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Thoma Morse "Combat Scout" nearly ready.

C

Cowboy1968

Charter Member
I have been testing the conversion of the Thoma Morse Scout in combat. It is a nice little flier. The model and the guns look good. Thank you to the original model builder and the guys who helped me develop the guns for the ship. I found the information for the conversion from several sources

The Combat Scout would have replaced the 80 hp La Rhone or 100 hp Ghnome, with a 110 hp La Rhone 9J of 110 hp. This engine allowed the plane to maintain a full speed run of 110+ mph and a ceiling of 19,000 feet.

More importantly the engine would have kept the Morse Scout competitive with the enemy well into 1918.

The Scout would have had two machine guns. One mounted above the wing and the other to fire through the prop.

This gave the machine a good combat ability.

To simulate the aircraft's performance I used Abacus FD Edetor and AirEd to work on the .air file. The biggest things i done was adjust weight of the guns and replaced the 80 hp La Rhone in the original model with a 113 hp La Rhone taken from another .air from a Nieuport 17. this simple adjustment really made a difference in the aircraft.

I tested the machine against the following types

Fokker Dr.I---This combat was was a blast, because the Dr.i had the advantage in agility, but it didn't have the altitude or speed advantage, and the turning radius wasn't that much more then the Scout. Now the Triplane could pull some wondrous moves, even under AI control. It was really a game of twist and turn and try to get the shot off. It was actually a fun fight. It stayed pretty tight.

Albatros D.III---This was another fun one where the Scout had the advantage of speed, but agility were about the same. This turned out to be a wide sweeping fight. It would be tight then go into a chasing fight, then go into violent turns and dives. The Scout generally was able to get altitude over the Albatros fighters. These results were about the same with the Albatros D.II

Fokker D.VI---another tight fight. Not to same manner as the Dr.I but a tight one. Again the Scout had the advantage of climb and speed, but agility in a turning fight was about even. In this case it was who could get the shots off first

Fokker D.VII---EVAN MATCH. Fun to fight. I wound up in a turning 20 minute fight with one airplane. The fight covered around 20 miles. it was a tight chase and tight turn affair. It was a blast, Both planes were able to really hold their own with each other.

Albatros D.V and D.Va--pretty much the same story as the Albatros D.III, except the speed advantage was a bit tighter. It made the chases a little tougher to get a shot in. It was a fun dogfight.

Fokker D.VIII---same story as the D.VII except the D.VIII could out climb the Scout. That big single wing has something to do with that I am sure. It was another fun fight.

In the end, I know why the US Army Air Service didn't take the plane into combat. It wouldn't have been ready until early 1918. The US was already being provided decent combat types in Europe, but I think the US missed a good chance to put a good fighter of US design on the front. The planes they were getting from France were faster and more heavily built, but the TM Combat Scout could have been a good addition to the allied list of fighters.
 
Isn`t it fun to evaluate these old planes?

Researching and adjusting takes some time, but you learn alot about the aircraft.
 
I do personally believe the army should have carried out the construction of what the report called the "combat scout". The thing is simply a dog fighter. i would put it in the same catagury as Nieuport. I climbed into a Fokker D.VI to have same fun flying against it. Well it wasn't fun.......i couldn't get an advantage on it..........it was another protracted dog fight.

two reasons i think it does good in a fight. The Scout has big control surfaces. It can shift a lot of air. Next the boost in engine power would have been a god send to a great airframe. Technicly the plane was just as good as anything in Europe in terms of design. Where the production birds failed was being underpowered for 1917 standards. The proposed modification would have solved that issue, and it would have turned out a plane that I think all the allies would have wanted. Not many birds can turn with a Fokker D.VI and Fokker D.VII, but the "Combat Scout" would have been one. It is interresting to note that after the war, the USN did re-engine 25 scouts with the 113 hp La Rhone, though this wasn't part of the Army proposal. This was because the navy didn't have spare 80 hp engines so they replaced them with what they had.
 
Lookin' good Cowboy! She ought to be fun in some what if missions over the Western Front.

While the rotory engine used by the TM and other scouts produced a great power to weight ratio (as it was a 2 stroke mechinism) it had a built in size limitation due to the tremendous torque it produced. The light weight frames of WW I aeroplanes just couldn't handle much more. While there were rotory engines with two banks of cylinders produced, they really never took off and the radial engine quickly replaced the rotory engine following WW I.

It also consumed it's oil with the fuel mixture. They used castor oil to lubricate the engine and the engine constanty exhausted the oil with it's exhaust. As a result, there were no constipated pilots when rotory engines were used!

Here's a great site to see how a rotory engine works:

http://www.animatedengines.com/gnome.shtml

And here is the Le Rhone 110 HP rotory of the TM Scout:
 
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