The AX Competition (rivals and development of the Fairchild A-10 Thunderbolt II)

Thanks to Secret Projects members' donations and Mark Nankivil, Vought V-502-11 AX project from 1967.
 

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Greetings All -

A recent EPay buy of a 1968 LTV AX Concept print.

Enjoy the Day! Mark



[See revised version below - Admin]
 
Cleaned up to remove effect of textured paper:
 

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GIMP plugin set GMIC - Bilateral Filtering. Its a noise reduction filter which preserves edges pretty well.
 
Mark has sent me the originals - here is my scan. Marks scan is actually more faithful to the original artwork, which is kind of a little "washed out", but I prefer my version.
 

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Greetings All -

Drawings of the V-502-11 from the Vought Archives.

Enjoy the Day! Mark
 

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Once again great work and great find Mark!!
I thought of the Vought AX design, after first seeing the artist impression was that it was somewhat more compact than the likes of the Fairchild/Northrop designs. Your finding with these drawings seem to support this!!

Keep them coming mate!!!


Regards
Pioneer
 
My favorite thread !
Thanks, MM. Nankivil and Martell !
IMHO, these last drawings for the V-502 are related to the -10 in place of the -11 wich is longer and has full scale TF34 (see previous 3 views drawings of different V-502 in this thread)
Cordialement,
Dominic
 
Mark, it's fully redundant at this point, but your posts are gems. Thanks for taking the time to dig 'em up. ;)
 
Interesting...but the last thing we were thinking about dropping was M117s. Until the first Gulf war, forward firing ordnance (gun and Maverick) was our primary choice. If we had to go with free fall bombs, it would have been parent mounted Mk82, probably tossed into the target area.
 
A cleaned-up version of pictures seen earlier in this topic:

1°) The first Convair design reminds me of the much earlier OS-117 proposal for the Navy.
2°) No mention of the Vought V-502 in the report. It might have been dropped at an early stage in the competition.

Enjoy!
 

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Well, searching for pictures often is quite hard. A function, to show all pages
of a thread as thumbnails would be great ....
 
Thanks for sharing, even if not for the first time. ;)

One question on the Convair AX-1 proposal...how they heck did they envision syncronizing a 30mm Gatling gun to fire through the prop? I have never heard of an externally-powered gun being syncronized in that way. The only system I can imagine is electric ignition and the gun would just spit out, unfired, the rounds that would have hit the prop, which seems very wasteful given the price of depleted uranium.
 
So sorry for the duplication (not quite so in fact, since the pics were cleaned up a bit).

I honestly couldn't remember seeing these before here, and I didn't check the rest of the thread beforehand.

As for a visualisation of a whole topic before posting, what I usually do is that I click on "All" instead of a page number, and the whole topic then shows as one page only.
 
Greetings All -

Found the attached artwork (appears to the be the Grumman AX design) in a 1974 issue of National Aeronautics magazine.

Enjoy the Day! Mark
 

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G'day gents
I just stumbled across this great video on Youtube! It's titled 'Northrop A-9 and Fairchild Republic A-10 Briefing'
Look it up, for it shows the best and for that matter the only footage I've seen of the Northrop A-9 flying and delivering weapons during the trials!


Regards
Pioneer
 
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Good on ya Cluttonfred!
For some reason it wouldn't allow me to cut and past the link last night :mad:

I'm thinking there must be some very interesting video/film footage of the A-9 out there in internet land!!

Regards
Pioneer
 
PaulMM (Overscan) said:
Supposedly the AX design was based on earlier tilt-wing work e.g. the Model 147 proposed to AAFSS (AH-56 Cheyenne requirement). It was not tilt-wing however.
Click to expand...

That is correct. I was an engineer working on the Boeing-Vertol A-X competitor. While it had cross shafting connecting the two rotors it was not a tilt-wing. If one engine failed, without cross-shafting there wouldn't be a vertical tail big enough (pardon the hyperbole) to keep the aircraft stable. We had blown flaps that could be used to tighten turns in addition to aiding STOL. My assignment, had the A-X become the A-9 or A-10, was to refine the blown flap in the Boeing Seattle transonic wind tunnel

I'll keep an eye out for the images I was able to retain.

Regards,

Walt
 
wjkuleck said:
I'll keep an eye out for the images I was able to retain.
Click to expand...

Really looking forward! Thanks for the offer and welcome to this forum. :)
 
According to Convair Advanced Designs II: Secret Fighters, Attack Aircraft, and Unique Concepts by Robert E Bradley (Crecy Manchester: 2013), this is the Convair Model 100 Super COIN. The Super COIN was based on the Air Force's desire to replace the Douglas A-1E Skyraider with a new aircraft circa 1966. Convair used the unofficial designation "A-8A" on the base of concept models of the Model 100. According to Bradley, it is not known if this concept design was self-funded or funded by the United States Air Force or if the A-8A designation was also used by the Air Force. Bradley makes it seem as though there were two programs named A-X in the 1960s, the first was intended as a direct A-1E Skyraider replacement and a later program that resulted in the A-10 program of the early 1970s. The first recorded use of A-X is believed to be 1967 with the Douglas Model 206.


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Source:

The final design in the proposed prototype program had a wingspan of 45 feet 10 inches, a length of 39 feet, and was configured as either a single or two-place airplane with zero-zero ejection capability. The turboprop engines considered were the 4,050hp Allison T-56-A7A and the GE 3,060hp CT64-820 (T-64). The basic (empty) weight of the T56-powered airplane was 17,300 lbs and the Design Gross Weight (takeoff weight) was 29,800 lbs, including 6,000lbs of external ordnance. The T-64 version was 15.395lbs and 26.350lbs respectively. These engines would drive a 13.5 foot fiberglass propeller.

The Model 100 offered two-hour loiter time at a 250 mile radius and a cruise speed of 320mph. It included a variety of survivability features including a heavily armored engine and cockpit area, duplicate components, fuel fire and explosion protection and failsafe structure design.
Click to expand...

Bradley, pp. 250-251
 
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Couldn't really find a better thread for this.

Attached comparison of some metrics between the GE candidate for GAU-8 and the Hughes GAU-9 ( Oerlikon 304 RK / KCA ).

Not included in the data, having already been rejected, was the Ford GAU-8 candidate which averaged just 728 MRBF, worse than the single-barrel Oerlikon.

I also found a reference on DTIC to a 304 RK cartridge marked 1955, much older than has generally been attributed to that weapon. That round provided the basis of the round developed by Aerojet for GE, with a change to copper driving bands and push-in percussion primer.

Hughes, being the low-risk insurance option, adopted the 304 RK round with iron driving bands and retained the screw-in electrical priming of the Swiss original.

Ford and their ammunition subcontractor Honeywell developed a new round adhering to the USAF's proposed dimensions and with an aluminium case and plastic driving bands, which was technically well advanced compared to the GE round. But GE refused to modify their cannon or round to the proposed common standard and also ignored the requirement for an aluminium case. Eventually, having won the cannon competition, they were persuaded to adopt the plastic bands which tripled barrel life.
 

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Avimimus said:
Anyone have an idea what the giant wing pods on the Lockheed design were?
Click to expand...


See post #8 on the first page. They were for the main gear, as in the final A-10 design.
 
They are a lot longer than is needed for the gear (looking at stowed wheel position). I wonder what else they had in mind (sensors, lights, etc).
 
I thought the same thing. Also, I thought perhaps alternate main gear? Dual-axle, skis, even tracks a la the B-36 tests? Unless we have more drawings, who knows?
 
PaulMM (Overscan) said:
Better versions of the Lockheed AX project drawings (L-1400)
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And from Le Fana 384.
 

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Hello, I did this drawing a long time ago for Le Fana. I just reproduced the plan (I attach the drawings). It was fun to do, and definitely inspiring! Regards Alain
 

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Thank's Alanqua, I've always been intrigued by the Lockheed proposal, and have only seen the tiny and unreadable schematic drawings.
These drawings of yours are great!!

Regards
Pioneer
 
From eBay, I think?
 

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Very nice Craig. Thanks!
 
aim9xray said:
From eBay, I think?
Click to expand...

Looks very interesting aim9xray, but can't ascertain design/designation :-[

Regards
Pioneer
 

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