DH Vampire Afterburner

Surely the sodding great flame and much extra thrust makes a bit of a difference!

Now come on Pagen, don’t be shy and say what you think..:D

Note that it has the Vampire F.1 tail layout and the tailplane is set higher than on subsequent Mks of Vampire and Venom.

John

It looks like this…..

Hmmm… Vampire GTI

Now that just looks wrong. In standard form the Vampire is quite a pretty machine but that extended jet pipe ruins it.

Vampire with Afterburner

Just a footnote to this enquiry, there is a good article in Flight magazine on the Vampire reheat system. Dec 22nd 1949 issue.

See
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1949/1949%20-%202039.html

Also this for a picture of the reheat tailpipe and modified higher tailplane.
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1949/1949%20-%202060.html

Steven

Afterburning Centrifugal Powerplants

Thank you very much for that information, clearly they were developed and reached operational service, although in a small number of designs.

exmpa

The afterburning J48 (Tay, not Nene) was installed in the F-94C Starfire… the earlier versions of the Starfire had an afterburning J33 (inproved/enlarged Derwent).

http://home.att.net/~jbaugher1/f94.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allison_J33

Note the Wiki article on the Tay is wrong… the J48 was produced in both afterburning and non-afterburning engines, with most being non. It was improved from the Nene, producing between 25% and 45% more thrust without water injection (USN favorite) or afterburner (USAF favorite).

Centrifugall with Reheat

Yes, the Nene, in the US version P&W J48, and in the MIG 17 version in the Soviet Union.

The Swedish fitted an afterburner to the DH Ghost.

Steven

J48/Nene

Very interesting, brings to mind a supplementary question:

Can anyone name an operational powerplant with a centrifugal compressor that was fitted with reheat?

I cannot think of one, perhaps it was because the rapid development in engine design meant that centrifugal powerplants were effectively sidelined by the more efficient axial engines.

exmpa

that looks like it could have been fun 😀

Vampire Afterburner

It looks like this…..

Vampire afterburner

Looks like this was never used for real.

Might have been fun to see the flame bend up off the runway onto the tail, on nose-rotate at takeoff!

Steven

cheers for that, you learn something new every day , post edited accordingly 🙂

No worries.

Mind you, having said the tailplane is above the jet efflux on a Vamp, it’s not THAT much above it! It’s close enough that the groundcrew used to drape an asbestos blanket over the tailplane to protect it during startup, especially ‘wet’ starts which must have been a fabulous, if slightly terrifying, sight!!!

The tail-plane and elevators wouldn’t survive very long if that were the case. 🙂

No, the tail booms are angled upwards slightly so that the horizontal surfaces are above the jet efflux.

cheers for that, you learn something new every day , post edited accordingly 🙂

I’m sure the afterburner on the Vampire was purely an early attempt at getting one running in a flying airframe by de Havilland to explore the parameters. What was the first application of an afterburner that entered service use?

I doubt if heat was a the limiting factor for this Vampire installation, but as several have said here, radiated noise and vibration would have comprimised the surrounding structures.

A service use of this in the vampire would not have been practical even if the stuctural deficiencies had been overcome, as the fuel consumption would have rendered it with even less endurance than a Lightning owing to its limited capacity anyway! 😀

…and the rear elevators are directly in the exhaust.

The tail-plane and elevators wouldn’t survive very long if that were the case. 🙂

No, the tail booms are angled upwards slightly so that the horizontal surfaces are above the jet efflux.

I cannot believe that heat was the problem with either the Vampire or Sea Vixen…

Surely the sodding great flame and much extra thrust makes a bit of a difference! You only have to be working near aircraft to appreciate the difference between reheat or none, the vibration and extra force is very noticable.
Look on a Phantom (example of airframe beyond tailpipes) above and aft of the tailpipes and it is massively reinforced in this area to handle the blast.
Vibration and noise can play a very complex role in airframe design.

well i wouldnt have thought there would be much of a problem with the vixen, the rudders are mounted on top of the rudders and aren’t directly inline with the exhaust, also the airframe could probably deal with the surge from reheat thought not without damage i would have thought. not so sure about the vampire, considering that the airframe is wood (wooden cockpit pod) and metal. though the tail booms are angled up slightly so that the horizonatal surfaces are above the effulx, i would have thought that an afterburner would still almost certainly compromise the tail structure.

I cannot believe that heat was the problem with either the Vampire or Sea Vixen, in standard config the engine jet blast was designed to miss the horizontal tailplane, adding re-heat does not change the direction of that blast. During ground running I admit it might present a problem.
Certainly damage from the sonic shock waves could easily destroy the nearby structure. An example being Thrust SSC(supersonic car) which although only ever having done a few hours of running had significant cracking on the panels adjacent to the jet pipes.

Richard

Some years ago I was talking to a ex de haviland Engineer who mentioned the re heat experiments Apparently the problem they found was harmonics which destroyed the tail plane popping the rivets out while the aircraft was on the ground. He gave me the impression that they never flew the aircraft, as they did not find a solution to the problem. As at that time it was a completely new phenomenon to them to destroy a structure with sound waves and the resultant vibration in the structure. Unfortunately he as since passed away.