Fighter Design Inspiration

ELTEE

ELTEE

Vice Admiral
Happy Holidays!

One of my many hobbies is scale modeling. I usually model WWII, but I enjoy the occasional obscure subject from any time period. I have recently been researching interceptors that appeared following the Korean War, and I came accross the North American F-108 "Rapier." Check out the link below to a picture of a 1/48 scale model of it. The Rapier never entered service, but what struck me was that I could easily make out the overall shape of the WC Rapier and Rapier II.

http://hsfeatures.com/f108pb_1.htm


Does anyone know what the 'official' inspirations were for any of the WC fighters? Of course it is completely possible that most of the designs were created from the vivid imaginations of the team, but I just found this coincidence interesting, to say the least.
 
Yeah, I see the similarities, but I think the Firefox has more similarity.
 

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The Firefox is actually an exact copy of the Rapier II. A Rapier II made a forced landing in the Soviet Union and Brezhnev ordered that it be disassembled and copied, down to the exact screws.
 
The weapons deviate significantly from the RapierII. I guess that's why the issued execution orders for the entire development team.
 
Personally I think it looks like a cross between the Sabre and the Rapier.

Maybe they found both and tried to make the best of both worlds?
 
It's probably no coincidence that more than one delta-wing design from that era was cancelled before seeing any significant production run:

http://www.rcaf.com/aircraft/fighters/arrow/index.php
http://exn.ca/flight/avro_arrow/

arrow.jpg

arrows.jpg


The Avro Arrow shown during the rollout ceremony, Oct. 4, 1957:
cf-105_1.jpg


(the prevailing theory is that the arrow was the victim of a dispute between the then current government and the company. Once the decision was handed down to scrap the project, all the prototypes and related material were cut into scrap to keep the design from being sold to other countries... But it did fly at least 60+ hours but not with it's intended engine and people involved still alive today say the initial tests were promising. An interesting discussion of why it was cancelled: http://www.dewit.ca/archs/avro_shaw/index.html)
 
The F-108 was cancelled as a result of sweeping budget cuts. In addition, the team at North American had no idea they were in close competition with the "Skunkworks" division at Lockheed. The YF-12, an interceptor version of the SR-71, was clandestinely selected as the 'winner' of the 'competition' the North American boys had no idea they were in.

Interestingly, the YF-12 actually set a whole bunch of records and performed several Mach 3+ live fire missile intercepts of target drones using the AIM-47 Falcon. Of course, that aircraft eventually succumbed to budget cuts as well, but it would have been one hell of an interceptor.

Still, the YF-12 story doesn't quite end there. The prototypes were used by NASA as chaseplanes...for the shuttle!
 
(the prevailing theory is that the arrow was the victim of a dispute between the then current government and the company. Once the decision was handed down to scrap the project, all the prototypes and related material were cut into scrap to keep the design from being sold to other countries... But it did fly at least 60+ hours but not with it's intended engine and people involved still alive today say the initial tests were promising. An interesting discussion of why it was cancelled: http://www.dewit.ca/archs/avro_shaw/index.html
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I don't know - the thing that doomed all of these fast interceptors is right there in the first paragraph of the RCAF link you posted: Sputnik. When the Russians put up a satellite the media-fed (some would say created) 'bomber gap' issue disappeared... and there was no need for expensive interceptors to mitigate the public's concerns over a threat which the military had already known for years would never materialize anyway.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I don't know - the thing that doomed all of these fast interceptors is right there in the first paragraph of the RCAF link you posted: Sputnik. When the Russians put up a satellite the media-fed (some would say created) 'bomber gap' issue disappeared... and there was no need for expensive interceptors to mitigate the public's concerns over a threat which the military had already known for years would never materialize anyway.
Click to expand...


I'm not so sure it's quite that simple.

The Soviet bomber force was always a threat during the Cold War - the way the threat was employed was simply altered. Bomber design switched from high altitude, high speed aircraft to low level penetration as SAM technology progressed. Interceptors didn't disappear; they simply changed along with them.

I suppose the F-14 is the perfect example in this case. Though recently retired, the F-14 was certainly the proper descendant of any of the century series aircraft and had a long and successful service life. Even the AIM-54 Pheonix missiles that the Tomcat used for 100 nm+ interceptions are a direct descendant of the Falcon that was tested with the F-108 and the YF-12 (both Hughes missiles, IIRC.) The Tomcat was just more mature; with variable geometry wings, it could do more than just zoom toward a bomber formation, release weapons, and bug out. It could actually follow a maneuverable foe at varying airspeeds and close the range if necessary. (Later on, it could even perform limited CAP)

I certainly agree that the greater nuclear 'threat' from the Soviets was not their bomber force, but they continued to pose a nuisance for NATO forces and as such, commanded a continued, appropriate response. Nowadays, we do generally see dedicated interceptors disappearing in favor of multi-role aircraft. The threat has changed once again. How dare they! :p
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I don't know - the thing that doomed all of these fast interceptors is right there in the first paragraph of the RCAF link you posted: Sputnik. When the Russians put up a satellite the media-fed (some would say created) 'bomber gap' issue disappeared... and there was no need for expensive interceptors to mitigate the public's concerns over a threat which the military had already known for years would never materialize anyway.
Click to expand...

I'm sure it was a factor but what I think part of what angers many Canadians about it is that not only was the project scrapped after almost all the development costs were done, barely a year later, they are buying interceptors from the US at a high cost. And the promised missile defense that supposedly rendered them obsolete never materialized here. Cost overruns that supposedly bothered the government never had a chance to be recouped and then the government seemingly vindictively attempts to destroy all evidence of the project, at the cost of thousands of jobs in the Canadian aerospace industry. And of course people pile conspiracy theories on top of all that.

Much of the talent went on to other aerospace industry companies including NASA and it's space program, Boeing, and others.
 
AD said:
I'm sure it was a factor but what I think part of what angers many Canadians about it is that not only was the project scrapped after almost all the development costs were done, barely a year later, they are buying interceptors from the US at a high cost. And the promised missile defense that supposedly rendered them obsolete never materialized here. Cost overruns that supposedly bothered the government never had a chance to be recouped and then the government seemingly vindictively attempts to destroy all evidence of the project, at the cost of thousands of jobs in the Canadian aerospace industry. And of course people pile conspiracy theories on top of all that.
Click to expand...

That's a really good point. The second and third order effects are tremendous when these programs are cancelled and cut. There is a new Nova show that will be coming out soon about the manned spy capsules the Russians put into space to watch us. (This is a neat subject in and of itself. These capsules had room for two guys that took pictures, developed them, etc.) The program talks about the competition in the US between developers of unmanned spy sats and their manned counterparts.

When the US decided unmanned sats were going to be the better solution and cancelled the manned sat program, thousands lost their jobs virtually overnight.
 
Remember that Avro was one of the independant British companies that was overtaken not by events, but by the defence White Paper in the seventies. The TSR2 went the same way, and we ended up buying inferior (according to MoD evalutation, test pilots and orders) F-111s that didn't remain in RAF service for very long.
 
um, let's get serious here. The A-Wing was inspired by the Arrow...the Star Wars guys went to the future to find their inspiration.

Geez...I'm dealing with amateurs here! :D
 
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