" wrote:

Guy Alcala wrote:

" wrote:

Guy Alcala wrote:

snip

[skipping a bit] "Tilting the wing upward during landing maneuvers allowed a
relatively slow landing speed, yet kept the F-8's fuselage at an AoA of about
5.5 deg. rather than 12.5 deg. as required with its wing down."


Guy, can you expound on that a little? I can't see how the angle
of the fuselage (AoI?) has any effect on the 'landing speed'.

snip

I think you're overanalyzing this. If the wing didn't tilt, then the whole
fuselage (assuming an AoI of 0 deg.) would need to be at 12.5 deg. AoA to have a
sufficiently slow landing speed.

But saying it that way makes it seem as if 'tilting the wing up'
(which you're not actually doing of course)

You are, with reference to the fuselage and virtually any other a/c, but then the
whole description is relative to the datum you use.

makes it possible to
fly slower when actually you're tilting the *fuselage down* so as
to make it possible to land on a carrier.

You're not *tilting the wing up*, you're *tilting the fuselage
down*, right?. I know that it's just semantics but saying that
this system 'allows slower flight' isn't true is it?. I suppose
you could say that it allows slower flight *without banging the
tail on the deck etc*

That would be the correct phraseology, and includes the assumption that I (at least)
made. After all, if your a/c design can only make one landing on a carrier deck
before being hauled off for scrap, NAVAIR would probably take a few points off your
score;-)

but it doesn't allow the a/c to 'fly
slower' in the sense that flaps do right?.

Right.

Instead, they achieved that low landing speed by
tilting the wing, which also gave them the benefit of a lower fuselage AoA for
view/clearance.

Guy

Well now, lessee...

Very simply, the wing had to fly at a high-enough AoA to fly sufficiently slowly for
the a/c to land on Essex class carriers. In order to achieve that AoA with the wing
rigidly attached to the fuselage, they would have had to chop off the after part of
the fuselage, mount the wing at a much higher fixed AoI, and/or give the a/c a taller
landing gear (to avoid dragging the tail), any of which would have been detrimental
to its performance. In addition, the pilot would have had to be sitting much higher
to have adequate view on the approach, also at a detriment to performance. CVA had
already designed the F7U Cutlass once, and had no wish to repeat it;-)

Guy