The Lockheed L-133

J_Matthews129

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I can blame this one on this website (http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,3636.0.html). LOL!

I had never before heard of Lockheed's L-133 design until visiting this website several years ago. When I saw the drawings and illustrations (also thanks to Mr. Lowther and his "Aerospace Review" articles, one of which covered this design: http://www.aerospaceprojectsreview.com/ev1n4.htm) I was intrigued by how advanced it was for the late 1930s. Compared to everything else it looked like something straight out of Buck Rodgers. What if Lockheed were given the "go-ahead", and the aircraft had actually been produced and flown? Imagine if it had been further developed. Needless to say, I was captured by the "what if" possibilities of the design and finally completed the 3D model. The examples you see here are finished works. They can also be seen on my website and even bought as prints or framed artwork (like my XB-51 illustrations).

Thanks for looking!
 

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I dunno. The intake looks kind of on the small side, and wouldn't there be a gas ingestion problems with the nose guns?
 
royabulgaf said:
I dunno. The intake looks kind of on the small side, and wouldn't there be a gas ingestion problems with the nose guns?

Hi!

See, that's the thing; the only thing to draw from are internal arrangement drawings, a three view drawing, and whatever other external illustrations existed. The 3D object was taken directly from the three view and internal arrangement concept drawings. There was an "Air Classics" magazine article in which the son of one of the designers (Hawkins) was interviewed. He stated they really didn't know how they were going to package the proposed 20mm cannons (i.e. above, below or inside the air intake, or elsewhere). I've seen drawings which placed them inside the air intake, but you can imagine how much havoc that would have wreaked considering spent gasses and other bits and pieces getting sucked into the engines.

Then there was the matter of the air intake itself. I've seen drawings with just one main (nose) intake, and others with supplementary intakes top and bottom, aft of the wing. Again, I have to imagine the lower ones would ingest a lot of FOD possibly. In the first version of the 3d object I did model it with the supplementary intakes, which added some additional visual detail to the model. I decided to omit them for the final version though, since it was easier to texture that way.

It clearly wasn't in any way what you would call a finalized design. I decided to take a bit of artistic license and placed the cannons above and below the intake, using the scaled dimensions of period 20mm cannons that would have been available. Even that would have posed a problem since the ammo also had to go somewhere. My guess is that nose-mounted cannons would have been unsuitable since there may not have been enough room for them, forward landing gear, the cockpit, other necessary equipment, and, of course, ammunition to feed the 20's. Ultimately, they never got a chance to sort it out and produced other aircraft.
 
Its my understanding they had a lot of problems with the engines. Marquardt took over engine development and in the end it never really went anywhere
 
Kevin Renner said:
Its my understanding they had a lot of problems with the engines. Marquardt took over engine development and in the end it never really went anywhere

I think it was sort of doomed from the beginning, and wasn't as much a problem with the engine design as with program management. The Army wasn't interested in the plane as much as they were interested in the engine. Lockheed designed the engine to be 24 inches around, weigh under 1,300 pounds, and projected 6,700 LBS thrust. They weren't keen on an airframer developing their own engine, despite Northrop doing the same thing with the Turbodyne. Yet, they signed a contract with Lockheed to develop it. That was troubled because of wartime production and they had to subcontract with Menasco, which the Army was also not happy about. The development was dreadfully slow because Menasco had problems providing precision parts (again due to wartime production). The Army finally got fed-up and bought GE/Allison axial flow engines. I think there's a mockup of the engine in a museum, but that's about all that's left of it.

Thanks for your post!

-John
 
Could the wing allow supersonic speed? Considering the problems IC powered aircraft had approaching mach 1.
 
Another good source I recommend is Air Classics, Feb 2013. The L-133 is the cover story.
 
XP67_Moonbat said:
Another good source I recommend is Air Classics, Feb 2013. The L-133 is the cover story.

Sorry for responding so late to your message (I need to turn on notifications :eek: ). I had the Air Classics edition you were talking about. No idea what's happened to it though, so I may have to order back issues. Someone mentioned to me that was a three part article? I recall it as being pretty informative.
 
Here's a new profile I've done of the L-133:

l-133-profile-36x12-poster-small.jpg


If anyone would be interested, I made it available as a poster here:

https://www.zazzle.com/lockheed_l_133_profile_poster-228521975701558049

Other L-133 prints are here:

https://www.zazzle.com/matthews_aero_art
 
Geist said:
Great!
Would you mind to tell me what program do you use?
(I don't remember if I already asked it to you before - sorry if so)

Hi Daniel,

I certainly don't mind when anyone has an interest in my work and asks a question :). Especially another artist, such as yourself!

I'm using a old version of 3DS to model the aircraft. It's like me; old but functional. Ha! PS for the texture work, and Vue Studio for environment.

What do you use? I'm very impressed with your work
 
J_Matthews129 said:
Geist said:
Great!
Would you mind to tell me what program do you use?
(I don't remember if I already asked it to you before - sorry if so)

Hi Daniel,

I certainly don't mind when anyone has an interest in my work and asks a question :). Especially another artist, such as yourself!

I'm using a old version of 3DS to model the aircraft. It's like me; old but functional. Ha! PS for the texture work, and Vue Studio for environment.

What do you use? I'm very impressed with your work

Thank you for the answer ;)
I create the texture in Photoshop, to do the 3D I use Rhino and to render Flamingo, than back to Photoshop for post-edition
 

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