Planes you'd never heard of

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Tacit Blue, the competitor to the Have Blue/F-117.
 
Axxman300 said:
[qimg][qimg]http://i64.tinypic.com/1cgtu.jpg[/qimg][/qimg]



Tacit Blue, the competitor to the Have Blue/F-117.
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As I understand it, the competitor to the Have Blue prototype was a Northrop XST prototype that had a much higher side RCS:

https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/meet-northrops-xst-the-plane-that-lost-out-to-the-orig-1714177698

Tacit Blue was a follow on project by Northrop. It was a tech demonstrator that combined new battlefield surveillance radars with a steathlier airframe. The radars went on to furnish the JSTARS planes. The lessons learned from the airframe went on to inform the design of the B-2.
 
Delvo said:
I get a bit confuzzled every time I'm reminded that flying boats/seaplanes aren't standard in every coastal search & rescue agency.

If you're looking for somebody as fast as you can, you need a plane. But to actually help when you do find them, you need to put some people & assets on the surface. Solution? A plane that can go right down to the surface immediately. Except... apparently not.
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Well, problem is that a seaplane needs reasonably calm water to land on, not to mention take off from. And that is often not available when sea emergencies happen.

Also, helicopters have taken that slot: No need to actually land on those choppy seas when you can just hoist stuff and people in and out.

Even sea helicopters like the Sikorsky S61 Sea King, while having sea landing capability, was rarely used such.

Do note, though, that quite a number of downed WW2 pilots owed their lives to Supermarine Walrus seaplanes.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...arine_Walrus.jpg/300px-Supermarine_Walrus.jpg

In itself a weird and notable plane.

Hans
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_Ilya_Muromets
Apparently the images feature is experiencing technical difficulties at the moment.
Sikorsky_Ilya_Muromets

images wikimedia commons

Some people know about this plane, but I just learned about it only a few years back. A Russian 4 engine bomber with a pressurized cabin in WWI!

Only 1 was ever shot down, and in doing so it shot down 3 of the four fighters attacking it!

Amazing advanced technology in the earliest days of flight from the famously genius mind of Igor Sikorsky, the Ilya Muromets heavy bomber.
 
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Does anyone else struggle with 'airplanes' and 'aeroplanes'? I prefer the latter. However, I'm British. The former seems to be more common in the U.S.

Anybody ever seen a Vulcan bomber up close and personal? Sex on wings!
 
MRC_Hans said:
Eech, the drag those eight wingtips must have caused, not to mention all those strut attachments. With a 110 hp engine ... that would have been one slow bird.


Hans
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84 mph (135 km/h; 73 kn) at 6,500 ft (2,000 m)
 
A slow fighter is a dead fighter. There has been certain situations where agility had the upper hand (the Finns with Brewster Buffaloes, Malta with Gladiators) but those are special situations where a fast fighter HAS to dogfight with a slow but agile one.

In general, speed counts.

Hans
 
Hans said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armstrong_Whitworth_F.K.10

[qimg]http://flyingmachines.ru/Images7/Putnam/AW/74-1.jpg[/qimg]

[qimg]http://flyingmachines.ru/Images7/Putnam/AW/76-1.jpg[/qimg]
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Add the Wight Quadruplane to this one.
Another similar quad winged aircraft with a similar lack of success.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wight_Quadruplane

Or the much bigger Pemberton-Billing Nighthawk. A twin engined quad with a 37mm cannon and searchlight.

It had an endurance of 18 hours and was supposed to be able to wait all night for a Zeppelin to arrive and then shoot it down.
Unfortunately it only made about 60 mph and took over an hour to reach 10,000 feet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Nighthawk
 
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An interesting concept was the General Aircraft Fleet Shadower.

Designed in the 30s as an early 'stealth' aircraft. It was very quiet and had a very long endurance. It could shadow enemy warships at night out of hearing and sight. It had a stall speed of only 39 knots.

It was superseded by radar and never saw widespread service going in to service in 1940 and being retired in 41.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Aircraft_Fleet_Shadower
 
Caproni Campini

The Caproni Campini was sort of a jet aircraft. Powered by a "Thermojet" engine, it was the second jet powered aircraft to fly (after the Heinkel He.178). The thermojet consisted of a multi-stage compressor section, driven by a conventional piston engine. The compressor flow was used to cool the piston engine, then combined with the engine exhaust and fed to the burner section where fuel was added and burned, then straight to the exhaust with no turbine section. In modern terms it could be considered a ducted fan with an afterburner.

Actual performance was lower than conventional aircraft just using the same piston engine.
 

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It was not a jet engine. It was powered by a petrol engine and prop, they just put the prop in a tube.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Add the Wight Quadruplane to this one. Another similar quad winged aircraft with a similar lack of success. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wight_Quadruplane
Or the much bigger Pemberton-Billing Nighthawk. A twin engined quad with a 37mm cannon and searchlight.

It had an endurance of 18 hours and was supposed to be able to wait all night for a Zeppelin to arrive and then shoot it down.
Unfortunately it only made about 60 mph and took over an hour to reach 10,000 feet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Nighthawk
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The idea of the multiplane designs was, of course, to get maneuverability. Short, narrow wings give a high roll rate, and then you add enough to get sufficient lift. Unfortunately, the cost in drag and complexity quickly became unsustainable. Even the triple plane designs, while having quite some success, suffered from inferior speed performance.

Hans
 
Captain_Swoop said:
It was not a jet engine. It was powered by a petrol engine and prop, they just put the prop in a tube.
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A matter of definition, of course, but I think Pope130 termed it accurately: A ducted fan with an afterburner.

More competent design might have rendered it a usable concept, but the
(high) weight/power ratio and (low) efficiency of the piston engine would always leave it mediocre at best.

OTOH, it could be built with the technology of the time. This was only marginally true of real jets.

Hans
 
MRC_Hans said:
OTOH, it could be built with the technology of the time. This was only marginally true of real jets.

Hans
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It depends how you define 'the time' the Gloster Meteor served for decades with air forces around rthe globe. The RAF retired it's last few working as target tugs in the 80's.
Martin Baker still operate two as test aircraft.

It's engine theRolls-Royce Derwent was used in all kinds of applications for many decades.

It can't be compared with the contemporary German Jumo that needed a rebuild every 8 or so hours.
 
Delvo said:
I get a bit confuzzled every time I'm reminded that flying boats/seaplanes aren't standard in every coastal search & rescue agency.

If you're looking for somebody as fast as you can, you need a plane. But to actually help when you do find them, you need to put some people & assets on the surface. Solution? A plane that can go right down to the surface immediately. Except... apparently not.
Click to expand...

This strikes me as well with ASW aircraft. After searching with airborne radar or magnetic anomaly sensors, a seaplane would be able to then land on the water and conduct a sonar search. (Or vice-versa.)
 
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