Not so long ago, the Internet project Alert-5 raised a small information tsunami. Reporters who were broadcasting from the China Helicopter Exposition (which was held for the fifth time in Tianjin, China, where the headquarters of the state aviation corporation AVIC is located), reported on the prototype of the "flying saucer" presented here.
A placard described the experimental vehicle as "a high-speed armored helicopter with a wing-fuselage composite structure." It also reported that he "absorbed all the advantages" of the Ka-52, Mi-26, AH-64 (Apache) and CH-53 (Sea Stallion) helicopters, and in the future will be able to climb to an altitude of 6000 m at a speed of 16 5 m / s, and will develop 650 km / h with a range of up to 3000 km.
Information stand on the sidelines of the 5th China Helicopter Exposition.
Within a few hours, the spectacular images spread on the Web, and the next day through the official mouthpiece of the PRC, the Global Times newspaper, it became known about the name of the mysterious apparatus - "Super Great White Shark" (SGWS). The publication reported that SGWS will be equipped with a pair of turbojet engines that create horizontal thrust (their air intakes and nozzles are actually visible in the pictures), and that the fuselage of the machine is covered with stealth materials. The state newspaper described it as a "sci-fi" attack helicopter, combining "high speed and invisibility", designed to operate in the line of direct contact with the enemy. However, Western engineers and experts, who understood the scanty data on the amazing new product, were rather skeptical about it. No one ever understoodwhat exactly the car borrowed from Russian "alligators" or American "Apaches". But she reminded too much of other aviation projects, for the most part - long-worked and closed.
One of the first photographs to appear on the web.
Pancakes and pies
Disc-shaped aircraft with a flat wing-fuselage capable of generating additional lift were tested back in the 1930s. During the Second World War, both warring parties were engaged in the search for structures capable of vertical (or at least shortened) take-off and landing and suitable for placement on non-aircraft carrier decks. The unusual scheme seemed to many to be a good option: aircraft engines would provide thrust, and a flat, wide fuselage-wing would create increased lift. Such a project (Sack AS-6) on instructions from the German military was developed by Arthur Sack, and in 1944 even (unsuccessful) tests of a full-size prototype passed. In the same years, the US Navy funded the project of Charles Zimmerman and the aircraft manufacturer Vought. They built and tested flat experimental aircraft V-173 and XF5U-1,nicknamed "flying pancakes", but in 1947-1948 and this program was curtailed.
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Following the wooden prototype V-173 (pictured), two metal XF5U-1s were assembled, but the XF5U program was soon phased out.
Soviet designers also made their own “approaches to the projectile”. So, in the early 1990s, the EKIP company operating in the Korolev near Moscow, headed by Lev Shchukin, designed and tested an experimental apparatus with a "thick" wing-fuselage. He no longer looked like a "pancake" - rather, like a pot-bellied pie - nevertheless, he also relied on the lift of the wing-fuselage. For obvious reasons, the project was not implemented; of the remaining pair of prototypes, one can be seen in the museum today, however, in Popular Mechanics we have already written about EKIP in all the details. The Chinese "shark" differs radically from all these projects: its round, thick wing-fuselage is devoid of even the semblance of an aerodynamic shape and is unable to create more or less significant lift. You cannot call it a "flying pancake", but rather a "flying saucer". However, such prototypes have already been tested outside the PRC. Since 1958, by order of the same American Air Force, this work was carried out by Avro Canada, once one of the largest aircraft developers.
One of the Soviet "Flying Saucers" in the State Military Technical Museum in Chernogolovka.
Canadian plates
The VZ-9 Avrocar, created by the team of designer John Frost, was truly experimental and used the Coanda effect in flight. Everyone must have noticed its manifestations: a thin stream of water falling along an even wall, as if reaching for it and inevitably stains the spout of the teapot. The fact is that the wall prevents the free flow of air in the gap between itself and the water jet. A rarefied area of low pressure is created, where water is diverted. They tried to use this effect many times in aviation (and in some places, to a limited extent, they did use it), but Frost's attempt remains one of the most ambitious. His apparatus, similar to a giant (5.5 m in diameter and up to 1.1 m thick) frisbee plate, hid three Continental J69-T-9 engines, located on the sides of an equilateral triangle for stability. In the center was the main propeller with 124 blades: to create lift, part of the jet stream from the engines was directed directly downward from the nozzles, and part was deflected, driving the propeller and allowing control of takeoff and landing.
The popular press of the early 1960s presented the VZ-9 Avrocar as a kind of flying army jeeps of the near future.
On the edge of the "saucer" there were movable flaps in a ring. They made it possible to regulate the flow of air flowing around different sides of the surface, and create the necessary lift and thrust forward. In the early 1960s, several VZ-9 Avrocar prototypes were assembled, some of which even took off.
However, according to the results of the work, the design was recognized as unsuccessful: the flight turned out to be too unstable, especially at high altitudes and speeds. The center of application of aerodynamic forces constantly "walked" around the center of gravity of the apparatus, a number of attempts to increase controllability did not help, and at the end of 1961 the program was curtailed.
One of the prototypes of the VZ-9 Avrocar produced.
Destruction of legends and new legends
The next time they started talking about such "flying saucers" was at the beginning of the XXI century, when the Canadian developer Paul Moller showed the M200G Volantor octocopter with propellers hidden along the circular edge. The device no longer pretended to great heights and speeds: the creators planned to make just a comfortable civilian flying car, capable of climbing a couple of meters and moving, economically using the screen effect. Among other things, the low height promised to facilitate certification: according to American law, lifting below 3 m does not apply to the aviation department and does not impose corresponding requirements. The project has started to show major cracks since 2005, when it was criticized on the popular TV show "Mythbusters". It revealed,that Moller has been promising the creation of such devices since the mid-1970s and has managed to get a lot of money for them - but never has it gone beyond demonstrating smaller models that are barely able to get off the Earth. Indeed, in recent years, his project has completely disappeared from the information agenda. Perhaps the constructor is just tired.
Paul Moller Prototypes: Late 1990 - early 2000s
The most recent reports of such concepts date back to early 2019, when a team of Romanian engineers led by Rashvan Sabi unveiled their All-DIrectional Flying Object (ADIFO). In addition to four propellers, the device is equipped with a pair of engines, the jet jets of which can be directed not only through the main nozzles, but also through several pairs of side nozzles, which promises high maneuvering possibilities. However, while we are again talking only about a reduced model with a simplified design, very, very far from those indicators that the developers are talking about, promising to "democratize supersonic flights." On the other hand, since the time of Moller and even more so the Avrocar project, aviation has made a huge leap forward - progress associated, first of all,with the creation of computer systems for flight control and management. Perhaps this gives hope to both the creators of ADIFO and the Chinese developers SGWS. The "superbig shark" scheme that appeared on the Web is indeed very reminiscent of the VZ-9 Avrocar. But if in the 1960s the designers from Canada did not manage to stabilize the flight, it is possible that now their colleagues from the PRC will succeed.
The promising device is planned to be equipped with a 20-mm automatic air cannon and a set of air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles.
Looking at the diagram, it should be noted that there are already two oppositely rotating coaxial screws in the center. Perhaps it was this detail that was borrowed from the Ka-52 to make it more stable. However, this is not the only problem that awaits the creators of SGWS. Suffice it to mention that at high speeds the device will inevitably encounter resistance, which will create a large central fan. It is possible that, in total, the difficulties of implementing such a scheme will once again outweigh its possible advantages. And then we will remember "Supercule" as another of a series of human attempts to create a combat flying saucer, as in the previously created science fiction.
Roman Fishman
