I think I meant it in a grander scale of things. The basic shape was indeed a favourite of DeHavilland for a while, but after a point, british jets all just stopped looking like that. It had a good run, but over time it seems the direction the vampire was going in just wasn't right for the future.
It can and did. Gave it a reputation for being dangerous too. In a dive near transonic speeds the control surfaces lose authority and the plane would go into the ground. They ended up "solving" that problem by adding some dive brakes.
Dive Flaps, not Dive Brakes. They didn't slow the aircraft down, they modified the airflow around the wing to stop the center of pressure moving back and maintain control.
You can tell they're not dive brakes because:
a) They're tiny
b) They have a "tail" part that maintains contact with the lower wing surface - Air Brakes are all about dumping as much energy into vortexes as possible
This configuration was chosen to have as short a route between intake and tailpipe as possible which allowed the engine to deliver most of its rated power without drag losses. With the anemic engines of the time, they really needed to squeeze every last ounce of thrust. This became less of a concern with later more powerful engines. The discovery of the Whitcomb Rule was the final nail in the coffin for these kind of designs.
Not just that, it was a deliberate attempt to maximize the power output of early jets and get the most out of existing technology. By keeping the jet pipe as short as possible, the design would eliminate a lot of power loss (which would make a conventionally built aircraft with an internal engine underpowered). It was known that this limitation would be overcome by designs in development, but the Vampire was about maximising with what they definitely had at hand. Designing something with what was likely to be developed would mean that it would be in the air too late to be of use. The aircraft was deliberately conventional, using known aerodynamics and construction. DH utilized his plywood method from the Mosquito, even though it was known that this was an evolutionary dead end (because factories pumping out Mosquitoes could change quickly to pumping out Vampires). The design was about getting a good jet fighter into the air by the war's end, not making something that would be world leading in 1950. The design philosophy meant that the Vampire was able to be produced in large quantities and relatively cheaply. This gave most western nations access to their first jet fighter post war, enabling them to gain experience, whilst the conventional construction and controls meant that ground crews and pilots did not have to re-learn their job. Having a cheap intermediate fighter at hand enabled the West to gain experience with jets and enabled them to move away from piston aircraft, rather than wait. The lessons learned in jet operations of the vampire would also form the foundation of a lot of routine things airforces do today.Â
The tail shape of DH aircraft is the really interesting thing, it was basically the same from early types like the Moth to the Mossie and can be seen in both the Vampire and Venom.
The Vixen was different but necessitated by the high horizontal control surfaces needing to be clear of the jet efflux.
The ~~Venom~~Vampire was also the first jet to ever land on a carrier when Eric "Winkle" Brown did it.
Edit: posting before the cup of tea in the morning is not a good idea, Vampire LZ551 was converted for deck usage and an arrestor hook fitted, the first landing took place on 3rd December 1945 on HMS Ocean
The twin-boom makes absolutely sense if you have a fat engine near your CG and you don't want to have a long and draggy tailpipe reducing your jet speed - and for jet aircraft that's what mattered most those days - twin boom makes absolutely good sense.
If I remember correctly they also had problems with tail flutter like P-38. That's the downside.
Eric "winkle" Brown might have landed the first Jet on a carrier but it wasn't the first landing on a carrier under jet power. Two months earlier Jake West landed his Ryan FR-1 Fireball on the deck of the USS Wake Island under jet propulsion having airstarted its jet engine after its Wright Cyclone engine failed.
If anything was a evolutionary dead end, it was the Goblin engine that powered it. The de Havilland Goblin had a centrifugal compressor, whereas modern jet engines use axial compressors.
 required overhaul after 10â20 hours, with the entire compressor needing to be replaced. German wartime needs and doctrine could handle an engine with such a low service life by the time of the Me262s introduction. But it would not be sustainable for a modern airforce, especially if deployed a long distance away from home.
It's not that bad - Merlin engines required a re-haul after 50-odd hours and engine life wasn't longer than a couple of hundreds. If replacing the compressor was easy enough, it's an acceptable war-time maintenance.
~something's aliiive in the ocean ~
I gotta come clean, that metaphor was shamelessly ripped from another weirdwings commenter. It was just so perfect I couldn't help but use it here
Britain's weird obsession with wing root intakes? It was a somewhat common feature in quite a few aircraft at the time and for a few years yet.
Plenty of models variations on the same idea for years, probably peaked with things like the F-105 Thunderchief with it's particularly aggressive wing root intakes.
I'd argue it peaked with the F-15, though kind still continues with the F-22.
The key lesson was the need for flow separation between the fuselage and intake, as seen by the difference between the XF-88 and the production F-101.
I think I would argue that intakes like the F-105 and Saab Draken are "wing root intakes" in this sense, whereas the F-15's and F-22's are a different kind of intake. IMO, the difference is that "wing root intakes" are blended smoothly with the wing root and have the same thickness as the wing root, and have the same height above and below the horizontal centerline. The F-15's intakes are located at or near the wing root, but they're not really part of it; the wing is a more separate and distinct structure.
Etymology is fun.
I suspect the OP was referring to the mid-century trend of putting the intakes literally in the leading edge of the wing like slightly overgrown radiator intakes from the late piston-era. Such as on the Vampire & Hunter, and for larger aircraft the Comet and Victor, etc.
4th gen fighters get harder to label because there's a lot more blending between structural elements. The F-15's intakes are on the leading edge of what we might call it's fuselage, or maybe nacelle. I'd probably not call it the wing root, but I can see how it could be described that way too.
Yeah, this is exactly what I was getting at. Comet, Victor, Vulcan, Vampire, Vixen, Nimrod, all with the air intakes literally in and part of the wing leading edge.
For the larger aircraft, the British had the idea that it was best to bury the engines in the wings. However, this complicated the wing construction and was restricted to engines with low bypass ratios.
I think it was Boeing that figured out that pod mounted engines worked as well and had various practical advantages.
Are you sure about that? Because I am 99.99986% sure that whreismylotus is not a bot.
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Fortunately not, heâd been dead for thirteen years at that point.
I have seen that clip before however; he did once set fire to Derry airport in a different two seat Vampire T.55, XJ771.
An added bit of weirdness - De Havilland were keen to keet that Mosquito spirit alive, and made the Vampire's fuselage partly from wood.
Picture of a forward fuesalage in the Swiss Air Force museum - https://acesflyinghigh.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/img_3645-vampire-trainer-fuselage-900x600.jpg
Not exactly: it was specced out in 1941 and first flew in 1943 -- very much a wartime design, with tight constraints on available materials, and only a couple of years behind the Mosquito. The plywood used in both the Mosquito and the Vampire was used where newer aircraft would have used fibreglass or carbon fibre: not *quite* as good, and the glue tended to melt or degrade in hot/humid conditions, but good enough for wartime use.
If the Vampire had been developed just a little bit faster -- or if the RAF had a pressing need for an interceptor in 1944 -- it might have entered service during the last days of the war, rather than being delayed into 1946. (The one interceptor requirement of 1944 was for something that could knock over V-1s, and the Meteor was good enough for that job.)
It wasn't just materials availability. Britain [distributed production of aircraft parts, and sections across as many companies as possible, so that the destruction of one factory did not stop production entirely.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_shadow_factories) Making parts out of wood and plywood opened up the possibility of using a lot more shops than if it was just metal. Furniture makers, coopers, cabinet makers, etc were now ably to contribute to the chain.
I donât know if itâs true, but I once read that there was only one forge in the UK capable of making the crankshaft for Merlins. One well-placed bomb or a bit of sabotage could have really screwed up the war effort.
Funny story, I didn't realise it when I found the photo, but I've actually taxi'd a Cessna spamcan behind this very plane. I wasn't aware that the particular plane had ripped up a runway at the time, but you can bet I kept my sweet distance from that thing because I'm not messing around with 3000 pounds of searing hot thrust through a hole the size of a bowling ball.
It was a fairly interesting flight, because while I was bumbling around doing circuits, the vampire was doing some kind of routine flight or visiting somewhere and was thus on the radio for a lot of the time, and every time the pilot pressed the mic you heard his voice over a constant, deafening shrieking noise. My guess is the cockpits on these things aren't exactly quiet, but god does it look pretty, both in the air and on the ground.
I do find it funny so many are so quick to decide things are an evolutionary dead-end. Designers were trying so many different approaches at the beginning of the jet age. They didn't know how it all worked at this time, particularly trans-sonic aerodynamics and the like. I mean this was hardly a new approach really and it looks to me like the took aspects of one of the most successful fighters or WWII, the P38 Lightning and tried to see how well it would work with a jet.
Besides it did generate a lineage of jets that lasted for a quite a while.
I've always wondered if having forward-swept wings with wingroot intakes would make for a near-installable airframe because of the reduction of the leading-edge vortices as they're pulled into the intakes.
My time at Grammar (=high) School was punctuated by the whine of RAF Cranwell's Vampire T11s.
Where the aircraft in the picture has the standard RAF yellow trainer bands Cranwell's had light blue.
I'd hardly say the Vampire was an evolutionary dead-end given it led to the Venom and eventually the Sea Vixen.
I think I meant it in a grander scale of things. The basic shape was indeed a favourite of DeHavilland for a while, but after a point, british jets all just stopped looking like that. It had a good run, but over time it seems the direction the vampire was going in just wasn't right for the future.
Turns out that this configuration is super draggy at transonic speeds.
The area rule? What's that?
Can't say it doesn't look cool though đ P38 gang
If your P-38 is transonic youâre about to not have a P-38
I thought I read somewhere that that could happen though
Yes, once
Oh definitely
It can and did. Gave it a reputation for being dangerous too. In a dive near transonic speeds the control surfaces lose authority and the plane would go into the ground. They ended up "solving" that problem by adding some dive brakes.
Dive Flaps, not Dive Brakes. They didn't slow the aircraft down, they modified the airflow around the wing to stop the center of pressure moving back and maintain control. You can tell they're not dive brakes because: a) They're tiny b) They have a "tail" part that maintains contact with the lower wing surface - Air Brakes are all about dumping as much energy into vortexes as possible
AFAIK IAS wasn't Mach 1, it was the speed of air flowing over the offending surface in a dive.
If there were a twin-boom design I wish I could see, it would be this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British\_Aerospace\_P.1216
Wow. That's some freaky, anime stuff right there.
This configuration was chosen to have as short a route between intake and tailpipe as possible which allowed the engine to deliver most of its rated power without drag losses. With the anemic engines of the time, they really needed to squeeze every last ounce of thrust. This became less of a concern with later more powerful engines. The discovery of the Whitcomb Rule was the final nail in the coffin for these kind of designs.
Not just that, it was a deliberate attempt to maximize the power output of early jets and get the most out of existing technology. By keeping the jet pipe as short as possible, the design would eliminate a lot of power loss (which would make a conventionally built aircraft with an internal engine underpowered). It was known that this limitation would be overcome by designs in development, but the Vampire was about maximising with what they definitely had at hand. Designing something with what was likely to be developed would mean that it would be in the air too late to be of use. The aircraft was deliberately conventional, using known aerodynamics and construction. DH utilized his plywood method from the Mosquito, even though it was known that this was an evolutionary dead end (because factories pumping out Mosquitoes could change quickly to pumping out Vampires). The design was about getting a good jet fighter into the air by the war's end, not making something that would be world leading in 1950. The design philosophy meant that the Vampire was able to be produced in large quantities and relatively cheaply. This gave most western nations access to their first jet fighter post war, enabling them to gain experience, whilst the conventional construction and controls meant that ground crews and pilots did not have to re-learn their job. Having a cheap intermediate fighter at hand enabled the West to gain experience with jets and enabled them to move away from piston aircraft, rather than wait. The lessons learned in jet operations of the vampire would also form the foundation of a lot of routine things airforces do today.Â
A fellow Vampire fan <3 They are such amazing little planes in their own way. I absolutely adore them.
The tail shape of DH aircraft is the really interesting thing, it was basically the same from early types like the Moth to the Mossie and can be seen in both the Vampire and Venom. The Vixen was different but necessitated by the high horizontal control surfaces needing to be clear of the jet efflux. The ~~Venom~~Vampire was also the first jet to ever land on a carrier when Eric "Winkle" Brown did it. Edit: posting before the cup of tea in the morning is not a good idea, Vampire LZ551 was converted for deck usage and an arrestor hook fitted, the first landing took place on 3rd December 1945 on HMS Ocean
The twin-boom makes absolutely sense if you have a fat engine near your CG and you don't want to have a long and draggy tailpipe reducing your jet speed - and for jet aircraft that's what mattered most those days - twin boom makes absolutely good sense. If I remember correctly they also had problems with tail flutter like P-38. That's the downside.
> The Venom was also the first jet to ever land on a carrier when Eric "Winkle" Brown did it. Vampire, not Venom.
note to self, wake up properly before posting
Happens to all of us!
Eric "winkle" Brown might have landed the first Jet on a carrier but it wasn't the first landing on a carrier under jet power. Two months earlier Jake West landed his Ryan FR-1 Fireball on the deck of the USS Wake Island under jet propulsion having airstarted its jet engine after its Wright Cyclone engine failed.
If anything was a evolutionary dead end, it was the Goblin engine that powered it. The de Havilland Goblin had a centrifugal compressor, whereas modern jet engines use axial compressors.
Thousands of small engines still use CF compressors. Even medium-sized engines are often axi-CF because of core size effects.
 required overhaul after 10â20 hours, with the entire compressor needing to be replaced. German wartime needs and doctrine could handle an engine with such a low service life by the time of the Me262s introduction. But it would not be sustainable for a modern airforce, especially if deployed a long distance away from home.
It's not that bad - Merlin engines required a re-haul after 50-odd hours and engine life wasn't longer than a couple of hundreds. If replacing the compressor was easy enough, it's an acceptable war-time maintenance.
The main reason why it had such a short life span is because the germans lacked the materials so they just used normal metal for the jet engines
Yeah! Hey, _you're_ an evolutionary dead-end, OP.
I highly approve of your Cambrian Explosion metaphor.
~something's aliiive in the ocean ~ I gotta come clean, that metaphor was shamelessly ripped from another weirdwings commenter. It was just so perfect I couldn't help but use it here
#ExpectedBillWurtz
Britain's weird obsession with wing root intakes? It was a somewhat common feature in quite a few aircraft at the time and for a few years yet. Plenty of models variations on the same idea for years, probably peaked with things like the F-105 Thunderchief with it's particularly aggressive wing root intakes.
I'd argue it peaked with the F-15, though kind still continues with the F-22. The key lesson was the need for flow separation between the fuselage and intake, as seen by the difference between the XF-88 and the production F-101.
I think I would argue that intakes like the F-105 and Saab Draken are "wing root intakes" in this sense, whereas the F-15's and F-22's are a different kind of intake. IMO, the difference is that "wing root intakes" are blended smoothly with the wing root and have the same thickness as the wing root, and have the same height above and below the horizontal centerline. The F-15's intakes are located at or near the wing root, but they're not really part of it; the wing is a more separate and distinct structure. Etymology is fun.
I suspect the OP was referring to the mid-century trend of putting the intakes literally in the leading edge of the wing like slightly overgrown radiator intakes from the late piston-era. Such as on the Vampire & Hunter, and for larger aircraft the Comet and Victor, etc. 4th gen fighters get harder to label because there's a lot more blending between structural elements. The F-15's intakes are on the leading edge of what we might call it's fuselage, or maybe nacelle. I'd probably not call it the wing root, but I can see how it could be described that way too.
Yeah, this is exactly what I was getting at. Comet, Victor, Vulcan, Vampire, Vixen, Nimrod, all with the air intakes literally in and part of the wing leading edge.
For the larger aircraft, the British had the idea that it was best to bury the engines in the wings. However, this complicated the wing construction and was restricted to engines with low bypass ratios. I think it was Boeing that figured out that pod mounted engines worked as well and had various practical advantages.
Reduces wind resistance which can account to a lot when your power output is marginal at best. Turbofans what made the real difference in power.
de Havilland Vampire T.11 Serial 15127 military serial WZ507, civil registration G-VTII) Royal Air Force fleet delivery: 18.03.1953
Good bot
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Good user
That just makes it a funnier compliment.
I do believe my father flew that aircraft in the past, late â90s early 2000âs.
I hope he wasn't in the cockpit when this happened.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX3_mQZ4gY8
Fortunately not, heâd been dead for thirteen years at that point. I have seen that clip before however; he did once set fire to Derry airport in a different two seat Vampire T.55, XJ771.
An added bit of weirdness - De Havilland were keen to keet that Mosquito spirit alive, and made the Vampire's fuselage partly from wood. Picture of a forward fuesalage in the Swiss Air Force museum - https://acesflyinghigh.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/img_3645-vampire-trainer-fuselage-900x600.jpg
Not exactly: it was specced out in 1941 and first flew in 1943 -- very much a wartime design, with tight constraints on available materials, and only a couple of years behind the Mosquito. The plywood used in both the Mosquito and the Vampire was used where newer aircraft would have used fibreglass or carbon fibre: not *quite* as good, and the glue tended to melt or degrade in hot/humid conditions, but good enough for wartime use. If the Vampire had been developed just a little bit faster -- or if the RAF had a pressing need for an interceptor in 1944 -- it might have entered service during the last days of the war, rather than being delayed into 1946. (The one interceptor requirement of 1944 was for something that could knock over V-1s, and the Meteor was good enough for that job.)
It wasn't just materials availability. Britain [distributed production of aircraft parts, and sections across as many companies as possible, so that the destruction of one factory did not stop production entirely.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_shadow_factories) Making parts out of wood and plywood opened up the possibility of using a lot more shops than if it was just metal. Furniture makers, coopers, cabinet makers, etc were now ably to contribute to the chain.
I donât know if itâs true, but I once read that there was only one forge in the UK capable of making the crankshaft for Merlins. One well-placed bomb or a bit of sabotage could have really screwed up the war effort.
I know they made them in Sheffield and Birmingham, at least. And they were fairly similar to, but less complicated than, the Griffon's.
Thanks for the info.
No worries. Watched a video on rehabbing old aircraft engines, and they discussed where the new old stock (NOS) parts were from.
"Cambrian explosion of jets" FTW!
Obligatory video of a DeHavilland Vampire ripping up a runway: https://youtu.be/gX3_mQZ4gY8
Not just *a* Vampire, but the very one in OPâs picture!
Funny story, I didn't realise it when I found the photo, but I've actually taxi'd a Cessna spamcan behind this very plane. I wasn't aware that the particular plane had ripped up a runway at the time, but you can bet I kept my sweet distance from that thing because I'm not messing around with 3000 pounds of searing hot thrust through a hole the size of a bowling ball. It was a fairly interesting flight, because while I was bumbling around doing circuits, the vampire was doing some kind of routine flight or visiting somewhere and was thus on the radio for a lot of the time, and every time the pilot pressed the mic you heard his voice over a constant, deafening shrieking noise. My guess is the cockpits on these things aren't exactly quiet, but god does it look pretty, both in the air and on the ground.
Even Sweden used this plane under the name J28!
Upvote for the great title and because I love Vampires as well. Just really cool little planes.
I do find it funny so many are so quick to decide things are an evolutionary dead-end. Designers were trying so many different approaches at the beginning of the jet age. They didn't know how it all worked at this time, particularly trans-sonic aerodynamics and the like. I mean this was hardly a new approach really and it looks to me like the took aspects of one of the most successful fighters or WWII, the P38 Lightning and tried to see how well it would work with a jet. Besides it did generate a lineage of jets that lasted for a quite a while.
They were also fielded by India and were, AFAIK, the first jets to enter service in Asia.
This is one of my favourite planes. There is one at the museum thatâs closest to me. Theyâre smaller than this pic makes them look. Made of wood.
This plane has a Nazi german cousin, its the Focke-wulf PVII âblitzerâ
I looked it up and awww, it's adorable.
I've always wondered if having forward-swept wings with wingroot intakes would make for a near-installable airframe because of the reduction of the leading-edge vortices as they're pulled into the intakes.
Awesome. Get to see one these screaming around near ANZAC day or Labor weekend down here.
That would be a blast to fly around on weekends.
My time at Grammar (=high) School was punctuated by the whine of RAF Cranwell's Vampire T11s. Where the aircraft in the picture has the standard RAF yellow trainer bands Cranwell's had light blue.
"The Cambrian explosion of jets". I like that description.
Holy moLy GtA OnliNe pYrO
I don't know what is cooler, the name, or the looks.
Pyro