Rockwell NR-356 Sea Control Ship (SCS) V/STOL fighter (XFV-12A)

[hesham]

Nice drawings,thank you Scrutor.

 

[hesham]

Hi,

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a083905.pdf

 

[hesham]

here is a report about Rockwell XFV-12.


http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a108354.pdf

From the same report,

a small Info about XFV-12B & XFV-12C.

 

[hesham]

From L+K 24/1976.

 

[Mark Nankivil]

Greetings All -

From the Gerald Balzer Collection, would appear to possibly be the mockup.

Enjoy the Day! Mark

 

[uk 75]

I remember the excitement surrounding the bizarre looking XFV12.
Was there any way of getting it to work? Or should the engineers have realised there would not be enough lift generated?

 

[kaiserd]

It’s certainly one of the last major prototype “well that didn’t work at all“ case studies, which have largely been eliminated via advanced in computer modelling etc.

Given the concept has never really been revisited (but that there was plenty of subsequent US and UK V/STOVL research etc. eventually leading to the F-35B) I think we can safely understand that no one thought they could readily “fix” this failed concept.

 

[Pioneer]

Yeah, better option would have been its competitor, the General Dynamics 200. This one was really similar to the soviets Yak 36 /38 /41 in the sense that it had a tilting rear exhaust plus two lift jets behind its cockpit.
Despite its defaults (hot gases reingestion) this layout WORKS rather well.

I'm planing a model of the General Dynamics design using a Gripen as basis...

For more info on the GD 200A, browse the "US V/STOL projects" thread. 9 pages of oddball designs (I'm fond of the well-named NUTcrakers designs ;D)

Did you ever build that model Archibald?

Regards
Pioneer

 

[Archibald]

Yeeees. One of my best built. I had some pictures on Photobucket but... oh well forget it.

 

[Pioneer]

Yeeees. One of my best built. I had some pictures on Photobucket but... oh well forget it.

Sneak peek, sneak peek!!!!

Regards
Pioneer

 

[dan_inbox]

I remember the excitement surrounding the bizarre looking XFV12.
Was there any way of getting it to work? Or should the engineers have realised there would not be enough lift generated?

Some things that work on a small model do scale up, others don't.
The lift augmentation concept of the XFV-12 is one of those that don't.

As wiki says in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_XFV-12 : "Lab tests showed 55% thrust augmentation should be expected; however, differences in the scaled-up system dropped augmentation levels to 19% for the wing and a mere 6% in the canard."

So indeed, there would not be enough lift generated.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Some things that work on a small model do scale up, others don't.

In aerospace, a *lot* of things work better the bigger you get (see: Project Orion, rocket engines, SSTO). But augmentor lift turned out to be the opposite. Didn't just kill the XFV-12, it made the idea of a VTOL C-130 with augmentor lift wings *laughable.*

 

[taildragger]

It’s certainly one of the last major prototype “well that didn’t work at all“ case studies, which have largely been eliminated via advanced in computer modelling etc.

I don't think computer modeling would have prevented the XV-12A failure. Modeling or CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) is based on real world observations and if nobody had ever built an augmentor lift system (or similar hardware) on the scale of the XV-12A, the software would have no basis for predicting that it wouldn't work.

 

[dan_inbox]

Sure. It is just surprising to me that they wouldn't build just one wing and blow a jet though it,
--BEFORE building the whole freaking airplane at max cost.

Risk reduction in project management, all the things we learn in school...