The Planes that never were

[Idris2002]

Caproni Campini N.1 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This thing might look like a jet aircraft, but it's not.

It's powered by a motorjet, which - well, wiki tells the story:

At the heart the motorjet is an ordinary piston engine (hence, the term motor), but instead of (or sometimes, as well as) driving a propeller, it drives a compressor. The compressed air is channeled into a combustion chamber, where fuel is injected and ignited. The high temperatures generated by the combustion cause the gases in the chamber to expand and escape at high velocity from the exhaust, creating a thermal reactive force that provides useful thrust.

Motorjet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Was this mode of propulsion doomed to be a technological dead end from day one, or could it ever have found a useful niche?

 

[ferrelhadley]

We'd better go with these, in that case:

My knowledge of Soviet era fighter aircraft is a little rusty. Is that a Mc 21?

 

[Idris2002]

My knowledge of Soviet era fighter aircraft is a little rusty. Is that a Mc 21?

It's a product of the famous O'Sukhoi factory - old established family, auld Sean O'Sukhoi, a staunch Parnellite who followed the Chief to the very end.

 

[spitfire]

Just came across this.....

The Greatest Planes That Never Were public group | Facebook

 

[Idris2002]

Nice one spitfire. Found this via the alternatehistory.com boards:

Boulton Paul P.100

The P.100 was one of several designs submitted by Boulton Paul in response to Specification F. 6/42 which called for a 'highly manoeuvrable single seat low attack aircraft'. The P.100 was an innovative and forward-thinking design with features that were maybe too advanced for the time such as the unique 'jaw' at the nose which allowed the pilot to escape without danger of hitting the pusher propeller. The successful submission would have needed to have been in full-scale production by January 1944, The P.100 was completely untested and would have required a leap of faith by the RAF. After assessing this and several other projects it was finally agreed that the role was best suited to a modified existing type: in this case the Hawker Typhoon, Hawker Tempest and a ground attack variant (Mk IV) of the Hawker Hurricane.

Proposed armament included 4 x 20mm Cannon, 2 x 40mm + 2 x 20mm canon, one 47mm Vickers cannon + 2 20mm guns. External weapons including 8 x RP3 Rockets or 2 x 500 lb. bombs. Power was to be supplied by a 1760 hp Rolls Royce Griffon II driving contra-rotating propellers.

Span 40' 2" (12.2m) Length 34' 2" (10.4m) 335 mph (571 Km/h) @ 17,000 ft (5,182m)

Sources: Interceptor Fighters Michael J. F. Bower, British Secret Projects Fighters and Bombers 1935-1950 Tony Buttler.

And there's more where that came from:

Xplanes3d.com Visualisation of Prototype, Experimental and Unrealised Aircraft

 

[Idris2002]

This is interesting - a proposal to convert a Tupolev bomber into a VIP SST passenger aircraft:

 

[spitfire]

OK so it is a plane that did but it is a prototype so I'm putting it in this thread.

Prototype 707 doing a barrel roll.

 

[Idris2002]

Caproni Campini N.1 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This thing might look like a jet aircraft, but it's not.

It's powered by a motorjet, which - well, wiki tells the story:

At the heart the motorjet is an ordinary piston engine (hence, the term motor), but instead of (or sometimes, as well as) driving a propeller, it drives a compressor. The compressed air is channeled into a combustion chamber, where fuel is injected and ignited. The high temperatures generated by the combustion cause the gases in the chamber to expand and escape at high velocity from the exhaust, creating a thermal reactive force that provides useful thrust.

Motorjet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Was this mode of propulsion doomed to be a technological dead end from day one, or could it ever have found a useful niche?

From the Facebook page, The Greatest Planes that Never Were:

Technological dead end sums it up - could it even have provided a transition to a true jet engine?

 

[dylanredefined]

I had an old boss who flew on Shackletons up to 1990!

I'm sure most people who look on here know, but it was basically a Lancaster (well a Lincoln); in service till 91! And some people say we didn't have a coherent defence policy...

Supposedly survived one nato exercise as the enemy mistook it for the battle of Britain memorial Lancaster.

 

[Idris2002]

Early jet liner from Avro Canada, which was basically killed by the Korean war:

 

[Idris2002]

This can't have been real, surely - a Kiwi Kombat Kraft?

 

[Idris2002]

Check it out you guys - a blog that discusses cancelled spaceflight projects, and thus creates an entire alternate history of the space race:

False Steps

ViolentPanda, you'll want to see this one.

 

[Idris2002]

Fascinating French site about ramjet propulsion:
Prototypes.com/La saga des statoréacteurs/I. Introduction

It's in French, but you can always look at the pictures.

 

[DaveCinzano]

Fascinating French site about ramjet propulsion:
Prototypes.com/La saga des statoréacteurs/I. Introduction

It's in French

*SHRUGS*

 

[pogofish]

Fascinating French site about ramjet propulsion:
Prototypes.com/La saga des statoréacteurs/I. Introduction

It's in French, but you can always look at the pictures.

At least they got some of their ramjet planes into the air - Whilst ours got cancelled before they left the drawing board or made it to completion in the prototype stage.

Although not strictly a ramjet, wasn't the SARO SR-53 prototype the only UK mixed jet/rocket aircraft to make any significant number of flights?

Always liked the Flying FLask/Leduc Ramjet - Yes, that cockpit is made out of Pyrex!

 

[Idris2002]

*SHRUGS*

Eh bien.

pogofish - was that photo taken on Tracy Island?

 

[pogofish]

No - France!

 

[MikeMcc]

The Dornier Do-31 experimental VTOL transport aircraft. Two Pegasus (Harrier) engines and 8 other lift engines all balanced by an analogue flight control computer!



1966 - Do 31 - VTOL Experimental Jet Transport

Dornier Do 31 - Wikipedia

One is sat outside the excellent Dornier museum, the other surviving aircraft is in a museum in Berlin I believe. Having worked close to Harriers it must have been an incredibly noisy smelly machine!

 

[pogofish]

the other surviving aircraft is in a museum in Berlin I believe.

Nope, it is at Schleissheim Airfield nr Munich, on display with much of the secondary collection from Deutsches Museum.

I have it down for a visit the next time I'm in Munich (which may be quite soon! ) as I never got there last time due to the main Museum, BMW and so much other interesting stuff in the city itself.

 

[Idris2002]

 

[DaveCinzano]

This is what happens when you don't read your Airfix instructions properly

 

[HAL9000]

This is what happens when you don't read your Airfix instructions properly

Nasa had a go at swept forward wings

 

[Idris2002]

What possible use could there have been for something like this?

"The Blohm & Voss P163-01 Was an Asymmetric Bomber Project with an Daimler-Benz DB 613C engine with contrarotating propellors the project was tested and had some complexity in which the aircraft had to be flown and steered from both condelas at that moment in the war there was no need for complexity in projects max speed of 404mph altitude :39370ft range:900miles"

 

[pogofish]

Nasa had a go at swept forward wings

And the British had a go at both wing formats, at the same time:

The BAE P.1214 - Which began as a Hawker project IIRC and got as far as the model stage of development, with one variant shown to Mrs T as a full-size pre-production model.

As the plane was intended for sale to the US, some of its design work was apparently made available to them and reused on the F35-B!

 

[kebabking]

The cockpit and air intake look like they came off an F-16....

 

[pogofish]

Yup, that is a speculative model but a very similar cockpit/intake arrangement was there on the only verifiable info:

 

[kebabking]

It looks like the bastard offspring of an F-16, Harrier and a Venom(?).

I wonder how it would have flown - and (one for the knowledgeable) why is it that we keep seeing concepts for forward swept wing aircraft, but never see one going I to production? Is it that there are fundamental problems that have solutions, but very expensive solutions, or is it straight forward conservatism among the senior military and political class that no amount of scientific data can overcome?

 

[T & P]

Nasa had a go at swept forward wings

And of course the Russians have a very viable technology demonstrator in the SU-47

Nowadays it's been used as a weapons testbed for the Pak-Fa. I guess the hyper-manoeuvrability of the design has come to be considered less important than good stealth properties.

 

[DownwardDog]

I wonder how it would have flown - and (one for the knowledgeable) why is it that we keep seeing concepts for forward swept wing aircraft, but never see one going I to production? Is it that there are fundamental problems that have solutions, but very expensive solutions, or is it straight forward conservatism among the senior military and political class that no amount of scientific data can overcome?

Someone asked that on another thread and I opined:

Horribly unstable in yaw and the wing stalls from the aft of the quarter chord first so it's almost impossible to recover. It might be possible to engineer these deficiencies out with modern FBW systems, although Russia is about as well placed as Burkina Faso to achieve this. The putative advantages just aren't worth discarding 70 years worth of progress and knowledge on normally swept wings

Since the 70s (F-15, F-16, Mirage 2K) we've been able to build airframes that are capable of exceeding the crew's physical tolerance for G anyway so, in a sense, there isn't much point in chasing an airframe with even better energy maneuverability if it GLOCs the crew.

Maybe FSW will come back into vogue when UAS become ubiquitous.

 

[Cid]

But they look like sci-fi illustrations, they should be made to work because otherwise this isn't the future.