Debris found in Southern CA Desert - Anyone know what it might be?

dean wrote:

No one mounts wings in the middle of the fuselage. of course, there's
a reason for this. by having them either above or below the fuselage,
the wings can be a single structure. if it's midmounted, then you
have to beef up the fuselage to support the wings. so if it wasn't a
wing, it could have been a horizontal stabilizer.


TsAGI told MiG that their wind tunnel research showed the mid-mounted
wing was the best aerodynamically, so MiG was pretty much forced to
mount them that way from the MiG 15 to MiG 21, even though that meant
heavy rings around the motor to support them.

Pat

Derek Lyons wrote:

dean wrote:


No one mounts wings in the middle of the fuselage.



It's not common, but there are many aircraft with wings in the middle
of the fuselage.


They used to be fairly common in the 1950's.

Pat


D.

On Thu, 27 May 2004 21:04:56 -0500, OM
om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org
wrote:

On Thu, 27 May 2004 14:41:47 -0600, Scott Ferrin wrote:

Why the hell did you attatch this non sequitur to MY post?

...Why not? It's not irritating the stick up your ass, I hope?

No, seriously. It's not irritating it, is it? I am concerned,
honestly.

OM


F.O.A.D.

Peter Stickney wrote:

It was a Way Cool Machine - bigger than an F-4, but able to outrun and
out-stay it on the same power. It had a supersonic ejection system
that worked pretty well. (Of the "Roll the Crewman Into a Knot, and
Hope the Seat Doesn't Hurt Him Too Bad" variety). It's only problem
was, to quote a family friend who didn't quite dodge all the SA-2s
fired at him one morning in 1967, that it "Jinked Mejestically."


There's speculation that its design was the inspiration for the Soviet
Union's MiG-25 "Foxbat"; and the two aircraft do resemble each other in
general layout and intake design... now that I found that three-engined
Vigilante interceptor variant design study, the idea seems more plausible.


Pat

In article ,
dean writes:
No one mounts wings in the
middle of the fuselage.

Except Republic (F-84 Plank Wings, F-84 Swept Wings, the XF-103 (Not
flown) and the F-105), and Lockheed (F-104), and Cpnvair (F-102,
F-106, adn B-58), and Grumman (F9F, F11F), and McDonnell (F3H), and
DeHavilland (Vampire, Venom, Sea Vixen), and Hawker (Hunter) and
Dassault (Ouragan, Mystere II, Mystere IV), and Mikoyan-Guerivith
(MiG-15, MiG-17, MiG-19, MiG-21), or Sukhoi (Su-7, Su-9, Su-11),
or...

of course, there's a reason for this. by having
them either above or below the fuselage, the wings can be a single
structure. if it's midmounted, then you have to beef up the fuselage to
support the wings. so if it wasn't a wing, it could have been a
horizontal stabilizer. so i checked the A-7 stab. no actuator...
after finding no fighters with actuators on the horzontal stabilizers
did i think of the rudder.

I doesn't work that way. The only jet I know of where teh wing is a
single structure is the Folland Gnat (Little teeny fighter, with a
wing span smaller than most other fighter's stabilator spans) You
see, the problem comes when you've got to haul 'em around, or
disassemble them for maintenance, or other such stuff (such as
building them in the first place). Consider, if you will, the need to
haul, say, an F-15 around on a flatbed trailer, or stuff a broken
airplane into a C-5 to get hauled back to the Depot to get fixed. No
matter how many Wide Load Permits you get, you can't haul 40 sonthing
feet of wingspan down the highway. So, the usual practice is to have
the the wing spars attack to the fuselage carry-through structure at
the root.

that "bulbous thing" was also a big clue. but i never did find an exact
match, just some A-7s and F-8s that had something close. if it was an
antenna, then it could change every time they put a new antenna in and
finding an exact match would be difficult.

It's definitely a late model F-8, either an H or J, fro the fairing
shape. (Note that somebody's removed the access panel on the side of
the fairing) The F-8 ESM/ECM fit didn't change very much. The RWR
(Radar Warning Receiver) ALQ-51/ALQ-100 DECM (Deception Jammers) fit
didn't and couldn't change very much over time. (For one thing, there
wasn't room - the RWR/DECM kit was oficially named "Shoehorn" becasue
there wasn't enough spare space in teh airframe for a normal
installation. In fact, they sacrificed some of the cannon ammo to
squeeze it in. (Not a big loss, BTW - the F-8's gun installation (4 Mk
12 20mm) was notoriously unreliable. )


Thankfully Pat was better at finding more examples to look at. Wouldn't
it be cool if 149212 was the actual wreckage?

It could be. There are a couple of places you can look for clues:
First, theere should be a large pair of letters on the fin:
"N Something" or "A Something". That will identify which Air Group
the airplane belonged to. The Bureau Number (The airplane's Serial
Number, basically) will, on an F-8, be in 12" numerals at teh root
(felege attachment side) of the fin. If you end up going back out,
those are the places to look. It's possible that teh Sun has washed
out the paint on the exposed side.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

Pat Flannery wrote:
Again, don't give me too much credit for this; It was Dean Petters who
basically narrowed it down to one of two different aircraft types, and I
just confirmed his identification...and it's hard to tell the F8 and A7
vertical fins apart- the key to it being an F8 was the fact that the
area above the rear warning radar bulge didn't sweep forward on the
trailing edge as it did on the A7;

I did notice the trailing edge, but with the limited angle of the photo,
I wasn't ready to discount the A-7 on that alone. Especially when i saw
some differences on other areas, namely the slight extension at the rear
along the body and the antenna bulb. some f-8's had it, some didn't.
the same can be said for the A-7s. i thought that there could have been
a-7s without that forward swept trailing edge. for that reason, i
didn't want to rule out a-7s.

image search for photos of the vertical fin paneling layout on both
types of aircraft... and after going over about a thousand or so images
of the two aircraft, I was able to pin it down as a F8.

Pat, you did a lot more legwork than i did in that respect. about the
only thing i pointed out (with a bit of evidence) was that this wasn't a
wing. I also gave a hint at the a/c, but others have done more to track
down those specifics than i have.


Dean

"Peter Stickney" wrote in message
news
No
matter how many Wide Load Permits you get, you can't haul 40 sonthing
feet of wingspan down the highway.

Except from Palmdale to Edwards and back

In article ,
Peter Stickney wrote:
I doesn't work that way. The only jet I know of where teh wing is a
single structure is the Folland Gnat...

Also done on the A-4 Skyhawk, where not only the structure but even the
skins are continuous tip-to-tip.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

So, just to recap, assuming I'm reading the numbers "212" correctly
from this pic that my friend Dave took:

http://home.earthlink.net/~jpa_2/pages/item2b.htm

-- as being the last 3 digits of the Bureau Number, and that
(according to my research) the only match from lists of possible
Bureau Number's is "149212"
Then it seems very likely that the following pic is the actual
aircraft.

http://members.aol.com/scottyv2/149212.jpg

I can't explain why only those three numerals are still visible but
presumably there is a logical reason as to why they stayed visible
while the first three faded.

What really got my attention was the small round item in the last "2"
which matches the wreckage pic very closely. Question is, why is
there a fuel type lable visible on the tail wreckage ("NATO CODE
NO.__", Max pressure, etc) that is not visible on any of the F-8 pics?

Dave seemed to think there was a fitting of some type in the circle,
but I'm not seeing this detail on any of the other F-8 pics. Is it
possible there was fueling point on the tail? It doesn't seem big
enough.

It looks like 149212 was photographed while on airshow display at
Edwards AFB, judging by the crowd under the nose.
The air group marked on the plane VF-124 was at NAS Miramar (less than
50 miles from the crash site) and apparently had the F-8's until 1972,
after which the remaining units were passed on to VF-63. Not sure
that this particular F-8 made it that far, however. Can't find much
info on VF-63 as far as F-8's are concerned.

Despite hours of internet searching there seems to be no records on
the status of 149212 except that it was changed from a F-8E to an F-8J
about 1968-69.

It does appear in the photo of 149212 that the upper tail fin "bump"
doesn't quite match the wreackage photo. As a few of you have
mentioned, there was some variation of radar antenna, etc. Dave said
the area was torn up as though someone had forcibly removed the
components after the crash.

Another question is the other item found about 1/2 mile away
("item1"):

http://home.earthlink.net/~jpa_2/index.htm

Is this possibly the afterburner? The cylinders seem to match in
terms of orientation and angular spacing. Presumably if it is from
the same event, the aircraft must have come apart in the air.

I might do some research at the San Diego Aerospace Museum this week.
Apparently they have extensive archives available.

Thanks again everyone for all your help and comments...

-Paul Axford




On Sun, 30 May 2004 22:41:29 -0400, (Peter
Stickney) wrote:



Thankfully Pat was better at finding more examples to look at. Wouldn't
it be cool if 149212 was the actual wreckage?

It could be. There are a couple of places you can look for clues:
First, theere should be a large pair of letters on the fin:
"N Something" or "A Something". That will identify which Air Group
the airplane belonged to. The Bureau Number (The airplane's Serial
Number, basically) will, on an F-8, be in 12" numerals at teh root
(felege attachment side) of the fin. If you end up going back out,
those are the places to look. It's possible that teh Sun has washed
out the paint on the exposed side.

On Mon, 31 May 2004 08:00:01 GMT, Paul wrote:

Dave seemed to think there was a fitting of some type in the circle,
but I'm not seeing this detail on any of the other F-8 pics.

On further inspection of the photos it looks like some F-8's do have a
detail there but not in a consistent place.

-Paul