Dan Cooper's Fulgur

galgot

galgot

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Dan Cooper is another fighter pilot comic caracter, in the kind of Buck Danny and Tanguy & Laverdure, but Canadian.
Author was Albert Weinberg. Know it much less than the other two, but had a few albums as a kid.
One album called "Programme F-18" is about the selection of the Hornet by RCAF.
Couv_12574.jpg

The bad guys fly some beautiful Norvegian made fighters named Fulgur , which are basically Mirage III/5 with dorsal engine inlets:
Capture d’écran 2012-11-01 à 15.42.04.png Capture d’écran 2012-11-01 à 15.42.52.png Capture d’écran 2012-11-01 à 15.43.09.png Capture d’écran 2012-11-01 à 15.44.35.png
See ? Hunchback Mirages , but still I find them beautiful.

Btw, D.B. Cooper, was also some times refered as "Dan Cooper" cause it was at one time thought he could be Canadian, as the comic caracter.
 
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I worked in Brussels between 1984 and 1987 and have been hooked on graphic novels ever since. Japanese.Manga has some good weapon and space art though sadly it is hard to find. In the UK we had Sydney Jordans Jeff Trace and more recently.Scarlet Traces which has Btitain using Mattian tech. But the A4 lavish colour.BD from France, Belgium and Netherlands (a fun series called Franka about a girl in Amsterdam with some nice guest vehicles).
I have an excellent Belgian BD called something like Octobre Rouge published in 1989 which is like Team Yankee but about the US Brigade stationed up near Btemerhaven. Spoiler, the Warpac win!
 
Galgot, thanks so much for posting this, i remember reading this album like twenty years ago and recently wanted to look up what the "Fulgurs" looked like, but i wasn't having much luck. :D
 
Dan Cooper !!!

My mom (and my elder uncle) had a subscription to Tintin magazine during the 50's. Alas, only lose bits of paper and scattered pages survived to the present day. Still, 25 years ago and through them I got a first glimpse of Blake & Mortimer, Dan Cooper and many other stuff.
I become fascinated by Dan Cooper this way, and later bought a re-edition of the first comics - Le Triangle Bleu, Cap sur Mars, Le maitre du Soleil and my all time favorite - Le mur du silence.

I use to think that Dan Cooper, having flown CF-100 and Triangle Bleus, missed a historic rendezvous with the CF-105 Arrow. Somebody should REALLY repair that injustice.

Somewhat astonishingly, there are rumors that the infamous D.B Cooper that hijacked a 727 near Seattle late 1971 and parachuted with some thousands of dollars over Mt Saint Helens (and was never found !) might have borrowed his alias from Dan Cooper.
Note that he left behind a tie on which titanium was found - some said he might have worked on the recently cancelled 2707-300 at Boeing...

By 1960 Dan Cooper comics took a downward turn - the times were changing.... Alfred Weinberg was a very gifted cartoonist. This bird looks like the bastard child of a Kfir, a Skyhawk and a Viggen, with a F-107 intake.

Couv_336677.jpg
 
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So far i Know is Dan Cooper one of the older fighter pilot comic in Europe, together with Buck Danny
Created for Magazine Tintin in 1954 to counter Buck Danny (1947) from Magazine Spirou.

Ironic is this background story:
The Artist working on both series: Weinberg, Hubinon, Charlier live together in same house.
and working Together on Buck Danny and Dan Cooper
Next to that they worked at SABENA, because comic artist in 1950s were bad payed.
but gave the trio a excellent inside on Aircraft and there operation.

Dan Cooper was first more Sci-Fi, until issue 6 got scenario by Jean-Michel Charlier,
The scenarist of Buck Danny, who became Editor for french magazine PILOTE with new series: Les Aventures de Tanguy et Laverdure
Weinberg produce in total 41 Dan Cooper albums and several "Spin off"
Last was were short comic by Weinberg re-adapted that hero is Dan Cooper, for German Comic magazine ZACK in 1970s

If you understand German, i highly recommend the Integral Dan Cooper Collection a Publisher Splitter Verlag.
It's complete edition it contain every Dan Cooper story, illustration and background information, all high quality print on good paper

The French Dan Cooper Collection by Publish Lombard missing some illustrations and has lower quality print.

So far i know there no english edition on Dan Cooper, what is sad...
 
Le mur du silence has a great scenario, really. The only little flaw is, not enough Triangle Bleu air combat against the evil foes.
 
Fact is that I'm more aware (like Jean Claude Van Damme) of the early, pre-1960 albums. No idea Weinberg had carried for so long and so many stories.
 
If I may, the aircraft on the cover of Le mur du silence appears to be derived from the SNECMA C.450 Colèoptère

en.wikipedia.org

SNECMA Coléoptère - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Some background info on Dan Cooper.

The Belgian and French illustrated weekly Tintin began to present the adventures of Dan Cooper to its readers in December 1954. Image of the Canadian duality, this elite fighter pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force and Canadian Armed Forces had an English-speaking father and a French-speaking mother. The stories of Cooper's creator, Belgian Albert Weinberg (1922-2011), touched on space exploration more than once. They also bordered on science fiction, especially during the 1950s. About twenty-five million copies of the 41 albums produced hit the bookshelves between 1957 and 1992. Many albums have been republished in recent years.

The aforementioned Charlier wrote the scripts for some of Cooper's adventures to help Weinberg, who was buried in work at the time. He did so in secret, however, so as not to come into conflict with the management of his employer, the Belgian illustrated weekly Spirou.

Over the years, Cooper's adventures have been translated into several languages, but not into English, which is curious given the character's popularity among RCAF and Canadian Armed Forces officers. Indeed, Weinberg visited Canadian air bases in Europe on many occasions, to take photographs he later used to increase the realism of his stories.

The Ottawa-based National Aviation Museum, in 2021 the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, offered to its visitors an exhibition on Cooper in 1994. A few other Canadian institutions borrowed this exhibition, entitled Dan Cooper: Héros canadien / Dan Cooper: Canadian Hero.

If memory serves me right, the Canadian military provided the museum with Cooper's "real" dog tags and, I think, a leather jacket bearing his name.

D.B. Cooper wise, the man may have said was Dan Cooper. In the late 2000s, an FBI agent who inherited the case concluded that the notorious hijacker, probably a former member of the United States Air Force who served in Europe, chose his alias to "honor" the character created by Weinberg.

A somewhat poor quality1981 American movie, The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper (200,000 dollars en cavale in French) recounted this near legendary story..
 
I worked in Brussels between 1985 and 1987 and got hooked on Bande Dessinee graphic novels which could be picked up cheaply in a street of shops selling nothing but comics. Nearby was a great little snack bar selling Frites with various weird sauces and types of meat.. Happy Days!
 
It is explicitely a Coleoptere, Dan Cooper says so in the comic.
Still daydreaming about a CF-105 / Cooper crossover.
The Triangle Bleu however was a tail sitter and thus a VSTOL. The Arrow was not, but I have a plan...

How about putting a couple of fans in the air intakes. Driven by transmissions connected to the PS-13 Iroquois, they would feed a pair of Harrier-like rotating cold air nozzles, stuck inside the former missile bay.
Meanwhile the Iroquois nozzles would get downward thrust vectoring, a bit like the F-35 - or Harrier.

This way an Arrow could at least go STOL if not VTOL. Note that Avro had a VTOL CF-100 project and De Havilland Canada was pretty good at BLC.
 
Didn't realized the VTOL CF-100 was to use Pegasus engines. Damn cleaver idea by Mario Pesando and James Floyd - a Pegasus would fit nicely into the CF-100 engine bays, and there would be two of them. Makes a lot of sense. Could be a demonstrator and engine testbed for Dan Cooper STOL CF-105, which would "borrow" Pegasus technology.

In "le mur du silence" the Royal Canadian Navy has another carrier called the Montcalm, used a secret floating base for VSTOL prototypes - Triangle Bleu and Coleoptere included. I can see the VSTOL CF-100 and the Arrow joining the party... :cool:

See attached. Borrowed a Harrier forward nozzles and a Yak-41 exhaust.

The massively powerful Iroquois are driving a clutch, which in turn through a couple of transmissions drives a couple of fans mounted forward - more or less inside the air intakes. Think of the F-35 gearbox and fan, but with two smaller, vertical fans. Which cold flux is then deflected downwards, into the Harrier "cold" nozzles you can see in the picture.
If the F-35 can have a gearbox to transmit its turbofan power to a forward fan, no reason an Arrow can's get a similar trick. But I don't want a huge horizontal fan (although there would be plenty enough room inside the Arrow spine and inside the former huge missile bay). I would prefer two fans fed from the air intakes - a bit like another compressor stage for the Iroquois. The clutch, transmissions and fans can be disconected once in flight. The nozzles then tilt upwards in the direction of flight, like the Harrier.

Well just typing this I wonder if the F-35 solution of a big horizontal fan isn't better. Driven by the Iroquois, via clutch. The fan would be nested inside the former, big missile bay. It would sucks air from above and ejects it downwards. Considering that the missile bay was as large as a freakkin' B-29 bomb bay, there would be room aplenty for a big fan there.
 

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Had the idea to try this for some time. Here :

Fulgur.jpg

It’s really a Mirage III/5 with a dorsal intake. Why would anyone put a dorsal intake on a Mirage III ? It’s even more kinky than with canards :p
Now you alternative history nerds to decide what engine could be in there ...

Fulgur-M5F.jpg
 
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good looking plane!
you do raise a good question, what would fit in there?
my guess is something VERY short. There is no way the compressor face would be anywhere in front of that vertical double-line, and i'm afraid i'm being generous. The inlet flow has to turn inside the fuselage and straighten in the axial direction, there's just no way of doing it in a very short distance. It's also going from a flattened oval cross-section to round.
I suspect that the afterburner would take up a lot of the remaining length. Anyway, i'll play and say maybe something like an EJ200, but that's a later engine compared to the timeframe of the Dan Cooper story.
 
Yeah, was thinking too, would need something very compact in lenght.
How about a Volvo RM-8 ? Dunno how big that is. But these side intakes reminds the Viggen.
Main intake would be bit small too maybe.
 
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Just checked the dimensions in Wiki, so it's very basic...
Fulgur-Engines.jpg
RM-8, just forget it galgot... unless they manage to do a new ultra short reheat.
J85 , you could almost put two in there :) but then it's no more a Fulgur.
F-404 and EJ200 would fit fine I think, with F-404 more in line with the time frame. Fun stuff.
 
Archibald said:
A RR Adour or the Ching Kuo F-125... Bristol Orpheus ?
Click to expand...
Yes they would fit fine , but then I think just one of these would not be enough for this airframe, like the J85. Note Jaguar, Ching Kuo and F-5, a pair are installed to have enough power. If we stick to single engine, one bigger and more powerful is needed. But not too big to fit behind that intake.
 
Some pictures from "le mur du silence"
- Triangle Bleu III
- the evil foes, flying near a Collier / von Braun space station
- their victim(s): the Goudlas supersonic airliner
 

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In my T.L (Dark Moon Rising) I have a lot of fun with the D.B Cooper coincidence. Some people are making "Le Triangle Bleu" for real: part F5D Skylancer, part Avro Arrow, both RCAF. The myth lives on.
 
An interesting image shows the armament of the Fulgur. The missiles look like big R-530s.
According to the description of the Fulgur, its performances are similar to that of the F/A-18 in every aspect, except for the maneuverability which is slightly inferior.
Fulgur.jpg
 
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I wouldn't want to eject from a Fulgur... there would be a non negligible risk of being sucked into that air intake. Or maybe not after all, see the YF-107, doesn't seems to have bothered anybody although the F-105 carried the day.
 
galgot said:
Archibald said:
A RR Adour or the Ching Kuo F-125... Bristol Orpheus ?
Click to expand...
Yes they would fit fine , but then I think just one of these would not be enough for this airframe, like the J85. Note Jaguar, Ching Kuo and F-5, a pair are installed to have enough power. If we stick to single engine, one bigger and more powerful is needed. But not too big to fit behind that intake.
Click to expand...

JTF16? Half the length of a TF30 with about the same thrust. Led into the F401 for the F-14B.

 
galgot said:
Just checked the dimensions in Wiki, so it's very basic...
View attachment 649853
RM-8, just forget it galgot... unless they manage to do a new ultra short reheat.
J85 , you could almost put two in there :) but then it's no more a Fulgur.
F-404 and EJ200 would fit fine I think, with F-404 more in line with the time frame. Fun stuff.
Click to expand...
A fighter as the North American F107 ?

en.wikipedia.org

North American F-107 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
According to the comic, the price of the Fulgur is 1 million dollars less per unit than the F-18, in 1981.
The number of Fulgurs envisaged for purchase by the RCAF if the F-18 is not accepted is 110.
 
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Some Dan Cooper artwork for your enjoyment, along with an article on Albert Weinberg from a 1960s issue of the Belgian Tintin weekly.
 

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F.L. said:
According to the comic, the price of the Fulgur is 1 million dollars less per unit than the F-18, in 1981.
The number of Fulgurs envisaged for purchase by the RCAF if the F-18 is not accepted is 110.
Click to expand...
Rather expensive for a collaboration between IAI (Kfir) and North American (outdated F 107)!
 
Now that's an idea... somebody should hybridize a (Trumpeter) 1/72 scale YF-107 with a (Hasegawa) F-106's delta wings, move the intake backwards, and call that a Fulgur...
 
F.L. said:
It's more a Mirage 5 than a Kfir, and it's a Norwegian built aircraft.
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Perhaps a Mirage Milan proposed to Switzerland; according the economical/political links between Norway and Switzerland (European Free Trade Area) , Norway bought the licence to build the Fulgur; with an American power plant due to NATO ; and with the help of IAI (experience with the American power plant in the Kfir)
 
Good idea. And since the Fulgur has the air intake moved away from the flanks, the "moustaches" would no longer disturb the air flow into the engines...
That's the annoying thing when modeling a Fulgur: one would have to eliminate the side intakes of a Mirage or a Draken.
 

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