V/STOL - A History in Patents

If you remember my review of Speculative Warplane Designs - A History in Patents, I was fascinated by the range of designs from the early days of flight to very recent times. In that title were designs that, in most cases, never got off the drawing board.

In this new release, Dataview Publishing has obtained patent information on an interesting subset of aircraft, some of which have made it as far as prototypes, and at least one into production. This of course is about Vertical and Short Take-Off and Landing (V/STOL) aircraft. Some of these designs will look instantly familiar as these aircraft (or variations thereof) made in off the drawing boards and onto the ramps of various test centers in the US.

The fascination of V/STOL is that this corner of the aviation flight envelope addresses the need to get an aircraft in and out of small areas such as clearings, roads, small flight decks, etc., while retaining its intended mission capability(ies). Up until recently, the technology has not been available to obtain that fine balance of aircraft weight, payload (including fuel), thrust, forward airspeed, and cost/complexity. A number of designs have been put forth in the past which are a compromise of one or more of the above categories to achieve flight.

The early V/STOL aircraft were hot air or hydrogen/helium balloons, but what they have in vertical flight, they lack in controllable forward flight. Autogyros that combined the lift of a main rotor with reasonable forward flight characteristics, but they lacked true vertical (hover) capability and payload. Helicopters in general are true V/STOL aircraft, but their lift rotor technology limited the maximum forward airspeed due to the eventual stall of the downwind rotor blade arc. Of course, Airwolf overcame that limitation, but that was only television...

One of the first workable V/STOL fighters was Hawker/Siddeley's Harrier, based on the Kestral prototype. It had sufficient thrust in one engine to achieve its tactical mission objectives. Follow-on versions from McDonnell Douglas built on that success. Yakovlev also achieved a reasonably workable fighter design with the Yak-38, based upon the Yak-36 prototype using multiple engines for lift.

Today, the fighter realm has been pushed into the bounds of supersonic V/STOL with the Joint Strike Fighters X-32 and F-35 as well as with the Yak-141.

The more elusive V/STOL success is a tactical transport that can take off like a helicopter and fly like an aircraft and still have a good range and payload capability. A variety of designs appeared, and a number of them flew, including the XC-142A Tiltwing, but today we've overcome many of the technology hurdles with the V-22 Osprey and its commercial derivatives, thanks to the XV-15 prototype.

So wander through these pages and look at what some visionaries considered to get their aircraft off the ground. It was fascinating to see how many were based upon derivatives of the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter (see the first example above). Many designs were ahead of their time as the technology wasn't yet available to implement their visions. Others were simply far-fetched.

This title is available in electronically in Adobe Acrobat(tm) format. You can purchase the CD for $9.99 or download it directly from the publisher for only $1.99.

This title is available directly from the publisher at Dataview Publications (www.dataviewbooks.com).

My sincere thanks to Dataview Publications for this review sample!