In 1964, Hamburger Flugzeugbau (HFB) received an order from the Federal Ministry of Defense (BMVg) to study a ground attack and reconnaissance aircraft with VTOL properties (Vertical Take Off and Landing). For HFB this was a welcome opportunity to conduct timely research in military air-wrapping and testing. So it is hardly surprising that from the very beginning a close cooperation was sought with the Ryan Aeronautical Company in San Diego and that this was called on as a subcontractor together with the engine manufacturer General Electric.
Under the designation HFB 530 or HFB Y2A Ranger, the design of a 13.73 m long twin-engine high-wing aircraft with a span of 7.97 m and conventional tail unit was created. The great feature of the HFB 530, analogous to the XV-5A, was a so-called lift fan system, which was developed at General Electric by the former BMW engineer Peter Kappus. In principle, this is a single-circle jet engine, which is pneumatically coupled via a system of pipes with a single-stage axial fan - the lift fan. The axial fan is driven by a blade tip turbine, which in turn is powered by the hot exhaust gas jet from one of the two main engines. In this way, a cold lifting jet can be generated at low speed, but with a large air mass and a significantly higher momentum than that of the hot exhaust gas jet from the cruise drive. A total of eight of these lift fans were intended for the Ranger.
During the take-off and landing phases and when hovering, the two cruise engines of the type GE J85-J1, each with 1685 kp static thrust, were only intended to serve as gas generators for the lift fans. These were in pairs for a total of four sliding platforms on the underside of the fuselage in front of and behind the wings. The transition to or from level flight would have been effected by appropriate deflection of the fan beam. The control of the machine during the hover flight around the longitudinal and transverse axis should be done by different loading of the blade tip turbines and thus a change in the lifting capacity of the respective lift-fan pair. Appropriate twisting of the beam deflection grids would have enabled steering around the vertical axis. For normal cruise flight, the fan platforms should be fully retracted into the fuselage.
In contrast to other drive systems, the advantages of lift-fan technology were obvious. No additional (lift) engines were required for take-off and hovering. Switching from cruising to lifting thrust was also possible without any problems, and no additional jets were required for control in hovering flight. And since the fans only generated a low air flow rate, the machine could easily be used from unprepared places. All arguments that seemed to promise a great future for the lift-fan system - also or especially in the civil sector. Therefore, HFB soon also dealt with a number of other lift fan projects, some of which will be presented at a later point in time in FLUGZEUG CLASSIC.
A total of 14 HFB engineers and designers were supervised directly in the USA for a good three months with project work for the Ranger, including Dr. Richard Vogt, who was responsible for the unusual BV 141, for example. When the project study was finally completed, the BMVg stopped work on the Ranger at the end of 1966. The NATO operational philosophy was beginning to change then, and so did it gradual move away from military VTOL technology. Only experimental programs remained, such as the VAK 191 B. Nevertheless, the work on the Ranger was not in vain, because the knowledge gained with it enabled HFB the "intensive participation in fundamental future tasks of military aviation technology in cooperation with the other German aircraft companies".
