A Wonderful Stack Of Wings from Russell Chmela

I love these wings! Some of these I hadn't even heard of before.


Among the various avenues of aviation design were the "flying wing" or "tail-less" or "wing-body" creations. They were sparked by the desire for aircraft that were simpler to build, or offered better efficiency by lesser drag, or the later known attribute of lower observability. There were advocates and experts in these designs in many of the major aviation producing countries. Some were well known as Northrop, Horten, Lippisch, and Burnelli but there were more by the names of Bartini, Cheranovski, Dunne, Hill, Fauvel, Canova, Junkers and Kimura.






One of the branches of these unique designs were the Parabola wing, mostly named for B.I Cheranovski, but also experimented with in Germany and the US. This wing, shaped like the protractor drafting and drawing instrument was to offer simplification and streamlining to aircraft. The designs were known under the Russian designation of (Bich) and German attempt by Horten or (Ho).





In the light of imagination comes the concept of these shapes being adopted as standard technology from the 1930's onward in both small and large aircraft by many nations. Most would include a raised fuselage in addition to the wing in smaller craft. Adapted as combat fighters, then Bombers and transports, the Parabolas were a concept that would be limited to the subsonic, even under jet power. In the quest for greater speed, the parabolas would morph into the more swept Delta wing as a delta flying wing of thinner cross-section.





The S55 was followed by the S66 passenger flying boat a few years later. But what would they look like if built today? or if the production line was restarted in modern times?
The answer might be in the form of the Savoia Cigno or the nickname of --- Savoia 2.0
Built with modern composites and turbofans with Computer aided design drafting, the new flying boat is graceful in form and function.
Applications are as a sports aircraft and scaled up to become an executive transport.





Last installment in this series, a drawing of an All-wing design for the Italian AF and Navy. The plane is the Piaggio Artiglio (claw) first flying in 1940. The drawing is in Prismacolor pencils and depicts an Artiglio making a touch-and-go landing at sea on the carrier Aquila (Eagle).