Well, I don’t know about how safe the VTOL F-104 would have been (with an average loss rate of around 30% in all the Air Forces operating it, the stock F-104 itself wasn’t the safest thing ever made), but when you look at just how small the total area of those three rotor blades were that were supposed to lift it, and start extrapolating the RPM they will have to rotate at to get it airborne, it was certainly going to be noisy as hell.
I notice it doesn’t get much coverage in the “Skunk Works” books, so maybe Lockheed themselves thought the idea was pretty far out in retrospect and aren’t very anxious to talk about it.
You can’t fool me, Hughes stole that off of the Lockheed VTOL F-104 design:
http://media.photobucket.com/image/vtol%20f-104/generalmelchett/P1060679.jpg
One source claimed the VTOL F-104 would have been a disaster waiting
to happen.
Remember the X-wing projects? They said later on that it would be too complex.
Well, I don’t know about how safe the VTOL F-104 would have been (with an average loss rate of around 30% in all the Air Forces operating it, the stock F-104 itself wasn’t the safest thing ever made), but when you look at just how small the total area of those three rotor blades were that were supposed to lift it, and start extrapolating the RPM they will have to rotate at to get it airborne, it was certainly going to be noisy as hell.
I notice it doesn’t get much coverage in the “Skunk Works” books, so maybe Lockheed themselves thought the idea was pretty far out in retrospect and aren’t very anxious to talk about it.