Good point.
Taildog was certainly an interesting concept with quite some merit.
Not exactly true. What couldn't be born was CVA-01, CVA-02, CVA-03 and fleets of aircraft and training and deployments.
But CVA was about the minimum for a CATOBAR carrier as about the same size and cost as CdG and Russian carriers, nobody has built a CATOBAR one smaller. Clearly we couldnt afford it and I dont think it was even that close.
PCB did work.....that was the problem!
No, it doesnt. You are mistaking PCB working as plenum chamber functioning and the system generating thrust. What you are missing is the implications and the massive hot gas ingestion (HGI) problem it creates.
It lures the UK down repeatedly to toying with this and squandering time, energy and money until trials of the technology kept confirming the problems of HGR and the blast of high temperature jets onto various surfaces.
But the irony is the pierced deck with water cooling actually solves that. It was opposed on principle by the Navy.
No it doesnt solve that. HGI (what I assume you mean with “HGR”) is unsolvable. Jet effects (blast temps) can be ameliorated but at high cost and effort and nobody wants to do that. Noting your solution is still not used even with F35B and its core nozzle close to the deck.
But HGI is still unsolvable regardless.
Your propulsion system basically works by raising the temp of air taken in. You are limited by materials as to how much you can do that.
If you are sucking in hot air you are losing thrust, something like 100lbf per degree rise.
This is what kills so many V/STOVL projects. The X-32 had the same issue.
Harrier and F35B work because of the front nozzles/lift fan air acting as a blocker to very hot and very high speed air post combustion. Even then the what inlet sees is still raised vs ambient and causes issues with ingestion.
Another key development is the tolerance modern engines have to distortion (uneaven flow conditions, temp/pressure) at the fan face. Hence partly why they rarely (vs 60s designs) surge. This as much as raw temp numbers is a showstopper in terms of HGI.
Much like single engined solutions.
And the whole 'rolling VL', which was so opposed for so long as some sort of heretical idea........is now used to increase bringback load on the F-35B!
Opposed? Heretical? Where are you getting this from?
Harriers did RVLs for most of their lives. On land.
What wasn’t feasible was doing this at sea with a moving deck. Only with modern FCS is this possible. A somone intimately involved in making SRVL work this was neither trivial, or possible before. Not only do you need F35 inceptor/FCS technology to make it possible for test, let alone service, pilots to do this, but also innovations like the bedford array and critically the ability to give ship data to the aircraft’s FCS to give a stabilised touchdown point (a whole world of issues with software and integrity etc, but solved).
That is what is required to do SRVL safely. It didnt exist pre F35. With F35 this was wanted (and seen as viable) from the outset hence the development work with VAAC and eventually the F35.
So, "it doesn't work" is false
It is absolutely true which is why it was and remains a dead end.
"you can't use pierced deck and water cooling" is false.
Who uses this? Even now?
And "you can't use rolling VL" is also false.
Not pre F35B you cant. Harrier was too complex and difficult to fly and only an integrated FCS where you can use control laws to simplify things can this be done. VAAC had F35 inceptors and control laws to help develop this, and was flown by TPs under very controlled conditions explicitly as a step in the process.
What's left is such aircraft be tough to design, limited relatively to more STOL and CATOBAR and CTOL oriented designs and unlikely to be produced in large numbers.
PCB was a dead end and not realisable as a practical on aircraft technology. Which is why it wasn’t and isn’t. Not lack of funds or conspiracies, it just didn’t work.
Considering various UK teams were designing VSTOL aircraft based on PCB until the mid 80's (a span of about 20 years) I agree in saying it clearly could be made to work.
So, they spent 2 decades on something and yet nothing, absolutely nothing came from it.
And yet you see that as “it must be good” vs reality of “its rubbish”. That is some prejudice.
It got to engine test phase so if it was really a dead end and unfeasable hundreds of engineers would not have spent two decades designing around it.
That is a very touching faith. It bears no relation to reality!
The problem is I believe - as with most UK projects - the money was never really there to drive it to flying status.
And yet as you say, they spent 20 years on it and 100s of engineers. That clearly isnt a lack of money!
The studies involving PCB were almost always UK only and after the early 60s the UK produced basically zero clean sheet designs on its own. So even P.1216 were unlikely to make prototype.
If the lure of the Phantom was ignored as specified in this thread and a P.1154 or nothing attitude in government was had I'm sure it could be made to work in an operational type.
No it couldnt, it was completely flawed. Want an alterntive to the siren call of the F4, design a conventional UK F4.
1127 derived was doable and proved very successful.
I think PCB based supersonic aircraft were still being touted as late as 1995.
That rather sits in the face of the ASTOVL and later JSF designs in the early to late 90s, none of which had any connection to PCB.
At that time it was either gas/shaft driven lift fans or lift engines. Perhaps Boeing on the way to what became the X32 abortion, but nobody from BAe, LM or Macair was PCB interested.
There may have been some small scale PCB type work in case it was wanted but I recall none and I doubt it as who would fund it and why, in the context of funding the above concepts which were clearly the future.
Certainly nobody was touting a PCB supersonice aircraft then.
Which means if you joined Hawkers in 1960, and took early retirement aged 55, you could have worked your entire career of 35 years on such concepts.
You could have joined BAe in the 80s and retired about now and spent your entire career on Typhoon. Or the 70s to 10s and Tornado.
I met a guy at LM who was retiring after 40 years. Not a single project he’d ever worked on had gone into service, and this was F35 in the days of the weight issue and fears of cancellation.
