Back in March, my laptop suffered an “issue,” and as a result all the data on the hard drive got wiped out. For the most part that’s not too much of an issue, so long as I keep up with the external hard drive backups. Well, one thing that *hadn’t* been backed up were the scans for Justo Miranda’s “Unknown! #5,” and thus they (and others) were lost. In the chaos that followed, efforts to rebuild and get back up and running, re-scanning those documents got lost in the shuffle. Well, I finally got back around to it, and I now present Unknown! #5.
This issue 60 pages of technical illustrations with 1/72, 1/24 and 1/5 scale drawings and English text. The Unknown! series is at the bottom of this page:
http://www.up-ship.com/blog/drawndoc/rd/rd.htm
Horten Schnellbomber H IX (earliest drawing), Horten Schnell-Kampflugzeug and Horten Ho 229C
R4M “Orkan” German air to air rocket and its launch systems “Abschussrost”, “Federtrommel”, “15er Wabe”, “Wabenrohr”, “Trommelanlage” with graphs showing its installation on the Ba 349B “Natter”, Blohm und Voss P.213.03, Heinkel He 162 A-2, Arado Ar 234 C “Heeresflugzeug”, Arado Ar 234 P-5 and Messerschmitt Me 262 A-1b. Also included, drawings and performances of the R4/HL and air to air rocket “Schlange”
“Beware-Kangaroos”, a combat story by John Baxter
From the “Boomerang” to the “Kangaroo” (part I) describing the evolution of the “Boomerang” into four versions: CAC P-176, CAC XP-17 and CA-15 (4/11/42 drawing) and CA-15 (1943 drawing)
“Outpost” lifeboat, describing the re-entry vehicle designed by Kraft Ehricke in 1958
Jet Shinden versus Jet Ascender, including a graphic study of the installation of No. 130 turbojet in the Kyushu J7W2 “Shinden Kai” ultimate Japanese jet interceptor and scale drawing of the jet version of the Curtis XP-55 “Ascender”.
Blackburn B-44 with scale drawing of several seaplane fighters with retractable floats. It includes profiles of the Ursinus Seaplane, Latécoère 671, “The Scarlet Stormer” and “The Lancer”. These two last designs from the Bill Barnes fiction series
Reggiane Re 2007, an essay trying to shed some light on the mystery of this mythical project, gathering in one theory all the available information. It includes scale drawings of the Re 2006 R (Hypothetical), Re 2007 (Cometti version), Re 2008, Yak-15, Yak-17, Ambrosini “Sagittario I” and Airfer “Sagittario II”.
“Target Panama” by John Baxter. Part II of the story published in UNKNOWN! #4
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Unknown #5 can be purchased for download for $18.50.
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6 Responses to “Unknown! #5 Now Available”
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I see the Orbital Lifeboat is the one that was included with the Hawk model of the Atlas ICBM space station:
http://www.fantastic-plastic.com/CONVAIR%20ATLAS%20MOL%20PAGE.htm
The book “The Dream Machines” shows those were to be launched two at a time, belly-to-belly atop a Atlas Centaur.
Was that Orbital Lifeboat ever tested in a wind tunnel? Any mockups built? Somehow I wound up with one the Hawk kit lifeboats in my spares box of weapons (I still have it).
> Was that Orbital Lifeboat ever tested in a wind tunnel?
I’ve never seen anything more on it than paintings.
Three questions:
1) The Ehricke orbital lifeboat was an actual project or only a sketch or just a whisful thinking?
2) I’ve never heard about a Re 2006R, it looks like an early jet powered yakovlev (Yak 15 or so on) but the Italian firm never did such design, the maximum was the Re 2005R that was a DB 605 Re 2005 with the addiction of Campini’s compressor in the back (300 Kg/sp of thrust). But Roberto Longhi (the Re-2000, 2001, 2005 designer) never liked the idea. So where Miranda and Mercado got the infos about this “Re 2006R”??
3) The Re 2007 was a post-war project, something started with the original Fury/Sabre and ended with a swept wing but just in the end of the design phase, trying to raise interest of Aeronautica Militare (that indeed choose the DH-100 vampire as first Italian jet powered fighter). Indeed not all the sources concorde about this project, which kind of sources had Miranda and Mercado for such project?
> The Ehricke orbital lifeboat was an actual project or only a sketch or just a whisful thinking?
Hard to tell exactly. Convair publicized it a fair bit, and *seem* to have created a number of designs and missions utilizing it… but I’ve never heard of any wind tunnel testing, or detailed engineering studies.
As to the other questions: dunno.
IIRC, the orbital lifeboat was supposed to have a jettisonable cover over the windshield to protect it during reentry, like the Dyna-Soar did.
One thing about Krafft Ehricke’s designs is that they always looked like they made sense, and in fact they still look very up-to-date aerodynamically nowadays.
You could picture the Air Force unveiling a secret military shuttle that looked just like this today, right down to the faceted surfaces for stealth:
http://www.fantastic-plastic.com/CONVAIR%20SPACE%20SHUTTLE%20PAGE.htm
Ehricke had a really fascinating back history; he was a space enthusiast in Germany before the war, and until von Braun could talk the government into getting him reassigned to Peenemunde, he was commanding a tank on the Eastern Front.