F.124T Rocket Fighters Questions And What-if Ideas

[dy031101]

I've been rather fascinated by Britol's submission to the F.124T project...... to be more precise, the Type 178A straight-wing rocket fighter.

That thing looks sleek IMHO, a bit like an F-104 upon a quick glance.  And the design, along with the AVRO 720 and what would ultimately lead to the Saunders-Roe SR.53, lasted through the first round until being reconsidered as a research aircraft (an idea not proceeded with)...... and now I have a question.

When the specifications were altered to include an auxilliary jet, Bristol chose the Rolls-Royce Soar...... but I couldn't seem to find any mention as to where the jet engine would be mounted in the BSP book......

Does anyone know?

Thanks in advance.

[dy031101]

The wording in the BSP book sounds like that the Bristol 178 has only one...... although the tone doesn't sound concrete, either.

But given what I've seen about the Soar, I agree with you in that I do think it makes sense to have two such turbojets- the Soar is rather small and primarily meant to power cruise missiles......

I read from Wikipedia that the Soar has an engine life of two or three hours at most......which I found strange- the BSP book describes it and other types chosen by competitors as both the auxilliary engines and the "get you home" engines (which sounds to me like cruise engines of sorts)......

Would there have been a version developed specifically for the Bristol 178 that has increased engine life?

[jcf]

Do a search in the Flight archives, you'll get several results on the Rolls Royce Soar:
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/index.html

http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1956/1956%20-%200577.html

http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1955/1955%20-%201284.html

Jon