Re: Drafting in Bicycle Races

[brian whatcott <inet@INTELLISYS.NET>]

At 12:42 9/15/99 -0400, Hugh Haskell wrote:
> ... Remember the "coke bottle" shapes on
> some military supersonic jet aircraft? I believe that
> the Air Force B-58 and
> F-104 had that shape as did the Navy F11F....

> Hugh Haskell

Convair's "Delta Dagger", the first delta wing fighter, was designed
as a missile platform, thought at that time to be the natural
successor to gun-platforms (which could and sometimes did shoot
themselves, e.g in a dive). The first of two YF-102 prototypes
to fly on October 24th, 1953 showed serious performance deficits.

 This was hastily redesigned using a novel area rule and the first
of the four prototype YF-102As flew on December 20th, 1954  while
a further eight of the original YF-102s rolled out. The F-102A entered
service mid 56. Production terminated two years later at number 875.

On a rather pragmatic basis, the effort to hold the wing/fuse
cross section area relatively constant at stations ahead  of the wing
on aft allowed the F-102A Dagger to reach Mach 1.25 in its
developed form.

The Grumman Tiger (F11F)  first flew on July 30th, 1954 with an F9F-9
tag. With rather low powered Wright engine, it would not meet the
contractual performance guarantee. In Navy service four years until
April 1961.
 It could make 753 mph at sea level. This was certainly coke shaped
and swept wing in plan. It carried four cannon.

It was not long before engines were developed with enough thrust to
avoid the need for diving etc., to go supersonic.




brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>
Altus OK