Warbird Information Exchange

Check out this article at RetroMechanix.com on a bizarre Avro VTOL supersonic jet fighter proposal to fulfill US Navy specification TS-140 in 1956:



It featured two pairs of unswept wings with four jet engines mounted on each wing tip. The aircraft's “X-wing” configuration is apparent when viewed from head-on, prefiguring the famous Star Wars design by several decades. Never before published online, it includes a 73 image slideshow reproducing the entire proposal brochure with many high resolution drawings, artist's impressions, and photos. It's amazing that the Canadian aerospace industry was once capable of producing such advanced concepts!

-Jared

Interesting, alot of sci-fi vechicles are 'inspired' by concept drawings and sometimes real life vehicles (i.e. the shiny silver ship the princess from episode 1 flew in, was definatly inspired by the SR71 and the drop ships from episode 2 where definatly a combo of Hueys and Russian MI34 choppers). So in some ways not surprising there is a resemblence.

Anyhow really cool thing to run across, yes along time ago ingenuity reigned, diffrent from today with too much red-tape and expense. Oh well.

Greg

read up on the avro arrow gentlemen we had an amazing aircraft industry that was single handedly destroyed by our own government in the late fifties and its brain trust scattered to the four winds, some went on to work for NASA and some went on to work on the concorde program!