Rocket boosters on aircraft?

An idle thought: Apparently the Luftwaffe experimented with rocket boosters on propeller planes, although nothing ever came of it. Could such a program be feasible, or would the planes, ah, crash an burn?
 
An idle thought: Apparently the Luftwaffe experimented with rocket boosters on propeller planes, although nothing ever came of it. Could such a program be feasible, or would the planes, ah, crash an burn?

Actually IIRC one of the Junker jet bombers (can't remember exactly which one) used a pair of Rocket boosters to help it get off the ground. However it wasn't a perfect system and was only developed towards the end of the war.

The only other example I can think of is the backup plan to operation Eagle Claw (the attempt to rescue the Iranian Embassy Hostages) in 1979. Codenamed Honey Badger or Credible Sport, the plan involved a modified C-130 Hercules with Rocket boosters to give it VSTOL capabilities. The intent was to land the bird in the soccer stadium next to the Iranian Embassy and proceed from there. However upon testing the plane the rockets misfired and proceeded to rip the wing off the plane.

So yeah...it doesn't look good. Too many problems, structural, control, etc. Better off just designing a proper jet plane.
 

Thande

Donor
I think both the Americans and the USSR (and possibly us) experimented with this in the 1950s, but I seem to remember something about it being more trouble than it was worth due to needing special runways and launch facilities, or something.
 
An idle thought: Apparently the Luftwaffe experimented with rocket boosters on propeller planes, although nothing ever came of it. Could such a program be feasible, or would the planes, ah, crash an burn?

Rocket Assisted takeoffs are actually pretty common http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqAPRWMkuv8

Rocket Assisted landings not so much. SOmeone mentioned earlier that it was tried on a c130 and failed real bad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxfpGPWtoOY

The actual failure is obscured so I can't really comment what happened.

Now if Rocket assisted landings were SOP, I guess forces that operate in isolation would have heavier eqptment. Not sure what that will do though

Edit: We'd also have fewer very large airbases across the globe since the need for long runways would be negated.
 
The Soviets experimented with rocket boosted versions of standard Lavochkin and Yakovlev piston engined fighters toward the end of WW2. The planes had a liquid fueled rocket motor installed in the rear fuselage, exhausting through an aperture beneath the rudder. This was intended as a speed boost in flight. Series models were not introduced because the dead weight of the rocket motor once the fuel was used up and danger of explosion outweighed any performance benefit. Also, I have read that the rocket motors actually were too effective and pushed the planes too close to their limiting mach number. And finally, the introduction of gas turbines made the whole concept obsolete.
 
I think both the Americans and the USSR (and possibly us) experimented with this in the 1950s, but I seem to remember something about it being more trouble than it was worth due to needing special runways and launch facilities, or something.

The USSR experimented with rocket engines for the I-153. Yes, imagine the irony/ stupidity/ awesomeness of a biplane with rocket boosters intended for ramming attacks. :D:cool:

Here, in all its glory :

oth072_3.jpg
 
There were zero-length launch (ZLL) proposals. During WWII, some British merchant ships carried modified Hurricanes, which were launches using rocket boosters off of miniaturized catapult-analogues, but they were just big launch rails. (Recovery was impossible; the pilot had to ditch and hope that he'd be pulled out of the ocean before he froze to death or drowned.) During the 1950s, the Soviets experimented with land-based ZLL systems; the launch rails were mounted on trucks. However, advances in SAM technology rendered it unnecessary. The dangerousness and clumsiness of these proposals, as well as things like the nasty acceleration forces they subjected the pilots to, also mitigated against ZLL.

As mentioned earlier, JATO/RATO was actually quite common; solid-rocket bottles to shorten takeoff roll. Some aircraft had mixed turobjet/liquid rocket propulsion; for example, there was the NF-104, a modified F-104 used by NASA for test purposes. It was designed to help train astronauts as well as conduct certain kinds of useful test work on the cheap. It could operate at very high altitudes, the sort of altitudes where normal control surfaces become useless, so it even had a reaction control system. There were also mixed-propulsion proposals for military aircraft, generally for interceptors; a high rate of climb was the main objective, for the sake of efficiently intercepting incoming nuclear-armed bomber aircraft. These proposals were overtaken by advances in jet engine technology (the jet engines delivered adequate performance on their own) and other aspects of aerospace engineering. I think several prototypes were constructed and even flown, however.
 
I think by the time rocket assisted planes were thought of for piston fighters jets were on the verge of service, and when they were needed for jets afterburners were used instead.
 
i don't know wat Faeelin means.

Rocket boost take off or Mix Engine Jet-engine/rocket-engine ?

in 1950s were alot Jet-engine/rocket-engine protoype
like Rocket Interceptor

French SO 9050 "Trident III"
so9050_09.jpg


England Saunder-Roe SR-53 & SR-177
sr53_7.jpg


USA Republic XF-91 and Lockheed NF-104A

the Idea was take off with Jetengine to Target
then use Rocket engine to super sonic attack the Target.

so wat wend wrong ?
most end of Program because budget cuts like SO 9050 and SR-53 & SR-177
or concept was consider opsolet against a F-104 with Sidewinder missle

the last of those was The Lockheed NF-104A
build for NASA and USAF for training X-15 X-20 program

300px-NF-104.jpg
 
Here are two pictures of West German experiments with ZELL (zero-length launch) of two Lockheed F-104G Starfighters
bildf104zell.jpg
f104_starfighter.jpg
 
The Me 262 had the following -

C-1a
Single prototype [made from Me 262A Werknummer 130 186] of rocket-boosted interceptor (Heimatschützer I) with Walter 109-509 rocket in tail, first flown with combined jet/rocket power on 27 February 1945.

C-2b
Single prototype [made from Me 262A Werknummer 170 074] of rocket-boosted interceptor (Heimatschützer II) with two BMW 003R "combined" powerplants (BMW 003 jet, with one BMW 718 rocket engine mounted atop the rear of each jet exhaust) for boosted thrust, only flown once with combined jet/rocket power on 26 March 1945.

C-3a
Single prototype of rocket-boosted interceptor with Walter rockets in belly pack.

But as you can see it did not beyond prototype stage.

++++++

After the war Dassault's had the Mystère-Delta 550, a sporty-looking little jet that was to be powered by twin Armstrong Siddeley MD30R Viper afterburning turbojets, each with thrust of 9.61 kN (2,160 lbf). A SEPR liquid-fuel rocket motor was to provide additional burst thrust of 14.7 kN (3,300 lbf). The aircraft had a tailless delta configuration, with a 5% chord (ratio of airfoil thickness to length) and 60 degree sweep.
 
This picture shows a rocket-assisted take-off of a Boeing B-47 Stratojet bomber. RATO take-offs were, as far as I know, undertaken routinely during operations of this bomber, they were no experiments.

Boeing B-47 Stratojet mit Starthilfsraketen.jpg
 
Another experimental mixed powerplant (rocket and turbojet) fighter from the post-war years: Republic XF-91 Thunderceptor

Republic XF-91 Thunderceptor.jpg
 
All this is great, but the original post asked about rocket boosting on piston-engined planes in WW2. Only Riain seems to have grasped that

If one expands the concept to RATO and JATO, the Germans did use disposable RATO uints on the big Me 323 transports with routine success. And as was mentioned the C-model Me262 would have used a built in rocket moter to suppliment the jet engines...but it was a jet. To my knowledge, only the USSR seriously considered mating normal piston engined planes with built in rocket boosters.

Pic shows mounting of rocket motor in tail of the La-7R fighter.

la-7R motor mounting.jpg
 
Maybe it is relevant, maybe it isn't: An Israeli Lockheed C-130 H Hercules does a rocket-assisted take-off:
1234272.jpg
 
The USSR experimented with rocket engines for the I-153. Yes, imagine the irony/ stupidity/ awesomeness of a biplane with rocket boosters intended for ramming attacks. :D:cool:

Here, in all its glory :

Isn't that Sonic the Hedgehog's plane? ;)
 
The Soviet engineers Borovkov and Florov proposed this project for an interceptor with a radial pusher engine and two ramjets in the aircrafts twin booms in 1941, the project was not realized
borovkov2.jpg
borovkov1.jpg
 
The Soviets had some pure rocket-propelled interceptor projects...basically manned, gun-armed SAMs. There was something called the BI-1, after the two designers, Bereznyak and Isaev. (Those were their surnames, of course.)

Not very practical, however.

What could you do with rocket boosters, anyway? Solid ones might be good for take-off, but that's often not necessary for fighters. It wouldn't have been in WWII; they generally weren't too heavily laden with ordnance and they had okay takeoff rolls.

What else? Improve performance in the air? Well...mixed piston and liquid-fuelled rocket propulsion's pretty tricky, too. What are you going to do...try and make cheap Me-262 substitutes using mixed propulsion? Use the liquid-fuelled motors to climb to altitude in order to attack bomber streams, say...maybe use the motors to make high-speed attacks? The problem is that they couldn't really properly exploit the speed advantages of the Me-262 for the most part, and Germany was suffering from all kinds of materials shortages, and their metallurgy left a little to be desired in some cases...so, melty rocket boosters. Hooray. Maybe they want a really cheap high-performance fighter and build motorjet fighters, and give them mixed propulsion. That's kind of cool, at least.

(A motorjet, you ask? Well...you might know it as a "thermojet," but that's not the preferred terminology these days. There's a piston engine, but instead of spinning a propeller it drives a compressor; there's an air intake, the compressor, a combustion chamber and some other fans, so instead of a propeller you get jet exhaust. It was obsolete very quickly, but maybe it could be done on the cheap. You don't even need a propeller, really. Or maybe a pulsejet-powered fighter, even.)

Or maybe a mixed-propulsion Me-262. And there was the Me-163 and some rocket-fighter proposals and prototypes which were never operational or produced in large quantities.
 
This picture shows a rocket-assisted take-off of a Boeing B-47 Stratojet bomber. RATO take-offs were, as far as I know, undertaken routinely during operations of this bomber, they were no experiments.
Comes with its own smoke screen.

Gives a whole new meaning to the expression war is dirty.

The Soviet engineers Borovkov and Florov proposed this project for an interceptor with a radial pusher engine and two ramjets in the aircrafts twin booms in 1941, the project was not realized.
To bad. Would love to see that fly.
 
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