NA/Rockwell 70's Stealth: Flying Banana, Silent Attack & Surprise Fighter

[SteveO]

Ah yes. Must remember to reread threads before posting

 

[AeroFranz]

from Darold:

"I believe we also envisioned getting off one missile as a fighter...not very agile, but "surprising" the enemy (same philosophy as F-22!) with first shot/first kill."

 

[hesham]

Hi,

https://www.reddit.com/r/WeirdWings/comments/ctg09y

 

[sferrin]

A project I've never heard of until today, looking through the Rockwell bomber study PDF here:

http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=C016293&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf

Concept 4-1 uses stealth technologies developed under Rockwell's Surprise Fighter program. Radar tests of a model of this shape showed virtually no radar return from most directions. The aircraft penetrates at high mach number with its wings fully stowed, leaving only a slab-sided shape with minimal intersections.

Interesting that this knowledge didn't appear to make it into their ATF concept.

 

[Foo Fighter]

I'm sorry I must appologise, I have for a while been gettin my reading of the title wrong, lazyness perhaps. Instead of
"NA/Rockwell 70's Stealth: Flying Banana, Silent Attack & Surprise Fighter", I have seen part to read as "Silent Banana". Sorry folks, my bad...........
IMHO though, my version works much better as a defence program title.

 

[sferrin]

When I was a kid there was a regional airliner. . .Hughes Airwest, that painted their aircraft yellow, called them "Top Bananas" but everybody else called them Flying Bananas. McDonalds even had little foam cutout "Top Banana" gliders they put in Happy Meals (I had one).

 

[Scott Kenny]

The pictures represent early attempts at designing stealth attack aircraft in the early seventies. The mission was to attack an SA-2 site.
The "Flying banana" and the "silent attack aircraft" are from North american, the surprise fighter is from Rockwell.
All vehicle incorporated FLIR and some sort of plug in the exhaust to prevent line of sight to the hot section. The surprise fighter was interesting in having pivoted wings which disappeared under the fuselage. I can only assume that penetration would occur at low altitude and high speed, and body lift was all that was needed. There is at least another later Rockwell bomber that relied on this concept, although in that case the design had a one piece oblique-wing hinged at the center as opposed to two variable geometry semi-wings. weapon launch in the Rockwell fighter was through a system similar to torpedo tubes. Exhaust doors at the back would open at the time of launch.

The "Flying Banana" looks like a scaled up version of an early stealth drone ("Aguila"? CIA Aquiline or MDD Batwing II, now that I looked it up), just with the V-tail upright instead of inverted.

 

[Archibald]

Awesome. So - that's where Tom Clancy got that idea of a surprise attack by a surprise fighter, to kill those pesky Soviet AWACS ? I note that (dreamland) frisbees are close from bananas, in shape [hell, crap - boomerangs, not frisbees - silly me, forget that)

How about that ?

I readily agree the non-banana surprise fighter certainly looks like a revamped YF-107 for stealth.

That forum is full of surprises.

 

[Archibald]

"Operation dreamland" - are you a Clancy & Red storm rising fan ? (just asking in passing)

 

[OPERATION DREAMLAND]

Yes!

 

[Archibald]

Me too ! Bought Red October, in 1995 - I was thirteen, and I loved it. Red Storm Rising came later : 2007. I like to think some Tomcat crews flew in both... novels.