The Saab 35 Draken: The Groundbreaking Fighter Nobody Talks About

it was among the most record-breaking fighter aircraft ever built a singularity of Cutting Edge jet age design and an absolute badass Range of capabilities built by Sweden in the early years of the Cold War the sa 35 dragon or in English the dragon rewrote the rules on what a fighter aircraft could be and when it thundered into the sky it immediately became one of the few war wordss that Soviet Russia ever truly feared and on today's episode of Mega projects we'll be taking a closer look at the track and the unique mission resp responsibilities it had to undertake the stunning capabilities it could add to the Pilot's toolkit and the long long list of Records it shattered during decades upon decades leading the pack in the Years immediately following World War II the Victorious powers of the world felt that they might be able to take a bit of a breather although the Americans and the Europeans could see Soviet leader Joseph Stalin giving them side eye from his throne in Moscow they knew that Stalin was just as battered and bruised as they were and with politicians and Generals alike feeling entirely fatigued with war well just for a moment they took their foot off the gas when it came to aircraft development as the world stumbled into the jet age aircraft like the vampire and the meteor in Britain and the shooting star and the thunderjet in America seemed as if they might just be enough to hold over the transatlantic Powers until the next wave of military buildup began but over in Sweden the ruling Social Democratic party and the Swedish people had no such luxury with a population of barely 7 million a strict policy of neutrality with either the emerging NATO block or the Soviet Union and a whole lot of strategically significant territory Sweden understood acutely that it was going to be in the crossfire if NATO and the Soviets ever started trading blows during these years Sweden's government understood acutely that their policy of neutrality would see them steamrolled into a third world war but then again the entire world would be steamrolled anyhow by a massive nuclear exchange much more important from Sweden's perspective was that it would be able to defend itself during such a cataclysmic war and ensure that its people at least survived a first crippling nuclear exchange and in an age where bomber aircraft was still the primary means of delivering nuclear payloads that could only mean one thing Sweden needed an Interceptor aircraft now unlike say The British whose lack of foresight on the Cold War left them stuck with a hawker hunter or the Americans could throw together a whole series of fighter aircraft in no time at all the swedes understood that they were both racing against a ticking clock and at a material disadvantage in terms of how much they could produce and how fast they could produce it so all the way back in 1949 even before the Americans and the Soviets had tested mig5 and f86 aircraft against each other at scaring Korea Sweden was already laying the groundwork to procure an Interceptor aircraft that would put both the Americans and the Soviets to shame the Swedish Air Force was highly specific in what they were looking to acquire in order to fit the unique wartime environment that Sweden would have to operate in of course Sweden had the list of the speed and combat requirements you'd expect and a forward-looking version at that the new fighter jet would have to hit a top speed well above the speed of sound roughly Mac 1.4 to 1.5 an expectation that would be revised upward multiple times before the plane was ultimately produced it would also have to be capable of performing an intercept to roll at roughly the speed of sound with the expectation that it could deal with heavy bombers and their fighter accompaniment in time to prevent them from flying over Sweden's long but narrow stretch of territory but the plane also came with some more particular requirements it would have to be able to fly in all weather conditions day or night including the intense winter cold of Sweden's Northern reaches there would have to be a single pilot aircraft that could nonetheless destroy heavy bombers without a dedicated Gunner or Navigator and that have to be able to operate out of rough air strips including even reinforced public roads that were expected to serve as part of Swedish air bases in times of war finally they had to be really really easy to replenish between flights to the point that a team of military conscripts with basically no training could have them refueled and rearmed within 10 minutes or less from Landing to take off the specifications were for a fighter meant for a single absolute defense of Swedish territory an allout break neck effort to defend Sweden's airspace before the entire nation was destroyed along with the rest of the World by Sweden's own expectations its Fighters would never have to see a foreign war Sweden had no need no desire and no ability to project power abroad instead their Cutting Edge aircraft would be a massive investment strictly for National Defense and it would be an aircraft that in a best case scenario never saw combat if it did then the world was most likely in the process of being destroyed the aircraft would be built by the Sab Corporation who planned it to enter service when two fighters they had in deployment the Sab 29 tunan and the Sab 32 lansen KN fighter would have already been introduced used lived out their service lives and become obsolete that time allowance would end up being particularly important for the team at s who had to explore a wide range of new technologies that were either badly underdeveloped or didn't exist at all when the aircraft was in its early design phases a team of 500 or more technicians would work on the new s Fighter by the time all was said and done but one engineer led the pack Eric brat Brat's approach to the new fighter was a highly creative one and both he and the Swedish government were willing to take significant engineering risks and experiment with the limits of the available technology in the hopes that they could seize on advantages that less bold Aerospace designers might have left on the table Chief among them was the plane's so-called double Delta design looking at the eventual draon design from the top down it essentially uses two Wing shapes at once a pair of very narrow wings that run along nearly the entire aircraft body at an 80° sweep and a pair of wide stubby Wings toward the back of the aircraft that forms a much more traditional 60° TR triangular sweep those two Wing shapes were basically fused into one in a first ofit kind design choice that offered two major benefits first the double Delta gave the wings a significantly higher storage volume for fuel and second the double Delta design was much stronger in a structural sense meaning that the aircraft would be able to resist damage buffeting external winds and the strain of maneuvering in a dog fight better than a comparable aircraft of traditional Wing design the Design's major sacrifice specifically the drag in midair would also eventually confirm an advantage onto the dra but we'll get to that Advantage a bit later the first aircraft to come out of the dra program wasn't a full-sized aircraft but instead the L draon which is both Swedish for little dragon and a fantastic SoundCloud rapper name it was a prototype of about 7% scale meant to try and figure out whether a double delta wing would be able to fly competently at low speed high speed was much less of an issue anything with wings and decent proportions will stay airborne pretty well when it's blasting across the sky at Mac 1.5 the little dra made his made on flight in January 1952 and after an intense several months of flight testing it was modified to have its air intakes pushed back to the position that they'd end up in on the eventual dren aircraft starting directly alongside the cockpit in order to give the pilot far better Vision when looking down toward the ground in an age before computer programs or flight simulators it was the L dra that confirms that a full-size draon was worth building and build it they would with a Trio of full-size prototypes the first of the three took its Maiden flight in the Autumn of 1955 and the second flying a bit later unintentionally took the draon past the sound barrier for the first time in its Maiden flight the plan's afterburners had proved so powerful that they blasted it through the sound barrier even as it was climbing into the sky the plane was ordered for production its testing Crews pushed it further and further and in January of 1960 it reached Mac 2 for the first time by then the dra and aircraft had already been delivered to the Swedish Air Force and a few months later the proved their worth in a series of exercises that were just as intense as the testing process had been over 3 days and nights the first round of drens and their pilots flew the aircraft practically constantly proving they could scramble to intercept an incoming Target again and again get back into the sky rapidly and maintain complete readiness continually by the end of the year the aircraft had been delivered to multiple fighter wings and the dra fleet was finally in business when discussing the j35 dra we're going to run through the specs of the first line model the j35a as we'll come clear in just a moment there have been a lot of variant in export versions of the dra and for us to attempt to go through all of them would keep us here for a really long time and probably not be that entertaining but rest assured that each subsequent variant after the j35a offered its own improvements over the top of the Baseline model but even that Baseline model when it first entered service in 1960 was something to behold a one- seater aircraft powered by a single Rolls-Royce aen Mark 48a engine and fitted oh with a Swedish After Burner the Drake can measured an overall length of 15.2 M about 50 ft with a wingspan of 9.42 M or 31 ft when sitting empty at weighed above 6500 kg roughly 7 and 1/4 tons it wasn't designed to be able to carry a whole lot of heavy bombs instead it was meant to carry a whole lot of internal fuel a total of 2,240 L or about 590 us gall giving it an impressively long range for such a high powerered fighter aircraft even without any drop tanks it could hit a maximum speed of 1900 kmph 1200 mph and it needed less than a kilometer of Runway to take off as few as 810 M or about 2,700 ft it could fly as high as 20 km above the Earth's surface that's 66,000 ft with a neck breaking climb rate of nearly 40,000 ft or 12 km a minute in terms of its Weaponry it came equipped with two fixed 30mm cannons in the wing wings with each gun equipped to fire 90 rounds externally the plane was fitted with nine hard points including eight under wing and one under the belly of those nine six- wi hardpoints Were Meant to hold high explosive air to ground Rockets to fill an attack roll say if Soviet tanks were rolling across Sweden on mass the other two Wing hard points Were Meant to hold Sidewinder air-to-air missiles which entered service in the US four years before the dra did in Sweden on the belly the dra could Mount either two more side winders or a drop tank for fuel because of the limited amount of space under the wings dra could either carry underwing missiles or Rockets but not both meaning that these Fighters could be configured for either an Interceptor role that is with two to four Sidewinder missiles on board plus their guns or for an attack roll with their rockets and perhaps two underbelly Sidewinders for protection the plane was equipped with french-made radar and an advanced gyro Gunsite that used the aircraft's own data to help aim the plan's cannons more accurately but it's impressive as the j35a numbers were especially for the time that was still just the bass version 935 A's were produced for Sweden with the last one being delivered in December 1961 the next round the 35b would see some of its copies modified into a day fighter with its radar removed but the hard points armed to the teeth with offensive Weaponry most 35 BS would instead be an allweather fighter featuring a Swedish made radar a radar gun site and a full avionic Suite the 35b day Fighters would eventually be modified into the same successor version these were the first Swedish planes to ever received digital orders from the ground to the aircraft using computers that could store the data for pilot access rather than making the pilot memorize anything the 35c featured a rebuild of the front section of the aircraft to make it more flyable into a second seat in order to let it work as a train AV verion while the 35d featured greatly improved engines that raised the top speed from 1900 to 2,150 km an hour it also got a second underbelly hardpoint allowing it to fly even further missions than the previous dra interations the 35e was built as reconnaissance version for featuring a total of nine cameras in the nose and fuselage and a setup to mount up to four drop tanks or an infrared reconnaissance pot finally the 35f version cranked up the speed even more all the way to Mac 2 nearly 1500 mph or 2400 km an hour it also featured new missiles new avionics and just one Cannon rather than two subsequent designs for a ground attack dra were ultimately never built regardless of the specific variant of the draon that was in the sky at a given time the entire line of dra fighter planes demonstrated a truly impressive level of performance in the sky it was capable of punching through the air with Incredible Force giving it a particularly high speed at altitudes closer to sea level when taken relative to other fer aircrafts although it was designed for an Interceptor role the dra proved in tests and exercises that it was more than capable of functioning as a dog fighting aircraft it was easy to maintain cheap to keep in the Swedish air fleet and relatively simple to fly considering just how much power was behind the stick early sensitivity problems with how quickly it was willing to pitch up and down were quickly brought under control and it could could be easily taken apart and put back together for engine access but that's not to say that the plane wasn't demanding to fly in reality Drake and pilot had to be very careful not to enter super stalls when tilting the plane upward or even downward while traveling at high speeds would cause a tremendous amount of drag and make it difficult for the plane to keep enough momentum to fly it was also quite unstable in the air due to its lack of a tail section it was part to land as well but all that being said the dra was still an Incredible Gift to its own Pilots once they mastered its peculiarities the only people people with real complaints about the dra at least within the Swedish Air Force were the flight instructors forced to sit in the back seat and the trainer position with only minimal forward visibility those trainers were forced to peer through a periscope that flight instructors themselves described as quote staring through two toilet paper tubes but there's one other special capability that the dra has in its Arsenal that no other aircraft at the time could demonstrate it's name is the Cobra maneuver now we'll pause for a moment and take a breath while the legions are fight pling nerds watching this video go crazy like Frat Boys watching a keg stands and we'll explain what the Cobra maneuver actually is basically it's a maneuver that takes advantage of the dra's ability to superstall during the course of training Pilots to avoid these dangerous super stalls Swedish ammen learned that it was possible when flying a dra at moderate speed to raise the nose quickly to a vertical and then slightly past vertical altitude that sends the plane into a stall and slows it down very quickly but the Swedish Air Force realized that if you were to hit your air Brak right afterward while still stalled out you could drop your plane back into its normal position you could then fire the engines Up full power and You' be flying safely again that particular maneuver gets so much reclaim because at least on paper it's a very effective way to go from a bad situation in an aial dog fight to a good one basically if you're in a dra and you're being chased by an enemy pilot the dra maneuver will allow you to slow down rapidly and cause the pursuing aircraft to overshoot your position basically flying straight past you so that when your nose comes back down you're the one in Pursuit it's also an incredibly demanding move to pull off with both the plane and the pilot having to undergo extreme physical stress in the process while the pilot in particular needs to remain exceptionally aware of their situation in order to recover the super stool but in the dra's case not only did the plan Swedish Pilots manage to teach it to themselves and each other but they pulled it off with the first aircraft for which the Cobra was really an option the Cobra name itself came later in Sweden the move was known to Pilots as the port parad or the short Parry a term borrowed from fencing Pilots banked Olo and sa on arborn were credited with the discovery which took place in the first couple of years of dren service in the 1960s now as we previously mentioned Sweden's use of the dra was going to pay off in one of two ways in an ideal world it would keep Sweden's airspace safe over the course of its service life in a prolonged situ situation of Peace in which World War II did not break out in a significantly less Ideal World the Soviet Union and the United States would decide to begin a nuclear ocalypse and the draon would do its best to keep Sweden safe from immediate death in bomb blasts while they made ready for decades of nuclear winter you can Rejoice though Sweden like everybody else got the non- apocalypse option but with Sweden disinterested in participating in any conflict less cataclysmic than a world war that also meant that the dra at least in Swedish Service never had to handle the demands of combat but what the dra did have to handle was a whole lot of aerial interceptions in peace time with Sweden sharing the Baltic Sea with the Soviet Union both nations were at Liberty to use the Seas designated international waters for their patrols but whenever Soviet planes came close to Sweden it was on the draon to be able to intercept them and escort them away in the first few years of dra flights we can only imagine how the aircraft must have looked to Soviet Pilots an ultra Advanced aircraft in comparison to the mig21 and su9 aircraft that they were flying at the time it's sort of like the modern US flying f-35s over Central America only for Guatemala to send up some hyper Advanced alien spacecraft to ask those f-35s to choose another route in the case of the Swedish pilots and their drens they often chose to use the Cobra as a surprise tactic sometimes they'd have a playful look what I can do tone about it and sometimes there was an erir of never forget that we swedes can ruin a whole lot more than your day word about the maneuver didn't actually spread past these encounters for quite a while in the early years it was Kept Secret by Sweden and when the Soviets eventually figured it out they took credit for its creation elsewhere in the Swedish Air Force the dra waited ready for any indication that it might be needed in times of potential crisis it was the first aircraft to be shifted into Sweden's network of wartime only bases a network of runways that gave the dra and quick and complete coverage of the entire Swedish territory during more peaceful times the plane was very well liked by its pilots and used for all manner of purposes to set new Swedish flying records perform Feats of Daring and Ingenuity and all other forms of aerial swashb Ling that you'd expect from Pilots with a very capable aircraft and lots of time on their hands a total of 651 drens would ever be produced with the vast majority of them spending their entire service lives in Sweden now when it came to export Potential from the dra Sweden wasn't exactly in a rush to hand their technology out the swedes were big Believers in export controls regardless of the product and the draon especially at this time in history was not the sort of plane you'd want falling into a potential enemy hands but three World nations were lucky enough to get their hands on them Austria Denmark and Finland it was offered to several other nations including Switzerland Argentina Singapore Belgium Malaysia and others but was ultimately refused the drons in the Nations that adopted it did get a few tweaks the Danish version flew through 1993 and were modified to be able to fill a better ground attack role while the Finnish dra were upgraded during the 1990s and finally replaced in 2000s by The fa18 Hornet Austria flew theirs through 2005 while the US acquired six of them and flew them through 2009 as part of the national test pilot school like Sweden none of these International drens ever saw combat instead flying patrols and oh waiting on ready mode for whenever things seemed like they might pop off however the fins and the austrians did at least figure out the cobra with the fins using it on one occasion while intercepting a hawker Sly Nimrod aircraft and impressing the hell out of the plan's British Pilots both in Sweden and everywhere else the dra era couldn't last forever Sweden was not the sort of nation to leave defense matters till the last minute and by the time the dra entered service in 1960 the Swedish Air Force had already decided on a success aircraft its name was the sa 37 vgan translating to either the Thunderbolt or the much less threatening tufted duck depending on which meaning of the Swedish word Vig that you'd like to use the vgan Prototype took its first flight in 1967 just a few years after the draon had been dispatched around Sweden and by 1971 the vgan was in service to with greater operational versatility a higher maximum speed and much more powerful engines the vgan was a clear successor craft of the draon making for a whole new generation of fighter rcraft of course it's not a great look for a dragon to get beaten out by a tufted duck and the dra and its Pilots put up a good fight against the vgan in mock dog fights between the two aircraft Drake and pons very frequently utilize the Cobra maneuver against the vgan which couldn't perform the move safely at any useful speed V Pilots were never taught the maneuver on mass and although their fellow sweds could use the move behind the controls of a dra no other aircraft at the time was believed to be able to use it so vgan Pilots weren't taught to defend against it either thus they were often very surprised to learn it was possible during the heat of a mock dog fight the Cobra would be retired not just for vgan Pilots but for Pilots of the Jaz 39 gri and Sweden's current multiroll fighter aircraft but one maneuver couldn't stop the passage of time and the vgan was all things considered a better and more appropriate plane for Sweden's evolving needs over the coming years the dra would slowly be phased out of service although the many delays and cost overruns of the vgan successor program the grippin meant that some dra models had to be modernized and to have their service lives extended the initial goal was for the dra to keep flying through the 2000s an exceptionally long life for any vter aircraft in a modern military but because of budgetary issues and the increasing cost of maintenance on such a vintage plane the dra fully ented its service life in Sweden in December of 1999 by just a hair the dra was consigned to memory as a plane of exclusively the 20th century although a few would be kept in operation for things like air shows and other non-combat applications when it comes to Legacy of the draon it's an aircraft that's forced to take the same critical knock on its life that a whole wide range of modern fighter jets have endured it simply never saw combat and whether it would have been a complete dud or the best aircraft of its era we'll simply never know but what it most certainly was was an innovator from start to finish in its early days it was a technology test bed for ambitious aerospace engineers who in retrospect got just about every element of the dra design just right in the hands of its Pilots it was capable of incredible Feats that would take decades for the major powers of the world to replicate and while it wasn't an out ride better plane than the one that replaced it it was a grizzled veteran with more than enough tricks up its sleeve to prove its door belonged the draer never saw combat and it never will but as far as neutral Sweden was concerned that was the best case scenario regardless of what its plane might have been capable of Sweden still exists today and thus the dra's entire reason for existence has been conclusively validated of all the legacies that the dra might have had with Hazard a guess that its real life Legacy is the one its Pilots must have been most proud to leave behind

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 553,262

Keywords: saab 35 draken fighter, saab 35 draken documentary, saab j 35 draken, saab fighter jet, saab 35 draken, saab j35 draken, saab draken documentary, saab draken, j 35 draken, swedish supersonic fighter jet, saab viggen documentary, j35 draken, jet fighter, j-35 draken, saab 37 viggen, draken j35, draken saab, saab gripen, swedish air force, close air support, draken, saab 35, saab j35, saab viggen

Id: wOdEud5wXeE

Length: 22min 33sec (1353 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 09 2024