but instead of having the *entire* wing given some degree of dihedral along their entire length, the outer sections are given more dihedral to (essentially) average it out. Also, near the end, I don't think you really mean the Skypirate was "expendable." Extraneous to needs, perhaps.

i'd like to see how the propeller mechanically worked.

Look at the size of that thing!

In hindsight, Douglas Aircraft would have been better off having initially developed the aircraft using the then available R3350 radial without the contra-prop and reduced capacity to maybe half what the original design was rated for. Thus awaiting a new dash number of the aircraft in the future, utilizing the R4360 once it became available. The plane would still have had far more capacity than anything the Navy had throughout WW2 that was carrier based and might have given the aircraft design a fighting chance at being fielded in a combat roll. Seeing as a great many of Douglas's aircraft where very robust and durable at taking combat damage, it might have saved more aviators lives as well. A prime example of robustness would be both the A-1 Skyraider and the A-26 Invader, of which both designs so use up and into the Vietnam War. The A-26 being numerically changed to the B-26K Counter Invader.

I keep thinking of the song. Sky pirate.

to be fair the RAF gave one aircraft a pirate name. A Buccaneer what means sea robber is a originaly a French name for a pirate. The Blackburn Buccaneer of the RAF was a longlasting strike aircraft that was withdrawn from service after the 1991 desert storm campain.

Dihedral in the wings adds stability in flight.

Have you come across the book "Combat Aircraft Designer"? It's about Ed Heinemann and his aircraft designs. This book might explain why the wing is the way it is.

After the programme was cancelled the two prototypes should've been preserved in suitable aviation museums.

It looks a bit like the USA version of the UK's Fairey Gannet, which was very successful and two engines, one behind the other, driving two propellers.

The Fairy Gannet makes me think this could have been like it, with a turboprop

This video underscores that it could be easily argued that the B-25 bomber could easily be seen as the F-25 Heavy Fighter

Beautiful plane though.

Shame that "super props" didn't had ther true golden age. Such interesting designs went to the trash 😢

It's not that it was too large, just that aircraft carriers were too small. It would be perfect for a Project Habakkuk aircraft carrier, over 600 meters long.

For some reason it seems the word "Buzzard" comes to mind when I see pictures of the Sky Pirate......

Still somehow retains an elegance only the late piston prop planes seem to have. Pity that there aren't any working examples......

Meters?

Ah well Douglas had the AD Skyraider which perfectly fitted the role so it wasn't really a loss for Douglas

If the invasion of Japan had to have been conducted, it would have served as a "bomb truck" providing CAS. Probably would have done a good job at that. Its likely that it never would have dropped any torps. @7:40 The dihedral wing was to improve lateral stability, necessary in a stumpy plane that had to fit in elevators. @13:00 Jets didn't replace it, the A-1 Skyraider was chosen instead.

Dimensions in meters and weight in bananas...how about that...😂

Re: Your ending remark -- If you want a 'cool' or even a sensible name for a new aircraft type, get someone in the RAF to name it, as they have given the aircraft we sent 'over there' iconic titles like: Catalina, Lightning, and Mustang, Just about every piece of combat hardware that Britain got from us was re-christened with a MUCH better name than the dull-witted US ordinance fellows would bother with, and I'd bet my Firefly ((formerly 'M4)) tank on that!

Yarrr. She be a fine vessel.