Update for "The end of Forked Ghosts"

[Tophe]

There are also triplex-twin-boomers:
- a seaplane with twin-booms, lateral, and the hull holding the tail too: Spencer Design 156,778 of 1944 - see at http://www.adventurelounge.com/aircraft/fu...design/167.html & http://www.adventurelounge.com/aircraft/fu...design/158.html
- a composite with 3 tails, 2 lateral + 1 central: Brettner Patent 2,421,742 of 1943, at http://www.adventurelounge.com/aircraft/fu...design/001.html

[Tophe]

Other addition: not from Internet but from Luftfahrt International 25: the Weserflug P.2137 project had existed in two versions: the landplane WFG 2137L landplane (illustrated in Forked Ghosts) and the seaplane WFG 2137W (below):

(thanks Paul, once more)

[Tophe]

Thanks to my Belgian best friend, and to Internet, I have made a new discovery:
A 1944 ideal civil plane was presented in Popular Science (June 44), similar to the Airsedan in Flying, while different. See:  
http://artwork.barewalls.com/product/frame...2&ITEMID=184962
If the sold item is the magazine, I may buy it. If this is the cover only, I may hesitate.

[Tophe]

A 1944 ideal civil plane was presented in Popular Science (June 44), similar to the Airsedan in Flying, while different.

Belated doubt: as the Airsedan dream was using the 1934 Weick W-1A as a basis, wasn't this twin-boom cover just a W-1?
I have checked and the answer is No, completely. The W-1A had high wing and fixed landing gear, not much room inside and poor aerodynamics.
Thanks to the great Aerofiles batch of pages, see http://www.aerofiles.com/_wa.html

[Tophe]

While moving to a new home, I have handled lots of aviation books and magazines, and my wife made me discover a 'new' unknown twin-boom airplane of the early 1940s, from a very serious source, far away from fantasy. She simply presented the cover, asking « where to put this booklet ? ». I had a look: « which booklet? Hey, what is this ?! Never saw this plane ! » (see below). It was a drawing like a Twin-Mustang night fighter with lateral posts and a central big pod for radar/tank/guns, but very surprisingly, the cockpits were very close to the propellers, with probably engines aft, like on a P-39.
Then, I handled the leaflet properly, to read the title, and yes, it was coming from my own collection : Racing Planes and Air Races by Reed Kinert, Volume IV – great for racing Mustangs' profiles with tiny canopies, but have I forgotten to look at the cover? Well... holding it properly to see the texts, it appeared that the new twin-fuselage was... just a twin-boom P-38 seen from below! (with dark air-intakes that I had misread as wind-shields)... Including this one is not updating the fantasy chapter, but the mistake chapter (during one minute and a half, I thought it was serious). Let us call 8E-d this new twin bird that I had imagined. Flying with P-51s, it could be dated 1945, yes. What-if... ?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A true addition came from the magazine Le Fanatique de l'Aviation, June 2005 issue (Nr427).
The first Kokusai Ku-7 was designed Ku-7-I in 1942 then the next one (with more metal): Ku-7-II in 1943; 300 copies of this cargo glider were ordered, only the 2 prototypes being built, due to the cancellation of the Ki-49 tug. No much news up to there but... the Ki-105 powered-derivative of 1944 was not what I thought (a flying tanker derivative), but just a cargo-plane, like the American Packet. 50 copies were started to manufacture, about 10 finished in 1945, 7 accepted by the Army – falling outside the "ghost" requirement of my books, all right, but... the pure flying tank-carrier version was coded Ki-105b and was just 'proposed', with probably no more windows, and none of this one was built – so I illustrate it below, happy...
Then, a funny misunderstanding: it was written in this (French) article "the Ki-105b was not produced, neither was the low wing Ki-111", and I was interested: What? Is this Ki-111 a Ki-105 with a low wing ? (a rare low-wing twin-boom cargo like the Belgian Renard R-45) No, not at all, it was a user-family of cargo planes, not a designer-family of twin-boomers, but this idea crossed my mind seriously, during half a minute, and became the what-if drawing below (Ki-111b)...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The next addition belongs, I think, to the "artist dreams of 1945" chapter, with the Airsedan. This new one was illustrating a propeller advertisement : "Iso-Rev constant speed propeller", Iso-Rev being a division of Zimmer-Thomson Corporation, New York. It was in "The Aircraft Yearbook for 1945 (Registered U.S. Patent Office)" by Howard Mingos, Lanciar Publishers. The text said "Today our entire energies and resources are devoted to the nation's war effort. We feel fortunate that our contribution towards victory may also place added enjoyment and utility within reach of the plane owner of tomorrow." Yes, the civil ideal aircraft seemed to be a twin-boomer in 1945 - Flying's Airsedan, Piper PWA-1 Aircoupe (PWA being Post War Aircraft), SUC.10 Courlis in France, etc... with this Iso-Rev Plane of Tomorrow, so.
(Great addition for me, thanks Paul)

[dragon]

Tophe,
    I have been wanting to hear your opinion on this:

1/72 imaginary racer.   B)  

[Tophe]

Tophe,
    I have been wanting to hear your opinion on this:

Great! Thanks Dragon! (by the way, I have leaned last month that the word for 'dragon' is 'tik-tik' in Filipino - Negros island).
Well, this model is very nice, it is somehow a mix of :
- the (very true, Real) Canard Lightning (Appendice 1 of my old book 'Forked Ghosts')
- Ollie's P-38JR-3 swept wing Lightning (page 37 of my recent book "the end of Forked Ghosts' ")
As there are 3 'tubes' (1 front, 2 aft) holding tails, I would not classify this one as twin-boomer (but triplex-boomer), as far as I am concerned, BUT - seeing differently - you would be wise saying "this plane has 2 tails: 1 front, 1 back, while the classical Lightning had only 1 tail, back". This is just another way to judge, to consider, and I respect all ways.

Thanks, Tik-tik...  

[Tophe]

- the (very true, Real) Canard Lightning (Appendice 1 of my old book 'Forked Ghosts')

Here is the real canard P-38 try (left) where I count 3 tail-tubes, and my 2 tail-tube derivative (right). Funny as 1/72 but probably dangerous in scale 1, and not a racer with only one engine...

[Tophe]

Dragon's Lightning-racer canard and the actual Lightning-testbed canard had 2 engines but 3 tail-tubes, my asymmetric Kiwi-38 canard had 2 tail tubes but 1 engine, so to be satisfying, I complete here with a D-ONUT 38 canard having 2 tail-tubes and 2 engines: this is a genuine Lightning...
And as a front stabiliser may not be canard enough, this one includes foreplanes without tailplanes aft. And there are obviously 2 tails here, tail-first, while the P-38 would have 1 or 2, the Lightning-canards 2 or 3...

Yes, but most of the P-38 are single-seaters with lateral engines... So, not to be excessively what-if, the P-38 canard testbed could be converted from 3 tails to 2 with a simple touch of asymmetry (P-38/1-1). However, this is not twin-tail anymore. Yes, counting tails, the principle could be : 2 distant twin tails like on a He111Z or else 1 single twin-tail like on a P-38 or P-82.

[Tophe]

In Airpower May 2005 was mentionned a version of XP-58 with a crew of 3 instead of 2, and a big internal load-bay near the center of gravity. Here is a provisional drawing of mine, before new data arrive, maybe.

PS. You know that I don't like killing tools, but military fans would have liked to hear: a medium bomber with a bomb bay...  

[Tophe]

Illustrating the Renard R-45 project, I have probably made a mistake: the source I had ("Les avions Renard 1922-1970" book, by A.Hauet) said the post-war Stampe-Renard SR-45, illustrated, was a derivative of the Renard R-45 project designed during the war, and I had supposed they looked the same. Probably not: at least at the first step, the R-45 design was probably using the classical high-wing of the twin-boom cargos Packet, Go242, Ku7, SAM-23 etc. Maybe my Belgian friend will confirm...

[Tophe]

the R-45 design was probably using the classical high-wing of the twin-boom cargos

Why a low-wing on a cargo, at last on the SR-45? That could have been preferred considering several possibilities:
- landing-gears from a high wing (or engines there) are long thus fragile and heavy
- landing-gears in the fuselage take room that would be better for the load
- landing-gears in pods close to the fuselage bring extra drag
- a mid-wing cannot be attached solidly without taking room from the load
- so a low wing including landing gears could be the best
(that is just my childish explanation - Evan engineer, do you have the actual answer? this is not an old mistake, see in the 1990s the serious cargo projects of low-wing MiG101M & high-wing MiG101N...)

[Tophe]

Reading again the book, I see part of another explanation: as the fuselage was a disposable container, it was impossible to have fuselage landing gears. But the XC-120 PackPlane used a high wing with the same feature, and the low-wing MiG101M had not this feature, so: ?

[elmayerle]

As with any design, there are tradeoffs.  One of those is the length of the main landing gear legs if the gear retracts into the booms rather than into pods or whatever (actually, properly integrated pods aren't that much of a drag source).  Wing placement (high, low, or mid) again depends on tradeoff analysis and, in some cases, personal preferences of the lead designers.  Myself, if it's going to be operating from rough, semi-prepared fields, I want a high wing to keep as much as possible up and out of hte way.

[Tophe]

Thanks a lot for this analysis, engineer. It is great   that engineers may be humble enough to reveal us that an aircraft design comes often, partly, from personal preferences ^_^ , rather than Very Truth that we, stupid non-professionals , cannot understand ... That brings more blue sky in our aviation World, thanks a lot !

For the Fairchild 78 Packet (with landing gears from the booms), I understand 4 possibilities were considered (on this sketch of mine : blue = good, red = bad, green = acceptable): the goal was a very low fuselage to climb just a little for heavy loads (F-78H perfect), but not too much long legs (fragile/heavy, F-78H imperfect), but with clearance for the propeller blades (F-78L must be climbed to, imperfect). Thus F-78W or F-78M were best for the users, with W preferred personally by the decision maker.