Kingfish and the Blackbird

There has been interest here in Convair's Kingfish design,
which lost to Lockheed's A-12 Blackbird in the competition
to build the successor to the U-2. I was able to find a lot
of information about both FISH and Kingfish and put it in
my book which AIAA is publishing at the end of this month:

http://www.aiaa.org/content.cfm?pageid=360&id=1789

The FISH and Kingfish sections include the two major FISH
designs and photos of desk models of the five rejected
Kingfish designs. There are also drawings of Lockheed's
versions of FISH, the Navy's inflatable aircraft, and all
but two of Lockheed's Archangel series.

The main theme is the attempt to produce a design which
would be invisible to Soviet radars. It begins with Project
RAINBOW (the attempt to reduce the RCS of the U-2) and
continues through the end of GUSTO (the design of the follow-
on aircraft).

AIAA is planning on putting my collection of declassified
documents on line, including the index.

Regards,

Paul

Paul A. Suhler wrote:
There has been interest here in Convair's Kingfish design,
which lost to Lockheed's A-12 Blackbird in the competition
to build the successor to the U-2. I was able to find a lot
of information about both FISH and Kingfish and put it in
my book which AIAA is publishing at the end of this month:

http://www.aiaa.org/content.cfm?pageid=360&id=1789

The FISH and Kingfish sections include the two major FISH
designs and photos of desk models of the five rejected
Kingfish designs. There are also drawings of Lockheed's
versions of FISH, the Navy's inflatable aircraft, and all
but two of Lockheed's Archangel series.

Is this Kingfish pole model full size?:
http://www.testpilot.ru/usa/convair/...h/kingfish.htm
It always looked smaller than I would think it would be.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:
Is this Kingfish pole model full size?:
http://www.testpilot.ru/usa/convair/...h/kingfish.htm
It always looked smaller than I would think it would be.

Pat

Hi, Pat.

The documents say it's 70% size, and my attempts to measure
the photos agree. Convair reworked the full-scale FISH model
to get this one, rather than building a new one from scratch.

Paul

On Sep 22, 12:14 am, (Paul A. Suhler) wrote:
There has been interest here in Convair's Kingfish design,
which lost to Lockheed's A-12 Blackbird in the competition
to build the successor to the U-2. I was able to find a lot
of information about both FISH and Kingfish and put it in
my book which AIAA is publishing at the end of this month:

http://www.aiaa.org/content.cfm?pageid=360&id=1789

I've already preordered on Amazon.com.


The FISH and Kingfish sections include the two major FISH
designs ...

These two?
http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=3512

and photos of desk models of the five rejected
Kingfish designs. There are also drawings of Lockheed's
versions of FISH, the Navy's inflatable aircraft, and all
but two of Lockheed's Archangel series.

3-view drawings, hopefully?



AIAA is planning on putting my collection of declassified
documents on line, including the index.

Definitely keep us updated on *that.*

wrote:
and photos of desk models of the five rejected
Kingfish designs. There are also drawings of Lockheed's
versions of FISH, the Navy's inflatable aircraft, and all
but two of Lockheed's Archangel series.

3-view drawings, hopefully?

I've got to see that Navy one.

Pat

On Sep 22, 6:15 pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
wrote:
and photos of desk models of the five rejected
Kingfish designs. There are also drawings of Lockheed's
versions of FISH, the Navy's inflatable aircraft, and all
but two of Lockheed's Archangel series.

3-view drawings, hopefully?

I've got to see that Navy one.

Isometrics were published in another recent Blackbird book: "From
Archangel to Senior Crown: Design and Development of the Blackbird,"
by Peter Merlin.

wrote:
On Sep 22, 6:15 pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
wrote:
and photos of desk models of the five rejected
Kingfish designs. There are also drawings of Lockheed's
versions of FISH, the Navy's inflatable aircraft, and all
but two of Lockheed's Archangel series.
3-view drawings, hopefully?
I've got to see that Navy one.

Isometrics were published in another recent Blackbird book: "From
Archangel to Senior Crown: Design and Development of the Blackbird,"
by Peter Merlin.

It was supposed to be built by Goodyear and be inflatable...was it
inflated with helium or hydrogen by any chance?
For that matter, was the Goodyear inflatable plane that they made for
the CIA capable of being tanked up with helium also, as well as the
normal compressed air method?
You probably never would get to the point where that aircraft and its
pilot's weight could get airborne via the lifting force of the helium
inside of it, but at least the helium would help to some extent.
A lifting body design would be a whole other ball of wax, as the Aeron
26 showed: http://www.aereon.com/pages/aereon26.html
Although Aeron 26 used an internal framework, the shape is great for
using a entirely inflatable form made out of multiple heat-welded
plastic sheets if you don't want to go any too fast.
I never did buy the story that it was going to take a mile-wide Skyhook
balloon to carry the big rubber ramjet aloft, like Kelly Johnson claimed.
Also, was the Navy one even going to be manned?

Pat

wrote:
On Sep 22, 6:15 pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
wrote:
and photos of desk models of the five rejected
Kingfish designs. There are also drawings of Lockheed's
versions of FISH, the Navy's inflatable aircraft, and all
but two of Lockheed's Archangel series.

3-view drawings, hopefully?

I've got to see that Navy one.

Isometrics were published in another recent Blackbird book: "From
Archangel to Senior Crown: Design and Development of the Blackbird,"
by Peter Merlin.

Those were drawn by John Whittenbury, who worked at the Skunk
Works right out of college, in the 1990s. They came from a
presentation that he gave on his last day at work before he
moved to Northrop Grumman.

Paul

wrote:
On Sep 22, 12:14 am, (Paul A. Suhler) wrote:
[...]

The FISH and Kingfish sections include the two major FISH
designs ...

These two?
http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=3512

Yep, those are the two designs; the dates are correct. Where did
you find the November 1958 design, the Jay Miller Collection?

and photos of desk models of the five rejected
Kingfish designs. There are also drawings of Lockheed's
versions of FISH, the Navy's inflatable aircraft, and all
but two of Lockheed's Archangel series.

3-view drawings, hopefully?

Yes, three-views. Some are scans of blueprints that were folded
up for decades and have marks on them, but they're legible.

AIAA is planning on putting my collection of declassified
documents on line, including the index.

Definitely keep us updated on *that.*

It wasn't up today, and AIAA found that their web site has
problems if the 10-digit ISBN has a letter in it, as mine
does. They said it'll be working before the book is released,
which should be the end of the month.

Cheers,

Paul

Pat Flannery wrote:
It was supposed to be built by Goodyear and be inflatable...was it
inflated with helium or hydrogen by any chance?
For that matter, was the Goodyear inflatable plane that they made for
the CIA capable of being tanked up with helium also, as well as the
normal compressed air method?
You probably never would get to the point where that aircraft and its
pilot's weight could get airborne via the lifting force of the helium
inside of it, but at least the helium would help to some extent.
[...]
I never did buy the story that it was going to take a mile-wide Skyhook
balloon to carry the big rubber ramjet aloft, like Kelly Johnson claimed.
Also, was the Navy one even going to be manned?


I don't recall the gas for inflation, but the construction
was interesting. It turned out to be significantly heavier
than a metal version of the same design.

Are you referring to the Inflatoplane as the one Goodyear built
for the CIA?

Lockheed's design for the Navy plane would have used a
rather large towplane to get the ramjet aircraft up to
altitude. Presumably the pilot would have lit the ramjet
in a dive, because there's no way it could have been towed
to a supersonic speed.

It was indeed manned. The cockpit was in the ramjet centerbody;
the ramjet's diameter was fifteen feet.

Paul