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Pilots,
With this weekend’s special we want to take the opportunity to answer a question that many of you have probably had on your minds at one point or another when looking through the World of Warplanes roster: why do some planes have four propeller-blades when most have only three? Is there an advantage to one over the other? Find the answer to this intriguing question in our History Flashback below!
Oh and since you’re already at it, why don’t you take in the bonuses of our associated special and level up with generous triple XP and some of the most sought-after consumables that the game has to offer?
| ‘Four Blades In the Wind’ Special | ||
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| In-game Offers | Special Mission | History Flashback |
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All offers and missions will be available |
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Triple XP
Four blades – four times the XP? Not quite, although we did go as high as we could for you, pilots!
50% discount on consumables
This weekend you should stock up on all the Fire Extinguishers, Pneumatic Restarters and First-Aid Kits that you’ll ever need!
30% discount and 20% increased credit income on the following planes:
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Chance-Vought F4U-1 Corsair |
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North American P-51D Mustang |
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Chance-Vought F4U-4 Corsair |
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Mitsubishi A7M Reppu |
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Supermarine Spitfire IX |
What would be a special without a massive discount on the planes that it’s dedicated to?
Get your four-bladed warbirds ready for some extended duty this weekend and score free Premium consumables!
| Mission: Damaging Your Enemies | |
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Goal |
Win battles flying the required aircraft. A battle counts only if you are one of the top 3 on your team by damage caused to enemy aircraft. |
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Reward |
1 x Automatic Fire Extinguisher |
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Conditions |
Must be flying any of the required aircraft:
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Have you ever wondered why some of the planes in your hangar have four instead of the usual three propeller blades? Well, the answer is simple: every aircraft has a certain engine-to-propeller diameter ratio which allows it to generate the biggest thrust. For a long time, on the rather “weak” early, WWII engines, this ratio required bigger and bigger blades. As a consequence, the same three blades became progressively longer the more that engines were developed.
That’s the reason behind the Chance-Vought F4U Corsair’s gull-like wings. To achieve maximum thrust from its 1,800 h.p. engine, the designers had to lower the centre of gravity of the plane in order to compensate for the huge three-bladed propeller that this kind of design required. Without the lowered gull-wings, the propeller would simply have been too large and too heavy. The plane would have tipped over onto its front which, incidentally, it still frequently was prone to doing.
While searching for a remedy to this situation, the engineers realised that adding an additional blade increases the blade area which, in turn, produces more thrust without having to increase the overall diameter of the propeller. Depending on the required performance, engineers started adding this fourth blade, in order to keep propeller diameter in check. An example of this would be the later versions of the same Corsair (like the F4U-4 or -5 models) that featured shorter, four-bladed propellers as opposed to the three that you can find on the F4U-1 stock version.
Three blades is boring! Four blades rule this weekend, pilots!
