Hawker P.1082

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A neat design.
Single reheated Avon, with what looks like a fully variable exhaust nozzle.
High wing, classic Hawker style swept sort. Structure seems to pass over the engine as a single piece.
Main gear may be in the wing, but it's not clear and the fusilage seems big enough to squeeze them in.

Inlets a bit odd, but well clear of cannon mounted beneath the nose. So little danger of gases entering the inlets.

Low tail..well relative to the high wing that is.

All in all, quite decent and drawn up to F23/49 in May 1950.

Almost the plane Hawkers should have built.

(Actually a real project, mentioned in the designations section https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/hawker-designation-list.833/ ,
so move to this section)
 
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May 1950 is terribly late for F23/49 given English Electric already had a contract for P1B in April 1950. I don't see any eason to prefer this design to the Lightning.
 
overscan (PaulMM) said:
May 1950 is terribly late for F23/49 given English Electric already had a contract for P1B in April 1950. I don't see any eason to prefer this design to the Lightning.
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Odd isn't it.
Almost as if.....say Camm got word of this late, got a sketch thrown up but realised it was too late.

What is preferable to the Lightning is engine installation, inlets, nose and general layout.
But more as a supersonic Hunter successor.
 
TsrJoe said:
Undercarriageless fighter like French
SNCASE Baroudeur ?
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No. The Baroudeur was designed as an "off road" takeoff with a heavy droppable gear like the Me 163, and landed on skids. The rubber deck carrier aircraft launched from something resembling a ZELL launcher, and had a reinforced lower fuselage for landing. Check any references for the Supermarine 505, their entry. To me, the most amazing thing about this harebrained scheme was the famous test pilot Winkle Brown thought it was a good idea.
 
The rounded lower fuselage and high wings would make it a tricky beast for flexible deck landing. But it does fit within the time period though, has no obvious undercarriage of any form and it does have an arrester hook. The 34ft span would probably make it carrier-lift capable without wing folding too. So its a plausible guess. It would put it firmly as a private-venture too.
 
The fact that so many experienced people thought the flexible deck was such a great idea that they actually put it on a ship and flew trials with it is honestly baffling. I can understand one or two people thinking it might be a good idea and suggesting it, but the sheer number of people needed to approve this?
 
royabulgaf said:
It would be an interesting sight if one of those had to emergency divert to some airport with a concrete runway.bb
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Well you wouldn't. Put it on the grass instead and clench yer buttocks hard and take the chance that you won't wreck your spine, or say "f*&k this" and punch out on the seat and take your chances that you won't wreck your spine.
 
It could have been also intended to be able to be recovered at land bases equipped with foamed runways. The RAF originally pioneered the technology for use with badly damaged bombers coming back from raids over Germany during WWII. The primary locations for that system during the war were RAF Manston, RAF Carnaby, and RAF Woodbridge, I believe. The 'foam carpet' was still in use at RAF Manston up to around the early 1990s or there abouts.
 
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SSgtC said:
The fact that so many experienced people thought the flexible deck was such a great idea that they actually put it on a ship and flew trials with it is honestly baffling. I can understand one or two people thinking it might be a good idea and suggesting it, but the sheer number of people needed to approve this?
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It does seem baffling. But there is the matter of hindsight. From their point of view, a Nimitz-class character would probably seem improbably large, expensive, and complicated.
 
We must also realise the origins of the Scimitar is as a fighter for such flexible deck landing.
They thought the lack of heavy landing gear justified the effort, especially prior to the development of the angled deck concept.
It looked safer and potentially delivered lighter aircraft.

But looking at this design there would seem scope for proper landing gear if desired.

Frankly such a design seems quite a reasonable basis for development.

Remember F23/49 was for sustained flight to Mach 1.2

If only Hawkers had come up with this earlier.
 
royabulgaf said:
TsrJoe said:
Undercarriageless fighter like French
SNCASE Baroudeur ?
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<snip> The rubber deck carrier aircraft launched from something resembling a ZELL launcher, and had a reinforced lower fuselage for landing. <snip>
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Interesting. Until you mentioned it, I hadn't thought about the similarity to ZELL. The early USAF "Zero Length Launch/Mat Landing (ZELMAL)" concept also relied on a flexible deck of sorts. An F-84 was supposed to land wheels-up on big rubber air mattress while snagging a cable with an arrester hook to slow itself. While ZELL worked well, the mats proved impractical and hard on the pilots' necks and backs. See https://web.archive.org/web/20140319163404/http://www.airvectors.net/avzel.html

I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't some cross-pollination between these projects. Both originated in a perceived need to operate heavy, high-performance jet aircraft out of tight spaces: small RN carriers in one case and dispersed, unpaved air strips in the other. The USAF concept was meant to disperse a retaliatory strike force that could survive a preemptive nuclear attack on NATO air bases. But I wonder whether it wasn't in part a holdover from WW2 experience, where a big advantage of fighter bombers was their ability to operate from comparatively small, relatively inexpensive ships and short, grass runways.
 
SSgtC said:
The fact that so many experienced people thought the flexible deck was such a great idea that they actually put it on a ship and flew trials with it is honestly baffling. I can understand one or two people thinking it might be a good idea and suggesting it, but the sheer number of people needed to approve this?
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I suspect it was the thought of saving the weight of the undercarriage and extending range/paload.

SRJ.
 
SeaslugMk2 said:
I suspect it was the thought of saving the weight of the undercarriage and extending range/paload.
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Yes given the poor fuel consumption of early jet engines the payload fractions were awful if you wanted reasonable range. Saving a few % on the landing gear potentially doubles your payload.

But then jet engines got better. And people realised that undercarriage is pretty useful for the 99% of time when the aircraft is on the ground.
 

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