Design Off?

[GTX]

Jim,

Welcome aboard - good to have a long time lurker finally speak up!  I'm sure someone did some profiles of the 640 a while back (but do you think I can find them!?).

Regards,

Greg

[GTX]

Jon,

Thank you for the Bel Geddes Ocean Liner pictures.  I had actually pictured it the other way around (i.e. bow where stern was and vice-versa).  Either way very nice and especially for 1932!!!  It wouldn't look out of place today.

Regards,

Greg

[Archibald]

Hello!

I was reading this awesome thread - some incredibles ideas there   - when an idea popped in my head...

remember this one ? SNECMA C-450 Coleoptere from 1959 ?
http://jpcolliat.free.fr/xfv1/xfv1-8.htm

Well it had a circular wing of 3.20 m diameter.
And I thought about something... why not lauching these aircrafts from SSBNs launch tubes  (instead of Polaris or M-4?)

Alas, SLBM diameter is only 1.40 to 2.50 m diameter... larger launch tubes ? (there's 16 to 24 tubes on a SSBN...)

[Jim Anderson]

Greg

I've seen those 640 profiles, too, but darned if I can find them. Meanwhile, here's a site everyone might enjoy:

http://www.combatreform2.com/submarineairc...aftcarriers.htm

Jim

[Mossie]

Hello!

I was reading this awesome thread - some incredibles ideas there  - when an idea popped in my head...

remember this one ? SNECMA C-450 Coleoptere from 1959 ?
http://jpcolliat.free.fr/xfv1/xfv1-8.htm

Well it had a circular wing of 3.20 m diameter.
And I thought about something... why not lauching these aircrafts from SSBNs launch tubes  (instead of Polaris or M-4?)

Alas, SLBM diameter is only 1.40 to 2.50 m diameter... larger launch tubes ? (there's 16 to 24 tubes on a SSBN...)

I've been thinking along the same lines Archie!  Lockheed plan to launch the Cormorant (thanks for the name Greg)  UCAV from missile tubes.  I'd been thinking along the lines of UCAV's because if you can get them to work from a sub, that would be the ultimate aircraft.

Here's the pic again so we don't have to go back & forth!


More up to date pic:


My thought was that the Cormorant didn't use all the space available in the tubes(about 2.2m x 14m in an Ohio/Vanguard class sub) & would be fairly limited in range & payload because of it.  I imagined something along the lines of an X-45 UAV, but with wings that folded behind it (the wings fold around the Cormorant).  The arrangement of the wings & engine would need some thought, but I worked out that an X-45A size UCAV could fit quite neatly.  2m would be plenty of width, a UCAV with an 8m long body could have 6m of wing behind it, which could fold out to a max of wingspan of 14m.  It'd be smaller than X-45B & C but would be larger thant the Cormoroant

I didn't post about it earlier becuase I'd tried to draw it - with disastrous consequences & I got myslef in all of a fluster!        

[Planeman]

Stealth flying boat fighter...


Ideal for folding up and putting in a submarine's hanger! lol.  

[Sentinel Chicken]

That looks more effective than that one that the Iranians were displaying a while back...the one that looked like it had a Weed-eater two stroke motor spot welded to a lawn chair frame on a homebuilt WIG..........

[Planeman]

That looks more effective than that one that the Iranians were displaying a while back...the one that looked like it had a Weed-eater two stroke motor spot welded to a lawn chair frame on a homebuilt WIG..........

The Iranian WIG was very much the same as a load of others, right down to the reverse-delta wing. Nothing remarkable or stealthy about it although nothing to mock either, except the OTT propoganda claims of course.


How abouts a nice tail sitting VTOL fighter instead?

[Planeman]

Here's an artist's impression of a 1950s cruiser submarine with a helicopter/seaplane hanger at the rear, and twin external above-surface-launched SSM tubes forward:


The hanger would be quite small so a upgrade would be using the hanger to stow an SA-3 SAM launcher so that the sub could act as part of the Soviet Unions' (menace factor) "Radar Picket" sub fleet.


(I actually had the Bristol Bloodhound SAM in mind but I'd already added the Russian star... )