From: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V4 #130 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, 27 January 1994 Volume 04 : Number 130 In this issue: Re: D-21, how many? subscribe Dazzle Camo, Trucking (!) Re: SKYQUAKE in Cape Cod Re: Dazzle Camo, Trucking (!) Re: Groom Las Vegas Hearing Will be Mar. 2 Denial and Deception Optical camoflage Optical camo on F-14s 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: cepe@taskon.no Date: Wed, 26 Jan 94 09:51:11 -0100 Subject: Re: D-21, how many? [Last posting of this message apperently bounced, so if this is a duplicate I'll apologize] I asked: >Does anyone know how many D-21s were built/flown? Dadams wrote: According to the new Skunk Works book there were 38 built. Six were D-21s, and the rest were D-21Bs. 17 were left when the program was canceled... Thus: 38 -17 -- =21 21 flights seems to little for such an expensive program. I would assume they were recovered most of the time. Or more than 38 were built. D-21B was the B-52 launched version, right? - - --cepe - - ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Carl P. Swensson Senior Systems Eng. internet: cepe@taskon.no Taskon AS x400: /c=no/admd=telemax/prmd=taskon/s=swensson Gaustadalleen 21 Tel: +47-22 95 86 21 N-0371 Oslo, Norway Fax: +47-22 60 44 27 - - ----------------------------------------------------------------------- - ------- End of Unsent Draft ------------------------------ From: "Dunham, Jon" Date: Wed, 26 Jan 94 07:35:00 EST Subject: subscribe subscribe skunk-works dunhamj@anser.org ------------------------------ From: I am the NRA Date: Wed, 26 Jan 94 05:46:30 PST Subject: Dazzle Camo, Trucking (!) >Your mention of the Nova show about camouflage stuff reminds me that >they did this thing called "dazzle camo" in the first and maybe second >world war. Evidently they gave the sailors of these ships a lot of crap >about how doofy their ships looked when they reached port, but I read >that not one of these ships was sunk by a U-Boat. >I guess the principle was that it was so very bold, it broke up the >horizontal and vertical lines of the ship and superstructure, making >it difficult to target. The view thru a perisope is LOUSY. Swell washes over the glass. Anything that makes the target harder to "acquire" helps. Think of one of those dazzle camo ships looked at from wave height (indeed, _under_ wave height, in a swell. >Does anybody know of a published discussion of these techniques? Probably some passing mentions. And there have been some recent books on camo published. By WWII, tho, "flat grey" seems to have been more in fashion. The specific references, in techie type books have referred to the dazzle as making the length uncertain (hard to tell the bow wave from the camo) and making the speed uncertain (ditto on bow wave). Especially during WWI (little sonar, no radar) anything that interfered with the eyeball, human, mark I, was a win. >I get the impression that the dazzle camouflage was a sort of >haphazard thing rather than a genuine science. I respectfully diagree. My impression is that it was very scientifically worked out. It just doesn't rate very high in the history books. I would tackle old issues of naval institute proceedings, WWI vintage memoirs & expect a long hard dig. >I have an artistic interest in the whole scheme. Email me! => Oooooooops. Oh Well. Consider it "Stealth, optical, antique" ====================== Truckin on down the road. I alluded to a video of trucking the SR71 to Seattle. Was out of town last Tuesday, so last night was first chance: Formal Series Name: The American Trucking Report Date: 11 Jan They DO, in the credits, formally offer video for sale !! The American Trucking Report 6481 Rambler Street Pensacola, FL (I missed the ZIP. And the Fone Number.) regards dwp ------------------------------ From: PHARABOD@frcpn11.in2p3.fr Date: Wed, 26 Jan 94 16:42:40 MET Subject: Re: SKYQUAKE in Cape Cod In late 1977 and early 1978, there was a strange wave of air booms over the East Coast of the USA. One serious reference is: "East Coast Mystery Booms: A Scientific Suspense Tale", by Deborah Shapley, Science, Vol. 199, 31 March 1978. Deborah Shapley reports three hypotheses: 1. Thomas Gold, professor of astronomy at Cornell, and Gordon MacDonald, a geophysicist, suggested explosions of leaked, airborne methane, coming from tectonic activity of the earth. Other scientists were skeptical. 2. The NRL (Naval Research Laboratory) suspected military aircraft flying at around 35,000 feet for brief periods of supersonic flight. But skeptics said these aircraft were doing that for about 15 years. 3. Jeremy Stone, FAS (Federation of American Scientists) director, and Richard Garwin, an IBM scientist, thought the Concorde was the cause of most of these booms. Turns south of Nova Scotia would have caused the booms reported there. Acceleration of Concorde off the coast of England would have sent shock waves which would have been bended down to earth by the thermosphere (altitude 100 miles) and could have hit the New Jersey or the Charleston area. But the Concorde flights have continued after 1978, and it seems that there were no more booms. I have heard that the Concorde changed slightly its trajectory in order to avoid the booms, and that it worked, but I have no written reference. Is there any precise description of these strange noises: did they sound like the "Aurora" West Coast "rumbles" ? J. Pharabod ------------------------------ From: cepe@taskon.no Date: Wed, 26 Jan 94 17:31:44 -0100 Subject: Re: Dazzle Camo, Trucking (!) >Your mention of the Nova show about camouflage stuff reminds me that >they did this thing called "dazzle camo" in the first and maybe second >world war. Evidently they gave the sailors of these ships a lot of crap >about how doofy their ships looked when they reached port, but I read >that not one of these ships was sunk by a U-Boat. >I guess the principle was that it was so very bold, it broke up the >horizontal and vertical lines of the ship and superstructure, making >it difficult to target. The view thru a perisope is LOUSY. Swell washes over the glass. Anything that makes the target harder to "acquire" helps. Think of one of those dazzle camo ships looked at from wave height (indeed, _under_ wave height, in a swell. >Does anybody know of a published discussion of these techniques? Probably some passing mentions. And there have been some recent books on camo published. By WWII, tho, "flat grey" seems to have been more in fashion. The specific references, in techie type books have referred to the dazzle as making the length uncertain (hard to tell the bow wave from the camo) and making the speed uncertain (ditto on bow wave). Especially during WWI (little sonar, no radar) anything that interfered with the eyeball, human, mark I, was a win. In pre-sonar times the length of a ship as it appears in a periscope was a major clue to the distance to target. I.e. a ship of class W is known to be X feet long and when it is Y increments long on the periscope crosshair, then it is Z yards away. An error in reading Y gives a propotional error in Z. I gues dazzle camo also would make it diffcult to estimate the target's course aswell. Target speed estimates were also guessed, with known max speed and bow wave as clues. I am impressed that they ever hit with those old torps. Regards, Carl ------------------------------ From: larry@ichips.intel.com Date: Wed, 26 Jan 1994 09:15:45 -0800 Subject: Re: Groom Las Vegas Hearing Will be Mar. 2 Glenn writes: >Sweetman didn't tell me anything about the North Sea sighting being the >first. Well then I apologize to Mr. Sweetman. Would someone help me extract my big foot from my equally big mouth. Larry ------------------------------ From: KELLEHER@casper.consilium.com Date: Wed, 26 Jan 1994 10:01:00 -0800 (PST) Subject: Denial and Deception Optical stealth programs have been around for centuries. All of our other sensor programs have been developed to enhance our ability to detect objects we cannot see. Countermeasures to these technologies have been relatively successful, so it is only natural to continue research on hiding things from the Mark-I Eyeball. There are a number of World War II training manuals long since declassified that discuss some of the paint schemes used for that purpose. Some of your best sources for these docs would be local hobby stores; model builders in their quest for accurate detail have a wealth of such information. Most camouflage methods are designed only to fool the observer for a few moments. In a high-speed jet, a camouflaged ground target may be indistinguishable. Or from the ground observer's perspective, a well-cammied aircraft would be hard to pick up among the clouds. Naval forces traditionally exhibit a wide variety of camouflage cover. From dazzle camo to differing shades of grey, they try to break up the outline of the vessel. For imagery interpreters, however, able to study reconnaissance photography in comparative leisure, this very method of hiding could provide extraordinary detail. One class of Soviet guided missile frigate, for example, was often painted as a two-tone: dark paint for half the length, light paint for the remainder. To another ship trying to determine range and bearing, this frigate would be rather well disguised; to the II, it was screaming its identity. Painting aircraft white, or grey, or black, or striped, or blotched, is quite possibly part of the continuing effort to improve visual stealth capability and extend the life of the airframe - and crew - in combat. You should keep your eyes open for the inflatable B-2 complete with minimized radar corner reflectors and tiny campfires underneath to fool the IR detectors. When they put one of those together, you know they are really getting serious! John Kelleher johnk@consilium.com ------------------------------ From: clark@acs.bu.edu (Jeff Clark) Date: Wed, 26 Jan 94 16:02:19 -0500 Subject: Optical camoflage On the topic of naval 'dazzle' camoflage, in the early 1980s the US Navy painted some of their aircraft in a similar scheme designed by aviation artist Keith Ferris. They used 3 colors and most had a phony 'canopy' on the underside of the nose painted black (or dark grey) with white circles for helmets. I don't think anything ever came of the experiment, though. If I remember, they used the scheme on 2 or 3 F-14s and on at least one F-4. They looked cool, which is why I remember them. Jeff Clark clark@acs.bu.edu ------------------------------ From: clark@acs.bu.edu (Jeff Clark) Date: Wed, 26 Jan 94 16:05:23 -0500 Subject: Optical camo on F-14s By the way, if anyone's interested I have a GIF of two of those F-14s in flight. It's at home, though I can upload to the archives if someone wants it. Jeff Clark clark@acs.bu.edu ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V4 #130 ********************************* 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". 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