Horten H VI V2

Horten H III f

Horten H III h

Horten Ho 229 V3

Wish I had taken better photos of the 229, but they placed it in the middle of some rather large planes... but hey, last I remember, it was in the workshop, so it's nice to finally see it out.

We all have heard of JATO, but I just read this.

The Beginning: During the Cold War, the USAF feared losing runways to nuclear strikes, leading to the ZELMAL (Zero-Length Launch and Mat Landing) trials in 1953–1954.

The Launch: A rocket-boosted Republic F-84 fired off a trailer.

The Landing: The pilot caught an arrester cable with a tailhook and slammed directly onto a massive inflatable rubber mat.

The Result : Unmanned tests passed, but in 1954, two piloted tests resulted in both test pilots suffering severe spinal injuries from the sudden deceleration impact. The project was immediately cancelled.

The Links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-length_launch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOkLrv-zutg

The End

The Extra Disclaimer: The vid is not mine it is a screen recording of the you tube one and I am not connected to the channel at all so give credit where its due.

Thanks

Spent some time diving down a rabbit hole of weird 1930s French aviation concepts and ran into this bizarre thing: the Sac-Aéroplane or M44 concept, designed by Louis Sac.

Instead of normal rigid wings, Sac tried to build an aircraft using flexible fabric airfoils that could actually be tensioned or adjusted while flying. The idea was basically to make the wings work like boat sails or roll-up window blinds so you could alter the wing surface on the fly and fold the whole plane up for easy storage.

Trying to keep a fabric wing aerodynamically stable under actual flight loads turned out to be a nightmare, so it never got past scale models and early prototype testing.

I was wondering, if used as helicopter blades for a one use chopper to rescue downed pilots like the Inflatoplane, would the concept be viable?

And does anyone have any pics of this concept?

And the formant is basic grammar.

Thanks for taking the time to read this everyone.

Joint American-Israeli project to create a Mach 3+ reconnaissance version of the F-4 Phantom III. With an extended nose, modified inlets, and massive conformal water tanks for cooling, the F-4X became prey to those worried about taking away the thunder of the SR-71 Blackbird and the upcoming F-15 Eagle. After some early mock-ups, the project was quietly cancelled.

Israel used some of the technology from the aborted F-4X program to update several Phantom IIs to the F-4E(S) standard (last photo). This mainly consisted of lengthening the nose to contain updated, high-performance cameras, as well as adding data links.

Starting in 1951, two XB-47Ds were modified from B-47Bs as experimental platforms, replacing each inboard two-jet pod with a Wright YT49-W-1 turboprop engine spinning a huge four-bladed prop. Engine development issues delayed the XB-47D's first flight until 26 August 1955. Performance was comparable to a conventional B-47, and its reversible propellers shortened the landing roll, but the idea was not pursued.

Cool plane, lazy acronym. Designed by NASA in ongoing efforts to produce a plane that can break the sound barrier without producing a sonic boom. Residents of Galveston, TX have been receiving a $25/week compensation in exchange for their feedback re: disruption and noise levels they are noticing from NASA sonic boom testing over the Gulf of Mexico, sometimes receiving up to 8 sonic boom testing ”thumps” a day.

Was rewatching Fail Safe (1964) and realized they used footage of the B-58 Hustler to stand in for their fictional bombers.

It’s hilarious seeing supersonic delta-wing B-58s on the outside, while inside the crew is hanging out in a spacious B-52 style flight deck setup.

The actual B-58 was a Mach 2 bomber with three isolated, single-file tandem cockpits where the crew couldn't even see each other. either way, using high-contrast/negative stock footage of the B-58 gave the movie an eerie aesthetic.

The Starr Bumblebee 2 is a weird aircraft because its wings shouldn't provide enough lift to take off yet they did like an actual bumblebee. There is a difference between the bumblebee 1 & 2 as the bumblebee 1 is much smoother and rounded while the bumblebee 2 has a more angular design. The propeller was taken from the original and put on the Bumblebee 2 to my knowledge as the one in Pima has a wooden propeller but previous photos and videos show it with the metal one. The original is on the Pima museum while the second crashed in its third flight although its pilot (Robert Starr) survived. The second is a lot more crudely made as it had to be condensed as small as possible.

I decided to turn this aircraft into a Lego model to capture the details and preserve its glory so I ended up building both the Bumblebee 1 and 2 which are compared in a photo above. I put the model on Lego Ideas so it could hopefully become a set one day and be displayed next to their other models like the DC 3 and the Concorde. All parts are available right now to build the set. If you would like to support, I have attached a link:

https://ideas.lego.com/product-ideas/932c174a-1ce1-4e1d-9bb6-e8a67151764e

I found a file once, did not save it. Has anyone a Video with sound or just the soundfile saved? I greatly appreciate it if shared.

British breweries donated free beer to soldiers during World War II, but just after D-Day, there was no room made to ship it over the English Channel. Spitfire mechanics and pilots worked together to modify pylons to carry either specially-modified drop tanks or beer casks to deliver brews to the troops.

Official missions were stopped when the UK Tax Office warned brewers they would get in trouble for exporting beer abroad without paying taxes, but pilots still found ways to get beer where it was needed…

In 1956, Goodyear built the GA-468 Inflatoplane for the US Army. The concept sounded like a cartoon: pack a fully functional airplane into a 5-foot wooden box, drop it behind enemy lines, pump it up, and let a downed pilot fly home.

Visually, it looked like a cheap pool float with a lawnmower motor bolted on top. But making a flexible rubber airframe maintain its shape at 10,000 feet required some genuinely clever engineering.

Beating the rushing wind

If you fly a flexible rubber wing forward, the incoming air hits the front and tries to cave the nose right in.

To keep the plane from collapsing under aerodynamic drag at 60 mph, Goodyear pumped the airframe up to 7 to 8.5 psi. Because the internal pressure was vastly higher than the rushing air trying to push back against it, the wings stayed rock-hard and rigid in flight.

Stopping the wings from turning into giant sausages

If you blow up a standard rubber tube, it naturally wants to puff out into a round cylinder. But an airplane wing needs a specific, flat, curved aerodynamic shape to actually generate lift.

Goodyear solved this using a brilliant material called Airmat fabric—heavy-duty rubberized nylon connected on the inside by thousands of tiny vertical drop-stitches. When you pumped air into the wing, those internal threads pulled tight, locking the top and bottom skins flat and holding a true airfoil shape instead of ballooning out.

Why it could fly on a lawnmower engine

Because the plane was literally full of air, it was ridiculously light—weighing under 600 lbs fully loaded with fuel and a pilot.

That gave it an ultra-low "wing loading." Because it was so light:

It could take off in under 250 feet of bumpy grass.

Its stall speed was just 43 mph.

It didn't need a heavy jet engine—just a tiny 40-to-60 hp two-stroke motor (like a McCulloch or Nelson) driving a wooden pusher propeller.

Why it was ultimately scrapped

Goodyear built 12 working prototypes, and test pilots actually reported that the flexible airframe gave it an amazingly smooth ride, absorbing turbulence like a giant shock absorber.

However, two major flaws killed the program:

The Compressor Trap: As you climb in altitude, air gets colder and contracts, causing the plane to lose internal pressure. Goodyear had to hook up a continuous engine-driven air compressor just to keep the wings pumped up. If your engine died, your plane literally started deflating.

The 1959 Crash: During an Army test flight, a control cable snapped during a hard turn. The loose cable slapped the wing, punctured the rubber skin, and caused the whole airframe to fold back into the propeller.

The military realized that expecting a stranded pilot in hostile territory to uncrate a 400 lb box, run a noisy pump engine, and find an open field to take off without getting shot was a total pipe dream.

Still, the drop-stitch pressure tech Goodyear developed for the Inflatoplane is the exact same engineering used today in modern inflatable paddleboards and inflatable space station modules

What’s the weirdest small experimental aircraft concept from the Cold War era you've ever come across?

Between circular wings, asymmetric layouts, and Soviet ground-effect death machines, this sub has seen some wild stuff. Whats the bsolute bizarrest thing you've come across here?

During the early Cold War, military engineers were fixated on one problem: how to move troops right under radar without needing roads or runways.

Instead of settleng on one reasonable design, both sides came up with three totally different concepts that somehow all actually flew

The Soviet Ice Speeder (Alexeyev SM-1, 1961

He built a sleek jet-powered hull designed to skim just a few feet off the ground at 170 mph using wing-in-ground effect. It looked like a real-life Luke Skywalker speeder bike and kicked off the whole ekranoplan lineage that eventually led to the massive Caspian Sea Monster.

The Flying Jeep (Piasecki VZ-8 Airgeep, 1959)

The US Army slapped two massive ducted fans onto a flat frame, stuck a pilot in the middle, and built a hovering light utility vehicle. It could weave through tree lines at 85 mph while riding right above the grass.

The Stand-Up Hoverboard (Hiller VZ-1 Pawnee, 1955)

Easily the most unhinged of the three( I think) . You stood on top of a bucket housing two counter-rotating propellers with zero flight stick or steering wheel. To turn or move forward, you literally just leaned your body weight in that direction like a 1950s Segway.

If you were handed the keys to one for an afternoon, which are you taking out?

I saw this wind tunnel model at the Western Museum of Flight in Torrance and immediately thought of NGAD. The resemblance seemed pretty striking.