1954 Interceptor
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1954 Interceptor
WS-201A, informally known as the 1954 Interceptor, was a United States Air Force project to develop a dedicated interceptor aircraft that would enter service in 1954. Several aircraft were developed as part of the project, leading to the F-102 Delta Dagger, F-106 Delta Dart, Republic XF-103 and, indirectly, the F-101B Voodoo and F-104 Starfighter. The electronics and weapons developed for the program would become common on US designs, including the AIM-4 Falcon missile and a variety of Hughes Aircraft-supplied radar and fire control systems. The project also led, eventually, to the upgrading of the SAGE battle control computers to directly control the interceptors for much of their flight. Although greatly delayed, the resulting systems operated for approximately 20 years, into the 1980s. Background The "1954 interceptor" concept first appeared shortly after the creation of the Air Force from the former US Army Air Force in the post-World War II era. With the re-arrangement of co ...
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United States Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal Corps, the USAF was established as a separate branch of the United States Armed Forces in 1947 with the enactment of the National Security Act of 1947. It is the second youngest branch of the United States Armed Forces and the fourth in order of precedence. The United States Air Force articulates its core missions as air supremacy, global integrated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, rapid global mobility, global strike, and command and control. The United States Air Force is a military service branch organized within the Department of the Air Force, one of the three military departments of the Department of Defense. The Air Force through the Department of the Air Force is headed by the civilian Secretary of the Air Force ...
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Bomber
A bomber is a military combat aircraft designed to attack ground and naval targets by dropping air-to-ground weaponry (such as bombs), launching aerial torpedo, torpedoes, or deploying air-launched cruise missiles. The first use of bombs dropped from an aircraft occurred in the Italo-Turkish War, with the first major deployments coming in the World War I, First World War and World War II, Second World War by all major airforces causing devastating damage to cities, towns, and rural areas. The first purpose built bombers were the Italy, Italian Caproni Ca 30 and United Kingdom, British Bristol T.B.8, both of 1913. Some bombers were decorated with nose art or victory markings. There are two major classifications of bomber: strategic and tactical. Strategic bombing is done by heavy bombers primarily designed for long-range bombing missions against strategic targets to diminish the enemy's ability to wage war by limiting access to resources through crippling infrastructure or reduci ...
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Sperry Corporation
Sperry Corporation was a major American equipment and electronics company whose existence spanned more than seven decades of the 20th century. Sperry ceased to exist in 1986 following a prolonged hostile takeover bid engineered by Burroughs Corporation, which merged the combined operation under the new name Unisys. Some of Sperry's former divisions became part of Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Technologies, and Northrop Grumman. The company is best known as the developer of the artificial horizon and a wide variety of other gyroscope-based aviation instruments like autopilots, bombsights, analog ballistics computers and gyro gunsights. In the post-WWII era the company branched out into electronics, both aviation related, and later, computers. History Early history The company was founded in 1910 by Elmer Ambrose Sperry, as the Sperry Gyroscope Company, to manufacture navigation equipment—chiefly his own inventions the marine gyrostabilizer and the gyrocompass—at ...
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North American Aviation
North American Aviation (NAA) was a major American aerospace manufacturer that designed and built several notable aircraft and spacecraft. Its products included: the T-6 Texan trainer, the P-51 Mustang fighter, the B-25 Mitchell bomber, the F-86 Sabre jet fighter, the X-15 rocket plane, the XB-70, the B-1 Lancer, the Apollo command and service module, the second stage of the Saturn V rocket, and the Space Shuttle orbiter. Through a series of mergers and sales, North American Aviation became part of North American Rockwell, which later became Rockwell International, and is now part of Boeing. History Early years On December 6, 1928, Clement Melville Keys founded North American as a holding company that bought and sold interests in various airlines and aviation-related companies. However, the Air Mail Act of 1934 forced the breakup of such holding companies. North American became a manufacturing company, run by James H. Kindelberger, James H. "Dutch" Kindelberger, who had bee ...
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General Electric
General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energy, digital industry, additive manufacturing and venture capital and finance, but has since divested from several areas, now primarily consisting of the first four segments. In 2020, GE ranked among the Fortune 500 as the 33rd largest firm in the United States by gross revenue. In 2011, GE ranked among the Fortune 20 as the 14th most profitable company, but later very severely underperformed the market (by about 75%) as its profitability collapsed. Two employees of GE – Irving Langmuir (1932) and Ivar Giaever (1973) – have been awarded the Nobel Prize. On November 9, 2021, the company announced it would divide itself into three investment-grade public companies. On July 18, 2022, GE unveiled the brand names of the companies it will ...
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Bendix Corporation
Bendix Corporation is an American manufacturing and engineering company which, during various times in its existence, made automotive brake shoes and systems, vacuum tubes, aircraft brakes, aeronautical hydraulics and electric power systems, avionics, aircraft and automobile fuel control systems, radios, televisions and computers. It was also well known for the name ''Bendix'', as used on home clothes washing machines, but never actually made these appliances. History Early history Founder and inventor Vincent Bendix initially began his corporation in a hotel room in Chicago in 1914 with an agreement with the struggling bicycle brake manufacturing firm, Eclipse Machine Company of Elmira, New York. Bendix granted permission to his invention which was described as "a New York device for the starting of explosive motors." This company made a low cost triple thread screw which could be used in the manufacture of other drive parts. By using this screw with the Eclipse Machine Com ...
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Autopilot
An autopilot is a system used to control the path of an aircraft, marine craft or spacecraft without requiring constant manual control by a human operator. Autopilots do not replace human operators. Instead, the autopilot assists the operator's control of the vehicle, allowing the operator to focus on broader aspects of operations (for example, monitoring the trajectory, weather and on-board systems). When present, an autopilot is often used in conjunction with an autothrottle, a system for controlling the power delivered by the engines. An autopilot system is sometimes colloquially referred to as ''"George"'' (e.g. ''"we'll let George fly for a while"''). The etymology of the nickname is unclear: some claim it is a reference to inventor George De Beeson, who patented an autopilot in the 1930s, while others claim that Royal Air Force pilots coined the term during World War II to symbolize that their aircraft technically belonged to King George VI. First autopilots In th ...
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Supersonic
Supersonic speed is the speed of an object that exceeds the speed of sound ( Mach 1). For objects traveling in dry air of a temperature of 20 °C (68 °F) at sea level, this speed is approximately . Speeds greater than five times the speed of sound (Mach 5) are often referred to as hypersonic. Flights during which only some parts of the air surrounding an object, such as the ends of rotor blades, reach supersonic speeds are called transonic. This occurs typically somewhere between Mach 0.8 and Mach 1.2. Sounds are traveling vibrations in the form of pressure waves in an elastic medium. Objects move at supersonic speed when the objects move faster than the speed at which sound propagates through the medium. In gases, sound travels longitudinally at different speeds, mostly depending on the molecular mass and temperature of the gas, and pressure has little effect. Since air temperature and composition varies significantly with altitude, the speed of s ...
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Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national republics; in practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the city of Moscow serving as its capital as well as that of its largest and most populous republic: the Russian SFSR. Other major cities included Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kiev (Ukrainian SSR), Minsk ( Byelorussian SSR), Tashkent (Uzbek SSR), Alma-Ata (Kazakh SSR), and Novosibirsk (Russian SFSR). It was the largest country in the world, covering over and spanning eleven time zones. The country's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government ...
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F-89 Scorpion
The Northrop F-89 Scorpion was an American all-weather, twin-engined interceptor aircraft built during the 1950s, the first jet-powered aircraft designed for that role from the outset to enter service. Though its straight wings limited its performance, it was among the first United States Air Force (USAF) jet fighters equipped with guided missiles and notably the first combat aircraft armed with air-to-air nuclear weapons (the unguided Genie rocket). Design and development The Scorpion stemmed from a United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) Air Technical Service Command specification ("Military Characteristics for All-Weather Fighting Aircraft") for a night fighter to replace the P-61 Black Widow. The preliminary specification, sent to aircraft manufacturers on 28 August 1945, required two engines and an armament of six guns, either machine guns or autocannon. The revised specification was issued on 23 November; it did not specify jet propulsion, but the desired maximum speed of ...
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P-80 Shooting Star
The Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star was the first jet fighter used operationally by the United States Army Air Forces The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ... (USAAF) during World War II. Designed and built by Lockheed Corporation, Lockheed in 1943 and delivered just 143 days from the start of design, production models were flying, and two pre-production models did see very limited service in Italy just before the end of World War II. Designed with straight wings, the type saw extensive combat in Korea with the United States Air Force (USAF) as the F-80. America's first successful turbojet-powered combat aircraft, it was soon outclassed with the appearance of the swept-wing transonic MiG-15 and was quickly replaced in the air superiority role by the transonic F-86 Sabre. ...
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F-94 Starfire
The Lockheed F-94 Starfire was a first-generation jet powered all-weather, day/night interceptor of the United States Air Force. A twin-seat craft, it was developed from the Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star trainer in the late 1940s. It reached operational service in May 1950 with Air Defense Command, replacing the piston-engined North American F-82 Twin Mustang in the all-weather interceptor role. The F-94 was the first operational USAF fighter equipped with an afterburner, and first jet-powered all-weather fighter to enter combat during the Korean War in January 1953. It had a relatively brief operational life, being replaced in the mid-1950s by the Northrop F-89 Scorpion and North American F-86D Sabre. The last aircraft left active-duty service in 1958 and Air National Guard service in 1959. Design and development Built to a 1948 USAF specification for a radar-equipped interceptor to replace the aging Northrop F-61 Black Widow and North American F-82 Twin Mustang, it was spe ...
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