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For years, all the aviation world knew about Boeing’s secret stealth project from the 1960s was limited to a name and a single mysterious photo. It seemed like a relic out of time, possessing many stealthy design features that wouldn’t exist until decades later, and even then, only in highly classified black projects.
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But Boeing just exclusively provided Foxtrot Alpha with a trove of photos and information for the very first time. After decades in the shadows, here is Boeing’s Kennedy-era “Quiet Bird.”
Even Boeing admits that there is very little known about Quiet Bird, also named Model 853, and that official records of the program were likely destroyed in 1970s.
Yet the tidbits of information that do exist about the concept paint a highly intriguing picture of an aircraft with design elements that have echoed throughout the decades that followed it.
The concept dates back to the early 1960s, with a one-half scale model of the aircraft being built sometime between 1962 and 1963. The aircraft was an exercise in utilizing specific materials and shapes to drastically reduce the radar cross-section of a tactical aircraft.
From this pioneering design, five Boeing “stealth” patents were awarded, and they only appear to have shown up in public records in the early 1990s, decades after they were officially filed.
The model of Quiet Bird was said to have been tested at Boeing’s Wichita facility in 1962-1963, all of which occurred on a radar range. No actual flight testing of Quiet Bird itself was said to have happened, though. But the tests were highly successful: they proved that it was possible to drastically decrease the radar signature of a tactical aircraft.
Still, the concept was not just designed as a shape to test radar reflectivity. Boeing had full plans to develop it into an actual aircraft. Unfortunately for them, the design ended up being too ahead of its time. Even to be adapted as a forward penetrating observation or attack aircraft, and believe it or not, the military had little interest in it.
This actually makes some sense. At the time, raw performance and increasingly advanced avionics that could allow for either all-weather high-level or low-level penetration of enemy airspace were all the rage. (See also the SR-71, U-2, A-6, and F-111). As it was, this jet wouldn’t have been much of a performer, but it very well could have been invisible to enemy sensors, and with that, who needs performance?
It would not be until about a decade later that the Pentagon would begin considering aircraft designs with low-observable technology as their primary feature set, later dubbed stealth, as a silver-bullet technology worth pursuing with fervor.
When looking at Quiet Bird, especially in these new images and schematics released to us from Boeing, it is amazing how many stealth features that are used in modern day low-observable aircraft designs existed on this 50-year-old concept. The aircraft’s chine-line that separates its smooth, shallowly curved bottom and trapezoid shaped fuselage are key tenets of stealth designs to this very day.
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The aircraft’s canted tails and exhaust set well forward of its trailing edge are also key features found on many modern combat aircraft that were designed with signature control in mind. This configuration not only helps with lowering radar reflectivity while still providing stability and maneuvering control, but it also shields the aircraft’s hot exhaust signature from the virtually every angle but from directly above and behind.
Even the aircraft’s gold plated canopy and use of composites structures are all major techniques widely in use today to lower a manned aircraft’s radar signature.
http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/never-seen-photos-of-boeings-1960s-stealth-jet-concept-1732308296
For pics and videos go to link above.. very interesting
