Y'know I'm just imagining that on the History Channel... Though it's pretty silly, all those heavy ships in the harbour? Come on, even a 5" shell would do it!
Another good thread from the past: http://www.ww2f.com/wwii-general/9868-great-aeroplane-designers.html Also interesting was Alexander Lippisch's work, which had an input in the F-102 aerodynamics, among others. Despite brute power the XF-102 could hardly go past the speed of sound. As a matter of fact, without this aerodynamical improvement - the area rule, originally discovered in Germany but unnoticed until rediscovered in the US, in short this is the 'coke bottle' shape as seen in the F-106 or the Bucaneer - airplanes have a lot of difficulty in going over the speed of sound. XF-102 without buttocks Here it is with buttocks! So planes without the area rule could hardly be able to reach great performance, it took until 1952 for the Yanks to discover the Coke Bottle so I don't think we can expect a lot of transonic performance from Reichdreams
German UFO’s Oh yeah, and Coca Cola was actually developed as a nutrition drink for SS Astronauts, how the Americans got their hands on it I really don’t know. It translates from the German KOKA KOLA = KohlensaeureKanister KommandantenLimonade = Carbonate Canister Commander Limonade Due to Germany’s leading edge in space alloys, the KokaKola was transported in Kanisters (cans) – which took the US decades to develop – instead of glass bottles. Regards Kruska
Hey ZA, I don't know if you did it on purpose but the F-102 picture is for the Texas Air National Guard unit that George Jr. got into so as to not have to go to Viet Nam. It could even be him flying in the picture.
Ta, you're right, it's Texas ANG! Here's your POTUS back then. Damn, talk about off-topic! Kruska, what I mean by 'coke bottle' fuselage is the fact that due to the area rule there has to be a marked narrowing or waist by mid-fuselage, look at an F-105 fuselage for a good example. Here's one. Damn, these planes were pretty! Ok, enough offtopicness, this was intended only to illustrate the area rule application. Back to my post above, so this had been discovered in a German tunnel wind in 1934 - I wasn't aware of this, I thought it had been discovered by NACA, after all it was rediscovered there! - but then in 1934 nobody thought of supersonic flight so it's not surprising that this bit of aerodynamics remained hidden in some forgotten university paper, to be resurrected much later. No immediate postwar or Luft'46 style design shows the use of this, the practical rediscovery and implementation was an American 'thing', so I maintain my doubt that any of these Reichdreams would reach such performances. So we see a number of postwar German design work in some countries as shown above but then again even with full support from their governments they weren't really that great. We can add a few Soviet designs with German input, all rather crappy, the only good one was the MiG 15, but then here what made it really good was the engine, which was British (gee, how could they?!), the Rolls Royce Nene.
Ahh the old area rule. It's actually a somewhat inefficient way to build supersonic airframes, but helps with transonic drag buildup. Interesting to point out that pretty much NO Soviet fighter used the area rule.
Maybe, but it was the best rule there was at the time Somehow the US forgot to share this little secret with the USSR during the Cold War