From RAINBOW to GUSTO: Stealth and the Design of the Lockheed Blackbird

Abraham Gubler

ACCESS: Top Secret
Senior Member
Joined
18 March 2008
Messages
3,532
Reaction score
718
To: skunk-works
Subject: skunk-works "From RAINBOW to GUSTO: Stealth and the Design of the
Lockheed Blackbird"

Hi, everyone.

I thought that some of the folks here might be interested in my book,
which AIAA is publishing at the end of the month. It's the story of
early work in stealth and how it influenced the design of the
Blackbird. I was able to interview many of the Lockheed and Lincoln
Lab/SEI folks, and even Bob Widmer (Kelly Johnson's counterpart at
Convair) and Leo Geary. There are previously unpublished drawings and
photos, including Lockheed's four subsonic stealthy designs from
1957, the two major versions of FISH, desk models of five Kingfish
designs, the Navy inflatable aircraft designs, Lockheed's versions of
FISH, and all but two of Lockheed's Archangel series. There are also
lots of Kelly Johnson's rough sketches.

And, of course, it covers the evolution of various RCS reduction
techniques.

Finally, AIAA will be putting on line my collection of declassified
documents, although not the drawings and photos.

http://www.aiaa.org/content.cfm?pageid=360&id=1789

And many thanks to Jay Miller for his help, encouragement, and
friendship during the many years that it took to bring this project to
fruition.

Cheers,

Paul
===============
Paul A. Suhler
suhler@ieee.org
 
I put my copy on order from Amazon several days ago. Been chatting sorta with the author... the book sounds like it stands a good chance to be the final word on the "Fish-Kingfish-Archangel" timeline and design series. They are apparently all going to be shown via three views and more.
 
Please Scott, could you post the link to order it from amazon.com?

Thanks
 
Orionblamblam said:
I put my copy on order from Amazon several days ago. Been chatting sorta with the author... the book sounds like it stands a good chance to be the final word on the "Fish-Kingfish-Archangel" timeline and design series. They are apparently all going to be shown via three views and more.

The author is also giving a lecture on this subject on the 7th at the Roadrunners event in Vegas. It is open to the public :)

At the atomic testing museum in vegas:
Wednesday, October 7:
10am-5pm Roadrunners meet-and-greet and book signings
2pm-3pm Area 51 historical overview by Peter Merlin
4pm-5pm Project Oxcart history presentation by Peter Merlin
6pm-8pm Area 51 Panel Discussion, moderated by George Knapp

Thursday, October 8:
10am-3pm Roadrunners meet-and-greet and book signings
11am-12pm Rainbow/Fish/Gusto/Archangel lecture by Paul Suhler
1pm-3pm Area 51 Panel Discussion moderated by Annie Jacobson


If you can go, it should be worth it just for Peter's talk.
 
I got my copy yesterday. It is, as far as I can tell, the Final Word on the development of the SR-71, with a very great many never-before seen three-view drawings. The down side* is that many of the drawings are reproduced at remarkably small size. Still, it's well worth the money. Highly recommended.
 
Mine's on it's way, postal strike willing....... ;D but also :mad:



cheers,
Robin.
 
... fire 'em en masse and replace.

The Government woud'nt allow it, this close to an election, besides, some of their own MPs support the strikers.
Basically, the public sector Royal Mail can't compete with the private delivery companies, partly because the Royal Mail has certain obligations set out in law.
The Government's answer is partial privatisation and 'modernisation'. This means, the Government says, new technology and working practices.
The union believes this 'modernisation' to mean large job cuts and worse conditions for those left.
It's also a show of strength to the current opposition party, who are expected to form the next Government.
A further complication is that the Royal Mail is not _directly_operated by the Government, but is effectively a business owned by the state, whose bosses are the meat in the sandwich in this dispute.

cheers,
Robin.
 
Ha ha! Firing civil servants is a joke! State workers have job security and can't lose it unless a very serious fault has been committed and evidenced. Besides, all public services, even non-State organizations, are liable to go on strike several times a year... In France as in many other countries in Europe, we get tired of teachers, postmen, bus drivers, railway workers or garbage collectors going on strike... unfortunately there isn't much one can do about it, going on strike is a constitutional right and it seems like many people can't get their claims or criticism voiced without making everybody else's life a nightmare...
 
Stargazer2006 said:
Ha ha! Firing civil servants is a joke!

Reagan canned the air traffic controllers when they went on an illegal strike. Certain government jobs simply cannot be allowed to go on strike. Imagine if your Army decided to go on strike for higher pay right when the Vandal Horde is about to cross the border.

going on strike is a constitutional right ...

Huh. That's... odd. I guess it's ok so long as the employer has a constitutional right to fire slackers at will.

A bit off topic, I suppose.
 
You're absolutely right, there is exaggeration in the situation we have here in Europe. This being said, I do not think that the right to go on strike extends to the military, who enjoy a different status... fortunately.
 
an illegal strike

Oh, it's legal. Under the law the union has to ballot it's membership, then if a majority in favour of strike action is achieved, seven days notice of the strike date must be given to the employers. Failure to observe any of these steps renders the strike illegal. Unofficial action is also ilegal.

Imagine if your Army decided to go on strike for higher pay right when the Vandal Horde is about to cross the border.

Strike action by the Armed Forces and Police is also illegal.

Here, have an Arrow.

Thanks, excellent. What is it??

cheers,
Robin.
 
I have it........,

see what you mean about the drawings, plus the small size of the book doesn't help. I was expecting a larger format offering.

cheers,
Robin.
 
have bought a copy at eBay UK with total price with shipping to Moscow around $50 - I suspect it would be exactly the same as with shipping from US Amazon (excluding waiting till end of November or even longer)
 
Apparently Amazon and AIAA have straightened out their supply chain and Amazon is now shipping. My boss brought me his copy to be signed this week.

My editor is trying to get the supplemental materials (my document collection with index) up on the AIAA web site, which has a bug; I'll let you know when it's up.

Hope you enjoy it.

Cheers,

Paul
 
Got my copy today. Paul, it's a treasure box and worth every cent paid. Only mess is drawings size due to book format - they deserve large fold-outs. Hope, that one perfect day we will see coffee-table book on subject...In short if you still don't have it, you are looser:)
 
Absolutely agree. Now, a second book on the USAF counterparts, like System 118P competitors from NAA, Bell, Northrop.... ;)
 
Orionblamblam said:
flateric said:
Got my copy today. Paul, it's a treasure box and worth every cent paid. Only mess is drawings size due to book format - they deserve large fold-outs.

AHEM!!

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,8170.0.html

And in Paul's and AIAA's defense, remember they're a relatively small organization, and publishing books is not their primary concern. As much as we love this book (mine finally showed up), the actual audience for this treasure is extremely small in the overall world of publishing so there was only a limited amount of money available to produce it (maybe they could have vastly increased sales if Paul had found some way to work vampires into it---naaah :D). As it is, I'm just glad it's available.
 
overscan said:
Indeed Scott, but in an ideal world the drawings would be decent inside the book :)

Oh, indeed. One can hope that a second edition could be produced in a larger format, with cleaned-up versions of the original blueprints presented in gloriously large size, and reconstructions presented in, preferably, full color. Something like a mix of the various "profiles" some of the forum members produce, and perhaps a few high-quality CG models. My own contribution is to make the layout drawings good and clear... but of course, you have to buy the book to unlock them!
 
For maximum sales, I'd suggest moody emo teen vampires and boy wizards in a crossover of epic proportions.
 
overscan said:
For maximum sales, I'd suggest moody emo teen vampires and boy wizards in a crossover of epic proportions.

...and they'd all drive cars that turn into robots.

Got all that, Paul?
 
overscan said:
For maximum sales, I'd suggest moody emo teen vampires and boy wizards in a crossover of epic proportions.

Moody emo teen boy transformer vampire-wizards? Throw in two-plus hours of interminable love story followed by about an hour or so of really neato effects of a big ocean liner whacking an iceberg and sinking, and you have box office *gold.*

Just a *little* off topic.

Back to topic: buy the book. You're not going to want to miss the Archangel series, but also the (as far as I'm aware) never-before-shown "Cherub" series of aircraft designs.
 
Now let's only hope that someone in Hollywood he is not reading this and take it as a suggestion for a MOVIE...
 
I got mine in the mail today, along with Crickmore's SR-71 Ops in Europe and the ME. This one is really, really good. Combine it with Merlin's AIAA volume on the technological side of Blackbird development and you have a very thorough two-volume set. One question: was this one supposed to come with a CD? It mentions an attached CD-ROM on page 271, but there wasn't one with the book like there was with Merlin's.
 
SOC said:
One question: was this one supposed to come with a CD? It mentions an attached CD-ROM on page 271, but there wasn't one with the book like there was with Merlin's.

There was originally supposed to be a CD with extra stuff, but AIAA decided that it would be cheaper/better/whatever to post the documents online. However, the AIAA managed to screw up something with the ISBN number which has caused a delay with the online posting of documents. Some discussion of that is here:
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.space.history/browse_thread/thread/855e442b3066b5f7/751707a3d7894478?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=suhler#751707a3d7894478
 
Two weeks ago my editor said that the web site issue preventing posting of the supporting materials had been escalated to the head of AIAA's IT department. It's not there yet, which isn't surprising given the holidays. I'll stay after them and let you know when it's up.

Paul
 
It looks like there might be something for download now, but the site wants you to enter a password. Where do we find one of those? Should it have come with the book somewhere?
 
hurrayah!

Hi, Grigory.

Yes, the password is in the book in the part that talks about the
supporting materials. I'd give you a page number, but I'm away from
home at the moment. The zip file is about 276 MB, compressed down
from 291. PDF of scanned documents apparently has lots of entropy,
like most graphics formats.

Warning: The materials contain a spreadsheet with links to the
documents. Unfortunately, the links were all prefixed with "..\..\"
so they won't work, unless AIAA replaced the spreadsheet with a
corrected one yesterday afternoon. If they don't work, then the quick
workaround is to create a folder in the same directory as the PDF
files. Create another folder inside that one. Move the spreadsheet
into the lowest folder and the links should work.

Some people won't be able to open Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, so
I'll ask AIAA to replace it with a PDF file containing links to the
documents.

If you're concerned about the macros, then disable them. They were
used to re-sort on various column headings. The problem is that the
best way to use the spreadsheet is in chronological order, but not all
documents have dates and I placed those based on my best guess of when
they were written. If you sort by, e.g., document number and then re-
sort by date, the documents without dates will all end up at the
bottom of the spreadsheet.

I'll post these instructions to the Secret Projects discussion when I
get home, unless you do it first.

Thanks,

Paul
 
Great googaly moogaly! 271 megabytes... :eek:

ADDITIONAL: please contemplate removing the link. The downloadables are supposed to be accessible only for those who bought the book, by way of a password. Should download through here: http://www.aiaa.org/content.cfm?pageid=403&ID=1789
 
Back
Top Bottom