Nov 132009
 

A 1956 concept for a derivative/modification of the Convair F-106, equipped with canards, entirely new inlets, a noticably larger nose (housing a larger 40″ radar), an infra-red seeker at the top of the vertical fin and a weapons load of a single massive Convair “Sky Scorcher” missile. The idea seems to have been that the Soviets would send waves of supersonic bombers tightly packed into groups which could be blasted out of the sky with two-megaton-yield nuclear air-to-air missiles.

Not much seems to be publicly known about the “Sky Scorcher.” The drawing below depicting the missile may or may not be accurate in the details… no fins are shown, so either the depiction is vague and handwavy, or steering was accomplished by means of thrust vectoring or movable flaps on the aft conical flare. Also unclear is whether the missile was guided or not… normally you’d think that an air-to-air missiles, especially one witha nuclear warhead, would be guided to the target, but the one nuclear air-to-air missile that the US did field (the AIR-2 “Genie”) was unguided. When you’re chucking megaton nukes into large flocks of bombers, I guess precision isn’t important.

The Sky Scorcher was a substantial missile. Weighing 3400 pounds, when launched at Mach 2/55,000 feet it could cover its 125 mile range in 200 seconds. For continental defence, a force of 80 Advanced F-106’s would lob 14 Sky Scorcher missiles into the incoming waves of Soviet supersonic bombers, blasting some directly out of the sky, and forcing others to split off. The remaining bombers would be picked off by the remaining Advanced F-106s, which would carry a weapons load of four Falcon missiles and one Genie each.
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 Posted by at 9:35 am

  13 Responses to “Advanced F-106/Sky Scorcher”

  1. I wonder how the “Sky Scorcher” compares to the slightly later AIM-69 “BiG-Q”? Either would make quite an impression on a massed raid, though I suspect our neighbors might not appreciate nukes exploding in fiar numbers over their territory.

  2. Nice. Only thing I’d ever heard about Sky Scorcher was from Chuck Hansen’s nuke book.

  3. Love those intake cones! I don’t think the shockwaves over the nose and canards are going to work the way they expect in relation to the intakes, particularly during manuvering flight, but if the idea is to scare the enemy to death, this plane has the looks to do it.
    The addition of the canard should really have helped in regards to takeoff and landing distance, and it would be fun to know if Saab got a peek at this design study before they started work on the Viggen.

  4. >particularly during manuvering flight

    … of which the plane was probably not expected to do much. Go at Mach 2.5 in a straight line, launch a missile, return to base.

  5. “of which the plane was probably not expected to do much. Go at Mach 2.5 in a straight line, launch a missile, return to base.”

    Yeah, it looks sort of like the poor man’s F-108 Rapier, which makes one wonder about why they thought the canard was needed at all.
    regarding the canard, the art makes it look like it has a trailing edge control surface, but the side view makes it appear that the whole canard pivots up and down as a single unit. Maybe it is locked in subsonic flight and uses the trailing edge controls, and goes into pivoting operation once it’s going supersonic?

  6. Probably one of those projects like Timberwind. Doable in the extreamly limited and narrow confines of it’s mission peramiter … if you’re willing to throw money at it.

    Perfect for making Military Analinsts wear ‘depends’ to work every day since Military Inteligance looks at capablities and (most of the time) leaves intentions for the head shrinkers over at the CIA equivilent.

    USSR: We’ll proclame that we can manufacture and man waves of supersonic bombers! That’ll teach the Ami to stay out of the Motherland!!

    USA: Hmm, they’re building huge amounts of supersonic bombers to spread Communisum! So the way they’ve set up their control of their bomber fleet and training of officers means that they’re probably come at us in waves … Okay, in about 6 months some preliminary studies of a 2.5 Mach Intercepter dirived from something we already have that will toss Flameing Nuclear Death at the waves of bombers and at least slap them out of the air with the shockwave.”

    USSR: Great, the Ami invented a Mach 2.5 Nuclear Fly Swater. Okay, start talking up how fast we can get Balastic Missile Armed Submariens off the East Coast of America….

    And so on, so on, so forth. Oh, and somewere in there you build some stuff but you keep the other guy guessing which. 😉

  7. This looks like the pre-cursor to the F-106 concept except everything I’ve ever seen about it showed box, rather than conical intakes?

    Also, stability wise isn’t having canards LOWER than your main lift wing a “bad” idea?

    Randy

  8. The original F-106 did something like Mach 2.32 and as considered the fastest mass produced single engine fighter ever. It looks like from the preliminary charts that this one was intended to be even faster.

    Growing up in Southern New Jersey the F-106 fighters of the 177th Fighter group, New Jersey Air National Guard, flew over a lot, I miss the plane.

    This idea is truly one of those Cold War era mind blowers. Thank you for posting!

  9. Oh I missed that I’d “mis-posted” a bit :o)

    I meant a precursor to the F-106X which (on-paper at any rate :o) beat out the YF-12/RS-71 on performance. My mistake but still LOVE the stuff you find Scott :o)

    (And I DO buy your shit… when I’ve got the money :o)

    Randy

  10. >My mistake but still LOVE the stuff you find Scott :o)

    Interestingly, the spam filter on the blog does not like *you.* If you’ve ever wondered why your replies take days to show up, it’s because Every Single One of your replies gets automatically dumped into the spambox. I got through that every 4-5 days and pick out the actual non-spam. The spam filter is supposed to *learn,* but there’s something about you it just doesn’t like. Maybe your ISP or something.

  11. I was responsible for the instrumentation on the 40″
    radome version. it didn’t have canards or the modified
    inlets. Project was scrapped after only a few flights due
    to center of gravity problems.

  12. Why would or should they need to get more top speed from the F-106A when it already had an unclasified “ETS” of mach 2.85? Below an Excerpt from the following link.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-106

    F-106A : Modified F-106 with improved performance. Maximum speed at least Mach 2.5, with some estimates as high as Mach 2.85 in level flight. The aircraft is capable of low supersonic speeds without afterburner with a significant range penalty and maximum altitude at least 57,000 ft.

    Air-to-air combat testing suggested the “Six” was a reasonable match for the F-4 Phantom II in a dogfight, with superior high-altitude turn performance and overall maneuverability (aided by the aircraft’s lower wing loading).

    And yes it was and still is (for the record) the fastest single engine jet AC in the World. That’s without the F-105’s water injection 24,500 not 26,500lbs of thrust and no fancy intakes or canards. The “6” was the least publicized an most successful of the 1950’s designed “Century Series” 2nd generation F/A AC” It was built in fairly low numbers relatively high $$(about 350 units) and as the USA’s top interceptor during the height of the cold war. It’s 25year operational lifespan as the worlds top interceptor until ultimate replacement by the F-15 in the mid 80’s bears testimonial to it’s air superiority from 1960 to 1985.

    The other century series AC, most notably the F-105 was the VN war workhorse and we lost 50% of it’s >1000 unit production to AAA, small arms and SA-2 fire. It was also (at one time) the world largest single engine F/A jet carrying a bomb load far in excess of the WWII B-17’s and B-24 liberators.

    The other century series AC in large # production; F-100, F-101 Voodoo and F-104 Star fighter had mediocre performance envelope’s when compared to the “6” or F-105.

    Bob Nixon, Chandler AZ, VN Vet as Avionics tech on F-100’s at Phan Rang AB RVN & currently living in disabled retirement.

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