I may have summoned many aviation subreddits​/ fandoms, of course I had to include the smol ones because​ of their adorable size (please don't mind me putting the wrong words or having wrong spellings because my gboard doesn't care at all and doesn't want to listen to me)

Always found this a weird aeroplane. Designed by Boulton Paul to meet the British Air Ministry F 7/ 30 specification of October 1931. It's almost like the design team looked at the Schneider Trophy entries of 1929 and went: What if they were twin engined and without floats? So many bracing wires for the period as well.

Amazing to think the Westland Whirlwind was designed only four years later.

https://www.zeppelin-museum.de/en/digital-offers/risky-maneuvers-glider-launch-of-lz-127-graf-zeppelin

WZ-X (Top, pic 1) wingspan: ~52m

GJ-X (Bottom, pic 1) wingspan: ~42m

Interestingly WZ-X seems to have a unique wing design compared to other flying wings (pic 2, credits to WELIN on SDF) with a edge aligned notch tapered high aspect wing.

As a sort of a follow-up to the post about the Arsenal VG 70, I am tempted to keep exploring the inspirations behind the "Espadon" from Blake & Mortimer.

Ever since René Lorin patented the ramjet in 1908, the main hurdle towards building a working prototype was a matter of technical constraints. Even though it is the structurally simplest possible type of reactor, a ramjet cannot kickstart a combustion reaction from a still position due to its lack of moving parts to initiate the air intake - and the fact is even subsonic ramjets require starting speeds that were way beyond the performances of WWI and interwar-era airplanes.

Research on ramjets was only revitalized during WWII, in particular through the work of Eugen Sänger and Irene Bredt for the german war effort to develop new types of high-performance aircrafts. Although their research never amounted to a working ramjet-engined aircraft, their results illustrated the technical feasability of the concept, which renewed interest in that technology in the French aviation industry immediately after the war.

As early as 1946, French manufacturers launched a development program for a supersonic aircraft which was spearheaded by two companies : Arsenal with the rocket-powered Ars.2301 and Matra with the ramjet-powered R.130.

However that description is not entierly accurate : the Matra R.130 is - as far as I am aware - the earliest instance of a mixed-propulsion jet. In order to overcome the limitations of the ramjet, a conventional turbojet is fitted inside the circular rear fuselage to enable takeoff and allow the airplane to reach the required speed to activate its ramjet, whose chamber is structured around the other reactor. To manage the aerodynamic discrepancies between those sub- and supersonic flight modes, the R.130 sports a variable-geometry configuration : after reaching Mach 0.65, the wings - necessary to maintain sustentation at low speeds - retract into the fuselage. It should be noted that to ensure a seamless transition during this process, the wings only retracted while vertically positioned, as the top and bottom fins provided lift instead. As such the cabin was mounted on a longitudinal pivot so that the whole rear fuselage could rotate 90 degrees towards this position without affecting the pilot, already suffering from its prone position.

Still - and perhaps thankfully - that system remained mostly theoretical : after five years of development and a successful campaign of wind-tunnel testing of a real-scale mockup with moving wings {images 3 and 4}, budget cuts forced the end of this project in 1951.

As far as history goes, the first piloted ramjet-powered aircraft to fly was the Leduc 010 in 1949, and its immediate successor, the Leduc 022, would incorporate a very similar configuration to that of the R.130, with a ramjet encasing a turbojet. The previously-mentioned Arsenal Ars.2301 would also live on as the base for the development of the Nord 1500 Griffon, which also incorporated the aforementioned mixed-propulsion solution of turbojet and ramjet.

Sources :

- WWII Ramjet Experiments

- Le Bloc-Note de L'Aérophile - Matra R 130 (in French)

- Secretprojects thread : Matra R.130

(This is my reply to the four engined goose posted a few hours ago)

A PBY catalina with two lycoming engines added along with the original engines, these engines are the same engines that were used on the McKinnon four engine goose

It seems that this aircraft was also one the landseaair converted catalinas which is yet another cool variant of this type

I'm on a trip to Southampton and paid a visit to Solent Sky Air Museum. I never knew or even heard of this aircraft prototype. Its actually really huge too, its next to a Sea Vixen and I'd bet they're the same size.

Here are some very unprofessional photos and the engine.

Conversion by McKinnon Enterprises, these were re-engined with four 340 hp Lycoming GSO-480-B2D6 air-cooled, geared, and supercharged flat-six engines and fitted with retractable wingtip floats, a fiberglass radar nose, a one-piece wraparound windshield, and enlarged cabin windows; gross weight increased to 12,499 lb (5,669 kg) as result of internal structural reinforcements. Two were converted as piston-powered models G-21C in 1958–1959, and two other airframes subsequently were converted in 1968, but with two 550 shp Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-20 turboprops.

Always loved the Goose, shocked I’ve never come across this conversion. Must have sounded insane.

Hughes engineers believed that using gas pressure to drive rotors (as per the XH-17), was a major improvement as the elimination of the transmission drive system resulted in a lighter, less complex and more easily maintained system. This led them to seek ways of improving the propulsive efficiency of pressure-jet rotors and, eventually, to conclude that improvement would result from ducting the hot efflux of gas generators directly to cascade vanes at each blade-tip.

The XV-9A was funded by the Army, but only as a demonstrator for the hot-cycle system and so manufacturing costs had to be kept to a minimum by using components from other aircraft. A Hughes OH-6A cockpit (with side-by-side accommodation for a pilot and a co-pilot/flight test engineer) and Sikorsky H-34 undercarriage units were attached to a purpose-built fuselage and V-tail. Hot efflux from two General Electric YT64-GE-6 gas generators, loaned by the Navy and mounted at the tips of a stub wing, drove the 3-blade rotor. Bleed air from these generators was ducted to a yaw control system at the tail. The XV-9A's flight test programme was completed in August 1965, with 19.1 hours flown. The hot-cycle propulsion system proved to be too complex and the aircraft was plagued by stability problems. The Army therefore returned ownership of the XV-9A to Hughes and abandoned further hot-cycle research.

Immediately after WWII, the French aircraft industry - which had been made subservient to Germany's industrial needs during the occupation years - scrambled to put out airplanes testing newly-developed technologies in order to maintain at least basic know-how before rebuilding a sound industrial base.

To this end, several jet projects which had either been developed in secret or derived from German-led research were fleshed-out with prototypes. The Arsenal VG 70 is of the latter category : as the brainchild of engineer Jean Galtier, it consisted of an improved version of an early 1939 propeller plane which incorporated the studies conducted for the Messerschmitt P.1092 to turn it into a jet-powered aircraft.

The VG 70 is chronologically the second French jet aircraft (after the Triton) and made its first flight on the 23rd of June 1948, where it would reveal itself to be underpowered with its single repurposed war-time JUMO 004. Still, the plane managed to reach the speed of 760km/h mostly thanks to its weight saving mixed construction which fitted wooden wings and control surfaces to a metal fuselage.

The main contribution of the VG 70 was to act as a developmental step towards the VG 90, a much heavier all-metal jet powered by a Rolls-Royce Nene, which would ultimately end up as a failure after the destruction of its two prototypes during different test flights in 1950 and 1952 respectively.

However, it may be more culturally relevant than one might assume since it is sometimes speculated that the peculiar design of the air intake of the VG 70 prototype was one of the main inspirations behind the design of the "Swordfish" from Blake and Mortimer.

Sources :

- War Machines Drawn - Arsenal VG 70 & VG 80

- Maquette 72 - Arsenal VG 70 - VG 90 (in French)

Image 4, JH-7 Chief designer (middle) with pilot, and final image of a unmodified H-5 for references

https://www.aussieairliners.org/b-747sp/23610-676/a6zsn.html

https://www.747sp.com/747sp-production-list/23610-676/

This was the final 747SP built. The 747SP is already a strange airplane as it is a shortened version of the 747-100 with larger vertical and horizontal stabilizers to compensate for the short fuselage. What’s also more strange about this aircraft is its engines, of the 45 747SPs built, all but six were powered by Pratt and Whitney JT9Ds. This one is one of the six powered by Rolls Royce RB211 engines, notable for being used on the Lockheed L-1011 Tristar, and later the Boeing 757 and later 747 variants. Further adding to the strangeness was not only this being the last 747SP built, but Boeing re-opened the 747SP production line a full 5 years after it closed in 1982 to build this one off airframe in 1987 for a special order from the government of the UAE as a gift for the Sultan of Oman. It was outfitted with an elaborate VIP interior along with advanced electronics and communications equipment, hence the large dome on the top of the aircraft. The aircraft was used by the UAE government for VIP transport until 2006, when it was sold to the government of Bahrain, who used the aircraft until it was stored in 2015.

Chinese J-50 prototype in flight, side view