Update for "The end of Forked Ghosts"

[Tophe]

I have found again 2 old forgotten drawings of mine, dated 1998...

- The first was a provisionary drawing of the Westland E5/42 (before Tony Buttler revealed its actual layout): all that I knew was "jet twin-boomer looking like a Vampire while different". So I based my drawing on a Westland Wyvern and imagined a simpler nose intake + booms connected on the fuselage rather than on the wing, to be more solid perhaps at high speed.
- The second was a Zwilling version of the Focke Wulf JP.011: the JP.011 was mentioned in "German Jet Genesis" as a jet twin-boomer while Justo Miranda presented it as non twin-boom at all. I thought: maybe a Zwilling version could have been called twin-boom...
I did not included these hypothesis in my (first) Forked Ghosts book at last, I was not what-ifing enough yet to present simple hypothesis...

[Tophe]

I present the latter as XP-68B (B for Belly, of course).

A friend of mine has wished a belly view of the XP-68Belly... Here is it:

[Tophe]

Correction: my drawing was almost all wrong, only half turned and completely impossible, even for what-ifers...

[Tophe]

Removing the arrows of explanation, the clean result is this:

[Tophe]

A friend did not understand the drawing above, asking where the plane is going from us. The answer was: imagine you are a pilot in another plane, the XP-68B flies above you, in front of you, on your left. OK?

Another friend sent me the drawing below, dated 1942. Jo Kotula was an artist, working to illustrate magazines (as Flying). Here, the thrilling subject "transports of the future" was illustrated by 4 planes, including a flying-wing and a twin-boomer, both having pusher propellers. This Burnelli-like design is probably not an industrial project, but in my collection of unreal twin-boomers 1939-45, it stands among the "dreams of those years", without what-ifing of nowadays mixing kits of old planes - it is not better or worse, according to me, it is simply different. And pleasant as well

[Tophe]

A friend of mine has told me the Kotula "Transport to come, 1942" looked a lot like the XCG-16 glider. Well, maybe (or what if...) this Kotula artist told himself: as the Bowlus MC-1 is a half-scale XCG-16, maybe this one is a half-scale Transport to come...
Adding a personal touch to reach the art status.
Below is the basis – with 6 engines to fly without need for a very huge glider tug, and 2 fins for balance.

[Tophe]

I had thought this single-engined P-38 with nose propeller (at http://www.controllineplans.com/frameset2.htm ) was a dreamy toy of nowadays.
Wrong ! Thanks to a friend, I was informed of such a twin-boom project 1941 from Lockheed-California : L-131, a Lightning derivative with a double nose propeller (see below) ^_^ ... This would have been a 2-seat fighter powered by a Tornado engine, weighing 20,000 pounds at take-off and reaching 416mph B) . It was alas cancelled together with the Tornado engine, preventing its coming to us as a plastic kit .
The source is the AAHS Journal Spring 1999, article "The Lockheeds that never were. Part 1". I will present 3 other twin-boom 1940-45 discoveries from there, in the days to come. Great source!

PS. I don't know why this airplane has been designed as a twin-boomer, rather than a simple Bf-110-like twin-fin normal design... probably just as P-38 derivative, using available parts rather than new tools with delay and extra cost.  

[Brian da Basher]

Wow Trophe! That's some excellent stuff! Reminds me of something that was suggested in a chatroom I was in earlier....just take a YB-48 flying wing kit and get the right livery and...

Brian da Basher

P.S. Oh wait...no twin tail on this...but I'm sure you wouldn't mind adding one Trophe.    

[Tophe]

Dear Brian, how did you guess that I was going to present an airfoil fuselage twin-boomer??? This is the Lockheed L-145 project of early 1944, in its L-145-8 version. It was a commercial transport, feederliner type, for 34 passengers, with a rear door (thanks to the twin-boom layout).
[still coming from the American Aviation Historical Society Journal, Spring 1999]

Note the booms not linking the tail to the wing, a very rare feature on twin-boom airplanes (even if it is common on twin-boom helicopters and autogiros)...

[Tophe]

And here is another semi-flying fuselage Lockheed project: L-147-5 of late 1944. Also a small commercial transport, but 3-engined and push-pull, for 16 passengers. Note the VERY rare feature of both a pusher propeller AND a rear door, 2 good reasons ro be a twin-boomer, all at once!

[Tophe]

Last one from AAHS Journal Spring 1999 (as far as unknown twin-boom projects are concerned...) is the Lockheed L-130 No.1 of 1941, long range bomber. Range = 8,160 miles, maximum speed = 380 mph, take-off weight 250,000 pounds, 6 engines of 3,000 hp driving 2 double pusher propellers.

[Tophe]

I imagine a preliminary L-130 variant (L-130 No.0?) having a very good reason to be twin-boom: 2 pusher (double) propellers close to one another, with minimum asymmetry if one group has to be stopped – there is no room aft for the central pod to carry the tail so the tail is supported by wing-booms. Perfectly logical, as much as a more classical single pusher-propeller.
Later, engineers realised that the rear post should not fire the plane's own propellers, so the central pod was lengthened a little, aft of the propellers (moved externally), and not to include a long corridor or separate pressurised cabins, the pod was not lengthened up to a fuselage carrying the tail, thus the twin-tail-boom layout remained. What if this was the explanation of No.1 twin-booming?
Anyway, both No.0 and No.1 are nice designs   for modellers able to scratchbuild that much (I cannot alas )...

[Tophe]

Found this on the Web (at http://www.popularmechanics.com/albums ), thanks to a friend. I am not sure but it seems to be a twin-hull twin-tail parasol-wing flying boat. With maybe 4 push-pull groups of engines. And this is dated February 1940, as journalists' dream at least, maybe from an earlier US patent (1939?) or as a possible future... that would not be, alas.

[Tophe]

And from the same site, a peculiar cargo plane, like a 4-engined big Packet dated 1944, years before the Argosy... I have a 1/72 C-119 kit in stock, maybe I could try...

[Tophe]

In the very nice new book "Les voitures volantes" (flying cars) by Patrick Gyger, the twin-boom Boggs air car with pusher propeller is mentioned as 2 versions :
- the Airmaster project of 1946-47 with rounded fins (that I had rejected as too recent for my 1939-45 list)
- the Convertible Air and Land Conveyance 1944 patent with square fins (new item for my list)
The Patent site http://gb.espacenet.com then gave me the information: the US Patent 2,462,462 delivered in 1949 came from a project filed in 1944 by Herbert & Helen Boggs:

Maybe the version with rounded fins came later (I don't know yet):