Thank you, Mr. Crall. For some reason , even at age 88, I can't get used to being called Mr. Parks...never have been comfortable with it. 'Preciate" it, though. back to the delta, I think one of the best air show displays at Abottsford was the Vulcan as it made passes before the crowd to show its planform. Beautiful airplane in the air. Horribly cramped flight deck and 10 foot nose gear strut.
Absolutely. The Vulcan impressed many, many people with those semi-aerobatic displays at various airshows. Hard to believe something that big could be so maneuverable at such slow speeds and low altitudes. They have one at the SAC Museum in Omaha, Nebraska - I think they had joint operations with the SAC at one time, so they acquired one for the museum.
If you go to Wiki and for Vulcan bomber, you can see the several iterations of the wing. They builtd several 7/10 flying pure deltas to test the wing before building the pure delta full size bomber before going to the final ogival winged bomber. Started out at a pure delta with a couple mods to an ogival wing
The Avro 707 was a testbed for the Vulcan's original wing, and the Fairey Delta FD.2 became a testbed for the Concorde's wing. There were similar small-scale testbeds for the wings of the Northrop B-35 and Handley Page Victor. The moral is: If you're going to try a new wing design, do it in small-scale first!
But even then, it won't give you all the data of the full sized vehicle. The Vulcan wing went through several mods to massage the planform. I can't believe all the history that you have, Jim.
Not wanting to nitpick here about Concorde's wing, Jim, but the Fairey Delta 2 was less important to the Concorde story than the Handley Page 115, which should be considered as the most important testbed for the Concorde's wing. It is a well-known fact that the choice of a delta shape for the future SST was decided after the works of the famous aerodynamist Dietrich Küchemann (a German) at the R.A.E, at the beginning of the fifties. Before this, the shape that was favored for a Mach-2 airliner was very short straight wings (just like the F-104) with a lot of difficult problems associated, like a very long take-off run, etc... Küchemann theorised what he called the "slender Delta" concept, and the Handley-Page 115 was built specifically to prove that concept, mainly that a "slender Delta" wing could still be controlable enough at low speeds, which was sucessfully proved. After the HP 115 tests results, the "slender Delta" was adopted as the wing shape for the future SST. The ogival wing of the Fairey Delta 2 was just an evolution, again due to further work by Küchemann, of the original "slender Delta" concept. If there is one man to whom the shape of the Concorde's wing must be rightfully attributed, it is Dietrich Küchemann. Rgds
A lot of F-106 pilots proved themselves well in ACM fur balls against other planes.........and often came out the victors (caveat - Falcon missiles were pure **** in ACM scenarios but the aircraft was not).........I think design considerations can often be overcome by a thorough understanding of aerodynamics and pure piloting skills........ Israeli Kfirs with canards were used by Top Gun adversary squadrons IIRC for a while.........
We can't forget Alexander Lippisch, who started the entire delta thing in the early 40's that led to the ME 163 "Comet".
My thoughts have been along those of Brian's (original post) for some time. There's many head scratchers about Vietnam War fighters in American inventory. The glamorized history books will tell you the F4 Phantom was the ultimate fighter, now that's not to burst any bubbles of Phantom drivers out there, the Phantom is a great fighter that is proven. Here's where things get interesting. The F-106 Delta Dart has some amazing stories to tell, and the remaining pilots that are able to tell their stories are coming forward. Combat loaded F-106 and F-4 Phantoms open it up after their patrol. Spoiler; Phantom required refuels Image Unavailable, Please Login
Another option to assist with maneuver at hi angles of attack would have been to include canards, by the canopy. This was included with the Kfir. Some of the Six's were modified with the M61. I was about 500 meters behind a Six and purposely had no ear pro when the J-75 went from military, to A.B. This was a 186th FIS (MT ANG) practice mission from the Barn, at D.M. AFB - late 1980's. Much better than any rock concert will deliver. You feel it in every part of your body . Unreal how it is almost quiet for a fraction of a second when the pilot advances the throttle to A.B. Then all hell breaks loose. Sky cops chased me away after the experience. ____ It would have been kewl, if the Pentagon activated both the 138th TFS (NY ANG) and 104th TFS (MD ANG) and sent them to Da Nang A.B., with the F-86H. Experienced pilots with thousands of hours and a lot of time with the Hog, in the perfect platform, for a furball. My guess the MIC did not want any finger pointing at the new overweight fighters.
The J-75 in the F-106 and F-105 used water injection for the afterburner. That engine was a real performer. Just do not fill up the water tank with JP-4, as was done at Holloman AFB on an F-105D one time. Blew the whole rear off the aircraft.
For the uninitiated, the same J75 engine (though without afterburner) was initially used in the Boeing 707-220 and -320 series and the Douglas DC-8-20 and -30 series, where it was called the JT4A. But nearly all those engines were replaced with JT3D turbofans in a relatively short amount of time.
I'm very late to this thread, but I thought a lot of it came down to the role of the aircraft-- fighter versus interceptor. If you want maximum speed and don't care that much about maneuverability, the delta was the way to go, but if you need to maneuver in close, it was very problematic for all the issues above. That, of course, was the idea behind the F-14-- it could do both, in theory at least and at the cost of great complexity.
I believe it. All I have is heresay. I've read on an aviation forum, can't remember the exact forum, that when the Tomcat was utilized to its full potential during combat training, its tight turn combat maneuver rivaled that of the Eagle.
The early F-14s with TF-30s ran out of energy quickly in turns. The later versions with vastly uprated engines did not. Delta wings actually turn very well, once, at high mach numbers. The planform's high drag eats up energy unless you have a real excess of power, like the 4th gen European fighters. The F-106s were used in DACT engagements to emulate MiG-21s and SU-15s before retirement, because of their similar low wing loadings. The F-106As were actually upgraded by adding a frameless canopy and gunsight so they could more realistically participate in DACT.
"If you want maximum speed and don't care that much about maneuverability..." was the philosophy the Soviets used when they designed the MiG-25 as a bomber interceptor. I compared it to a Top Fuel dragster - terrific acceleration, but don't expect it to turn!
And that was the whole point of that airplane. It was to intercept and destroy a US high altitude supersonic bomber (which I believe was cancelled)... get up there fast and shoot a missile, and come back. No turning necessary.
I appreciate being considered for this thread but I am in no way at the level of Mr. Phillips or those who have flown this equipment. I know those who have, however, and I have the utmost respect for them. I just talk a lot.
Bob- You have way more experience than most of us who only flew a few "modern" aircraft. Not so modern now in the age of B-2s, F-35s, and F-22s.
It's hard to conceive that a sleek airplane like the F-106 was conceived 60 years ago! It says that the first half of the aviation age progressed much faster than the last half has!
Jim- It is when you look at the canopy or in the cockpit. We had an F-106 follow us down during an exercise in the Eglin AFB area. We were doing an overwater TFR letdown at around 10,000 fpm to 1000' AGL initially, then stepping lower. He followed us down to around 2000' AGL with me jamming his radar the whole way. We figured that was pretty brave in an aircraft with round gauges and no radar altimeter. Probably helped that our lights were on.
