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Difference between revisions of "Common Questions and Answers"
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→General: Add How did crews go to the bathroom in an airplane? Entry
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The postwar era saw near universal worldwide adoption of autocannon and today almost all fighters have guns in the 20 mm to 30 mm range. | The postwar era saw near universal worldwide adoption of autocannon and today almost all fighters have guns in the 20 mm to 30 mm range. | ||
=== How did crews go to the bathroom in an airplane? === | |||
Depending on the type of airplane, there were a couple different ways pilots could relieve themselves. Some single seat aircraft had a "relief tube" under the seat that could be pulled out and urinated into. It consisted of a funnel attached to a rubber hose that led to a Venturi tube mounted on the outside of the fuselage. Larger, crew served aircraft such as medium and heavy bombers actually had a toilet seat. The British Avro Lancaster featured a chemical toilet called the "Elsan".<ref name="Wright">{{cite web |last1=Wright |first1=Ken |title=And When Nature Calls |url=http:/www.bombercommandmuseum.ca/s,whennaturecalls.html |website=Bomber Command Museum of Canada |access-date=5 August 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190226034853/http:/www.bombercommandmuseum.ca/s,whennaturecalls.html |archive-date=26 February 2019 |date=2010}}</ref> In B-25Cs and Ds, the toilet even doubled as a riding seat for the operator of the aerial camera that was mounted in the floor.<ref>{{cite book |title=Maintenance Manual [for] B-25C and B-25D Airplanes |publisher=Field Service Department, North American Aviation, Inc. |location=Inglewood, California |page=Q-9 |url=http://app.aircorpslibrary.com/document/viewer/hugemmb251a |access-date=5 August 2024}}</ref>{{efn|This manual, which was produced by North American and not the USAAF, is fascinating because it illustrates how much extra equipment didn't make the cut for later variants of the airplane. Part of the reason it comes in at a whopping 1,308 pages is because it includes descriptions of equipment such as a chemical toilet, torpedo director, wing bomb racks, radio compartment armored bulkhead, camera compartment, blackout curtains, work tables, scanning lens to replace the side windows, handheld fire extinguishers in the nacelles and a retractable ventral turret. The aircraft would have been incredibly cramped, and therefore hard to move around in, with all of the equipment installed. So much so, that it is not hard to imagine that upon arriving at a combat zone a crew chief would have ordered most of it removed from the airplane.}} | |||
However, the problem with sit down toilets is that they take up a lot of room for a piece of equipment that has a very limited use and so were often just not included. For example, later variants of the B-25 disposed with the toilets along with the camera mounting. In aircraft without a toilet, crews would either defecate into a leftover box such as an ammunition crate that could be thrown out of the airplane or go out of the open bomb bay.<ref name="Wright" /> For this reason it could be argued they were really unnecessary anyway. | |||
The high altitudes at which the aircraft operated could cause some unusual problems, however. The cold temperatures could cause relief tubes to freeze, rendering them unusable. Even if the urine did manage to successfully leave the aircraft, it could still cause problems. On B-17s, the tube discharged out of the bomb bay and a failure to warn the ball turret gunner could result in his view out of the front of the turret being obscured by a frozen yellow liquid. In at least one other case, a B-17 farther back in the formation was hit in the windscreen by a discarded box containing what was left of the crew's morning meal.<ref name="Wright" /> | |||
Dedicated toilets for larger aircraft eventually became standard for two reasons. First, as their size and power increased the space and weight penalties of the equipment were less of a problem. In addition, aircraft began using pressurization and the requirement for a sealed aircraft made it impossible to simply open a hatch to dispose of unwanted material. | |||
== Airplane Design == | == Airplane Design == | ||