A Selection of 20th-Century Experimental Aircraft Quiz

Answer: TSR2

The TSR, Tactical Strike and Reconnaissance, project was carried out under the British government's General Operational Requirement No339 and was a development led by BAC, the British Aircraft Corporation. Running for nine years between 1957 and 1965, the project was cancelled after a total expenditure of over £430 million, an enormous sum of money at that time. The reasons for the cancellation of the project have been debated for decades, some fact and some conspiracy, but whatever the reasons for the termination of the TSR2, it is a modern aircraft that became a legend in its brief lifetime.

The TSR2 flew for the first time on the 27th of September 1964 but, after a series of just twenty-four test flights and the project becoming mired in spiralling development costs, the government announced the cancellation of the project in the budget speech on the 6th of April 1965; apparently, as with all government projects, all tooling and part-completed airframes were to be destroyed shortly after the announcement leaving very few project artefacts.

Only two examples of TSR2 exist today; one complete aircraft, number XR220, housed at the RAF Museum Cosford in Shropshire and a partially complete example, XR222, which is displayed at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford in Cambridgeshire.

Answer: Moonbat

The XP-67 single-seat twin-engined monoplane was the only piston-engine powered aircraft that the McDonnell Aircraft Company ever produced. McDonnell completed just a single example of the aircraft that became known as the 'Moonbat' before the US Army cancelled the project in the autumn of 1944.

The XP-67 first flew in January 1944 but was immediately beset by engine problems, an issue that was to plague the aircraft over its entire existence. However, the issue with its power plants was to prove immaterial in the end; the United States had identified the possibility of long range attacks by German bomber forces some years previously, a threat that never materialised from either the Germans or the Japanese. It had been the intention to arm the XP-67 with a total of six 37mm cannons, weapons which may have served it well in an anti-shipping role or as a ground-attack platform, but which would have been far too heavy and powerful for its original role as a high altitude interceptor. Only a single 'Moonbat' was ever constructed and this was, unfortunately, destroyed in a fire on the 6th of September 1944, the project being finally cancelled a week later on the 13th of September. The XP-67 was just under forty-five feet in length, had a wingspan of fifty-five feet and was expected to achieve a maximum speed of over 475mph although the closest that the prototype ever managed was just 405mph.

Answer: Helicopter

With a total of just six examples ever completed, the Flettner Fl265 first flew in 1939 but was by no means the first aircraft of this type to be designed by Anton Flettner; other earlier designs created by the German engineer pre-date this machine by almost a decade. The Flettner Fl265 had a crew of one, was just over twenty feet in length, around nine feet in height and weighed eight hundred kilograms when empty. Powered by a BMW radial engine, the Fl265 had a top speed of eighty-seven miles per hour and was kept aloft by two intermeshing rotors at twelve metres in diameter. The use of intermeshing main rotors dispensed with the need to provide this little aircraft with a tail rotor, a design feature that can be seen in use today on those helicopters produced by the Russian Kamov Company.

During 1942, Anton Flettner Flugzeugbau GmbH introduced a larger model, the Fl282 'Kolibri' or 'Hummingbird' which, with twenty-four machines completed and in service with the Luftwaffe, is considered to be the world's first production helicopter.

Answer: False

Not invisible, just inflatable! Flying for the first time after just twelve weeks of design and development, the Goodyear 'Inflatoplane' was a concept that saw the light of day in 1956; initial thinking behind this little aircraft was that it should see service as a rescue vehicle to be dropped behind enemy lines.

Having one of highest strength-to-weight ratios of any material available at the time of its development, the aircraft's wing, tail and cockpit assemblies were constructed of a rubberized fabric called Airmat. The fuselage was made of airship fabric with high-strength patches of material providing areas for the secure attachment of those struts and supports that connected the landing gear and the pilot's seat to the aircraft and provided the necessary levels of rigidity. In early versions a 40hp engine was mounted on top of the wing and an engine-driven air compressor was fitted in order to maintain the pressure needed to keep the airplane inflated and rigid. Goodyear further developed more advanced models of the aircraft which were fitted with larger engines providing more takeoff power. Additionally, an ingenious combination landing gear was developed which allowed this machine to operate from land, from water or from icy environments with no additional modification. The final version of the 'Inflatoplane' featured a 60hp engine which provided a range of two hundred and thirty miles at a breakneck top speed of 69mph!

Only 12 examples of all types were constructed between 1956 and 1973 when the project was finally cancelled. Of these only three survive; the only example on display today can be seen at the Stonehenge Air Museum located in Fortine, Montana.

Answer: Horten Ho229

In the summer of 1940 and at the height of the Battle of Britain, Luftwaffe fighter pilot and technical officer for Jagdgeschwader 26, Walter Horten determined that the Luftwaffe needed a fighter superior to the Spitfire. This new airplane required sufficient range to fly to England, be capable of engaging in combat for more than just a few minutes, and return safely to base, something that the fighter aircraft available to the Luftwaffe at that time fell short of providing.

During the early 1930s, the Horten brothers were designing and building their own glider aircraft which utilised an advanced flying wing configuration. Fully funded development work began in earnest on six examples of the Ho229 aircraft - v1 through to v6 - in 1942, but by this stage in the war the Horten designs became beset by delays, usually in the provision of the turbojet engines. However, the v2 example of the Ho229 was test flown and attained a speed in excess of 500mph; a staggering achievement for its time. The Horten flying wing fighter prototypes were still incomplete when personnel from General Patton's Third Army discovered Ho229v3 to v6 at Friedrichroda, Germany, in April 1945. Under Operation Paperclip, the US operation to prevent advanced German weapons technologies from falling into the hands of the Soviets, Ho229v3 was shipped to the United States later that year. No wings were recovered at Friedrichsroda but a pair was later recovered seventy-five miles away; these wings were also shipped to the United States where they are currently housed with the v3 central section at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in preparation for a full restoration of this ground-breaking aircraft.

Reimar Horten planned to sandwich a mixture of sawdust, charcoal, and glue between the layers of wood that formed large areas of the exterior surface of the Ho229 jet wing to shield the aircraft from radar, creating what could have been the world's first modern stealth fighter. The Ho229 had a wingspan of fifty-five feet, was just under twenty-five feet in length and was a shade over nine feet in height and was to be powered by two Junkers Jumo turbojet engines.

Answer: The Flying Bedstead

Constructed in 1954 by the famous Rolls-Royce Company, the two thrust measuring rigs or TMR's that became known as the 'Flying Bedstead' were the first vertical take off and landing aircraft built in Britain. Used in the development of Britain's first ever VTOL aircraft, the Short SC.1, they were later used to collect test data as part of the successful Harrier project.

Powered by a pair of Rolls-Royce Nene turbojet engines, the TMR was an inherently unstable aircraft and proved difficult to control effectively. The TMR took to the air in free flight for the first time on the 3rd of August 1954 at the Hucknall Aerodrome in Nottinghamshire; other flights had taken place prior to this date but in those cases the TMR had been securely tethered to the ground for safety reasons. Inevitably, with an aircraft as unstable as the TMR, there were accidents. The first of these occurred on the 16th of September 1957 when a failure of the thrust control system caused the TMR to crash, its pilot, Wing Commander Stan Hubbard surviving. The second TMR was completely destroyed in an accident that killed its pilot Wing Commander H Larsen on the 29th of November 1957. The surviving TMR designated XJ314 can be seen on display at the Science Museum in London.

Answer: Valkyrie

The XB-70 'Valkyrie' was conceived to be the ultimate strategic bomber having a cruising speed of Mach 3.0 and operating ceiling of seventy thousand feet. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, military thinking had changed and many senior figures were of the opinion that the future strategic planning should be based around the use of missiles and that conventional, manned aircraft had become obsolete. Two XB-70 prototypes were under construction at North American Aviation when the administration under the leadership of President Kennedy cancelled the project. The XB-70 then became involved in an SST (Supersonic Transport) research program, the first XB-70 prototype taking its maiden flight on the 21st of September 1964. Testing continued throughout 1964 and into 1965, and although the intention had been for this aircraft to cruise at Mach 3.0, the XB-70 was found to have poor stability at speeds of over Mach 2.5; only a single flight at a speed of Mach 3.0 was ever made.

On the 8th of June 1966, XB-70(2) was involved in a mid-air collision with an F-104 'Starfighter' aircraft which resulted in the loss of both aircraft and the deaths of both the F-104 pilot and the XB-70s co-pilot. The final XB-70 flight occurred on the 4th of February 1969, when the sole surviving 'Valkyrie' was flown to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base where the aircraft can be seen on display at the Air Force Museum. The XB-70 is 189 feet in length, has a wingspan of 105 feet and was powered by six General Electric turbojets each producing up to almost 29,000 lbs of thrust.

Answer: Coal

The Lippisch P.13a was an experimental ramjet-powered delta wing interceptor aircraft designed in late 1944 by Dr. Alexander Lippisch. The aircraft never made it past the drawing board, but testing of wind tunnel models proved that the design would be extraordinarily stable at speeds up to Mach 2.6. Conventional fuels were in extremely short supply in Germany by late 1944, and Lippisch proposed that the P.13a be powered by a form of coal; a wire-mesh basket holding the material was to be mounted behind a nose air intake, was to protrude slightly into the airflow and be ignited by a gas burner. The P.13a consisted basically of an engine and fuel tank and a small cockpit for its pilot. Its pulse engine was not an unfamiliar concept as the V1 flying bomb flew to England using this type of engine. Following wind-tunnel testing of the ramjet and the coal basket, modifications were made to provide more efficient combustion. The coal, contained within a newer mesh drum, was to take the form of small granules instead of irregular lumps, producing a more controlled and even burn.

After its capture by US forces, the US government ordered that work on the aircraft was to be completed by Lippisch's team, after which it was to be shipped to the USA where it would undergo a test program. These test results were reported to have been very positive and the lessons learned were applied to United States research aircraft well into the 1950s.

Answer: Fairey Aviation Company

Perhaps the most famous product from the Fairey stable was the Fairey Swordfish, the obsolescent biplane torpedo bomber which played a major role in the sinking of the German battleship, Bismarck. Founded in 1916, the Fairey Company was a British aircraft manufacturer during the first half of the 20th century, which merged in 1960 to become a part of the larger Westland Aircraft company. The unusual Rotodyne was the result of over a decade's worth of research and investment into compound helicopters made by the company. The prototype Rotodyne XE521, a machine that would not have looked out of place in an episode of the children's entertainment show 'Thunderbirds', was built during 1957 and was powered by a pair of Napier Eland turboshaft engines. The aircraft took to the air for the first time at White Waltham on 6th November 1957, only making its first full transition from vertical to horizontal flight in April 1958. Although the Rotodyne set a new speed record for machines of its type at 191mph, the Rotodyne failed to secure orders, military or commercial, leading to the project being cancelled in 1962. The Rotodyne flew for the last time on the 26th of January 1962 before being cut up and scrapped at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough.

The only major components of the Rotodyne that survive today include a single Eland engine, one complete rotor blade, a section of fuselage and a small number of rotor tip jets. These components are all on display at the Helicopter Museum located in the town of Weston-super-Mare, Somerset.

Answer: True

It was as early as 1938 that Nazi Germany conceived that the Luftwaffe may require the capability to strike at the mainland US in the future but their Amerika-Bomber project did not materialise until 1942. Requiring sufficient range capability to carry out raids over a return distance of some seven thousand six hundred miles, a number of designs were submitted to the German Air Ministry, the Reichsluftfahrtministerium, by Germany's most experienced aircraft designers and manufacturers most notably Heinkel, Messerschmitt and Focke-Wulf.

Of these, only Messerschmitt succeeded in designing and producing a flying prototype. The four engined Me264 was a high-wing, all-metal aircraft, only one of which saw active service with the Luftwaffe in a transport role. This machine and another prototype were damaged during a raid on the 18th of July 1944 and never repaired. One other complete prototype had been destroyed earlier in a bombing raid in late 1943. The Heinkel He277, a design derived from the company's existing He177 model never passed beyond the drawing board stage, the project being cancelled in April 1944. Potentially the most advanced design ever created by the Focke-Wulf company, the six engined Ta400 failed to progress beyond wind tunnel testing. With a projected crew of nine and at a length of ninety-four feet and a wingspan of one hundred and fifty feet, it was the largest of the designs submitted. The Ta400 was also to be assisted in flight by two Junkers turbojet engines.