Mike Marron wrote:


As I mentioned in my response to you (the important part that you
snipped), besides just increasing the visibility, the variable
incidence wing also enabled the sleek and very fast fighter to
maintain the slower speeds required for carrier ops.


That doesn't make sense to me Mike...as Peter and John say the
higher AoI used for landing allows the fuselage to be more
horizontal (better pilot visibility, keeps the tail higher when
in landing attitude and allows for shorter (stronger)
undercarriage...

In other words Gord, the variable incidence wasn't designed to give
the F-8 "less drag for high speed operation,"

I think it was, it gets the fuselage 'more in line with the wing
chord' which 'has' to reduce drag.

Why do all the engineering to design this complication if it
isn't a very important aspect?. I think that the 'only' reason
for the 'variable AoI' was to allow for low drag (and high speed)
flight yet ~normal fuselage attitude for landing (for pilot vis
plus normal u/c config)...

I think that it's possible that on an a/c with a very low AoI
like this the extreme nose up attitude of the fuselage (to get
enough AoA on short final) may not be 'liveable' because of what
John mentions (tail strikes) plus very poor pilot visibility plus
the requirement for very longlegged u/c as Peter mentioned.

it was designed to give
the F-8 MORE drag (as the result of more LIFT) for SLOW speed
operation in order to land aboard carriers.


Why?...you won't get any more 'lift and drag'
(you can get all you want with the elevators) BUT you WILL have a
much more fuselage 'nose up' attitude if you cannot increase your
AoI for landing.


--

-Gord.