From the early postwar years until well into the late 1950’s, Convair-San Diego spent a great deal of effort studying and proposing turbojet powered seaplanes. Roles covered the spectrum from small fighters to Mach 4 bombers to cargo lifters. Sadly, nothing came of these efforts, and nobody except the Russians ever fielded a fast jet seaplane.
One of the earliest of these concepts I’ve seen is this 1947 design for a single engine jet fighter seaplane, apparently the first of the “Skate” series (which ran into the 1950’s and included bombers and passenger planes). This is a highly aerodynamic vehicle, with shaping taken as far as doing away with the normal bubble canopy by making the pilot lie prone. A similar design was produced with the same basic geometry but with two jet engines exhausting near the wing trailing roots.
The plane was certainly well armed. Four .50 caliber machine guns and two 20 mm cannon, with an alternate load of 30 5-inch “spinner rockets” fired from wing-embedded “rocket guns.” The rockets look like they would have been atrociously inaccurate, so the load was almost certainly not for shooting down other fighters. However, for taking down bombers, cargo aircraft or ships, these probably would have packed a hell of a punch.
5 Responses to “Convair Skate: 1947 jet fighter seaplane”
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Wow. At least some of us got the Convair bit right! Thanks for sharing this great material.
It is a bit late to comment on this, but the engine would have been the heaviest part of the aircraft, while the wings and front of the fuselage would provide buoyancy. In water, this would result in the aircraft floating slightly nose-up, with the trailing edge of the wings in the water. Because of this, the jet engine would theoretically be horizontal for takeoff.
The angled jet engine is weird; on throttling it up the plane is going to dig into the water nose high and then probably stall on takeoff from too much AOA, and crash.
They couldn’t give the pilot a decent chair to sit in?
I have a number of Skate design diagrams; this is the only one with a prone pilot. Sadly there’s no documentation with this, so the reasoning is guesswork, but:
1: Prione piloting experienced a bit of a fad just after the war.
2: A prone position reduced frontal area, and thus drag, which may have been a concern here.
3: A prone pilot has a smaller frontal area, both himself and the plane, which woudl reduce the *target* area. The rocket armament indicates that it was to go after relatively fixed targets like ships… which tend to shoot back.