Biggest mistakes in aviation history? Which projects should have been built?

[Marko Dash]

8 pages and nobody has brought up the B-70 yet!

 

[starviking]

8 pages and nobody has brought up the B-70 yet!

And now someone has... ;D

My particular fave B-70 is the RS-70 concept.

Once the first missiles in a nuclear war had launched, so does the RS-70 - to locate and nuke anything left "un-nuked".

Reconnasance-Strike in a big way.

Starviking

 

[Tam]

Let me rant on my imaginary F-14S and a rewrite of American aviation history.


Back in the seventies, the US Congress sees the bill for the F-15, F-14, F-16 and other projects. They finally decided to throw an ultimatum to the US Navy and Air Force. Why are you developing at least four different aircraft projects? Racked by stagflation, a budget minded US Congress plans to cut back on the variable wing F-14, F-15, and F-16/18 programs, and presses the need for a singular plane to fill all branches, much like the F-4 Phantom did.

An alternative was worked out.

The F-14S features the body of the F-14 but with a new fixed clipped delta wing that blends into the fuselage. Part of the blended fuselage creates a LERX, with a double delta outline. Instead of TF-30s, GE F110s are to be the new engines, with PW F100s are the interim substitute. And thus born, the closest thing to an American Flanker.

 

[Weaver]

Hmmm....what should have been built... Let's slay a few sacred cows:

1. There was serious talk of the Hawker P.1052 (swept wing Sea Hawk) being put into emergency production for the RAF at the time of the Berlin Airlift. They should have done it. Then the RN could have tested it, found out that swept wings would indeed work on a carrier, and bought it too. Then both services could have had a Nene-powered, swept-wing fighter in service just in time for Korea. Just in time for the end of Korea, or just after, they get the straight-pipe, Tay-engined P.1081 (although it wouldn't have been called that) into service, and Hawker sell them by the hundred at the expense of the F-86, F-84, Ouragan/Mystere and Mig-15, depending on the politics. With a swept-wing, high-subsonic fighter already in service in the early '50s, the RAF wants to go supersonic with it's next step.

Result of 1? No Hunter....

2. The RAF looks at the stunning flight test results of the Fairy Delta II and orders a fighter version similar to the ER.103C with cranked arrow wings, wingtip Firestreaks and Airpass radar, powered by a Gyron or Rb.106 (or even a late Avon). Fairy sell them by the hundred at the expense of the Mirage III , Starfighter, F-100 and Mig-21. Later, in the mid-'60s, a major re-work of the Fairy Firedrake (as it gets called, this being my world) gives it an afterburning Spey, with the same or more power, but less weight and fuel consumption.

English Electric's P1A research aircraft performs sterling work, but no-one seriously considers putting such an awkward-to-maintain design into production now that single engines can achieve the same power per cross-section figures as staggered Avons.

3. The RAF accept the good qualities (cheapness amongst them) of the Gnat and Petter accepts that the tailplane hydraulics need work. The RAF orders the low-supersonic, thin-wing Gnat Mk.2 as a Vampire replacement and Folland sell them by the hundred at the expense of the F-5A, amongst others. Also, saving the afterburning B.Or.12 from cancellation also saves the HAL Marut and the HA-300.

Result of 2 and 3? No Lightning.....

4. The RAF accepts the analyses, by the RN and everybody else and his dog, that tell them that making a low-level strike aircraft do Mach 1.2 instead of Mach 0.9 makes it twice as big but not one jot safer. GOR.339 is re-written around a Spey-engined B.108, i.e. a stetched, de-navalised Buccaneer with more fuel and land-attack avionics that come in stages from the TSRA (Tactical Strike Reconaissance Avionics) program. Blackburn sell them by the hundred to Germany and other NATO countries at the expense of the Starfighter, and the RAF actually get a realistic Canberra replacement by the mid-'60s.

Result of 4? No TSR.2......

5. In the late 1970's, the Super Buccaneer's replacement is the Tornado, although with Buccaneer, rather than Starfighter, experience to go on, the Germans and Italians accept the British insistence on more fuel, thus giving the finished product rather more legs. Since it's never going to make a satisfactory fighter, and since the French have two fighters projects (Mirage 2000 and 4000) on the go and can't afford both of them, the Panavia nations cut a deal with France, and the French government have the good sense to ignore Dassault's inevitable objections to anything less than 100% French products.

The Panavia nations plus France buy whatever mix of Mirage 2000s and 4000s suit their national needs, probably all 2-seat 4000s for the RAF (in place of the Tornado F.3), all 2000s for the Luftwaffe (to replace the Starfighter and F4-F), and a mix of the two for Italy and France. In return, France buys the Tornado for it's strike requirements (in place of the indifferent Mirage 2000D). Since the French Tornado buy is much smaller than the Panavia Mirage buy, the French aircraft are "off-the-shelf" (which is no great loss since French strike avionics capability is limited anyway), but the Panavia Mirages have significant national input, the British 4000s having a Ferranti radar and Skyflash, for instance.

Panavia makes more Tornados, thereby lowering the unit price, and Dassault sells LOTS more Mirages MUCH sooner with a big version in production, thereby levelling the playing field (somewhat) between the Mirages and the F-15/16/18.

Result of 5? RAF flies a French fighter......

Okay, is there anyone I havn't upset yet? ;D

 

[Rickshaw]

Now for something a little off the beaten track. In 1945, the Australian Government, instead of suffering from the usual cultural cringe which afflicts its thinking, decides instead of purchasing the rights to produce the North American Mustang, that it will fund the continued development and production of the CA-15. The result, the RAAF ends up with a superior aircraft up to Korea.

While the CA-15 is in production, the RAAF, having heard something about these new fangled jet things goes off to the old Dart and sees the P.1052. Instead of listening to the naysayers in the RAAF, they also see the promise in the P.1081 and purchase that. The result is that they have a swept-wing, Jet fighter entering service just as the Korean war breaks out. They purchase a stop gap squadron of Meteors but speed up the development of the P.1081.

The CA-15 and the Meteors are replaced in 1953, just as the Korean War closes and the P.1081 manages to fly a few sorties, proving itself to be the equal of the Sabre and the MiG-15. The RAAF put money into its successor, the Hunter and purchases it as an "product improved" P.1081. With the RAAF backing Hawkers, this leads to the P.1083 being adopted by them and the RAF. This gives both, a comparable aircraft to the MiG-19 and the F-100.

This would mean that the RAAF does not look to France for the Mirage III for its first Mach 2 fighter, instead choosing to stick with British manufacturers. My question is. What would have fulfilled the need? Fairy Delta or Lightning? Assuming of course that there was no successor to the Hunter which came from the Hawker stable.

 

[skyrocket01]

LearFan
Shuttle Orbiter/winged Saturn V (and the entire expanded Moon/Mars program that it was intended to support)
F-12B - AIM-47s AND a 20mm Vulcan
F-107 (seriously, this was an F-16 class fighter a quarter-century ahead of its time, and was even tested with FBW)
DC-X
RS-70
TSR/CF-105
L-2000
DynaSoar
Crusader III
SonicCruiser

 

[zen]

Weaver.

Add one on? Saro's P163 wins the second research tender instead of the favoured AWA or the actual winner (in the real world) Bristol (with the 188).
Performance is high in turbojet alone and Saro propose a modified version for a fighter, shifting the inlet to under the nose to make room for a 30" dish, in effect a larger P177 where the turbojet is powerful enough to drive the machine to mach2 without rocket assistance.
RN unable to operate Faireys fighter look at this instead and choose it.
Result is a fighter to NA47 and no F4 selection in the 60's.
Superior short field characteristics draw the RAF to purchase some for the MRI mission using a 'Medway' turbofan and changed avionics. Result no Jaguar.

 

[Rickshaw]

Saro P163? I can't find any reference to it on the web. What did it look like?

 

[Jemiba]

From Tagg/Wheeler "From Sea To Air" in lores:

 

[Weaver]

Saro P.163 was a proposal to the ER.134T hig-speed research aircraft requirement eventually won by the Bristol 188. The final submission built on the company's SR.53 rocket-fighter work, but replaced the small "get-you-home" Viper jet engine with a full-size Gyron, which added 25,000lb (reheat) thrust to the standard Spectre rocket's 8000lb.

Zen: I don't like the P.163 as a fighter for the same reason I don't like the SR.177: the high tail. I can see it being as much of a lemon in a turning fight as a Starfighter or Voodoo. Without it's rocket, it's just another single Gyron powered fighter, and there were other, better layouts for that. Also, when a full-size Gyron was actually run (behind a P.1121 intake) it surged badly and persistently, to the extent that Hawker actively pursueed the Olympus as an alternative, lending Bristol another P.1121 intake for testing. This makes me wonder if the Gyron would ever have been a successful production engine.

Four of the five points in my previous post are cherry-picked from a longer "alternative history" idea (I just picked out the ones that killed of aircraft enthusiasts' favorite aircraft..... ). In the original version of this, The Labour government of 1964 makes an early, coherent decision to cut everything they're going to cut, including the RN's CTOL carriers, so the Navy never labour under the delusion that they're going to get the Phantom, and instead co-operate on P.1154RN with a much better attitude. P.1154RN therefore becomes the RN's Sea Vixen replacement, operating from their new, 30,000 ton STOVL carriers.

However, having read more deeply on P.1154, including John Farley's doubts about it, I'm now having second thoughts, and wondering if a non-PCB BS.100-powered "big Kestrel" might have been a more realistic path to take. This then leaves the issue of a Sea Vixen replacement open again.......

 

[McColm]

Hi Guys,
During the sixties.

The combination of the TRS-2 and the Vigilante to enter service with the Royal Air Force and Fleet Air Arm, Royal Navy. Using the A-5B model as a basis and keeping the mock-up layout from North American.
A four seater long-range FB-111K/M version is built under licence using the Boeing concept design and later an updated delta wing as the replacement for the Vulcan.
A dedicated reconnaissance and EW versions of the Vigilante-TRS-2 are built in small numbers.
The Shorts Belfast is produced in large numbers and the C-130 order is cancelled.
The Royal Navy keep HMS Hermes.

During the seventies.

A carrier version of the F3 Tornado is built and the Sea Jaguar enters service with the Navy along with the Sea Harrier.
The supersonic harrier enters service with the RAF and RN.
The Royal Navy buys the E-2C Hawkeye.
Licenced built HH-53s are used for COD and ASW on the new through deck cruisers. The Sea King enters service in the SAR and ASW roles.
The Canberra gets in fight refueling probes, two seater clear glass canopy, multi-screens and fly-by-wire controls.
The Super Nimrod is selected for MPA. With its wide body and four spey engines, export orders role in.
C-141Bs enter service in the long range transport role. KC-141Bs become tankers.

During the eighties

The A/X F-117 is bought for the RAF and RN. The fuselage is lengthened and a second seat is added. The wings are lengthened, arrestor hook and landing gear beefed up. Visibility is improved, new engines and a larger weapons bay. These replace the navy and RAF Vigilantes.
All Tornados have the longer fuselage of the F-3. Small numbers of SEAD and EW versions replace the Vigilantes in this role.
The Super Nimrod has the Phalcon AEW suite fitted to a selected few.

During the nighties

The Gripen enters service replacing the Jaguars. NH-90 helicopters replace the Pumas and Wessex. The EH-101 slowly replaces the Sea King.
Some of the Belfasts are stretched and a few have a hull added. The become the Sea Belfast and are used in SAR, MPA and the Coast Guard.

2000

F-45 Goshawks and the Yak-141 enter service, replacing the supersconic Harrier and Sea Harrier and Sea Jaguars.
The Vigilantes are finally retired along with the Canberra's.
The TR-2K replaces the Canberra ,the outer wing wheels fold up into blisters.
The Super Nimrod ASW retires and the new Shackleton/Atlantic-V, enters service. The contra-rotating engines have 6 blades on the outer and 8 blades on the inner powering four turbo prop engines. Inflight refueling and state of the art avionics. Fly-by-wire controls.
The Nimrods are converted into long-range attack and reconnaissance aircraft. The fuselage has two ten foot plugs. The weapons bay is bigger, fly-by-wire controls and a larger wing. Composite materials with the A-10 cannon added. A large SLAR can be carried in the forward weapons bay similar to J-STARS. Spey engines are replaced by Tornado 104s.

F-23s and Su-35s replace all the Tornados and F-117s. There are given the multi-role duties and are rotated between the RN and Air Force. Su-34s replace the FB-111K/Ms . Updates to the Hawkeye replace the Super Nimrods in the AEW role.

 

[Hammer Birchgrove]

Lots of good suggestions. I'll just add some I haven't seen here:

*Propfans should have been used when they came during the 1980's. Very short-sighted of the air lines to think "Well the energy crisis is over for now, so we don't need it!".

*Synthetic fuels. OK, coal-based kerosene would have been expensive and hardly "green" but technically it would pave the way for biomass-based fuels and it would show OPEC that the oil-importing countries have alternatives. (Hydrogen or natural gas would have been better but I think the required technology hasn't matured enough for it yet.)

*Still waiting for the return of Zeppelin-type airships, including turbofan-, fanprop-, and Stirling-run, and hybrids with helicopter rotors. I've seen (drawn) pictures of Zeppelins used as gas tankers, that will be needed if the Siberian and Alaska's tundra melts, making the pipelines crack.

 

[Hammer Birchgrove]

Forgot to add:

*Vickers Valiant B.Mk.2 and 3 (low-level Valiant) should've been built.

*That Gloster Javelin wasn't made "thin-winged" and area-ruled from the beginning.

*That USA waited so long to let Wernher von Braun develop ballistic missiles and satellite carriers. USA could easily have been first to send an unmanned satellite.

*That USSR didn't do manned lunar missions.

*That USA:s manned missions to the moon didn't continue and that no moonbase was built.

 

[SteveO]

Just read Chris Gibson's “Vickers VC10 – AEW. Pofflers and other Unbuilt Variants” http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,5553.0.html so the unbuilt military VC10 variants are on my mind at the the moment.

Would have been great to see VC10 AEW, tanker, reconnaissance and weapon carrier variants making up the back bone of the RAF.

I wonder if a VC10 maritime patrol conversion would have been a better choice than the Nimrod MRA4? ;D

 

[Archibald]

Having the 2000 + Super Etendard + Rafale instead of multirole/ multiservice F1E-M53 + a small batch of Mirage 4000s in the 1975-1985 era.

cheap Big Gemini + space station instead of shuttle-to-nowhere in 1971.
Big Gemini, just like the Soyuz, could have been modified later for lunar missions (while you can't really fly a shuttle to the Moon!) This would have eased the current VSE...

TKS instead of Soyuz/Progress to carry crew and cargo to Mir.

 

[SOC]

Forgot to add:

*That USSR didn't do manned lunar missions.

That's because the N-1, their lunar booster, had this spectacularly awesome habit of detonating at or shortly after liftoff. That was one example of a project that wasn't just dropped, but rather cancelled in part because it was a failure.

Me, I think the CIA should've kept the A-12s, and that Aeroflot should've kept the Tu-144 long enough to get the improved D models into service.

 

[pathology_doc]

This may overlap aircraft and missiles a bit, but:

In Britain:
1) Either the thin-wing Javelin or the F.155 should have been proceeded with, giving the RAF a supersonic interceptor to stand alongside the Lightning. (This may have involved a close encounter between Duncan Sandys and several miles of electricians' tape in a circum-oral location.)

2) Failing this, every effort should have been made to perfect an illuminator function for AI.18 and to tie it to a SARH variant of Firestreak/Red Top, possibly with an extended range. This would have given the Gloster Javelin an all aspect attack capability, and might have improved Sea Vixen Mk2's all aspect kill capability beyond the seeker-lock range of IR Red Top (essential for both aircraft, since they lacked the performance to do a tail-chase kill on an enemy supersonic or near-sonic bomber).

3) Red Dean should have been continued, if only on a research basis; Vickers/GEC should have been given the time and money necessary to make it work, as a prelude to making something smaller to do the same job.

4) The Hunter should have been wired for Firestreak/Red Top, even if it meant losing two of the four Aden guns to make room for missile support systems.

In Canada, the RCAF should have been told to bite the bullet and accept an interim Hughes FCS/Falcon deal as a weapon system for the Arrow instead of the horrendously complex system they spent huge sums on and eventually didn't get. Given what they eventually ended up with (the CF-101B with Falcon and Genie), they'd have been no worse off weapon-wise; and if they'd been able to fit the half-dozen Arrows they DID build with a weapon system ex factory and have them ready for the RCAF to put into limited service, they might have saved the airplane.

 

[bobbymike]

Missiles - Aerojet's 156" diameter solid rocket as a super heavy ICBM. Studied by Aerospace Corp (h/t sferrin and Orionblamblam). Better yet Aerojet's 260" diameter solid rocket (again h/t sferrin)

Aircraft (too many to mention) but an F/A-23 would have been cool and a very large BWB bomber with a huge payload of X-51's (although the latter may still be built)

 

[CFE]

I gave my favorite "what if" projects some thought, and here's what I came up with:

1) After the J40 engine's troubles were established, Douglas should have petitioned the Navy for permission to terminate the XF4D Skyray program and begin immediately on the F5D Skylancer, based around the J57 and later the J79.

2) Not only should the RAF TSR.2 program have continued, but the USAF should have evaluated it as an alternative to TFX.

3) Instead of scrapping Apollo and developing the Space Shuttle, NASA should have continued the Apollo Applications Program in earth orbit using the Apollo spacecraft and Saturn INT-20. This would be a sustainable earth-orbit space program which would leave the manufacturing infrastructure in place to launch future moon missions. Instead we're spending billions more to recreate that capability with Ares & Orion.

4) The VFAX program should have been terminated in favor of a supersonic upgrade of the A-7 (similar to A-7F, but suited for naval strike requirements.)

5) While the F-15E was the correct choice for the Dual Role Fighter flyoff to replace the F-111, the F-16XL should have still gone into production as the F-16E/F, replacing the F-16C/D on the production line. The F-16 has mainly been used for strike missions anyway, and the XL would have been a definite enhancement in this regard.

5) The Northrop Advanced Tactical Aircraft would have avoided many of the A-12 program's shortcomings, and its successful introduction to the fleet would have alleviated the need to replace the A-6 and procure the Super Hornet & JSF.

 

[SOC]

Oh wait, I thought of a good one. The F-23 should've been selected and the NATF program kept. Because then we'd at least know what the NATF F-23 looked like.

 

[pathology_doc]

2) Not only should the RAF TSR.2 program have continued, but the USAF should have evaluated it as an alternative to TFX.

Sounds promising, and quite reasonable - after all, the Yanks did build the Canberra under licence; and what was the TSR.2 but a supersonic Canberra successor? I can't help but think, though, that it was politically impossible or the Yanks would have stepped in to save it from the axe. IIRC TFX was meant to be the basis for an all-singing, all-dancing fighter, interceptor, strike and attack aircraft (with minimal changes between variants, at least as originally planned) whereas TSR.2's role was AFAIK (nuclear) strike, (conventional) attack and recon with no thought given to an air-to-air role (at least in the initial contract - though it's easy to imagine an ADV with Red Top or some developed SARH variant thereof. American acceptance of TSR.2 as a contender for the TFX contract would have meant either dropping the interception requirement or modifying TSR.2's electronics suite to accept AAMs - which amounts to adding an illuminator for Sparrow (or possibly AIM-4 Falcon). Adding to the specification without the certainty of acceptance is a good recipe for cancellation-itis.

The other question is whether TSR.2 could have hauled a sufficient conventional weapon load to satisfy the Americans.

 

[Hammer Birchgrove]

Those images reminds me of something I've wondered for some time: why didn't the original Canberra get swept wings from the beginning? ???

 

[Hammer Birchgrove]

Forgot to add:

*That USSR didn't do manned lunar missions.

That's because the N-1, their lunar booster, had this spectacularly awesome habit of detonating at or shortly after liftoff. That was one example of a project that wasn't just dropped, but rather cancelled in part because it was a failure.

IMO it wouldn't have become a failure if Sergey Korolyov had gotten the proper funding and attention from the Politburo, the assistance from Valentyn Hlushko, and the time to test the rocket engines before assembling them into the rocket. There is also the possibility of having used Volodymyr Chelomey's Proton rocket instead, or having a lunar program with several smaller rockets which sends parts that will dock around Earth's orbit until being sent to the Moon (like some proposed Mars programs).

Perhaps I could have written "USSR should have planned and funded their lunar program better, so it could have competed with USA"?

 

[robunos]

Would love to see a ROMBUS lift-off.....


cheers,
Robin.

 

[CFE]

Forgot to add:

*That USSR didn't do manned lunar missions.

That's because the N-1, their lunar booster, had this spectacularly awesome habit of detonating at or shortly after liftoff. That was one example of a project that wasn't just dropped, but rather cancelled in part because it was a failure.

IMO it wouldn't have become a failure if Sergey Korolyov had gotten the proper funding and attention from the Politburo, the assistance from Valentyn Hlushko, and the time to test the rocket engines before assembling them into the rocket. There is also the possibility of having used Volodymyr Chelomey's Proton rocket instead, or having a lunar program with several smaller rockets which sends parts that will dock around Earth's orbit until being sent to the Moon (like some proposed Mars programs).

Perhaps I could have written "USSR should have planned and funded their lunar program better, so it could have competed with USA"?

The late start for the Soviet moon effort was a major factor in its failure. Saturn's engines had been in development before Kennedy's moon commitment, whereas the Soviet effort didn't officially start until 3 years after Apollo was authorized. Perhaps UR-700 would have been a more reliable approach than N-1, and the personal conflicts between Korolov & Glushko were certainly a factor too. But Glushko also deserves blame for side-stepping the combustion stability problems with big kerosene-burning engines, and moving to toxic, storable propellants instead. The efforts of the F-1 team at Rocketdyne and NASA should never be forgotten for being the unheralded technical achievement that they were.

 

[pathology_doc]

Those images reminds me of something I've wondered for some time: why didn't the original Canberra get swept wings from the beginning? ???

I suspect it had something to do with the basic design dating back to late 1945!

 

[Hammer Birchgrove]

Forgot to add:

*That USSR didn't do manned lunar missions.

That's because the N-1, their lunar booster, had this spectacularly awesome habit of detonating at or shortly after liftoff. That was one example of a project that wasn't just dropped, but rather cancelled in part because it was a failure.

IMO it wouldn't have become a failure if Sergey Korolyov had gotten the proper funding and attention from the Politburo, the assistance from Valentyn Hlushko, and the time to test the rocket engines before assembling them into the rocket. There is also the possibility of having used Volodymyr Chelomey's Proton rocket instead, or having a lunar program with several smaller rockets which sends parts that will dock around Earth's orbit until being sent to the Moon (like some proposed Mars programs).

Perhaps I could have written "USSR should have planned and funded their lunar program better, so it could have competed with USA"?

The late start for the Soviet moon effort was a major factor in its failure. Saturn's engines had been in development before Kennedy's moon commitment, whereas the Soviet effort didn't officially start until 3 years after Apollo was authorized. Perhaps UR-700 would have been a more reliable approach than N-1, and the personal conflicts between Korolov & Glushko were certainly a factor too. But Glushko also deserves blame for side-stepping the combustion stability problems with big kerosene-burning engines, and moving to toxic, storable propellants instead. The efforts of the F-1 team at Rocketdyne and NASA should never be forgotten for being the unheralded technical achievement that they were.

Indeed.

In more than one way, Stalin is the one to be blamed for the demise of the Russian Space program. (It's his fault Glushko "sold out" Koralev, giving Koralev a weak heart from the time in Gulag and starting the conflict between those two brilliant engineers.)

 

[Hammer Birchgrove]

Those images reminds me of something I've wondered for some time: why didn't the original Canberra get swept wings from the beginning? ???

I suspect it had something to do with the basic design dating back to late 1945!

That didn't stop the Sabre Jet - which originated from 1944 - to get swept wings. Perhaps USA was faster to use the recently discovered German research. :-\

 

[Stargazer]

Probably. And also Britain didn't WAIT for German research to come up with jet engines, swept wings, flying wings and lots of other aircraft concepts. They had many firsts and prided themselves in always being one step ahead of others... Which is probably why Nazi Germany wanted to hit them hard, because if they managed to tame their spirit, likely the rest of Europe would follow...

 

[pathology_doc]

Hammer, I recall reading somewhere that the Sabre started with straight wings (as the naval Fury) and was redesigned when the German swept-wing research became available.

There's no doubt that Britain fumbled the ball when it came to using swept-wing data after the war. Its problem was that the aviation companies had too much to get done, too little to do it with, and no sense of urgency from above. It might have pulled its finger out and built both the Swift and the Hunter a lot earlier, but we're talking here about the nation whose politicians stupidly and naively handed the USSR the Nene engine on a silver plate. The urgency to do something like what was improvised with the MkIX and MkXII Spitfires simply wasn't there, although in this case the problem would have been of shoving a very good existing engine into hastily designed swept wing airframe rather than the other way around.

 

[Abraham Gubler]

There's no doubt that Britain fumbled the ball when it came to using swept-wing data after the war.

The Canberra's design evolution before it was finalised had swept wings but Petter went back to a straight wing design because the extra weight for the swept structure was not worth the aerodynamic advantage in the Canberra's specification performance. The Canberra was never actually known as a plane with bad flight performance!

As to British use of swept wings post war they were world leading, things like the Handley Page crescent wing and the Avro deltas were well advanced of what the US was building in the 1940s.

[Edited by admin]

 

[pathology_doc]

Respectfully speaking, what Petter did or did not do with the Canberra is irrelevant: the issue I am getting at is the failure of Britain to have a swept-wing jet fighter in service at the time of the Korean War when it was more than capable of doing so, and when both the US and the USSR had managed to do so. If that's not fumbling the ball, what is?

There is no doubting the genius of the British design bureaux; the problem lay at the procurement level - the transformation (or failure thereof) of excellent paper designs into in-service hardware, a process which frequently halted when the hardware was well under construction (thin-wing Javelin, P.1121) or even complete (TSR2, second-stage Vickers Valiant) or - worse - stalled for so long that British excellence was overtaken by events (DH110 Sea Vixen). Sometimes this was the fault of government (e.g. Sandys' short-sightedness w.r.t manned fighters), sometimes the companies (e.g. Supermarine's troubles with the Swift).

Being a pioneer is IMO irrelevant when your pioneering efforts don't make it into metal before the other side (or someone else on your side) catches up. The history of US post-war fighter development, for example, is littered with dead ends - but many of those dead ends were built and flown, and shown to be insufficient on the proving ground if not on the battlefield, while so much of Britain's aeronautical genius never made it into metal, or never got to the runway if it did, or never got the improvements it deserved and needed: e.g. the Lightning, which to the very end was still carrying AI.23, a pair of Blue Jays, and (sometimes) two Adens 28 years after it first went into service. Or the Vulcan, which in the era of laser- and TV-guided munitions had to run the Black Buck missions with iron bombs and American Shrike missiles.

 

[red admiral]

If that's not fumbling the ball, what is?

It helps to have money available. In the immediate postwar period, the concern was to get rid of as many people from the services as possible, reduce defense expenditure, reduce the amount of resources taken up by defense, and get the economy back to something healthier. The Soviets weren't the enemy, bankruptcy was much more pressing. As a result you get a 1944 design like the Sea Hawk not entering service until 1953. Then again, the projects which were actually a priority, did get funding; the V-Bombers and Meteor/Javelin interceptors. It was possible to live without a top notch air superiority fighter.

There are many things that could have been done better, but it's easy to forget the government's point of view in favour of a bunch of cool planes. It was simply unaffordable to have top notch armed services any more.

 

[Abraham Gubler]

Respectfully speaking, what Petter did or did not do with the Canberra is irrelevant: the issue I am getting at is the failure of Britain to have a swept-wing jet fighter in service at the time of the Korean War when it was more than capable of doing so, and when both the US and the USSR had managed to do so. If that's not fumbling the ball, what is?

Ahh OK, I see it. What happened is irrelevant, what matters is how you perceive it 60 years later from a limited perspective. Of course!

So why didn't the RAF have a swept wing fighter in service for the Korean War? Because they were the only Air Force after the end of WW2 with a jet fighter in mass service. Two of them: Meteor and Vampire. By being ahead of everyone else their procurement cycle was out of sync with the new technology.

The only RAF aircraft in sync with introducing swept wing technology was the Canberra. And as anyone with more than a passing understanding of this project knows that swept wings were incorporated into the design but rejected because they decreased the aircraft's performance in the areas that were considered important for this mission. One of the reasons the Canberra outperformed the XB-51 despite the later having one of the best swept wings (and variable incidence) available at that time.

It takes a very simplistic interpretation of British aircraft development post WW2 to assume that they dropped the ball in this. Then referencing this failure to a range of other fails a generation later when they were cash starved is just further misinterpreting the issue. Duncan Sandys was not running British aircraft development in the 1940s!

 

[F-14D]

Hammer, I recall reading somewhere that the Sabre started with straight wings (as the naval Fury) and was redesigned when the German swept-wing research became available.

FJ-1 Fury and F-86 Sabre

 

[F-14D]

Respectfully speaking, what Petter did or did not do with the Canberra is irrelevant: the issue I am getting at is the failure of Britain to have a swept-wing jet fighter in service at the time of the Korean War when it was more than capable of doing so, and when both the US and the USSR had managed to do so. If that's not fumbling the ball, what is?

So why didn't the RAF have a swept wing fighter in service for the Korean War? Because they were the only Air Force after the end of WW2 with a jet fighter in mass service. Two of them: Meteor and Vampire. By being ahead of everyone else their procurement cycle was out of sync with the new technology.

There is another factor to be considered. The US' large industrial capacity was intact after the war, and partly because the mainland was never touched by the Axis, the economy and infrastructure was in better shape, which allowed the US to field large numbers of P-80s (344 on order by July 1945 and over 1,700 eventually built) and other jets after the war and still be able to afford to simultaneously develop and field swept wing aircraft. Britain on the other hand, recovering from WWII, probably couldn't afford to introduce a whole new generation that soon.

 

[pathology_doc]

It helps to have money available...

(snip)

There are many things that could have been done better, but it's easy to forget the government's point of view in favour of a bunch of cool planes. It was simply unaffordable to have top notch armed services any more.

Hence my assertion that the companies had too much to do with too few resources, and nothing to light a fire under Treasury that they might have them. As for unaffordability, what seems expensive now is even more so later when you're caught unprepared.

 

[NERVA]

Boeing's Sonic Cruiser.

 

[saturncanuck]

Canadair C-102 Jetliner. I shudder when I think of what we gave up, years before the Avro Arrow got all the glamour and tears.

Why oh why doesn't somebody make a kit? :'(

Aurora did, many moons ago

 

[saturncanuck]

Most people here seem to be posting about post-war and jets.

How about these to consider...

The He 112B, or, even better, the He 100D

Martin-Baker MB.5

Focke-Wulf Fw 187 Falke