I would like to share with you a pet project that ought to keep me busy in the months to come.
While looking at images of the Curtiss SC-1 Seahawk armed scout of 1944, and of the 1945 Ryan FR-1 Fireball jet fighter prototype, I came upon the realization that there may be much more in common between the two than it seems. Simply put, if you remove the jet and wheels from the FR-1 and replace the latter with the former's floats, you get a very plausible Ryan contender for the Seahawk. The more I studied the two designs and the more I wondered if Ryan's Fireball could have been derived from a slightly earlier armed scout proposal that was rejected.
WHY THE « FIRESCOUT »?
It has always seemed very strange to me that the SC-1 didn't seem to have any competition in prototype form. The war was at its height and development and decision phases must have been shortened as much as possible... aviation companies were more busy producing masses of aircraft for the war effort than developing one-off prototypes... but still! It seems like the Seahawk ought to have been chosen after a flyoff with some other valuable opponents. Not so.
Hence was born the idea of the Ryan XSR-1 Firescout. A prototype sharing many design characteristics with the XSC-1 (and perhaps other contenders which would have to be imagined) because it answered the same Navy specification, the Firescout makes sense. Its name introduces the "Fire-" prefix for Ryan products and is completely consistent with the company's product history as it is also similar to the name of the last Teledyne Ryan type that was produced before the Northrop take over, the Model 379 Fire Scout UAV rotorcraft.
Besides the three-view plans, photo manipulations and various imaginary documents to accompany the project, I'm planning to actually BUILD the SR-1 as a 1:72 scale model... Yes, your eyes have not deceived you! I'm talking plastic here, a first for me in donkey's years!!! I already have a Czech-made Seahawk by Antares, so now I need to get a hold of a decent 1:72 model of the Fireball. Of course I'm open to your suggestions on that particular point (easiness of build being an important criterion, as I don't know how to work in resin).
In profile view, the tail is not that of the FR-1, but rather of the FR-2. I prefered to pick the higher tail design which was more fitting for a floatplane. The canopy should not look as dated as the Curtiss one, but not as modern as the FR-1's drop-shaped one, so I opted for keeping the Fireball's canopy and adding some extra strengtheners. the lower tail, now deprived of an exhaust, narrows towards the end and gets aligned with the lower fuselage in pretty much the same way as on the Seahawk. The part of the fuselage between the engine and the wing is also strengthened.
WHAT WILL BE CHANGED
In plan view, the wings' shape and position are very different of course, but I won't change everything. After hesitating about moving the wings further ahead, like on the Seahawk, I've elected to keep them where they are as a Ryan originality. Just extended them further, widened the front part by adding some span from where the intakes used to be to the wingtips, and square these off a bit, like on the Seahawk (something I'm not yet too sure about, this.) The panelling of the non-foldable parts is simplified since there are now no jet intakes and less armament. The tail is also reshaped to be coherent with the wing's shape.In front view, the wings extend further at the tips, while the tail's horizontal stabilizers are slightly shorter. The jet intakes have disappeared and the guns are fewer. I still have one problem I'm having to solve: should the outer wings (the foldable part) be more slanted, like on the Seahawk, or is the design sound as it is without modifying that point? Obviously, that would demand some extra work on the plastic version if I were to angle them up a little more.
Please, by all means, tell me your thoughts about this project, what I should or shouldn't do to improve on it, and if it inspires you to try and do your own thing about it, by all means do!!!