Secret Projects humour. Sort of. Opinion wanted.

Carthages Directorate of Technical Planning and Procurement questions the need for FOUR engines, due to complexity issues. Would two do? And which two?

However, the solid nose (with room for radar) bespeaks interesting possibilities. Something similar is in the works at the Design Bureau, but perhaps some sort of fusion could be worked out, with good terms for licence building?
 
Well the J85 was (and still is) a small, reliable powerplant originally designed for the GAM-72 (ADM-20) Quail decoy, but it showed such potential that the design for an expendable engine (testbed YJ85-1, prototype YJ85-GE-3, production J85-GE-3, later replaced by the J85-GE-7), with an eventual thrust of 2,450 lbf (10.9 kN) was developed into a family of engines starting with the development of the YJ85-GE-1 for the YT-38 Talon program, which would then lead to the YJ85-GE-5 (J85-GE-5 for production T-38s). From there, the sky was the limit.

The J85-GE-5, with a thrust of 17.1 kN [3,850 lbf] (augmented) in it's initial version, would have probably been the engine used for USAF 4-engined F-84s if the CAS proposal had been approved. It was specifically designed to be reliable and easily maintainable, not to mention low cost. Carthage would probably have little trouble maintaining, or even manufacturing it under licence.

So a four engined design using J85s might actually meet Carthage's needs, both industrial and operational.


http://wiki.scramble.nl/index.php/General_Electric_J85
http://pachome2.pacific.net.sg/~itm4u/gej85.html
 
Or maybe... upscaling it?

I agree on the merits of the J85; I'm just (still) not sure that a close-support fighter bomber needs the complexity which comes with having four of them.

Shall do a little modelling when I have an hour or so's peace from the kiddlywinks. Anyone got diameter, weight and SFC (dry and wet) data?
 
Further developments in real life mean that small children have overrun this project. I'd hoped to actually scratch-design the Carthaginian aircraft myself, plug numbers into equations from books and turn out ballpark-realistic designs, but that's not going to be possible any more. SO... it comes down to foreign purchases and licence production/local modifications thereof.

Let's talk about that F-84 with four engines again. Put in a fuselage plug to allow a second crewmember without fuel penalty, crank the J-85s up to their 5000lb wet thrust limit, stick a basic search radar in the nose (with secondary ground-mapping mode to follow in due course), wire them for AIM-9B and tanks on all the pylons, and I think you've got a deal. Nuclear capability is NOT required.

Also, re. the Bugatti - definitely not with a piston engine. The CAF finishes the war with Griffon Spitfires gifted from the RAF, plus all the Spitefuls and Seafangs that were destined for scrap, and isn't interested in a piston-engined follow-on. OTOH an airframe aimed at 550mph with a piston engine and all that prop-induced drag should be capable of magnificent things with a gas turbine slotted in. Put in a jet (say the Metrovick Beryl for a start), fit a tricycle undercarriage, and we'll talk. Rearward view must be crap for dogfighting, but as a bomber interceptor it would be the bee's knees. Can we have service entry by 1947?
 
pathology_doc said:
Also, re. the Bugatti - definitely not with a piston engine. The CAF finishes the war with Griffon Spitfires gifted from the RAF, plus all the Spitefuls and Seafangs that were destined for scrap, and isn't interested in a piston-engined follow-on. OTOH an airframe aimed at 550mph with a piston engine and all that prop-induced drag should be capable of magnificent things with a gas turbine slotted in. Put in a jet (say the Metrovick Beryl for a start), fit a tricycle undercarriage, and we'll talk. Rearward view must be crap for dogfighting, but as a bomber interceptor it would be the bee's knees. Can we have service entry by 1947?

I'll have to get back to you on that one.
 
Not a problem.


Crate with all my books in it finally arrived from Australia, so I've got my copy of Gunston's good old Encyclopedia of Combat Aircraft and can have a better overview now of what everyone else was fielding, what people were hoping to sell Carthage, etc. Particularly of interest will be Sweden, given its philosophy of "go it alone, develop one type and do it properly and carefully" (a story that probably deserves its own Secret Projects book one day). Carthage might have a lot to learn there!

I know it only dates up to 1976, but it covers most of the period I'm interested in & it's good for thumbnail sketches.
 
http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=5093.0;attach=55396;image

Surely the lunar motorbike ! ;D ;D
 
LOL in about... oh, 2025 or so. Directorate of Technical Planning and Procurement would put preference on a design that is also compatible with (or easily upgraded to handle) the surfaces of Mars and the Jovian moons.

I hadn't actually considered a spaceflight chapter, but you never know. The Carthaginian Government, upon seeing Kennedy's pledge made, was well aware that it would not Get There First, and was content to let the Yanks and Russians make all the mistakes as well as have all the glory. Similarly the Carthaginians did not feel the need to possess The Bomb, and the Tripwire Policy faded before Carthaginian pilots were trained/cleared to carry it on behalf of NATO (the Italians were nervous about the Carthaginians having access to it, in case one of their pilots forgot about the approaching Soviet hordes and flew to Rome instead). When you don't have The Bomb and you don't need ICBMs, part of the driving force towards space travel drops away, if only because military-budget Cold War ICBM research addresses many of the problems civilian space travel will face.

If I were going to write a spaceflight chapter, I'd imagine the Carthaginian space program in the present day being about where India's is - the launch of unmanned lunar probes on a shoestring and an unhurried time-scale, with long-term manned ambitions that could happen whenever they did.
 
Playing around with equations the other night to see what I could derive from basic published information, and I thought I might be able to derive a Cd0 (parasite drag coefficient) for particular aircraft and assess likely performance gains (or losses) from assumed percentage drag decreases, carriage of bombs, rockets etc.

I have all-up weight, speed at a stated height, engine horsepower, wing area, and span. Knowing the height, I can determine density in the standard atmosphere (for which the figures are given anyway), and hence C-lift and C-drag (using wing area as reference area), aspect ratio (span-squared/area). For prop-driven aircraft, I obtain thrust from P = TV, assuming power = advertised engine power maintained to stated altitude by supercharging. I'm neglecting prop efficiency and setting it = 1, because I'm comparing apples with apples. In the equation Cd = Cd0 + (Clift)squared / pi.AR.efficiency, I am assuming the efficiency factor = 0.85.

I ended up with CD0 in the point zero three neighbourhood for the Gloster Gladiator II at height and one mark of Grumman biplane fighter at sea level, which when you consider a Cessna 172 is about 0.025, sounds reasonably ballparkish. However, when I tried it for the Grumman at height (two figures were given, SL and height), it all went terribly awry and I wonder where I've gone wrong.

To what extent are my assumptions and approach valid, or am I just making a horrific hash of it?
 
I doubt this fits with your timeline, but what came to my mind was the following. Bear in mind it reflects my bias towards orphaned projects.

1. Mid '50s, Carthage wants to develop some local air production. My candidate: the FFA P-16 from Switzerland. By all reports an excellent design, looking for a home. It gives Carthage a nice little STOL attack and CAS aircraft with some fighter capability built in. And experience building a transonic fighter.

2. Early 60's, snap up the HA-300 before Egypt. Fund the Brandner engine, team up with India on the engine, and enter into an agreement to co-produce the HF-24 Marut and the HA-300 in both nations. By 1970 you (and India) have an excellent dogfighter and a useful fighter bomber, since the Marut with the Brandner engine can meet its designed performance goals. Messerschmidt goes back to Germany, but Brandner continues developing his family of engines, and Kurt Tank continues working on follow on versions of the Marut, culminating in the HF-73, which looks a bit like an F-17/18 equivalent.

This is also the time to set up an aeronautical engineering campus, or more specifically two, for future cooperation with India. Ideally this would lead to something like Embraer, with designs for at first simple and then later more complex and advanced commercial designs.

3. It would be good to have a long range strike option, especially since Carthage has so much coast-line. The F-111F* is going out of production in 1976, perhaps an opportunity to jump in and move the line to Carthage? And if it's there anyway, how about the FB-111H? Okay, that's a definite reach. Stick to the F, and maybe work on improved avionics later.

4. With the low end covered and a high end strike aircraft, perhaps a high end fighter? The Mirage 4000 shows up at the end of the decade, and with Dassault distracted by the 2000 and a little later the Rafale program, local production across the Med might be sensible.

5. You really do have a lot of coast-line, maybe a couple of carriers in the Spanish or Italian vein would make sense. Locally produced AV-8Bs seem like a good idea, and you have plenty of experience now.

6. By this point, with experience building and maintaining both simpler and advanced aircraft, and engineers educated both abroad and at home, independent combat aircraft design, or co-design with your old pal India, beckons. Hopefully your commercial production has managed to make carve out an Embraer sized market share.

*I consider the F-111F an orphaned project. They finally got the Aardvark right, and instead of producing several hundred over the next decade promptly ended production.
 
Oh goody gumdrops. And by "modular" systems, are we talking "return to factory for fit" or are we talking about the line erks swapping them in and out?
The word "modular" implies that they can be quickly bolted in or hung from existing bomb racks .... hence little need to return to the manufacturer for conversion.
 
Dear apparition13,
You have some great ideas.
I am picturing Carthage as an Islamic equivalent of Israel that accepts a wide variety of engineering refugees to build up their industrial base.
Carthage starts by buying up WW2 surplus airplanes - from Germany - for scrap metal rates.
When WALLIES refuse to sell them WW2-surplus transports, Carthage buys tooling from Budd and builds a few hundred RB-1 Conestoga transports. Budd also helps them establish a factory to build railroad rolling stock.
In the aftermath of the collapse of the American light plane industry (late 1940s) they buy up a couple of complete factories for pennies on the dollar.
They buy Republic's tooling for the Seabee light amphibian.
When Fairchild of Canada shuts the Husky production line in 1950, Carthage buys all the Husky tooling. With a larger engine and fin, STOL Huskies haul supplies for the booming Carthaginian oil industry.
When the Avro Canada Jetliner is cancelled in 1951, Carthage buys up tooling and hires a few Avro Canada engineers. Even better if those engineers are Polish ex-pats.
When Scottish Aviation quits building the Twin Pioneer transport during the 1960s, Carthage buys some of the tooling, but never builds any Twin Pioneers. Instead the build the proposed STOL successor with tri-gear, turboprops and a tail ramp (ala. successful Shorts Skyvan).
After building a batch of Swiss FFA P-16 jets, Carthage also buy the rubble of the Swiss Piranha jet, along with scraps remaining from the Yugoslav Novi Avion and Israeli Lavi programs to build a Carthaginian light-weight fighter.
 
Oh goody gumdrops. And by "modular" systems, are we talking "return to factory for fit" or are we talking about the line erks swapping them in and out?
The word "modular" implies that they can be quickly bolted in or hung from existing bomb racks .... hence little need to return to the manufacturer for conversion.





On the modularity concept for the Blackburn P.141. From Roy Boot's 'From Spitfire to Eurofighter', pp. 70-1 :-

"P.141.
In 1965, as the brainchild of Rod Melling, came the last of our attack projects, the P.141. This was offered as an alternative concept to the MRCA (later Tornado). The proposal was to avoid the size and complexity incurred by having an airframe with the capability of fulfilling a number of roles by a modular approach, where role-related major components could be attached, on the assembly line, to a common core, thereby producing a smaller and cheaper product."

(My Bold)

cheers,
Robin.
 
I am picturing Carthage as an Islamic equivalent of Israel
No. They are not Muslims. These are CARTHAGINIANS; they still worship whatever Gods the actual Carthaginians did before the Romans exterminated them in actual history. IMHO if Carthage hadn't been wiped out it might have resisted the Islamization of northern Africa, but the Romans left a power vacuum in the west and the Eastern empire wasn't strong enough to put that genie (pun intended) back in the bottle.
 

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