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Aviation History
1950
1950 - 0169.PDF
FLIGHT, 26 January 1950 North-American FJ-I Fury naval fighter (General Electric J-35). cockpit is located well forward, and generally allows an excellent field of view for take-off, landing, climbing and fighting. Whereas the later types of piston-engined fighters afforded a downward view of, say, 5 deg, over the nose, an angle of 17 deg is now attainable. The cockpit is, of coarse, pressurized, and may be automatically air- conditioned, and the seats on all the newest types can be ejected to enable the pilot to escape at speeds of over 500 m.p.h. There is a strong opinion in some quarters that in a two-seater night-and-all-weather fighter a side- by-side or staggered seating arrangement is greatly superior, from an operational standpoint, to a tandem lay- out, though it may be noted that in the Northrop Scorpion and Avro Canada CF-100 the pilot and radar operator have tandem seats. In the latest form of Martin-Baker ejector seat the pilot's parachute, stowed in the seat chassis, is opened auto- matically, even though the pilot may be rendered un- conscious after leaving the aircraft. So long as the face blind is pulled down, safe ejection is assured. On ejection, a time switch is triggered for a period of six to nine seconds, after which a drogue parachute is released from the seat and automatically pulls out the pilot's 28ft canopy, simultaneously releasing him from his seat harness. The time switch is barostatically controlled so that, although ejection may take place at any height, the switch will not operate until the seated pilot has fallen to 10,000ft, at which point separation occurs. Emergency exit is normally made upwards.but on the Douglas Skyknight, which has an abnormally tall fin, there is an escape chute extending from the cockpit to the fuse- lage underside. The first aircraft with a self-contained jettisonable fuselage section, embodying the cockpit (this so-called "capsule" feature may~-become common on fighters), is the Douglas Skyrocket high-speed research machine. ~^ Whereas a conventionally seated pilot can withstand only about 5g without blacking out, the prone position may allow him to tolerate i2g, and accelerations of this order have already been recorded with a "live" test rig. Con- Grumman Panther naval fighter jettisoning fuel from tip tanks. comitant benefits are reduction of fuselage drag, elimina- tion of the conventional cockpit canopy, and lessening of the fatigue danger. An American prone position "bed" is of nylon netting, arranged to conform to body contours and having an adjustable abdominal support. There is a padded jaw-rest, likewise adjustable, and a counter- weighted support to relieve neck-strain. After tests in the nose of a converted Fortress bomber, this type of position will be applied to a Lockheed Shooting Star. Although the armament and other military equipment has not yet been discussed, some idea may have been conveyed of the extent to which the power plant and crew provision may occupy fuselage space. In general it is difficult to house the retracted undercarriage in the fuse- lage, but the Swedish SAAB J-29 has a body of large cross- section, which serves not only to house the wheels but is used for the attachment of the undercarriage. Tyre width and wheel diameter are major considerations for convenience of wing stowage, and American designers are turning increasingly to high-pressure tyres and multiple- wheel units, exemplified in the Republic XF-91, with its small tandem wheels retracting outwards into the wing tips. Duplication of wheels is, of course, a valuable safety feature. In certain instances high-pressure tyres are fitted for operation from normal airfields and runways, and low- pressure tyres, with special fairings, for rough-surface work. Only two types of jet fighter—the Supermarine Attacker and 510—have a tail-down undercarriage, and their makers express themselves well pleased with the weight-saving thereby effected. The possibilities of jettisonable wheels, used in conjunc- tion with a landing skid, were demonstrated by the war- time Me 163 rocket-powered intercepter, and a landing skid is also a feature of the McDonnell XF-85 air-launched " parasite " fighter, stowed semi-intemally in the bomb bay -of. a B-29 or B-36 bomber. The pilot of the XF-85 having faded to~€ii£age with a trapeze lowered from the parent bomber, he was twice obliged, during early tests, to set the tiny fighter dowa on its skid at a speed in the neighbour hood of 170 m.p.h. A single-jet Hawker Sea Hawk (left) is shown with folded wings for comparison with a twin-jet McDonnell Banshee.
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