Stealth Biplanes?

The old WW1 biplanes were wood & doped canvas, mostly. Engines & guns were metal, of course.

How well did/do they stand out on radar?

How easy would it be to build a Stealth Biplane?

A WW1 style Heavy Bomber?

Using modern materials?

Could a Third World nation adapt over-the-counter materials for this effect?

IANAE (I Am Not An Engineer), but I think the big problem you’d face is that WWI biplanes were, well, WWI biplanes. They were fine for dropping a bit of gas or dynamite, but they just couldn’t carry the size of ordinance we’ve come to know and love in modern warfare, and they couldn’t go very fast, and they couldn’t go very far. All these things would make them fairly useless for modern warfare. And by the time you’ve rectified the things that are lacking - stuck on some jet engines, a much bigger fuel-tank, structural supports for the now-faster-and-heavier plane, bomb bays, etc - you’ve got a big clumsy something that looks very much unlike a WW1 biplane or an effective modern stealth bomber.

That being said - if you’ve got anything in the sky, and the other guy doesn’t, you’re in a position to unleash a world of hurt. Even the Tamil Tigers have conducted successful air strikes - using converted civilian aircraft, if memory serves. So I suppose that if some really, really poor nation (or rebel group, or terror group, whatever) wanted to, they could fly a WW1 biplane over an equally poor city and drop a bit of ordnance.

But, frankly, why would they bother? Even a cheap Cessna is a heck of a lot more capable, durable and easy-to-fly than a WWI biplane - to say nothing of being much more common, and thus easier to maintain. (Spare parts, for example, will be easy to come by.) If I were an Evil Rebel/Terrorist/Dictator and I wanted to drop some inexpensive hurt on a city that couldn’t defend itself from air attack (target country has no radar/anti-aircraft/air force), I’d go the cessna-bomber route. And if I were attacking someplace with a serious airforce - well, I wouldn’t be, at least not with an air raid. There are easier ways to make things go boom.

Sorry if this is a bit hijack-ey, but I hope it at least somewhat answered your question.

In their heyday? Not very well, as WWI predates radar.

These days… may not show up on secondary radar due to size/speed filters, which is why transponders or special permission is required for them to enter Mode C Veils, towered airports, and airspace A-D (technical pilot stuff). Presumably they would show up on primary radar, but it’s not prefered for ATC because everything, including flocks of birds, show up on primary radar making for quite a mess on the screen at times.

How big and fast are you planning to make it? Size counts as well as materials.

Would probably show up on radar (WAG, but it’s a fairly large object)

Which modern materials? Also, stealth is dependant not just on the materials used but also the shape of the aircraft.

In theory, possibly, but as a practical matter the cost of high-tech materials will likely have the m back to wood and fabric and you’d have to wonder where the computer modeling and aerospace engineering expertise would come from.

This is sort of funny. June 9th the Economist reported an arms deal to counter these Tamil bombers. Sri Lanka has purchased MIG’s 29’s to counter the Tigers planes. The Economist reported the Tamils planes have a top speed of 260 KMP(about 160 MPH) While the MIG’s have a top speed of 2400 KMP (about 1450 MPH).

Seems like a WW2 fighter might work better.

Good luck finding one for sale in armed, operational condition. :wink:

Guys, what about the deHavilland Mosquito?

It was rather stealthy.

hun. Did these even exist?

Given that NWS doppler radar picks up rain drops, birds and insects, I’d say that radar could pick up a Sopwith Camel (Snoopy not included) or some other WWI-era biplane. Now, radar when it was invented during WWII could not, but that was because of how the reflected signal was detected and processed.

Vlad/Igor

The old Mossie (Mosquito, that is) shows up on radar just fine. There are a ton of stuff that goes into stealth. Consider a neato radar reflector. Take some tin and suspend it on high, configure it like a three-dimesnional star, lots of right angles. The radar comes in, hits the corners and comes back loud and clear.

Now look at a biplane. Lots of corners and right angles. (The reason a biplane is a good design is that is a sort of a box, a very simple and strong design. You can’t get around it.)

In a stealth airplane you have to avoid all sorts of reflectors, supposedly seal the pilot’s helmets non-reflective was a bear.

So in a word, no. Primitive technology is not naturally stealthy.

Definitely won’t show on secondary radar as it requires a transponder on the aircraft (that’s all it is, a transponder interrogator.)

There’s a P40 Kittyhawk in New Zealand that was restored with working guns. I believe they are not normally fitted though as it is difficult, if not impossible, to comply with the country’s gun laws.

We operate a maritime search radar at work that will pick up floating logs, whales, small wooden fishing vessels, fish boils, etc.

What might work in the Camel’s favour, is that although there are radars around capable of detecting all sorts of minute crap; weather radars pick up rain, birds etc, our search radar picks up small wooden boats, and air search radars pick up aircraft; these radars are all also designed to supress unwanted targets. So a Camel may get through relatively undetected simply because the radar looking at it has been designed to ignore it. Having said that, I think a military radar would probably have a fairly broad range of detection capabilities.

Remember, also, that “stealth” means more than just low radar cross-section. Any technology to reduce visibility in any form (radar, infrared, visible, acoustic) is part of stealth technology.

As early as WWI, aircraft designers were considering ways to make their planes less visible to the naked eye. Clear skins and particular paint schemes were investigated, although I’m not aware of any that were put to effective operational use. But still, you could do some tricks to your biplane to make it less observable to the eye and ear. It wouldn’t fool a modern enemy with modern radar capabilities. But 90 years ago, it didn’t have to.

yep

Brian
(who has been within a foot of the Vimy replica)

Biplanes would stand out pretty well to any primary radar - One of the key signature returns off of aircraft are their engines, which on biplanes were nice big blocks of metal with little or no shrouding. Then, there are the propellor hubs, the exposed machine guns, the wires bracing the wings, and so on. OK, they’d be small targets, but relatively “bright” targets, returning a high proportion of incident radar waves. Especially those aircraft with rotary engines. The large WWI bombers would be the worst - Often having large, heavy, completely exposed engines, and being quite large, they’d not even be small targets.

But is it for sale?

You forgot the very first heavy bomber (most folks do) - the Sikorsky Ilya Muromets

Hey, me too—close enough to see the National Georgaphic flag on the side. :cool:

Anyway, of some note to the discussion, I’ve heard it said that the An-2 “Colt” (or at least, some of the Chinese-built variants) would at least be kind of stealthy, with the wood and canvas used in their construction. Although, as that wikipedia page notes, at least one WAS shot down in Vietnam by a Phantom II—I’m guessing that it was at least tracked on radar at some point. But hey, I guess that’s why it’s only “stealth-ey.”

A long time ago, say, late fifties, or so, some guy in the Niagara Falls area had a nice time using a hot air balloon and fireworks to spoof radars for the new missile bases around the area of Lake Erie.

He would rise up, on a tether, to about two hundred feet, and then fire off a rocket or two, (some say it was shotgun shells loaded with aluminum chaff, but I don’t think that would actually work.) and then pull himself down to the ground. The radars would not report the balloon, because it was stationary, and a weak signal. The hot smoke trails would show, very briefly, and then fade. (Usually before the massive transmitter sets of the period could slew back to get a “fix” on the thing.)

By the time the scrambled aircraft were there, he had his balloon below the tree line, and was not noticed. If the tale is true, they got him eventually, with a mobile system, out looking for him. Of course, this is a tale told by radar jockeys, who are all brain damaged from climbing out on transmitter booms. Who knows if it’s true?

Tris

Is it true that LearJets had such a low radar return that they had to be fitted with transponders?

Just looking for a more modern aircraft than a SE5 to begin my quest for world domination.

Si

Some guy landed a little Cessna in Red Square during the 80’s. It may not be perfect stealth, but hey, if it can get you into the heart of the Soviet Union during the height of the cold war, it can’t be all that bad.

I think it was a Cessna that crashed into the White House in the 90’s, also. How many F-117’s can say they penetrated Red Square? How many enemy military fighters have a proven record of being able to hit the White House?

Forget all of this expensive stealth crap. Buy a fleet of Cessnas and you can dominate the world!