Fuselage lift

On Sunday, March 20, 2016 at 11:29:34 AM UTC-4, Jonathan St. Cloud wrote:
Wondering how much if any lift in gliders is generated from the fuselage in flight. There is a famous photo of a F-15 that landed with one wing gone due to collision. This of course was possible due to the lift generated by the F-15 fuselage.

The Schleicher family of gliders had two new fuselages designed in the mid 1990's (ASW-24 and ASH-26). Scheme-Hirth, fuselages take their linage from the original ventus designed in the late 1970's (wing roots added in later designs, tail feathers modified with ventus 2cx.)

Seems like all new designs of gliders focus on the airfoil, wing shape and winglets, but I wonder how much if any design improvements are not realized due to improvements that could be made in lift and drag of fuselage designs.

The F-15 also has a total lifting area of a tennis court, and was travelling substantially faster. The wing in the F-15's case is much more integrates and spread across the fuse, whereas most glider fuselages generally match a tapered 50 caliber shell and blend the wings on. As UH said, all the fuse is doing is keeping you attached to the wings and trying to minimize drag.

Beg to differ, the substantial increase in performance we gained in the zuni isnt an isolated case. Some of the older folks here may be familiar with the early bellanca cruisair series of aircraft. The bellanca cruisair when new would cruise at 150 mph on 150 hp franklin engine. This is for a four place built like a brick ****house wood and tube aircraft of the late 1930's.. Part of the efficiency of guiseppe bellanca's designs was based upon a fuselage planform that was in itself a lifting surface. As for the 50 cal analogy, definitely applicable to the trans-sonic and sonic regions of the flight envelope but not the most efficient shape for subsonic flight.