Oddball, Experimental, or One-off

[BrendAn]

Just spent some time wandering around the Moorabbin aircraft museum. Great place. Haven't been there for years. Used to love the bull creek museum in Perth too before we moved east.  I might have sat in one of nevs old offices today. Pics didn't come out properly . 

[kgwilson]

I am constantly amazed at many of these oddball one offs etc as to why they were actully built. Many are just butt ugly and that never leads to production and sales. It is that old saying that they only flew because they were so ugly the earth repelled them.

[BrendAn]

On 22/10/2023 at 3:16 PM, BrendAn said:

Just spent some time wandering around the Moorabbin aircraft museum. Great place. Haven't been there for years. Used to love the bull creek museum in Perth too before we moved east.  I might have sat in one of nevs old offices today. Pics didn't come out properly . 

hey nev. what cockpit is this. pretty poor photo, i figured that park brake wheel would be a clue

[facthunter]

 I can't help you there , sorry. Need to see a bit more.   Nev

[BrendAn]

2 minutes ago, facthunter said:

 I can't help you there , sorry. Need to see a bit more.   Nev

its a dc9. i figured you probably drove one of these at some stage.

[facthunter]

Sure did.  Flew one through Cyclone Ken, and to Gove. Practically all of Australia and they only have 3 hours endurance to empty.. Designed for short hops, but the AIrline knows better.  Nev

[BrendAn]

32 minutes ago, facthunter said:

Sure did.  Flew one through Cyclone Ken, and to Gove. Practically all of Australia and they only have 3 hours endurance to empty.. Designed for short hops, but the AIrline knows better.  Nev

The cockpit looks like you must had a hell of a work load.  The other plane I sat in was the Vickers Viscount, I was impressed with how large the crew area was in that old girl.

Edited October 24, 2023 by BrendAn

[facthunter]

A lot of People failed their conversion to the "NINE". It had DC-6 Instrumentation at Macchi trainer speeds. It turned Captains hair white prematurely as it operated amongst GA a lot of the time and you were operating on low fuel reserves or leaving people behind, often in heavy tropical rainfall conditions. IF you put engine and airframe icing on you stopped climbing and used a lot of fuel. .    Most Pilots loved the Plane as it's easy to fly and pretty manoeuvrable. You just have to keep ahead of it. Nev

[BrendAn]

5 hours ago, facthunter said:

A lot of People failed their conversion to the "NINE". It had DC-6 Instrumentation at Macchi trainer speeds. It turned Captains hair white prematurely as it operated amongst GA a lot of the time and you were operating on low fuel reserves or leaving people behind, often in heavy tropical rainfall conditions. IF you put engine and airframe icing on you stopped climbing and used a lot of fuel. .    Most Pilots loved the Plane as it's easy to fly and pretty manoeuvrable. You just have to keep ahead of it. Nev

you really need to record all these memories . fascinating.

[red750]

The Vickers Windsor was a Second World War British four-engine heavy bomber, designed by Barnes Wallis and Rex Pierson at the Vickers-Armstrongs factory at Brooklands. 

 

Only three examples (the original plus successive prototypes known as Type 457 and Type 461) were built. This was due to refinements in the existing Lancaster bomber, rendering it suitable for the role for which the Windsor had been designed. The first prototype flew on 23 October 1943, the second on 15 February 1944, and the third on 11 July 1944. All three were built at Vickers' secret dispersed Foxwarren Experimental Department between Brooklands and nearby Cobham. The two latter prototypes were tested until the end of the Second World War, when further development and production were cancelled.

 

 

[red750]

The Savoia-Marchetti SM.93 - An Italian dive-bomber prototype designed by Alessandro Marchetti in the early-1940s. The thing that sets this aircraft apart from the rest is its cockpit, it not only looks odd from the outside, it was also unique in the inside. As you can see part of the cockpit is placed above the engine, this was made to better accommodate the pilot in a prone position, he was set in such a position to help him resist the g-force that he would experience in flight, however as you may have already imagine, this only limited the pilot’s visibility and handling of the aircraft, therefore the project was cancelled. Only 1 produced.

 

[red750]

The XB-38 was the result of a modification project undertaken by Vega (a subsidiary of Lockheed) on a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress to fit it with liquid-cooled Allison V-1710-89 V-12 engines. It was meant as an improved version of the B-17, and a variant that could be used if air-cooled Wright R-1820 radial engines became scarce. Completing the modifications took less than a year, and the XB-38 made its first flight on May 19, 1943. Only one prototype was built, and it was developed from an existing B-17 bomber.

 

[red750]

The Hawker Tornado was a British single-seat fighter aircraft design of the Second World War for the Royal Air Force as a replacement for the Hawker Hurricane. The planned production of Tornados was cancelled after the engine it was designed to use, the Rolls-Royce Vulture, proved unreliable in service. A parallel airframe that used the Napier Sabre engine continued into production as the Hawker Typhoon.

Number built    4 (3 prototypes and 1 production).

 

 

[facthunter]

Thunderbolt and "sea Bee"  also built by Republic.   Nev

[skippydiesel]

"Like most large aircraft of the era, it used radial engines,......."

 

Should this not be Like most US large aircraft........."?

[BrendAn]

1 hour ago, red750 said:

The Republic XF-12 Rainbow was an American four-engine, all-metal prototype reconnaissance aircraft designed by the Republic Aviation Company in the late 1940s. Like most large aircraft of the era, it used radial engines, specifically the Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major. The XF-12 was referred to as "flying on all fours" meaning: four engines, 400 mph (640 km/h) cruise, 4,000 mi (6,400 km) range, at 40,000 ft (12,000 m). The aircraft was designed to maximize aerodynamic efficiency. Although innovative, the jet engine and the end of World War 2 made it obsolete, and it did not enter production. Only 2 were produced. A proposed airliner variant, the RC-2, was deemed uneconomical and cancelled before being built.

 

very nice looking design

[facthunter]

There's also British, Japanese, Russian  and German radials. Flying at speed at 40,000 ft would need some pretty fancy props and decompression would be a bit deadly. OAT at minus 58 C ??.  Nev

[onetrack]

Don't forget the Polish radials - and we even had Australian-built radials, too!

[skippydiesel]

Okay I give in - lots of other radials not just the septic tank ones.

 

Its a very handsome aircraft but why does the rudder appear to have a large hinge space (or is it a trick of the photo)?

[red750]

The Northrop F-20 Tigershark (initially F-5G) is a light fighter, designed and built by Northrop. Its development began in 1975 as a further evolution of Northrop's F-5E Tiger II, featuring a new engine that greatly improved overall performance, and a modern avionics suite including a powerful and flexible radar. Compared with the F-5E, the F-20 was much faster, gained beyond-visual-range air-to-air capability, and had a full suite of air-to-ground modes capable of utilizing most U.S. weapons. With these improved capabilities, the F-20 became competitive with contemporary fighter designs such as the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon, but was much less expensive to purchase and operate.

 

Much of the F-20's development was carried out under a US Department of Defense (DoD) project called "FX". FX sought to develop fighters that would be capable in combat with the latest Soviet aircraft, but excluding sensitive front-line technologies used by the United States Air Force's own aircraft. FX was a product of the Carter administration's military export policies, which aimed to provide foreign nations with high quality equipment without the risk of US front-line technology falling into Soviet hands. Northrop had high hopes for the F-20 in the international market, but policy changes following Ronald Reagan's election meant the F-20 had to compete for sales against aircraft like the F-16, the USAF's latest fighter design. The development program was abandoned in 1986 after three prototypes had been built and a fourth partially completed.

 

[facthunter]

Anything here would have been under licence. Not counting the Rotec radials. Some DH Gypsy  engines were made by HOLDEN.  But rude Using that description  Ne est ce Pas . Nev

[red750]

The Convair XB-46 was a single example of an experimental medium jet bomber which was developed in the mid-1940s but which never saw production or active duty. It competed with similar designs, the North American XB-45 and Martin XB-48, all of which saw little use after the successful development of the Boeing XB-47.

 

In 1944, the War Department was aware of aviation advances in Germany and issued a requirement for a range of designs for medium bombers weighing from 80,000 pounds (36,000 kg) to more than 200,000 pounds (91,000 kg). Other designs resulting from this competition, sometimes named the class of '45, included the North American XB-45 and the Martin XB-48. Procurement began with a letter contract (cost-plus-fixed-fee) on 17 January 1945 with mockup inspection and approval in early February. Orders for three prototypes followed on 27 February 1945 with certain changes recommended by the board. Serials 45-59582 to 59584 were assigned. Budgetary concerns also led to the contract being changed to a fixed-price type.

 

In the fall of 1945, Convair found it was competing with itself when the USAAF became interested in an unorthodox forward-swept wing jet attack design, the XA-44-CO that the company had also been working on. With the end of World War II severely curtailing budgets, the company considered canceling the XB-46 in favor of the other project as there was insufficient funding for both. Company officials argued that it made more sense to allow them to complete the XB-46 prototype as a stripped-down testbed omitting armament and other equipment and for the AAF to allow them to proceed with two XA-44 airframes in lieu of the other two XB-46s on contract. In June 1946, the AAF agreed to the substitution but that project was ultimately cancelled in December 1946 before the prototypes were completed. The B-46 would be completed with only the equipment necessary to prove its airworthiness and handling characteristics.

 

[red750]

The British Martin-Baker MB 5 was the ultimate development of a series of prototype fighter aircraft built during the Second World War. Neither the MB 5 nor its predecessors ever entered production, despite what test pilots described as excellent performance.

 

Martin-Baker Aircraft began the MB 5 as the second Martin-Baker MB 3 prototype, designed to Air Ministry Specification F.18/39 for an agile, sturdy Royal Air Force fighter, able to fly faster than 400 mph. After the first MB 3 crashed in 1942, killing Val Baker, the second prototype was delayed. A modified MB 3 with a Rolls-Royce Griffon engine, rather than the Napier Sabre of the MB 3, was planned as the MB 4, but a full redesign was chosen instead.

 

The redesigned aircraft, designated MB 5, used wings similar to the MB 3, but had an entirely new steel-tube fuselage. Power came from a Rolls-Royce Griffon 83 liquid-cooled V-12 engine, producing 2,340 hp (1,745 kW) and driving two three-bladed contra-rotating propellers. Armament was four 20 mm Hispano cannon, mounted in the wings outboard of the widely spaced retractable undercarriage. A key feature of the design was ease of manufacture and maintenance: much of the structure was box-like, favouring straight lines and simple conformation. It was built under the same contract that covered the building of the MB 3. Only 1 example was built, the colour photo shows this aircraft after refurbishment, before the elevators wer reinstalled.

 

[red750]

Mistel (German for "mistletoe", a parasitic plant) was the larger, unmanned component of a composite aircraft configuration developed in Germany during the later stages of World War II. The composite comprised a small piloted control aircraft mounted above a large explosives-carrying drone, the Mistel, and as a whole was referred to as the Huckepack ("Piggyback"), also known as the Beethoven-Gerät ("Beethoven Device") or Vati und Sohn ("Daddy and Son").

 

The most successful of these used a modified Junkers Ju 88 bomber as the Mistel, with the entire nose-located crew compartment replaced by a specially designed nose filled with a large load of explosives, formed into a shaped charge. The upper component was a fighter aircraft, joined to the Mistel by struts. The combination would be flown to its target by a pilot in the fighter; then the unmanned bomber was released to hit its target and explode, leaving the fighter free to return to base. The first such composite aircraft flew in July 1943 and was promising enough to begin a programme by Luftwaffe test unit KG 200, code-named "Beethoven", eventually entering operational service.

 

[red750]

The Advanced Attack Helicopter project was a US Army project from 1972. The Boeing-Vertol 235 was one of the proposed designs for the project. The picture is of the 235 mock-up; the farthest this design ever got. At the end of the the AAH project, the Army chose the Hughes YAH-64, now known as the AH-64 Apache. Hell, I’d choose the Apache over this thing as well.

 

The Boeing-Vertol 235 is noticeably asymmetrical. It looks like a helicopter version of Two Face. Or it had a stroke. Information is sparse.