From: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V3 # Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Thursday, 29 July 1993 Volume 03 : Number 000 In this issue: New Kelly Johnson - Blackbird Video See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: larry@ichips.intel.com Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1993 11:36:44 -0700 Subject: New Kelly Johnson - Blackbird Video Thanks to Dean Adams for the great tip last week on the video about Kelly Johnson, containing the many new shots of A-12s and D-21s. This video IS EXCELLENT !! I just received my copy last night. It is being sold by LERC (Lockheed Employees Recreation Club). The title is: "Kelly's Way: The Story of Kelly Johnson & The Lockheed Skunk Works" It costs $5.50, and is available from LERC at (805) 572-2201. They also send you a catalog with the purchase. What can I say? There is a lot of new stuff in this video. It tells the complete story of Kelly's career and his philosophy of aircraft design and construction. The failures and the successes are covered, and there is lots of video I've never seen before as well as some of Kelly's design concepts. It covers the period in Kelly's carreer from his first year at Lockheed in 1932 (if I recall) where he did his first design work on the Electra, to his retirement in 1975. The video is a few minutes shy of 60 minutes long. Now the most interesting part to me was on the Blackbird. In my opinion, they did the best job on this part, which is not to slight the treatment of the other aircraft he worked on. The first thing you notice is that there is a LOT of new information on SUNTAN (H2 fueled U-2 successor) and its foundations. They showed drawings of some of the SUNTAN concepts that proceeded the CL-400 design we are all familiar with. It turns out that the CL-400 design we all knew up to the publication of this video, was the CL-400-10 model. Kelly studied a range of vehicle concepts for SUNTAN, and it showed several of them. These concepts ranged from vehicles that could fly at Mach 2.5 with a range of 2200 miles, to a vehicle that could fly at over Mach 4 with a range of 9000 miles. Design concept drawings are shown for the following SUNTAN concepts: An undesignated design shown before the CL-400-10 CL-400-10 Mach 2.5 Range: 2200 mi (B-52 size in length) CL-400-12 Mach 4.0 Range: 9000 mi CL-400-13 (2X B-52 size in length !! - a B-52 drawing is shown next to a top view of it for comparison ... WOW!) CL-400-14 CL-400-15JP Mach 3.0 A CL-400 with normal HC fueled turbojet engine that became the preliminary study for the design direction that led to OXCART All the above designs are quite NEAT - but I'm a real prelim. design freak. And if you think you've died and gone to heaven, ... it aint over! After Kelly killed SUNTAN and returned the money, because it just wasn't going to work out, it then went on to show his notebook entitled: "Basic Approach To Design Of U-3"; April 21, 1958; CLJ WOW!! Yes, Kelly called the U-2 successor the U-3 for awhile. Before changing the name to Archangel I. That's right: "Archangel I". Hmmmm .... . The video shows, for the first time, pages and drawings from Kelly's own design notebook, that show the evolution of OXCART with some of the very preliminary studies that he did before the study got closer to the final design. For example he investigated: - - Balloon boosted vehicles. - - The U-2 used a a vehicle to tow a ramjet powered vehicle to 60,000 ft. - - A multi-stage Dyna-Soar like vehicle with a U-2, a large winged booster, and a Dyna-Soar like recon. vehicle. - - Vehicles with inflatable wings and empennage. It mentioned that stealth was a key ingredient. After 16 mos. of preliminary design work, the design settled down to the path to the A-12 vehicle we now know. It showed models of some of the possible A- concepts. It also showed what it implied was a model of the final proposal which the video labelled as A-12. This shot was NEAT because it showed probably the most beautiful A-12 shape I've ever seen! You can tell it's an A-12. But, there is a hint of area-ruling that makes the cockpit area wider, with a wrap-around windshield. The chine seems even more tapered and beautiful than the production A-12's, in my opinion. Next to the A-12 like model, is a very different model of a vehicle with the designation AC-9 on the side. Would this be the A-9? Anyway, the planform is quite different from the A-12. It is a double delta design with twin verticals in roughly the same place in the planform as the A-12. It looks like it must have under wing mounting or under fuselage mounting of its turbojet engines because there is no hint from the top side of engine installation. Neat design. Now that I think of it I think Crickmore also talks about the A-9 as being one of the final design direction options along with the A-12 in his new SR-71 book. I'll have to check on that. The AC-9 design looks quite contemporary! When I first saw that shot of the A-12 model and the other shape, I was excited thinking that we were seeing the A-12 design from Lockheed and its KINGFISHER competitor from Convair. But the other design does have AC-9 written on the side. Then there are shots of A-12's being rolled out of hangars, and as Dean said, video of the first accidental A-12 flight on 25 April, 1962. Quite scarry nosewheel steering and roll problems! The following day it flew great after they adjusted things. Four days later it showed dignitaries arriving for first official flight, with Lou Schalk mounting up, flying for 59 minutes and then landing and greeting people. The first A-12 was completely unpainted and it looks quite beautiful! That must have been quite a day in April 1962!! It then goes on to the D-21 stuff. Shows some construction video, wind tunnel seperation testing, the mating to the M-12, taxi of a black M-12/D-21 combo, flight of a black M-12/D-21 combo, and several launches from the LCO's periscope. You can see the elevons on the D-21A moving. Great Stuff! Then there is more SR-71 video. A great video, and for only $5.50!!!! Larry Smith ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V3 #0 ******************************* To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "listserv@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu". If you want to subscribe something other than the account the mail is coming from, such as a local redistribution list, then append that address to the "subscribe" command; for example, to subscribe "local-skunk-works": subscribe skunk-works-digest local-skunk-works@your.domain.net To unsubscribe, send mail to the same address, with the command: unsubscribe skunk-works-digest in the body. Administrative requests, problems, and other non-list mail can be sent to either "skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu" or, if you don't like to type a lot, "prm@ecn.purdue.edu". 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