aircraft that should have been built

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wietze

truth is life said:
The Ariane 4 didn't have the lift capacity to launch manned spacecraft (except I suppose for very limited ones, like Mercury or Gemini), and it was not man-rated. The Ariane 5 worked on both counts, although with the end of the European HSF program it turned out to be somewhat oversized and overexpensive for the satellite launch market it actually ended up servicing.
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The Ariane-4 has the same payload as the Soyuz the Russians are using for their manned space vehicles. And although Ariane-4 was not officially manrated, its reliability had reached such high levels that it would have been only a matter of calling it manrated.

That why i didnt understand the retirement of the Ariane-4, as they both served a different portion of the market, the 4 being medium lift and the 5 being heavy lift.
 

Russell

The Oncoming Storm said:
Russell if the SR.177 had gone into service then do you think there would have been any need for the Lightning or were they meant for different roles?
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You know, i'm not sure. Both designs originate from the same time with the same intended purpose. The Saro 177 was a simpler (but faster with a greater service ceiling), smaller design with good export potential (so long as you can overcome the Lockheed bribes) but will be totally obsolete by the 70's with little room for upgrades. I'm also not sure about the whole mixed propulsion thing - a rocket engine can get you to height quickly and efficiently but after the fuel is expended then it just becomes dead weight.

Russell
 
trekchu

trekchu

Besides, as it turned out the Lightning was enough plane for the purpose, I mean this thing did chase intercepts of U-2s from above, i.e. it was flying even higher!
 

Archibald

Banned
wietze said:
The Ariane-4 has the same payload as the Soyuz the Russians are using for their manned space vehicles. And although Ariane-4 was not officially manrated, its reliability had reached such high levels that it would have been only a matter of calling it manrated.

That why i didnt understand the retirement of the Ariane-4, as they both served a different portion of the market, the 4 being medium lift and the 5 being heavy lift.
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I did the statistics (using Astronautix) one day.

From 1979 to 2003, the Ariane 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 family failed seven times (in 1980, 1982, 1985, 1986, 1990 and two times in 1994, a very bad year).

Five failures were traced to the HM-7 cryogenic stage - the very stage you don't need for low Earth orbit flight, isn't it ?

So two failures remain: the 1980 and 1990 ones.

The 1980 failure happened on the second test flight; destructive pogo on the first stage, which never happened again.

The 1990 failure is so dumb it is hilarious. At the Ariane plant of Les Mureaux, near Paris, some distracted or silly technician forgot a cloth into a Viking cooling tube. Noone noticed it, the tube was bolted to the Viking, the Viking went to Ariane, and Ariane to the Kourou launch pad.
The rocket took off, the cloth made the engine overheating and losing power. The others seven (it was a 44L with podded engines) tried to fill the gap; the rocket veered off course right from the launch, missed the top of its launch tower*** - and a major disaster - by only two meters (!), veered off further, and was destroyed, together with 500 million dollars worth of Japanese communication satellites.

Space balls ! :eek:

*** top of the launch tower was found to be sooted and scorched black by the engines. Had Ariane hit the tower, it would have exploded into a nasty cloud of toxic, hypergolic propellants.
It happened to the Soviets in 1969 with a Proton; it happened to the Air Force Vandenberg pad in 1986 with a Titan 34D. Very ugly disasters !
 
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Workable Goblin

Workable Goblin

wietze said:
The Ariane-4 has the same payload as the Soyuz the Russians are using for their manned space vehicles. And although Ariane-4 was not officially manrated, its reliability had reached such high levels that it would have been only a matter of calling it manrated.
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The reliability doesn't actually matter for manrating--you need specialized systems for monitoring engine health for emergency shutdowns and such--it's been an issue with the hypothetical manrating of the EELVs. Probably the fuel had something to do with it as well, since the Ariane 4 used hypergolics. While obviously the Titan II had as well, it had been over 20 years, and safety standards move on. You'd be better off asking someone else though (maybe over at nasaspaceflight, they've got a lot of knowledgeable people), that's not really my area of expertise.

And as for the lift capacity, well, the Soyuz is (and was) actually a fairly limited vehicle. Given that the ESA at the time was developing Hermes--which couldn't be launched on an Ariane 4--and afterwards had totally dropped its own human program, there was no reason to keep Ariane 4 around for human launches. It wouldn't have served any purpose. I suspect the disposal of Ariane 4 also had to do with the use of hypergolics as fuel as much as anything else, those things are nasty and I would suppose that the ESA and EADS were trying to clean up Kourou a bit.
 

Mostlyharmless

tallwingedgoat said:
arsenalds50vf.jpg


The Arsenal VG fighters. Less than 10 served with France before it surrendered. The last variant, the VG-39bis, could have had Yak-3 level performance by late 1940.

See more from this thread:

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=2777
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"France 41" could be as interesting a collection of aircraft as the traditional "Luft 46". My favourite puzzle is the performance of the Bloch MB-157 which is quoted as including a maximum speed of 710 km/h or 441 mph at http://www.aviastar.org/air/france/bloch_mb-157.php. This partly comes down to understanding the power of the Rhone-Gnome 14R engine at high altitude as discussed in a thread elsewhere http://warbirdsforum.com/showthread.php?t=1180. Like the Arsenal VG-33 series, the German Heinkel He 100 and Focke-Wulf Fw 187, the MB-157 should have been built in at least sufficient numbers that one would survive. Then we would actually be able to reach a sensible conclusion.
 

tallwingedgoat

Mostlyharmless said:
"France 41" could be as interesting a collection of aircraft as the traditional "Luft 46". My favourite puzzle is the performance of the Bloch MB-157 which is quoted as including a maximum speed of 710 km/h or 441 mph at http://www.aviastar.org/air/france/bloch_mb-157.php. This partly comes down to understanding the power of the Rhone-Gnome 14R engine at high altitude as discussed in a thread elsewhere http://warbirdsforum.com/showthread.php?t=1180. Like the Arsenal VG-33 series, the German Heinkel He 100 and Focke-Wulf Fw 187, the MB-157 should have been built in at least sufficient numbers that one would survive. Then we would actually be able to reach a sensible conclusion.
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Top speed needs to be qualified by weapons and fuel carried. An empty plane is obviously going to be faster than in combat confirguration.

I wonder if the French fighters could be produced in the US. The Arsenal VG series was especially promising. It was made of plywood and thus reduced requirement for strategically important aluminum. the VG-50 variant was designed for the Allison engine due to the shortage of Hispano-Suizas. If France outsource production to America, it could serve as a cheap interium Lend Lease fighter with superior performance to the P-40.
 
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Jonathan Kan

Jonathan Kan

BlairWitch749 said:
I'm going to come out against the FW-187

Considering the ME-110 served competently in the scout, fighter bomber, night fighter (most successful night fighter of the war in terms of kill ratio) the Germans got their money's worth out of the design

The FW-187 was built as an uncompromised fighter and would have had ZERO versatility AND would still have been outperformed by British single engined fighters in the battle of Britain, so if anything, its production as opposed to the ME-110 reduces German strategic options to counter their growing and diversifying air needs as the war progresses
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AdA said:
The original Fw187 was a fighter, but there is no reason it could not have been built in dedicated variants for other roles, such as:
Long range Photo recce. You don't need a co-pilot to overfly targets and take pictures, see all the fine work PR spitfires did;
Ground attack with all kinds of external stores and extra guns
Bomber destroyer (in later versions) with Mk103 30mm guns and DB605 engines. Even later with DB603 engines
Torpedo attack. If they could put a torpedo in a Fw190 why not in the Fw187?
Tank buster with a 50mm Gun and extra armour.

The design had the potencial to take newer engines and do anything that a single seater could do.
For the night fighter role the Germans could build more Ju88 nightfighters at first and than build more of the excelent He219.
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How about Fw187 instead of early model Bf110. Then as the war progress, Do335 instead of late model Bf110, Me210 and Me410?
 

Russell

This one is one of my favorites.

For those who don’t know, the British Short Belfast was a strategic air lifter designed originally to help provide logistical support to Britain’s V-Bomber force. It was a reasonable design but lacked lift and engine power (its wings were directly copied from the much smaller and lighter Bristol Britannia with RR Tyne turboprop engines). Although capable of transporting any modern Main Battle Tank at the time, it suffered from considerable lackluster performance and was only capable of transporting a maximum payload of 80,000lbs 978 miles.

Therefore, in order to rectify this, Shorts began to design a more modern Turbofan powered model with wings and tail sections based upon those of the USAF C-141 Starlifter (although not directly copied as many sources claim) and powered by four 25,000lb RR Super Conway Engines. As a result, this new aircraft was expected to be capable of carrying a maximum payload of 100,000lbs some 3750 miles! Sadly, the MOD decided that Britain was no longer going to be performing any further strategic operations from the 1960’s onwards…

Regardless, it would have given Britain a unique military asset and export product – the only affordable airlifter capable of transporting a Main Battle Tank outside the Eastern Block (C-5 Galaxy would both come into production half-a-decade later and be far too large and expensive for smaller nations). The market for such aircraft would be small as most European nations are by the 1960’s more concerned with the potential European theatre of war and not larger strategic concerns. However, two countries, namely France and India did show an interest in acquiring large strategic airlifters (Africa with France and the more remote and inaccessible mountainous regions like Kashmir for India).

Russell

BelfastStarlifter.jpg
 

Russell

The Oncoming Storm said:
I'd never heard of that one before Russell, thanks for putting it up! :)

Edit. Two cargo decks?!
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Yes, the civillian version had two decks - one for passengers and one for cargo. However, both the military and commercial versions had "removable" second decks and it's very likley that had any aircraft been produced such a feature would have been removed all together, leaving only a single cargo space.

NOTE: The aircraft also feature a swing nose feature that would have allowed the transport of large, outsized caro too big to fit ithrough the rear cargo doors.

Russell
 

abc123

Banned
Russell said:
Same as above - a contemporary artists impression.
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Yes, too bad that RAF didn't get bigger number of ordinary Short Belfasts and that jet Belfast would be a great thing too.
This is one of my personal favourites:

Armstrong-Withworth AW.681

hz1ru8ms7zbr83t8fwaf_thumb.jpg

Provided of course that he should be made as a ordinary transport aircraft, not with VTOL nonsences...
 

zoomar

Just Leo said:
The picture does not portray the "Shinden". The one portrayed looks more like a Vultee XP-54, an aircraft of limited distinction. Perhaps a Saab.
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The plane depicted is Ki-98. A Japanese design never even built in prototype form. The J7W1 was a canard interceptor - one prototype flown in last few days of the war. As much as the real J7W1 is a truly cool-looking plane, it's hard to say it "should have been built" when the nation building actually decided on mass production but only a few more days left. Even in an AH situation with Japan lasting several more years or winning, it's reasonable to imagine it being cancelled in favor of early jets
 
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