I had a model kit of the Japanese Shinden. Pusher type propeller as I recall. Very advanced design. Did the P-47 ever exceed the speed of sound in a vertical dive? I recall reading that somewhere.

There are many claims from WW2 about German and British planes breaking Mach 1, but most aircraft (German) just were buffering the barrier. Some planes were definately destroyed like the volatile Me-163 Komet rocket plane that had normal max speed of 600 mph and attained 702 mph in a climb test with V18- ripped most of the tail off. A Me-262 pilot named Hans Mutke claims he exceeded the barrier in April 1945 over Tyrol, Austria flying "Weiss 9" (White 9) in a _powered_ dive at full throttle to push through. At the time he did not realize what was done but the aircraft was reported to have experienced a double flame-out with bolts ripped from the airframe and wings and metal-warping visible. He made the claim later in life and the old theory that the Me-262 could only attain Mach 0.84 went out the window. Several German universities did computer simulations and reached the same conclusion as Wright Field's report on the Me-262, pg. 13 that stated that the Me-262 COULD achieve Mach 1 in a shallow dive from above 35,000 ft. Max ceiling was 37,565 normal flight. And there is secret intel on the Lippisch Lp.13b ramjet that was under construction by Skoda-Kauba in 1945. US Intel reports that the plane was completed by March 1945... but then the rest of the info on that plane is mysteriously missing! It probably flew and broke the barrier and was conveniently lost when Yeager broke it officially in Oct '47 in the Bell X-1. Unlike the Allies, the Germans had several supersonic aircraft under construction in 1945, the others being the Zippermayr Pfeil at Lofer, Austria and the DFS-346. The US got the Pfeil in glider form and took it to the States while the Soviets captured the DFS-346 and made 4 versions of it for supersonic flight. It flew over 500 mph in 1947 as a glider but took extended time to push for Mach 1 by 1951 whereas the prototype broke-up in flight, the German pilot escaping. Btw, the Shinden was the only canard/swept-wing combo piston fighter and powerful with a Mitsubishi Ha-43 @2200 hp.

Propeller aircraft can never reach the sound barrier, since the tips of propeller blades hit the sound barrier before the rest of the plane does. The speed at the propellers is axial speed plus rotational speed. When the body of the plane hits Mach .7 (or maybe a little less), the props are at Mach 1. The propeller blades go into shock stall, and the plane can no longer accelerate. There are many claims of propeller driven dive bombers breaking the sound barrier during WWII, but these have to all be considered implausible. Approaching the sound barrier, an airplane is already well above its terminal velocity, the speed at which drag matches the acceleration imparted by gravity. Propellers are shock stalled, and there is neither thrust nor gravity available to accelerate a diving airplane past a certain point. As any aircraft approaches the speed of sound, airflow over some parts of the plane will exceed Mach 1 and create shockwaves. These shockwaves cause intense buffeting. Many propeller driven WWII fighter planes, including the Supermarine Spitfire, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, and the North American P-51 Mustang, experienced these effects at Mach 0.85.

this deserves 5's I'm not plane around! (bad pun I know go easy)

@PT... here we go into a NG-themed argument. #1) Your first statement is false b/c a supersonic prop can be mounted aft (as in pusher) or mid-fuselage driven by 1-2 high hp/torque engines and therefore not be the fisrt part of the plane to go supersonic. #2) Supersonic prop feasibility studies were performed by the US under NACA in the 1940s and by Germany at several flight institutes (Germany also had supersonic windtunnels and even a hypersonic wind tunnel). Both studies agreed that a prop plane COULD break the sound barrier IF the shape of the prop was modified to meet the pressure requirements of supersonic flight which led to some odd prop test models including the promising scimitar kind, and #3) there is NO FUNDAMENTAL REASON a prop with altered shape could not exceed the speed of sound as the tips do. All that is needed is the highest hp and torque mated to a blade that can go supersonic along with the aircraft which in the 1940s was supposed to be as aerodynamic as possible (think bullet shape of the Bell X-1). The highest speed attained in WW2 by a prop plane that was test verified was a Spitfire that hit Mach 0.90 which started to come apart with the prop blades and cowling. The P-47 pilot's claims were off b/c even in a dive from high altitude the instruments gave false readings giving the _impression_ of reaching Mach 1 when in fact they reached approx. 575-580 mph and were losing control of their planes. They looked at the instrumentation instead of realizing that they would have regained control of the a/c IF they had truly broken Mach 1. Several P-38s were also tested in high altitude dives from 42,000 ft with full power and did not break the barrier. So recap: the conventional blade props of the WW2 fighters were NOT designed for supersonic flight and at or near 500 mph lost thrust and lift and produced severe drag, acting as a brake. The Supermarine Spiteful Mk.XVI in 1945 in an unofficial test flight broke 504 mph (some claim 509 mph) and later postwar the Australian CAC CA-15 Kangaroo also broke 500 mph (but that was not its normal operating speed). The XF-84H "Thunderscreech WAS designed with supersonic props but the airframe and turboprop twinned engine @ 5332 hp + over 1200 lb thrust generated only got it to 670 mph @ height= Mach 0.92. That is not the fault of the Aeroproducts supersonic prop design but in the F-84 mods and coupled engines choice. The reason there is no supersonic prop plane is that no one has built a suitable supersonic propeller to mate with a highly aerodynamic fuselage with tremendous hp and torque. It's not impossible at all, just needs time like much of aviation. Imagine IF Rare Bear had double the hp and torque and mounted a supersonic prop!!! It's all about efficiency, airflow, power, torque, and aerodynamics. I think one of the racing crowd is now attempting a supersonic piston plane as we speak, but the studies in the 1940s verified that the supersonic prop fighter WAS feasible, yet not needed. Germany's highest speed with the Do-335 was 477 mph, Britain had the Spiteful at 494 mph, and the US had the P-51H and possible Superbolt from 480-490 mph. Even the Japanese had the Shinden at 466 mph. But jet aircraft from the Reich changed aviation history. No German piston a/c dare dive on a pursuing P-47 Jug w/o losing, but the He-162 jet shot down two P-47s easily in 1945 (2 of its 4 kills operating for just 3 weeks with JG 1 with only 23 total operational a/c received of 55)!

This is a hybrid, so the supersonic prop fighter purists will reject it but the McDonell XF-88B used 2x XJ34 jets at 4825 lb st each PLUS a Allison turboprop A-5 WITH transonic and SUPERSONIC PROPS to exceed Mach 1. The Trimot reached Mach 1.12 in the late 1940s!
A pic:http://www.boeing.com/history/mdc/graphics/histlarg/hist059b.jpg
Also note that civilian test pilot Herb Fisher performed earlier 150 dives from 38,000 ft with the P/F-47s to attempt Mach 1 with Curtiss supersonic propellers. The P/F-47s could only make 500-580 mph, unfortunately. And the German supersonic swept-blade design was by VDM in WW2 which would also require 2x He S 011 jets and a DB 021 turboprop of 3300 shaft hp with 2424 additional lbs thrust to go supersonic. This design does not show up in the Luft '46 pages nor books b/c it was a design for an unspecific heavy fighter, so configurations could vary. DB made WW2 engines, not aircraft (with exception of a design study for a new Ural Bomber using a carrier system: Projects A-D and E parasite jet fighter), so it would have been assigned to another company for the prototype. The DB 016 turbojet was the most powerful in the world in WW2 at over 26,000 lb st and the designs for the turboprops were adopted by the Russians postwar leading all the way up to the Bear bombers which are the loudest bombers in the world and routinely fly at 575 mph! FYI PT

Seems that a man named David Rose has been pursuing high performance and supersonic prop planes since '07 with Mach Buster and other concepts:
Rose Mach Buster: http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation-photos/middle/7/2/8/0801827.jpg
The weird-looking (aka Luft '46 inspired) RP-4 tandem: http://www.barnstormers.com/eFLYER/2007/070600FA01-348x148.jpg
http://www.barnstormers.com/eFLYER/2007/070600FA02-348x199.jpg

People also said that the ornithopter would never fly too... didn't stop the Germans in WW2:
http://discaircraft.greyfalcon.us/Adalbert%20Schmid%20Ornithopter.htm

Info on the Lippisch 13b aircraft that _might_ have been the first to have flown Mach 1 in WW2 (with exception to classified German disc craft that operated off EMG drives and had mass-reduction systems onboard):
http://discaircraft.greyfalcon.us/LIPPISCH%20P.htm

I also remember seeing the movie "Blue Thunder" in 1982 with the modified Gazelle and people actually believing that a helo could NOT do a loop!!! I thought I was surrounded by fools in the theater that gasped when the fake helo did it; in fact, in the 1970s MBB of Germany (Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm) had made the rigid rotor sytem for the Bo-105 attack helo that could do loops all day long!!! Another belief destroyed with ease as tech became available- now, most attack helos can do loops... once thought impossible and backed by science as Plane Talk tried to explain (or copied & pasted from an old obsolete site with old ideas). Btw, the whisper mode of the stealth Silent Hawk (provisonal designation) helo used in killing Osama was invented by the Germans again-EADS.

The original question had to do with a WW2-vintage, front prop plane being able to reach Mach 1 in a power dive. I thought Plane Talk did a nice job explaining that it was impossible then, and no new science has been invented to change that. I, for one, don't give a hoot in hell if his words were his own or somebody else's. If the latter, I congratulate P.T. on being smart enough to smell a rat and to be industrious enough to find and lift the right words. You, on the other hand, have written 7 comments on your own parody -- 6 since Plane Talk tackled the question head-on. Your comments are loaded with irrelevancies (e.g., false readings from instruments), anecdotes, unrealized design concepts, futuristic aircraft, helicopters, German derring-do, IF this and IF that, and a bunch of other stuff you copied from your stacks of reference material. You were stung by P.T. and now you're trying to recover by generating a gigantic snow job.

Please tell me, you 14 voters who offer no comments, how in heaven's name do you consider this parody to be funny? Chucky G., the comment box is now much improved, but when, at long last, are you going to require voters to use it?

Yeah Straight Talk (Plane Talk puppet), you were actually put in your place when I rebutted your false fact that a prop plane could not go supersonic due to the prop and all factors affecting it. The 3 points I made are still valid and also the XF-88B trimot DID go supersonic with the prop in operation, so you lost right there. The Thunderscreech also had a designed supersonic prop by Aeroproducts but failed due to the design of the aircraft. I correctly answered that WW2 prop fighters had props that were NOT designed for Mach 1 but that studies in the US and Germany concluded that they were feasible and companies like Curtiss and VDM worked on such designs that were not needed as the first jets Germany put into service (Me-262, Ar-234, and He-162 plus rocket fighter Me-163) did not need them to go over 450 mph. The German speed range of those a/c was 460-620 mph! I also provided information on the German ornithopter and the MBB Bo-105 to prove that "impossible" aviation feats backed by science of the time were proven WRONG (key word)! Your pathetic attempt to play NG games of evasion and pure commentary do not change anything I presented and even cited. Do you want the NACA report numbers or German further sources? I can provide them. Also, in very minimalist terms any prop blade or helo rotor blade is just a small wing and a wing can go supersonic by simple sweep-back. If you wanna go the rounds with aviation, military or otherwise, I can write and cite all day. You have provided zero facts to rebut my arguments.

ST(D)... btw, everything written here is from memory- no ref materials needed. A well-studied aviation artist, modeler, historian, or experienced combat flier could write the same things as well b/c we all know them by heart. I've had 4 decades of study mixed with real life experience and my knowledge base is very broad. 145 IQ, encyclopedic knowledge on a range of topics, and only the 11th author since 1955 to attempt a book on all of the German flugscheiben (flight discs). I have you at a disadvantage. NFR

AFAIK, the interesting XF-88B was a multi-project collabortion between NASA and the services of the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy. Transonic and supersonic propellers were tested in the 1940s through the 1950s with NACA/NASA. The XF-88B exceeded Mach 1 with three different supersonic propellers in the 1950s, confirming the wind tunnel data obtained separately. Among them was a "Flexolite" bending blade.
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-445/p137.jpg

Rob, you have my deepest sympathy, and I sincerely hope the New Year brings you what cannot be memorized: self-control, wisdom, and judgment.

Just a passing note that for the record the XF-84H could have made it supersonic if the Allison turboprop had afterburner. At height, Mach is almost 100 mph slower, putting the XF-84H within 30 mph of achieving its goal. This has been discussed on modeling and aviation message boards for decades. Yeager broke Mach 1 after being dropped by a carrier aircraft at height and lit his four rocket engines in sequence as he had no throttles. The B-29 climbed at 165 mph but the X-1 stalled at 236 mph so the B-29 took a dive to gain speed and released the aircraft which then lit and climbed to 42,000 ft where Mach 1 is less than 750 mph at S/L at 32 degress F. He achieved Mach 1.05, cut the engines and drag slowed the aircraft down immediately. The British, United States, and Germany all knew about Mach flight by 1940. The Germans were the only ones building aircraft to achieve it and those planes and plans fell to the Allies. Britain could have been first with the Miles M.52 which started in 1943 under Specification E.24143. It was cancelled in February 1946 but a scale model flew in 1948 to Mach 1.38. As for supersonic propellers, the most promising was the scimitar blade investigated by both the United States and Germany during World War II. But neither side had a requirement for a supersonic fighter and the work was all research. Many aviation experts think that the XF-86 broke Mach 1 before Yeager on Oct 1, 1947 and others believe that the Germans did it in March 1945 with a classified ramjet design. Accounts by P-51, P-47, P-38, Spitfire, Typhoon, Tempest, Mosquito, Me-163, and Me-262 pilots are generally refuted due to the inability of the propellers of that time and the German jets and rockets not being powerful enough, although they were capable in dives of high 600 mph speeds,

Wow, 25 straight 5's on a day when 9 of the other 10 submissions received 0-2 straight 5's and the 10th received 4. You must be the best parody writer ever! Watchout Weird Al, there's a condender for your title!!!

Uh WOW, this has been up for 11 days and judging by the comments section is one of those argument ratings parodies. Callmelennie gets these amounts too; in fact, a lot of political and or controversial topics rate these amounts! I guess it really depends on what side you are on or if you're going to post a protest vote or not!!! That could be a 1-1-1 or a 5-5-5.