Britain's Forgotten Flying Wing - Armstrong Whitworth A.W. 52 | Aircraft History #2

Welcome back to another aircraft overview. Today we are having a peek at the Armstrong Whitworth A.W.52 - A flying wing that never quite made it to success, but left its mark on aviation history nonetheless. (Note: This video is a re-upload of a video that I have migrated over from my other channel).
The Armstrong Whitworth A.W.52 was an attempt by Britain in the late 1940s to dabble with the possibility of using a flying-wing aircraft for commercial, rather than military use. Armstrong Whitworth put forward a proposal for a flying-wing airliner powered by either four or six jet engines.
The A.W.52 was intended for high speeds and was an all-metal turbojet powered aircraft. The A.W.52 was shown off to the public on December 16th 1947. Members of the government, press and the aviation industry gathered at RAF Bitteswell to watch Whithworth's Chief test pilot - Squadron Leader Eric Franklin - take the aircraft up for a demonstration flight. Despite the aircraft's impressive looks and warm reception, there were indeed problems. Whilst putting the aircraft in a dive at 320mph test pilot Joe Lancaster encountered a pitch oscillation caused by the dreaded wing flutter.
Expecting imminent and fatal structural failure, Joe Lancaster ejected using the aircraft's Martin-Baker ejection seat. In doing so, Joe Lancaster became the first British pilot to eject in an actual emergency.
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Producing these videos is a hobby of mine. I have a passion for history, and personally own a large collection of books, journals and other texts, and endeavor to do as much research as possible. However if there are any mistakes, please don't hesitate to reach out and correct anything :)

[@lanky2610]

My grandad was the test pilot for this plane. He always said that he ejected because flutter meant that he was completely disoriented and couldn't read the controls. He blacked out after ejection but regained consciousness after a few moments in free fall, and he landed in a thorn bush on his shoulder, near a pub where he got a drink waiting for a pick up but he was back to work after 2 months of recovery.

[@TCSC47]

Well done to your Grandad and well done to Martin Baker ejection seats of course!!

[@andrewr62]

Your grand dad was pushing the envelope back in the day! Great story! Thank you for sharing.

[@RabbitSQN]

Hey that's awesome! My mother-in-law's Uncle Harry used to work at Armstrong Whitworth and used to fly with Charles Turner Hughes etc as flight engineer! Don't supppose you have access to your Grandads flying logbooks??? I'm guessing it was Jo Lancaster???

[@lanky2610]

@@RabbitSQN Yes it was! Unfortunately, we don't have them anymore - all 7 of them are at RAF Coningsby in the care of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight as he wanted them to be used to teach future generations. I did read some of them however. Pre-WW2, he was part of the RAF-reserves, but... he got thrown out for joyriding and crashing a plane! May have been a de Haviland or an Avro, I can't remember. EDIT: found out from his memoirs that we still have. it was an Avro Cadet

[@29jug11]

I recall seeing this Flying Wing, over Kenilworth about 4 miles from Bagington Aerodrome Coventry circa 1947-48 ….I was 10 yrs old at the time.

[@LostLargeCats]

I'm sure you have some amazing stories.

[@red_d849]

damn thats cool

[@XstonedmonkeyzX]

And THIS is why people thought aliens existed... Planes like this in the 40s were a sight to behold, unlike now where we have B2s and are used to it...

[@Sreven199]

I remember seeing this thing back in the secret weapons expansion of BF1942....Never knew anything about it until now. Thanks

[@Sreven199]

@@lambastepirate the horten was also in the game, but the allies got their own flying wing, and that was this. You saw it mostly on the Essen map

[@lambastepirate]

@@Sreven199 ya I remembered and deleted the comment

[@TimPerfetto]

NO THANK YOU THANK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

[@tedsmith6137]

2:08 "..........takeoff weight of 20,000lbs or 90,000kg." Hmm, I would be rechecking those figures. Perhaps 9,000kg would be more correct.

[@tmutant]

I checked the aircraft he used for comparison, it looks like he got the pounds wrong, not the kilograms. I think he meant 200,000lbs.

[@johnladuke6475]

Well considering the safe landing, I kind of wish that there HAD been a passenger to helplessly watch Rex eject... only to confront him a few hours later on the ground. It's a little surprising that they didn't follow on this design, considering that the fluttering plane basically stabilized itself and landed on its own. That seems like fertile ground for improvement.

[@keithammleter3824]

I wondered about that too. Perhaps they couldn't find a test pilot that would agree to flying it. Sometimes technically ignorant but risk-adverse senior managers cancel projects even when the engineers have firm plans and confidence of fixing it. Happened to me once. The firm paid me for two years on a (electronic automation) project. Coincident with field trials starting and minor bugs showing up, a new manager took over and he just cancelled it. No debate, no investigation, he just ordered it abandoned. Two years investment completely wasted for want of another week or so. You get that. Then again, if I was the non-engineer company chief and they told me that the aircraft could only fly safely at 60% of its design speed, I would think they really stuffed up and I'd cancel it too.

[@maynardmckillen9228]

@@keithammleter3824 Then, too, how much time and money would it have taken to design and build a more rigid airfoil that did not flutter?

[@keithammleter3824]

@@maynardmckillen9228 : It may not have been that simple. There is a powerful incentive to not build an over-strong aircraft due to the added weight penalty. Their calculations told them it would be fine. It practice it wasn't. That sort of thing could happen in the days when a computer was a large room full of women with mechanical add/subtract/multiply/divide calculators. This video is inaccurate in saying the whole wing was oscillating - the actual problem was that the automatically compensated elevons were flapping up and down. Still, the fact that it sorted itself out and landed does suggest that a cure might not have been difficult. As soon as you tell any engineer (I am an engineer myself) that an automatically compensated device goes into oscillation, he thinks "Hah, not enough damping - just needs a tweak."

[@thethirdman225]

@@keithammleter3824 Just out of interest - and asking as the son of an engineer - what do you think they could have done to damp it?

[@Bialy_1]

@@thethirdman225 Instal modern computer... that is the proper solution to the problems with this type of planes and that is why this type of design was not successful for so long.

[@sincerelyyours7538]

Interesting. There was another early British flying wing design, actually a biplane flying wing with no tail, built during WW1. The following is from a footnote in a book called A World War 1 Adventure, The Life and Times of RNAS Bomber Pilot Donald E. Harkness: The Burgess-Dunne D.8 was an unusual single-engine pusher biplane with severely sweptback wings of equal size and no empennage of any kind. This particular plane was [probably] built by the French Nieuport Company under franchise from W. Starling Burgess, an American yachtsman who built them in the USA after he’d acquired the manufacturing rights from their designer, John William Dunne, who was forced to retire in 1913 due to ill health. Dunne, an Anglo-Irish former army officer and a visionary aircraft designer, experimented with and built tailless aircraft during aviation’s formative years before the war. They possessed a remarkable inherent stability that made them possibly valuable as civilian aircraft but lacked the maneuverability needed for military operations. Consequently, not many of these aircraft were built. When a fire destroyed Burgess’ factory a few days before the end of the war, he sold his holdings and went back to designing yachts. The planes were odd looking; like huge double arrowheads without the arrow shaft and feathers, however, they were the first successful, sweptback, tailless, flying-wings the world had ever seen, making them an aeronautical marvel for their day. My grandfather (the subject of the book) witnessed a crash of one of these aircraft into the side of a Grahame-White shed at Hendon Aerodrome on Nov 21, 1915 while he was taking flying lessons at the Ruffy-Baumann School of Flying. At the time, Burgess was trying to sell his design to the Allied flying forces for use in reconnaissance but they quickly determined that the planes were too stable for military operations. Without the ability to maneuver they'd have been sitting ducks for any enemy aircraft in the area. This inherent stability probably explains why the Armstrong Whitworth A.W. 52 was able to land itself without a pilot once the speed dropped to below the point that initiated flutter.

[@davidhowe6905]

Thanks; interesting reminiscences. I also missed any reference to Dunne. I read that the stability was such that Dunne could take his hands off the controls to make notes during test flights (seems the A.W.52 could also fly itself!). Dunne went on to write books on philosophy (time, consciousness, dreams, precognition) which influenced J. B. Priestley (quite a change of tack!)

[@dananichols1816]

Glad that I've just found your channel, sir... you've got another loyal follower! Retired USAF/Alaska Air National Guard senior NCO here, from a mil family, and have always cherished aviation museums as much as airshows; especially now, when airshow venues and access are uncertain. Your delivery and narration are notably the hook here, as I'm partial to such class acts and over with aviation subject videos or channels with obnoxious hosts.

[@howardroark7726]

That pilot must have have endured merciless piss-taking from his mates. "She flew fine once you took your hands off the stick, didn't she?" Such a pity what happened to the excellent British aerospace industry with amalgamation.

[@Farweasel]

But that would be cruel banter on a par with chastising the author of this generally excellent video by pointing out Rolls Royce name their jet engines after rivers, not 1980s german singers with the faces of angels, hairy armpits and a fascianation with Luftballons (or red ones for that matter) - In short, it is a Nene (phonetically *Neen*) engine, not a 'Nina'. And obviously no one would be so lacking in gentility as to labour that point. (Would they?)

[@howardroark7726]

@@Farweasel Certainly not. No one could be so lacking in humanity as to bring up that fact, not even in the most subtle way. 😉

[@jarikinnunen1718]

In Finland had happened same landing without crew. They tested the skis on the landing gear of the Blenheim bomber and skis get stuck in the wrong position. The crew parachuted into a wide field where the abandoned plane landed without damage after large circle. One crew member injured his ankle when he fell on the roof of the barn.

[@sebastiansochanski]

Lol,what a bunch of wankers.

[@Backwardlooking]

Terrific. Thank you for your video. 👍🏻🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

[@monochromaticlightsource2834]

The Rolls Royce Nene, is named after the river NENE (neene) not Naynay, the Rolls Royce Derwent is named after the river Derwent (Darwent). Most of the Rolls Royce early jet engines were named after british rivers, Avon, Trent, Derwent; Dart, Tyne, Spey, and Nene. The Pennine was the last of the piston engines.

[@michaelwright2986]

I was going to make the same point about the Nene (two years later) but the Derwent isn't quite so simple. Brought up in London, I call it the "Darwent", but up North it's the Derwent (well, derrr).

[@PaulStewartAviation]

Really enjoyable, thanks!

[@RexsHangar]

Thanks! I loved the F-111 video you did a while back :)

[@PaulStewartAviation]

@@RexsHangar cheers :)

[@jasonz7788]

Awesome thanks for the great work Sir

[@karavalle12]

Thanks again, to your team, for sharing with us, it's a fantastic historical creation! Bravo 👏👏 to your site! Looking for you!👏👏👏

[@williamsteele8891]

That painting at 2:20 is really cool!

[@LBG-cf8gu]

New to the channel; subbed. Great stuff!

[@Kevin-hb7yq]

Great video!

[@brucedeville9053]

Excellent content and video.

[@jkarra2334]

DB was designed from start to have cannon barrel go through the block...central mount cannon was one of luftwaffes requirements after First bf-series.after e-serie when friedrich came out it was way manouvable because 15/20mm cannon in middle instead more weight in wings like e model had...

[@Brommear]

Thank you. Very interesting.

[@pierremainstone-mitchell8290]

Fascinating!

[@billy4072]

👍 good work.on the wing. .. the art deco ish building @3.45 worthy of a shout . 🥳🥰

[@AlbertSpeerPhd]

good stuff, I am now subscribed!

[@RexsHangar]

I realise I accidentally read out my thrust conversion wrong at 2:08 - thanks for letting me know :)

[@davidmackie8552]

Thankyou!

[@TCSC47]

The Midlands Air Museum at Bagington is well worth a visit as it has a small exhibition on the AW 52 amongst other Armstrong Whitworth displays. the AW 52 was manufactured nearby in Coventry and flew from Bagington. The museum specialises in jet aircraft and aeronautics from the 50's onwards because Frank Whittle was a Coventry / Leamington Spa lad. Such a shame that the AW 52 has not been preserved.

[@unclebob6728]

thank you!

[@warleymerencio2902]

these designs are out of the box

[@salvagedb2470]

Shame it got scrapped , I did like the Passenger type idea..Good one Rex.

[@PNH750]

Time Point 2.10......Max take-off weight of 20,000lbs or 90,000Kg??? Should that be 9,000 Kg?

[@guidor.4161]

200000lbs, no doubt

[@coreyandnathanielchartier3749]

Thanks for this interesting video about an obscure type that was a little ahead of the technology level of the day. Some very bright people made this project fly-quite an accomplishment for the era. I think it time, they would have worked out some sort of gyro-stabilization system to solve many of the 'quirks' inherent in flying wing planes. Regarding the comments below regarding the definition of what constitutes a pure 'flying wing', I am reminded of the time I went on the web to search guidance on how to hard boil an egg (I always just guessed). Two to three articles in, I found people fighting and insulting each others' egg-boiling procedures. Some people take egg-boiling rather seriously and personally!

[@2lotusman851]

Do you open your egg from the small end, or the large end?

[@690Lighthouse]

I see at 9.5 min into the video a Hastings aircraft, the RAF flew Hastings for many years and it was used extensively but we seldom see it mentioned, a shame for it to be forgotten, I spent many hours flying in and working on this type.

[@peerpede-p.]

this was new to me, many thanks for the video.

[@christopherneufelt8971]

A great thanks for the quality of this video. I heard this from my father, and I even had an image of it an encyclopedia of 1948 (!). Great work, great research.

[@megaxtrime3144]

I love the fact the pilot ejected rightfully worried the plane was gonna rip itself apart, the plane was like screw you then and landed itself

[@martentrudeau6948]

It was cutting edge technology, trail blazing engineering.

[@jimtaylor294]

^ Uncited claim is uncited. *Ding*

[@jimdavison4077]

@Brian Roome stolen from who?

[@clarkbutler]

your vids are good ,lots of good info ,keep it up and good luck

[@Flight72]

What amazing videos Rex! Thanks for your time and effort to put it on for the everybody's knowledge! 5*

[@thebighurt2495]

Flying Wings are such a neat idea. It's a real shame they're so hard to get to work right.

[@Wideoval73]

Very informative video of a rather obscure aircraft. Flying wing is a great idea, but it was to early with no computers to help control it.

[@diedampfbrasse98]

"great idea" ... thats going a bit too far, what flying wing designs gain in flight characteristics/fuel efficiency they lose in economical and practical usage. Such planes would always be expensive to build, run and maintain, while forced by the design having unpractical loading spaces/characteristics. Hence even with computers and modern materials those things only are a niche solution for very special requirements which allow for a lot of money being burned.

[@NoahSpurrier]

Reminds me of the Cornfield Bomber, F-106, that also landed with minor damage after the pilot, Captain Gary Faust, ejected. I think there is an interview with him somewhere on KZbin.

[@Stellar001100]

Everyone getting in on this wing action.

[@bat2293]

Best feature of this entire design... the M.B. ejection seat.

[@raypurchase801]

It would be useful to include images of the Westland Hill Pterodactyl. Almost flying wings but not quite. GERMAN DESIGNERS: "Vee made ze first tailless svept ving aircraft in air force service". WESTLAND: "No you didn't".

[@RexsHangar]

I've got so many planes I want to cover. Not enough time in the day 😅

[@michaeltelson9798]

The Horton brothers did say that they were inspired by Northrop, just like with rockets the Germans were inspired by Goddard. Both Americans.

[@michaelpielorz9283]

@@michaeltelson9798 of course and i`m shure some americans invented the wheel just after fire !!

[@michaeltelson9798]

@@michaelpielorz9283 This was a quote from the Horton brothers in a book I have on their aircraft. Look at Goddard, he was ignored by us until after the war when the German scientists including von Braun. Northrop was well known prewar for his flying wing designs with prototype aircraft during the war. And the torsion bar suspension used in German armor came from an American patent.

[@michaelpielorz9283]

@@michaeltelson9798 ah i see you don`t know the name Lippisch and Hugo Junkers got a patent on a flying wing in 1910,dang no american involved ,strange enough even not Super-Edison who invented everything else, including fire ,the sun and the nightly darkness

[@BodleyFludes]

That should be RAF Bitteswell - pronounces Bittuz-well. I saw the AW52 flying over our house when I was a kid. We lived not far from Baginton and the Armstrong-Whitworth factory.

[@raphaelklaussen1951]

Disposing of that aircraft as scrap was a tragedy. It should be in a Museum.

[@whalesong999]

Studied flying wings from my youth (late '40s) after one classmate moved to my neighborhood in Kansas and was the son of a Northrop flying wing crew member, O.H. Douglas. He'd taken a position at Boeing/Wichita as an engineer. I see in this design what might have been the elemental outline of the flying wing in Raiders Of The Lost Ark - the straight trailing edge of the center section and the two different leading edge sweep angles. That fictional airplane had two pusher prop engines placed roughly at the panel separations of the inner and outer wings with jogs in the chord lines making room for the rear propellers. That wing was constructed at EMI Elstree Studios by an English aircraft company. Glad to see this video exploring the A.W. design, I'd only seen scant references to it in magazines.

[@Straswa]

Great vid Rex! Fascinating plane.

[@BHARGAV_GAJJAR]

Winglets are very innovative thinking in those days

[@neiloflongbeck5705]

You forgot J W Dunne who flew his first flying wing aircraft in 1907.

[@markbooth1117]

We British have a fantastic aviation history, it is a shame that we have no museums, etc that contain prototype aircraft as a specific subject. Yes, there are a few prototypes in museums such as TSR.2, Kestrel (Father of the Harrier), some of the smaller Vulcan test vehicles,etc but it is a shame to scrap aircraft such as this shown, to be gone forever and only seen now in photos.

[@robertwinsper7409]

Try Cosford.

[@Brooman56]

@Brian Roome funny !

[@newton18311]

@Brian Roome except the Jet engine. LOL> your uneducated

[@StoRmwarnung94]

@@newton18311 The first prototype of a jet engine was developed by Henri Coandă a Romanian, and the first jet powered aircraft was the Heinkel He 178 (German).

[@dananichols1816]

@Brian Roome Canted aircraft carrier flight deck, steam catapult, mirror landing system; also, a slender, little racing floatplane & its engine, which seemed to evolve into aviation engineering world-changers.

[@TalkernateHistory]

Please do one on the Vought F7U Cutlass

[@alaingabriel1710]

For a few brief seconds at the beginning you showed a photo of a medium sized jet airliner that looked a lot like the Avro Canada C 102 Jetliner. Except that the photo showed showed a flying wing jet airliner. By the way, the Avro Canada C 102 Jetliner was beaten by the de Havilland Comet by only 13 days, in getting in the air as the first jet airliner, in the 10th of August 1949.

[@MrTwyres]

Good.

[@angelicamcd1165]

It's rather weird and sad how many of these strange designs were eventually scrapped.

[@alexhayden2303]

I saw it parked at Farnborough in the early '50's.

[@korebeast973]

this seems to have been too early for it's time. The precision needed to allow this aircraft to fly effectively simply didn't exist yet, though it really is amazing they got that thing to fly stable at all, truly a marvel.

[@OnlyEdandTheAlmost]

Impressive channel. Love the drawings.

[@zJoriz]

Am I correct in assuming that a much thinner wing would have helped it attain higher speeds?

[@wbertie2604]

My father remembers seeing this flying.

[@warhawk4494]

I remember seeing something similar in crimson skies:high road to revenge

[@martincox4520]

Many more Horten gliders were built in Argentina. They also built the Ho1b in the1950`s iusing elevons instead of separate elevator and alieron as Ho1

[@captainheadass9179]

my great grandfather Lesley Everett baynes also invented a flying wing glider known as the baynes bat the idea being to attach tanks to the bottom of the glider add fly them in Behind Enemy Lines

[@animaltvi9515]

A flying wing is a tailless fixed-wing aircraft that has no definite fuselage, with its crew, payload, fuel, and equipment housed inside the main wing structure. A flying wing may have various small protuberances such as pods, nacelles, blisters, booms, or vertical stabilizers.. Just to help some of the discussions.

[@JFrazer4303]

They called Burnelli planes a flying wing, though they had a definite airfoil shaped fuselage, and usually booms holding a substantial tail.

[@louisvanrijn3964]

5:48 HP-14 or HP-15 glider. Laminar flow is difficult to maintain. Ice , rain, insects etc disturb it.

[@tiddlywinks497]

Yeah, it seems like a bad idea if it were intended for mail delivery

[@louisvanrijn3964]

@@tiddlywinks497 Laminar flow can only be achieved on a spotlesly clean wing. Even the flush rivets have to be filled with putty, and the complete wing gloss-sprayed, or polished. In the early 60ties the RNAF did some tests on a T33 aircraft, it has indeed a laminar flow NACA section. Only the first 30% was laminar in the best measured result.

[@tiddlywinks497]

@@louisvanrijn3964 Yeah I know that, I was just saying an aircraft with that kind of requirements doesn't really work well as a mail carrier, seems like an odd choice.

[@Schlipperschlopper]

The German Gotha P60 looked quite similar

[@Dr_Jebus]

Second crewman not provided an ejection seat. That's one way to tell your flight engineer how much he's valued...

[@sim.frischh9781]

Or how highly, they trusted the engineer to MacGyver his way out of the situation...

[@Dr_Jebus]

@@sim.frischh9781 Ha! Fair point

[@maynardmckillen9228]

The UK's "V-Bombers" also provided a "selective" means of egress from a crippled plane. Both the pilot and co-pilot had ejection seats in the Avro Vulcan, the Vickers Valiant, and the Handley Page Victor, while the remaining three crew members had to bail out via an escape hatch.

[@sim.frischh9781]

@@maynardmckillen9228 At least they had an "escape hatch", no MacGyvering needed.

[@maynardmckillen9228]

@@sim.frischh9781 True, although in both cases the g-forces present at times of uncontrolled movement, i.e., an airframe that is tumbling, cartwheeling, and the like, may mitigate the presence of an escape hatch.

[@Rondart]

What is it with swept wing aircrafts righting itself after the pilot ejected? The Cornfield Bomber was like that as well.

[@BennyCFD]

I think if they would have set to cosine of the delta of the cord a little lower it would have taken care of the flutter.

[@JFrazer4303]

A comprehensive German wiki site defines an "all-wing" plane with tailfin & rudder but no separate horizontal tailplane as "brush-less", as opposed to entirely tail-less. Nobody yet has made a completely tail-less or wing-tip fin plane to be reliable and reasonably simple and entirely safe, after the Dunne D-8 which technologically and was ready for consumers, though nobody wanted to order any or invest. That's the story with all of the successful finned all-wings that have succeeded. Yes, I include the B-2 in that, because (besides the incredible cost) it's unflyable without complexity, it's only flown by military officers and test pilots in ejection seats because it's a death trap if complexity fails. Several designers who have gone on to use a substantial fin and rudder, have made a variety of planes variously called lifting fuselage body, or unitary wing/body, or "blended" wing/body or all-wing, usually called "flying wing". All at least as good as normal planes (though usually faster/more efficient), some markedly better than normal planes (See the "Flying Heel-Lift" youtube about the '30s Arup S-2, and the '90s Facetmobile)

[@theinspector1023]

At 7:07 the engine name (Nene, after the river) is pronounced 'neen' and not 'nina'. Without intending to be pompous, I think it's important to get these things right.

[@blackroberts6290]

ohhh so that's why meme is pronounced as meme and not meme

[@arno-luyendijk4798]

I cannot escape the impression that designers of this plane must have had designs of both the (never built) Heinkel P1079 jet fighter and the Messerschmitt Me P.08.01 (also never built but very interesting and ahead of its time design) before their very eyes.

[@chrisweeks6973]

Given that the design request to Armstrong Whitworth came from the Directorate of Scientific Research of the Ministry of Supply in early 1942 - this being prior to Ernst Heinkel's design and at about the same time as Dr. Wurster's design for Messerschmitt - I would suggest that it was yet another case of parrallel development. The tailless concept goes back to J.W. Dunne in 1908 and considerable work was undertaken in the 1920's-early30's by G.T.R Hill with the Westland-Hill Pterodactyl. Two lots of footage of this exists on KZbin, which shows the progress that he made.

[@ronjon7942]

I’ll never understand how the British government eventually threw away all this aeronautical genius.

[@keithstudly6071]

A bit of a puzzle. The British aircraft industry had no shortage of wonderful ideas. Many of them showed great promise and made flights in prototype form and some into actual production but the first 'bump' they hit was always catastrophic and resulted in failure for any further development, or in the case of the Comet delays that spoiled it's position in the world market as newer designs stole the market.Finance and politics I'm sure were important factors in the final result.

[@keithammleter3824]

Not a puzzle at all. Lack of sufficient finance was a significant part of it. What was the real problem was that in the immediate postwar period they were trying to keep up in aerospace with the USA, and they just didn't have the competence to execute their ideas. The Comet was a good example of this - the basic idea was to built an all-metal pressurised jet airliner - which would have captured a big market if it was good. But De Havilland had no experience of such things and so had no engineers competent to take on the task. You can't know what you don't know. So they made mistakes such as ordering ADF antennas from their usual supplier without specifying that the antennas needed to withstand pressure differential. So one blew out in flight and that Comet was lost. Mistakes that Boeing engineers did not make with the 707 because they had pressurised experience dating back to WW2, and there was enough finance to brainstorm and test what could go wrong. The same problem showed up in other ways - such as the Windscale nuclear accident - The British wanted to match the Americans in nuclear technology but simply didn't have the competence to operate their primitive reactor safely. Its a bit like a country town doctor trying to do advanced neurosurgery just because he heard about someone else doing it.

[@keithstudly6071]

@@keithammleter3824 I agree with much of what you say but I think that there was also a cultural factor too. The world wars had left Britain in a state where they felt incapable of tackling new frontiers. They had the minds to go forward, but had been sold the attitude that lower goals had to be enforced. An inferiority complex? 'We're poor and can't afford big dreams!' 'Your wrong to waste time even thinking of such things!' A friend of mines father was in ejection seats and left Martin Baker to go to the USA and work for North American in Ohio. Not much happening in UK. If the Soviet Union, which had suffered far more had taken the same path there would have been no cold war or space race. I really think it wasn't till the mid 1960's that Britain started to climb out of the depths of post-war depression and show some strength, and confidence.

[@keithammleter3824]

@@keithstudly6071 : Most definitely it was a cultural thing. But you and I have opposite views on what that cultural problem was. Essentially, the Bits felt they had to, and COULD, keep up with the Americans. But they had such a lack of expertise they could not. Most people, and most communities, understand their limitations, but the Brits did not. They were fixed on the concept of "if the Yanks can do it, so can we." The trouble is, prior to WW2, the aircraft industry, electronics industry, etc, was producing relatively simple products, so with a little bit of luck, relatively small outfits could succeed - as in an exceptional R Mitchel designing the Spitfire, and the amazing wooden Mosquito designed by a very small team led by Eric Bishop. There was a multitude of relatively small technology companies in both Britain and the USA. After WW2, products were vastly more complex and sophisticated, and one brilliant designer, a couple of engineers and a room full of women with mechanical calculators could not do the job - it needed a large team of expert engineers backed by expensive research facilities and large scale electronic computers, sustainable only in a few very large companies. The British generally, and their government and industry leaders in particular, did not understand this. They did after a while try forced amalgamations, but did it in such a way as to get a lowest common denominator instead of a sum greater than the parts. You see in the posts here and elsewhere views that if Britain could do it before the War, she should have done it after - but the world had changed. What Britain had was no longer sufficient. You alluded to the "Brain Drain" in your comment about a friend's father. That was a factor. America hoovered up talented people from all sorts of places, strengthening America and weakening other countries.

[@Rapscallion2009]

UK engineers built some pretty impressive aircraft - but more often for Boeing or McDonnell Douglas - who were willing to pay more than Avro or Hawker would and had impressive facilities in California instead of England's rainy former RAF base in Bedfordshire. It was known as "The Brain Drain". It still goes on - UK graduates who get a first a CompSci and can choose between working in a dusty academic job, taking a starter position in Europe, or buggering off to California to start a well paid job in the sun, Tesla in the garage, trophy wife and McMansions by the time they're both 30. You do the math. I know which I'd pick.

[@EVISEH]

@@keithammleter3824 It was not pressurization issues which caused so much grief for the Comet - but the fact that it was designed with square passenger windows and that constant stressing around the sharp corners of those windows eventually led to cracks forming in the metal skin which then led to explosive decompression of the aircraft. Boeing also had no knowledge of that problem as well, as most of the pressurized aircraft in use by the Americans were piston powered and flew at slower speeds and lower heights than the Comet and it was only after the British finally determined what had caused the Comet crashes that Boeing then designed the 707 to have round passenger windows. Also with jet engines, the Americans had absolutely no knowledge of or experience with such and the first generation American jet engines were simply license built copies of British designs and which the Americans gradually refined over time.Indeed much of the initial attempts by the Americans to design a jet engine of their own were dismal failures.

[@90lancaster]

+9:44 Say what is that 4 Prop plane immediately behind the A.W.52 Far middle right of screen ?

[@ronjon7942]

Interesting! Looks British; I’m gonna have to go down the rabbit hole :). The nose brought the Rockwell Twin Commander (Bob Hoover) to mind, but obviously….

[@bigyin2586]

7.25 “Nayna” engine? Try “Neen”, ie the Nene, a river in Lincolnshire. Rolls Royce named its early engines after rivers in the UK.

[@Retroscoop]

Just a question: if the prototype "glider" wasn't designed for militairy use, why did it have the British "RAF" like badges and the P for prototype like those on other militairy projects ?

[@sos_legio_primus9177]

I imagine as, although it was not a military craft, as such, The ministry of war was funding the research with military matters/ applications in mind.

[@sos_legio_primus9177]

Kinda how you see joint USAF and NASA insignia on test/ experimental aircraft. It is not being developed for the military, but if the concept works, the military applications are promising. So The USAF shares the funding of the research, to get early in on the tech in case it is successful. So despite being a civilian research project by a civilian institution, the aircraft bears USAF markings

[@michaelleslie2913]

Another interesting film , A point of interest for me is how similar the wing element is to the glider tank proposal of ww2 in which a tank could be towed and dropped into action with a detachable wing , mad but true.

[@TCSC47]

As a lad in the 60's I was intrigued with flying wings, no doubt like many aeromodellers, because you only have to build the wings! However, my father who had been Sydney Camm's aerodynamicist on the Hunter and the Sea Hawk was very scathing of flying wing designs. Too many problems to solve as demonstrated by aircraft such as the AW52 and the American XB35 and 49. Hawkers approach to aircraft design was KISS --- keep it simple, stupid! I think that was why they were the only design team in the world to be able to produce a practical VTOL way back in the 60s. (With the help of the USA Marines of course.)

[@Swaggerlot]

'Nene' is an English river pronounced 'neen'

[@THEScottCampbell]

Even now, there are no passenger or cargo flying wings, which seems unfortunate and disappointing. Over 100 years of development have made them practical and safe but we are still flying 1950's technology. Our priorities are messed up.

[@robertphillips2983]

Perhaps the flutter was caused by too much free play or lack of stiffness in the complicated elevon control circuit........??

[@peekaboopeekaboo1165]

Whoa. At 9:53 mark....is that a wide-bodied passenger plane?

[@AtheistOrphan]

No. The AW55 was a conventional single-aisle design.

[@davidwright8432]

If I have it right, this kind of airplane (tailless) was impossible to realize in reliably flyable form until the advent of computer-run contol surfaces. Humans just couldn't respond fast enough, or subtly enough, to maintain stable flight.

[@JK-rv9tp]

Flying wing's aren't really "tailless"; they just move the "tail" to the tips of the wings, which have to be swept for the purpose, and force the tip region to provide trimming downforce to achieve a given stability point AOA, but on a much shorter moment arm. Not much different than just making the fuselage half the length and making the stabilizer/elevator larger. It's the very short trimming and pitch force moment arm that results in sensitive pitch control and a very narrow C of G range, the major downfall of the configuration and the biggest reason the sky isn't filled with them. So much easier just to stick the trimming and pitch control surface at the end of a boom with a nice long moment arm to provide necessary trim and control forces with better damping and less area. Then you just enlarge the "boom" to put things in, like cargo and people and voila!, you achieve lots of volume without a lot of frontal area, and you have 99% of the airplanes ever made.

[@ollimoore]

Surely tails are called tails because they look like, well, tails though? Obviously the function that the tail would normally provide has to be replicated some other way, but if the alternative arrangement does not make use of a tail like structure, it would be tailless wouldn’t it? By the logic you present here, a dog which has it’s tail completely chopped off still has a tail because it has other ways of showing how pleased it is that it’s owner returned from work. I guess the question is, is a tail a physical thing or a function?

[@JK-rv9tp]

@@ollimoore It's a physical thing with a function. The tail moves the aerodynamic center aft of the center of mass where it needs to be, and provides the ability to trim, that is, make the body weathervane into the airflow at a desired offset angle (angle of attack). I can move those functions to the trailing edge of the wing, either the tips or roots depending whether I sweep it aft or forward, and reduce drag somewhat, but the penalties are severe, and in the end it's less draggy to put payload into a large tube oriented lengthwise instead of making the flying wing itself really fat (effectively putting the tube sideways) to fit things into it. Having done that, I might as well put tail surfaces at the end of the tube. There's a reason it's almost never done outside specialty a/c.

[@ollimoore]

@@JK-rv9tp just saw a notification, another video about a tailless aircraft, reminded me I hadn't replied to this. That was a rhetorical question, you didn't actually need to explain anything, but no matter. If a tail is a physical thing (and we agree that it is) then if it isn't present in a design, that design can legitimately be referred to as 'tailless.' The opening part of your original comment only makes sense if 'tail' exclusively refers to function.

[@jonmiguel]

At 4:15 it looks a lot like the Vulcan bomber.

[@kevinhoffman6592]

Very cool she landed herself

[@robertwoodliff2536]

for every one but the pilot.!

[@TrustMeiamaD.R.]

Barnes Wallis designed something similar I recall.

[@robertphillips2983]

The Swallow

[@snowflakemelter1172]

Are we now saying the Horten prototype found in Germany at the end of the war was not as unique as it's made out to be ?

[@drstrangelove4998]

Both the Horten brothers and Alexander Lippish built pure flying wings which actually worked.

[@jimtaylor294]

Anyone familiar with the Horten Flying Wing knows the thing was nowhere near being ready for production nor service. The prototypes were literally comprised of whatever material could be scrounged, including a landing gear "aquired" from a crashed Luftwaffe Bomber. The point though is that Flying Wings weren't unique to Germany, not even close. (the UK, USA, USSR & others having worked on such aircraft designs & prototypes prior to Germany's defeat in WWII)

[@leneanderthalien]

@@jimtaylor294 In France the Fauvel flying wings tested sinze the 30' was different (straight + autostable wing profile, much safer as delta flying wings), and had real uses after the war as gliders (Fauvel AV35 for example).Some Fauvel AV35 are in use today and still make new by homebuilders, some as ultralight (with engine for autonomous take off)

[@sophdog1678]

Such a shame one wasn't kept. Lack of hangar space and post-war shortages likely dictated the scrapping. It shared the fate of so many prototypes and small-production planes of the early days...

[@beachboy0505]

Excellent research for future aircraft But embarrassing 😕, for the test pilot 😅 🙃. The plane landed itself safely? Did the test pilot keep his job??

[@nekeke1]

Btw, the MTOW for the a320-ceo is 78 metric tons..... that is 78,000 kg....

[@johnsatan117]

This is what the B2 Spirit was based on, not that Horton Sh*t. That wasn't even a stealth bomber.

[@timgosling6189]

I'm sure you know an AUW for the putative airliner of 90,000kg equates to 200,000lb, not 20,000. However, a nice summary. It's always reassuring that an aeroplane flies better when that interfering pilot is no longer present! As many others found, including our own De Havilland with the 108, creating a fully controllable flying wing aircraft has its problems. But somebody had to do the initial research so that future electronic flight control systems would have something to work from.

[@nickainsworth5275]

Yeah thought that was a bit off too !

[@glennquagmire597]

Primitive is an understatement compared to the Horton Brothers who designed n flown the jet flying wing that was many years ahead and done by 1945 !!!!

[@Allan_aka_RocKITEman]

*I ❤️ FLYING WINGS*

[@chestermicek]

If the wings on any aircraft that I was flying started flapping like a bird, I'd punch out.,

[@Kefuddle]

With a laminar flow over the wing known to be that sensitive at the design stage, it probably would not make a very good airliner with all the potential for icing and operating and maximum take-off weights with near max-crosswinds as is often the case.

[@frankmoore993]

The first hang glider to fly 160 kms non stop was a "Mitchell" wing. Built by someone who used to work with JACK NORTHROP! Hang glider pilots had no problem working with tailless 3 axis.

[@bjofuruh]

I made an R/C model inspired by the Mitchell Wing: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nKfSpKuQlpx5j80 It flies beautifully.

[@goingtoscotland]

You stated that it would have had a MTOW of 20,000lb, but I believe you're mistaking the MTOW for the payload. The article clipped says "24 to 28 passengers which would be part of a 29,000lb payload." A modern 737-Max9 has a MTOW of upwards of 185,000lb and an operating empty weight of 100,000lb. That's a 60,000lb+ useful load more than what the proposed full scale flying wing would have had

[@goingtoscotland]

And I didn't notice on the first listen, you said that was 90,000kg. 90k kg is nearly 200,000lb. Perhaps just misreading the script.

[@JTA1961]

Tough explanation to boss on why you had to eject when plane lands itself in 1 piece

[@crashrr2993]

You can just imagine the ribbing he suffered!😂

[@bjofuruh]

Pilot: The plane was shaking sooo violently! Boss: Now your knees are shaking even more...