DOUGLAS SECRET PROJECTS - Aircraft Concepts and Proposals from Long Beach, CA during the Cold War.

what does this surveillance aircraft this cargo aircraft and this stealth bomber all have in common we're going to tell you in a special episode of celebrating Aviation with Mike mashat by request my special thanks to my dear friend Craig Caston for the idea for this episode and you're going to see many of Craig's images uh a little later in the program well what these three diverse aircraft have in common and I'll throw in one more for good measure is that they are Douglas Concepts which at one time were Douglas secret projects full disclosure if you're new to the channel I'll mention that I worked for the Douglas division of the McDonald Douglas Corporation from 1977 to 1987 and was very privileged to be a staff illustrator in the presentations department and I'll be showing you some of my images as well later in the program so let's talk about secret projects and what we actually called them in-house was Advanced design let's start with this one this is the span loader which is a cargo airplane that carries its payload in the wings and the fuel is in the fuselage uh there are other Blended Wing designs flying uh today uh in mockup form or model form and uh this was the beginning was uh 1978 you notice the traditional uh conventional configuration cargo airplane in the background showing the the comparison for loading and unloading but the span loader was an interesting project and here's the military version slightly different configuration with twin tail booms and uh a unique loading system from the ground I'm not quite sure how that would have worked but again these are proposals and Concepts kind of what if and obvious obviously they never made it off the drawing board here's the ATB which stands for advanced tactical bomber uh best I can say now is that this type of airplane is flying today is the B21 Raider from North or Grumman uh a medium size smaller than the B2 stealth bomber uh and a very Advanced airplane but this was an early 1980s uh version proposed by Douglas and here's the uh sea launched cruise missile uh when in a wing in ground effect vehicle for the Strategic Air Command this is one of my renderings and yeah I know what you're thinking this looks just like the Caspian Sea Monster the Russian Wing in ground effect vehicle that you see it upper left and again this never got past the uh proposal rendering stage that you see here the VTX was a an entire training package for the Navy uh and this became the T45 gos Hawk but the idea was that the Navy would get the actual airplane and all the simulators and all the just training AIDS and and just a complete package for creating future Naval aviators uh the company proposed a version for the US Air Force this is my painting of the jet over Randol Air Force Base head of the uh tactical training Air Command the primary uh outsized airlifter in the 1950s was the c124 glow Master 2 and Douglas developed a turboprop powered version the YC 124b which was powered by four 5500 shaft horsepower pratton Whitney t34 turbo prop engines the idea here was that the airplane would be proposed to the Air Force as a tanker however they went with the Boeing KC 97 but the turbo prop technology translated to an even larger airplane the XC 132 this airplane never made it off the drawing board but again that technology was used in the c133 cargo Master which was developed mainly to carry the new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles as late as 1982 Advanced turboprop Air airlifters were still under study by Douglas this is a rendering by my cohort in presentations Mr Steve Wright and a six engine Advanced turbo prop machine interesting to look at and then we have all the acronyms and we're going to decipher all this for you a little later in the program but here you see a an air refueling airplane with a cargo airplane and these of course became the C15 and the kc1 interesting to see uh the actual airplanes of course the c-15 was a prototype and that evolved into the c17 glob Master 3 that you see in this photo on on the right and of course that's a kc1 refueling that airplane what about experimental research and flight test aircraft well Douglas had the d558 D1 and the d558 D2 first airplane to fly twice the speed of sound so it stood to reason that uh there would be a d558 D3 however this airplane never uh got into uh production it was the uh study for what became the X15 commercial airliners this is kind of neat well no that's not a commercial airliner that's the uh Douglas xb42 known as the Mixmaster for its Contra rotating Pusher props but believe it or not there was an airliner version of this airplane and you're not going to believe what they were going to call it it was the dc8 Sky Bus uh I believe uh the sky bus was a different airplane we're going to show you that in a moment and of course the dc8 uh became a 4 engine jet transport uh this airplane which first flew in 1958 but uh that Sky buus idea really emerged as this this is one of a family of airplanes that I guess you could call the sky bus but more accurately it's the Airbus SS stands for supersonic transport let's see what Douglas had in mind in 196 2 the model 2229 was proposed uh as Douglas's entrance into the U supersonic transport sweep Stakes with lock heed and Boeing uh Douglas decided not to pursue this design in 1963 but uh take that three View and make it into a rendering and you've got this stunning image by the great Ren Wix there were other SST studies a variable geometry aircraft in a painting by RG Smith and this was the winner of the three uh companies that proposed ideas the Boeing 2707 seen here in mockup form do we have a better picture of this airplane I think we do can we put that up there we go yeah that's more like it uh in the 1980s Douglas was still considering possible supersonic transports this is the DC Advanced supersonic transport and even into the 90s uh they were studying designs but again these never made it past the study stage of course the first actual SST was the Russian t144 which flew in 1968 followed by the angl French Concord in 1969 military dc10 proposals this is interesting we're going to show you a number of uh airplanes that have never been seen before uh in this uh venue Douglas was always looking to advance the dc10 not quite sure how this airplane would have ever parked at a ramp or negotiated the taxiways at traditional airports but uh they were always looking for bigger and better ways to use the airplane and uh this is one of the military versions a presidential transport of course that went to the Boeing 747 to replace the 707s of the Kennedy era and this was called the vc10 not to be confused with this vc10 but before we get into the military dc10 Concepts let's talk about how that airplane all started it began with the CX program which was the uh competition for what became the locked C5 Galaxy however the construction methodology and the power plant technology lent itself to the possibility of a giant widebody airliner and are you ready this was going to be the first dc10 a double deck four engine monster in a beautiful painting by RG Smith but the dc10 actually took form as a twin engine airplane to meet a requirement by American Airlines to have a 250 seat widebody machine fly uh operationally out of New York's LaGuardia Airport as you see in this photo the largest jet at that time operating out of LaGuardia was the Boeing 727 uh the American Airlines airplane taking off and a tww at the gate uh to give the airplane transcontinental range a third engine was added as you see here and the dc10 operated successfully out of LaGuardia through the 1970s and well into the 1980s this is an ironic photo because taking off on the runway of course is an Airbus a300 so let's get into it military dc1s let's start with the intelligence missions and I should mention that uh most of the aircraft used for these operations were converted or adapted from other existing airplanes uh the two on the left were airliners DC3 and the Lockheed Constellation and the two on the right the Boeing b47 Strat jet Lockheed C130 Hercules adapted for the Recon and Intel uh mode so let's start with this the dc10 E10 Advanced Airborne command post which of course became the Boeing E4 747 and look at this airplane all sorts of interesting sensor packages and side looking radar uh the ec1a electronic intercept version I love this photo this is I'll call this the photo of the week it's the ec1b multisensor surveillance platform being intercepted by a friendly Mig 25 foxbat the cp10 longrange patrol aircraft for the Royal Canadian Air Force and of course they went with the locki P3 Orion but uh an interesting looking machine love the markings and this of course is a beautiful painting by RG Smith Airborne missile launcher really well yeah um a number of studies for different types of uh rotary uh missile storage and launching out of a DC d10 the carousel launcher uh the Bombay launch with a rotary uh device and uh the final selection was a side launching uh airplane out of uh launch blisters located on the rear fuselage and uh let's take a look at a rendering here this is by Hank Lozano the dc10 standoff bomber uh total payload would have been 64 air launch cruise missiles uh Believe It or Not There was resistance from the airlines about having an airliner as a strategic uh weapon system there was concern about confusion uh and so that never came to pass but they even studied intercontinental ballistic missile launches out of a dc10 and here's a cutaway showing two missiles that could be ejected out of a lower um Bombay type device in the lower a fuselage and this is a beautiful Pacific miniatures model 1 164 scale study of that particular airplane then there was this the C15 program which was a prototype uh we'll show you in a moment uh this was developed as a medium range uh STL type aircraft and that acronym was amst which stood for advanced medium-range short takeoff and Landing transport this airplane flew in 197 5 and it won a fly-off competition against Boeing's yc14 but this airplane was also studied to be adapted for air launched intercontinental ballistic missile this is my rendering of such a a launch here we see the missile actually on a cradle that was then uh pulled out of the airplane by a large parachute and this actually happened this is a dummy uh missile launch study out of a c177 globemaster 3 but up to now we've seen uh mostly Concepts that just as I said never left the drawing board was the term that you always used let's talk about an airplane that did and it's this the atka which stood for advanced tanker cargo aircraft the logic here is that for a major air force deployment the tankers would refuel other aircraft Fighters bombers whatever and then cargo airplanes would take all the logistics loads the uh men and machines and Equipment spare parts and such the idea here was that you'd have all that capability in one airplane the advanced tanker cargo aircraft this was a converted uh dc10 series3 convertible freighter adapted for the military Mission and what they would do is uh this airplane could carry Squadron and maintenance Personnel uh as well as cargo and spare parts including cluding complete jet engines on their cradles and have full aerial refueling capability for both Air Force and navy and foreign airplanes when required as mentioned the uh convertible freighter uh was equipped with a 10 foot x 22 foot forward cargo door that you see in this cutaway illustration by Chuck santmire and the total fuel capacity was 356,000 pounds which theoretically gave the airplane the range to fly non-stop from New York to Sydney Australia it was called the K10 extender and in the renderings uh we always showed it with Company products here we kc1 refueling an F-15 and uh even another ky10 this is by the great George akamoto Boeing also proposed the 747 as a tanker we see it here with the KC 135 boom in a dry hookup flight test with the SR71 uh but uh the Air Force went with the dc10 for its accessibility into smaller air bases and so it was a very significant win for the company and uh this cutaway shows you some of the different configurations in the mix of Passenger and cargo uh when the markings were finalized I made one of the first renderings of the airplane again refueling F15 um and I remember this very fondly I got a pass to go out to the paint shop uh with my Polaroid and actually take the first photos of the painted airplane it hadn't flown yet but it was just literally uh painted the day or two before and I had the actual markings and made this rendering first flight was July 12th 1980 I'd like to show you a comparison with the kc1 uh versus the KC 13 5 ky10 had a number of very interesting features uh among them the hos and drogue housing a retractable hosen drogue was uh available for as I mentioned US Navy and foreign aircraft and then the main boom was a digital flyby wire refueling boom with twice the offload capacity of the KC 135 here we see this is an interesting size comparison with the kc1 and the C5 and this photo was taken during a 4 and a half hour test flight at Edwards Air Force Base uh operating its speeds up to 400 knots and altitudes as high as 25,000 ft during this sequence 48 total refueling contacts were made at different air speeds different attitudes again just opening the envelope for refueling such a large airplane h10s enjoyed 40 Years of continuous service they are just now starting to be retired 60 total were built one was lost in a ground fire in the first year of operation but 59 ky10 have soldiered on for the Air Force and uh I want to show you the different color schemes this is what we call the white top got airliner type color scheme there with a stripe and then this was affectionally referred to as shimu because the airplane looked like a giant killer whale current color scheme is the standard Air Force gray seen here on a KC 46 Pegasus which is the tanker that is going to to replace the kc1 and I've always been fascinated by Future Concepts and aviation art and uh I want to show you a very striking example of what happens when secret projects become reality so there you have it a look at Douglas secret projects Concepts and proposals as always special thanks to the great artists I was so privileged to have worked with in my time at the Douglas Aircraft company and all the wonderful people who supported the presentations group with uh photos and Technical material and again to Craig Caston engineer co-author of American secret projects available on Amazon at at all book sellers uh Craig has been a a great friend over the years a great supporter and uh generated the concept for this program so thank you for celebrating Aviation with Mike Maat I hope you enjoyed this episode we enjoy so very much bringing them to you if you haven't subscribed we love having you on board and please do hit the like button on the way out it does help us in a big way with YouTube so until next time take care

Channel: Celebrating Aviation with Mike Machat

Views: 25,836

Keywords: #secretprojects, #douglasaircraft, #mcdonnelldouglas, #jetairliners, $jetbombers, #aircraft, #airplanes, #aviation

Id: s6SDKjUj6NI

Length: 19min 24sec (1164 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 28 2023