Aug 312008
When North American Aviation got hold of some of the swag the US Army got from wartime Germany, one of the first things they proposed doign with it was taking the V-2 rocket, adding wings and ramjets, and making a cruise missile out of it. This eventually turned into the Navaho; but early on it really did look like a V2 (or the V-2’s smaller cousin, the Wasserfall) with ramjets nailed to it. This is a cutaway of one such early concept…
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According to NAA artwork in the book “The Navaho Missile Project” three of those were fabricated, but were never test flown.
The version of the cutaway shown in Jay Miller’s “X-Planes” book lacks the upper and lower nose control surfaces.
The design is the NA-704; it got started as a non-ramjet equipped canard version of the A4b/A9.
It would be interesting to know if the design had any influence on the Bomarc SAM, as it’s pretty close to it in concept.
The other designation for that design is the XSSM-A-2. Range was supposed to be 1,000 miles. The project was part of MX-770 series of missiles, and the program to develop it started in April of 1947, with that particular design dating from September 1949, but it was canceled in February of 1950.
The NA NATIV rockets were the first step in the program to develop the MX-770.
It was examined with two other concepts; first, a version with a integral ramjet and nose intake looking something like a D-21 with nose canards that was to ride on the back of a pilotless and recoverable canard aircraft (I can’t tell if it was jet or rocket powered from the drawing, but it seems to have drop tanks under the wings), and following that, the same canard ramjet missile mounted on the nose of a large liquid or solid-fueled rocket booster. These were supposed to have 5,000 mile range and were examined in the mid 1948-early 1950 time frame.
These were in turn canceled in favor of what became Navaho.