Oddball, Experimental, or One-off

[red750]

Mistel (German for "mistletoe", a parasitic plant) was the larger, unmanned component of a composite aircraft configuration developed in Germany during the later stages of World War II. The composite comprised a small piloted control aircraft mounted above a large explosives-carrying drone, the Mistel, and as a whole was referred to as the Huckepack ("Piggyback"), also known as the Beethoven-Gerät ("Beethoven Device") or Vati und Sohn ("Daddy and Son").

 

The most successful of these used a modified Junkers Ju 88 bomber as the Mistel, with the entire nose-located crew compartment replaced by a specially designed nose filled with a large load of explosives, formed into a shaped charge. The upper component was a fighter aircraft, joined to the Mistel by struts. The combination would be flown to its target by a pilot in the fighter; then the unmanned bomber was released to hit its target and explode, leaving the fighter free to return to base. The first such composite aircraft flew in July 1943 and was promising enough to begin a programme by Luftwaffe test unit KG 200, code-named "Beethoven", eventually entering operational service.

 

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The Advanced Attack Helicopter project was a US Army project from 1972. The Boeing-Vertol 235 was one of the proposed designs for the project. The picture is of the 235 mock-up; the farthest this design ever got. At the end of the the AAH project, the Army chose the Hughes YAH-64, now known as the AH-64 Apache. Hell, I’d choose the Apache over this thing as well.

 

The Boeing-Vertol 235 is noticeably asymmetrical. It looks like a helicopter version of Two Face. Or it had a stroke. Information is sparse.

 

[facthunter]

Based on how it looks? That's the least of a helicopter's problems.    Nev

[kgwilson]

Good grief, what on earth is the purpose of that. Sure does look like it had a stroke or the designer had one.

[facthunter]

Maybe good side vision?  Nev

[skippydiesel]

One side! - must be the only side an attack may come from.

[red750]

The Dornier Do 29 was an experimental aircraft developed by Dornier Flugzeugwerke and the Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt (German Aviation Laboratory) in the 1950s, used to test a tilting-propeller system for short takeoff and landing (STOL) aircraft. The concept was proved successful in flight testing; however, no further development of the system or aircraft was proceeded with, and at the conclusion of its test program the Do 29 was retired.

 

Two examples of the Do 29 were constructed, while a third was planned but not built, with the first prototype flying on 12 December 1958. In the following flight testing, the propeller system was not rotated further than 60 degrees as opposed to its nominal 90 degree capability,
but the aircraft proved to be highly successful, with a stalling speed of 24 kilometres per hour (15 mph) and exceptional short-field performance.

 

Despite this, however, the tilting-propeller system was not further pursued after the end of the flight test program.

 

[facthunter]

I'm assuming the helicopter is flown from the RH side.     Nev

[red750]

As the copied text says, information is sparse.

[spacesailor]

Or 

A very small pilot . LoL

spacesailor

[red750]

The Junkers Ju 287 was a multi-engine tactical jet bomber built in Nazi Germany in 1944. It featured a novel forward-swept wing, and the first two prototypes (which were aerodynamic testbeds for the production Ju 287) were among the very few jet propelled aircraft ever built with fixed landing gear.

 

The Junkers factory in Dessau was overrun by the Red Army in late April 1945. Before long, the Junkers Ju 287 V2 had been almost completed, waiting for its engines to be fitted, and construction of the V3 had reached 80-90 percent completion, while the V4 was reportedly 60 percent complete. Both V1 and V2 were destroyed by the personnel at the Luftwaffe test base in Brandis to avoid capture by Allied forces. Wocke and his staff were captured by the Red Army and taken to the Soviet Union, and remnants of V2, especially the wings, were used in construction of the EF 131 which was flown on 23 May 1947, but by that time, jet development had already overtaken the Ju 287. A final much-enlarged derivative, the EF 140, was tested in prototype form in 1949 but soon abandoned.

 

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The Gloster F.5/34 was a British fighter of the 1930s. It was a single-seat, single-engine monoplane of all-metal cantilever construction; the undercarriage was of the tailwheel type with retractable main wheels.

 

The aircraft was developed for Air Ministry Specification F.5/34, a fighter armed with eight machine guns and an air-cooled engine that was well-suited to operations in the tropics. The Gloster design was overtaken by more capable competitors and the specification was later abandoned, with none of the aircraft designs produced for it selected for entry into service. Only 2 produced.

 

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The Douglas F5D Skylancer is a development of the F4D Skyray jet fighter for the United States Navy. Starting out as the F4D-2N, an all-weather version of the Skyray, the design was soon modified to take full advantage of the extra thrust of the Pratt & Whitney J57 eventually fitted to the Skyray instead of the Westinghouse J40 originally planned.

 

Soon the design became too different from the Skyray to be considered just a variation of it, and the aircraft was assigned a new designation as the F5D Skylancer. Almost every part of the airframe was modified, though the basic form remained the same as did the wing shape, though it became much thinner. The wing skinning was reinforced, correcting a problem found in the F4D. The fuselage was 8 ft (2.4 m) longer and area ruled to reduce transonic drag, being thinner in the region of the wing roots. Everything was shaped to reduce drag and increase stability at high speed.

 

Although the four 20 mm (.79 in) cannon in the wing roots were retained, primary armament was to be missiles or rockets; four AIM-9 Sidewinders or two AIM-7 Sparrows, and/or a battery of spin-stabilized unguided 2 in (51 mm) rockets.

 

Nine test airframes were ordered, with a 51-aircraft production order to follow, but only four were produced. Production aircraft were to be powered by the more powerful J57-P-14 engine, while there was a rejected proposal to use the even more powerful General Electric J79 and variable-geometry inlets in Mach 2 version.

 

 

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The Armstrong Whitworth A.W.52 was an early flying wing aircraft designed and produced by British aircraft manufacturer Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft.

 

The A.W.52 emerged from wartime research into the laminar flow airfoil, which indicated that, in combination with the flying wing configuration, such an aircraft could be dramatically more efficient than traditional designs. It was pursued to gather data and experience with the configuration in support of Armstrong Whitworth's ambitions to develop its proposed flying wing jet airliner. Construction of the A.W.52 commenced during the late 1940s; a total of three aircraft, the A.W.52G glider and two jet-powered aircraft, were constructed for the research programme.

 

On 13 November 1947, the A.W.52 performed its maiden flight. On 30 May 1949, during a test flight, the first prototype encountered severe pitch oscillation that motivated its test pilot, John Oliver Lancaster, to eject from the aircraft; the incident was the first occasion of a genuine emergency ejection by a British pilot. The first prototype recovered and descended to the ground relatively undamaged. Shortly thereafter, Armstrong Whitworth decided to terminate all development work, having lost confidence in the configuration's practicality and the envisioned flying wing airliner that the A.W.52 was intended to lead to. Despite the termination, the second prototype remained flying with the Royal Aircraft Establishment until 1954.

 

[red750]

The RRG Delta I was a German experimental tailless aircraft flown in the early 1930s first as a glider and then powered. It was one of the first delta wing aircraft.

 
The first tailless aircraft that Alexander Lippisch saw was the Weltensegler glider, which flew briefly at the second Rhön contest in 1921. He was impressed by its initial stability, though a turn led to an uncontrolled spiral dive followed by breakup and the death of its pilot. In response he built several models and also designed the full size but disappointing Espenlaub E 2. After some time designing more conventional types and becoming Technical Head of the RRG in 1925 he returned to the tailless glider layout. in 1927. He began in 1927 with the RRG Storch, which was rather like the Espenlaub and was progressively modified. All of these aircraft had wings with sweep on both leading and trailing edges. In 1930 his first design with a straight, unswept trailing edge flew; he named it the Delta I. 

Its straight leading edge was swept at 20°. Following the standard practice of the time the wing had a single spar, with plywood covering ahead of it, forming a torsion resistant D-box. There were diagonal internal struts close to the wing roots and further ply skin strengthened these areas. The rest of the wing was fabric covered. The thickness was decreased markedly by the upward slope of the underside, providing dihedral. The Delta's trailing edge was equally divided between outboard ailerons and inboard elevators. As on the Storch, the wing tips were cropped and carried small, roughly triangular, ply-covered fins mounting longer, rounded rectangular, fabric covered rudders. The inner surfaces of the fins and rudders were cambered as a conventional tail rudder would be but the outer surfaces were flat. The rudders operated independently, each with its own foot pedal. To turn to port, for example, the pilot would press only the lefthand pedal to swing its rudder outwards where it acted more like an airbrake, turning the glider to port with its drag. 

The fuselage of the original glider was a simple, oval-section, ply-covered nacelle. Its pilot sat in an enclosed cockpit under the wing, with a transparency in the wing edge ahead and another above. A pair of smaller windows on each side provided landing views. Landings were made on a nearly nacelle-length sprung skid. There was a second cockpit at about mid-chord with another transparency above it and a pair of windows on each side. The fuselage tapered to an angled vertical knife-edge. Only one example was built.

 

[red750]

The Ikarus 451 is a family of research aircraft designs built in Yugoslavia in the 1950s, all sharing the same basic airframe, but differing in powerplants and cockpit arrangements. One member of the family Ikarus 451M became the first domestically-built jet aircraft to fly in Yugoslavia, on 25 October 1952.

 

Variants

 

232 Pionir
A small twin-engined prone-pilot research aircraft, powered by 2x 48 kW (65 hp) Walter Mikron III piston engines. (1 built)
S-451
A larger, more powerful version of the Pionir, powered by 2x 120 kW (160 hp) Walter Minor 6-III piston engines and also incorporating a prone pilot cockpit. (1 built)
S-451M
(Mlazni – Jet) Derived directly from the S-451 airframe, the S-451M substituted Turbomeca Palas turbojet engines for the piston engines, in underslung nacelles at the same positions on the wing and conventional cockpit.
S-451M Zolja
(Zolja – Wasp) Flown in 1954, the S-451M Zolja featured a stretched fuselage, folding wings, and engine nacelles centred on the wing chordline. Powered by 2x 1.57 kN (353 lbf) Turbomeca Palas 056A turbojet engines, the S-451M was used to set a world speed record in its class in 1960.

Ikarus J-451MM Stršljen II from 1956 (J-451MM Hornet) on display at the Museum of Aviation
J-451MM Stršljen
(J – Jurisnik – close support) (Stršljen – Hornet)The intended production close support version with tricycle undercarriage, Turbomeca Marbore engines and cannon armament. (1 built).
S-451MM Matica
(Matica – Queen bee) Two-seat trainer version, used for a world speed record in 1957.
T-451MM Stršljen II
A single seat aerobatic trainer, fitted with more ammunition and maximum ordnance weight was slightly increased.

 

No member of the family was produced in any number. 

 

For more details on the design and development of the models, click here.  For more photos of the various models, click here.

 

[skippydiesel]

Photos can be deceptive - "S-451M Zolja" ? the little twin engined jet looks about the size of a larger homebuilt

[red750]

The Fisher P-75 Eagle was an American fighter aircraft designed by the Fisher Body Division of General Motors. Development started in September 1942 in response to United States Army Air Forces requirement for a fighter possessing an extremely high rate of climb, using the most powerful liquid-cooled engine then available, the Allison V-3420. The program was cancelled after only 14 prototypes and production aircraft had been completed, as it was no longer required in its original role, could not be quickly deployed, and possessed no significant advantages over aircraft already in production.

 

 

 

[red750]

The Wittemann-Lewis NBL-1 "Barling Bomber" was an experimental long-range, heavy bomber built for the United States Army Air Service in the early 1920s. Although unsuccessful, it was an early attempt at creating a strategic bomber.

 

Development of the XNBL-1 (Experimental Night Bomber, Long Range) Barling Bomber is generally attributed (the press called it "Mitchell's Folly") to William "Billy" Mitchell, a U.S.Army Air Service General and most vocal advocate of strategic airpower, who in 1919 discovered Walter H. Barling, who had previously worked for the Royal Aircraft Factory. Mitchell asked Barling to design a bomber capable of carrying enough bombs to sink a battleship. Mitchell's goal was to demonstrate the effectiveness of airpower by sinking a battleship from the air, and needed a large, strategic bomber in order to accomplish this feat. Mitchell projected the cost of two prototype bombers at $375,000. On 15 May 1920, the Army Engineering Division sought bids for the construction of a bomber based on Barling's sketches, with the requirement that it be capable of carrying a 5,000 lb (2,300 kg) bomb load, to an altitude of 10,000 ft (3,000 m) at a speed of no less than 100 mph (160 km/h). Only one built.

 

 

 

[red750]

The VL Humu (Whirlwind) is a Finnish fighter aircraft, designed by Valtion lentokonetehdas in 1944, and based on the American Brewster F2A Buffalo.

 

The Finnish Air Force had acquired 40+ surplus B-239 naval variants of the Brewster Buffalo and put them to good use during the Winter War, so it was decided in 1942 to produce a copy due to aircraft shortages. Chief designer Martti Vainio, along with designers Torsti Verkkola, Arvo Ylinen at Valtion Lentokonetehdas were tasked with designing the new aircraft as well as a replacement wing made of wood instead of metal.

 

The Humu was largely constructed out of wood due to scarcity of metals, but the frame was made from steel and its design followed closely that of the Brewster. It was planned that captured Soviet engines and instrument panels would be used. It was powered by a 930hp Shvetsov M-63 engine, previously tested on a Brewster. The wooden wing added 250 kg of extra weight and moving the fuels tanks from the wing to the aft fuselage adversely affected maneuverability due to the center of gravity being shifted.

 

The first flight took place on 8 August 1944. Later flight testing gave a total flight time of 19 hours and 50 minutes. The aircraft was 250 kg (551 lb) heavier than calculated, its engine was underpowered, and it was felt that the fighter would not be able to compete against enemy aircraft. The end of the Continuation War in September 1944, combined with the aircraft's poor performance, however, put the end to the project. Only one was built.

 

[red750]

The RFB X-114 was a ground-effect craft, designed chiefly to operate over water but capable of flight at higher altitudes where required, carrying five or six passengers or freight along coasts and capable of surveillance duties. One was evaluated by the German military in the late 1970s, but no orders followed.

 

The RFB X-114 Aerofoil Craft was an experimental ground-effect vehicle intended to work over water, with the ability to fly out of ground effect when required. It was the last of three such aircraft designed by Alexander Lippisch in the 1960s and early 1970s. The low powered, two-seat proof of concept Collins X-112 was followed by the RFB X-113, structurally and aerodynamically refined, but still low- powered. The much larger X-114 seated six or seven and had a 149 kW (200 hp) engine.

 

All three were inverse delta aircraft, that is, they had a wing that was triangular in plan, but with a straight, unswept leading edge. Combined with strong anhedral, this layout produces stable flight in ground effect. Specifically, it is claimed that it is stable in pitch and also that it can fly in ground effect at altitudes up to about 50% of its span, allowing it to operate over rough water. This contrasts with the lower aspect ratio square wing of the Ekranoplans, which leaves ground effect at only 10% of span, limiting them to the calmer waters of lakes and rivers.

 

[red750]

The Heinkel He 280 was an early turbojet-powered fighter aircraft designed and produced by the German aircraft manufacturer Heinkel. It was the first jet fighter to fly in the world.

 

The He 280 harnessed the progress made by Hans von Ohain's novel gas turbine propulsion and by Ernst Heinkel's work on the He 178, the first jet-powered aircraft in the world. Heinkel placed great emphasis on research into high-speed flight and on the value of the jet engine; after the He 178 had met with indifference from the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM) (the German Reich Aviation Ministry), the company opted to start work on producing a jet fighter during late 1939. Incorporating a pair of turbojets, for greater thrust, these were installed in a mid-wing position. It also had a then-uncommon tricycle undercarriage while the design of the fuselage was largely conventional. A total of 9 units were produced.

 

For more details, click here.

[red750]

The McDonnell XP-67 "Bat" or "Moonbat" was a prototype for a twin-engine, long-range, single-seat interceptor aircraft for the United States Army Air Forces. Although the design was conceptually advanced, it was beset by numerous problems and never approached its anticipated level of performance. The project was cancelled after the sole completed prototype was destroyed by an engine fire.

 

[red750]

The Boulton Paul P.111 is an experimental aircraft designed and produced by the British aircraft manufacturer Boulton Paul. It was amongst the first aircraft designed to explore the characteristics of the tailless delta wing configuration.

 

The development of the P.111 came as a response to the release of Specification E.27/46 by the Air Ministry shortly after the conclusion of the Second World War. To internally accommodate its Rolls-Royce Nene turbojet propulsion, a relatively broad fuselage was necessitated, giving it an unorthodox appearance. The wing featured removable wing tips that could be swapped to produce different wing shapes, a feature deemed to be highly desirable for the aerodynamic investigations it was built to perform. Other novel features beyond the wing included a Martin-Baker-built ejection seat and an early fully-powered flight control system. The P.111 performed its maiden flight on 10 October 1950.

 

Only one prototype built. More details here.

 

[red750]

The General Aircraft ST-18 Croydon was a 1930s British cabin monoplane built by General Aircraft Limited.

 

Following the mixed success of the earlier Monospar family of aircraft, the company designed a ten-seat light transport, the ST-18 (later named Croydon). Due to the longer-span wing, it was not a cantilever monospar wing but had to be fitted with bracing struts. The ST-18 was a low-wing monoplane, with a conventional tail unit and tailwheel landing gear, and hydraulically retractable main gear. It was powered by two Pratt & Whitney Wasp Junior radial engines mounted on the wing leading edges. It had a crew of three, and a cabin for ten passengers, a toilet and baggage compartment.

 

On 16 November 1935, the sole aircraft (T22, later G-AECB) first flew at Hanworth Aerodrome, piloted by Harry M. Schofield. It performed well, but did not attract any orders, so the aircraft was prepared to establish a record for an Australia to England flight. On 30 July 1936, Lord Sempill, Harold "Tim" Wood, and two other crew left Croydon Airport for Australia. On 7 October 1936, during the return flight from Darwin, navigation errors occurred during the flight over the Timor Sea, and the aircraft made a successful forced landing on a coral reef (Seringapatam Reef). The crew members were immediately transported off the reef by local fishermen, and the aircraft was abandoned.