F-117A prior to unveiling: artists impressions and kits of the 'F-19 Stealth Fighter' in mass culture

[overscan (PaulMM)]

Some ideas of what the F-117 might look like from the 1980s

Source:
Bill Gunston, Warplanes of the Future Salamander 1986

 

[Matej]

Interesting design from cca 1990 that nearly matched it.

 

[flateric]

From 'Lockheed Aircrafts Since 1913' by Rene J Francillon, Putnam 1987

 

[frank]

Considering the F-117 was officially revealed in November, 1988, it's no wonder that a 1990 drawing nearly matches it.

Interesting design from cca 1990 that nearly matched it.

 

[SOC]

What's really amusing is how far off some of the drawings were thanks to the odd angle of the jet in the retouched photo that was released.

 

[fightingirish]

Interesting design from cca 1990 that nearly matched it.

Reminds me very much of the "Stealth Fighter" from Matchbox toys, I had as a kid!

 

[Matej]

This was falling down to Iraqi people during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm:

http://www.hitechweb.genezis.eu/stealth5b.files/letak.jpg

 

[flateric]

After unveiling F-117A heavily mastered photo in November, 1988, numerous attempts were made to imagine fighter 3-view and understand how all this faceted stuff situated.
First one comes from guru Bill Sweetman, with an additional effort from Interavia magazine artist to reveal facets at official photo. (c) Bill Sweetman/Interavia (January, 1989)

 

[flateric]

Untill first inflight photos of F-117A by John Andrews and Tony Landis, showing the right wing swept of the a/c, were released, several kit manufacturers did a big mistake, hurrying to feed a market with 'correct' Stealth Fighter model kits. First was Hasegawa, producing in 1989 something really weird. In the moment I don't have kit in hands, more quality boxart and 3-view graphics is to come.
AMT also made its small effort.

 

[flateric]

After first in-flight F-117 plan-view photo appeared on the cover of Aviation Week, new generation of drawings and kits appeared, a little more close to real aircraft.
1). 3-view from Dough Richardson's Stealth Warplanes (c) MBI Publishing, 1990

 

[flateric]

In 1990 Revell produced both 1/144 and 1/72 kits, now I don't have 1/72 on hands, but seems that this is just scaled up 1/144 kit (or vice versa)

 

[Matej]

Ough! Especially the exhaust nozzle looks like the drainage cover.

 

[flateric]

And the inlets like the cart grill
OK, I've ordered all 'wrong' F-117 kits on eBay. More pics are to follow.

 

[fightingirish]

And what about toys?

F-117 Stealth fighter
SB-35
Made in Thailand
Matchbox Int'l LTD
(C) 1990

 

[flateric]

Cool, thanks for posting this masterpiece)))
1-2). FURUTA MILITARY AIRCRAFT EGG SERIES F-19 STEALTH FIGHTER
3). ZEE Die - Cast F-19 Stealth Fighter

 

[flateric]

Hasegawa 1989 'US Air Force Stealth Fighter' I could not stop myself from buying this masterpiece for USD 0.99 at eBay

 

[flateric]

Earlier, than their attempt to replicate F-117 in 1/144 scale, here goes Revell's Stealth Fighter in 1/72. Just note at the V-tail angle and this pretty air pressure sensors...but Hasegava's one at the top of the canopy much more sexy

 

[Golfus]

A bit of nostalgy: Bill Gunston´s excellent "Stealth Warplanes"

 

[Matej]

Under the lamp is the biggest dark....

I realised that I have my own mutation of F-117! But not one. Two!!! When I was youger, I used to create and make my original paper models. Some of them were aircrafts and two of them were F-117 related. When the first was an attempt to make the real F-117 (however I didnt understand the angels), the second one is much progressive mutation with single jet at the center of the fuselage, that powered via shaft two cold-air ducted fans. Ducted fans are two things above wing that looks like jet engines.

And when the two batteries are in the bomb bay of the first model, then comes.... the surprise

 

[flateric]

Cutaways god Mike Badrocke's and Bill Sweetman's collective impressions of a 'stealth fighter'. It was 1986 on the backyard. Already then Sweetman was aknowledged that real aircraft use faceting LO technology.
(Bill Sweetman 'Stealth Aircraft: Secrets of Future Airpower', Motorbooks International, 1986)

 

[flateric]

Three more modelling beasts in the F-117 mood - DML's 1/144, DML B-2/F-117 double kit pack in 1/200 and HobbyModelKits 1/72 creature.

 

[flateric]

AMT 1989 F-117A in 1/72. Second place on wobbly goblin contest after Hasegawa.

 

[Matej]

Full stealthy ironless F-117 made from.... LEGO

http://www.dementia.org/~adams/lego/f117/index.html

 

[flateric]

DML's 1990 1/144 F-117A. Note that boxart looks much weirder than kit molds itself.
My gathering of the full collection of 'wrong' F-117s is close to the end.

 

[flateric]

This F-117A wood desk model commemorated F-117A final delivery date in 1990. Seems to have Lockheed Martin origins and marks a good sense of ADP stuff humor.

 

[CFE]

Does anybody have the full story on how John Andrews came up with the famous Testors F-19 design? I recall reading that one of Andrews's inside sources described the F-117 as looking like "a Douglas Skyray with Packard grills on the intakes." His final design looks like it borrows liberally from the SR-71, but it demonstrates that Andrews had some idea of aeronautical engineering and stealth design. He even got a patent for his design (probably an effort to prevent copycats from cloning his F-19 design more than anything else.)

 

[LowObservable]

If a person had been close to the scene at the time, one might have speculated reasonably that the design fused elements of the Blackbird - which clearly had RAS built into the wing edges - such as the planform and inward-canted fins, with AvWeek reports of a double-delta aircraft with two F404s. The flush inlets look a lot like standard NACA flush inlets and the verticals shield the exhaust.

 

[CFE]

One strike against Andrews is his canards mounted on the upper surface of the F-19. They'd have been useless at moderate angles of attack.

The wing is very tiny, likely due to a perceived need to transport the F-19 inside a C-5. We'd hear the C-5 story again in the years that followed. Reports of a craft resembling the nose of an SR-71 being unloaded from a C-5 at Palmdale. AvWeek stories about the "Blackstar" orbiter being ferried by C-5. I don't know if there's any truth to these tales, but it's fascinating to follow.

 

[flateric]

Interesting that front view profiles of Testors kit and actual aircraft are strikingly close (except, of course, inward canted tails and these small fins). Again, we see some 'angled' structure from the front. I bet some observer's notes who probably have seen it in hangar have leaked. OK, just my guess.

BTW, story of F-19 kit described quite well in glamorous Curtis Pebbles 'Dark Eagles'.

 

[Antonio]

please, could anyone tell me what is "PR art"?

Thanks again

Antonio

 

[sferrin]

LowObservable, could you please tell me what is a PR image?

thanks

A picture released for public consumption which may or may not resemble a real project. A prime example would be some of the old Loral ads. Showing a table full of black boxes isn't nearly "sexy" enough for your average marketer so they had a picture of a stealth fighter in their ads that looked like what they thought stealth looked like back in those days. To this day that damn thing pops up with people saying "what aircraft was this?"


Oh, and "PR" stands for Public Relations. You hear that term a lot around election time when candidates are trying to convince the masses that they really believe what the latest polls tell them the public wants to hear.

 

[doggedman]

The artwork you are showing was done by an artist named Atilla Hejja. The configuration was purely his invention and has no basis in any actual program that I'm aware of. If I remember correctly, he actually did a cutaway illustration of the airplane which had no fewer than 4 engines. Indeed, looking at the design, except for the canted verticals and top mounted intake, it bears little homage to low observable aircraft design.

 

[sferrin]

has no basis in any actual program that I'm aware of

Read what I wrote. I said it's fictional.

Indeed, looking at the design, except for the canted verticals and top mounted intake, it bears little homage to low observable aircraft design.

On the contrary, it embodies everything the public thought stealth would look like in those days: upper surface inlets, smooth curvy edges, inward canted tails, canards (because they looked futuristic so all future fighter drawings had them pretty much), and 2D exhaust.

 

[flateric]

Read this and following, *very interesting* commentary from Elmayerle

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,185.msg15039.html#msg15039

 

[Merv_P]

The artwork you are showing was done by an artist named Atilla Hejja.

I see Hejja died suddenly about three months ago.

http://www.antonnews.com/oysterbayenterprisepilot/2007/09/07/obituaries/

 

[doggedman]

Atilla died of a heart attack. I became friends with him through another artist I know, John Batchelor. Atilla was one of the best aerospace artists I've ever met. You might be interested to know that he and John also designed the V-44, a 4 engine version of the V-22 that appeared in Popular Mechanics some time ago. I understand that Boeing and Textron have looked at the configuration and even had a CGI movie of the V-44 at the Farnborough air show in 2006.

I think a great deal of public information was and is available regarding Low Observable aircraft design. Two references that comes to mind are Skolnik's book as well as Pyotr Ufimtsev's work on ray tracing. None of these works reference canards, inward canted tails, or smooth curvey edges as a the essentials for an LO design.

The planform of an LO penetrator (a fighter, reconnaissance, or bomber aircraft that penetrates hostile, defended airspace) generally employs a straight leading edge for the fuselage, wings, and empennage. Straight, and if possible parallel, edges allow you to focus and reflect incoming energy in specific directions (spikes). The configurations of the Have Blue, F-117, B-2, A-12, YF-23, F-22, X-32, F-35, and Boeing's Bird of Prey all retain the same straight, parallel edge configuration to some degree. Attilla's fuselage and wing design employs a continuous compound curve which results in an omni-directional scattering source; anathema to LO design. The canted verticals also employ compound curves which would themselves be large scattering sources. As a separate note, radar absorbing materials are employed to attenuate or reduce the signature.

Whereas the planform employs straight edges, expanding the planform to accommodate volume does employ continuous compound curves in order to scatter incoming energy away from the source of emission. Looking at the B-2 nose on gives a clear illustration of this as the fuselage blending into the wing is a continuous compound curve.

Some aircraft, such as the Lockheed/Boeing Tier 3- Dark Star had nearly straight wings and a semicircular fuselage. This creates a nose-aft spike which is desired for surveillance aircraft as they fly parallel to threat radars vs. penetrating.

Canards have little, if anything to do with LO design. Neither does smooth curvey edges or inward canted verticals. Indeed both the F-117 and YF-23 had outwardly canted verticals. To the best of my knowledge only the Have Blue demonstrators had inwardly canted verticals and I believe Lockheed really regretted doing that. In fact LO design would want you to eliminate as many control surfaces as possible (fore, aft, or vertical). You are correct about the inlets, however, as the top mounted inlets allow you to obscure the engine front face and avoid the scintillation effect caused by the rotating machinery. One final point, LO aircraft designers for the most part are electrical engineers and Physicists who care primarily about electrical emissivity not aerodynamics.

 

[sferrin]

Atilla died of a heart attack. I became friends with him through another artist I know, John Batchelor. Atilla was one of the best aerospace artists I've ever met. You might be interested to know that he and John also designed the V-44, a 4 engine version of the V-22 that appeared in Popular Mechanics some time ago. I understand that Boeing and Textron have looked at the configuration and even had a CGI movie of the V-44 at the Farnborough air show in 2006.

I think a great deal of public information was and is available regarding Low Observable aircraft design. Two references that comes to mind are Skolnik's book as well as Pyotr Ufimtsev's work on ray tracing. None of these works reference canards, inward canted tails, or smooth curvey edges as a the essentials for an LO design.

The planform of an LO penetrator (a fighter, reconnaissance, or bomber aircraft that penetrates hostile, defended airspace) generally employs a straight leading edge for the fuselage, wings, and empennage. Straight, and if possible parallel, edges allow you to focus and reflect incoming energy in specific directions (spikes). The configurations of the Have Blue, F-117, B-2, A-12, YF-23, F-22, X-32, F-35, and Boeing's Bird of Prey all retain the same straight, parallel edge configuration to some degree. Attilla's fuselage and wing design employs a continuous compound curve which results in an omni-directional scattering source; anathema to LO design. The canted verticals also employ compound curves which would themselves be large scattering sources. As a separate note, radar absorbing materials are employed to attenuate or reduce the signature.

Whereas the planform employs straight edges, expanding the planform to accommodate volume does employ continuous compound curves in order to scatter incoming energy away from the source of emission. Looking at the B-2 nose on gives a clear illustration of this as the fuselage blending into the wing is a continuous compound curve.

Some aircraft, such as the Lockheed/Boeing Tier 3- Dark Star had nearly straight wings and a semicircular fuselage. This creates a nose-aft spike which is desired for surveillance aircraft as they fly parallel to threat radars vs. penetrating.

Canards have little, if anything to do with LO design. Neither does smooth curvey edges or inward canted verticals. Indeed both the F-117 and YF-23 had outwardly canted verticals. To the best of my knowledge only the Have Blue demonstrators had inwardly canted verticals and I believe Lockheed really regretted doing that. In fact LO design would want you to eliminate as many control surfaces as possible (fore, aft, or vertical). You are correct about the inlets, however, as the top mounted inlets allow you to obscure the engine front face and avoid the scintillation effect caused by the rotating machinery. One final point, LO aircraft designers for the most part are electrical engineers and Physicists who care primarily about electrical emissivity not aerodynamics.

You seem to keep missing the forrest for the trees. I didn't say it WAS representative of a stealth aircraft, I said it was representative of what the public THOUGHT a stealth aircraft would look like.

 

[flateric]

That famous Atilla Hejja's LORAL ad

 

[rousseau]

3 VIEWS MUSTN'T BE LOST ;D

 

[Helodriver]

It looks like at some point someone took Atilla Hejja's stealth design seriously. The link has images of a model built by Wesco Models out of Baldwin Park, California. This was a company known for producing models of prototypes and design studies for the major aerospace companies in the LA basin, and not known for making toys or things for mass production. As you can see it it a very fair representation of the Loral artwork, even more than the later Monogram "F-19" model. the question is, which came first? Atilla's or the professional prototype model shop's? BTW, Wesco went out of the model business in mid 1980s.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8686041@N02/2798961456/in/photostream/