AHC: Earliest Possible Supersonic Flight

John Fredrick Parker

Donor
With no PoDs prior to 1904,* what is the earliest that an aircraft could break the sound barrier? What is the earliest that ramjet technology could be developed? And this being done, how early could TTL see the first serious** designs for a scramjet plane?

*or 1895 at the earliest, if you want to utilize earlier rocketry a la Pedro Paule
**I'm not saying "functional" here, since OTL still doesn't have a working plane capable of reaching LEO (to my knowledge)
 

Cryhavoc101

I think the obvious one is the Miles M.52 / Power Jets W.2/700 jet engine project is not stopped by an 'act of treason' in 1946 by the the British PM - under the advice of 'Russian Agent' Ben Lockspeiser - did I say that out loud? Well...he was a Cambridge lad so it's probably true

Therefore Eric Winkle Brown in the Summer of 1946 or possibly 1947 becomes the first man to break the sound barrier in level flight

OTL the data was sent to Bell who in return would share their findings (they did not) from the X1 program which would eventually exceed the sound barrier the following year
 

Riain

Banned
With a PoD that early there are possible trajectories that have Whittle develop a working turbojet by the early 30s. Once the jet is flying then I can't imagine it would take too long for the sound barrier to be broken, perhaps like OTL within 5 or 6 years of the first jet plane.
 
marathag

marathag

Banned
wyld.jpg
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In 1936, James Wyld developed the idea of letting rocket fuel circulate around the rocket nozzle using a double wall configuration as a means of producing more powerful rocket engines. He first reported this innovation in the April 1938 issue of the American Rocket Society Journal, Astronautics.

Wyld's "self-cooled tubular regenerative rocket motor," was first tested on December 10, 1938, at New Rochelle, New York. It produced 90 pounds of thrust for thirteen seconds, and its simple steel chamber and nozzle did not burn out. The static test was cut short because the ARS could not afford sufficient amounts of liquid oxygen, but the test was successful. Engines tested by the ARS were primarily intended for JATO (Jet Assisted Take Off) use by aircraft.

The ARS continued to improve on Wyld's original design, and by July 1941, three successful tests of his liquid fuel rocket motor were made, producing an average thrust of 125 pounds. These tests were repeated for the U.S. Navy in November 1941, winning Wyld and his associates a contract to build more rocket engines. On December 16, 1941, Wyld and four other ARS members formed Reaction Motors, Inc. (RMI), the first commercial rocket company in the United States to continue development of his engine design. James H. Wyld was the company's secretary and director of research.

During World War II, Wyld's rocket work was integrated into the American military effort. After meeting its initial Navy contract for a JATO engine with 1,000 pounds of force in 1942, RMI continued to improve on his design, and by 1943, Wyld and his co-workers delivered a JATO engine to the Navy that could produce 3,400 pounds of thrust.

In 1945 RMI got a contract for a powerful engine to power what would become the the Bell X-1 by combing four thrust chambers of Wyld's motor to produce 6000 pounds of thrust on LOX and alcohol
239px-XLR-11.jpg


PoD, American Rocket Society gets a lot of money from a benefactor, and can spend more on testing, getting the Navy's attention sooner. Liquid fueld JATOs sooner

Northrop hears of RMI's motors, and uses that for his XP-79A vs OTLs RFNA fueled Aerojet motor, and both Army and Navy get interested in high speed rocket powered aircraft.

RMI gets a contract to do the XLR11 engine a few years early, and the *P-79C flirts with the sound barrier
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xp-79_schematic_top.gif
 
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Riain

Banned
John Fredrick Parker said:
@Cryhavoc101 @Riain Would it be possible to go even earlier, and find a way to make Maxime Guillaume's 1921 patent feasible? For that matter, could the work by Rene Lorin or Albert Fono in the 1910's have gotten further?
Click to expand...

I'm not all over Guillaumes design but Wiki says it would be well ahead of the state of the art in turbine design which, if Whittles work is any indication, is the key bottleneck to progress. Adrian Lombard wrote the seminal paper on aerodynamic turbine design in 1926, and this was a requirement for gas turbine design. However Lombard akso retarded jet progress because he reviewed Whittles work and poo poohed it because of some mathematical errors and a touch of jealously.
 

Bernard Woolley

@Cryhavoc101 Until recently I would have agreed that the M.52 would have been a good candidate. However I did recently read an article in FlyPast which suggested that it was unlikely that the M.52 would have been ready before the X-1 and that it may not have been capable of supersonic flight.
 

Just Leo

Opinions vary. But they are only opinions. The government's attitude towards the existence of Miles Aircraft Company cannot be stated with utter certainty. Whether the government appreciated Mr. Whittle's efforts and achievements cannot be stated categorically. The follow-on rocket model of the M.52 was contracted out to Vickers, not Miles, and did achieve supersonic speed before it too was cancelled, and Miles closed their doors and Whittle left. The entire affair was considered top secret until the dismantling of a segment of the British aircraft industry was successfully accomplished, such that public outcry would be pointless. Well done!
 
Don Quijote

Don Quijote

Banned
Provided you're not looking for an official 'in level flight' record, then the Me 163 might have managed it in a steep dive, provided it didn't blow up or dissolve the pilot. It did set a world speed record during the war, becoming the first aircraft to reach 1000km/hr in level flight, but due to the circumstances this was never accepted by the FAI.
 

Just Leo

Don Quijote said:
Provided you're not looking for an official 'in level flight' record, then the Me 163 might have managed it in a steep dive, provided it didn't blow up or dissolve the pilot. It did set a world speed record during the war, becoming the first aircraft to reach 1000km/hr in level flight, but due to the circumstances this was never accepted by the FAI.
Click to expand...

If you consider that not all the Me-163 returned to the ground on Dittmar's record-breaking flight, I don't think a dive would have helped. The aerodynamic flight limits of the configuration were also investigated by the DH-108 Swallow and the Northrop X-4 and were found to be solidly trans-sonic.
 
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