Fairey F155T (OR 329) interceptor: "Fairey Delta 3"

overscan (PaulMM)

overscan (PaulMM)

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Some nice drawings from the brochure
 

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Really interesting project Overscan.
I've read something, over the years, about the Fairey Delta III but never found so much (and so detailed) information about it.

Anyway I've a question: do you mind that the F155T could be a real competitor of Phantom II?

Or it was only optimized for interception, and in this sense was less flexible than the American competitor??
 
F155T was a highly specialised requirement for an interceptor. Most F155T concepts were big, the Fairey compliant bid here being large indeed - 74ft 4in length, 46ft 10 span, 1100 sq ft wing area.

The three concepts that seem more sensible from a modern standpoint were the Fairey ER103 development, the Hawker P.1103 and the English Electric P8, a reasonably straightforward Lightning development. The first two had single Gyrons, the last developed Avons. They were all discounted for failing to address the specification properly.

Clearly, if any F155T project was built, it could have been turned into a general purpose fighter. The designs were all short on fuel (fuel fraction was 0.21, 0.26 including rocket fuel, for Fairey F155T), but deletion of the rocket engines could have helped there (assuming advances in weapons reduced the required altitude performance).

Fairey did studies on a GOR339 version of their F155T design.
 
overscan said:
Clearly, if any F155T project was built, it could have been turned into a general purpose fighter. The designs were all short on fuel, but deletion of the rocket engines could have helped there (assuming advances in weapons reduced the required altitude performance).
Click to expand...

I really agree with you Overscan.

Anyway the shortage of fuel was a common problem of almost all British (and not only British, think about early versions of MiG 21s) projects and real fighters, as English Electric Lightning.

By the point of view of mixed propulsion system, a lot of fighters (and not only fighters as the early Comets did for take off) at that time seriously considered, and sometimes used, this approach.
I refer especially to early Mirage family (I and III) and also to the Italian Ambrosini's projects (Ariete, Leone and so on).
I think, but it is my opionion, that the F155T realized and used for real should have left the mixed propulsion system for good, and should be one of the few real competitors of the outstanding Phantom II...
 
archipeppe said:
overscan said:
Clearly, if any F155T project was built, it could have been turned into a general purpose fighter. The designs were all short on fuel, but deletion of the rocket engines could have helped there (assuming advances in weapons reduced the required altitude performance).
Click to expand...

I really agree with you Overscan.

Anyway the shortage of fuel was a common problem of almost all British (and not only British, think about early versions of MiG 21s) projects and real fighters, as English Electric Lightning.

By the point of view of mixed propulsion system, a lot of fighters (and not only fighters as the early Comets did for take off) at that time seriously considered, and sometimes used, this approach.
I refer especially to early Mirage family (I and III) and also to the Italian Ambrosini's projects (Ariete, Leone and so on).
I think, but it is my opionion, that the F155T realized and used for real should have left the mixed propulsion system for good, and should be one of the few real competitors of the outstanding Phantom II...
Click to expand...

The Delta III would not have been a Phantom II competitor, it was much closer to the Mig-25.
 
MiG-25, and its predecessors Ye-150 etc, is a reasonable comparison actually: the Gyron engine powered P.1103 derivative, P.1121, was expected to be able to push Mach 2.8 (with obvious airframe limitations on time) and a steel wing was considered for high speed derivatives.

There really wasn't a direct UK equivalent to the Phantom. In fact, worldwide, the Phantom was pretty unique.
 
From W A Harrison article on Fairey Deltas in Aircraft Illustrated Dec 1984

Looks like a bomb underwing? Perhaps the GOR 339 version?
 

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overscan said:
MiG-25, and its predecessors Ye-150 etc, is a reasonable comparison actually: the Gyron engine powered P.1103 derivative, P.1121, was expected to be able to push Mach 2.8 (with obvious airframe limitations on time) and a steel wing was considered for high speed derivatives.

There really wasn't a direct UK equivalent to the Phantom. In fact, worldwide, the Phantom was pretty unique.
Click to expand...

Top of the line Jack of All Trades. I'd say the F-15E is it's modern equivalent but it can't land on carriers.
 
Wonderful graphics, Overscan...

Really, really hideous concept and design, apparently executed by someone who had been shooting eraser fragments at classmates during the lecture on "drag".

Wings? Well, we've got these big engine tunnels down the fuselage. Should we put the wing carry-through below them? Above them? No, straight through the freaking middle of them!

Engines? Let's put them in the front so that the inlets are short, there's no time to straighten the flow out and the jetpipes are hot! (The installation looks a lot like a Boeing X-32, but they had an excuse.)

This does make one realize why the Froggies get upset when people suggest that they copied the Mirage III from Fairey, when Dassault did so many elementary things right and the Brits did them wrong...
 
The art was relatively young when the Delta series were designed.

Now, you want an example of an aircraft which was designed by someone who was asleep during the drag lesson, look at the F-4 Phantom. If no other aircraft proves the adage that, "if you put enough engine power on a brick, it will fly," its the F-4 Phantom, particularly in its early versions (the F-4E improved matters considerably but more with some interesting tricks than real change to the design). Another good example is the F-105 - it wasn't nicknamed "the Thud" for nothing. Once that single engine failed, it had the gliding ability of a brick apparently.

What find about all British aircraft of this period is how relatively under-armed they are. An aircraft the size of the Delta III carried only two Red Tops whereas the F-4 at the same time was carrying 8 missiles! Were there any plans to give the Delta III a gun?
 
rickshaw said:
What find about all British aircraft of this period is how relatively under-armed they are. An aircraft the size of the Delta III carried only two Red Tops whereas the F-4 at the same time was carrying 8 missiles! Were there any plans to give the Delta III a gun?
Click to expand...

The same problem afflicted, the Italian fighters during WWI. Take the Macchi MC 202, and it's two tiny 12,5 mm guns and compare it with the terrific 8 guns of early Spitfires or Hurricanes....
 
Indeed. In discussions on the merits of the Hawker P.1121 in 1957 Air Ministry staff express incredulity at the inclusion of a gun in the design.
 
Rickshaw,
To paraphrase Forrest Gump, draggy is as draggy does.
The F-4C had just about as much thrust as a Lightning (17000 lb per engine vs. 16300 lb).
It had two crew, bigger radar and four times as many AAMs, and had more internal fuel than a Zippo lighter, but had about the same top speed as the Frightening.
A good inlet and afterbody arrangement is not always the one that LOOKS good.
 
P1 was designed to be supersonic without afterburner. This was difficult to achieve, but afterburners were in the earliest stages of development and it wasn't thought sensible to rely on them to achieve supersonic flight. It was also handicapped by using existing engine designs that weren't intended for supersonic flight.

Therefore every element of the P1 and the derived Lightning design was chosen to minimise drag, and equipment and fuel kept to a minimum.

This worked. The P1 went supersonic (just) without afterburners, and the P1B could get to Mach 1.2 without afterburner. P1B had a thrust to weight ratio with afterburners on of 1:1, a figure not equalled until the 1970s. As a fighter it was supposed to climb like crazy to intercept those incoming bombers with minimum warning times.

The P1B/Lightning eventually reached Mach 2; the inlet was designed for Mach 1.7, the initally requested speed, and by Mach 2 started vibrating nastily, which prevented faster flight.

The Phantom is a very different design. It relied on afterburners for any degree of supersonic performance, and was later in basic conception than the P1 family. Its climb performance is a lot worse, and drag is certainly higher than for the Lightning. However, it has a superb engine designed for supersonic flight and advanced intakes that, combined with use of afterburners, give it good high speed potential.

The British approach as seen in P1B and Lightning was more cautious and cheap, but ultimately far less flexible. You can think of it as MiG-19/F-100 technology used to build a Mach 2 fighter.
 
What it comes down to, as usual, is each aircraft was designed for different requirements, but similar missions in some respects. They each fulfilled the roles they were designed for brilliantly. As such, people have a tendency to compare planes of similar types as if they were both designed to the same requirement when they really are comparing apples and oranges.

My only regret is that I've never had a chance to see a BAC/BAe Lightning, flying or otherwise, in real life; And I'm not going to be going to South Africa anytime soon. ;)
 
"What find about all British aircraft of this period is how relatively under-armed they are. An aircraft the size of the Delta III carried only two Red Tops whereas the F-4 at the same time was carrying 8 missiles! Were there any plans to give the Delta III a gun?"

The Delta III was intended to carry a pair of the large Red Dean then Red Hebe long range radar guided missiles, which were cancelled at the same time. Don't forget these were interceptors in the F108, F105 Arrow, Mig 25 Category intended to intercept the supersonic Soviet Nuclear bombers before they could drop their bombs. Dogfighting would be left to the fighters.

The Phantom was the same except it was a carrier based interceptor, 50's thinking was that battle would be done BVR at Mach 2, high altitude using radar and radar guided missiles. What happened was rather than global war against the Warsaw pact, we ended up with Little bush wars and conflict where rules of engagement required visual contact and resulted in close in combay with guns and heat seekers.

Geoff
 
Fairey's offering to F155T said 6 machines in 3 years from the word go and 24 machines in 6 years time.
Initialy powered by a pair Gyrons, it would get the RB122 (increased diameter RB106) turbojets.

Presumably the RAF was thinking similar numbers to the Javelin, which is not the same as the actual production of that type (450 I seem to reccal overall), rather something closer I think to 160.

Red Hebe was with the 'streamlined' motor exhaust cover attached some 22ft long, 15 inches in diameter, 6ft in span and weighed over 1,300lb. A nuclear warhead was considered, possibly Purple Passion.
It was designed to guarentee a kill of a mach2 bomber.
 
What kind of range did those missiles have? They must have been quite high to justify only carrying 2 of them...

BTW: The English Electric Lightning could accelerate to and achieve Mach 1.79 without afterburner from what I read.


KJ Lesnick
 
Range is difficult, depends on launch conditions, Red Hebe the full scale weapon, was intended to be 'all aspect' able to intercept a target from any angle and guarentee destruction.
It was certainly required to bring down a target flying higher than the launch vehicle , but my only range figure is very doubtful at 60nm.

The Lightning might have made that figure under special conditions, but I doubt it ever did it in normal service without the use of reheat.
 
F.155T specs and a desk-top model from:

Fairey F.155T All-weather Intercepter Project

Length : 22.6m
Wing Span: 14.2m
Wing Area : 102 Square Meter
All-Up Weight : 22,888Kg
Engine : RB122 Turbojet X 2 Spectra Jnr Rocket X 2
Max Speed : 2,387Km/h+ (Mach 2.0+)
Crew : 2
Armament : Red Dean AAM X 2 or Blue Jay Mk.4 AAM X 2
 

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This is for you, Geoff.

I still reckon its just a dodgy drawing....

Source: Flying Review, November 1964
 

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Cheers Paul, yeap it is a simplified Flying Review style drawing but does show the later version without the rocket booster coamings. ;D

G
 
I imagine they'd have been dropped had the project gone ahead, performance was that good rockets where rather superfluous except at very high altitude.
 
Rockets rather complicated the fuel handling. I know as a POL handler, I'd have not wanted to get involved with HTP or any of the other exotics they were considering. Most normal POL is bad enough.
 
LowObservable said:
Wonderful graphics, Overscan...

Really, really hideous concept and design, apparently executed by someone who had been shooting eraser fragments at classmates during the lecture on "drag".

Wings? Well, we've got these big engine tunnels down the fuselage. Should we put the wing carry-through below them? Above them? No, straight through the freaking middle of them!

Engines? Let's put them in the front so that the inlets are short, there's no time to straighten the flow out and the jetpipes are hot! (The installation looks a lot like a Boeing X-32, but they had an excuse.)

This does make one realize why the Froggies get upset when people suggest that they copied the Mirage III from Fairey, when Dassault did so many elementary things right and the Brits did them wrong...
Click to expand...

Didn't the Fairey Delta II supersonic experiment aircraft perform well? FD. II was much smaller bird than the projected FD. III; Fairey's original proposal was to base their F155T project on that one, which would have been relatively easy and perhaps it would have provided a good interceptor to RAF in the early 1960's. But as another poster wrote, the-powers-to-be didn't want it that way.

http://www.rp-one.net/f_155_t/f155t.html
 
They wanted a machine that would stay relevent for as long as possible. Since the military offerings of a scaled up Delta II where based on existing manufacturing techniques and materials, it might have been quick but it was also limited in their perspective at the time.

Delta III was developable to a mach3+ machine, with appropriate developments in the engines of course.

As for drag, it was expected to overcome it ;)

Engines are where they are for CofG issues, a neat and compact engine and reheat unit would cause all sorts of problems trying to balance that in the airframe. Thats why Vickers Supermarine chose a canard arrangement instead.

Bags of volume in this beast though.
 
zen said:
As for drag, it was expected to overcome it ;)
Click to expand...

Mach 1.90 without reheat and with external Blue Jays. Engine power helps a lot.

I wonder how much the fuselage was based on the Delta II. There, the wings were pretty much bolted onto the sides of the fuselage without carrying the spars through. No space in the fuselage to do so as it was barely bigger diameter than the Avon. Reduced drag though, giving supersonic performance without reheat like the P1.
 
One thing that almost none of the drawings really get across is just how BIG this thing was. Much as with the Avro 730, the scale is very difficult to grasp.

I remember once seeing a book on battleships and battlecruisers in which every ship displayed was compared in silhouette to HMS Dreadnought. Someone needs to put out a similar book in the style of Bill Gunston's "Encyclopedia of Combat Aircraft", dealing with all the major unbuilt or never-entered-service projects, with each project compared in silhouette to the closest comparable aircraft from that nation which did get built (e.g. the Avro 730 would be compared against the Vulcan, the Delta III against the BAC Lightning, American projects against a Phantom II for fighters, a B-52 or a Hustler for bombers, and so forth.)
 
I'm making such a book. I'll have to consider that.

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,10056.msg94146/topicseen.html#msg94146

My samples live here:

http://lost-aviation.blogspot.com/
 
As mentioned by LowObservable the long jet pipes between the turbine nozzle and the afterburner may lead to inefficiencies, especially during dry (non-afterburner) flight regimes (besides additional problems because of the hot gases inside the fuselage like material stretching). Nearly all British designs of that period used this layout as well as designs that used British engines (saab lansen, draken, etc.) - in contrast to most American, Russian and french designs which had a more compact turbine-afterburner arrangement. I don't know the reason - was it really just a question of the CoG?
 
Basil said:
As mentioned by LowObservable the long jet pipes between the turbine nozzle and the afterburner may lead to inefficiencies, especially during dry (non-afterburner) flight regimes (besides additional problems because of the hot gases inside the fuselage like material stretching). Nearly all British designs of that period used this layout as well as designs that used British engines (saab lansen, draken, etc.) - in contrast to most American, Russian and french designs which had a more compact turbine-afterburner arrangement. I don't know the reason - was it really just a question of the CoG?
Click to expand...

Yes, it had to do with CoG and the US used a similar arrangement on the BOMARC. To make up for inefficiency of the long duct, that's partly why the convergent/divergent nozzle was invented. My (late) air breathing propulsion professor actually designed that for the Bomarc.
 
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The BOMARC? It was a liquid fueled (and later solid fueled) missile with ramjets mounted beneath the fuselage. No long ducts there.
 
Conventional aircraft with a high proportion of overall weight consumed by the engine position the engine in the centre of the fuselage entirely because of centre of gravity. On aircraft like the Sabre and MiG-15 the engine is also positioned in the CoG but they had shorter fuselage to engine length ratios in their design. Other American and Soviet aircraft of this era without such convenient length ratios had the long exhaust tubes (eg Lockheed Shooting Star). Its only when the engines got lighter and the rest of the aircraft heavier and more exotic configurations utilized that this practice went away.
 
Basil said:
The BOMARC? It was a liquid fueled (and later solid fueled) missile with ramjets mounted beneath the fuselage. No long ducts there.
Click to expand...

Thanks, if I run across my notes, I'll have to see what it was he was referencing. I know it was an unmanned system, I thought it was Boeing related, but it had a long duct with what would have normally been severe duct losses. I just remember him discussing it in class. Although it may have been a rocket, as, although I had him for air breathing propulsion, he was a propulsion expert, regardless of whether it was a rocket or air breathing. Although, I didn't have him for rocket propulsion, that was another professor. But both of them had some great stories to tell, but I'm certainly not going to repeat them here. Anyway, the point is, there are ways to mitigate the losses of the long duct length, although they are never ideal. For a good efficient propulsion installation, the F/A-18 is an excellent reference, but it has volumetric drawbacks for the overall airframe.

Another airplane design with a similar engine installation to the Fairey Delta is the CA-223, which was the Australian 1950's supersonic interceptor design. You can find drawings of it on this forum and see the engine installation in the top view drawing.
 
Abraham, Sundog,
thanks for the explanation. Nevertheless, the designs mentioned by Abraham were of an earlier generation and had large diameter centrifugal units which wouldn't fit well into an aircraft's tail. The following generation (F-100, MIG-19, etc.) had their axial flow engines placed far more to the rear with a more compact duct to the burner.
 

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