The Least Stealthy 'Stealth' Planes Ever Built | The 'Fleet Shadowers' [Aircraft Overview #70]
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ต.ค. 2024
- Today we're taking a look at two aircraft: the Airspeed AS.39 and the General Aircraft GAL.38. These were known as 'Fleet Shadowers', aircraft designed to fly silently at very low speeds in order to shadow enemy surface fleets.
Sources:
Taylor.H.A (1970), Airspeed Aircraft Since 1931 - geni.us/GeZx22
Butler.P (2006), "The Night Shawdowers." Air-Britain Aeromilitaria Vol. 32, Issue 125, Spring 2006.
Want to join the community? Visit our Discord - / discord
Want to support the channel? I have a Patreon here - / rexshangar
***
Producing these videos is a hobby of mine - and apparently its now a full-time job too! I have a passion for history, and personally own a large collection of books, journals and other texts, and endeavor to do as much research as possible. However if there are any mistakes, please don't hesitate to reach out and correct anything :)
![The Soviet Bomber That Was Utterly Bonkers | Tupolev TB-3 [Historical Deep-Dive]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/b0g8HiAbNAE/mqdefault.jpg)
![A Revolutionary Carrier Fighter | Mitsubishi A5M "Claude" [Aircraft Overview #41]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/iDHEl-s2MNU/mqdefault.jpg)
![Innovative For Five Minutes, Obsolete Forever | Curtiss A-12 Shrike [Aircraft Overview #87]](/img/n.gif)
F.A.Q Section
Q: Do you take aircraft requests?
A: I have a list of aircraft I plan to cover, but feel free to add to it with suggestions:)
Q: Why do you use imperial measurements for some videos, and metric for others?
A: I do this based on country of manufacture. Imperial measurements for Britain and the U.S, metric for the rest of the world, but I include text in my videos that convert it for both.
Q: Will you include video footage in your videos, or just photos?
A: Video footage is very expensive to licence, if I can find footage in the public domain I will try to use it, but a lot of it is hoarded by licencing studies (British Pathe, Periscope films etc). In the future I may be able to afford clips :)
Q: Why do you sometimes feature images/screenshots from flight simulators?
A: Sometimes there are not a lot of photos available for certain aircraft, so I substitute this with digital images that are as accurate as possible.
Feel free to leave you questions below - I may not be able to answer all of them, but I will keep my eyes open :)
“Bugged for your convenience” I find that hilarious I love it
Breguet interwar planes....Dewoitine D 370 interwar monoplane fighter series. As they have a lot of weird/transitional stuff.
Also could you do a video on some of your favourite aircraft?
With your current emphasis on inter-war planes you could consider The Armstrong Whitworth Whitley, the Bristol Bombay or the Handley Page Harrow. The latter may appeal to your pechant for quirkiness as it was used to deploy aerial mines.
All the best and keep up the good work.
can you please cover the Romanian I.A.R. 80 and it's variants (I.A.R. 81) ?
I think the idea behind the stealth mechanism was to make it ugly enough that the shadowed crews would simply ignore it in hopes that it would go away rather than look at it
This fact may have been buried in the lengthy text of the specification.
Very true. Especially looking at it from the straight front is extremely unnerving. Imagine being in the shoes of a sailor who realizes he is fighting an enemy capable of creating such a terror
Or that they would laugh so hard while pointing at it over the railing that they would fall overboard.
it would be hard to shoot it down though, since those who saw it would either go blind from its ugliness (and thus cannot see to shoot) or are laughing so hard their aim is thrown off
So hideous that their brain forces itself to forget all about them. Genius!
Sikorsky must have seen these planes. The model S 58 helicopter looks a lot like these oddballs.
I was going to comment on the same thing. The similarity is remarkable.
@@oldesertguy9616 Yea replace the wings with rotor blades and it looks like an old Sikorsy/Westland beast.
I've had the very same thought
Same thought here!
He saw them and he liked them very much. When he saw the S58 he said "yes.. That's it.. That's it"
Another fascinating case of technology moving on faster than the aircraft could be designed and built - a carrier based, four engined reconnaissance plane, you certainly can't criticise their ambition!
Having a 4 engine plane designed for Carrier use surely could have been converted to a bomber? Throw some stronger noisier engines on that sucker and some hard points to mount bombs and instantly the best Submarine hunter of WW2.
@@Wallyworld30 The Fairey Swordfish was just as effective as an A/S aircraft, and that was already a proven design. The problem in the early war years was that escort carriers hadn't entered service, so there was no platform from which to operate sub-hunters. These things would have been too big to operate from anything less than a fleet carrier, and they were too valuable to use for chasing submarines.
Fascinating. I never heard of such aircraft. Perhaps the air arm was wise to test all options in 1937, but collaborative consultation might have saved time and money all around.
It might have, but it might haven't as well. Suspicions and allegations of budgetary misappropriations are not uncommon in such cases.
Having worked as a developer in various branches and have been deeply involved in manufacturing, I’ve learned that it is often more effective from the perspectives of costs, time, and resources to try out concepts in the practice without putting too much effort on generation of various abstract concepts and evaluations. And I’ve observed many cases where budgets were vastly wasted on consultations without usable statements at the end. Frequently, you could have placed a bet in good confidence right at the beginning of the project on that it would have been a better call to build several prototypes and evaluate them, than spend lots of time on talks and consultations. The prototypes and experiments would have generated more discussible and usable data, that you could have built on.
At the end, it is a statement not only about judgment capabilities of involved project leaders, but about some hidden motivations, or even useless homage payments as well.
@@vaterchenfrost7481 These aircraft were in the run in to the second world war. A world of Hurricanes and Spitfires, and of Messerschmitts 109s and 110s. Those behind these two really ought to have known better.
tbh, I like the utilitarian look of all of these “flying boxcar” designs.
Same here, always have. Probably goes back to the Sikorsky helicopter in Thomas the tank engine...
I do too they are really fascinating
@@AnimeSunglasses Thomas is very British…
Harold was a Westland WS-55 Whirlwind…
(The Westland had a gas turbine engine unlike the Sikorsky S-55)…
Calling it that I think tarnishes the name of the great C-119
@@chugachuga9242 Nah, I think it was a sterling solution to the design problem of putting a bunch of stuff in a big ol' box and making it fly. 🎖️I have nothing but veneration for the mighty C-119. 🙇🏼♂️
Seeing a 4 engine plane with wings that fold like a pair of Scissors is weird as hell. I'm surprised they got this thing to fly at all!
It’s amazing that so many designs over the years actually achieved flight and were (more or less) controllable.
To be able to fly at 34 knots is quite an achievement !
Not really.
Balloons and dirigibles can do it easily.
@@craigkdillon for a large fixed-wing aircraft it sure is!
Looks remarkably like an early Wessex.... which isn't surprising since the Admiralty basically wanted a helicopter
😃
🤣😂 yep, they cut the wings off and mounted one engine vertically to create the Wessex 🚁
They wanted a helicopter before helicopters were a thing
exactly…he wouldn’t dare insult that helicopter but would gladly insult the plane which is exactly the same design visually
The grandparents of the Short Seamew.
Neat weird aircraft. I have a soft spot for slow stuff, and 39mph is pretty awesome. I don't know what's wrong with me since I love thrashing fast cars and motorcycles like a madman, but for some reason my idea of the ideal aircraft would be one that just trundles along quietly at a walking pace eight feet off the ground.
Maybe only four, so I could tip my hat to the ladies, and wish them a good day.
A few thoughts, if you don't mind.
Floating above the FRIENDLY fleet seems reasonable, considering the preponderance of spotting tops on modern warships. If early ASV RaDARs had been light enough, would this have not presented a useful platform for mounting one even higher than the carrier's mast? Long endurance, low fuel requirements, low maintenance engines, able to hover for hours over a carrier group; it (GAL) might've fulfilled the AEW role before later adaptations arrived.
In other applications, perhaps the liaison role between ground units; fall of shot, transfer of personnel, general's/admiral's taxi. I know that "wait another year and we'll really have something" seems cool after the fact.
I tend to agree. Put the more powerful Cheetahs on it, accept a 100 mph speed, and fit it with radar. It could orbit the Fleet, and let them know if anything approached.
Well, why have one slow long duration plane, that would be useless during an enemy attack, when you can have multiple shorter duration fighters on rotation performing the same task with added benefit of being able to not only spot, but also engage an enemy attack?
But this was a planned alternative to radar, that wasn't ready yet, a contingency plan if you will. When radar was usable, this idea was scrapped.
Radar at the time wasn't available, so your idea would have been wonderful, but at the time, not possible.
If a light/powerful enough radar was usable at the time, then they wouldn't have requested such silly machines.
imagine having to do a carrier takeoff and landing every time you want to use radar
@@vitorgas1 One doesn’t have to imagine anything, except your lack of knowledge. The U.S. Navy flies Hawkeye aircraft for this very purpose. On ship radar has a very limited to the horizon range (or some extension for atmospheric effects at times). It is a massive advantage to launch a radar carrying aircraft that can increase your detection range many times over. They also do this with sonar carrying aircraft and helicopters. They also have access to satellite data and land based radar aircraft as well. Your amazement needs a bit of education.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Had Radar NOT lived up to its early promise... had some major flaw..impossible to fix, occured with that technology..then this spotter aircraft concept may have been important...
Considering their reliance on heli-craft in later years, I'm surprised they didn't consider auto-giro type solutions.
Maybe to get enough equipment, crew & endurance an auto-gyro was a bridge too far.
There were some shots at that. Some naval vessels carried autogyros that they'd drag behind them on a chain/rope. This gave them a very high observation point, and so long as the ship goes fast enough the autogyro doesn't need fuel.
@@pavarottiaardvark3431 Sure, on a rope. The Navy wanted an independent observing platform with good range.
@@pavarottiaardvark3431 Ah, yes, the Focke-Angelis 'gyro-kite' that was tried on some U-boats...
The Japanese did have one,if I recall correctly,albeit it was land based.
The fact that these aircraft were ever even built strains credulity almost to the breaking point. That they also flew (however poorly) utterly shatters said credulity!🤣
It's almost like something out of Star Trek; "It's life, Jim, but not as we know it."🤣
Thanks especially for the "bugged for your convenience" bit! That really had me chuckling!
It didn't even occur to me that these thing's top speed is less than a north Atlantic breeze until you mentioned weather. (They could probably take off backwards in a stiff wind. Yikes) Thanks for another fascinating vid. Very cool.
I love stuff like this, the experimental. "Here's the requirement, can it be done?" is the opposite side of "this is the best we can make, now what can it do?"
Early STOL designs are always interesting. It must have been easier with small size planes like the Fieseler Storch, but larger scale designs were clearly still hard to achieve. And these didn't even need to carry a significant weapons load.
One of my favorite aircraft is the Fieseler Fi 167. All STOVL tricks from the Storch applied to an aircraft three times as heavy. However the DB 601 engine was everything but quite.
I always look forward to your vids Rex. Keep up the good work!
There is something to be learned from the development of every aircraft, even if the lesson is: "Well, we don't ever have to do THAT again."
dont forget the them might be doing this also side (can it be done ? do we have to look out for something like this ?) yes you do but you wont have to look hard and you can use a airgun to bring down !
I'm surprised you didn't mention it, but one of the lead designers of the Airspeed airframe was the novelist Nevil "On The Beach" Shute, who had also helped design the R.101 airship.
re: "...who had also helped design the R.101 airship."
It was the R 100 he helped produce by calculation stresses on the stiffening wires for the ring sections.
Around 1960 I read his 1954 book "Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer". A great read.
While it was easy to appreciate the superior design of the R 100 around 1964 I elected to design & build a 10 foot model of the R 101 because I preferred it's overall contours to the R 100's. That model was built with a 1/16" X 1/16" balsawood strip frame, complex frame rings and all, matching the actual R 101's, with model aircraft tissue covering that was carefully fitted such that it required no shrinking. I never built a gasbag system to get it aloft. I built a lot of "giants" in my teen years, such a an 8 foot BV 238, a 7 foot Me 323 and I never got around to mounting the 6 .020 COX Tee Dee engines needed to fly them because solid state electronics caught my interest. ;)
@@DataWaveTaGo That's an impressive list of hobbies! Thanks for correcting me, I accept my chastisement humbly.
@@theprojectproject01 They weren't exactly hobbies. I was teaching myself airframe design in preparation for my engineering degree. I studied from my father's technical library at home (dad was RCAF from 1939 to 1971) , particularly the two volume set:
"Aircraft Design" G. H. Latimer Needham. You can see that book set in the following documentary:
BBC Documentary Films | Escape From Nazi Alcatraz Escape Plan Colditz Cock
Time mark 19:48 From the Colditz library "Aircraft Design" G. H. Latimer Needham is introduced.
th-cam.com/video/iSo2gq1uHkc/w-d-xo.html
Long story short, I moved on to astronautical engineering because it was simpler than aeronautical engineering, then after visiting the university's IBM 360 computer housed in a room 60 feet by 200 feet with a 20 foot ceiling I decided to move into the even simpler world of computer science and have been there ever since.
In my own home library I have the books I read going back to 8 years of age (I'm 74 now) and I can remember every important fact from all of them. Anyway, I cruise the Internet recoding any new nuggets of info & comment once in a while to make corrections or add any facts missed by the content providers.
@@DataWaveTaGo That's fantastic. I wish I'd had a more disciplined mind (and better maths teachers) in my youth, as I didn't figure out I was supposed to be a mechanical engineer until I was well into my 40s. Still, I enjoy the projects I do have going, such as my experiments into improving Willard Custer's 'Channel Wing'.
Rex`s Hanger, that mysterious little shed at the bottom of your new garden. Priceless!
They remind me of an airplane ride at a theme park. Those tiny engines, odd proportions, and big windows.
Saw this fleet shadower in an old Jane's edition. Never knew anything more about it. Happy you featured its history.
@1:20 great piccy of a Fairey Seafox. Don't think I've seen that one before.
Thumbs up for including Black Adder!
Great episode! Hahah loved the Black Adder-like segment where the Air Ministry was being "bugged" 😂😂😂.
Such a detailed, stringent specification also does a good job to underscore how seriously the RN were taking night fleet manoeuvres and combat in the 1930s. Radar just became available sooner than the aircraft could.
That and the fact that their Carrier strike crews were all night trained. Indeed the Swordfish was designed specifically for night operations, it was never meant to be used in daylight. The Royal Navy FAA strike aircrews were the only Naval Aviators to routinely operate entirely at night for most of the war. And this is not simply a case of oh, you may have to land at night, but a case of take off, find the target, strike the target, return to carrier, land on carrier, all at night....
When you look at it that way you begin to understand many of the design decisions they made for the Swordfish....
The Taranto raid was made at night so what you say makes a lot of sense.@@alganhar1
Educational video - I had never heard of either of these monstrosities. Loved you "summary" of the design meeting!
Love the vids mate, glad you’re uploading frequently :))
I'll note this concept of a silent spotter aircraft resurfaced in the Vietnam war where the Americans produced a series of aircraft based on glider airframes for artillery spotting and low-level recon.
Check out the Lockheed YO-3 "Quiet Star" for details, but I particularly like how they were able to tune the propellers to make all their noise in the subsonic range at low rpms.
Hey, Hey. Pretty good aircraft stuff here. Subscribed. Everybody covers the "Movie Stars", the P--47, the P-51, the F4U, the P-38 and the rest but there have been some fine machines in aviation history. Good-looking channel here.
@Rex’s Hanger, thanks, enjoyed that.
The fact they were powered by something called a Pogjoy or...however you spell it, stirs something within me.
Thank you Mr Rex great job Sir
Interestingly, The US Army looked into this kind of concept in Vietnam, but basically settled on a powered glider, Known as the YO-3 Quiet Star
It was supposed to sound like a flock of birds flying, I don't know if it did. Didn't they use it for psyops with the ghost noises to frighten Charlie.?
@@flukedogwalker3016 I just remembered an old air and space magazine article about it. In the article, it described using what would generally be considered an underpowered engine, turning a propeller so slowly that it would be almost completely silent to viet cong troops, while staying low and slow enough to avoid radar.
I read an article where they said it was used at night and that it may of had electronic sniffers used to find urea which would indicate that the VC either used elephants for logistics or large encampments but there wasn't much unclassified information available. Maybe Rex could find something.
@@flukedogwalker3016 Given what we all know about the CIA and their various spy ops, I wouldn't put anything like that past them.
Excellent presentation
Very interesting. Thank you!
I’m liking this new sassy Rex
Peculiar and rare as we like it! Thanks
One almost feels that one could sit down for tea, biscuits and a nice chat in that front conservatory area, what?
Fascinating!
I so love your channel and the (British) wit in which you narrate. Keep it up! Yours IS an exceptional channel!
You would do a good job with the Douglas XB-19. Thanks for all your hard work.
love learning about all these obscure and unsuccessful aircraft, great content!
Plot originality: Superb
Character development: Commendable
Deadpan acting: Failed
Wonderful video..
Keep going!!
"Please build an aircraft that has a long list of contrary requirements that would be unsafe at any speed, we will _definitely_ not drop the entire project once you've wasted time and money building it."
(Laughs in Radar)
Thank you!
Wild, ty for sharing
Another great video. I enjoy your videos when you show pictures in a slideshow format. Your knowledge and dry humor provide the entertainment. Please no more war thunder crap, and that vultee xp-54 model had so many things wrong with it... your narration was the only thing that got me through. Thank you for these videos!!!
So many of these "failures" before and during WW2 must be attributed to the ridiculous requirements that were being demanded.
I'm thinking a committee of public servants drinking tea and munching on digestive biscuits, and getting some solid input from the tea lady came up with the specs, while a few actual aviators watched and were ignored, alternatively laughing and crying.
Airspeed and GA both need a medal for actually trying to match the specs, and getting them into the air (for a while at least)
No. The Navy regarded itself as The Senior Service and the Fleet Air Arm as Johnny How Dare They Come Lately. The Navy still used Nelson's day tactics and anything slightly 'modern' as Frightfully Un-British. No wonder they dreamed up these rediculous specifications, they were used to playing with kites.
Loving these obscure aircraft and looking forward to the next video! With the low noise and stol capability these could have come in handy for liaison with the French resistance.
I always wondered prompted the design of this quirky plane. Now I know.
Excellent as ever. Well done that man. 😁👍😁
What fascinatingly strange aircraft. Always like when the weirder stuff gets featured here!
Love all your videos, thanks for uploading. Love all those rare aircrafts, that i never heard before. Keep it up. 😊✈✈✈
Using the specification stated here, the Goodyear blimp might qualify.
Yes, the U.S. Navy did just that. Dirigibles and Blimps were a big part of WWII surveillance.
Very interesting! You dig up the weirdest of plane designs. :)
Always a pleasure watching your videos.
I was hoping you would have these on your channel! Kudos!
Thanks, as ever. I knew nothing of these planes
Thank you.
They're flawlessly stealthy, just in a reverse-psychology sense. Jerry is going to be looking for _actual_ stealth aircraft and will never notice them 😅
and if they see them, they would want to look elsewhere
TBH, from the thumbnail, I was expecting the aircraft to be a dummy built to populate dummy airfields and mislead the enemy. I didn't expect them to be real aircraft!
Even if these planes had been used, it overlooks the near impossibility of finding a fleet in the dark of night by visual means only.
The phosphorescence from the wakes of the ships is what they would look for.
I just don't understand why it was either/or...
Why not send these guys out to put eyes on a suspected contact? Surely a physical siting as to the enemy's disposition was worth a flight...
@@mikeynth7919 I think visible phosphorescnce is more a phenomenon of tropical seas rather than the North Sea and North Atlantic. I may be wrong and I will take no offence if you correct me.
hello great presentation thanks so much for sharing this with us. saludos
I was hoping you’d do these, first came across them in Aeroplane Monthly in 1990
Seems to me an autogyro might have been a better starting point for this role.
"Probaby" (the brand new word introduced over the retro voiceover) sounds like a reasonable name for these weird planes...😁
Cool!
A new video from The Hanger
Would just like to say in the early part of the video that is one good looking sleek battleship that was shown. 👍🏻
It does beg the question for these and many other aircraft, that are referred to as terrible aircraft. That it isn't the aircaft that are bad but the crazy specification that are put out. If that aircraft does what was specified, in a sense it was successful. Its not the designers fault if the air ministry coming out with such ideas where high on there stupid pills 🙄
Well put. Many of the ‘worst planes ever’ videos, of which there are many on youtube, feature successful well designed airframes built to ill conceived specifications. The Boulton and Paul Defiant, for example. The Fairy Battle is another - hopelessly vulnerable as a day bomber, but a delight to fly and successful as a target tug and training aircraft. Nowt wrong with the airframe… Something like the Blackburn Botha was a bad aircraft. The specification was fine and led to some successful aircraft, but the Botha never achieved the required performance to meet the spec…
The engineers did a great job of meeting the spec it's just the spec itself was ridiculous and created an unwieldy machine.
great video
I remember my first radar absorbing paint job
Looks like a Fifties Bedford lorry with wings
Thanks
The weird thing is that, if the ministry hadn't been so stringent about requirements, I can kinda see how these could've been a good idea. Not as implemented of course, but the concept of something able to slow down enough to shadow enemy fleets for a long period of time is pretty solid.
i realy like your interesting videos and the way you narrate... very often, like today, you present planes i never heard of. and in general i agree with your opinions, but in this case i must say: even so the performance was horrific, the look of those two unlucky birds i find quiet pleasing... looking forward to what you dig out next
Thank you for picking up my wish.
They both remind me of the Short Skyvan.
Pilots and the new recruit.
Pilot: Alright Jenkins, as the newest squadron member, you'll have some chores for you to do for a while.
Jenkins: Yes sir.
Pilot: Very good. Now see that AS-39 over there, Jenkins? That plane uses a lot of propwash to fly slow enough to spy on the enemy fleet. We have to replenish that, so I want you to take this jerry can over to supply…
😂🤣
I don’t where u find this stuff ? Super !
Stealthy enough for the enemy to never detect any of them. Complete success!
the profile of this plane made me think of the Sikorsky H-34 helicopter
It's like putting engines on a glider to turn it into a really big Po-2.
Well, that's literally what happened
There is something rather French or Polish about the forward fuselage. So pleased to see this presentation, especially with the two designs. I was only aware of the Airspeed one from an old 'Aeroplane' article.
It sounds to me as though the requirement on loitering *speed* should have been dropped, with only the loitering *time* retained. This would likely have removed the requirement for exotic aerodynamic features, with the aircraft simply flying a bit faster, in a "cleaner" and more efficient configuration, and thus being less subject to the weather. If the engines were really as quiet as advertised, circling slowly around the fleet wouldn't have been any more noticeable than zig-zagging a short distance behind or abeam it.
Always very interesting Rex, thanks for posting. By the way, did I note a smidgen of sarcasm? 😜
A design well ahead of it’s time. Looks just like a Wessex, just needs a rotor on top & scrap the wings.
The plane's fuselage design almost predicted The H-34 Chocktaw lol..
The profile reminds of those wessex helicopters, and the multi small engines of some electric plane proposals
Finally, an airplane that makes a Stuka look good.
"We need you to build a new recon plane"
"Do you want it to be sleek and fly really fast?"
"Ummm...not quite"
"Some room in the Air Ministry...probably (Bugged for your convenience)" Another fine joke by the "Ministry of Dry Humor"
Liked and shared.
I like 'em!
At does indeed look like a winged version of the "Screaming Mimi" from the short-lasting U.S. TV show "Riptide".
Interesting to see a photo of a Fairey Seafox near the beginning. The observer's cockpit was enclosed but the pilot's cockpit was open for some reason.
This got uploaded on my birthday lol
I bet tsla could make badass planes and helicopters
While I know the requirements were impossible, I *can* understand why the Admiralty wanted such an aircraft.
What most do not appreciate these days is that British Carrier Strike Doctrine at the time was all based around taking off, finding the enemy, attacking, returning to the carrier and landing, AT NIGHT. It is why the Swordfish was the way it was, it was designed to operate at night. So I can fully understand why they may want an aircraft capable of (more or less) silently observing the enemy fleet at night, and guiding the Swordfish strikes in.