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Aviation History
1945
1945 - 1114.PDF
6io FLIGHT JUNE yra, 1-945 Two Novel Types Pushers with Submerged Air-cooled Engines and All Flying Control Embodied in the PRELIMINARY announcements of twodesigns have recently reached us fromthough they are in widely different aircraftca, andlegories, they have certain features in common which abdicate some of the lines on which research and devek>npieni_are tending among experimental aircraft engkjepfsGn the U.S. The two aircraft are the Jormro^^^-^psm^le-seater fighter and the Consolidated ^pralt JcOTtyfflable-wing " light air- craft ; each is a pu$J»ei: tyrA^ripk^ing an air-cooled engine buried in the fuselawMJemidyPie pilot, and with all flying controls incogporatl^ in the main supporting surface. ^ ./' Except for the presence of fixed vertical stabilising fins above and below the rear extremity of the straarfhlined nacelle, the ' XP-56, " ^ designed by Jack Northrop, famous for his originality, may be said to fall into the '' tailless '' category, elevators and lateral controls being on the wing's trailing edge. The power" unit, a Pratt and Whitney air- •cooled radial engine, is mounted within the nacelle behind the pilot's cockpit and drives a six - bladed contra - rotating pro- peller. The engine is blower - cooled, air being admitted by ducts in the leading- edge roots of the wings. This aircraft is claimed to be the first pusher type to employ contra- props (giving high thrust with balanced torque reaction), and also the first with a completely submerged air-cooled engine. It is Reported that successful flights have already been made and valuable data obtained. This design, of course, has a number of immediately obvious advantages. Its all-up weight should be comparatively low, the submerged engine and nacelle offers the minimum parasitic drag, while the wing form suggests a high life/drag ratio. As a fighter, the absence of an airscrew in front benefits armament arrangements, but a pusher airscrew, unless it can be jettisoned, suggests the desirability of some means of ejecting the pilot clear of the blades when baling-out. -x'"' The second novel type is a small two-searfer developed by William B. Stout, Consolidated Vwltee's experimental engineer, which embodies a controllable wing evolved by George Spratt, the design specialist in the corporation^ Stout Research Division at Dearborn, Michigan. This strikingly unusual little aircraft dispenses with normal elevators, ailerons and rudder, control being effected by movements of the parasol wing about two pivots, one giving a variable angle of attack and the other providing lateral and directional control. The NORTHROP XP-56 : This tailless pusher with submerged air-cooled engine and contra-prop is remarkably "clean." The apertures in the downswept wing-tips may have a control function. tail is merely a stabilising unit, having fixed horizontal and vertical surfaces except for what appears from the photograph te^be a trimming tab on the vertical fin. So far no structural details or specification has been released for publication, but it would appear (again from the photo- graph) that a horizontally opposed engine is mounted inside the fuselage behind the cabin^ait for both cooling and aspira- tion being taken in via louvres, one of which can be seen immediately behind the transparent, streamlined cabin top. In this case also, cooling is probably assisted by some form of blower Bel*w and slightly forward of the air-intake will be seen what is evidently the exhaus^ stub from the starboard cylinders, and immediately in fraaf'of this, a large inspection panel. Sine* the thrust-line of the propeller is obviously well above the level of the engine, the power unit is no doubt set at aft angle in the fuselage and the drive carried aft via a shajt and one or more universal joints, or suitable gearing, fnother feature which will be noticed is the four-wheeled jercarriage, and bearing in mmd "Bill" Stout's interest fche possibilities of the flying-flivver type of personal trans- (this project has a foot throttle) it will be apparent that if the controllable wing can be turned through go degrees to lie longi- tudinally above the fuselage, and the front pair of wheels are steer- able, then this lil aircraft could at l be driven between the local airstrip and the owner's garage—albeit at some breezy incon- venience to road-users immediately astern, un- less one includes pro- vision for declutching the airscrew and engaging an auxiliary drive to the rear wheels, i The idea of a tilting -^ wing is, of course, almost as old as flying itself. One of the earliest machines to fly with a variable in- cidence wing was the Paul Schmitt biplane exhibited at an early Paris Aero Show. The combination of lateral tilt with variable incidence was first used in the front plane of the Focke-Wulf " Ente " (tail-first) monoplane, with results fatal to Dr. Wulf who was piloting it. Just before this war an Italian inventor built a machine in which the main wing was controllable about both the transverse and longitudinal axes, but nothing more seems to have C9<fie of it. Mr. Stout, however, is quite enthusiastic about the results of the initial flight tests of his latest development. " Our little; ship flew wonderfully," he reports in a letter to Mr. Geoffrey Smith, Flight's managing editor, who saw the machine in course ^ of construction. "It is a single control job, more than fool- ^ proof, and always flies horizontally." This last remark means, of course, that when the controllable wing is banked for a turn, or its incidence changed for climbing or descending, the fuselage maintains the normal level attitude in the rolling and pitching planes. No big claims are made for the Spratt system by Consoli- dated ; indeed they state that much further' development will be necessary before it can replace the conventional method. But they envisage its eventual adoption for light aircraft. STOUT WORK ! : Faintly reminiscent of the Pou dn del, this "Convair " experimental pusher with controllable wing and four-wheeled under- carriage hints at the flying flivver idea.
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