Design the aircraft the Royal Navy should have had in 1968

[uk 75]

As a keen follower of various threads on what the Royal Navy should have
done about its carrier problems in the 1960s I have found that there is a hard
core of things that were virtually unavoidable:

The RN could only afford to build and operate three fleet carriers

New build ships could be no bigger than HMS Eagle and indeed HMS
Hermes size ships were a more practical proposition as long
as aircraft could be found to operate them

The Phantom was what the RN wanted as its fighter.  Ideally
it would have liked a Fighter/attacker combining the roles
of the Phantom and Buccaneer in one plane.

VSTOL and swing wing aircraft might look pretty but simple is
better. Could the UK have provided a Phantom/Buccaneer
type aircraft small enough to operate off Hermes style ships?
What should it have looked like?

If the Hawkers and BAC had not been so keen on VSTOL and
swing wings they could have built a smaller aircraft than the
Phantom with similar capabilities.  Variants of Buccaneer were
offered but I think would have been too big and heavy. 
Jaguar was too limited and only single seat. Perhaps a more
powerful version based on the two seater?

Any takers?

UK 75

[ysi_maniac]

IMO a mix between Jaguar and Phantom would be OK. There is, in fact, such thing in one of Mr Buttler's books (sorry I do not remember its Id)
I like the general scheme of Jaguar, but it could be fitted with bigger wings and bigger internal fuel capacity.
What do you think?

[nev]

Sounds like they wanted the F-18 fifteen years early......

[Zen]

Well you want to take a look at the HSA Brough P141 Next Generation Tactical Aircraft, study between 1964 to 1967.

The working shape is a sort of scaled down F4 around two M45G turbofans, a high wing and with a manufacturing approach much like SAAB's Viggen. This is rather the answer they came to after what seems to be realising the limitations of UK CVs and the costs of VG and STOVL.
Its about the right length and can accomodate the tighter wingfold needed.

The P.53 is a fixed wing version of the AFVG, circa 1968.

Earlier in 1957 we have the potential basis for a F4 competator in the form of the P1125, a twin Avon powered machine using the nose, tail and wings of the P1121. Which takes us naturaly to the P1121 itself, which with a little work could've been produced as a Naval machine, by virtue of moving the main gear into Tuplavov style pods on the wing.

There was a twin engined version of the smaller Type571 from Vickers-Supermarine.
DH's GOR339 design has a certain attraction but for the undercarridge and actualy was looked at for the RN.

Avro's 739, could possibly be scaled down to Avon/Spey sized engines and might be plausable for a Navy machine.

If you strip the VTOL elements out the P1152 its not that bad a design.

[Zen]

And now in a seperate post my own thoughts.

Take to two scaled RB106 engines as offered to EE for the P6D.
Dry thrust about 10,000lb each, reheated was quoted at 12,400lb but could perhaps be improved uppon since thats the mid50's so something closer to 14,000lb or even 15,000lb is possible.

Outer diameter of the engine nacelles was 33inches (pessamistic measurement, they came at as less and I rounded the number up). Diameter of the full scale RB106 is 37 inches, and this is described as a two thirds scale, so about 25inches diameter for the actual turbojet.

So for place them side by side, add a third diameter for a half circle of the same figure(33 inches) under the two. This will cover the nose of a maximum of 33 inches which should handle a decent dish arc of travel mechanism to get a 30 inch dish inside it, and the cockpit will have zero rearward visibility but hey this is the late 1950s and BVR rules.
Inlets are behind the rear seat canopy and have a vague A4 feel to them, but of the semi-circular with shock cone inside type (like a Mirage III or F104)
Pass the wing structure under the engines. Place the main gear wheels inside that half circular tube under the wing where a lot of systems will pass under the engines, plus some fuel. May have to place one mainwheel behind the other for a handed undercarridge, but it pays off in cross sectional area.

Fusilage Cross sectional area is less than 20ft squared.

Now add the wing of your choice.
Wing otions?
1. swept wing
2. Buccaneer style tow angle leading edge.
3. Crescent wing as in the Victor and Type 545.
4. Low angle delta (I think something like 45 degrees) as in the Saro P.177
5. Shorts aeroisoclinic wing.

[Zen]

Another thought.

There was a twin engine offering of the A7. Why not do the same with the F8?

[Weaver]

On my profiles thread I developed the idea of a UK/US joint project for an unpgraded F-8 with an afterburning Spey and a "Sea Harrierised" cockpit. Here's the RN bit; French, Coomonwealth and Joint NATO schemes can be found as well here: http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,19781.45.html


Great Britain's decision to get involved in the Vietnam War rather caught the Royal Navy off guard, and it became rapidly apparent that the FAA desperately needed a supersonic day fighter, the urgency of the requirement precluding anything other than an off-the-shelf buy. The F-8 Crusader had made a good impression during it's 1962 European sales tour and a "small carrier" version was already being developed for the French Navy, so the RN bought a quantity of F-8E(RN)s, essentially similar to the F-8E(FN), and these went on to give good service over Vietnam in subsequent years.

The RN aspired to follow the USN's lead and replace the F-8 with the F-4 Phantom, but the 1965 decision to reduce the RN's future carrier programme to just three 35,000 ton ships put paid to this ambition forever. The RN now looked to industry for another fast solution, and Hawker Siddeley, who's Brough division was now facing an early end to Buccaneer production, duly came up with one. Crusader production was also coming to an end in favour of the A-7 Corsair II, so HSA, in partnership with Vought, proposed a "Corsairized" F-8 which would also address some of the original aircraft's problems. The new machine's most conspicuous feature was a raised cockpit for better visibility, a longer nose housing a Ferranti Blue Knight multi-function radar and IR sensor complex, and a subtley enlarged fin (increased chord) compensating for the increased side area forwards. Armament was extensively revised, with a pair of 30mm ADEN cannons replaced the problematic original installation of four 20mm weapons, and it was now possible to add a second Sidewinder rail to each side, thus avoiding the use of the draggy "Y-rail". The inner pylons were plumbed for drop tanks, new outer pylons were added just inboard of the fold line, and all four wing pylons were wired for Sparrow. However the greatest change was inside, where an extensively re-worked fuselage and enlarged intake fed a Rolls Royce Spey-201 afterburning turbofan, as originally intended for the RN's Phantoms. At 20,000lb, this engine only produced some 2000lb more thrust than the original J57, but it was much lighter and burned far less fuel, thereby greatly increasing the aircraft's range.

The new aircraft, called the Palladin FG.Mk 1, saw it's first operational deployment aboard the first of the new carriers, HMS Furious, during her maiden Vietnam combat tour in 1970, and went on to achieve an impressive combat record in the last two years of the war. A decade of peace followed, until the infamous Falkland Islands incident of April 1982. Claiming to be acting on intelligence information, the accuracy of which is still disputed to this day, the British government sent all three of the Royal Navy's carrier task groups 8000 miles to the remote backwater of the Falkland Islands in the bizarre belief that Argentina was about to invade them. No such invasion took place, Britain was roundly condemed in the United Nations for "Imperialist gunboat diplomacy" and the public outcry about the enormous cost of the adventure brought about the fall of the Thatcher government in the 1983 general election. Wargamers and computer game programmers continue to be fascinated by the "What If" of FAA (Fleet Air Arm) Paladins dogfighting with FAA (Fuerza Aérea Argentia) Mirage F1s to this day....