Author(s): Justo Miranda
During little more than five years of the Second World War, the power of engines and speed of aircraft increased as much as it did during twenty years of peacetime.
Conventional aircraft and their engines reached the limits marked in the original design and even surpassed them. The basis for this remarkable achievement were superior fuels, short-lived and artificially overpowered engines, propellers with four, five and six blades and thin wings with sections of laminar flow. Some pilots even had the paint on their aircraft removed and the metal polished to gain vital speed.
The aviation industry was now ready for the introduction of the turbojet and arrowed wing; however, an unknown phenomenon, later named compressibility buffeting, caused aircraft to suddenly spin out of control.
Ailerons failed to respond, the horizontal tailplane suffered from violent flutter and the control column would jump out of the pilot’s hands as if alive. The entire structure was under a high-frequency vibration and had to be cured in the Allied supersonic race.
BOOK ISBN | 9781781558881 |
FORMAT | 248 x 172 mm |
BINDING | Hardback |
PAGES | 392 pages |
PUBLICATION DATE | 30 November 2023 |
TERRITORY | World |
ILLUSTRATIONS | 158 back-and-white scale drawings |
An exhaustive and comprehensive visual examination of late-war experimental and drawing board Allied fighter designs.[/smallDescription]