Ceiling 70 years ago

[chimera]

Hi from new member, non-professional,
I'm interested in extreme design : minimum size and weight for increased performance. The B17 service ceiling was 35000 ft, but what was the record ceiling ? If everything was stripped to minimum, just a flying shell with pilot and so with smaller wings, would 39000 ft be possible with a small bomb-load? That's the Messerschmidt service ceiling.

 

[Gremlin29]

Sure one could go higher with less weight because when wing loading is reduced, so does stall speed. That being said, you may not reallize that "service ceiling" is a term that has been in use for a very long time and is simply the altitude at which an aircraft can no longer climb at a rate of 500 feet per minute which is considered to be the "standard rate of climb". I would expect the B17 could have achieved 40,000 aerodynamically without much trouble, but I'm not well versed in the performance of supercharged recips which will become oxygen starved at some altitude.

From a purely defensive posture the bombers could have flown higher narrowing the performance advantage fighters had in both speed, climb and maneuvering (stall speed increases with altitude) however that would be at the expense of range, load and bomb accuracy. Even with the advanced for it time Norden bombsight, B17's were horribly inaccurate and increasing altitude would have made them even less accurate.