For every successful aircraft there are many more that never made it beyond the drawing
board.
Some of these designs failed due to cost, time constraints, a lack of interest, or just
plain bad luck – but some were the victims of their own lofty ambition.
Today we’re looking at some of the crazier commercial aircraft designs that never quite
made it.
And seeing as flying boats are some of my favourite aircraft designs, lets start off
with a couple of them – both of which were designed at Sanders-Roe.
First up is the Dutchess.
Even before the second world war had concluded, the British Air Ministry was keen to revive
the famous flying boat air routes.
Saunders-Roe, often known simply as Saro, had foreseen the need of increasingly larger
flying boats in the postwar era, and were endeavouring to design and build the Princess.
The princess will get its own video, as that was an aircraft that at least flew, but along
with that aircraft they were also working on something more cutting edge.
The jet age had well and truly dawned, and Saro were designing a new aircraft to feature
this technology – the Dutchess.
It was designed and built almost in parallel with the Princes, and as such the pair shared
some physical similarities.
The dutchess was designed as a medium-range flying boat, with the intention to carry up
to 6 crew and 74 passengers across a distance of 2,600 miles.
It had a length of 124ft 6 inches, a wingspan of 129ft and a maximum takeoff weight of 130,000lbs.
It was envisioned to have a top speed of 550mph and a cruising speed of 468mph, which was
considered very brisk by late 1940s standards.
To move the Dutchess through the air at such speeds, it was designed to be powered by six
of the reliable de Havilland Ghost turbojets which provided 5000lbs of thrust each.
The engines would be mounted in the wing roots, three to each side, with removeable panels
over the installations to facilitate maintenance.
Up to three fuel tanks were to be provided: with 6000 gallons being contained in the two
main tanks in the outer wing sections, and an optional 1250 gallon tank in the centre
section of the wing.
The wings were high mounted on a visually distinctive hump, so as to reduce the risk
of water entering the engines.
The sweepback on the inner sections of the wing was greater than the outer sections to
achieve the high speeds required, the tailplane also had a significant sweepback for the same
reason.
Its hull form was unusual for a flying boat as its length-to-beam ration was pretty high
compared to contemporary design.
With the engines mounted so close to the centre, they could not be relied on to provide sole
lateral control when the Dutchess was on water.
As a result of this, a split water-rudder was included at the bottom of the tail.
The Dutchess would remain a paper aircraft, as the need for flying boats waned, but it
wouldn’t be the only jet-powered flying boat they designed.
Enter the Saunders-Roe Queen, and yes she is a big one.
In fact it should really be considered a cruise ship with wings, seeing as Saro had been contracted
by P&O to design her.
The intention was to provide the same facilities and standards of comfort that were enjoyed
by those travelling by sea.
Due to the large size of the aircraft, only long routes would justify the expense of such
an endeavour, and so the Queen was designed to fly from the United Kingdom to Australia.
The numbers of this mammoth are deeply impressive.
She was expected to have a capacity for 47 crew and 1000 passengers.
She had a length of 318ft, a height of 55ft 9 inches, and a wingspan of 313ft.
Her maximum takeoff weight was predicted to be 1,500,500lbs, and all of this was to be
powered by no less than 24 Rolls Royce Conway engines.
Amazingly a complete design study was drawn up for this aircraft, and Like the Princess,
I’ll do a full video on this monster in the future.
Sadly it might take a while, I’m on a waiting list to get copies of her design documents
sent to me by the national archives…and requesting copies from half way around the
world is turning out to be rather difficult.
Before Junkers worked on their famous G38 aircraft, they had produced an exploratory,
revolutionary, and massive design called the J1000.
Indeed, lessons learned from designing this aircraft directly affected the design process
of the G38s themselves.
Designed way back in 1924, It was the brainchild of a design team led by Otto Mader.
It followed Hugo Junkers pioneering principals of using a thick, load-bearing wing as the
main structure for the aircraft.
It had a wingspan of 80 meters, a length of 24 meters, and a height of 7 and a half meters.
The wing itself was constructed of a tubular frame with duraluminium cladding, and it had
a maximum thickness of 2.3 meters.
Jutting out at the front central section was the so-called command post, which housed the
cockpit and navigation room.
Like the G38 of future years, the J1000 was designed to have literal engine rooms in the
wing, which allowed mechanics to service the aircraft in-flight.
Initially, it was designed to be powered by a system of four 1,000hp piston compressor
engines – the propellers being driven by four turbines that would be connected to storage
tank containing compressed air.
At some point, this system was changed out in favour of four 2000hp Diesel engines.
Though the exact reason for this change is unknown, it was probably done for the sake
of increased power output for reduced complexity.
The so-called tail of the aircraft sat in front of the cockpit.
It consisted of a large horizontal control surface that sat atop the ends of two hull-like
structures.
These structures housed dining rooms and viewing platforms for up to 18 passengers, as well
as the structure for the landing gear.
The landing gear itself was designed to be retractable, a very cutting-edge concept in
1924.
In the event of a gear failure, the structure of these hulls was heavily reinforced to support
the impact of a hard landing.
The design of the J1000 had been prompted by Hugo Junkers himself, who wanted a revolutionary
design to take over to America.
He took the design with him, along with full blueprints, renderings and even some models.
But ultimately the aircraft was too big and too ambitious for its time, and Junkers failed
to secure any investors for the construction of a prototype.
Out of all the aircraft featured in this video, the Airliner NO.4 is perhaps the most fantastical
of the lot – though the Saunders Roe Queen is definitely a contender when it comes to
sheer size.
It was designed between 1929 and 1932 by Norman Bel Geddes and Otto Koller.
Geddes and Koller did not see eye to eye when working together.
They had disagreed on a previous design, and as a result of this Otto refused to provide
exact performance specifications for the new design.
Norman had a bit of a thing for designing vehicles of a bulbous shape, and the Airliner
No.4 is the best example of this obsession.
Whether this aircraft had a remotely safe aerodynamic design is still up for debate,
though its not wholly improbably, but its sense of grandeur cannot be overstated.
It was designed as a tailless V-winged amphibious monoplane.
The airliner had a wingspan of 528ft 5 inches and was supported by two great pontoons that
were 104 feet apart and 60 feet high.
It had a gross weight of 1,275,300lbs and it was powered by twenty engines that provided
a total combined output of 38,000hp.
Ideally it was to carry 451 passengers and 155 crew in singular luxury.
The airliner was designed with every comfort in mind, and with 9 dedicated decks it had
the space for it.
Four of these decks were built into the two large pontoons, with each deck coming as a
pair.
The first decks carried the main fuel tanks, from which fuel would be pumped up to auxiliary
fuel tanks that would feed into the engines.
Half of the second decks were also devoted to fuel storage, as well as housing pumps
and baggage compartments.
The third decks provided entrances for baggage and passengers, information desks, office
suites for the purser and stewards, crew quarters and the crews kitchen and mess hall.
The fourth decks both had forward lockout stations, and between them they also held
the main kitchen, pantry and supply rooms – which in turn would supply the twelve
other pantries and two axillary kitchens that were scattered around the airliner.
At the back of the fourth decks were six motorised lifeboats.
The remaining decks were in the main hull of the airliner.
Deck five featured a huge main lounge that had a 36 foot high ceiling, and could accommodate
such things as a full orchestra and dance floor.
The rear of the lounge featured a dining room that could comfortably seat two hundred, and
attached to this would be three smaller private dining rooms.
Along with this deck six also housed a gymnasium, solarium, children’s playroom, medical facilities
and a hairdressers shop.
Deck 7 was known as the promenade deck, as it ran almost the full length of the main
wing and provided excellent viewing opportunities for passengers.
It also featured cafes, a bar, bathing facilities and fourteen suites that had their own private
verandas.
Deck 8 held the navigation bridge, chart room, officers’ quarters and the radio room.
Deck 9 forms the interior of the auxiliary wing, where the engines are mounted, and it
contained the engine rooms, repair shops and additional equipment storage.
Not surprisingly, an aircraft of this size equipped with the technology of the time wasn’t
going to be the swiftest bird in the sky.
It had a theoretical top speed of 150mph and a cruising speed of between 90 to 100mph.
It was expected that a flight from Chicago to Plymouth would take forty two hours, and
the aircraft would require re-fuelling during this time.
It was never completely verified whether or not they intended to refuel this behemoth
mid-flight, but the safest option would involve an amphibious refulling operation.
It was estimated that the airliner would cost $9 million to build in 1932, and by making
three Atlantic crossings per week it could hope to pay for itself within three years.
For various reasons: size, cost, aerodynamics, and an inclination for sanity, it was never
built.
The remaining aircraft in this video don’t have as much documentation about them, but
they’re still worth honourable mentions.
Starting with the Boulton Paul P.144.
Near the end of their operating life, Boulton Paul began to work on designs for VTOL aircraft.
In fact, they were quite prolific with this, drawing up over a dozen designs during the
1950s.
The two most striking were the P.144 and the P.146.
The P.144 was more akin to Boulton Paul’s idea for a flying car or a private shuttle,
being designed to carry only five passengers or a cargo payload of 1000lbs.
It was to be powered by two Rolls-Royce engines that drove four fans, two in each wing.
The wings had a greater chord than span, giving it a somewhat bug-like appearance.
It had a length of 27 feet 9 inches, a width of 17 feet six inches, and a height of 13
feet 6 inches.
It had an approximate top speed of 184 mph and an endurance of 50 minutes.
A second version dubbed the 144A was also drawn up, which apparently looked more like
a car.
It had a jet engine for flight, and a traditional piston engine for ground use.
The P.146 was Boulton Paul’s grandest and most outlandish VTOL designs – and frankly
it looks like something straight out of thunderbirds which I absolutely love.
It was to be a 96-seat VTOL civil airliner with tandem swept wings and powered by three
modified RB163 bypass engines, along with eighteen RB.155 lift engines.
The three engines that were used for conventional flight were mounted around the rear of the
fuselage, while the eighteen lift engines were mounted in four pods on the tips of the
wings and the forward canards.
This design never made it past the initial concept stages, with only a single marketing
model being produced.
Up next, we have the Tupolev 404, a relatively recent design project that was started in
1991.
Initially this design began as a more conventional looking aircraft, somewhat resembling an upscaled
Boeing 747, but the passenger cabins posed design problems and so the decision was made
to change it to a blended wing design.
In this new form the main cabin was huge, having a width of 27 meters at its widest
point.
The vast floor and roof were joined by numerous struts or walls to withstand the pressurisation
loads.
The 404 had a wingspan of 110 meters, a length of 59.7 meters, and was designed to carry
over 1200 passengers with a maximum range of 13,500km.
Curiously this aircraft was to be powered by turboprops rather than jet engines.
Six engines were to be mounted in the tail section of the fuselage between two large
vertical stabilizers.
In 1993 Tupolev exhibited a large model of the aircraft in its flying wing configuration,
with a projecting cockpit near the nose, widely spaced slanting tais with underfins, and six
advanced turboprop engines.
Despite some general interest in the project, there was not enough to justify it going beyond
marketing models and hypothetical discussions.
And last, but certainly not least, we have the Rolls Royce Griffith – a supersonic
Vertical takeoff airliner that looks like something straight out of a sci-fi movie.
There seems to be no one single design for this aircraft, but a series of patents were
lodged by Alan Arnold Griffith – whom the project is unofficially named after.
The exploration of these patents resulted in a supersonic jet transport that was proposed
in the late 1950s.
It was designed out of a growing need for large transports that could operate at high
altitude and at high speeds in excess of 500mph.
The proposed design would be powered by a grand total of 68 jet engines.
56 of these engines would be installed in the main fuselage to provide vertical thrust,
and the remaining 12 engines would be mounted in the tail fins to provide lateral thrust.
Supposedly it was to give a top speed of 1,700 mph, cruise at 60,000 ft and carry up to 135
passengers.
To deal with the extreme forces and temperatures of mach 2 flight, the aircraft comprised of
an internal pressurised cabin that was mounted in a framework, with the outer skin itself
mounted on a second framework.
These two frameworks were connected together by sliding joints to allow for thermal expansion
during flight.
Aside from the information provided by the patents, further specific information on the
aircraft is almost impossible to fin.
Most of it comes from promotional articles from publications such as Aviation Week & Flight
Global.
It was only a speculative design, and for the 1950s it must have seemed almost impossibly
futuristic.
These were of course not the only strange aircraft to never make it past the drawing
board, indeed there are many designs out there that deserve coverage, so stay tuned for a
continuation of this video series in the future.
Next time we’ll be looking at some of the weird and wonderful military projects that
didn’t make it to production, but until then I hope you all enjoyed this little foray
into the world of hypothetical designs, and thank you for watching.