Aircraft Designers / Manufacturers

Zipper730 · Apr 17, 2020

I was thinking about how certain aircraft designers and manufacturers seemed to design things certain ways.

Blackburn: They produced a lot of clunky designs

Fairey: A lot of their aircraft had rather boxy radiators that seemed to produce a lot of excess drag.

Seversky/Republic had a preference for radial engines in their aircraft: They also seemed one of the few American designers that employed elliptical wings in aircraft.

GregP · Apr 17, 2020

Hi Zipper,

There are a lot of aircraft that have a "family resemblance." The Planes of Fame has a Republic P-47G (razorback) and a Seversky AT-12. If you place them side by side, the family resemblance is very obvious. Once they got to monoplanes and even before, a de Havilland looks like one. To me, the Hurricane, Typhoon, Tempest, and Sea Fury are all distinctly Sydney Camm and Hawker. Yakovlevs look like Yaks, Mikoyan Gurevichs look like MiGs, and it's hard to mistake a Tupolev for anything else.

pbehn · Apr 17, 2020

And a Mk1 Mustang doesn't really look like a P-51D though they are basically the same plane.

Admiral Beez · Apr 18, 2020

Petter's Whirlwind, Wyvern, Canberra and Gnat to my eye demonstrate a consistent attention to streamlining.

His Lysander and Lightning, not so much, though not a prerequisite for the former. The Lightning's belly tank suggests that Petter omitted to design in sufficient fuel capacity.

Zipper730 · Apr 18, 2020

GregP said:
There are a lot of aircraft that have a "family resemblance." The Planes of Fame has a Republic P-47G (razorback) and a Seversky AT-12. If you place them side by side, the family resemblance is very obvious.

Of course.

Admiral Beez said:
Petter's Whirlwind, Wyvern, Canberra and Gnat to my eye demonstrate a consistent attention to streamlining

That's kind of what I was getting at. Another was Barnes Wallis who loved geodetic construction.

pbehn · Apr 18, 2020

Admiral Beez said:
Petter's Whirlwind, Wyvern, Canberra and Gnat to my eye demonstrate a consistent attention to streamlining.

View attachment 577940

View attachment 577941

His Lysander and Lightning, not so much, though not a prerequisite for the former. The Lightning's belly tank suggests that Petter omitted to design in sufficient fuel capacity.

I don't know that he designed the Lightning on his own, I think the range/endurance requirement was increased after it entered service.

Admiral Beez · Apr 18, 2020

GregP said:
To me, the Hurricane, Typhoon, Tempest, and Sea Fury are all distinctly Sydney Camm and Hawker.

Camm's distinctive style started with the Hawker Harrier, no not that Harrier, this one....

See the Nimrod and Sea Hurricane below.... clearly penned by the same designer(s).

jetcal1 · Apr 18, 2020

You see can the familial resemblance in the following aircraft:
A-20
B-26
Twin Commander
IAI Westwind (Jet Commander)
Aerostar
All designed by Ted Smith
If you follow the razorback profile on an F-5 you will see the resemblance to the razorback on a P-51 (Schmued)
There is also a bit of similarity from the F-5 lower tail section and that of an F-18 in a profile view.
A view of the P-38, P-80, XF-90, U-2, and F-104 you can follow the progression via the profiles of the nose and intakes and canopies.

Shortround6 · Apr 18, 2020

Admiral Beez said:
The Lightning's belly tank suggests that Petter omitted to design in sufficient fuel capacity.

Petter had a tendency to do that.
There is a reason that most Gnats are seen with two underwing tanks.

One story has the Gnat in contention with the Fiat G 91 for Nato light strike fighter.
One problem was the Gnats landing gear/tires were not suitable for the rough airstrip requirement, and larger tires requiring bulged landing gear doors were needed.
Petter refused to fit the larger tires and doors and Helped the G 91 win the competition.

Petter was reported to be not the easiest man to work with.

Buster01 · Apr 23, 2020

jetcal1 said:
You see can the familial resemblance in the following aircraft:
A-20
B-26
Twin Commander
IAI Westwind (Jet Commander)
Aerostar
All designed by Ted Smith
If you follow the razorback profile on an F-5 you will see the resemblance to the razorback on a P-51 (Schmued)
There is also a bit of similarity from the F-5 lower tail section and that of an F-18 in a profile view.
A view of the P-38, P-80, XF-90, U-2, and F-104 you can follow the progression via the profiles of the nose and intakes and canopies.

To say nothing of the P-38 and L-049 wing. The U-2 and F-104 share a lot of design features.

Shortround6 · Apr 23, 2020

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

A lot of designers did try to keep keep certain parts of aircraft looking the same, in part because of "family resemblance" and in part, especially in the days before commonly available wind tunnels, if a vertical fin and rudder worked pretty good on one plane, why not use it on another (with a little scaling up or down). There was a fair amount of acquired knowledge with certain shapes and doing something different, just to be different, was going to take time and effort to sort out if it wasn't as good right from the start.

wingnuts · Apr 23, 2020

pbehn said:
I don't know that he designed the Lightning on his own, I think the range/endurance requirement was increased after it entered service.

I think the Lightning originated from an experimental supersonic design, the P1, I think Petter had resigned before the Lightning was developed into a fighter

Zipper730 · May 7, 2020

Vultee was an interesting company in that most of it's designs were far from the most aerodynamically slick, but there was the XP-54 which, despite a lot of problems in its design, was actually quite sleek.

GregP · May 7, 2020

I've heard it said that a typical British 1940s - 1950s fighter, when fueled up, oiled up, and ready to launch is/was in a state of fuel emergency unless it had external tanks attached that were full and feeding correctly. The culminated in the pretty Bristol 188 below:

(http://imgur.com/IArygyE)
This neat-looking jet didn't have enough fuel to start up, take off, climb to altitude, and accelerate to high speed for more than 2 minutes. It never really WENT top speed because nobody wanted to try gliding in with that wing loading. It doesn't mean the British could not come up with a long-range fighter. It means that people have a sense of humor over the fact that they typically didn't think too much about longer ranges because the aircraft were generally expected to stay mainly over the UK in peacetime, or so it seems to a lot of people.

At the Planes of Fame, we had a former BAC Lightning pilot come through on a visit. I asked him if it really COULD go Mach 2. He looked up, scratched his chin and said, "It could go Mach 2 ... toward the fuel. If you ever got going Mach 2 pointed away from the fuel, you were never going to get back to the fuel!"

nuuumannn · May 7, 2020

The Blenheim, Beaufort and Beaufighter all have similar visual cues, particularly round the tailfeathers. The Blenheim and the Beaufort being designed by Frank Barnwell and the Beaufighter based on his latter design.

0707 Duxford Blenheim I

DD931

RD253

Heinkel was another firm whose designs had a similar look and embraced streamlining. Take a look at the He 70, He 111, He 118 and He 119. Products of Siegfried and Walter Gunther, although Walter died in 1937.

0507 RAFM He 111

nuuumannn · May 7, 2020

And then there's the Great Mario Castoldi. Need I say more...

M.39

M.67

MC.72

MC.200 side

C.202 nose

C.205

nuuumannn · May 7, 2020

The Bristol T.188 was a good looking aircraft.

1207 RAFM Cosford Bristol T.188

As was the Lightning.

1207 RAFM Cosford Lightning

wingnuts said:
I think the Lightning originated from an experimental supersonic design, the P1, I think Petter had resigned before the Lightning was developed into a fighter

Indeed it was. Compare with the Lightning above.

EE P.1

Zipper730 · Jan 15, 2021

By the way, who was the designer of the XP-54 (not the manufacturer, the person)?

fubar57 ,

GregP , P pbehn , S Shortround6 , W wuzak

pbehn · Jan 15, 2021

Zipper730 said:
By the way, who was the designer of the XP-54 (not the manufacturer, the person)?

fubar57 , GregP , P pbehn , S Shortround6 , W wuzak

No idea but I think that whoever it was he was dating an anorexic addicted to growth hormones at the time.

wuzak · Jan 16, 2021

I do not know either.

Richard Palmer, who designed the Hughes H-1, was Vice President of Vultee.

Another representative of Vultee, William Burdick, was in communication with the Experimental Engineering Branch of the Army.

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