Personally I am a huge fan of stupid 1950’s/60’s aircraft experiments that either end in succes or very “interesting” failures. One I’ve recen come across involves the U.S military testing what would happen to a fighter jet if a NUCLEAR GOD darn BOMB WENT OFF when it was flying, honestly what did they think would happen? It ended the way you would expect for what the plane was (I don’t remember the type of jet it was the one with strait wings and goofy fuel pods on the ends of the wings). Basically what happened was the fuel tanks on the with got YEETED off of the plane and they were never recovered and the vertical stabilizer tail got bent to hell and back and it crashed somewhere in the desert. What’s you fav stories form that time of experimentation?
What are your favorite/funniest experimental aircraft stories you’ve ever come across?
1,806 AttestedArk
5.1 years ago
I’m pretty sure that just happened with an f-16 recently @BACconcordepilot
@Stormfur self sealing tanks create a back pressure that keeps that frome happening
@Brields95 like putting a match into the fuel tank
Yeah I know right @Brields95 @Brields95
and uh, some engineers got spooked and jumped off trains while they were going
well it's not an aircraft but when trains first started coming around, people were afraid that going over 30mph would cause your blood to boil
The Rutan Voyager. They messed up the wingtips on takeoff and had to shake them off before continuing on.
@Gestour yeah that'd be a hell of an oversight.
John Denver in his Long Easy is a good experimental airplane story.
He couldn't reach the auxiliary fuel tank switch.
P-80 shooting star pilot has a hung wing tank. Used his sidearm to shoot holes in the tank to bleed off fuel to make it lighter. Only, it's a conformal with self sealing.
Mfw there's cheaper ways to destroy an airplane