Oct 202010
From Air Progress magazine October/November 1963, an illustration of the Northrop X-21 laminar flow control research plane. It was a handsome plane, and it’s interesting to consider what an operational version might have looked like. Of course, given the maintenance issues and the probable inability to paint the wings upper surface, what role an operational version would ahve fulfilled is unclear. Perhaps airborne early warning or missileer for the Navy (but that would require wing folding)? High altitude recon? Flying down low in the dirt and the bugs is unlikely.
4 Responses to “X-21: more”
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Long range cruise missile.
If you blow it up, you don’t need to clean it.
Very _expensive_ long-range cruise missile.
Northrop did lead the way in use of composites in aircraft construction though with the composite wing for the Snark intercontinental cruise missile*.
Considering all their work on recon drone versions of the evolved Firebee target drone series (which also used a lot of plastic in their construction IIRC), they might have been playing around with the idea of using the suction system on a recoverable long-range recon drone though.
If you can’t paint the wing, can you get it the color you want via chemical treatment, the way guns are blued or Parkerized?
* Saw an interesting film clip of one of those being boosted off of a launch track via a rocket sled a couple of days ago; this seemed to work very well compared to the twin RATO boosters that gave so much trouble early on.
That was the very first copy of Air Progress I ever owned. Had it until the Great Basement Flood of 1994. Sigh . . .
>Very _expensive_ long-range cruise missile.
Oh, sure. And given the limits of computers in 1963, I think it would need to be a nuclear delivery system to actually hit much. So unmanned, one-way strategic bomber.