Fourth Quarter (Oct - Dec) 2010 · Farmingdale, New York. Hughes offered the XF-112, a twin-engine, twin-boom design that, at least to a casual observer, resembled the Lightning3

1 www.war-eagles-air-museum.com

Editorial T his issue, our “Featured Aircraft” article tells the story of another little-known but fascinating avia-tion oddity that you’ve probably never heard of—the Republic XR-12 Rainbow.

We’ve had a few positive comments, and no negative ones, about our decision to cover other aircraft than just those in the War Eagles Air Museum collection in Plane Talk. We really enjoy researching and writing these kinds of articles, and we hope you enjoy reading them. For the history of aviation is much more than the “snapshot” represented by a collection of airplanes languishing in a hangar. It is al-so a history of ideas, of dedicated design-ers and skilled test pilots, and of the pio-neers who gave all they had to bring their farsighted aeronautical concepts to life.

Over the years, many advanced air-craft have been designed that never went into production. Often an aircraft compa-ny would build a prototype, but then the money would run out, or a better design would come along, and the prototype would go plop into the dustbin of history. Worse, there was often little interest in preserving these aircraft. The number of one-of-a-kind aircraft that have been cut up for scrap metal is appalling. The fate of the sole remaining Rainbow, after one of the two prototypes crashed (a fate you will learn about in this issue), is perhaps the most shameful of all.

We need to assure that today’s proto-types do not suffer similar fates. They are a priceless part of aviation history, and they belong in museums, not in the junk pile. Preserve the Prototypes!

Inside This Issue Editorial......................................1 Featured Aircraft ........................1 Richard Green (1941–2010)......2 The Battle of Palmdale ..............4 Aviation Bookshelf .....................6 Membership Application ............7

The Newsletter of the War Eagles Air Museum

Fourth Quarter (Oct - Dec) 2010

Volume 23, Number 4

Featured Aircraft (Continued on Page 2)

Featured Aircraft

E very once in a while an airplane comes along that is so well-pro-portioned, so elegant, so right, that it earns a place in the annals of avia-tion history for that reason alone. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but few be-holders would argue that an airplane with sweeping curves is not “better-looking” than a clunky one with bulges and protru-sions sticking out all over. Examples of the latter are legion—everyone probably has a favorite “ugly airplane.” Examples of the former are rarer. But surely one of the best is the Republic XR-12 Rainbow.

Surely one of the most graceful, beautiful aircraft ever to grace the skies, Republic’s stunning XR-12 Rainbow photo-reconnai-sance aircraft pushed the limits of aviation technology in the 1940s. The availability of cheaper alternatives meant that only two of these eye-catching models were ever built.


W e lost a great friend with the passing of Richard T. “Dick” Green. Dick started flying at age 12. With a lifelong passion for avia-tion, he flew all kinds of aircraft, from a Piper J-3 Cub to a Boeing 747, and ac-crued over 30,000 hours in his logbook. He retired from Continental Airlines as a Captain after 19 years, and then flew for Air Transport International, from which he retired in 2001. For the last six years, he captained Douglas DC-9s at C&M Airways in El Paso. He competed nation-wide in Advanced and Unlimited aero-batics, and was also a motorcyclist and an avid scuba diver. Everyone who knew him appreciated his strong sense of ad-venture, his sharp wit and his unstinting professionalism. We will all miss him very much.

Plane Talk—The Newsletter of the War Eagles Air Museum Fourth Quarter 2010

Plane Talk Published quarterly by:

War Eagles Air Museum 8012 Airport Road Santa Teresa, New Mexico 88008 (575) 589-2000

Author/Executive Editor: Terry Sunday Senior Associate Editor: Frank Harrison Associate Editor: Kathy Sunday

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the Republic Aviation Corporation, of Farmingdale, New York. Hughes offered the XF-112, a twin-engine, twin-boom design that, at least to a casual observer, resembled the Lightning3. Republic pro-posed the big, four-engine XF-12, which did not much resemble anything else that had ever flown. After evaluating the pro-posals, the Air Force ordered two proto-types from each company, presumably intending to hold a “fly-off” competition to select the one that best did the job.

Republic began as the Seversky Air-craft Company, founded in 1931 by émi-gré Russian pilot and World War I veter-an Alexander de Seversky. At the time, Josef Stalin was violently purging Russia of the intelligentsia and others whom he perceived to threaten his brutal rule. Sev-ersky rescued many of his former coun-trymen and gave them jobs with his new company. One of these men was Alexan-der Kartveli, who later led the design ef-forts for some of Republic’s most famous aircraft, including the P-47 Thunderbolt, the F-84 Thunderjet and the F-105 Thun-

The Rainbow grew out of the con-vergence of two separate lines of aviation development in a sort of “chicken-or-the-egg” situation. In the early 1940s, Pan American World Airways had a require-ment for a new trans-Atlantic passenger plane. At about the same time, the U.S. Army Air Corps realized that it needed a long-range, high-speed, high-altitude re-connaissance aircraft to support its com-bat operations over the vast Pacific Ocean. The historical record is unclear on whether the civilian version of the re-sulting airplane spawned the military one, or vice versa. But it is clear that Pan Am’s airliner did not materialize1, where-as the military’s recon plane did, at least in experimental form. Many people who saw the stunning Rainbow “in the flesh” considered it one of the most beautiful aircraft ever to fly.

In August 1943, Colonel Elliot Roo-sevelt, the President’s son, commanded the Air Corps’ 3rd Reconnaissance Group in North Africa. He knew the value of timely, accurate intelligence in the type of mobile warfare that he experienced in Algeria and Tunisia. His unit flew twin-engine Lockheed F-5s, which were P-38 Lightning fighters with modified noses fitted with cameras for photo-reconnais-sance missions. Roosevelt felt strongly that the Air Corps needed to develop a dedicated airplane designed specifically for the reconnaissance role. The top brass agreed. Thus, in late 1943, the Air Tech-nical Service Command at Wright Field, in Dayton, Ohio, sought proposals from the American aircraft industry for a cam-era-carrying airplane that could fly at 400 miles per hour for 4,000 miles at an al-titude of 40,000 feet.

In March 1944, two companies (there may have been others—the record is not clear) responded to the solicitation with aircraft designed to meet the Air Corps’ requirements: the Hughes Aircraft Company, of Culver City, California, and

Featured Aircraft (Continued from page 1)

1 Interestingly, in 1952 Pan Am introduced new economy-class service from the U.S. to Europe that it called “The Rainbow.” Was the name inspired by the stillborn airliner concept from ten years earlier?

What might have been...Rainbows in Pan American World Airways livery would have attracted attention throughout the world.

2 The “F” stood for “Foto” (i.e., “Photo”),” not “Fighter.” The “F for Fighter” designation, replacing the “P for Pursuit” used in World War II, was adopt-ed when the Air Force became a separate service on September 18, 1947. At the same time, the XF-12 be-came the XR-12 (“R for Reconnaissance”), which we will use throughout the rest of this article.

3 Howard Hughes was seriously injured when he crashed in the first prototype XF-11 on July 7, 1946 in Beverly Hills, California. Some of his biographers believe an addiction to the pain medications that he had to take after this crash was responsible for his la-ter well-known eccentricities.

Richard T. “Dick” Green May 19, 1941–July 8, 2010


enough air to cool all four rows of cyl-inders (cooling the back rows was always a problem with R-4360s). The cooling air and the engine exhaust gases from the turbosuperchargers were ducted through the slender nacelle and exited at the rear, providing a thrust equivalent to about 250 extra horsepower.4 Each of the nacelles was as long as a P-47, giving an indication of the XR-12’s immense size. In another innovative feature, all carbur-etor, oil cooler and intercooler air entered from wide, low-drag slots on the leading edges of the wings between the nacelles.

In the fuselage behind its straight ta-pered wing, the XR-12 had three pressur-ized compartments, each fitted with three Fairchild K-17 cameras with heated, six-inch-focal-length f6.3 Metrogon lenses shooting nine-inch-square negatives on roll film. Complete darkroom facilities allowed the crew to develop and print the film in flight, giving intelligence analysts immediate access to the material when the aircraft landed. For night reconnais-sance, a large bay in the belly, with drag-reducing, inward-retracting doors, carried 18 M46 photoflash bombs to light up tar-gets with 700-million candlepower each.

The Rainbow first took to the air at Farmingdale on February 7, 1946, at the hands of Republic test pilot Lowery L.

derchief. But despite its skilled design staff, by early 1939 the company was not doing well. The Board of Directors oust-ed Seversky and, in September 1939, re-organized the firm as the Republic Avia-tion Corporation. That proud name car-ried considerable cachet for the next few decades. Then, in September 1965, Fair-child-Hiller took over Republic, and later vanished itself in the frenzy of aerospace consolidation, joining the ranks of such storied monikers as Convair, Douglas, McDonnell, North American and Vultee.

As you can tell from the its stream-lined profile, even with unswept wings and tail surfaces, low drag was the guid-ing principle of Kartveli’s XR-12 design team. The smooth, rounded fuselage con-tours, with flush cockpit glazing, made it look fast just sitting on the ground. The industry magazine Aviation Week said, “the sharp nose and cylindrical cigar shape of the XR-12 fulfills a designer’s dream of a no-compromise design with aerodynamic considerations.”

This low-drag obsession continued with the engine installations. The air-craft’s Pratt & Whitney-4360-37 radials with dual General Electric turbosuper-chargers were the most powerful piston engines ever made. The slender nacelles did not have cowl flaps to control the flow of cooling air. Rather, the cowling rings themselves moved fore-and-aft, modulating the cooling airflow while minimizing drag. A two-stage fan behind the propeller assured the engine got

Fourth Quarter 2010 Plane Talk—The Newsletter of the War Eagles Air Museum

Brabham. He thought he was well prepared, but the aircraft’s tre-mendous acceleration surprised him, and he had to climb steeply to avoid exceeding the landing gear retraction limit of 250 miles per hour. Failure of a flap motor meant he had to fly the entire first flight with the flaps halfway down. Nevertheless, it was a successful and auspicious debut for an airplane that Republic

executives hoped would turn the com-pany around. By the time the second pro-totype flew on August 12, 1947, an order for six production versions was in hand.

Republic XR-12 Rainbow General Characteristics

Powerplants Four 3,000-horsepower+ Pratt & Whitney 28-cylin-der R-4360 Wasp Major radial engines

Maximum speed 470 miles per hour

Cruise speed 398 miles per hour

Service Ceiling 45,000 feet

Length 93 feet 9 inches

Wingspan 129 feet 2 inches

Range 4,500 miles

Weight (empty) ~ 65,000 pounds

Weight (max.) ~ 101,400 pounds

The XR-12’s extensively glazed, low-drag nose provided not only a futuristic appearance but also excellent visibility.

4 The XR-12 was slated to use P&W’s revolution-ary new VDT (Variable Discharge Turbine) engine, a highly advanced, 4,300-horsepower R-4360 deriva-tive, but it never did because of engine development problems and cancellation of the program.

The XR-12’s size is obvious in this photo. It dominates the men standing near the land-ing gear. Note also the big spinners, closely cowled engines and air inlet slots between the nacelles on the wing leading edge.

On one test flight, Brabham applied full power in level flight at 35,000 feet and the XR-12 quickly surpassed the not-to-exceed dive speed of a P-47. This was a sweet, high-performance aircraft in-deed. However, during maximum-gross-weight landing tests in the first prototype on July 10, 1947, the right main gear broke off on a hard landing. The airplane managed to claw its way back into the air. Reaching a safe altitude, the pilot (whose name is unrecorded) burned off excess fuel and then landed as gingerly as he could on one main wheel and the nose wheel, keeping the right wing raised for as long as he could while scrubbing

Featured Aircraft (Continued on page 7)



to-air missiles, such as Sidewinder and Spar-row, that were then un-der development. At 11:34AM on August 16, 1956, Navy technicians at Point Mugu started the big, noisy, 2,000-horsepow-er radial engine of an F6F-5K drone. Minutes later, the Hellcat took off on its final mission as the target for a mis-sile test. Watching the bright red aircraft climb out over the Pacific, the ground crewmen sud-

denly realized that they had a problem. The drone would not respond to their ra-dio control signals. They had a runaway airplane on their hands!

But wait…maybe it would be okay. The drone was heading out to sea with nothing in front of it but thousands of square miles of deep, open water. Their relief was short-lived. The F6F turned gracefully to the southeast and took dead aim at downtown Los Angeles. The con-trollers could do nothing but watch help-lessly. In a decision that must have ran-kled almost unbearably, Navy brass rang up their arch rivals in the Air Force and asked the junior Service for help.

The Air Force, no doubt relishing a little Schadenfreude, immediately scram-bled two Scorpions of the 437th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at nearby Oxnard Air Force Base (now Camarillo Airport). Pilot First Lieutenant (1LT) Hans Ein-stein and his back-seater, radar observer 1LT C.D. Murray, manned one F-89D. 1LT Richard Hurliman and 1LT Walter Hale flew the other. Their orders were simple—shoot down the drone before it caused any damage. As the interceptors roared south after their target, the crew-men were no doubt sure they would ac-complish their mission and be back to base in time for a late lunch.

Einstein and Hurliman had no trou-ble finding their target. Even if the drone hadn’t been painted high-visibility red, their Scorpions were equipped with the latest-technology Hughes E-6 fire control

The Battle of Palmdale T he mid-1950s were fascinating times. The Cold War raged at full intensity. The U.S. and the Sovi-et Union faced each other in the proxy nations of Europe with bristling arrays of conventional and nuclear weapons. Mili-tary men on both sides of the Iron Cur-tain still thought jet aircraft were “state-of-the-art” technology. Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), which would later come to dominate relations between the superpowers for half a century, had not yet become operational. Long-range bombers were the main strategic threat. American military planners feared the Soviets would attack with fleets of Myas-ishchev M-4 Bison and Tupolev Tu-16 Badger and Tu-95 Bear bombers, flying over the North Pole on one-way missions to drop their atomic bombs on U.S. cities. Far-flung radar stations, Nike surface-to-air missile batteries and interceptor air-craft were key elements of the U.S. air defenses set up to counter such an attack.

Northrop’s F-89D was one type of all-weather interceptor deployed at U.S. Air Force bases. This subsonic, twin-jet aircraft, with its ground-hugging stance and sharply upswept tail, bore what was surely one of the most fitting and evoca-tive names in aviation history—Scorpion. Like its namesake, it packed a powerful sting—it carried 104 unguided 2.75-inch Folding Fin Aerial Rockets (FFARs) in two permanently mounted wingtip pods (2.75 inches was the diameter of the roc-ket motor case). The rockets were intend-ed to be fired in salvos against enemy bombers. The prototype XP-89 first flew on August 16, 1949, and the first produc-tion-model F-89A took to the air a year later. First flight of the definitive F-89D was on October 23, 1951, and 682 even-tually entered service with the U.S. Air Force and the Air National Guard.

In those days before near-real-time satellite reconnaissance, stealth aircraft

and precision-guided missiles, squadrons of Scorpions were America’s best chance of repelling a Soviet aerial attack. If the balloon went up, Air Force officers were confident these interceptors would send bombers falling from the sky like metal-lic autumn leaves. As it turns out, how-ever, a bizarre, little-known incident that some historians ignominiously call “The Battle of Palmdale” hints that such confi-dence may have been misplaced…

Grumman’s F6F Hellcat was one of the finest U.S. Navy fighters of World War II, but after the War ended, the Na-vy had more of them than it knew what to do with. The Naval Air Development Unit at Johnsville, Pennsylvania, came to the rescue, with a program to convert surplus Hellcats into radio-controlled pi-lotless drones. The Navy flew these pro-peller-driven, piston-engined drones at the Point Mugu and China Lake Naval Air Weapons Centers in Southern Cali-fornia. Many of these once-proud fight-ers, painted a garish fluorescent red all over, ended their lives as targets for air-

A Grumman F6F-5K Hellcat drone is seen here, piloted, on a ferry flight. This one is painted bright red with a yellow tail.

This flight of Northrop F-89D Scorpions shows the upswept tail that gave the aircraft its name. The wingtip pods were permanently attached. Each one contained fuel in the rear, behind the dark line, and 52 2.75-inch Folding Fin Aerial Rockets in the pod’s nose.


system incorporating an AN/APG-40 and an AN/APA-84 computer. Catching up with it at 30,000 feet northeast of L.A., they tucked into a loose formation behind it as it turned back to the southwest, flew over the city and lazily drifted back to the northwest toward Santa Paula. As soon as it passed over an unpopulated area, they figured, they’d fire a salvo or two of rockets at it and it would all be over.

The first several times they tried to fire, nothing happened. The Air Force la-ter found that a design flaw prevented the Scorpion from firing its rockets while it was in a turn! It seems like this might have been a good thing to verify before the interceptor went into operational ser-vice, but apparently its extensive flight test program had missed this little idio-syncrasy. Einstein and Hurliman had no choice but to line up for a wings-level at-tack and try again. This was a bit of a problem, because the drone was turning almost constantly at the time.


continued to chug along, blissfully un-aware of the attempts to bring it down.

Meanwhile, the 84 rockets from the two salvoes plunged to the ground seven miles north of Castaic near Bouquet Can-yon, igniting brushfires that burned 150 acres. The rockets were supposed to dis-arm themselves if they missed their tar-get, but clearly many did not.

Each Scorpion then loosed a second salvo of 32 rockets. The results—at least in the air—were no different. The Hellcat continued to fly along unscathed. On the ground, though, it was a different story. The rockets rained down near the town of Newhall, setting fires near a city park and in Placerita Canyon, where they ignited several oil sumps at the Indian Oil Com-pany and burned 100 acres of brush. The blazes raged out of control for a while. At one point they came within 100 yards of the nearby Bermite Powder Company explosives plant. Another fire near Sole-dad Canyon, west of Mt. Gleason, burned 350 acres of thick brush.

As the errant drone serenely wander-ed north toward Palmdale, the Scorpion crews figured they had one more chance. They both fired all 30 of their remaining rockets in a final salvo. In case you’re keeping score, that’s a total of 208 rock-ets fired from two top-of-the-line jet in-terceptors against an obsolete World War II piston-engined aircraft. The results of this salvo were the same as the others. Not one rocket hit the Hellcat.

Once again, though, the rockets had no problem hitting the ground, which they did with a vengeance in and around downtown Palmdale. Edna Carlson and her six-year-old son William were in her home when a piece of shrapnel shattered her front window, ricocheted off the ceil-ing, burst through a wall and ended up in a pantry cupboard. Another piece of shrapnel tore through J. R. Hingle’s gar-age and home, nearly hitting visitor Mrs.

Lilly Willingham as she sat on a couch. Seventeen-year-old Larry Kempton was driving west on Palmdale Boulevard, with his mother Bernice in the passenger seat, when a rocket exploded on the street in front of him. Shrapnel from the blast shredded his left front tire, broke his windshield and punched 17 jagged holes in his radiator, hood and firewall.

Amazingly, the rockets that fell like hail over Southern California on that Au-gust day in 1956 did not kill, maim or in-jure anyone. But it took 500 firefighters two days to put out the fires they had set, and Air Force Explosive Ordnance Dis-posal teams later recovered 13 duds in the Palmdale area.

And what of the plucky Hellcat? As it passed over Palmdale, it finally ran out of fuel. Its engined sputtered, coughed and then died. The bright red aircraft de-scended in a wide spiral, oblivious to the trail of destruction in its wake, until it fi-nally hit the ground on a patch of barren Mojave Desert eight miles east of Palm-dale Airport. Just before impact, perhaps thumbing its nose at the Air Force in a fi-nal gesture of defiance, it severed three Southern California Edison power lines along an unpaved road. It hit the ground in a cloud of dust—there was no fire.

As it might be displayed on a base-ball park scoreboard: unmanned obsolete Navy airplane 1, high-tech Air Force in-terceptors 0. Game over! The Los Ange-les Times ran the story under a screaming front-page headline: “208 Rockets Fired at Runaway Plane: Missiles Spray South-land in Effort to Halt Wild Drone.”

From our perspective over 50 years after “the Battle of Palmdale,” it is easy to see that the Air Force’s scheme of fir-ing salvoes of unguided rockets at attack-ing Soviet bomber formations was proba-bly not an effective defense option. To its credit, the Air Force also knew that at the time, and was working feverishly on oth-er ways to counter aerial attacks. In the same year that two modern F-89s repeat-edly failed to bring down one obsolete, unpiloted, unguided, unarmed, propeller-driven World-War-II-vintage aircraft, the Scorpion became the first aircraft in the Air Force inventory approved to carry air-to-air nuclear weapons…

A Scorpion firing its rockets was an awe-some sight. Flame and smoke vented from the pods enveloped both wingtips. Note how erratic the rockets are in flight. They were not accurate weapons by any means.

Hundreds of 2.75-inch-diameter, 48-inch-long Folding Fin Aerial Rockets such as this one caused mayhem in Southern California.

The meandering Hellcat soon passed over Fillmore and Frazier Park and head-ed toward the sparsely populated western end of Antelope Valley north of L.A. But it suddenly turned back to the southeast and headed for L.A. again. Einstein and Hurliman decided that they were running out of time. They had to attack now!

Einstein attacked first with a “ripple-fire” salvo of 42 rockets as the Hellcat crossed the mountains near Castaic. All of his rockets missed. Then Hurliman took aim and salvoed 42 of his rockets. They all passed beneath the drone, which



Aviation Bookshelf

W e’re again trying a new idea in this issue, with a couple of reviews of recent aviation-re-lated books. Terry Sunday, Plane Talk Editor, originally wrote these reviews to post on Amazon.com. Please let us know if you find this kind of information use-ful, and if you’d like to see more book re-views from time to time.

of each aircraft, covers their development and flight-test programs and then sum-marizes the operational histories of those that went into full-scale production. He includes hundreds of well-chosen black-and-white and color photographs (many of them rare images from his personal collection) and a few drawings of, for ex-ample, actual and proposed aircraft con-figurations, cockpit layouts, etc.

I recommend Convair Deltas highly for every aviation enthusiast. It covers a specialized topic, but an exceptionally in-teresting and important one. Mr. Yenne does a superb job of telling the tale of the groundbreaking aircraft that proved an aerodynamic concept perhaps most fam-iliarly embodied in the Space Shuttle Or-biter. Their aerodynamic and structural advantages mean that delta wings will be around for a long time, and this fine book tells the full story of their early formative years in development, flight test and op-erations. This is very good stuff.

Experimental & Prototype U.S. Air Force Jet Fighters

By Dennis R. Jenkins and Tony Landis

No one writes aviation history better than Dennis R. Jenkins and Tony Landis. Few authors match the scope of their research, their painstaking accuracy or their meti-culous attention to detail. Virtually none match their ability to unearth new infor-mation on interesting aircraft. Experi-mental & Prototype U.S. Air Force Jet Fighters is a prime example of them at their best. Very much in the tradition of their earlier works Valkyrie and Hyper-sonic, their latest book covers some of the most fascinating aircraft ever built.

The decade just after World War II saw a bumper crop of experimental air-craft, as the U.S. Air Force faced the So-viet Union in the Cold War while trying to tame its new jet engines. This was the time when the famed “Century Series” fighters—North American’s F-100, Mc-Donnell’s F-101, Convair’s F-102, Lock-heed’s F-104, Republic’s F-105 and Con-vair’s F-106—first flew, and when other advanced concepts, such as Republic’s XF-103 and North American’s XF-108, were on the drawing boards.

The first eight chapters (about 3/4 of the book) cover this period, separated in-to logical, bite-sized chunks by mission area, such as “The First Jets,” “All-Wea-ther Fighters,” “Point-Defense Intercep-tors” and “Penetration Fighters.” The last three chapters cover later aircraft, such as Lockheed’s YF-12 and F-117, General Dynamics’ F-111 and F-16, and the Boe-ing and Lockheed Martin prototypes that led to today’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Exquisitely printed on thick, glossy paper, Experimental & Prototype U.S. Air Force Jet Fighters is filled with crisp, sharp photographs and drawings (some in stunning full-color) that perfectly supple-ment the authoritative, comprehensive, informative text. Messrs. Jenkins and Landis have done a superb job of digging up rare photographs from government and private archives, and of unearthing formerly hidden details about these fasci-nating aircraft. Their efforts make this volume an exceptional addition to any aviation enthusiast’s bookshelf. As an added bonus, there’s an Appendix with historical summaries of the companies that built these aircraft, most of which ul-timately succumbed to the frenzy of take-overs and mergers that created the three huge firms that today dominate Ameri-ca’s aerospace industry (Boeing, Lock-heed Martin and Northrop Grumman). But true aviation “buffs” will never for-get storied names, now vanished, such as Bell, Chance Vought, Seversky and Vul-tee. In this great book, you’ll find out what happened to them.

Convair Deltas From SeaDart to Hustler

By Bill Yenne

Although delta-winged aircraft are main-ly just an interesting footnote in aviation history, the U.S. has over the years devel-oped a surprising number of such aircraft (more than any other nation). One Amer-ican company has built most of them—the Convair Division of the General Dy-namics Corporation.

Convair Deltas: From SeaDart to Hustler is an outstanding history of Con-vair’s delta-winged aircraft. Author Bill Yenne begins with a 10-page corporate history of Convair, and then tells the full design and development histories of the fascinating delta-winged aircraft that the company built over nearly 25 years. All of them are here: the XF-92A, the F-102 Delta Dagger, the XFY-1 Pogo VTOL fighter, the F2Y-1 SeaDart jet seaplane, the F-106 Delta Dart and the B-58 Hus-tler supersonic bomber. Mr. Yenne gives complete, detailed technical descriptions



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tember 1, 1948, the second prototype took off from Muroc Air Force Base in California and climbed out to the west over the Pacific. When he reached an al-titude of 40,000 feet, the pilot turned back east, switching the cameras on as he crossed the coast. Six hours and 55 min-utes later, he landed at Mitchell Field, in Garden City, New York, completing the

trip at an average speed of 361 miles per hour. That was not the most impressive part of the operation. One of the cameras shot 390 indi-vidual frames on a 325-foot-long roll of film, photographing a 490-mile-wide swath of the continental U.S from coast to coast. Nothing could have more dra-matically demonstrated the reconnaissance ca-pabilities of the Rain-bow. The record-shat-tering flight was writ-

ten up in the November 29, 1948, issue of Life magazine, and the actual filmstrip was exhibited at the 1948 Air Force As-sociation Convention in New York.5

But despite this crowd-pleasing ac-complishment, the XR-12 was doomed to languish in aviation obscurity. In fact, at the time of the triumphant Birds Eye mis-sion, the Air Force had already cancelled the program. As an early example of the bureaucratic myopia that has plagued the American defense and aerospace industry for decades, the Air Force decided that modified Boeing RB-29 and RB-50 Su-perfortress bombers could do the recon-naissance mission nearly as well as the XR-12. The end of World War II, and the fact that the Cold War had not yet ratch-eted up to full intensity, took some of the urgency out of the need for a new strate-gic reconnaissance aircraft. The crash of

Featured Aircraft (Continued on page 8)

off speed. When the right wing touched down, the main spar fractured and the en-gines and propellers were torn up, but there were no injuries. Republic repaired the damage and the aircraft flew again.

The program had a spectacular suc-cess with Operation Birds Eye. On Sep-


“Starting Number Three.” This exquisite image, probably paint-ed by an unsung illustrator in Republic’s Art Department, shows the XR-12s sleek shape, flush cockpit and streamlined nacelles to good advantage from a very dramatic viewpoint .

5 Exhaustive attempts to find the Life article and the film strip on the Internet to include in this newsletter failed to turn up either.


War Eagles Air Museum Doña Ana County Airport at Santa Teresa 8012 Airport Road Santa Teresa, New Mexico 88008 (575) 589-2000

the second XR-12 prototype was the final nail in the coffin. On November 7, 1948, pilot Lynn Hendrix was returning to Eg-lin Air Force Base, Florida, after a photo-graphic suitability test flight when the in-side left (number 2) engine exploded. Vi-olent buffeting threatened to send the ill-fated Rainbow out of control at any mo-ment, so Hendrix ordered the seven crew members to bail out. Five men success-fully parachuted into Choctawhatchee Bay a few miles south of the base, where they were picked up by Eglin’s search-and-rescue boats and helicopters, but two of the crew—SGT Vernon B. Palmer and MSGT Victor C. Riberdy—perished.

The flight test program continued at a slow pace for a while. But the axe fell for good in June 1952, when shortsighted Air Force bean-counters shipped the first prototype, with only 117 hours on it after repair of its landing damage, to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, where it end-ed its days ignominiously as a target for


for military models sent costs for the air-liner version skyrocketing. It had higher operating costs than other available air-liners as well, such as the Lockheed Con-stellation and Douglas DC-6. The two airlines that had expressed interest in the aircraft (Pan Am and American) backed out of the deal, and no versions of the Rainbow airliner were ever built.

gunnery practice. To-day, not a single trace exists of this elegant, high-performance air-craft that turned heads wherever it flew more than 60 years ago.

Sadly, the equally elegant and capable Rainbow airliner that Republic hoped to build fared no better. It would have had a lon-ger fuselage and would have been fitted with more powerful engines than the XR-12. The company laid out lavish appointments in the fully pressurized interior, with roomy seats for 46 pampered passengers, an all-electric galley and even a lounge. It would have cruised serenely at 435 miles per hour, topping the weather at 40,000 feet, carrying its passengers and crew of seven in style, comfort and safety. Unfor-tunately, the lack of an Air Force order

Seen here sparkling in the high-altitude sunlight, the Rainbow was the highest-performance piston-engine aircraft ever developed. In level flight, it could fly faster than the never-exceed speed of a P-47 Thunderbolt in a dive. Note the similarity of the vertical tail shape to that of the straight-wing Republic F-84G Thunderjet.

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Fourth Quarter (Oct - Dec) 2010 · Farmingdale, New York. Hughes offered the XF-112, a twin-engine, twin-boom design that, at least to a casual observer, resembled the Lightning3