The Miles M.52 was designed in secrecy during WW2 between 19, with Frank Whittle‘s Power Jets being contracted to produce its turbojet engine. The British were also working on supersonic airplanes. The air-dropped Bell X-1, piloted by Chuck Yeager, first reached supersonic speeds in level flight in October 1947. The first airplane to fly supersonically in straight and level flight was the U.S.’s Bell X-1, a rocket-powered research airplane, which performed several test flights near the sound speed in the late 1940s. This airplane was followed by the Messerschmitt Me 262, which had a swept wing and was the world’s first operational turbojet-powered fighter airplane. It was the first piloted airplane of any type to approach Mach 0.8 but not exceed the speed of sound in level flight. After that, Lippisch designed the famous rocket-powered Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet, which had a swept, almost delta wing and was powered by a rocket engine. The aerodynamic effects of using sweep at high speeds were first investigated in Germany as early as 1935 by Albert Betz and Adolph Busemann. Additionally, advancements in aerodynamic research and understanding of supersonic flight led to the development of new aircraft designs, such as swept-wing configurations, ultimately allowing aircraft to operate at higher airspeeds before encountering Mach tuck and other adverse effects of compressibility. These devices were designed to disrupt the airflow over the wings and tail surfaces, reducing the nose-down pitching tendency during high-speed dives. One unique solution was developing and implementing dive recovery flaps or brakes. To address these issues, aircraft designers and engineers introduced various solutions.
This phenomenon was known as the “dive recovery problem” or “ Mach tuck,” which sometimes made a recovery from the dive impossible. However, the increased speeds presented a new problem: a strong nose-down pitching moment, where the aircraft’s nose would pitch downward uncontrollably. Jakob Ackeret published a pioneering paper on the lift and drag of a supersonic airfoil in 1925 titled “Luftkräfte auf Flügel, die mit größerer als Schallgeschwindigkeit bewegt werden” in the journal Zeitschrift für Flugtechnik und Motorluftschiffahrt.ĭuring WW2, aircraft design and performance were driven by the need for faster airplanes like the P-51 Mustang, Spitfire, and others, which could approach the speed of sound in a dive. However, by 1930, there was much interest in supersonic flight, and the aerodynamics associated with supersonic flows were being studied extensively in wind tunnels, with parallel theoretical studies underway.
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In the early 1920s, a series of delta wing aircraft concepts were proposed by Alexander Martin Lippisch in Germany, although not for supersonic airplanes but instead for unconventional “tailless” airplanes. In addition, the rise and fall of supersonic transport (SST) airliners such as the Concorde and Tu-144 raise awareness that even today, technological feasibility does not necessarily equate to commercial and economic viability. In supersonic flight conditions, kinetic heating of the airframe is also a consideration, posing new challenges in designing aircraft structures and developing construction materials suitable for high-speed flight. Many different types of supersonic airplanes were developed in the 1950s, including those with delta wings, closely-coupled canard delta wings, and wings with variable-sweep geometry. The invention of the turbojet engine and the afterburner, in which extra fuel is burned in the exhaust stream, increased thrust significantly and allowed airplanes to accelerate through Mach 1 and maintain supersonic flight. Aircraft are not intrinsically limited to subsonic or transonic flight speeds, but for them to fly supersonically requires the consideration of several other factors, not just limited to their aerodynamics.Īfter the aerodynamics, stability and control, and propulsion issues of flight near and beyond Mach 1.0 were understood by the early 1950s, it was only a short time before military airplanes routinely flew supersonically. While a modern military will always have a “ need for speed” for most of their missions, the ability of civil aircraft to quickly transport passengers and cargo from point to point has never been more acute. Humankind has always strived to develop flight vehicles that can fly fast and still faster. 45 Flying Fast – Supersonic & Hypersonic Flight Introduction
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