AviationBanter - View Single Post

**Dudley Henriques[_2_]** · February 9th 08, 07:37 PM posted to rec.aviation.piloting,rec.aviation.student

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in news:lJ-
:

WingFlaps wrote:
On Feb 8, 12:20 pm, Dudley Henriques wrote:

Interesting story and I can well believe he could have broken the
barrier as described. I also heard that the X1 was in fact designed
by
the British and given to the Americans, along with data, due to the
expense of the British supersonic program and problems with repaying
war debt. Do you know anything about that -I once saw a old picture
of
an "X1" in the UK but can't find it now.

Cheers
To my knowledge, the X1 was a request research project from the old
NACA
(now NASA) to Bell aircraft for an aircraft capable of making the
attempt to break the speed of sound.
I've never heard any mention of a design from the Brits.

Yeah, it was a Miles aircraft. The M-52
They got as far as a mockup but dropped the project. It had a
stabiliator and the brits are fond of whining that it was that
development on the X! that enabled it to break the sound barrier.
However, this was not a Brit innovation. As usual, the germans had
realised that in the thirtie, years before Miles..

Actually, the
design concept was quite simple. They did the entire aircraft based on
ballistic tests with a 50 Cal. bullet even to taking the canopy out of
the equation and replacing it with molded in windows.
Based on the ballistic tests of the 1/2 inch bullet, Bell designers
expected the same transonic performance from the X1 provided they
could
get it up to speed.
The horizontal tail proved to be the only real issue and they changed
that to a slab tail to solve the shock issue.
The F86 prototype was having the same problems at the same time in
dives.
It's interesting that North American added a stabilator to the 86
later
on in it's production run but to my knowledge George Welsh who broke
the
barrier the week before Yeager had a regular tail on the prototype
which
was carried through to the first A Sabre.

Yeah. A stabilator or at least a rapidly trimmable stab is essential for
a transonic aircraft o avoid excessive buffeting on the stab due to
camber introduced through moving elevators up and down..

Bertie

The way I heard the story from a few guys who were at Edwards during the
period was that there was information passed back and forth between the
Brits and bell about the Miles project but it was the US that stopped
trading out data due to the Brit program getting bogged down.
I know a lot of what the Brits had in research being done early on at
Boscombe Down came out of the German research, and you are right about
Lippisch. He was a genius. His work on tailless stuff is still
considered important.
As for the slab tail. I hate to admit it, but Bell I think might very
well have lifted this idea from the Miles project and incorporated it
into the X1. The shock issue at the hinge on the horizontal stabilizer
was common knowledge and a solution was really needed for the X1.
That whole period was involved a ton of stolen ideas back and forth, and
some of it really started back in the German research. Those guys were a
fair bunch of aerodynamic brains :-))

--
Dudley Henriques