Tail Plane Design

[Jim Oxley]

Why aircraft designers choose a particular tack for design has always fascinated me.

Take for example the twin-tail design, mostly used on bombers (for arguments sake I'm excluding twin-boom aircraft eg P-38, Fw189, Fokker G.1). The aircraft that come readily to mind are the Avro Lancaster, Consolidated B-24 and the Handley Page Halifax. Initially I thought that the reason the twin-tail was adopted was that it facilitated easy installation of a tail gunner's position. But while this is probably correct it can't be the only,or main, reason for it's adoption. After all Boeing managed to install such in it's traditional tailed B-17 and B-29, as did Petlyakov with it's Pe-8, Mitsubishi with it's G4M, Martin with it's B-26 and Vickers with it's Wellington.

No, there has to be specific benefits associated with the twin-tail for it's (fairly) wide use. The French loved it, and used it on the Potez 63, the Bloch 174, Breguet 690, and the Liore LeO 451. British use seemed to rest with specific designers, eg Avro (Manchester, Lancaster), Handley Page (Hampden and Halifax) and Bristol (Buckingham). The same can be said for the Americans, only Lockheed (Hudson, Ventura and Harpoon), North American (B-25) and Consolidated (Coronado and Liberator). The Germans dabbled in it with the Dornier D0 17/217, Heinkel He 219 and the Messerschmitt Me110. As did the Russians with the Pe-2/3 and the Tu-2: the Japanese with the Mitsubishi G3M and the Kawanishi H6K and the Italians with the Fiat B.R.20.

So why was the twin-tail design used? Only a few utilised the space for a rear turret, so while this may have been a benefit it didn't see widespread use. What were the other benefits? Was it ease of manufacture? Improved handling as in rudder response? What were the drawbacks?


Very interested to hear others thoughts on the matter.