Well, bernse, old legends die hard. In correspondence with Steve Levin (the editor of the XB-70 website) he said the SR-71 was flown by Daryl Greenameier briefly at Mach 3.6 (a bit more than the “low 3s”) but had to back off due to “heating issues.” Evidently Mach 3.2 was the highest sustainable cruising speed.
I’ll have to concede that those heating issues are probably structurally related as opposed to control surface issues. Steve recently had lunch with Joe Ventolo, author of a recent book on the Blackbird and in trading “odd stories” about the SR-71, the heat / boundary envelope tale did not arise. I’ve asked him to inquire when he has the chance, just for grins.
As to the 75% of thrust due to suction, he replied, “The suction is a pretty common effect for afterburning turbojets.”
I’ll take that as confirmation of my own posting to that end. Thanks for inspiring my inquiry into all of this. It’s always nice to have the facts in order.
Yes, I agree, I have a photo in front of me of one (but no scanner). The Germans also had some mid wing four engine sea planes (as opposed to flying boats) that they launched from large catapult ships. When I find the names and a link, I’ll post it.
Funny thing, though… I find the Vulcan somewhat lacking. Oh well, to each his own.
I’ve noticed that the Germans seemed to stay away from tricycle gear, even the early Me 262s were tail draggers.
Brilliant piece of thinking outside the box. “How do we give this bird the power of a twin but the roll rate of a single? Put both engines on the centre-line!”.
Bet it was a bitch to bale out of, though :eek:
Flying boats: Blohm und Voss did a couple of these, too. The Bv138 triple-engined “Flying Shoe” and the Bv222 six-engined monster.
Actually, IIRC it was one of (if not the) first aircraft equiped with an ejection seat. I also think the rear prop was explosively seperated from the aircraft.
I’ve seen a Dornier 335, and I’m pretty sure it’s the only one left. The Smithsonian Air and Space museum has it at their storage facility in the suburbs of D.C. (Silver Hill, Maryland, to be specific) I took a tour there a couple of years ago and it was amazing, and we were a small group so we got to go into a couple extra, out-of-the-way buildings. Most of the planes are in pieces to take up less space; you’ll see the fuselage parked on the floor and the guide points out the wings in a rack against the wall. But there’s just nothing like stepping into a dark warehouse, and as your eyes adjust to the light you’re three feet away from the Winnie Mae. (A Lockheed Vega, speaking of gorgeous airplanes.) And even when you’re standing right in front of them, you just don’t touch the original tires from The Spirit of st. Louis.
If I remember correctly, the Do-335 had an explosive charge on the drive shaft for the rear propellor. (And possibly one of the rear fins as well.) If you had to bail out, just trigger that charge, it cut the drive shaft and the prop was gone.
No problem, except that the plane was parked outside for quite a few years, no one knew knew about the explosives, and those things tend to get kinda unstable as the age. Eventually Dornier made a proposal to the Smithsonian that they’d restore the plane at their factory if they could display it there for a little while. Nobody noticed the unstable explosives until after they’d shipped the thing across the Atlantic in a Lufthansa cargo 747.
Low wing, not mid wing seaplanes. Faulty memory, I’m sure…
I guess my impression of Germans not liking trike gear was that early early Me 262. The plane taxied around the runway very fast, but never took off. The test pilot breifly applied brakes, bringing the tail up, and then the jet flew. It was remade as a trike. No cite for that other than a Wings of the Luftwaffe show in my fuzzy memory.
Another beauty from the '50s, the first piloted aircraft to achieve Mach 2.0, a D-558-2 Skyrocket in flight with an F-86 chase plane, and launching (in the company of an equally rare bird, a U.S. Navy B-29).
Or if want something a little faster how about a B-1B? I saw one of these at an air show at
Edwards AFTB. Parked it looked like it was going 500MPH. Just flat sexy.
A cherished childhood memory is that of seeing 3 Vulcans flying low over my parents’ house during a NATO exercise. Whoah! - these birds take up a lot of sky.
Saab came up with a twin-boom pusher round about the same time that took a similar approach, for much the same reason. I can’t remember any more details, as this was in a borrowed book I read maybe nine or ten years ago and have long since given back.
Talking of “taking up a lot of sky”, how about the Messerchmitt Me323 Gigant? An ugly brute, but an impressive one.
The one bit of trivia that I remember about the Fokker F27 is that the wings were mounted on the fuselage using only four bolts per wing. I don’t know if it’s true or not, it was related to me by a just-landed paratrooper when I was watching the Friendships drop parachutists over the moors near my parents’ house, when I was a young lad of 10 years old. Sadly, they no longer do droppings anymore. I also vividly remember the sonic booms of the NF5’s and, later, the F16’s as they came blasting over (there was an air force base 15 kilometers away), back in the day when jet fighters were still allowed to go supersonic over the Netherlands. Late 70’s, early 80’s.
I also remember seeing an entire squadrom of Stealth Bombers land at that same air force base in the early 90’s. Too cool!
The Smithsonian will put the Do-335 on display at the new branch museum at Dulles Airport, which opens this December (the 100th anniversary of the Wrights’ first successful powered flight). Most of the aircraft that have been in storage at the Garber facility will go there, including the fully-reassembled Enola Gay.
