Napkinwaffe (all the world's most ridiculous[ly amazing] never-built airplanes)

Francis Urquhart

Well-known member
I don't know what this is, but it's certainly unusual

51XVNTRJ8DL._SX367_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

I believe this is the Vickers Victory Bomber Type C.2 dating from 1943. This originated from a pre-war Barnes Wallis proposal for the 10-ton Grand Slam bomb and an aircraft to carry it to Germany. The original Victory Bombers were quite conventional but as knowledge of the German defenses grew, the designs became steadily more unorthodox. IIRC there were several C-series designs, all powered by six piston engines and all configured as canards. They ended up midway in size between the B-29 and the B-36. This wasn't quite the end of the design series; there was a jet-engine version but it died when the Air Ministry realized there were much more interesting things one could drop and also that the Grand Slam could be carried by the Lancaster.

By the way, the book above now costs around UKP400 to UKP500. Moral, if you want a book, grab it while you can
 
D

Deleted member

Guest
Mon Capitaine, might that not be a good idea for a service here? People who want but don't have specific books could list what they want and people who have but don't want or can get them can get in touch.


Yes, actually, that’s a very good idea. Thank you!
 

gral

Well-known member
Confirmed, Crecy Publishing took over the series from the original publisher(Midland, IIRC), and the books are being republished since 2016. All of them are available at Amazon, and Volumes 1, 2 and 3 are below USD 40 each.
 

PsihoKekec

Swashbuckling Accountant
To be fair, their flying wing designs had inherent stability problems that were there to stay until fly-by-wire was developed.
 

Aaron Fox

Well-known member
To be fair, their flying wing designs had inherent stability problems that were there to stay until fly-by-wire was developed.
Actually, the test pilots of the Northorps outright stated that the designs don't want to stall. Period. Hell, one test pilot told another test pilot to not force it to stall... and the pilot in question did just that and it ended with the entire test crew getting killed.

The Northrops were rather stable platforms outside of a stall.

The stall instability problem was the biggest problem that required fly-by-wire.
 

Francis Urquhart

Well-known member
<deleted content>
Your recollections are spot-on. :D I've read the SACs and flight documentation on both the YB-35 and the RB-49, (the SACs are included in US Strategic Bombers 1945 - 2012 published by Defense Lion Publications) and both aircraft had very unpleasant flying characteristics. Their stability, across the board, was severely deficient. The aircraft were unstable in all three axes and there was no flight regime in which their flying characteristics were acceptable. It would indeed be the 1980s before flight control technology had advanced enough to make their behavior acceptable. Even then, the basic Northrop design remains seriously flawed. The B-2 actually uses an aerodynamic design more closely related to the German WW2 Horton principles than to the B-35/49.
 

PsihoKekec

Swashbuckling Accountant
This looks like constructor woke up some day with divine inspiration how to outboondnoggle the He-177.
 

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