Have you ever wondered to yourself “what were the Air Force Weapon System Designations as of September, 1959?” Wonder no more:
The following page does not continue the Weapon System list, but goes on to list Air Force ace fighter pilots.
Jun 212022
May 092022
Mike released a video on some of the stranger aircraft designed in the US since World War II. It includes a plethora of full-color concept paintings, including the first color rendering of the McDonnell Douglas ATB that I’ve seen.
Apr 262022
The third of three pieces of vintage aerospace concept art – the actual paintings, not reproductions – that I recently procured from ebay has arrived. This is a 1960’s Hughes concept for a “Hot Cycle” Rotor Wing VTOL aircraft. The prior two – a 1970’s Bell AMST concept for a four-turbojet C-130 test aircraft and a 1980 Bell concept for a hovercraft to allow fighters to launch from bombed-out runways – were just able to be scanned on my flatbed scanner. But the Hughes painting was much larger, so I digitized it via photography, resulting in a 10,878X7500 pixel (about 36X25 at 300 dpi) image. Several iterations of the image – the stitched-together final image, and a version that was fade-corrected to make it look more like the actual painting – have been uploaded to a Dropbox folder with the Bell art.
These paintings are currently framed and will be hung on my wall… for a time. At some point my plan is to donate them to a good museum. The Smithsonian NASM is the obvious default, but I’m interested in alternatives. A museum that would *want* these and would protect yet display them would be ideal.
If you happen to see other aerospace concept art on ebay that’s not going for *insane* amounts and you’d like to see it preserved… let me know. I now have four pieces (not counting things like blueprints); not a great collection by any measure, but it’s something.
I am going to continue to work on digitizing this painting. I’ve been trying to find a local flatbed scanner big enough to scan the whole thing all at once; if I can get that done, the results will also be uploaded to the Dropbox folder.
If you’d like access to the folder – and thus the high-rez images, as well as some PDF documentation I’ll be adding – here’s an opportunity to do so. These paintings were not cheap to secure, so there’s a bit of a charge ($25):
Procuring these was not cheap, but now they are saved for posterity.
If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.
Mar 312022
I’ve just made the March 2022 rewards available for APR Patrons and Subscribers. This latest package includes:
Art: A poster of the 1990’s German Sanger II two-stage-to-orbit spaceplane
Document: Bell-Boeing “Pointer” brochure… full color brochure describing the proposed tiltrotor UAV
Document: Cessna EV-37E STOL: 1964 presentation on battlefield recon/surveillance version of the T-37
Document: History of the Juno Cluster System: conference paper on the early satellite launching system
CAD diagram: work-in-progress layout of the Aerocon Wingship. General arrangement diagram with brief description of how much trouble I have to go through sometimes…
If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.
Feb 182022
Circa 1967, bell Aircraft produced a design for a tiltrotor VTOL aircraft that would be quite similar to the V-22 Osprey of 20 years later. the Model 266 had two T64 turboshaft engines, one at each wingtip. Each engine drove a three-bladed prop/rotor that could be tilted to provide vertical or horizontal thrust, with cross-shafts making it so that the aircraft could power both props in the event that an engine were to go out. The overall configuration was much like that of a spindlier V-22 with a conventional tail. The basic role was as a troop transport for the US Army.
The full-rez scan of the art has been uploaded to the 2022-02 APR Extras folder on Dropbox. This is available to all $4 and up Patrons and Subscribers. If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.
Feb 112022
One of the odder concepts from the 1950’s was this circa 1959 Bell Aircraft concept for a nuclear powered helicopter. Very little has come out about it in the decades since; some crude schematics of how the reactor and propulsion systems would be arranged, a bit of text, and this one piece of art. Supposedly this vehicle would have a fuselage some 300 feet long (including rotors, it would be much longer), have a top speed of 200 miles per hour and weigh 500,000 pounds. The artwork looks more like the result of turning the artist loose on the idea of “giant nuclear helicopter” than an interpretation of an engineering study; nuclear reactors powerful enough to lift a half million power helicopter and neither small nor minimally radioactive. A heavily shielded reactor would have to be fitted within this vehicle *somewhere,* and there would doubtless not be windows in that region. This design, though, has windows along the whole length of the fuselage, with little space for a shielded reactor. This design seems to have been designated D-1007.
The full-rez scan of the art has been uploaded to the 2022-02 APR Extras folder on Dropbox. This is available to all $4 and up Patrons and Subscribers. If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.
Oct 142021
Here are some screenshots snagged from a not-quite-final version of the book, showing the sort of content you can expect from the final product.
As before it is available for pre-order from both the publisher and from Amazon:
Oct 042021
Early/mid 80’s artwork depicting an X-Wing vehicle (a helicopter with very rigid rotors that could stop in flight to serve as wings). The text attributes this to Boeing-Vertol, but I could swear I’ve seen it attributed to someone else (Lockheed? Grumman?).
The X-Wing concept seemed to have great promise, but testing showed that, perhaps unsurprisingly, it had severe problems during transition. Had it worked, though, it would hve provided the high speed and long range of a conventional aircraft with the hovering efficiency of a helicopter.
Sep 282021
My next book is slightly behind schedule, but it is coming. I was recently sent the first “proof” of the book after the graphic artists laid it out; a bit of tinkering yet, but it is nearing completion. I thought it might be interesting to post a shot of the last page.
Sep 132021
An animation of one of the Lunar Escape System concepts. The idea was that if the lunar module ran into some sort of trouble and couldn’t launch back into orbit, the ascent stage could be torn apart and jerry-rigged into a minimalist launch system… essentially a couple of lawn chairs stuck to a few propellant tanks and a rocket. Could it have worked? Sure. Would it have worked? Ehhhhhh….
If it’s “do this crazy thing or give up and die,” I can see the Apollo astronauts getting straight to work.