How about a spy plane? Convair always had unusual ideas, and it seemed like among them was a fascination with drones. The CIA and the Air Force were worried about the U2 even before it entered service. Despite its performance characteristics, Russians could track the ugly thing on radar with no difficulty. So remember that pod hanging from the bottom of the B-58? Well, what if that carried a drone instead of a nuclear weapon?
Convair had experimented with parasite aircraft prior to advances in aerial refueling. With the extended range and high cruising speed of the B-36 Peacemaker, fighters of the day had difficulty keeping up. Jet fighters didn’t have the range, and prop fighters didn’t have the speed. The solution was the X-85 Goblin, designed to hang from a hook in one of the B-36’s bomb bays. It wasn’t a great solution; I’ll do a future post about it.
In this case, though, Convair proposed an two-piece parasite; one manned, the second unmanned. The host aircraft would accelerate to Mach 2 so the ramjet on the parasite had enough airflow to fire up; once released, it could hit Mach 4, which made it invulnerable to fighters and surface-to-air missiles of the time. It would land like the X-15; on a belly skid.
There were immense problems with this idea. First, the parasite was probably to heavy and produced too much drag to allow the host B-58 enough speed for the ramjets to fire up. Second, the B-58B program was cancelled while development continued.
The Fish (as it was called) was ahead of its time: it used ceramic materials to help with supersonic heat and absorb radar; it was shaped to limit radar cross-section; it featured a lifting body design to extend its range to nearly 4000 miles. All this in the 1950s.
Links to much more detail and excellent pictures over at aerospcaeweb.org.
Additional editorial commentary: it amazes me how little progress has been made in aerospace since the middle of the last century. In the recent controversy over the Obama administrations proposed cancellation of the Constellation project, some key thoughts have been overlooked. First, the great advances in aviation were often made by small teams of engineers at private companies like Lockheed and Convair (and even Boeing). NASA today has become a huge bureaucratic mess; it takes 25,000 employees several months just to refurbish the Space Shuttle for one launch. NASA’s plan to return to the moon and go on to Mars was described as “Apollo on Steroids”; but Apollo, while a magnificent feat, was done with unlimited budgets and the only motivation to beat the Russians. After the moon, interest died and NASA turned into a jobs program. People want more aerospace research; funding NASA is unlikely to provide progress, any more than funding the Post Office (contemplating 5-day delivery, still at a loss) is more likely to produce better mail delivery or funding Amtrak more (Acela – too many compromises and priced too high, especially compared to Asian and European systems) is likely to produce innovative rail service. For innovation in aerospace, look to Scaled Composites, SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and innumerable other small companies.
