from luft46.
This VTOL (Vertical TakeOff and Landing) aircraft project’s design, by Weserflug, dates from 1938. The fuselage was fairly conventional, with a standard tail unit. The real difference in this design were the wings, which were hinged and tiltable about halfway along the length of the wings. Mounted on each end of the wing was a nacelle featuring a large diameter propeller. The wing was mounted high on the fuselage, so that the propeller would have the necessary ground clearance when the wing was tilted in flight position. A single Daimler-Benz DB 600 series engine was located in the fuselage behind the cockpit, and drove both propellers. The engine was fed by an air intake located in the nose. The main gear retracted into the fuselage, and the rear tail wheel retracted beneath the tail. A crew of two sat in a cockpit located in the top forward section of the aircraft.
Although this was a very novel idea for an aircraft at this time, the concept never left the drawing board. A very similar design was later built by the United States as the Boeing V-22 Osprey, and began testing in 1989. Even today, the tilt-rotor concept is proving troublesome, and the fact that there would have had to be a very complex gearing arrangement for the Weserflug P.1103 (to tilt the wings and keep constant power to the large diameter propellers) would have proven a very difficult design hurdle.
The v-22 and prototypes have already killed a quite few USAAF test pilots. For that reason, I belive this is the luft46 project that was the most effective against the allies when a lot of rescorces were wasted on useless prototypes.I guess that this is the only weapon that was effective because of its crappyness.:mrgreen:
) :
