Piper Cub Vs F-15

From: Alan Dicey
Date: 7/4/2004 5:27 AM Central Daylight Time
Message-id:

Cub Driver wrote:
Not really. The 35 had those great engine pods, and the 49 had a
bunch of vertical fins, so in fact neither one was a true flying
wing. Nobody ever managed to fly the 35 enough to determine its
utility (the long shafts were the main problem),

The main reason the 35 flopped was the contraprop gearing system was unreliable
so they went with the single props which radically affected performance.

snip

I read that the YB-35 managed to do without vertical surfaces due to the
props providing enough longtitudinal stability; although I'm not
entirely clear as to how that would work.

It wasn't the props as much as the drive shaft fairings.

snip

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

I read that the YB-35 managed to do without vertical surfaces due to the
props providing enough longtitudinal stability; although I'm not
entirely clear as to how that would work.

It wasn't the props as much as the drive shaft fairings.

Right, the fairings were long and (by the time they reached the prop)
high above the trailing edge of the wing, rather like the wing of a
paper dart. They would have acted very much like a vertical
stabilizer. (And created, as was posted, no end of problems with the
XB-35's propeller shafts, which vibrated.)

The fairings (and later the vertical fins on the YB-49) also served as
air dams, perhaps inadvertently solving a problem with swept-wing
designs, where the airstream tends to move laterally toward the
wingtips rather than straight back in the line of flight.


all the best -- Dan Ford
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