The rewards for APR Patrons and Monthly Historical Documents program subscribers have been sent out. Included in the November 2020 rewards package are:
1: A diagram of a proposed DC-9 aft propfan research configuration
2: A Kaman K-Max brochure
3: A preliminary draft/outline for a report on F-108 employment
4: A CAD diagram of the M61A1 Vulcan
If this sort of thing is of interest, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.
Hey! Anybody hereabouts interested in unbuilt variants of the North American B-70 bomber? I know a guy who can hook you up:
https://media.defense.gov/2020/Nov/23/2002540204/-1/-1/1/B-70%20VARIANTS.PDF
An official publication from the AFMC History Office, edited by noted aerospace author Tony R. Landis. Recommended.
A magazine ad from 1967 looking for people wanting to hire on with Sikorsky. The ad shows a stowed-rotor helicopter design for the CARA (Combat Aircrew Recovery Aircraft) role. In the midst of the Viet Nam War, US pilots were being shot down over enemy occupied territory and needed rescue. A helicopter was a perfectly serviceable vehicle for that role… it could hover over the jungle and drop a line down through the canopy that the pilot could latch on to and be pulled up and flown away. The problem was that choppers are relatively slow. You’d much rather get to the ASAP before enemy forces could find them. A stowed-rotor design could theoretically fly at airplane speeds and hover like a helicopter. But as with all hybrid vehicles, being capable of two things means you’re great at neither.
Additional art of this design:
From 1965, two Boeing-Vertol Heavy Lift Helicopter concepts in model form, to scale with a Chinook (at far right). At far left is the Model 227 which carried loaded internally; in the middle is Model 237, designed as a flying crane. note, though, that even though the Model 237 is designed to carry payloads externally the vehicle is so large that the reduced fuselage still has room for a substantial passenger load, windows and all.
Another Chinook derivative, the Model 167 was substantially further from the original. It was larger and had an additional turboshaft engines… and moved all three of them forward, *presumably* for balance reasons. This was from the era when it seemed like a good idea to operate commercial helicopter “buses” from rooftop heliports in major cities, generally to shuttle passengers either from one city to another nearby one, or from the heart of an urban area to an outlying airport. It’s a little difficult to be sure, but it looks like the Model 167 had retractable landing gear.
A 1966 Boeing concept for a civilian version of the Chinook. Viet Nam veterans I’ve known who rode in Chinooks of that era have stories that make me suspect that *substantial* structural stiffening would have been required for such a craft to be fully accepted by the public; apparently, looking forward towards the cockpit and watching the while cabin twist back and forth was slightly disconcerting. A cruise speed of 200 mph seems slightly optimistic.
There have been a lot of “personal air vehicles” designed over the last decade, most designed for VTOL operations and many with purely electric propulsion systems. One such design – which I can’t vouch for on either technical or financial fronts – is the Delorean DR-7 from Delorean Aerospace, founded by the nephew of *that* Delorean.
Their website, lean on details:
http://www.deloreanaerospace.com/
An article from 2017:
And a patent (US9862486B2):
From the mid 1960’s, a Bell illustration of a 12-ton (presumably referring to payload weight) cargo or military transport hovercraft derived from the “SK-9” design.
A design from 1963 that used four Bristol-Siddeley vectored-thrust Pegasus engines (same as used by the Harrier) and ten lift jets to give an otherwise fairly conventional cargo transport jet aircraft VTOL capability.
