Shipbucket

CMASA CS.15 racer

Facist Italy's final attempt to reclaim the world air speed record, cancelled with Italy's entry into the War.



While both Hitler and Mussolini had unquenchable desires for their nation's to be acclaimed as world-bearters in all fields, Mussolini had a special passion for aviation, such that both of his sons became military aviators.
Mussolini had been devastated when Britain had finally won the Schneider Trophy, and so demanded Fiat poduce a high speed racer to capture the absolute air speed record. Fiat delegated the task to their bespoke design house CMASA and worked to produce a high-powered engine for the task, the AS.8. The airframe work was completed, and windtunnel testing at the world's only supersonic wind tunnel showed a potential speed of an unheard of 850 kph. The engine was the Achilles' heel though, and was only ready in 1941.
Meanwhile Germany had steadily pushed forward on the high-speed limit, with the He100 and then Me209 having set new records.
With Italy's entry into WWII the CS.15 and AS.8 were never brought together, and the ME209's record remained solid (now as the propeller aircraft record) until bested by the modified Grumman Bearcat "Rare Bear" in 1989 at 850 kph.

Nice work.

Unbuilt Stirling models

While the other British heavy bombers had multiple alternate models designed, the Stirling as the "backup" model had very little further development undertaken.

Short S.34 "Ideal Bomber" Stirling

In the late 30's British dogma assumed that a heavy cannon defensive armament would be required to defend large aircraft from enemy fighters, and work was undertaken designing the massive four-cannon dorsal and ventral turrets.
In response to the "Ideal Bomber" Specification B.1/39 Shorts tendered 2 modified Stirlings, a single tailed version with Hercules engines, and a twin-tailed version with Griffon engines. The wings would be mid-mounted and have extended span. Unfortunately no illustrations of these designs appear to have survived.

Short S.36 Super Stirling

By 1941 it was obvious that the Lancaster and Halifax were superior to the Stirling, and so Shorts started work on significant improvements to the Stirling, initially refered to by Shorts as the Stirling Mk.III.



The basis of the modification would be the use of Bristol Centaurus CE.3.SM engines, with redesigned wings with wing bomb cells, and an extended fuselage featuring an enlarged bomb-bay. The performance of the new aircraft was better than the Stirling Mk.II, while carrying almost twice the bombload. Two prototypes were ordered in January 1942.
However the change to construction of the new type would mean the production rate of Stirlings would drop by a half, and the Air Ministry decided that resources should instead be devoted to updating the basic Stirling to use the Hercules VI engine, leading to the Stirling Mk.III that we know.

https://imgur.com/Od0NyMr
Another J-13 is on progress.

In 1958, Armstrong Siddeley engineer David Andrews proposed an IRBM based on work done for both the Stentor engine for Blue Steel and the Gamma engine for Black Knight. In the same way that the Gamma combined small Stentor combustion chambers with one fuel pump, this unnamed proposal would use four large Stentor chambers, in an engine that would eventually be designated PR.27. As it would have used high test peroxide as an oxidant, the weapon could be left fully fuelled for days or weeks at a time. The Air Staff and defence chiefs were focused on Blue Streak, and in any case thought the missile's calculated payload was very much on the light side for a Green Granite or Green Bamboo warhead, so nothing came of it. ASM proposed the design again when Blue Streak was cancelled and the lighter Red Snow warhead was entering service, making the proposal viable, but by this time the people in high places were fixated on Skybolt so the proposal again went nowhere.



Details on the actual proposal, and the derived SLAVE launch vehicle, are available on Nicholas Hill's UK Space site - archived version here

Nice work, good to see a lesser-known rocket/missile programme being represented.

Empire of Japan, Kawasaki Ki-88
looks like somebody copied Bell's homework

L-1011-100 CMCA "MissileStar" based off of concept art from the 1970's, with a few creative liberties applied to it.



The concept art in question:




thanks to deadright for helping me with the nose!

The_Sprinklez wrote: ↑September 21st, 2022, 1:17 am New Zealand, F-16A Fighting Falcon

In the late 1990s, the New Zealand Government agreed to purchase 28 F-16A/B Fighting Falcons, airframes previously intended for sale to Pakistan, as an interim replacement for their aging A-4K Skyhawks. In March 2000, the incoming Labour government under Prime Minister Helen Clark cancelled the purchase, effectively stripping the RNZAF of combat aircraft after the last A-4K was retired in 2001. The RNZAF has not operated combat aircraft since.

The first two schemes are the ones most likely to have been worn by RNZAF F-16s, the first being a lowvis camouflage modeled on current RNZAF aircraft such as the King Air 350 and the second being the final scheme worn by RNZAF A-4Ks. The last two schemes are historical camouflages depicted here as some sort of heritage scheme.

Updated with more accurate F-16A base drawings:


Should replace http://shipbucket.com/vehicles/8809 in the archive

Argentine never-were collection

HAL Tejas - Argentina's FAA has been offered 12x HAL Tejas as part of the Supersonic Aircraft Competition. HAL's offer has been de facto thrown out, but remains offered still.


PAC JF-17 - JF-17 has been one of the leading competitors for the Supersonic Aircraft Competition of Argentina, with the newest offer as of 6/19/2023 being for 15x JF-17 Blk. 3 units with an unknown number of those being trainers.


A330/A340 - in the late 80s through early 90s, the Agrupación Aérea Presidencial had been searching for a long distance VIP Aircraft to replace the Boeing 707, however the 757 that flies today was selected. However, during in the mid 2000s after the 757 had broken down numerous times, several alternative aircraft were floated, including the A330, A340, and a 747-400. Néstor Kirchner preferred however to lease out Aerolíneas Argentinas 747s for long range travel as to not repeat the political hot-topic that the purchase of a new aircraft would lead to. I opted for the old scheme for the mid 2000s as the 757 was repainted after her incidents with the same scheme instead of a new one such as the one today.