Oct 182022
Here’s a look at Book 4. Some of the diagrams I do are completed in just a few hours. Some take considerably longer… several to many man-days, sometimes spread out over months as I dial in details. This one was sort of mid-range. The most complex and time consuming are typically the diagrams of aircraft that were actually built… those have to be accurate, and more details are available. This one is of an unbuilt aircraft that is reasonably well documented, but was a configuration that was in a constant state of design flux.
Just found your additional website and I’ll be sure to return!
As you’ve mentioned at the Secret Projects Forum, Book 4 will the second volume of the bookazine series “Secret Cold War Designs”, covering nuclear powered aircraft, seaplanes, hypersonic vehicles, VTOL aircraft, and a few other miscellaneous aircraft types. The D-188 shown in this diagram reminds me of the VJ 101 in having swiveling jet engines on the wingtips, but it also had two turbojets in the rear directed out of two separate tail ducts, and two liftjets directly aft of the cockpit and positioned vertically. Will the section about VTOL aircraft in Volume 2 of the “Secret Cold War Designs” bookazine series cover all types of VTOL aircraft besides helicopters, including tail-sitters and flat riser VTOL aircraft with liftjets?
The VTOLs covered will be some of those that are “Supersonic Bombers.” That kinda excludes helicopters.
When originally pitched, this was to be a single bookazine, but it expanded quickly to be enough for two on supersonic bombers. There are more “Cold War” bookazines in the planning stage for the future, and doubtless other authors. I have no evidence of such, but it would make sense for there to be, say, a “Secret Cold War Brit/French/Italian/German/Russian/etc. Fighter/Bomber/Whatever” set of bookazines from authors expert in those areas.
One potential “Secret Designs of the Cold War” bookazine you could write in the future should cover American guided missile and target drone designs of the Cold War because the Spangenberg Index at the National Archives College Park (https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/the-spangenberg-index-at-archives-ii-college-park.9832/#post-91314) includes mention of the little-known Radioplane XKD3R-1 target drone project and there are probably little-known US Army guided missile projects that might have received the design numbers 11, 20, 21, 24, and 26 in the US Army’s 1947-1955 missile designation system, not to mention that the Diamondback air-to-air missile and Hopi air-to-air surface missile almost certainly received the “missing” designations AAM-N-8 and ASM-N-9 respectively, not to mention that you took note of the fact that the Convair X-11 and X-12 were designed as test vehicles for the initial Convair Atlas design with five engines before the Atlas design was revised into a missile slightly shorter than 100 feet (leading to the cancellation of the X-11 and X-12).