One of the more advanced and interesting designs put forward in the early days of the LHX program was the Bell BAT, the Bell Advanced Tiltrotor (thus the “Bell Bell Advanced Tiltrotor”). This was a single seat design, essentially a scaled-down version of the highly successful XV-15, and a hoped-for stablemate to the V-22 tiltrotor transport. The BAT had a gross weight of 8,000 pounds and a max speed of 304 knots at 14,000 feet, and would have carried its weapons internally. It could hover at up to 10,000 feet, and had a ferry range of 2,100 nautical miles. Length was 33.3 feet.
Unlike a lot of the other LHX designs, the BAT got as far as a mockup, which got some fair amount of press at the time. The mockup was apparently on display for some years at a small aviation museum near Amarillo, TX, but got sold when the museum closed up. What happened to it after that… dunno.
5 Responses to “Bell BAT”
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It looks like a Fouga Magister with engines and rotors where the tip tanks would be.
I’m surprised they didn’t work on a two-seater one of these for the civilian market, because it looks like it would be a ball to fly.
Take the planned missile armament (4 Hellfires and four Stingers) off and replace its weight with extra fuel, and you would have had a really impressive range also
There’s some more info on it here:
http://www.aviastar.org/helicopters_eng/bell_bat.php
…and here:
http://www.aiaa.org/tc/vstol/unbuilt/bell_tlt/index3.html
As well as a whole pile of very similar Bell concept studies.
Nice color photo of the mock-up here: http://lh4.ggpht.com/_4xLi6KmWWQA/S2YPIDRt9ZI/AAAAAAAAALk/KN-m_4AQJ5A/s800/Bell%20BAT-2%20small.jpg
The Bell-Agusta BA-609 civil tilt rotor, conceptually a smaller version of the V-22, is secheduled for certification in 2011 and has about 80 orders. Might be a reasonable platform for a scout/attack ship.
Lived in Amarillo till 6 years ago. Shame the museum closed.
Seemed like they had a cammo F-84 and 105. A Cabarou that I saw arrive while running air show security in the early 90’s, an OV-10, ?.
Any else remember what they had?
My god, you know if they had gone ahead with this it’d be a joker’s goldmine: “Hey, go over the bat-hangar and get the bat-tools. We need to do a Bat-check before the bat-pilot can…”
Such potential lost…
Jim
I was always amazed that the B-2 wasn’t named the “Batarang” instead of “Spirit”.