What shouldn't have been built?

hagaricus

hagaricus

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There are copious posts about what should have been built but wasn't, I wondered what people would nominate as aircraft that were built, but shouldn't have been?

For me, the supermarine attacker springs to mind, a jet-powered taildragger with an out-of-date wing.

Any thoughts?
 
This thing. Uber disaster ! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_XF10F_Jaguar
 
I'd vote the F-106. picking an oversized F-102 over the Lockheed Blackbird interceptor not only just seems like a waste of money, but also did a disservice to aviation industry. imagine where high speed high altitude craft would be today if the interceptor model of the SR-71 had gone into common service..
 
mithril said:
I'd vote the F-106. picking an oversized F-102 over the Lockheed Blackbird interceptor not only just seems like a waste of money, but also did a disservice to aviation industry. imagine where high speed high altitude craft would be today if the interceptor model of the SR-71 had gone into common service..
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How do you figured the F-106 was picked over the YF-12? I do not see how the F-106 had anything to do with the YF-12 not being ordered.
 
The Blackburn Botha. "Entry into this aircraft is difficult. It should be made impossible."

The J40 engine should have been canned a lot sooner than it was, and too damned many aircraft were designed around it.

Harrier, I am tempted to agree with you on Supermarine. The Attacker was probably a necessary step in the evolution of better things, and it did show what the Spiteful wing was capable of (did the Sea Hawk do any better in level speed terms?) In retrospect the Swift was a disaster, except possibly the FR.5 version, but what would have done the Scimitar's job? As for TSR.2, surely some of the blame for that has to go to EE and Bristol-Siddeley - unless you're saying that the TSR.2 should have been the P.17, built the way EE wanted, in which case I agree with you.

The F-4K and F-4M - slowest and heaviest Phantoms of all.

The irony about the XF10F was IIRC that the swing-wing was the thing about it that worked best.
 
Evil Flower said:
F-22. Now everything has to look like it.
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Everything has to look like it because the design works for VLO characteristics. I forget the exact quote but there's a saying that when building a design to fulfill certain requirements the designs of multiple different designers will ultimately tend toward a common design. Everyone wants VLO fighters, so everyone is going to build something that is going to look alike in some way shape or form.

Back on topic though, the bird that never should have been built would be the F-4 Phantom II for the simple reason that it was built using a philosophy that anything with enough thrust could fly and air combat maneuvering was made obsolete by SARH missiles with a tendency to malfunction whenever they were mishandled properly. It was also forced on every military branch by McNamara so that type of stigma doesn't sit well with me.
 
The DC-10
With the formal launch of this airplane, Douglas split a 1 plane market in two, leading to the demise of both competitors as airliner producers. Additionally, the competition left unserved the market for a smaller (250p) wide-body twin, greatly increasing the A300's odds of success. If a competent American airplane in this category had existed, Airbus probably wouldn't have anywhere near it's current position in the marketplace. No offense to the Europeans, but there wasn't anything that I know of that was terribly wrong with the Mercure other than the 737.
I realize that Airbus' rise isn't an objectively bad thing, but the DC-10 launch was extremely costly decision for the American industry.

As an aside, why wasn't the L-1011 launch the bad decision? Early in 1968, Lockheed had firm orders for approximately 150 aircraft from 3 customers against Douglas' letter of intent for approximately 50 aircraft from one customer. That was the moment for Douglas to back down and downsize their design to something approximating the requirement from AA that started the race (and sounded a lot like the A300). Oddly for a company that was probably at that moment contemplating withdrawal from the losing battle with the 707, they went ahead and entered another competition with an even more evenly matched competitor.
 
AAAdrone said:
Back on topic though, the bird that never should have been built would be the F-4 Phantom II for the simple reason that it was built using a philosophy that anything with enough thrust could fly and air combat maneuvering was made obsolete by SARH missiles with a tendency to malfunction whenever they were mishandled properly. It was also forced on every military branch by McNamara so that type of stigma doesn't sit well with me.
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But it was a very capable airplane for its day - and in terms of doing all sorts of jobs reasonably well, it was streets ahead of the other thing McNamara tried to force on everybody. As for ACM obsolescence, the Yanks weren't the only ones with that philosophy when the F-4 was in the design phase.
 
May I second the DC 10 for the lethal cargo hatch design that could be 'locked' loose ?? AKA the DC-10 Lesson...
 
Don't know about the F-102, it proved to be a good step up to a more potent design in the F-106, as well as a good study in building supersonic fighters. Failures are great learning tools.

The Boulton Paul Defiant gets my vote.
 
I like aircrafts that were engineered properly, failed, but they proved, that the experimental concept was simply wrong (at least for their era). Convair XFY-1 Pogo, SNECMA Coléoptére, Nord 1500 Griffon, Leduc 021, XFV-12A, Ryan X-13, Northrop X-21A, Sea Dart to name a few.

I don't like aircrafts that failed, proved nothing and from engineering point of view were one big stupid fail. A few examples:

General Motors P-75 Eagle (in fact it achieved its goal, but it was not to build an usefull aircraft)
Bristol Model 167 Brabazon
Hughes-Kaiser HK-1 Spruce Goose
Curtiss XP-87
Ilyushin Il-28
Buran spacecraft
MiG I-320
 
Firefly 2 said:
Don't know about the F-102, it proved to be a good step up to a more potent design in the F-106, as well as a good study in building supersonic fighters. Failures are great learning tools.

The Boulton Paul Defiant gets my vote.
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I'll take your Defiant and raise you a Blackburn Roc.
 
After seeing the F-102 appear: it wasn't that bad. The Christmas Bullet now, that was a millstone in the history of aviation. It flew like one too.
 
Possibly because the question carries the subtext of "designs from manufacturers that had a habit of being otherwise reputable builders of safe and reliable airplanes". It's fairly obvious that Christmas was anything but! ;)
 
Here's another idea, the XF-85 Goblin. It was a logical concept but it had its issues with re-docking with the mothership B-36 and being inferior to everything out there in ACM.
 
AAAdrone said:
Here's another idea, the XF-85 Goblin. It was a logical concept but it had its issues with re-docking with the mothership B-36 and being inferior to everything out there in ACM.
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True, but I suspect the general idea was that its opponents would be fixated on the mothership and would be easy meat, esp. since they wouldn't necessarily be expecting "fighter" opposition. i.e. if you give all your attention to the B-36, the Goblin will nail you; if you get on the Goblin's tail, it will fly under/past the bomber at an appropriate angle and the bomber's gunners will nail you.
 
Jemiba said:
I agree with regards to the P-75 or the Spruce Goose and others, but I cannot see,
why the Il-28 is in this list ? An aircraft of which more than 6000 examples were built
and that still is in use cannot be that bad, can it ?
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Well, let me say it that way:

Space Shuttle was in some way serial produced, used some thirty years until recently, so it cannot be that bad, can it?
DDT was really mass produced and is still in use in some third world countries, so it cannot be that bad, can it?

My answer is yes, it can.
 
AAAdrone said:
Everything has to look like it because the design works for VLO characteristics. I forget the exact quote but there's a saying that when building a design to fulfill certain requirements the designs of multiple different designers will ultimately tend toward a common design. Everyone wants VLO fighters, so everyone is going to build something that is going to look alike in some way shape or form.
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That wasn't the point. The point was that if they'd built the F-23 instead, everybody and their mother would've copied THAT design and as a result we would have better looking fighters.
 
It's supposed to kill people efficiently, EF, not look cool. Looking cool is a bonus.

Oh, and for an additional contender: the Short Sperrin. There's insurance against failure, and then there's building three different bombers to the same basic requirement AND a backup to THOSE.

The irony is that all four of them worked well as aircraft, though I'd rather not have taken a Sperrin into Russian airspace if I could have a Vulcan...
 
firepilot said:
mithril said:
I'd vote the F-106. picking an oversized F-102 over the Lockheed Blackbird interceptor not only just seems like a waste of money, but also did a disservice to aviation industry. imagine where high speed high altitude craft would be today if the interceptor model of the SR-71 had gone into common service..
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How do you figured the F-106 was picked over the YF-12? I do not see how the F-106 had anything to do with the YF-12 not being ordered.
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Firepilot is exactly right. The F-106 was ordered into production in April of 1956, so I guess you could say that the F-106 was picked "over" a plane that not only had not yet flown, but hadn't even been conceived.

The YF-12 didn't go into production because Robert McNamara wanted to force USAF to buy an interceptor version of the F-111 to replace the F-106 (I'm not making this up). USAF wouldn't do so, they wanted the F-12B. Congress agreed and funded the latter. McNamara sequestered the money. When Congress did the same thing the following year, McNamara ordered the Blackbird production line destroyed. Although he posited an "F-106X" in there, that was just a smoke screen to pretend he was considering alternatives to an F-111 interceptor. It finally reached the point where McNamara essentially told the AF that it was, '. the F-111 or nothing'. USAF wisely chose. 'nothing', and that was the end of dedicated interceptor development in the US.
 
Matej said:
Jemiba said:
I agree with regards to the P-75 or the Spruce Goose and others, but I cannot see,
why the Il-28 is in this list ? An aircraft of which more than 6000 examples were built
and that still is in use cannot be that bad, can it ?
Click to expand...

Well, let me say it that way:

Space Shuttle was in some way serial produced, used some thirty years until recently, so it cannot be that bad, can it?
DDT was really mass produced and is still in use in some third world countries, so it cannot be that bad, can it?

My answer is yes, it can.
Click to expand...


DDT, along with aspirin, was probably one of the greatest advances in protecting human life of the 20th century. Take a look at the deaths from insect-borne diseases, especially in poor countries, before, during and after the periods of DDT availability.

Things aren't always as simple as the press makes them out to be.
 
F-14D said:
USAF wisely chose. 'nothing', and that was the end of dedicated interceptor development in the US.
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As an air-superiority fighter (especially shipboard), the -111 was clearly a no-go. It was too heavy and couldn't dogfight to save itself. But as a land-based high-speed bomber interceptor based in the continental US, is it really such an awful thing? IIRC it was quite a fast aircraft.
 
I agree with Pathology_Doc. It was by all standards a nightmare to operate from a carrier and was far too cumbersome to fight in ACM but in the strictly long-range role it would have been a decent long-range interceptor/land-based Missileer since it had a top speed of at least Mach 2.5 and an immense unrefueled range and combat radius so with a good enough long range missile it would seem to have been a pretty viable airplane.
 
AAAdrone said:
I agree with Pathology_Doc. It was by all standards a nightmare to operate from a carrier and was far too cumbersome to fight in ACM but in the strictly long-range role it would have been a decent long-range interceptor/land-based Missileer since it had a top speed of at least Mach 2.5 and an immense unrefueled range and combat radius so with a good enough long range missile it would seem to have been a pretty viable airplane.
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Aside from the fact that it lacked an air-to-air radar and armament (at various times it was proposed to use the ASG-18/AIM-47 from the F-108/YF-12 or the AWG-9/AIM-54 from the F-111B but this was never defined) there were other issues. It was very fast when clean once it did get to altitude and speed, but it did neither of those as quickly as was needed for an interceptor. Optimized for low level strike, its flexibility at altitude wasn't that great. Another aside: that's why the TSR.2 would not have made a good interceptor. Its sustained turn performance, especially against a high speed target , would not be all that impressive. BTW, these were other reasons -aside from its carrier characteristics- why Navy was less than enamored with the plane. The Missileer concept was that you'd have a long endurance aircraft already airborne lumbering around the sky, wait for targets to come at you (you'd be a barrier between them and the known target) and then lob long range missiles at them. This wouldn't be good for a landbased interceptor. Also F-111 carrying more than its two internal missiles would lose its high speed. It has great range, but at sustained supersonic speeds that would go down a lot (whereas the F-12B was designed for great range at its high speed). And of course there are the TF30s, the less said about them the better.

Another consideration is that the F-106 existed, the F-12B had flown in prototype form with the fire control and weaponry (and launched and hit targets multiple times) while the AF interceptor F-111 only existed on paper and in McNamara's dreams. Given what it would have done to AF's budget and the limited capability it would have given them, once it was clear that McNamara was going to block the F-12B, electing to buy nothing and stay with the existing F-106s was the smart choice.
 
I think some people are confusing the role of "Interceptor" with that of "Fighter". Interceptors aren't intended to engage in ACM. They are intended to be able to fly, very, very, fast and usually in pretty much straight lines to destroy an attacking bomber before it can drop/launch its weapons. The F-111 would have made a pretty reasonable interceptor. It would have been pretty hopeless as a fighter though.
 
True, but F-14D's point still stands about how quickly the F-111 could get to the high altitude and speed. It had a good top speed, but a terrible acceleration rate and rate of climb due to the horrible engines and the drag penalties induced by carrying more than 2 missiles in internal bays.
You may be fast but being fast means nothing if it takes you forever to get to speed.

It is also true that the F-111 wasn't designed to be operating at continuous supersonic speeds with a large payload of long range missiles without suffering a serious range reduction as a result. Hence it would be hard pressed to defend a large area threatened by bombers.

The F-12 would have been so much better since it was actually built for the role of long range high speed super interceptor.
 

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