Rolls-Royce Spey based projects

[overscan (PaulMM)]

It seems that, in the early/mid 1960s, that the Spey was a very popular engine. Here is a quick summary of 3 Spey engine design proposals I've found mentioned in one book: Attack Aircraft of the West by Bill Gunston.

TFX / F-111

Allison and Rolls-Royce's AR.168 (license-built Spey) was considered the best engine proposal by some margin, but was marginalised due to its perception as a "foreign" engine. It is interesting to speculate if the Spey might have proved less troublesome than the early TF30.

A-4 Skyhawk

1964's Spey-Skyhawk would have increased the combat radius with 4000lb load from 200nm to almost 600nm.

Mirage IV

BAC promoted a Spey engined Mirage IV as a TSR.2 replacement.

 

[Archibald]

- Tsiklon!!!! Spey powered, vastly upgraded Vautour for Israel, after the 6-day war. with such a plane, no need for phantom as long range strike aircraft... but de gaulle embargo killed the project
(any data is welcome!!!!!!)
- F-100S. once again, a multirole spey-powered F-100 in the 60's (found that at Joe Baugher website)

 

[Archibald]

Forget : Mirage IIIK (spey-powered, for Great Britain... want to know more about it :-[ )

 

[Jemiba]

Cyclone : Just imagine a Vautour IIN with a longer, pointed nose ! ;D

 

[tomcat1974]

IAR-95

 

[Archibald]

WS-9 for the J-8II
TF-41 for the A-7
AMX

 

[Deino]

WS-9 for the J-8II

Sorry, but the WS-9 was never intented for the J-8 as this was to be powred from the beginning by two Liyang (LMC) Wopen-7A (MNPK 'Soyuz' [Tumanskii] R-11-F300) for the J-8 and later WP-13 for the "B" !

The concurring delta canard Chengdu J-9 was once considered with the WS-9 but its original engine was to be the WS-6 !

Cheers, Deino

 

[Archibald]

??? Ok, but is there a chinese fighter using the WS-9 actually ?

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

F-104 Spey project (referred to in Attack Aircraft of the West)

I'm referring to Spey based PROJECTS here, not every aircraft that used Spey.

 

[Jemiba]

Here's the before mentioned Cyclone, although Cuny describes it, as to
be powered by RB 168-1, "a development of the Spey" ...

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

Jemiba, remember the Spey was a civil turbofan first. RB.168-1 is the military derivative of Spey as used on the Buccaneer.

The Allison TF41 was known to Rolls-Royce as the RB.168-62.

 

[Deino]

??? Ok, but is there a chinese fighter using the WS-9 actually ?

Yes, the Xian JH-7 (later production machines from the Block-02) and JH-7A !

 

[Archibald]

You mean the chinese equivalent to su-24, Aka the flying leopard?

 

[Pioneer]

Now I do not think you can class the JH-7 Flying Leopard as a Su-24 equivalent!
The Su-24 is far greater in just on payload, range and low altitude performance alone.

Now you would be closer if you said Anglo-Franch Jaguar!

Regards
Pioneer

 

[Archibald]

Maybe, but the spey is much more powerful than the Adour (4000 kgp Vs 9000 kgp). and they obtained a Jaguar-class performance aircraft ??!!! Is it built from lead ? ;D
Just wanted to be sure that we talked about the JH-7 flying leopard, powred by two WS-9 "chinese speys".

 

[martinbayer]

I realize I'm a bit late on the roundout again on this one, but in the Seventies Egypt considered the Spey to re-engine their Mig-21s:

http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1975/1975%20-%202768.html

Martin

 

[Zippydoodah]

Jemiba, remember the Spey was a civil turbofan first. RB.168-1 is the military derivative of Spey as used on the Buccaneer.

The Allison TF41 was known to Rolls-Royce as the RB.168-62.

Yes you are correct. I have the orginal draft drawing of the TF-41. It hung in my Grandfathers office for many years.

 

[JohnR]

There are two aircraft I have wondered how being re-engined with Speys one is one of my all time favourite aircraft the A5 Vigilante and the B58 Hustler. How would the re engining of these aircraft with Spey would have affected them. I fthink it may have been as ill advised as the Phantom's on the A5, but with the nacales of the B58 may have been able to be more successful.

 

[Archibald]

That's terrific idea BUT - for the alternate history section (unless this was considered for real,but I doubt it: B-58 and Vigilante while formidable were also "dead ends" impossible to export, so the Spey-re-engining probably can't apply, alas)

As you noted, Vigilante may be as difficult as OTL British Phantoms. B-58 by contrast had podded engines and (as proven by Convair bazillons of B-58 proposals) you can hang whatever engines on the pylons, provided enough ground clearance and not tearing the pylons apart, of course. In the case of the Hustler, trading J79 for Speys would directly impact high-altitude performance. On the positive side, range and low level performance would get a boost. Which is pretty good, because the Hustler needed to switch to low level and conventional weapon delivery to survive into the 70's... Independant from Spey, the Hustler would need some limited redesign to try and make a little more *friendly* to its pilot and crews, as far as flight characteristics go... the B-58B seemed to be a step in that direction. A B-58B with Speys would be one hell of a terrific bomber, much better than Tu-22 Blinder (not too hard to beat that flying piece of junk) and perhaps on par with the Backfire.

 

[JohnR]

Sorry if I put my thoughts in the wrong section, but it's been an itch I've wanted to scratch for ages and this thread seemed ideal.

What would the effect of the Spey's installation on high altitude performance and why. I know that Convair came up with lots of variants of the Hustler including an air liner. One variant that has always intrigued me was one with the engines placed into a twin mounting. I've only ever seen a line drawing in Bill Gunstons Spitfire to Eurofighter (I think, my much delayed house move is back on so most of my books are boxed up).

 

[elmayerle]

There are two aircraft I have wondered how being re-engined with Speys one is one of my all time favourite aircraft the A5 Vigilante and the B58 Hustler. How would the re engining of these aircraft with Spey would have affected them. I fthink it may have been as ill advised as the Phantom's on the A5, but with the nacales of the B58 may have been able to be more successful.

Re-engining the A-5 runs into a problem in engine diameter. There is a major forging that serves as the spindle frame for the horizontal and vertical tail surfaces and changing that to handle a larger diameter engine than the J79 would not be a trivial or cheap effort.

The use I would have preferred seeing would be the afterburning TF41 replacing the TF30 in the F-14A when the F401 engine was cancelled.

 

[razorbak5]

It seems that, in the early/mid 1960s, that the Spey was a very popular engine. Here is a quick summary of 3 Spey engine design proposals I've found mentioned in one book: Attack Aircraft of the West by Bill Gunston.

TFX / F-111

Allison and Rolls-Royce's AR.168 (license-built Spey) was considered the best engine proposal by some margin, but was marginalised due to its perception as a "foreign" engine. It is interesting to speculate if the Spey might have proved less troublesome than the early TF30.

A-4 Skyhawk

1964's Spey-Skyhawk would have increased the combat radius with 4000lb load from 200nm to almost 600nm.

Mirage IV

BAC promoted a Spey engined Mirage IV as a TSR.2 replacement.

My Grandfather help develope the Spey Turbofan k 168 202.
I have the original draft blueprint of it