hlg6016
A/C Wings Here
I could just picture this thing eating flight line personnel.
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Little known / experimental aircraft
- Thread starter Randy Daytona
- Start date
That does not look like a competitor of the AH-64. That looks like some 1950s Flash Gordon stuff.
Who else but the S-3 uses drop tanks to sink an Iraqi patrol boat?
I thought it was a buddy store and drop tank?
Could have been....it's still awesome either way.
The USAF (mainly) pursued a number of prototype or conceptual vertical takeoff air interceptors at the start of the cold war, designed to position on the North American periphery to counter Soviet LRA prior to the advent of precision long range surface-to-air. Not sure if this exact model was part of that effort or not.
I think another Convair product, the 200, was of that mind. It was VSTOL, basically a prehistoric F-35.
Nope, @Griz882 was right. It was submitted by Convair as part of AAFSS that the AH-64 won. The coleocopter concept was one branch of early VTOL research that was led by the Germans due to wartime requirements for a VTOL interceptor to counter allied bombing raids. The Germans looked into a whole spectrum of ideas some of which crossed the border into fanciful and unachievable with the technology at the time. During the early cold war there was exploration of many parts of the VTOL spectrum that included helicopters, one flying coleocopter, tiltrotors, ducted jets, tail sitters, etc. Of the various points on the spectrum the only ones that have worked well enough to be fielded are helos, tilt, and ducted jets (kestrel, harrier, f-35).
Tail sitters (Pogo, Vertijet, XFV) never made it past initial testing due to difficulty in landing them and limited performance against conventional aircraft once up and away.
Apparently the one coleocopter that flew was largely uncontrollable due to fact that the huge spinning mass of the fan basically made it into a gyroscope. This was in the 50s so controls technology was pretty limited to meat servos and the pilot as the stabilization and flight computer.
Idiots.
Bachem Ba 349 B-1 Natter (Viper) | National Air and Space Museum
Yep, that's one of the more notorious ideas. It's like someone saw the Me 163 and said "yeah, that's a dumb idea but I can make a dumber one." Only slightly less suicidal than the Japanese Ohka.Bachem Ba 349 B-1 Natter (Viper) | National Air and Space Museum
airandspace.si.edu
The Focke Wulf Triebflügel is another fanciful what if:Bachem Ba 349 B-1 Natter (Viper) | National Air and Space Museum
Focke-Wulf Triebflügel - Wikipedia
Congratulations, you had an EP and made a successful landing, but one of the fuel tanks surrounding the cockpit ruptured, so now you're literally getting dissolved Bond villain-style by concentrated hydrogen peroxide. Yes, this is a thing that happened to some poor bastards.