Comments by "William Cox" (@WildBillCox13) on "Forgotten Prototypes: 1950s Experimental Planes | Full Documentary" video.

  1. Believe me. If the Soviets discovered high speed nuclear specific bombers so close to their border they'd quite naturally expect we were gearing up to a sneak attack. In those days, fingers were on buttons and such a provocation might well lead to an all out nuclear conflagration.
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  2. ---Not an expert. Personal view here. 1:10:00 The problem jet age engineers conveniently ignored is that a jet plane on a runway OR in the ocean is subject to FOD; especially ingesting objects that cause engine failure or damage to the landing gear. An airfield can be visually examined/inspected and carefully swept by a perceptive team specialized in the task. That's impossible on the sea, unless you're a friend of Aquaman's. The Sea Dart was doomed from inception. Re: Seaplanes. Seaplanes were only useful when land planes had insufficient range to fly safely between far flung airports. Once land planes had enough range, seaplanes as a concept in transportation died out. There are still some brands out there, but short range, small capacity floatplanes are far more common. It's even worse for fighter planes, which have less clearance on take-off and landing. There's no reason for a jet powered ski plane, other than technological hubris (characterized as "the can-do attitude"). Ingest any object and the plane is dead in the water. And the very surface used for takeoff and landing is mutable, and subject to ingestion. Any malfunction of the ski and the plane goes to the bottom . . . that makes it insane as a military standard.
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  3. 55:20 The competition was doomed to fail, due to the T40 Turboprop Motor. This was buggier than an ant farm. All planes designed around it (mostly tail sitters) were failures. Agreed, they were ideas waiting modern CCV technology solutions to be made feasible, but, a crappy engine can doom the best design. Consider the troubles Germany had with the Junkers Jumo and BMW turbojet engines. The "Tail First" fighters (Ascender, et al) were also cursed by buggy engines, like the P&W X-1800. Heck-even the B29 was plagued by engine malfunctions- especially fires. Its R2800 Double Wasp engine was really insufficiently developed when introduced into service.
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