Stuff That Never Made It - but why?

[Mossie]

The photo is the Defiant prototype mocked up as a single seater.  Bouulton Paul wanted to do it but there were more than enough Hurricanes and Spitfires when they'd done the conversion work - we really needed pilots.  Besides which, there were many people in the Air Ministry and the Air Staff who were too wedded to the turret fighter concept.  And this was after the disasters at Dunkirk with the 109s...

It was also a possible insurance in case the Hurri or Spit failed, or in case factories were bombed.  The Spitfire was close to being canceled on a number of occasions, it's mechanical complexity meant there were problems building the required numbers at first.  I often wonder what would have happened had this been the case?  Not a failure by any stretch, but maybe the Hurricane would have been developed more & not been the Spits unglamorous country cousin.  Maybe aircraft like the Defiant would have stepped up to the crease?

[sideshowbob9]

Right now I'm making an RAAF Defiant tankbuster, and a Royal Navy Swift.

Darn you to heck!!! I was gonna do those!!! 

Well actually I was gonna place a Sabre in the nose of the Defiant and the Swift was probably going to be Indian Navy but hey, there's nothing like a good grudge 

I wish people would stop knocking the Defiant.... It's a myth that it was a failure.

I believe I read somewhere that 100 Group used Defiants to great effect in decoying German nightfighters from the bomber streams and occasionally into Mossie traps!

Manchesters could have there old engines replaced

The Centaurus would work for an all-Brit solution.

How about the annular radiator Sabre, as fitted to a Tempest and a Warwick as an alternative to the Centaurus?

[Barry Krell]

Fit the Battle with a more powerful Merlin, remove all the stuff for a second crewman and fit 40mm cannons/ wing bomb racks to make an interim tank buster & GA aircraft for North Africa

Even with a more powerful Merlin, the Battle would have been a crock.  Maybe against tribesmen on the Northwest frontier, in Iraq against Rashid Ali or against the Italians in east Africa...

[Mossie]

I've sometimes wondered about putting tandem engines into the Battle, like the Bolkhovitinov Spartak.  I doubt it would have made it any better, it quite likely would have made it worse!  The Spartak had problems with engine reliability & shaft losses & they were always a hairs breadth from making it work.  It would be an interesting aircraft to follow up itself.  Basically, if I ever did model it, the tandem engine Battle would be presented as even more of a failure than the original!

Bolkhovitinov Spartak:

[McColm]

If Dassault had built the Br1150 Atlantic with four Dart engines instead of two, maybe more countries would have bought the European model rather than the P-3 Orion. The Transall C-160 could have developed a four engine rival to the C-130.
The F-23, has had better reviews than the F-22, but is yet to enter service either as an updated or follow on aircraft, once the recession has finished.
If the AEW Nimrod had the Phalcon or American suite fitted, worked out the air conditioning to cool down the computers and a all woman crew, like the Candians and sprayed it pink!!

[Sauragnmon]

I always thought the Defiant would have been a bit better if it'd had Guns somewhere up front in addition to that turret.  Give it an ability to pick a fight, instead of fully relying on the turret which can't do more than a fly-by shot against something.  With a beefier engine in it, it probably would have been a pretty good competitor for speed as well, and its firepower would have been certainly something if it had a few guns in the wings - take a full tilt slash attack against a target, if it isn't burning then, the turret guy can take a parting burst at them as well.  Hartmann's tactics would serve it well, and you don't have to risk it all in a dogfight when the angle the guy's trying to get at, he can get hit in.

XB-70 - another plane that got curtailed for no real good reason - it was an awesome aircraft, sure R&D made it expensive, but every major project has had big R&D costs.  It wouldn't be a problem if the escorts just stayed a safe distance away from the big fracking bomber and avoided getting sucked into the tip vortices.

The Shinden - aside from being too late to the party, I have to wonder why it wasn't continued after evaluation... aside from the fact it would have been a humiliation to the allied war machine to use a Japanese design...

[jcf]

To reiterate, the Defiant was a Bomber-interceptor not a fighter in the narrow sense. The concept of the
turret-fighter was that the aircraft would basically formate on its target (supposedly slower and less maneuverable) and the
turret gunner would spray at will. A high speed 'slashing' attack would be pointless with a turret-fighter. They were never
intended to engage in dogfights, however they probably would have been very effective against Zeppelins and giant Junkers
'flying wing' bombers.

The reality is that the XB-70 had little support practically from the beginning and the aircraft that were built were basically hand-built
tech demonstrators, production tooling was not built as the necessary funds were never budgeted. President Eisenhower for one never
saw the military sense of the project and was unmoved by all the whiz-bang 'we can fly Mach 3' dog-and-pony shows. In realistic terms
the XB-70 was 'canceled' as a bomber before it was built with the Air Force reducing the program to a single prototype/demonstrator in
1959. It was re-budgeted in 1960 (in what is considered, by some, as a transparently political move being as it was an election year) to
a three prototype (XB-70) and eleven service test (YB-70) aircraft program, the YB-70s were cut in the 1961 re-budgeting and airplane
number 3 was formally canceled in 1964. Tests were undertaken in 1960 to explore the possibility of low-level use, the results were
not favorable. BTW Joe Walker's F-104 was not sucked into the XB-70 by the wing-vortices, the accident report conclude that he had
most likley lost spatial reference and drifted too close to the right wingtip of the Valkyrie and that the airflow from the XB-70 only became
a factor after collision was already imminent. As to escorts, what escorts? The F-108 was canceled in 1959 and its cancellation was one
of the nails in the XB-70 coffin, anyhow the escort concept was seriously flawed as it was part of a blindered SAC conceiving of future
wars as a repeat of WWII to be fought with jets and rockets at 70,000' feet and Mach 3.  

I love the Shinden, however 'twas not a 'super' weapon and it had some design features that would have caused operational problems
(stalky gear, propensity for propeller strikes etc.) and anyhow turbo-jet powered aircraft were already in service with new and better
designs under development so why would the Allies have bothered? Canard aircraft look cool, but like airships have never quite lived
up to the claims.

[JayBee]

Canard aircraft look cool, but like airships have never quite lived
to the claims.

Pity about the Typhoon then!!

[jcf]

Pity about the Typhoon then!!

Nope, no canard.  back at ya.

[Kerrillc]

Jaybee, daft question time! WHICH Typhoon? WW2's or contemporary?

Kerrill

EDIT: I didn't clarify my thoughts sorry!

[Sauragnmon]

Yes, pity about the Eurofighter, nobody told those designers that canard aircraft don't work... and of course nobody mentioned it to Saab, who've built a few of them... Just an absolute tragedy, really.  Did anybody tell Chengdu their J-10's a complete failure because it includes canards?  How about the Israelis, their KFir was a flunk, obviously.

And of course, the W2 Shinden would have had less problems with its design, like the propeller strikes.  They Did fix the problem with the propeller though, and really the long gear might not have been as much of a problem as it seemed I'm sure, once it was actually given a chance to fly for more than 50 seconds.  It never got the chance to work out the bugs, really.

[jcf]

Depends on how one defines a 'canard' and whether it is a lifting surface or primarily a forward control surface for what is basically a tailless aircraft,
and of course it also shows up in a few cases on tailed designs as an auxiliary control surface.

The Shinden had a fixed forward surface with an elevator, the modern examples are more like the Curtiss XP-55 which had a forward mounted free-moving elevator, it was not a 'lifting' surface.

The limited procurement and service of the types mentioned are reasons to question whether or not they are truly 'successful' designs,
sure they work within the parameters of their required functions, however having a canard does not make them automatically superior
to a non-canard design.

Also one has to wonder if it is such a superior layout, where are the fleets of Russian canard aircraft? They have some three surface aircraft,
however they have no 'true canard' aircraft in service. If the canard was so great you'd think they would have all over it.

Or howabout all those canard equipped airliners taking off and landing every day? Wow, they are a sight aren't they.

My original comment was speaking to general matters of the oft trumpeted technical promise and supposed advantage, thus the allusion to
airships, and the reality that the canard remains largely a niche concept with limited applications.

[Weaver]

Well certianly in the civil market, conservatism plays a big part - look at how the propfan died, for example. You also have the example of airport infrastructure: standard boarding gates are not really set up to deal with aircraft that have sticky-out bits at the front.

In the military field, the USAF has a well-known bias against canards, and the last fully developed generation of Soviet fighters (i.e. the MiG-29/Su-27) aped the equivalent American one. In the next Soviet "generation", which didn't get put into service primarily for economic reasons, you have the MiG I1.44 with canards and the Sukhoi Berkut with canards.

[Barry Krell]

Doesn't the Chinese J10 have canards as well?  I expect that they'll be quite popular with third world dictators that the Chinese are propping up whilst they rape their countries of resources...

[jcf]

Well certianly in the civil market, conservatism plays a big part - look at how the propfan died, for example. You also have the example of airport infrastructure: standard boarding gates are not really set up to deal with aircraft that have sticky-out bits at the front.

Conservatism in the civil field, really? Ya, they were so slow to embrace all-metal construction, pressurisation,
the turbo-jet, strut-mounted turbo-jets on highly flexible wings, the turbo-fan and, of course, the Jumbo Jet.  
Yep way too conservative those boring airline folks.

Canard airliners were proposed before the development of the modern jet-way, which was first introduced in 1959,
the one has little to nothing to do with the other.

If you can prove something has a practical advantage and will make money, then the folks who control the money will
buy it. From the evidence at hand no one has been able to prove any advantage to the canard layout for an airliner. The
latest try was the Sonic Cruiser, but no one wanted to pay the cost for what was realistically a minor bump in speed.

The propfan died on the rocks of cheap oil, if prices had stayed high then it would have been pursued because it
did hold promise of conveying a practical advantage.

In the military field, the USAF has a well-known bias against canards, and the last fully developed generation of Soviet fighters (i.e. the MiG-29/Su-27) aped the equivalent American one. In the next Soviet "generation", which didn't get put into service primarily for economic reasons, you have the MiG I1.44 with canards and the Sukhoi Berkut with canards.
In the military field, the USAF has a well-known bias against canards,

So it is repeatedly claimed, do you have documentation that proves the claim?
I guess that also applies to the USN? Again with what proof?

I'm sure the Russians would love to know that they slavishly adopt whatever the USAF does.

As to the the MiG and the Berkut, from what I've read neither was truly a prototype for a next-gen anything.
Seems they were more on the lines of tech demonstrators/research projects similar to the many other TsAGi
driven projects in Russian aviation history, while they may have eventually led to a new fighter, no one can
say for sure whether or not it would have featured canards.

Personally I think canards are cool, but I wouldn't be too surprised if they eventually go the way of variable-geometry.