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

[sferrin]

https://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1981/1981%20-%203327.html
https://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1982/1982%20-%201615.html

CSIRS mentioned in Flight in 1981 and 1982 only.

Also briefly mentioned in this book:

 

[quellish]

I would suggest that, possibly, there is a connection between "Covert Survivable In-Weather Reconnaissance Strike" radar technologies and Northrop's Tacit Blue program, but that is the extent of the truth here.

There is, BSAX was part of the larger group of Covert Strike programs and participated in some of those tests.

 

[sublight_]

And this 1976 report correctly uses "XST" as the designation for Lockheed's "Stealth Fighter".

https://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1976/1976%20-%202367.html

Wow, I am quite surprised at the mention of XST, even though they got the acronym wrong. I guess they got REALLY serious about classification once the RCS results starting piling up?

 

[JimK]

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.

Just for completeness of this discussion, here is that cutaway from the October 11, 1982 issue of AW&ST. It is interesting to see what an aviation artist considered relevant to a "stealth" design a third of a century ago: Upper surface inlet and exhaust. Check! Internal weapons bay. Check! SR-71 fuselage sections. Check! IRST sensor. Check! Canted verticals. Check! (Although of ridiculous planform and poor location.) But what are those pipes in the wing leading edge and why the large holes in the weapons bay aft bulkhead? And that canopy: fifty percent larger that an F-16's! How much elevon power it would take to lift that nose about the apparent main gear location. Ahh. That's what that canard is for! It does show that some thought went beyond the external shape.

 

[Vladimir]

Hi, when i was a boy i think that F-19 real plane...according to this "Turbo" chewing gum ;D

 

[Vladimir]

some pics:

 

[sferrin]

Heh. I use to have a copy of that blue stealth book by Bill Sweetman.

 

[Hobbes]

I used to play that Microprose game a lot.

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

I used to play that Microprose game a lot.

Me too! On my Amiga... My favourite were the carrier missions. Bombing the USSR was easy compared to finding and landing on the carrier.

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

Heh. I use to have a copy of that blue stealth book by Bill Sweetman.

I still do.

 

[sferrin]

Heh. I use to have a copy of that blue stealth book by Bill Sweetman.

I still do.

I think my little brother lifted mine. When I went off to college I left my books at my parents place. Years later when I grabbed the rest of my stuff my book collection had "mysteriously" gotten smaller. :'(

 

[XP67_Moonbat]

I got another copy from Coas Books in Las Cruces, NM back in March. Saw about three other copies then. This bookstore has a lot used, older titles on their shelves. Good selections!

Here's the website:
http://www.coasbooks.com/

 

[flateric]

...

 

[Dynoman]

Fun video for fans of Testors F-19.

 

[Ian33]

You really can see how the Have Blue was seen by an unauthorised person who saw it side on, and to the rear but not planform.

Inward canter tails faceted cockpit, engine intakes above and behind... And Wowser, what a great video!

 

[Dynoman]

I'm curious, with as much attention that the Testor F-19 model received during its heyday, if there was ever any engineering or popular article written on it from an engineering perspective? I can see a variety of issues (e.g. canard and spoiler control effectiveness, wing loading, obstructed inlet, stealth effectiveness, etc.) that may have already been addressed in a peer reviewed article.

This article explains how Anderson came up with the design:
http://articles.latimes.com/1986-10-19/magazine/tm-5852_1_f-19-stealth-fighter/2

The initial inspiration for the design came from an electronic company's (Loral's?) stealth aircraft advertisement.

 

[Hobbes]

What struck me when building the Revell F-19 (and having an F-117 to compare it to) was the lack of space in the fuselage. You'd have the engines, weapons bay and landing gear all impinging on each other, while leaving no space for fuel.

 

[Ian33]

What struck me when building the Revell F-19 (and having an F-117 to compare it to) was the lack of space in the fuselage. You'd have the engines, weapons bay and landing gear all impinging on each other, while leaving no space for fuel.

F35 early variant?

But yeah, can see why it was a demonstrator, Have Blue sized.

 

[Dynoman]

Although not a definitive case, the basic configuration of the Testor F-19, flown here in an RC model, is tentatively a stable and a controllable design. The video demonstrates no apparent oscillations in high AoA maneuvers (i.e. slow flight, climb out, landing, etc.) and no gross oscillations in sideslip when turning. Maneuvers seemed to respond positively to all the controllers inputs, flying patterns that appeared precise with no over-controlling, suggesting positive static stability. Again, its very subjective, but its an interesting exercise in 'napkin-engineering.'

Note: Just found quellish posted similar video of an earlier version of the RC model.Sorry for the duplication

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

What struck me when building the Revell F-19 (and having an F-117 to compare it to) was the lack of space in the fuselage. You'd have the engines, weapons bay and landing gear all impinging on each other, while leaving no space for fuel.

F35 early variant?

But yeah, can see why it was a demonstrator, Have Blue sized.

Size of the model was driven by the reports that the Stealth Fighter was transportable without disassembly in the C-5.

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

Doesn't seem like this has ever been posted here, surprisingly.

Testors F-19 Patent drawings.

 

[Ian33]

That's a beauty, even if she is just a model.

 

[Steve Pace]

Doesn't seem like this has ever been posted here, surprisingly.

Testors F-19 Patent drawings.

Do you have the link to that patent - I googled it and came up with nothing. Thanks -SP

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

USD305325S - Airplane - Google Patents

 

[Steve Pace]

Thanks so much, Paul. Now if we could just get the same re the LORAL F-19 concept. -SP

 

[LEG]

Cutaway,

Very Nice buildup of the 72nd snaptite. It's too bad that Monogram had to butcher the beautiful LORAL concept artwork with the chintzy F/A-18 MLG and misproportioned belly (effectively turning the jet from a low wing monoplane to a midwing design, like turning an F-20 into an F-16) but from the top, the jet is still very impressive, as your beautiful replica shows.

The real issue here is that the LORAL design is for a very high altitude wave rider with elements of XB-70 theory in it whereas the nominal 'F-19' was part of a fictional (?) COSIRS or Covert Survivable In-Weather Reconnaissance Strike system capability which simply never would have looked like the jet shown.

You don't build a huge wing area to fly 'In Weather' but /over it/ (turbulence etc.) and once you develop that concept and marry it to the ideals of stealth for which a blended wing:body theory, similar to the B-2, is applied, the nature of the design becomes one of a flat belly with a sculpted upper deck where the real depth of the structural volume (sufficient for OUTBOARD positioning of tall landing gear for instance) is inherent to a delta wing with F-4 rather than F/A-18 influence MLG.

The Monogram kits (they also did one in 48th with the full gear) diverge from this by attempting to navalize the aircraft with folding wings and other nonsense at a time when the SOA in VLO design was the F-117 with 'vinyl tile' appliques and lots of 'butter' edge seal putty that would simply never stand up to such articulation.

As such, rather than use what we now know to be a standard of design with the perfect skin envelope built first and the structural body integrated into it as a separately trimmed design, Monogram used a component approach with discrete fuselage and wing elements that could not and did not have the blended depth needed to achieve true VLO within a believable packaging constraint for such a broad-but-shallow design.

Part of this may well have been LORALs fault in putting what is essentially an F-16 scaled cockpit on what would have been something closer in size to an SR-71 but it is equally important to note that the LORAL concept artwork was only ever released once, as a (high) in-flight shot and thus you never really see the belly or landing gear.

As Kelly Johnson once said of the 'RS-71' performance regime: "We don't really give the Russians enough to think about in the high fast envelope." The analogy being made of an AGM-69 SRAM having 10-15nm of range in the TF mode, 20-30nm from a B-1B at 30,000ft and 70+nm in the B-52 at 50,000ft when compared to a strike configured blackbird releasing one at Mach 3 and 80,000ft to fly perhaps 200nm downrange.

Of course, the bar always raises and today the 'F-19' would be hypersonic with a wedge as much as traditional wing design. It would probably use a weapons tunnel like the A-5A Vigilante with positive release EML shunt of multiple trained or stacked weapons behind a habitation module and the performance numbers would reflect the capacities of the 40N6 missile of the S-400/500 with defensive coverage in excess of 600km equating to a need to adopt minimum 500nm standoffs from a Mach 10 and 200,000ft, hypercruising, airframe. Skipping the weapons across-track like stones over a millpond before tipover reacceleration under blip motor (and possible MARVing) to slam into high value infrastructure and industrial targets in economic warfare.

Such a weapons system might very well have the planform of the 'F-19' but it would likely have the deep spine of something like a Bird of Prey or even an M2 lifting body

https://new--tomorrows.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F25109308262

View: http://new--tomorrows.tumblr.com/post/25109308262/scanzen-northrop-loral-f-19a-specter-stealth

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/ff/b0/47/ffb0470b41267b6b6aa8d694ec70db4f.jpg

http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/9b552809394c49a2aea908a2f6df3bc5/m2-f3-lifting-body-research-aircraft-begins-its-rocket-powered-flight-c0krbf.jpg

Ironically, it might even be navalized. If you want to retain cheap, fast, manned strike without the cost and fuel issues of feeding (and upgrading) an entire airwing constellation of support missions, into an A2AD/ICD biased threat environment, you almost have to go high-fast to allow for tangential drive-by attacks and 'here to there' shuttle bombing from say the East China Sea to the South China Sea before rinse-and-repeat return missions, more than 1,000nm offshore from the threat BASM/ROTHR coverage.

It is not Midway anymore and if you are going to beat 1,500km DF-21 or 2,500km DF-26 with BASM capabilities, you have to make the jet behave like the missile does in terms of speed of transit, depth of reach as SOI and multiplicity of strikes per day on valuable targets. The fact that Megawatt class SSLs are going to come to dominate close-in defenses must also be considered.

 

[hesham]

From JAWA 1985.

 

[Dynoman]

A couple more videos of the F-19 in action via VSKYLABS X-Plane. The details of the X-Plane model is based on the Testor/Italeri design.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSpLAZ7IObM

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ2LOvB0du8

 

[Dynoman]

Scale of Testor's F-19 compared to Lockheed F-117A, and Have Blue compared to F-117A. The smaller F-19 model looks more like a demonstrator in size than an operational concept with two F404s and two AGMs buried inside its airframe with fuel, cockpit and equipment. The F-19 is similar in dimensions to an F-16 Fighting Falcon.

 

[flateric]

...

 

[hesham]

From; Warplanes of the 21st Century

 

[fightingirish]

(Early) Artwork by Erik Simonsen. B)

 

[Dew]

May as well post this as I came across it again recently - looked through the thread but couldn't see this exact die-cast posted before. ERTL Dyersville Iowa (Made in China ofc!). I seem to have lost the bombs/missiles/can't remember on the very stealthy central stores. Guessing this was late 80's ?
Anyway I hope somebody likes them!

edit: it's ~6¾" / ~17cm

 

[Jeb]

I still have this, fully intact although it's had a fair amount of the black paint bashed off in play and I don't think the wheels stay up anymore. It came with a pair of Maverick missiles that attached in tandem to studs on the belly.

 

[fightingirish]

And what about toys?
F-117 Stealth fighter
SB-35
Made in Thailand
Matchbox Int'l LTD
(C) 1990

This toy mold is back, but with a plastic tail and more flimsy undercarriage.

 

[r16]

f-118 in What if format and its heavy brother as a bonus . Found online somewhere .

 

[Dynoman]

From VSky Labs with cockpit layout designed similarly to the original Testor model.

 

[Dynoman]

Testor's F-19 Stealth Trainer variant.

 

[archipeppe]

Such drawing, even if it is referred to the Northrop ATB, is an early attempt to depitct the Lockheed F-19 CSIRS, appeared in the June 1982 number of AerospazioMese (at that times directed by our Nico).

 

[TsrJoe]

the AerospazioMese drawing is based upon 'Stealth Penetrator' artwork which appeared without comment in National Geographic journal (part of the original disinformation programme ?)