Supersonic Flight Question

In a previous article, Big John said:
Must have read this in AW&ST ..................but some time ago???
Isn't it two axis (up and down)?

"up and down" is *one* axis, pitch. And yes, that's what the F-22 has.


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In article , Paul Tomblin
writes
In a previous article, "Jay Honeck" said:
At Pan American World Airways, we had a Boeing 707 that created
a sonic boom and lived to fly out its natural life carrying
passengers around the world.

Well, Bob -- you can't leave us hanging! What's "the rest of the story?"
How the heck did this happen?

There was a DC-8 that intentionally broke the sound barrier in a dive, but
I've never heard of a 707 doing it.

http://www.dc8.org/library/supersonic/index.php

And this page lists the DC-8, but not the 707 as having exceeded Mach 1:
http://personal.eunet.fi/pp/vmhalme/machbust.html

I did find one discussion board site where somebody claimed that it
happened to a Pam Am 707, but then another person refuted the story, and
nobody came up with any documentation.

I think you may be referring to the Boeing 727-100, TAW Flight 841 on
April 4 1979. Flight from Kennedy to Minneapolis/St Paul.

There was long running dispute over whether the crew were to blame or
not. It suffered a severe upset while cruising at FL390. Whether this
was caused by the crew wrongly extending the slats or by a slat coming
out in flight is the dispute.

It rolled over and dived towards the ground, rolling and diving near
vertical. It went down at n average 46,000 ft a minute at moments
touching 76,000 ft a minute. At this it went supersonic and it is said
the sonic booms were clearly heard on the ground. Speed brakes seemed to
have no effect.

At 30,000 ft the ASI read 450 knots. It went up to 470 knots and nothing
seemed to help. The g went up - it had already been at 3.5g. At 20,000
ft in desperation the Captain called for gear down. It sounded like an
explosion. The gear doors were ripped the right gear nearly come off
and the g went up again but the pilot noticed a small amount of control
returning. He managed to stop the roll but the nose still pointed down.
They passed through 11,000 ft and it began to respond pulling hard the
aircraft stayed together at 6g. There is lots more - after touching
5,000 ft he zoomed back up to 10,000 ft.

The emergency landing at Detroit was quite something His final approach
was at 205 knots.

Reference: Emergency - Crisis on the Flight Deck by Stanley Stewart.
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David Francis E-Mail reply to
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On Tue, 08 Jul 2003 11:28:46 -0400, "G.R. Patterson III"
wrote:



Rick Durden wrote:

When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939 the Polish
Air Force fought courageously with outdated airplanes, all of which
could easily out-turn the Bf-109.

According to Len Deighton in "Blitzkrieg", Poland's aircraft were destroyed
on the ground early in the morning of 1 September, 1939. According to Johnny
Johnson and other British pilots, losing speed rapidly in an attempt to make
your opponent overshoot was a tactic used successfully by both sides in the
Battle for Britain period. Commander Lamb in "To War in a Stringbag" also
points out some of the defensive advantages of being slow and maneuverable.
While it's true that you aren't likely to shoot anyone down if you can't
catch them (though at least one Swordfish scored a Bf-109), speed isn't
everything.

George Patterson
The optimist feels that we live in the best of all possible worlds. The
pessimist is afraid that he's correct.
James Branch Cavel

It was true that in the hands of a skilled combat pilot, a
maneuverable WWII fighter could often survive against faster
opponents. But if that was all they had, the odds of combat were
against them and eventually they would be shot down.

Saburo Sakai, the well known Japanese fighter pilot, fought an epic
battle single handedly against a dozen F6F Hellcats off Iwo Jima in
1944. He was basically trapped alone in the sky with the Navy pilots
taking runs at him. He kept rolling out of the way of their gunfire,
timing his maneuver's perfectly. But that's all he could do because
they were faster then him and basically used him as target practice.
He grew very angry at being the target of so many inexperienced pilots
and whipped around onto the tail of one of them and peppered it with
gunfire. But he had to roll out of the way when his squadron mates
rushed to the rescue. Eventually he ran for the protective gunfire of
Iwo Jima to brush the fighters off and landed literally soaked in
sweat and totally exhausted. Where most maneuvering fights ended
within a minute or two, this one lasted over 20 minutes.
Unbelievably, he had not one bullet hole in his Zero. He was
evacuated from Iwo Jima shortly after this and basically the island
lay naked to invasion. However the Navy wasn't ready to invade then
and did not for many months. By the time the invasion did occur, the
Japanese had used the interval wisely and had built the defenses up to
a formidable degree.

This fight occured after he'd been wounded at Guadalcanal and had lost
the vision in one eye. He wrote about this incident, commenting that
he could not escape his opponents, he did not have the speed.

Corky Scott

Actually, I would disagree with the lack of a need for extreme
maneuvering due to missiles being used. There is no technical need for
extreme maneuvering as both the AIM-120 and the upcoming AIM-9X (along
with most Russian, European, and Israeli missiles) are very capable at
killing an aircraft at range. However, the likehood of the rules of
engagement allowing a pilot to take a missile shot without visually
IDing the target is slim and none. And given the conflicts we are likely
to see in the next 10-20 years, a visual ID is always going to be
required as part of the ROE. Once you are in visual range, you are in a
furball. Now the AIM-9X with the high of boresight firing capability
might allow you to take a shot in the merge and thus prevent you from
getting into a full up furball but you are still going to have to close
with the other aircraft and that gives him a chance to take a shot at
you. Now once visual sensors catch up and allow a pilot to ID a target
from range then the need for extreme maneuvering could be reduced.

Chris

Big John wrote:

Paul

Must have read this in AW&ST ..................but some time ago???
Isn't it two axis (up and down)?

My ramble still stands I guess. Not much need for extreme maneuvering
with missiles that can be fired at a distance and off axis.

Air to ground gun firing (train busting) doesn't require extreme
maneuverability either.

Let me put question to one of my classmates (USAF test pilot school
graduate). If I can find him in retirement. He was still doing some
consulting a couple of years ago.

One thing that is possible is that thrust vectoring causes less drag
then deflecting the elevator in a high speed high 'G' turn???

Big John
Point of the sword

On Tue, 8 Jul 2003 19:38:03 +0000 (UTC), (Paul
Tomblin) wrote:

In a previous article, Big John said:
We have been experimenting with it for some time and flying test
articles. Don't believe any of our birds (even F-22 and F-35) have it
incorporated? You can do lots of things with vectored thrust on tail
pipe if in a 1 v 1 'fur ball'.

The F-22 has thrust vectoring. See
http://www.af.mil/lib/airpower/airpower_specs.shtml

"G.R. Patterson III" wrote in message ...
Rick Durden wrote:

When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939 the Polish
Air Force fought courageously with outdated airplanes, all of which
could easily out-turn the Bf-109.

According to Len Deighton in "Blitzkrieg", Poland's aircraft were destroyed
on the ground early in the morning of 1 September, 1939. According to Johnny

Well, no. Another fine example that British have no idea about 1939
campaign and ignore all Polish history books.

"Polish Airforce was deployed at numerous airfields and although
numerically inferior and partially obsolete was very active during the
course of the campaign (e.g. over Warsaw). Polish pilots shot down in
combat over 137 enemy planes"

A.D.Danilecki "szopen"

An unfortunate moment from that time was Lindberg's trip to Germany and then
his telling Roosevelt that we had better stay out of it... He was
technically accurate in his estimation that we would get our butts kicked by
the Luftwaffe in a straight on confrontation, plane versus plane.. Whereas,
he should have told Roosevelt that we needed to get off our duff and build
better warplanes 'now'... Unfortunately, he was a great pilot, not a great
military strategist... It took getting our noses rubbed in it at Pearl
Harbor to truly energize those in power to build up our military machine...
Roosevelt held it against Lindberg for steering him wrong, and probably with
good reason ...

Denny

"a.d.danilecki" wrote in message
om...
"G.R. Patterson III" wrote in message
...
Rick Durden wrote:

When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939 the Polish
Air Force fought courageously with outdated airplanes, all of which
could easily out-turn the Bf-109.