And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Great photo gallery here: https://www.axis-and-allies-paintworks.com/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?id=18585
"One feature of the XP-55 was a propeller jettison lever inside the cockpit to prevent the pilot from hitting the propeller during bailout." How comforting.
That'd be a neat trick since not only does the twin-engine Do-335 Pfeil (Arrow) look nothing like the single-engine XP-55 Ascender, it first flew over 3 months later.
Heck! I did not know Burt Rutan was designing stuff back in the early 40's.
I honestly thought that was a photoshop as have never seen the craft and I was deep into all the aviation stuff in the 60's as my dad was an avionics sales rep. for Bendix back then.
There were two lost in accidents. The first became stabilised upside down during stall tests and floated down after the engine stopped - it wasn't designed to work indefinitely upside down. The pilot escaped but with some difficulty as he had to open the canopy against the air flow. The second loss was at an airshow in 1945 when an airforce pilot tried a slow roll and lost control. Neither were really the fault of the design which had many good characteristics but stall and spin traits were un satisfactory and never resolved. It was probably more successful than its competitors the XP 54 and XP 56. The latter was a real knife edger to fly and was built of welded magnesium which saw inert gas welding, so common nowadays, developed.
The idea of all the various designs like this is to get power of two engines without the increased frontal area of the usual design. The problem is always cooling the rear engine. The Germans came close near the end of the war, but ultimately the appearance of jet engine killed off their design before production. The name "Ascender" was in-joke assigned by the AAF who were not very impressed with the thing.
Assender
ReplyDeleteThe American Shenden.
ReplyDeleteGreat photo gallery here:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.axis-and-allies-paintworks.com/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?id=18585
"One feature of the XP-55 was a propeller jettison lever inside the cockpit to prevent the pilot from hitting the propeller during bailout."
How comforting.
Kind of an ironic name, considering its flight performance.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Long-EZ
ReplyDeleteSorry Burt, nothing new under the sun!
Every test pilots first reaction.."HELL NO. I'm not getting in that."
ReplyDeleteReverse engineering of the Kraunt Dornier Do 335.
ReplyDeleteThat'd be a neat trick since not only does the twin-engine Do-335 Pfeil (Arrow) look nothing like the single-engine XP-55 Ascender, it first flew over 3 months later.
DeleteHeck! I did not know Burt Rutan was designing stuff back in the early 40's.
ReplyDeleteI honestly thought that was a photoshop as have never seen the craft and I was deep into all the aviation stuff in the 60's as my dad was an avionics sales rep. for Bendix back then.
How do you steer that thing without a working tail?
ReplyDeleteThe vertical stabilizers and rudders are out on the ends of the wing.
DeleteLooks like it has a rudder and vertical stabilizer on the end of each wing.
DeleteOk, looks like me and Rick were typing at the same time and he beat me to the trigger!
DeleteActually, the correct answer is "Poorly."
DeleteAssender!
ReplyDeleteI believe the surviving example is at the Kalamazoo Air Zoo. The only other example killed the test pilot.
ReplyDeleteThere were two lost in accidents. The first became stabilised upside down during stall tests and floated down after the engine stopped - it wasn't designed to work indefinitely upside down. The pilot escaped but with some difficulty as he had to open the canopy against the air flow. The second loss was at an airshow in 1945 when an airforce pilot tried a slow roll and lost control. Neither were really the fault of the design which had many good characteristics but stall and spin traits were un satisfactory and never resolved. It was probably more successful than its competitors the XP 54 and XP 56. The latter was a real knife edger to fly and was built of welded magnesium which saw inert gas welding, so common nowadays, developed.
DeleteThe idea of all the various designs like this is to get power of two engines without the increased frontal area of the usual design. The problem is always cooling the rear engine. The Germans came close near the end of the war, but ultimately the appearance of jet engine killed off their design before production. The name "Ascender" was in-joke assigned by the AAF who were not very impressed with the thing.
ReplyDeleteThe XP-55 was a single-engine aircraft!
DeleteThe new Godzilla movie on Netflix has something like that in it.
ReplyDelete