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Aviation History
1955
1955 - 1256.PDF
FLIGHT, 2 September 1955, HANDLEY PAGE, LTD Telephone: Gladstone 8000 Victor Throughout the past year, development of the Victor B.I four-jet bomber has gone ahead with the most encouraging success. In April this year, the Under-Secretary of State for Air flew die prototype to a height of over 50,000ft and at high Mach number. He himself made the landing, and when congratulated, remarked "The Victor does it for you." By this he had in mind the strong tendency of the Victor to trim nose-up as ground effect comes into play, thus conferring valuable self-landing characteristics. The chief test pilot of Handley Page is firmly of the opinion that any pilot can bring the Victor in gently with power on and air brakes in operation in rain or in bad visibility, and that all he need do is to correct for local air disturbances affecting lateral trim, until the wheels of the main bogie undercarriage touch down. Thereupon the nosewheel is brought on to the runway and die brakes applied. This quality of the Victor is, however, an incidental one, for the characteristic crescent wing layout was chosen —in the words of a Handley Page technician—-on performance grounds. The specification had called for long range, good load-carrying ability, high subsonic cruising speed and high cruising altitude, but none of the layouts studied was right for every application. In general, a moderately high aspect ratio was found to be required with a pronounced angle of sweep-back to give a high critical Mach number. Heavy sweep in conjunction with high aspect ratio, however, produced unfavourable pitching behaviour at the stall, and tip-stalling problems became particu- larly acute. The adoption of the crescent, then, was essentially a working compromise between two methods of overcoming the difficulties, i.e., between high sweep and low aspect ratio, and moderate sweep on a thin wing of reasonably high aspect ratio. By progressively reducing both sweep and thickness/chord ratio, a constant critical Mach number along die span was obtained. It was found that the thick wing root was suitable for stowage purposes, and the overall structure- weight penalty did not prove too great. The highly swept root, which did not stall easily, resulted in a tip-stalling problem, but this difficulty was remedied by careful design of die wing/fuselage intersection. Under high-speed stall conditions, the performance of the crescent wing showed to advantage, particularly good behaviour being apparent in high-g turns. The need to vary the sweep and thickness/chord ratio to obtain the constant critical Mach number involved much calculation and experimental work in order to determine the pressure distributions and the most suitable wing geometry, and the Royal Aircraft Establishment co-operated in the necessary high-speed tunnel tests. Stability and control characteristics under conditions of unseparated flow were little different from those of a conventional swept wing of the same average sweepback angle. The sweepback reduction at the tip of the wing, how- ever, had to be limited because of the danger of a loss of aileron effect. Nevertheless, aileron power at low speeds was an improvement over that of the straight swept wing. The Armstrong Siddeley Sapphires are installed close against the fuselage within the wing and take in air through wing-root intakes of very subtle design. The outermost panels of die wing itself have droop-snoot leading-edge flaps, each in two sections; the rearward-moving trailing edge flaps are shaped to the jet-nacelle contours; and there are large, hinged air-brake panels on the tail cone to increase drag for deceleration in flight and upon landing. The Victor has powered controls with progressive feel simulation. Internal bomb capacity is great and additional bombs may be carried in streamlined containers beneath die wings. Victor B.I Power plant ... FOOT AroutroagSkMcler Sapphire Span 110ft Length ... 114ft llin
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