In article ,
(The Enlightenment) wrote:

Chad Irby wrote in message
.. .
In article ,
(robert arndt) wrote:

http://www.luft46.com/misc/wes1003.html

"Although this was a very novel idea for an aircraft at this time, the
concept never left the drawing board."

1/15 the loaded weight of the Osprey, some very optimistic numbers (400
MPH? Yeah, Right.), and no grasp of the difficulties in gearing and
power issues in a tilt-wing aircraft.

So you say they had "no grasp". They had built and put into naval
service in 1943 the Fletner Fl 282 Kolibri (hummingbird) intermeshing
rotor helicopter which was entirely succesfull despite the technology
of gearbox designe.

So you're comparing a small helicopter with two fixed rotors and a
simple fixed gearbox with a full-up tiltwing aircraft?

The only thing that prevented the production run of 70 extending to
1000 was allied bombing.
http://www.centennialofflight.gov/es...ettner/HE6.htm

Still, comparing a simple little helo to a tiltrotor.

That's funny.

They had flown and tested the Focke Achgelis Fa-223 Drache which has
the same configuration in vertical flight of the V22 and P.1003.

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/es...a_223/DI52.htm

You might note that the FA-223 was a twin-rotor *helicopter*, not a
tiltrotor. Besides having the rotors out on booms at the sides, it was
not really very complicated (and slow, due to the massively increased
drag of those two side booms).

Once again, nothing like a tiltrotor, and nothing in these designs would
have prepared them for the problems inherent in tiltrotor flight. And
it *sure* wouldn't have let them build a 400 MPH tiltrotor right off the
bat.

The Nazis had a lot of Really Cool Ideas that would have never
worked (like the Sanger "America Bomber," which would have melted
quite nicely the first time they did a reentry).

How do you know? The aircraft never re-entered at full orbital
velocity, it skipped at sub orbital velocities to reach the required
range, take opportunity of cooling effects and a lower speed of
re-entry.

Actually, skip-reentry relies on a somewhat higher initial reentry
speed, as compared to the "plunge" method, and while max temps can be
higher, the plunge method has some advantages. Note also that the
"skip" method relies heavily on radiative heat emission, and that's not
very effective for dumping large amounts of heat in a short period of
time. You still need some very high-temp metals (Inconel or titanium,
to start), instead of the normal stainless steel Sanger proposed.

Even the X-15, which wasn't anywhere near as ambitious as the
Silverbird, had to have sprayed-on ablative coatings to hit high Mach.
The only reason the Dynasoar project went as far as it did was because
of the development work on the X-15.

Sanger never actually worked on the thermodynamic aspect of the
Silverbird, and that would have been a potential showstopper for the
program, even if he'd had more time to work on it. The plane was a
concept/mockup only, and very little actual engineering work had been
done when the war came to an end.

The wedge shapped wing profile shows a keen understanding of
supersonic aerodynamics.

No, it just showed a basic understanding of high-speed flight. Small
wings = high wing loading = higher speeds and lower maneuverability.
Landing speeds would have been high, even when empty.

The Germans had solved the hypersonic and heat shielding re-entry
problems of the V2.

....by not flying it at high hypersonic speeds for very long. The V-2
topped out at about 3500 MPH on reentry, and only managed that for a
very short time, in uncontrolled ballistic flight.

Nothing like the 13,000 MPH the Sanger was supposed to hit.

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