Boeing Flying Wing concepts from the mid 1930s

Hi folks,

Here are some Boeing Flying Wing concepts from the mid 1930s. They are all variations of the same theme and come under the Model 306 designation:

First the Heavy Bomber:








Regards,

Greg

Now the first fighter version - the 306B single engine variant:





Regards,

Greg

Now the Model 306C twin engined fighter:






Regards,

Greg

Now the Model 306A Commercial Airliner:







Regards,

Greg

And last, but not least, my favourite - the Commercial Flying Boat variant:




Regards,

Greg

*chuckle* If you look at the credits for that article, you *might* find a familiar name or two.

No - only some nobody named Evan L. Mayerle

Regards,

Greg

GTX

Sorry for bother you dude, but we just can see little parts of the atachments, and they´re look like a very good illustrations.

GTX

Sorry, i already discovered that i need to save the image before could opened and now it´s complete.

Fabián

The Flying Boat is a beauty

Boeing has an impressive array of unconventional projects in the pre-1945 era. Perhaps the most active of US Aircraft Manufacturers?
What do you think about?

No - only some nobody named Evan L. Mayerle

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Are you the author of this article?

Our very own Evan (aka elmayerle) is the perspn credited in the original article (Airpower, March 2005) for explaining the principles of the external elevon. The authour and illustrator, I believe is Jared A. Zichek.

Regards,

Greg

http://www.sciencedaily.com/cgi-bin/apf4/amazon_products_feed.cgi?Operation=ItemSearch&SearchIndex=Books&Author=Jared+A.+Zichek

Apparently you can buy this article in html format online. $5.95 seems a bit much for a single article however.

Flying Wing, Flying Boat? isn't that too unstable?

Tzoli, thanks for resurrecting this old topic. I had never seen it before and I'm glad I did!!! Boeing sure had some amazing designs on the shelves at the time. Always have, in fact (the Model 390, 395 and 396 fighters come to mind, for instance). Real-life models unfortunately have always been a lot more conventional... :

Stargazer2006 said:

Tzoli, thanks for resurrecting this old topic. I had never seen it before and I'm glad I did!!! Boeing sure had some amazing designs on the shelves at the time. Always have, in fact (the Model 390, 395 and 396 fighters come to mind, for instance). Real-life models unfortunately have always been a lot more conventional... :

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You are welcome, it's nice to be a new reader here who seeks the older threads too.
While not always get the answers in short time tough.

Eye-opening aircraft...

IMHO, most of them could have done with rudders on centre-line. Perhaps the 'leggy' fighter would have fared better with contra-props...

Uh, the flying boat seems to scream for an elegant rudder, perhaps a modest T- or V-tail to be sure, to be sure. Perhaps they intended to use sponsons (??), those low-mounted, stub wing things that some later designs had, which also allowed a convenient external 'step' plus stowage for grounding gear etc...

Why is that the ailerons are on the wingtips separate of the wings and not in them as almost every other aircraft? This way it gives better manoeuvrability?

My guess (not having read elmayerle's explanation in a long while) is that the elevons' configuration is dictated primarily by their elevator function and that they produce a longer moment arm than is possible otherwise. You could argue that these surfaces disqualify the airplanes from membership in the flying wing club, but it's a small, struggling club and they can't be too picky about who they let in. Pitch control was said to be one of the main deficiencies of Northrop's big flying wings, so it seems like a sensible idea.

From what publication are all those Boeing flying wing drawings and illustrations taken, especially the bomber version? I'd like to get my hands on a copy.

The author, Jared Zichek, is a member of this forum. I think it was an article in Wings/Airpower?

It was. ISTR the article was from about 04 or 05, maybe. Have to go thru storage and dig it out.

That would be the March 2005 issue of 'Airpower'

Well done, gentlemen! i appreciate the information. If readily accessible, can I get a hi-res scan of the Model 306 bomber 3-view? I want to redraw them for a possible 1/144th or 1/72 scratch-build project and can't read any of the dimensions on the drawing. I suppose I could interpolate from the cross-section of the fuselage which looks like it was taken from the B-15, but that would be a pretty big assumption. FYI I think it would be comparatively simple to make this thing with a 1/72nd scale Mossquito fuselage and 1/144th Airfix Model 314 wings as a starting point in 1/144th. But I need/want to redraw before I think much further. I wouldn't mind a scan of the text of the article, either.

My email is ag122651@hotmail.com

Thanks in advance!

AlanG

in 1938-1940 were previded successors for Boeing 314 "Clipper"?
Were projects for future long rage passengers flying boats, for mid and late 40s?

there was study Boeing Model 306

based on 314, but using tailless flying wing, then later change into a fuselage similar to the Boeing 314
and with Allison V-1710 Engines

the design let to XB-15 what became B-17 Bomber

elmayerle said:

*chuckle* If you look at the credits for that article, you *might* find a familiar name or two.

Click to expand...

GTX said:

No - only some nobody named Evan L. Mayerle

Regards,

Greg

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GTX said:

Our very own Evan (aka elmayerle) is the perspn credited in the original article (Airpower, March 2005) for explaining the principles of the external elevon. The authour and illustrator, I believe is Jared A. Zichek.

Regards,

Greg

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Close to 20 years ago I'd corresponded by snail mail & over the Internet with Evan on number of aviation design concepts. This 1998 art of jet powered Yokosuka R2Y2s (escorted by Kyushu J7W1s) was result of design drawings he'd sent me to render the art that 16 years later is still up on j-aircraft.com:

Tzoli said:

Flying Wing, Flying Boat? isn't that too unstable?

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The whole reason for mounting elevators well aft of wing trailing edges is to improve stability and control in pitch (nose up or nose down).

I dont want to upset the emperor, but could you stick some elevators on that vestigal real fuselage, to give some pitch control.....

Dont hate me.....

[Update: The evidence is now against what follows, but I leave it here as a lesson in humility]

I think I am going to challenge this one. The more I study the details of these designs, the more I begin to doubt their authenticity. Call me an old cynic if you will.

First, provenance. Or rather, the lack of any. Everything on the Internet points back to Zichek's article. Even Bill Rose's mention in his Secret Projects - Flying Wings and Tailless Aircraft appears to (Publishing just 5 years later, he notes that "they remained unknown until relatively recently"). None of the drawings or renderings are verifiably by anyone else. Unless the article itself contains verifiable references (and I confess I have not seen it), there is no provenance. None.

Second, historical oddities appear in the storyline. If you are developing a continuous line of studies, why are they all variations not on each other but on unrelated Boeing projects (if anybody's?) The bomber is a modified XB-15, the flying boat a modified Clipper, the fighters with their pusher props are straight off Page One of a what-if fantasist's sketchbook, mimicking Northrop designs that would not appear for another five years. For example the clones of other Boeing projects echo the protruding cockpit lines and other wobbles of those planes, while the unrelated ones are sleek and smooth and what-if idealist. It's hard to believe that is just coincidence.

Third, design details don't stack up. As has been noticed elsewhere, the flying boat has no stabilising floats (unlike other near-contemporary studies such as the Westland-Hill Pterodactyl VIII or the Roxbee Cox and LP Coombes flying wing). The 30-seat airliner has a fat, stubby and hence draggy fuselage for the day, its four engines in typical what-if-meme push-pull pairs never studied by Boeing elsewhere, the two excrescences - fuselage and engines - are treated with contradictory aerodynamic priorities, the one dangling wholly below the wing in a simple and practical structural arrangement, but the other placed mid-wing in a notoriously difficult structural arrangement, there is inadequate space for passenger luggage, etc. etc. Then, a high-wing fighter in the 1930s? Aw, c'm on! Those pusher inverted-vee engines could perfectly well have been mounted higher to improve prop ground clearance - drag doesn't disappear because you dangle the cylinder banks like scrota beneath the back end - and the wing could then be mounted lower on the fuselage in the latest high-speed fashion, keeping its relation to the thrust line unchanged. And so on.

but the killer for me is the technical rationale offered for the unique trailing elevons, the suggestion that decoupling them from the wing makes things more efficient. In fact, the reverse is true. For example SF Cody, who flew the first British-made plane in 1908, tried free-pivoting ailerons located between the planes of a biplane, before abandoning them as ineffective and changing to the now-conventional inset style. What actually happens is that deflecting a conventional attached aileron modifies the air pressures over the fixed wing surface too, greatly increasing the effectiveness of the action. The detached scheme mooted here has been tried occasionally. The detached surface acts more or less like a servo tab, allowing the natural aeroelasticity of the wing to amplify its effect. Without that elasticity, the aileron is ineffectual. And the Boeing wings shown here have typical rigid-as-possible profiles, they display none of the characteristics of the necessary aeroelastic tailoring. Moreover, the supposed wind-tunnel tests claimed to have proven the scheme would have in truth demonstrated the exact opposite; that really was one embellishment too far, it kills the credibility of the story stone dead.

Sorry Zichek, forgive my scepticism, but your extraordinary backstory requires extraordinary evidence to support it, and you appear to have produced exactly none. I guess a Boeing patent or other original documents would persuade me otherwise, but not much else could.

@jzichek is a member of the forum so he can probably comment on the sources used for this. As could @elmayerle.

Note that lack of original drawings and art is not necessarily an indicator of fakery. Sometimes you can't use original material due to cost of reproduction.

Also, many preliminary drawings are sketched which are technically questionable. There are many designs in the Hawker "wallpaper" book that look ludicrous.

steelpillow said:

I think I am going to call this one out. The more I study the details of these designs, the more they begin to smell of a hoax, of classic what-if variations on a theme by an enthusiast with much ingenuity but little real knowledge of aircraft design.

First, provenance. Or rather, the lack of any. Everything on the Internet points back to Zichek's article. Even Bill Rose's mention in his Secret Projects - Flying Wings and Tailless Aircraft appears to (Publishing just 5 years later, he notes that "they remained unknown until relatively recently"). None of the drawings or renderings are verifiably by anyone else. Unless the article itself contains verifiable references, there is no provenance. None.

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Not a fight I would wish to pick - and 'hoax' is not a word I would use unless I was absolutely dead certain I was right and could prove it.
Looking briefly at what I know: Bill Rose works, as far as I can tell, from tertiary sources. I would never trust anything he wrote about anything. His writings about German WW2 designs are usually way off the mark, for example. Holding up a line from his work as proof of a 'hoax' is laughable.
Also consider: Boeing is one of the very few aviation companies with an unbroken lineage. It was never spun off, sold off or subjected to a hostile take-over. As such, it's corporate achive, I understand, is one of the most (if not the most) extensive and complete of any aviation company in the world. In better times, 20 years ago, it could be accessed by aviation historians and researchers - but for whatever reason few bothered. Jared, unlike Bill Rose, is well known for his archival research.
Today it's not so easy to access Boeing's archive as the company has become very protective of its original documents. Posting one online, as you suggest, would certainly be a bad idea for all concerned.
The easiest way to find out the truth, Guy, would be to contact Boeing's archive and negotiate access for yourself to view the original reports.

steelpillow said:

I think I am going to call this one out. The more I study the details of these designs, the more they begin to smell of a hoax, of classic what-if variations on a theme by an enthusiast with much ingenuity but little real knowledge of aircraft design.

but the killer is the technical rationale offered for the unique trailing elevons

Sorry Zichek, forgive my scepticism, but your extraordinary backstory requires extraordinary evidence to support it, and you appear to have produced exactly none. I guess a Boeing patent or other original documents would persuade me otherwise, but not much else could.

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These are original Boeing drawings from Airpower March 2005 Zichek piece on Model 306. Still "smell of a hoax"? Not the weirdest proposal of the times and if doesn't look rationale from 2020s, it would be quite different in 1930s.

Given comments about the author's track record I have watered down my wording a little.

overscan (PaulMM) said:

Note that lack of original drawings and art is not necessarily an indicator of fakery. Sometimes you can't use original material due to cost of reproduction.

Also, many preliminary drawings are sketched which are technically questionable. There are many designs in the Hawker "wallpaper" book that look ludicrous.

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Quite right. On the other hand, such absence does necessarily cut off one route to verifiability.

Yes, brainstorming sketches do tend to lack the necessary practical detail. But the the unsigned drawings presented here seem to offer rather more than that.

newsdeskdan said:

Bill Rose works, as far as I can tell, from tertiary sources. I would never trust anything he wrote about anything. His writings about German WW2 designs are usually way off the mark, for example. Holding up a line from his work as proof of a 'hoax' is laughable.

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I agree. Luckily, that was not what I did. I said that Rose was no provenance of validity. We seem to be in agreement there.

flateric said:

These are original Boeing drawings ... Still "smell of a hoax"?

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Until I see some provenance for that claim, yes. Is it stated in the original article?

newsdeskdan said:

The easiest way to find out the truth, Guy, would be to contact Boeing's archive and negotiate access for yourself to view the original reports.

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Not a bad idea. I'd be most interested in any wind tunnel reports. Does it cost much to obtain electronic copies? It's a bit far to walk, and the sea gets in the way. Meanwhile I could go looking for patents, if I get a moment. There's no way those could get locked away.

flateric said:

steelpillow said:

I think I am going to call this one out. The more I study the details of these designs, the more they begin to smell of a hoax, of classic what-if variations on a theme by an enthusiast with much ingenuity but little real knowledge of aircraft design.

but the killer is the technical rationale offered for the unique trailing elevons

Sorry Zichek, forgive my scepticism, but your extraordinary backstory requires extraordinary evidence to support it, and you appear to have produced exactly none. I guess a Boeing patent or other original documents would persuade me otherwise, but not much else could.

Click to expand...

These are original Boeing drawings from Airpower March 2005 Zichek piece on Model 306. Still "smell of a hoax"? Not the weirdest proposal of the times and if doesn't look rationale from 2020s, it would be quite different in 1930s.

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I can confirm: I saw those exact diagrams in the Boeing Historical Archives with my own two-or-so eyes.

Orionblamblam said:

I can confirm: I saw those exact diagrams in the Boeing Historical Archives with my own two-or-so eyes.

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Thank you, Sir. Much appreciated. Sometimes it's nice to be proved wrong.

By the way, I did a quick trawl for patents but found nothing significant. There is a 1937 flying boat patent for retractable sponson stabilizers, but that is the nearest it gets.

I still stand by my view that the trailing arrangement would not have been validated in the wind tunnel, but I can accept that Boeing must have given it significant attention after all.

May 20, 2023
This film features the build and first trim session of the 44" free-flight rubber-powered Boeing 306-C, a twin-pusher flying wing that was an unbuilt, concept design aircraft by Boeing in 1935. The model was inspired by the paintings of Jared Zichek, and the 21" rubber-powered plan of the Boeing 306-B by Pres Burning.I was given a 36" rubber-powered model of the single engine version, the 306-B, from the estate of the late Dallas Cornelius. I had intended to fly his beautiful model this summer, to give her some air again, but instead, I became inspired to build my own, opting for a larger twin-pusher version, the 306-C.Inspiration also came from the Lippisch P-13, rubber-powered design by the late, great Don Srull, whose rib designs were employed for this project.I wanted to keep this model as clean as possible, so I decided to keep the rubber motor contained within the wing via a sheeted rib box. With only an inch of clearance at the high point of the airfoil, I grew concerned for the ability of the motor to fully unwind without bunching, which could then easily alter the flight path. I needed consistency for these twin motors, so it was decided to go a bit shorter with the rubber, than originally intended. Still, the motor is 3X the hook to peg distance. I also used a 1/2" piece of surgical tubing at the prop hook to act as a spacer, which helped to prevent the rubber from climbing the prop shaft.The model performed well on its first time out, so I'm excited to see her potential as I reach max winds of 1200 turns. Happy man!!

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steelpillow said:

I still stand by my view that the trailing arrangement would not have been validated in the wind tunnel, but I can accept that Boeing must have given it significant attention after all.

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There is this,

... the Model 306 studies all shared a high aspect ratio wing with an unusual control surface configuration, in which external elevons were attached to supports well aft of the trailing edge. These allowed the air to flow over the whole airfoil shape of the elevon, generating more force than a more conventional installation. These elevons also had a greater moment arm around the axis of the wing.

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Going to presume this will be of interest,

Jun 9, 2023 Another flying session with the 44" rubber-powered free-flight Boeing 306-C flying wing, at Wawayanda, NY on 5.29.23. Designed, built, & flown by Tom Hallman. Props to Pres Bruning for his rubber-powered design of the single prop version, the 306-B. Filmed with a Canon Powershot SX20, and iPhones 11Pro & 14Pro. Music via ArtList by Dear Gravity, called "Horizon".

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