“From RAINBOW to GUSTO:” Archangel A-1

Recently arrived in my mailbox was Paul Suhler’s new book, “From RAINBOW to GUSTO: Stealth and the Design of the Lockheed Blackbird.” There have been over the years a great many books on the SR-71 and its development, but this is the first to make a serious stab at a comprehensive history of the designs leading up to the final A-12 “Blackbird” design.
This book describes advanced, semi-stealthy derivatives of the U-2, including the “GUSTO Mark 2,” which used a twin-boom design and relocated the inlet to the top of the fuselage; the Navy’s Project CHAMPION “Ramjet Kite” designs which included a large subsonic tow plane hauling what certainly look like vast inflatable-wing kites with giant ramjet engines; and moves on to describe the Archangel series of supersonic designs produced by Kelly Johnson’s team at the Skunk Works, as well as the FISH and Kingfish competitors designed by Convair. And this time, rather than a simple text description of these interesting designs, “RAINBOW to GUSTO” actually provides three-view drawings of the great majority of them. A quick count shows about 42 layout drawings… including one of the D-33 design, a manned A-12 follow-on vehicle meant for takeoff from small runways (including aircraft carriers), featuring a Concorde-like planform and an RL-10 booster rocket. There are also never-before-published photos of the desk models of FISH and of several Kingfish variants.

More than just a series of design studies, the book is also the story of the people involved and is based on interviews with stealth researchers and aircraft designers and on hundreds of declassified documents. It has the first public telling of why Convair was brought in to compete with Lockheed, why the B-58B was cancelled by the Air Force, who discovered the flying saucer shape, and why Lockheed didn’t build it.

While I have not yet completely read the book (man, I’m slow), it is a great little book. And that is the one complaint I have about it: it has a relatively small format, 9 by 6 inches. As a result of this, the layout drawings are necessarily reproduced very small. However, I have contacted the author, and we have worked out something of a fix for this: I will be showing many of the drawings from the book here on this very blog, at much higher rez than in the book. But if you want to know the details of the design – history, context, performance, etc. – well, you’ll just have to buy the book. Something I heartily recommend that you do.

Due to Lockheed copyright restrictions, the original drawings cannot be reproduced except within the pages of Mr. Suhler’s book. However, I’ve gotten the go-ahead to re-draw them. The first drawing out the hatch is the Archagel 1 (A-1), figure 46, page 98. This particular drawing has a Source Grade of four:

I will be creating these drawings at a leisurely pace… one every day or three. Combine these drawings and “RAINBOW to GUSTO,” and you will have a wonderful history of the SR-71 development, just the thing for project-heads!
“RAINBOW to GUSTO” is available from Amazon.com (for $39.95) and direct from the AIAA ($29.95 for AIAA members).

———-

UPDATE: To download the high-rez version of the A-1 drawing, simply click THIS LINK. You will be prompted for a username and a password. For the A-1 drawing, use these:

Username: the first word in the body of the text on page 98
Password: the first word in the body of the text on page 99
The high-rez drawings will include further information. Data that’s on the drawings but not in the text of the book – dimensions, wing area, etc. – will be included on the drawings. But the only way to get the high-rez drawings is… to get a copy of the book.