Swiss Stinger - EFW N-20.10 Aiguillon

[CammNut]

This is a Dujin 1/72 resin rendition of the Swiss EFW N-20.10 Aiguillon (Stinger) four-jet fighter. This strange if rather lovely beast never made it beyond a single prototype and appears to have flown only once, and only briefly, in 1952 before being cancelled.


Pictures from the time show the aircraft in natural metal, but it is preserved in the Swiss Air Force Museum resplendent in glossy silver. So mine is painted silver. No decals came with my kit so rather than try to somehow create the Aiguillon logo and stripe on the prototype, I decided to make it an operational aircraft. Luckily Swiss markings are simple and sparse.

The model seems fairly faithful shapewise, although I had to create the series of slots that make up the small jet nozzles on the inboard wing trailing edges. There's a really good walkaround gallery here:

https://www.grubbyfingersshop.com/walkaround_galleries/EFW_N-20_Walkaround_Swiss_Air_Force_Museum_2015/content/index.html

In the third shot of the gallery you can see the slotted trailing edge, jet nozzles and the wing slots for augmenting and reversing the bypass flow.


The Aiguillon seems surprisingly advanced for its day. The aircraft was powered by the first low-bypass turbofans, with reheat of the bypass air and thrust reversing via slots in the wing. The weapons were housed in interchangeable fuselage "pods". It even had an ejectable cabin for the pilot!

The four engines were locally developed and called Swiss Mambas (SM) - an Armstrong Siddeley Mamba turboprop fitted with fan stages to produce a turbofan. Engine core air went down the middle to a square nozzle on the trailing edge. Bypass air when down ducts either side of that where it was reheated and then exited through slots either side of the nozzle. The "slot flaps" in the bypass ducts forward of the trailing edge allowed more air in to increase thrust but could also be used to reverse thrust for braking on landing. The original SM.01s fitted to the prototype were underpowered. An uprated SM.02 was tested and a bigger SM.05 was planned, but the program was cancelled.



Fixed armament was a pair of 20mm cannon in the lower forward fuselage (not fitted to the sole prototype built). Interchangeable belly packs could carry four 30mm cannon, two 400kg bombs, 16 50kg bombs or 36 8.7cm rockets on rotary racks or four cameras with 24 flares plus 500 liters of fuel.

The cockpit section was designed to eject intact. There was a rocket under the floor and directional and landing parachutes behind the pilot. As best I can work out, panels called rumpfklappe or "hull flaps" (one is seen open in the museum picture) helped stabilize the capsule in flight after ejection.

[zenrat]

Nice looking plane.
 

[DogfighterZen]

Nice looking plane.
 

I agree, that looks good. 

[Weaver]

Well done! 

Really interesting aircraft: it's a shame it didn't get to at least do more test-flying so that it's left-field ideas could have been more thoroughly explored.

[NARSES2]

I forgot Dujuin did a kit of it. Very attractice looking aircraft and you've done a very nice rendition of her 

[PR19_Kit]

The engines sound VERY complicated, bags of scope for things to go wrong, but it does look very good.   

[Weaver]

The engines sound VERY complicated, bags of scope for things to go wrong, but it does look very good.   

Not really: they're "just" afterburning turbofans (admittedly cutting edge for 1952) with the bypass air diverted into two ducts either side of the core instead of all around it. One advantage, I suppose, is that the afterburners for the core and bypass flows are separated so they can have different characteristics.

[Dizzyfugu]

Exotic, and nice! 

[kitbasher]

Ooh, that's different.  As you say, odd-looking but not unattractive.

[McColm]

Well done 

[kerick]

Never heard of this one. Well done!
It reminds me of a version of the Batplane.

[CammNut]

Thanks folks!

[chrisonord]

I am liking that 

[buzzbomb]

Nice work. Some Scale-o-rama potential in that kit

[Spino]

Kinda looks like a single-tailed Vought Cutlass with the engine configuration of a BAe Nimrod.  I actually had to look it up to make sure that it actually existed, because that's what I thought it was!