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US Air Force's 1950s Supersonic Flying Saucer Declassified
MrSeb writes "Tighten the strap on your tinfoil hat: Recently declassified documents show that the US Air Force was working on, and perhaps had already built, a supersonic flying saucer in 1956. The aircraft, which had the code name Project 1794, was developed by the USAF and Avro Canada in the 1950s. One declassified memo, which seems to be the conclusion of initial research and prototyping, says that Project 1794 is a flying saucer capable of 'between Mach 3 and Mach 4,' (2,300-3,000 mph) a service ceiling of over 100,000 feet (30,500m), and a range of around 1,000 nautical miles (1,150mi, 1850km). According to declassified cutaway diagrams, the supersonic flying saucer would propel itself by rotating an outer disk at very high speed, taking advantage of the Coand effect. Maneuvering would be accomplished by using small shutters on the edge of the disc (similar to ailerons on a winged aircraft). Power would be provided by jet turbines. According to the cutaway diagrams, the entire thing would even be capable of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL). The fact that there are no disc-shaped aircraft in the skies today, though, suggests that the USAF's flying saucer efforts probably never got past the prototype stage."
Everyone in saucer design knows that the Coanda Effect also causes the outline to appear blurry and shaky.
It is the first step towards cloaking which was later perfected using techniques developed by Tesla.
No brain, no pain.
Do you people realize the significance of this? If this Project 1794 was the saucer that crashed 27 miles outside Roswell and was taken to Area 51...1794/(51+27)=
THE NUMBER TWENTY-THREE!!
Everything is better with chainsaws.
> They thought the same about flying wing designs in the 1950s. Indeed, they never did get the design to work right at the time.
Flying wings have been successfully built and flown since the 1930s. The problems with the B-35 and B-49 were inherent in the platform:
* Conic Instability - in a banked turn the outer wing goes faster than the inner one and gives more lift with increases the bank angle until it flips over and spins. I have seen film of a B-52 doing that.
* Nodding - The Northrops were designed for bombing and later for photo work. The wing 'nods' due to lack of pitch stability which makes it impossible to aim using a bomb sight, and difficult to get the photos to overlap correctly.
* Slewing - with no tail the wing does not care whether it is aligned with the flight path or skewed from it by several degrees. Bomb aiming is thus impossible.
The planes were actually very successful as flying machines (though the propeller gearboxes failed too often), but useless for the missions they were intended for. The B-2 fixed all those issues with computers compensating for the instabilities.