USN Blimp Replacement?

Sidebar:
I was fortunate to know Ed Heinemann pretty well. Among others of course he designed the SBD, A-20, A-26, A-1, A-3, A-4 and some record-setting X jobs.
He was really proud of the A-3, which his Douglas crew brought in at about 70k lbs v. the USN spec for 100k
BUT
He was proudest of his
Blimp.
Say whaaaat?
Yup, turned out that Douglas beat Goodyear for the last LTA contract, which then was canceled.

Th really impressive one to me is the A-4. It was envisioned as a twin carrier based bomber rather like the AJ Savage. Heinemann managed to convince the Navy he could beat all the specs with a single engine jet. I am amazed that the USN accepted such a radical change from their concept.

And I read that he had a student engineer figuring out which airfoil to use for the A-4. After not hearing anything from the kid for a while he went to see what was going on. The student had produced reams of wind tunnel data on a variety of airfoil sections, trying to figure out which one was optimum. Heinemann said "Let me show you something." He cut a piece of plywood into a delta shape, sanded the leading edge to make it more rounded off and had the student run it in the wind tunnel.

He asked, "Now, how much difference is there in that plywood and the best airfoil you have found?"

"Not much at all." the kid ruefully admitted.

USN Blimp replacement... was the P-3. A damn good airplane.

We've got Huthis shooting down drones off'n Yemen on a semi-regular basis. What mission do these drone have that they may avoid casualties like this? If we're talking drug-interdiction, sure. Over a hostile AA environment? Probably have some issues.

Barrett said:

Sidebar:
I was fortunate to know Ed Heinemann pretty well. Among others of course he designed the SBD, A-20, A-26, A-1, A-3, A-4 and some record-setting X jobs.
He was really proud of the A-3, which his Douglas crew brought in at about 70k lbs v. the USN spec for 100k
BUT
He was proudest of his
Blimp.
Say whaaaat?
Yup, turned out that Douglas beat Goodyear for the last LTA contract, which then was canceled.

Click to expand...

How about that. Always a fan of Heinemann's Hot Rod. I knew of most his creations. I NEVER knew he designed a blimp. Any sketches of it available?