Saunders Roe SR.53 and 177
In the mid-fifties the British aircraft industry produced a number of operational jet fighters with trans-sonic capabilities like the Hawker Hunter, Gloster Javelin, De Havilland Sea-Vixen and the Vickers-Supermarine Scimitar. During this time, a new generation of supersonic fighters and fighter-bombers was being developed with a number of various prototypes in advanced stages.
Development of the SR.53
With a captured German Me-163 Komet rocket fighter as an example, British aircraft engineers in the late forties/early fifties started on several projects of a similar point defence fighter. The major drawbacks of the Me-163 were that it could only use its excess of speed for a very short period of time to execute a bomber interception and once that its rocket fuel was exhausted, it was nothing more than a glider and after landing, it had to be towed away making it very vulnerable during an enemy air attack. For a more sustainable flight, British designers (and also designers from a number of various other countries) came up with the concept of the mixed-propulsion jet fighter. It could cruise on a jet engine and once it had to make an interception the rocket engine was ignited. This gave the plane a tremendous rate of climb combined with a very high -supersonic- speed. Also Saunders Roe Ltd, based at Cowes on the Isle of Wight, designed such a mixed-propulsion fighter: the SR.53.
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Great web pages. I am a bit of an aircraft freak and regret the passing of a great UK aircraft building industry. Living close to the isle of wight I also remeber the days of the Princess flying boat and the Empire flying boats that used to fly from Calshot.
Hello Nico
I wonder if you can help me.
I play a game that uses all sorts of transport.
One form that is currently under consideration for introduction into the game is Flying boats. A moddeler who designs planes needs has been approached by me to make a graphic model of the SR Princess flying boat.
He requests basic dimensions.
This is to eneble him to design a scaled down model of it.
The finished view of the Aircraft is a maximum of 250 PIXELS in size!.
So the dimensions are simply the overal length, wingspan, under_carraige (hull) tail hieghts, engine size and spacing’s etc necessary to present a reaonable image to the screen. The execcutable program has built in variable values that refer to sprite sizes (graphics).
So if you have any information that I can pass directly to my moddleing friend (A Russian player of the game) that would be great.
The game is called locomotion by Chris Sawyer and published by Atari since 2004.
Thank you
Brian