You are currently viewing the Aircraft Profiles page
	Click this icon to return to the Gallery page

	Introduction
	This page is a gallery of profiles of 20th Century aircraft.  The profiles were made with the freeware vector based graphics software Inkscape.  LINK The main sources for these profiles are the excellent "Secret Projects" series of books by Tony Buttler. LINK

Click the thumbnail images below to move to the relevant part of the page.

	The mighty Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow, in natural metal finish (NMF).

	The Arrow again, this time in the colour scheme worn by a CF-101 Voodoo when it was used as an Electronic Warfare test aircraft. Note the additional antennae.

	A final Arrow representing a developed version with a more conventional canopy, and armed with AIM-47s. The IIAF required a high-altitude interceptor to deal with intruding MiG-25s and an operational Arrow might have been ideal.

	The Blackburn B.44, a single engined floatplane fighter related to the Firebrand.  Designed for an extended Pacific war where island airbases might not be available, the lower fuselage of the B.44 extended to form a central float, with retractable stabilising floats on the wings.  This concept had previously been successfully demonstrated on the B.20 maritime patrol aircraft.

	Of course, if the New Zealanders have them, then so do the Australians...

	And also the RN, in the attractive three tone scheme.  The B.44 would have been armed with four 20mm cannon in the wings.

	The Douglas F6D Missileer was a concept for a subsonic fleet defence machine, armed with six Bendix AAM-N-10 Eagle 100 mile range, two-stage air to air missiles.  The F6D would have had a loiter time of 6 hours 150 nautical miles from the carrier, and the three crew would have engaged targets at long range using the powerfull nose-mounted radar.

	And just to mix things up a little, here's a version in French service.

	A woefully under-represented machine on the internet, the Miles M.52 was Britains' attempt to be the first to break the "sound barrier".  The M.52 resulted from a 1943 requirement for a very high speed jet (not rocket) propelled aeroplane which, in it's military version, would have acted as an interceptor armed with two 30mm cannon.  The exact reasons for the cancellation of the project, just one year before the Bell X-1 was to so famously reach supersonic speeds, remain controversial.  This machine is shown in a Miles company scheme.

	Shown here in a similar scheme to that worn by the Gloster E.28/39 jet test aircraft, the ultimate twist in the tale of the Miles M.52 is that the rocket propelled models used to develop guided weapons in the late 1940's were, in fact, scale replicas of the M.52, and reached speeds of Mach 1.38, showing that the manned aircraft would have been capable of meeting its design objectives.

	The M.B.3 was a step on a long road to reach the outstanding M.B.5, a strong candidate for the best piston-engined fighter never to see service.  This earier aircraft would have been armed with six 20mm cannon.  Tragically the only prototype crashed during testing, killing the pilot Captain Val Baker.

	The BAC Type 1199 was a development of the Super VC-10 seating 284 passengers in a widebody fuselage.

	The two engined Britten-Norman Defender is used by No. 1 Flight for (probably) communications intercept purposes. The larger three engined machine - which is now back in production - has been offered as an alternative for military roles.

	The extraordinary Ushakov LPL was a reconnaissance / anti-shipping seaplane with retractable floats which was able to submerge upon landing. Much of the structure, including the cockpit, was free-flooding with the crew moving to a seperate compartment under the fin for underwater operations.

	The BAC EAG.3281 was one of a number of designs considered for an experimantal machine to explore the high speed flight regime up to about Mach 4. This large two seater aircraft would have been powered by two turbo-ramjets and featured large multi-shock integrated nose intakes.

	The Beechcraft P.17 is a single-seater fighter derivative of the famous Staggerwing. There is no information availble on line and it may never have been seriously proposed, but for sheer looks alone it should have been. Shown here in USAAC colours such a machine could have seen extensive export success in the 1930s in a similar manner to the Curtiss Hawk series. Examples of possible operators are shown here.