Thanks! About cottage… do you know Mickey Newbury’s “Swiss Cottage Place”, one of my favorite songs ever…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ4HVBkhQFc (tear jerking for me, like many ones from this romantic genius singer)… But back to aviation retro futurism:
When the Fokker/VFW-614 was tested with success in 1971, it was so much better than competitors that such a layout (jet engines above a low wing) was concluded as being VERY certainly the future of commercial aviation: 1/ no need of big & fragile landing gear for low jet ground clearance, 2/ possibility of comfortable & cheap little stairs to climb into the airplane (without the problems of a high wing: narrow & unsafe landing gear from the fuselage or fragile & heavy from the high wing)… It was anticipated that Lockheed may propose such an airliner, with maybe no need to pay copyright to Fokker if designed as something like the ALIN-38, derivative of their Psh-38X (from the previous marine Psh-38W). No? We are now in 2017 and… isn’t it what happened? Uh, but hell: why???
In 1907, a journalist asked the Wright Brothers if, in the future, with increased speed and aerodynamic needs, the canopy of airplanes will be closed. The brother engineers laughed: “Do you want to kill the pilot?!” and “Look! A human pilot needs air, impossible to breath in a goldfish glass box or bubble!”. The journalist apologized for his stupidity, sorry, and his article depicted the fast airplane of the far future (like… say: 1950! or even 2000!), that he called “Mustang” like a wild horse (not a bird at all!), but still a breathing animal, of course, no “bubble” submarine! This wise anticipation deserves a reward, for sure.
In the 1950s, the future of aviation was very surely VTOL everywhere especially for military airplanes (all runways being destroyed in the first seconds of a modern war). The TSP-51 was such a TailSitting P-51 (with no relation to the French magazines’ TSP, meaning “Tournez la page S’il vous Plait” = please turn the page to the next one). Illustrated in the (1st) April 1953 article of Willy Sheikspeer “Future aircraft: to be VTOL or not to be?!”…
In 1948, the Roswell incident changed completely the future of aviation, military side: “no need anymore to prepare a childish fight between capitalist and communist cousins, a Total War is going to oppose human beings and Aliens from another planet or galaxy! Our technology is very poor and we will immediately try to copy their evil way, so efficient alas… 1,697,957,233 human casualties are announced (not yet official, greatly increasing at each second, according to our sources)…” Years later, it seems it was not the immediate future but a TV joke, celebrating the anniversary of Wells’ radio fake reports.
After the WTC drama in 2001, civilian aviation was strongly accused and it will never be the same again, as explained in a detailed illustrated note: “Civilian pilots will be controlled severely:
- In its design, every aircraft (including racers) will have to feature 6 firing turrets with explosive bullets pointed towards the pilot, these turrets being remotely controlled by legal authorities (in the name of the president).
- If a turret is switched off by a mechanic, it will automatically explode destroying all (and everyone) around, without a single warning.
- The goal is to decrease by 99.99% the number of candidates to become pilots.
- The remaining “candidates”, very suspect of terrorism, will be sent to Guantanamo lawless place/jail for complementary interview (possibly violent, but less than 15% killed estimated, except special cases involving national Security).
The future starts NOW!” […not yet started in 2017…]
In 1971, the future of US military aircraft changed completely: no more fantastic dreams of a Huge World War 3 with USSR at Mach 3+ in the stratosphere but the main word became Vietnamization (at very low “altitude”), the armies of the US wanting to go back home (and not directly in the graveyard). A cartoonist replaced the proud Stetson (a-la-John Wayne) by a rice field hat (against local sun & violent rain)…
In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan declared the Space Army technologic war, and aircraft within the clouds and turbulence seemed just an old memory anymore. “The future will be fighter spacecraft, for sure!” (he said). He was partly wrong for that part but when he said “this will defeat USSR”, he was right, financially…
In 1981, just before I turned 18 y.o., France elected a social-communist government, that was followed by many dances of joy in the streets: “we will not make war to USSR anymore (remember the scheduled mass murdering of cities here and there), we are friends with everybody now. Our monstrous Mirage supersonic atomic bombers-killers will be replaced by gentle unarmed agricultural biplanes for our flying lieutenants and captains. Yes we will buy them in the friendly USA: antique (= precious) P-51D & B modified with 80hp engines and 2-blade wood propellers (together with similar MiG-3 pretty biplanes in USSR). They will be developed especially for us! Paix-51, pronounced for us like P-51 means Peace-51! Yes, in a World of Peace, this is our future!” There were many clapping hands… idealistic? In fact alas, things went differently and a quick national bankruptcy/devaluation prevented any airplane change. Ahem.
In the early 1940s, most of the attention was focused on the tragic war alas, but an unclassifiable article depicted a very different future for aviation: “seaplanes and runways are doomed, we will jump in the sky!” (with landing that uses parachutes). No echo was encountered and History was not interested (alas?), except for drones (but paying no copyright to the article’s author).
In the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, I have always read prospective articles saying “airliners of the future will have no more fuselage: for sure they will be flying wings…”. OK but when? In the year 3000? who cares? I have looked in the archives and it was already told in the 1940s, with the W-82AL as illustration:
Long before the stealth fashion in aero design of the 1980s (and top-secretly before with the SR-71?), there were the 1910s transparent airplanes (almost invisible?), it is now well known. But in the meantime: in the 1940s, there was also the wooden Mosquito with no radar signature, and also a weird prediction: “aircraft of the future will be impossible to detect, even visually!”. The illustration below (“the cloud-carrying fighter”) was given either as futuristic or daydreaming fantasy, I don’t know.
With the radar technological race of the early 1940s, the electronic industry changed completely the aviation world, no more reserved to pilot aristocrats. As soon as January 1941, North American announced that – before the end of this year – future Mustangs in service (both fighter P-51U and bomber B-51U, U for unmanned) will be remotely controlled only. The date was wrong, but 70 years later this is becoming true (with other models, of course).
When appeared the twin-boom PZL Belphegor, many Western observers laughed loudly: “What?!! A jet biplane??! Stupid!! Hey, go back to school!”. No, gentlemen, sorry, PZL engineers wrote an article in the scientific Nr 1 revue “Science”, explaining that the change from biplane to monoplane has been a tremendous fault of the 1930s. “Airplanes of the future will be multiplanes again!”, and there were lots of mathematical proofs with equations and diagrams. And they were very right, knowing at last (today, in 2023) that the new Reno race, Unlimited, has been won by the Mustang triplane (of Chris Miller Jr):
In 1945 with the end of the war, and many many surplus machines, airplane industries had trouble to sell their products. One idea was to start a new race (like in 1926-27 for crossing the Atlantic), and in 1946, this great race goal was crossing the Pacific Ocean against the winds, San Francisco to Tokyo (not Alaska to Siberia, easy…) without stop (in Midway) nor air-refueling. This seemed impossible but made design bureaus work hard. Then, an unknown man (P.Mustangopoulos, US-citizen of Greek ascent) wrote a surprising article concerning this Pacific air crossing : “The winner, in a close future, will be the one pleasing Gods!”. Presenting a triple-fuselage tandem wing Mustang, “because” the God of the Ocean (Poseidon/Neptune) always wins (fishing?) with such a triple-forked trident and will bless only such an attempt glorifying Himself... (No money was found for building it).