Eric MC? Harrier design origin.

[Driller]

Just read this (after a ribbing from a French colleague):

"The 1957 design for the P.1127 was based on a French engine concept, adopted and improved upon by the British."

Is this true?

[telecat]

Cannot find any mention of the French in the History of Vectored thrust engines let alone the Harrier and the Pegasus Engine.

[aeropilot]

Driller said:

Just read this (after a ribbing from a French colleague):

"The 1957 design for the P.1127 was based on a French engine concept, adopted and improved upon by the British."

Is this true?

Is it bks.

[J-c]

Sir Sydney whats his name invented it on British planes this has sod all to do with the french saying that he might of stolen a few ideas from the frogs

[fadeaway]

while we wait for Eric to give us the real correct answer, wikipedia seems to back up your French colleague:

Wikipedia said:

In 1957, the Bristol Engine Company informed Sydney Camm of Hawker that they had a project to combine their Olympus and Orpheus jet engines to produce a directable fan jet, an idea brought to them via NATO's Mutual Weapons Development Project (MWDP) Team from the French engineer Michel Wilbault.

Doesn't say how developed this Frenchman's idea was though, so could just have been a conceptual thing. And anyway, the clever bit was making it work as a usable aircraft

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_Siddeley_P.112...

[jimmyjimjim]

fadeaway said:

while we wait for Eric to give us the real correct answer, wikipedia seems to back up your French colleague:

Wikipedia said:

In 1957, the Bristol Engine Company informed Sydney Camm of Hawker that they had a project to combine their Olympus and Orpheus jet engines to produce a directable fan jet, an idea brought to them via NATO's Mutual Weapons Development Project (MWDP) Team from the French engineer Michel Wilbault.

Doesn't say how developed this Frenchman's idea was though, so could just have been a conceptual thing. And anyway, the clever bit was making it work as a usable aircraft

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_Siddeley_P.112...

Sounds like it's the same way the DaVinci 'invented' the helicopter.

[aeropilot]

fadeaway said:

And anyway, the clever bit was making it work as a usable aircraft

The engineering genius of Sir Stanley Hooker saw to that.

(in fairness though it was the Frenchman's idea to have a single engine with rotating nozzles as a concept, but no more than that)

Edited by aeropilot on Friday 9th October 15:52

[Eric Mc]

Wibault (who was, indeed, French) drew some technical sketches showing the layout of an aircraft which became the basis of the Hawker P1127 (and later still the Harrier).

Apparently Camm saw these sketches and then phoned Hooker at Bristol Siddeley and asked him what he was doing with his vertical take off engine.

Hooker replied "What vertical take off engine?".

Camm replied, "The Pegasus, you fool!".

Bristol Siddeley had been developing the Pegasus as a large fan engine and had not given any thought to its use for vectored thrust. Camm got the ball rolling and within two years the first P1127 had flown (at Dunsfold).

Edited by Eric Mc on Friday 9th October 16:18

[J-c]

So it was British then

[RizzoTheRat]

Apparently there's an AV8 in the Smithsonian with a plaque all about how the Americans designed it To be fair though I believe the big wing design is American.

[Eric Mc]

To be fair, neither the RAF nor the Royal Navy were originally interested in a plane like the Harrier and it was only through pressure applied by the US Marines that US funding was allocated through a NATO programme. This resulted in semi-operational versions of the P1127 (known as the Kestrel) being tested in front line situations in the mid 1960s.
It was only when the RAF had seen the practical benefits of V/STOL with the Kestrels that they began to warm to the idea. The Royal Navy waited until the mid 1970s before they ordered their version of the 1st generation Harrier (the Sea Harrier).

The MkII Harrier is a sorry tale of British government ineptidude and lack of faith in their own engineering prowess.

Hawker Siddeley (later British Aerospace) could not convince either the City or the UK government to support them in their development of an advanced Harrier for the 1980s onwards. In the end, the only way the funds could be raised was for BAe to sell the design rights for the Harrier to McDonnell Douglas in St Louis. McDonnell Douglas therefore became the design leaders on the second generation Harrier with BAe acting as sub-contracted partners.

[Driller]

J-c said:

So it was British then

...based on a French design

[Eric Mc]

Driller said:

J-c said:

So it was British then

...based on a French design

Supported and funded by the US Department of Defense .

[Driller]

Eric Mc said:

Driller said:

J-c said:

So it was British then

...based on a French design

Supported and funded by the US Department of Defense .

[aeropilot]

Driller said:

J-c said:

So it was British then

...based on a French design

A Frenchman's conceptual theory......rather than a definitive design.....

[DrTre]

aeropilot said:

Driller said:

J-c said:

So it was British then

...based on a French design

A Frenchman's conceptual theory......rather than a definitive design.....

Sounds like their defensive tactics in 1940.

[J-c]

Mr google says the frogs had nothing to do with the P.1127

[aeropilot]

Eric Mc said:

Bristol Siddeley had been developing the Pegasus as a large fan engine and had not given any thought to its use for vectored thrust.(at Dunsfold).

Incorrect.

Pegasus 1 was the name given in 1959 to the development vectored thrust engine previously refered to by BS as the BE 53/2 which had begun two years earlier as the BE 53, by combining an Orpheus and 3 stages of Olympus LP compressors to the front of it.

[Mojocvh]

aeropilot said:

Driller said:

Just read this (after a ribbing from a French colleague):

"The 1957 design for the P.1127 was based on a French engine concept, adopted and improved upon by the British."

Is this true?

Is it bks.

Totally. They played catch up by the use of separate lift engines in some cobbled together mirage shaped effort.

Bit like JSF in fact. Except it isn't french and isn't a delta. Well not a classic delta.

But their version did indeed not in fact crash from the air (slightly) at the Paris sàlon (?) on demonstration.

Edited by Mojocvh on Friday 9th October 21:38

[Eric Mc]

Mojocvh said:

aeropilot said:

Driller said:

Just read this (after a ribbing from a French colleague):

"The 1957 design for the P.1127 was based on a French engine concept, adopted and improved upon by the British."

Is this true?

Is it bks.

Totally. They played catch up by the use of separate lift engines in some cobbled together mirage shaped effort.

Bit like JSF in fact. Except it isn't french and isn't a delta. Well not a classic delta.

But their version did indeed not in fact crash from the air (slightly) at the Paris sàlon (?) on demonstration.

Edited by Mojocvh on Friday 9th October 21:38

The VTOL Mirage did crash - killing the pilot - but not at an air show, as far as I can remember.
However, a Kestrel DID crash at one Paris Air Show - although the pilot survived.

Some history here -


1.2] MICHEL WIBAULT & THE BE.53

• Even before the first flight of the SC.1, the wheels were in motion that would eventually result in an operational VTOL aircraft, though by a long and very complicated path. In 1956, a French aircraft designer named Michel Wibault, well-known for his pre-WW II designs, proposed a VTOL aircraft named the "Gyroptere". He was interested in building a combat aircraft that would be able to operate independently of airfields, which were clearly vulnerable to immediate destruction by Soviet nuclear strikes on the event of a general European war. The Gyroptere was to be fitted with a British Bristol "BE.25 Orion" turboshaft engine, with 5,970 kW (8,000 SHP), fitted the rear fuselage to drive four blower units, arranged around the center of gravity with two blowers on each side of the aircraft. Each blower would be in a moveable snail-shaped casing that could be rotated to provide vertical or horizontal thrust.

Wibault tried to promote the Gyroptere to both the French and American air forces and got nowhere. Finally, he approached the Paris-based "Mutual Weapons Development Program (MWDP)", an American-funded NATO office that promoted technologies useful for European defense. The MWDP's chief, US Air Force Colonel John Driscoll, found the concept interesting, and passed it back to the NATO "Advisory Group For Aeronautical Research & Development (AGARD)" for comment.

AGARD's chairman was Dr. Theodore von Karman of the California Institute of Technology, one of the most prestigious figures in aerospace. Von Karman was very intrigued by the idea. Encouraged, Colonel Driscoll then passed the concept on to Bristol Aero Engines in the UK. Bristol's technical director, Sir Stanley Hooker, found Wibault's lash-up clumsy, but he liked the basic idea of using a single engine for both vertical lift and forward flight. Hooker assigned a small research team consisting of Gordon Lewis, Pierre Young, and Neville Quinn to investigate the idea.

The research team quickly concluded that Wibault's idea could be greatly improved by dropping the external blowers and instead using the airflow of the engine itself, directed through swivelling exhausts. They then gradually refined the idea:


Their first design concept, designated the "BE.48", was described to Hooker in a memo dated 2 August 1956. The BE.48 simply extended the Orion's shaft forward to drive a large compressor turbine at the front of the engine, something like that of a modern high-bypass turbofan engine, to drive airflow through a pair of elbow-joint swivelling exhausts immediately behind that. The memo suggested that the first two compressor stages of the Olympus BO1.21 could be used for the forward fan. The turboshaft's rear exhaust remained unchanged, with the airflow straight out the back.

This concept quickly evolved into the "BE.52", in which the Orion was replaced by a modified version of the smaller and simpler "Orpheus" turbojet engine, and the large compressor fan was more tightly integrated with the rest of the engine. The scheme provided just as much thrust, maybe even a little more, than the Orion-based concept. Versions with straight or swiveling exhausts fitted to the rear of the engine were considered.

The next concept, the "BE.53", was similar, but the large compressor fan was changed so that it rotated in the opposite direction from the main compressor spool, eliminating gyroscopic effects that would be a nuisance in a VTOL aircraft. The BE.53 was described in the initial patent for the new type of engine, dated 12 January 1957.
Hooker took the BE.53 concept to Paris to show it to Driscoll and von Karman, who were both enthusiastic. Driscoll left the MWDP soon after Hooker's visit, but his successor, USAF Colonel Willis "Bill" Chapman, was just as enthusiastic. Hooker also hired Michel Wibault as a consultant. Wibault, far from being offended at the way the British were reworking his design concept, was delighted at their ingenuity. He and Gordon Lewis became joint patent holders for the BE.53, though sadly Wibault died just a few weeks later and never saw his idea become reality.

• The Bristol work led to an engine, but not an aircraft. Then another lucky series of events took place. In early 1957, Hawker Aircraft's chief designer, Sir Sydney Camm, responsible for the Hawker Hurricane, Tempest, Hunter, and other famous aircraft, was attending the Paris Air Show. There, he happened to chat with the Hawker representative in France, Gerry Morel, a Frenchman who had been a member of the British Special Operations Executive during the war. Camm mentioned that he was unimpressed with most of the "lift-engine" VTOL schemes being put forward at the time, and Morel told Hooker about Bristol's tinkerings.

Camm was very worried about the future of Hawker, since the British government seemed almost indifferent to procuring new combat aircraft. Possibly, Camm reasoned, a VTOL combat aircraft might stimulate their interest. A few days later, Bristol's Hooker got a letter from Camm that read:

Dear Hooker:
What are you doing about vertical take-off engines?
Yours, Sydney

-- and a few days later Camm got back an envelope containing data on the BE.53. He passed it on to his engineering staff, and in due time got back a preliminary sketch of a VTOL aircraft. Some time later, in early March 1957, Camm then gave Hooker a call, starting out with: "When the devil are you coming to see me?"
Hooker replied: "About what?"

"About this lifting engine of yours, you bloody fool! I've got an aircraft for your BE.53!" The show was on.