A Lloyd C.V of my very own?

[Hauksbee 103]

I just got a phone call from a friend who's a landscaper; travels a lot, and while working at the other end of the state, discovered what he styled "God's Own Hobby Shop'. He has a weakness for hobby shops, and said, "This place has everything! Name your favorite plane, and I'll bring a kit down to you." I whipped off a few names, but the question was 'what scale?'. I didn't want a little-bitty one. To make things easier, he handed the phone to the clerk and I settled on an Alb. D.V, but as he was reciting names, he mentioned the Lloyd. I hadn't heard of it, so it didn't click. I asked if he had any German two-seaters like Rumpler or Aviatik. He said the Lloyd was a two-seater, and I said, OK, I'd take them both.

 

After we'd rung off, I googled the Lloyd to see what I'd committed to. The C.V was the only two-seater I could find for Lloyd, but what really piqued my interest was the bottom two aircraft. I then consulted my brand-new 'Jane's Fighting Aircraft of WWI' hoping to educate myself on what I'd just bought. But in the German section there was no mention of Lloyd at all.

 

Does anyone have any info on the middle plane, the Luftkreuzer? I don't think I've ever seen another plane with three floors.

[stumpjumper 3]

wow last time i saw anything that crazy yosimie sam was fying it in dumb patrol

[Hauksbee 103]

wow last time i saw anything that crazy yosimie sam was fying it in dumb patrol

Pretty close!

[stumpjumper 3]

on the cv is the obs gun a schworlze mg?

[Bullethead 12]

Does anyone have any info on the middle plane, the Luftkreuzer? I don't think I've ever seen another plane with three floors.

 

This was the Lloyd prototype for the Austro-Hungarian requirement for a heavy bomber. Needless to say, it was a total fiasco and, as you might expect, nosed over on its first taxi test, after which it was scrapped. Geez, and the poor pilot say back even with the wing trailing edge, so had even less forward vision than in most KuK planes.

 

Lloyd in general was full of bizarre ideas. Most of their own designs that saw production and service were in the 1914-1915 time, before anybody knew better. One characteristic feature of their planes was wings covered with thin veneer instead of fabric. This made for a very strong wing (numerous photos exist of Lloyds landed Hobbit-style with no apparent damage) but it was practically impossible to repair even minor holes in the field. Still, the highly varnished wing surfaces looked quite cool. Anyway, as a result of all the engineers wasting time on this and the "Luftkreuzer", Lloyd spent the latter 1/2 of the war building the designs of other companies.

[Hauksbee 103]

on the cv is the obs gun a schworlze mg?

I don't think so. The Schwarzlose was a heavy, water-cooled, tripod mounted, crew served MG. Even without the tripod weight, I'd suspect that it would be too heavy. Same problem with the French Hotchkiss MG, which lost out to the Lewis MG. In any event, the illustration doesn't show a water-cooling jacket.

 

Thanks for the Lloyd info. BH.

Edited September 12, 2012 by Hauksbee

[77Scout 3]

I found some actual photos of these beasts here ...

 

http://www.dieselpunks.org/profiles/blogs/knights-of-the-air-made-in

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

Yikes!

 

 

Here are some more monsterous oddities:

[stumpjumper 3]

I don't think so. The Schwarzlose was a heavy, water-cooled, tripod mounted, crew served MG. Even without the tripod weight, I'd suspect that it would be too heavy. Same problem with the French Hotchkiss MG, which lost out to the Lewis MG. In any event, the illustration doesn't show a water-cooling jacket.

 

Thanks for the Lloyd info. BH.

 

think it may be this one the Schwarzlose 7/12 http://www.wwiaviation.com/german_guns.html

[Hauksbee 103]

think it may be this one the Schwarzlose 7/12 http://www.wwiaviati...erman_guns.html

I think you've got it right, Stump. I heartily recommend the link to anyone interested in aerial gunnery. It turns out that there's a lot more to this synchronization business than meets the eye. In a nutshell: the time it takes a bullet to travel from the muzzle to the propeller is fixed, but the prop will "continue rotate, moving over an angle that also varies with engine rpm. Because of the relatively long delay time of the Schwarzlose M7/12, the synchronization systems that were developed could be operated safely only in a narrow band of engine rpm. Therefore the Austro-Hungarian fighters were equipped with large and prominent tachometers in the cockpit." (Italics from the original)

 

As though one doesn't have enough to think about in a dogfight, now you have to speed up/slow down to get off a shot.

Edited September 12, 2012 by Hauksbee

[Hauksbee 103]

I found some actual photos of these beasts here ...http://www.dieselpun...the-air-made-in

Another outstanding link! Thank you much. I downloaded every pic. and stashed them in my "Flying Oddities" file. I especially like the pic. that showed the cockpit of the "Luftkreuzer". It looks as though the pilot flew standing up. Am I right in assuming that "Luftkreuzer"=Air Cruiser?

[Hauksbee 103]

Some of the small details about the Lloyd just keep getting stranger and stranger. I read through the text accompanying Scout 77's link and found the following: The machine was completed on June 8, 1916 and was ready for engine testing at the airport in Aszód. The aircraft was found to be heavy on the nose, its gravity center set too high. During ground tests it received a small-scale damage. Therefore, chassis was revised and a third wheel has been added under the nose.

 

I don't see the wheel in this pic., but what possible use could it serve, way up there? Unless it was a huge tricycle gear? Seems a bit looney, but then it does not appear that the designers let the idea of drag bother them too much. I.J.Boucher, (who did the illustrations in my first post) described the Luftkreuzer as a plane whose faults were many, and virtues were few. (...and it does translate as Air Cruiser)

[Bullethead 12]

@Hauksbee

That photo of a model isn't the Luftkreuzer, it's a 2-seater that was normal ewcept for the tumorous growth over the nose. That was for the observer, so he could shoot ahead over the prop due to the long-running Austrian problems with synchronization. In this plane, the pilot sat at normal fuselage level, immediately behind the observer's "fox hole", so had even worse forward visibility than usual in KuK planes.

 

This Lloyd was one of several things competing for the same specification for a raised observer. Other companies kept the observer behind the pilot but raised him flush with the top wing. Although the pilot could then see ahead as well as normal (as in under the upper wing and behind the engine cylinders), he couldn't communicate with the observer, so even that idea was scrapped.

 

The eventual solution was to mount a gun atop the upper wing, which was the standard Austrian 2-seater armament for the entire war. But the Austrians usually got fancy with this, enclosing the gun and its ammo in a large, streamlined pod, part of which served as an auxiliary fuel tank.

 

BTW, it wasn't just the Austrians who were limited to firing within specific engine RPM bands. That applied to nearly every synchronization system ever used. You'll note that the German fighters also have the tachometer (engine RPM counter) top and center of the instrument panel, just below the gun sight. What made things difficult for the Austrians was the delayed blowback operation of their gun, which caused its ROF to be more variable than the recoil-operated systems used by everybody else. Having an irregular rate of fire is bad when you're trying to synchronize :)

[Bullethead 12]

I don't see the wheel in this pic., but what possible use could it serve, way up there? Unless it was a huge tricycle gear? Seems a bit looney, but then it does not appear that the designers let the idea of drag bother them too much. I.J.Boucher, (who did the illustrations in my first post) described the Luftkreuzer as a plane whose faults were many, and virtues were few. (...and it does translate as Air Cruiser)

 

The wheels are on very short struts under the lower wing. The tail skids are under the rudders, which themselves are under the fuselage booms. In this pic, however, the plane up on jacks and tied down to stakes in the background, to do engine thrust tests.

[Hauksbee 103]

@Hauksbee

That photo of a model isn't the Luftkreuzer,

 

What made things difficult for the Austrians was the delayed blowback operation of their gun, which caused its ROF to be more variable than the recoil-operated systems used by everybody else.

 

I realized that after I posted it. It's the Lloyd FJ, the bottom illustration in my first post. I did think it was the pilot's position, though.

 

the Schwarzlose: So not only were they tap-dancing around the variable propeller speed, the gun's rate of fire varied too? It sounds like an invitation to blow your own prop off. How did they deal with it back in the day? Was this a common problem, or no?

[Bullethead 12]

the Schwarzlose: So not only were they tap-dancing around the variable propeller speed, the gun's rate of fire varied too? It sounds like an invitation to blow your own prop off. How did they deal with it back in the day? Was this a common problem, or no?

 

You have to remember that in WW1, arming airplanes was a matter of taking an off-the-shelf machinegun originally designed for land use and somehow making it work in a role not even envisioned yet when the gun was designed. Thus, everybody had problems with synchronization to some extent. You will find mention in memoirs of guys shooting a few holes in their props.

 

In general for WW1 systems, you had 2 independent machines, the engine and the gun, neither designed to work with the other, and both wanting to do their own things. The synchronizer connected them and made them cooperate within acceptable tolerances, at least on those occasions when the operating cycles of both were more or less "in harmony". This is why nearly all systems were only "safe" to use (remember, acceptable tolerances) within certain ranges of engine RPM. The further you got out of that range, the more likely you were to shoot your prop.

 

Engine RPM could, of course, vary from 1 extreme to the other of the "safe" range. Because the engine and gun were mechanically interconnected, slower engine speed meant slower rate of fire and vice versa. This affected every synchronization system ever made, not just Austrian.

 

The special problem the Austrians had, on top of all these others, was that the Schwarzlose was in some ways a BETTER infantry weapon than the Maxim-type. The Schwarzlose had a much simpler mechanism with very few moving parts, and the moving parts it did have were big and heavy. Thus, on the ground, it was less likely to gum up with mud, had fewer problems with overheating, was much easier to strip, clean, and reassemble, and the individual parts weren't as likely to break. It was also cheaper to mass-produce. However, these virtues made it much more difficult to synchronize. To attach a synchronizer to a gun, you have to modify some of its moving parts, and the smaller the parts are, the easier this is and the better it works. There were several ways to get into the guts of a Maxim this way but very few options on the Schwarzlose and none of them were ideal. Thus, it took the Austrians longer to develop a system and the systems they came up with didn't work as well as those elsewhere. They had looser tolerances, so that even in their "safe" zones, there was a higher chance of shooting the prop. But you can't hold this against the Schwarzlose. It was a very good weapon for its intended purpose, and other nations were just lucky that they'd gone with Maxims when the need for synchronization arose.

 

The Austrians were of course quite aware of this. What they needed was a gun designed from the get-go for airborne use. By the end of the war, they had the Gebauer Engine Gun. This differed from all other systems in not being a stand-alone weapon, but an accessory of the engine itself, not really much different in concept from the engine's own oil pump. This solved all problems related to making 2 stand-alone systems try to work together because there was only 1 system. Rate of fire still varied with engine RPM but the gun was incapable of firing when the prop was in the way regardless of engine speed, and its rate of fire could be MUCH higher than anything possible with conventional systems. Sadly for the Austrians, the war ended before this could go into production. It did see limited post-war use, but never achieved the success it deserved.

 

An interesting note on all this is that the Austrians had a warning system for when their synchronized Schwarzlose guns weren't working right. This implies that once the system got out of synch, it stayed that way, so if you kept shooting, you'd only do more damage. I think this was actually true with all synchronizers, not just Austrians, but was a rather more common problem with them. Anyway, the Austrians glued thin wires to their props. While these wires were intact, they formed a circuit that lit a lightbulb on the instrument panel. If this lightbulb ever stopped working, the pilot would assume the wire was broken by a bullet going through the prop, so would break off the action. It seems to have taken quite a few bullets to break a prop, so if you stopped shooting soon enough, you could still get home OK (provided the enemy let you).

[Hauksbee 103]

Great exposition, BulletHead. This gets copied and filed for future reference.