Evening all
Just a quick thought as I ponder on things, how many things are being peddled out as ‘new’ and ‘revolutionary’ that were actually dismissed when they were first conceived.
My first thought is with ‘supercruise’, some modern jet fighter manufacturers are touting this as a new thing when in actual fact it has been around for longer than I have walked this earth, The E E Lightning was in fact capable of ‘supercruise’ in the late fifties.
Come to think of it, how many firsts did the British invent only to have other countrys claim that they did it first???.
Regards,
John.
By: RPSmith - 21st August 2007 at 12:28
My thought on the initial question would be the fly-by wire system, hailed revoultionary when introduced on the Airbus A320 family in the 80´s. To all intends and purposes the Vulcan was a fly-by wire. Analogue, but still fly by wire!
Reading Aeroplane Monthly’s article about engines for the mighty Hughes HK-1 flying boat it says that the engine throttles were “a primitive ‘fly-by-wire’ system” using servo motors.
Roger Smith.
By: Ant.H - 21st August 2007 at 11:36
[QUOTE=mike currill;1152355]
Autoland systems – first installed on the Trident I believe.
QUOTE]
Slightly sore point that one, in fact the French carried out the first automatic landing in a Caravelle under test conditions. They were also the first to get CAT.III certification for thier system. For whatever reason, they don’t seem to have used it much and the first automatic landing in commercial service was by a Trident1, G-ARPP (from memory) in 1967.
By: mike currill - 21st August 2007 at 03:04
A very good point Galdri. One that has just come to mind is swing wing technology. A Barnes Wallis idea which was sold to the USA for want of official backing in this country.
Autoland systems – first installed on the Trident I believe.
Strange how these things come to mind on the back of comments by someone else. Actually on thinking about it a little more the Bristol fighter was a fighter first and foremost but when used as a bomber once the bombs were gone it was quite capable of performing its primarily intended role though possibly with slightly degraded performance due to the drag of the bomb racks.
By: galdri - 21st August 2007 at 01:37
My thought on the initial question would be the fly-by wire system, hailed revoultionary when introduced on the Airbus A320 family in the 80´s. To all intends and purposes the Vulcan was a fly-by wire. Analogue, but still fly by wire!
By: mike currill - 20th August 2007 at 22:44
I agree with the point you made about multi role on the same mission and by that criteria I don’t think the Tornado is true multi role as the IDS variant is primarily a ground attack aircraft and any pretence at being a fighter seems to be in self defence and the air superiority version is a quite severely modified airframe.
By: FMK.6JOHN - 20th August 2007 at 22:28
Mike
Some good thought there,
To expand on the multi-role idea I think we should clarify exactly what is meant by ‘multi-role’, the Bristol Fighter was a multi role aircraft but not on the same mission (I think:confused: ), whereas some aircraft are classed as ‘swing-role’ as in able to undertake two different mission profiles within the same sorte.
I can only think of the Jaguar that was the earliest to do this for the British but i could be wrong.
John.
By: mike currill - 20th August 2007 at 22:07
I don’t know about things we’ve invented but I do know that the USA did not invent the cruise missile. The credit for that has to go to Germany for the V1. The Multi Role Combat Aircraft concept is not as new as the Tornado if you consider the roles covered by the Bristol Fighter (fighter, light bomber, recconaisance) or Mosquito (Fighter, Night fighter, fighter bomber, bomber recconaisance)
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August 20, 2007 at 9:58 pm