June 16, 2007 at 5:10 pm
The British issued an experimental requirement for an aircraft to cruise at Mach-5, I have no idea of the date for this but the requirement recieved the designation ER.181. This lead to the English Electric P.42 concept. Now the Bristol company appears to have done some work on several Mach 3-5 ramjet designs which were associated with the P.42 such as the BS.1002 and BS.1006. Then there was the BS.1012 that supposedly was a combination engine using Olympus machinery and ramjets. There were other combination engine designs too apparently associated with studies for high mach cruising by Barnes Wallis. Obviously none of this ever seems to have made it of paper but it still seems fascinating. The problem is that the above is all I know, with the exception of the below link supposedly showing a computer generated image of what the P.42 may have looked like had it ever been built.
http://www.bisbos.com/rocketscience/aircraft/hyper/scheme8/scheme8.htm
If anybody has any more information about British research into hypersonic flight or any comments I would greatly appreciate your contribution!!!:confused:
Thanks in advance sealordlawrence.