The Arsenal VG 90 was a French
carrier-based jet-engined interceptor
Interceptor may refer to:
Vehicles
* Interceptor aircraft (or simply "interceptor"), a type of point defense fighter aircraft designed specifically to intercept and destroy enemy aircraft
* Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor, a police car
* ...
developed in the late 1940s. It was intended to compete for an
Aéronavale (French Naval Aviation) contract and first flew in 1949. It set a speed record for a French aircraft the following year, but both of the completed
prototypes were destroyed in fatal crashes and the program was cancelled in 1952 before the third prototype was finished. The Aéronavale contract was eventually awarded to a license-built British aircraft. The remains of the last VG 90 were
scrapped in 1978.
Development and description
After the end of World War II, Aéronavale had only two small
aircraft carriers: , which was loaned by the Americans, and , which had been leased from the British, but planned to
lay down
"Lay Down" is a single by the Strawbs which reached No. 12 in the UK Singles Chart in October 1972 - their first hit. It was included on their 1973 album ''Bursting at the Seams''.
The lyrics are loosely based on the 23rd Psalm in the Old Testa ...
its own larger PA-28 design in 1947. All of its aircraft were
piston-engined and had been rendered obsolete by the advent of jet-propelled aircraft during the war. The French lacked an indigenous
turbojet
The turbojet is an airbreathing jet engine which is typically used in aircraft. It consists of a gas turbine with a propelling nozzle. The gas turbine has an air inlet which includes inlet guide vanes, a compressor, a combustion chamber, an ...
design and
licensed
A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit).
A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...
the British
Rolls-Royce Nene
The Rolls-Royce RB.41 Nene is a 1940s British centrifugal compressor turbojet engine. The Nene was a complete redesign, rather than a scaled-up Rolls-Royce Derwent"Rolls-Royce Aero Engines" Bill Gunston, Patrick Stephens Limited 1989, , p.111 w ...
to facilitate their development of jet-propelled aircraft. Aéronavale issued a requirement for a jet-powered interceptor on 29 March 1946 and then issued a
request for proposal on 8 June. The aircraft had to exceed a speed of at all altitudes, have a climb rate in excess of at
sea level
Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardise ...
, and an armament of three
autocannon with the possibility of carrying bombs or unguided
air-to-ground rockets.
Arsenal de l'Aéronautique
Arsenal de l'Aéronautique (commonly named Arsenal) was a national military aircraft manufacturer established by the French Government in 1936 at Villacoublay. In the years before World War II, it developed a range of technically advanced fighter ...
's proposal was derived from its earlier
VG 70 research aircraft
An experimental aircraft is an aircraft intended for testing new aerospace technologies and design concepts.
The term ''research aircraft'' or ''testbed aircraft'', by contrast, generally denotes aircraft modified to perform scientific studies, ...
and its related VG 80 carrier-based fighter proposal. The
SNCAC NC 1080
The SNCAC NC 1080 was a French jet-engined interceptor developed in the late 1940s by SNCAC for use aboard aircraft carriers. It was intended to compete for an Aéronavale (French Naval Aviation) contract and first flew in 1949. The aircraf ...
and
Nord 2200 were the other competitors for the contract for 90 aircraft.
The single-seat VG 90 had a semi-
monocoque
Monocoque ( ), also called structural skin, is a structural system in which loads are supported by an object's external skin, in a manner similar to an egg shell. The word ''monocoque'' is a French term for "single shell".
First used for boats, ...
all-metal
fuselage
The fuselage (; from the French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an engine as well, although in some amphibious aircraf ...
and was fitted with
tricycle landing gear
Tricycle gear is a type of aircraft undercarriage, or ''landing gear'', arranged in a tricycle fashion. The tricycle arrangement has a single nose wheel in the front, and two or more main wheels slightly aft of the center of gravity. Tricycle g ...
. The leading edge of the
shoulder-mounted wing was
swept back at an angle of 25° and the wing itself was given a
dihedral of 4°. Three fuel tanks were housed in the fuselage with a total capacity of and each wing was provided with three additional fuel tanks between the two
spars; the total capacity of the wing tanks was . The skins of the wings and
tailplane
A tailplane, also known as a horizontal stabiliser, is a small lifting surface located on the tail (empennage) behind the main lifting surfaces of a fixed-wing aircraft as well as other non-fixed-wing aircraft such as helicopters and gyropla ...
of the first prototype were made from
birch
A birch is a thin-leaved deciduous hardwood tree of the genus ''Betula'' (), in the family Betulaceae, which also includes alders, hazels, and hornbeams. It is closely related to the beech- oak family Fagaceae. The genus ''Betula'' contains ...
plywood, but those of later prototypes were metal.
Dive brake
Dive brakes or dive flaps are deployed to slow down an aircraft when in a dive. They often consist of a metal flap that is lowered against the air flow, thus creating drag and reducing dive speed.Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms, ...
s were fitted on the upper and lower surfaces of the folding wings. Air for the
license-built Licensed production is the production under license of technology developed elsewhere. The licensee provides the licensor of a specific product with legal production rights, technical information, process technology, and any other proprietary compo ...
Nene 102 engine was provided by side-mounted intakes below the wings' leading edge. The entire aft fuselage could be removed to allow access to the engine. The
cockpit was armored and the pilot was provided with an
ejection seat
In aircraft, an ejection seat or ejector seat is a system designed to rescue the pilot or other crew of an aircraft (usually military) in an emergency. In most designs, the seat is propelled out of the aircraft by an explosive charge or rock ...
.
The VG 90's armament was intended to consist of three 30 mm
Hispano-Suiza HS.602 autocannon mounted in the center portion of the wing, but Arsenal investigated replacing them with four or six cannon. A
radar
Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, we ...
was intended to be fitted in the nose and four
hardpoints were going to be fitted under the center wing section for
drop tank
In aviation, a drop tank (external tank, wing tank or belly tank) is used to describe auxiliary fuel tanks externally carried by aircraft. A drop tank is expendable and often capable of being jettisoned. External tanks are commonplace on modern ...
s, bombs or rockets.
[
]
Construction and flight testing
Design work on the first prototype began in October 1946 and construction began fifteen months later. The aircraft was completed in May 1949 and ground testing began the following month at Melun-Villaroche airfield, although it did not make its first flight until 27 September. This revealed problems with the air intake ducts and the ailerons and rectifying those issue delayed the next flight until December. On the third flight, the dive brakes unilaterally extended and their shape had to be modified to prevent a recurrence. Further flights were uneventful and the prototype was flown to Brétigny-sur-Orge to be evaluated by the test pilots of the Centre d'essais en vol
Center or centre may refer to:
Mathematics
* Center (geometry), the middle of an object
* Center (algebra), used in various contexts
** Center (group theory)
** Center (ring theory)
* Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentrici ...
((CEV) French Flight-testing Center) on 10 May 1950. Initial evaluations were favorable although the pilots complained that forward visibility while landing was poor and that it was difficult to prevent the aft fuselage from striking the ground. During this time, the aircraft reached a speed of Mach 0.845 between , the highest speed yet attained by a French aircraft. Pilot Pierre Decroo was killed on 25 May while making a high-speed pass before coming in to land when pieces of the airframe broke away, causing the aircraft to roll seven times before ploughing into the ground. Flight-data instruments recorded about 15 violent oscillations. The crash investigation concluded that the dive brakes had again spontaneously opened and the high velocity caused them to be torn away, striking the tailplane and sending the aircraft out of control.
Work continued on the second prototype which had a larger vertical stabilizer
A vertical stabilizer or tail fin is the static part of the vertical tail of an aircraft. The term is commonly applied to the assembly of both this fixed surface and one or more movable rudders hinged to it. Their role is to provide control, s ...
with a split rudder
A rudder is a primary control surface used to steer a ship, boat, submarine, hovercraft, aircraft, or other vehicle that moves through a fluid medium (generally air or water). On an aircraft the rudder is used primarily to counter adve ...
, enlarged air intakes, modified landing gear, powered controls and a revised dive-brake installation. The aircraft made its first flight in June 1951. After the preliminary tests had been completed, pilot Claude Dellys flew the aircraft to begin its evaluation at CEV on 21 February 1952
Events January–February
* January 26 – Black Saturday in Egypt: Rioters burn Cairo's central business district, targeting British and upper-class Egyptian businesses.
* February 6
** Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh, becomes m ...
. It crashed en route after he reported experiencing some turbulence that was unnoticed by the chase plane
A chase plane is an aircraft that "chases" a "subject" aircraft, spacecraft or rocket, for the purposes of making real-time observations and taking air-to-air photographs and video of the subject vehicle during flight.
Background
Safety can ...
. Dellys died in the crash because his ejection seat malfunctioned and did not fire because of frozen hydraulic fluid. The accident investigation concluded that the recent removal of some balancing weights in the horizontal stabilizers when the power controls were installed caused aerodynamic flutter that tore off the tail of the aircraft.[Gaillard, May 1995, p. 53]
The third prototype was intended to be built to production standard as the first VG 91. The VG 90s had been found to be underpowered and the aircraft was to be fitted with a SNECMA Atar 101
The SNECMA ATAR 101 is a French axial-flow turbojet engine built by SNECMA. It was derived from engines and design work carried out at BMW in Germany during World War II, and extensively developed though a progression of more powerful models. T ...
C engine to improve upon their performance. It was also going to be equipped with a thinner wing and the intended armament installed. All further work was cancelled after the second crash and a license-built version of the British de Havilland Sea Venom
The de Havilland Sea Venom is a British postwar carrier-capable jet aircraft developed from the de Havilland Venom. It served with the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm and with the Royal Australian Navy. The French Navy operated the Aquilon, develo ...
was ultimately selected to satisfy Aéronavale's requirement. The incomplete aircraft was tested in the ONERA
The Office National d'Etudes et de Recherches Aérospatiales (ONERA) is the French national aerospace research centre. It is a public establishment with industrial and commercial operations, and carries out application-oriented research to supp ...
full-scale wind tunnel
Wind tunnels are large tubes with air blowing through them which are used to replicate the interaction between air and an object flying through the air or moving along the ground. Researchers use wind tunnels to learn more about how an aircraft ...
at Modane
Modane (; ) is a commune in the Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in southeastern France.
The commune is in the Maurienne Valley, and it also belongs to the Vanoise National Park. It was part of the Kingdom of Sardinia unti ...
to discover the cause of the flutter. Many years later, it was discovered in the scrapyard
A wrecking yard ( Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian English), scrapyard ( Irish, British and New Zealand English) or junkyard (American English) is the location of a business in dismantling where wrecked or decommissioned vehicles are bro ...
at Cazaux Air Base
Cazaux Air Base (french: Base aérienne 120 Cazaux) is a French Air and Space Force (french: Armée de l'air et de l'espace) base. The base is located in the village of Cazaux, part of the town of La Teste-de-Buch, and is approximately southwe ...
, but could not be restored and was scrapped in July 1978.[Buttler, p. 109]
Variants
VG 90
:Carrier-based fighter with a Rolls-Royce Nene turbojet, two completed.[Carbonel, pp. 101–102]
VG 91
:Production version of the VG 90 with a SNECMA Atar 101 turbojet, one built, but not completed.[Carbonel, p. 102]
VG 92
:Land-based version of the VG 90 without folding wings and arrestor hook
A tailhook, arresting hook, or arrester hook is a device attached to the empennage (rear) of some military fixed-wing aircraft. The hook is used to achieve rapid deceleration during routine landings aboard aircraft carrier flight decks at s ...
, project only.[
VG 93
:VG 90 fitted with wingtip ]ramjet
A ramjet, or athodyd (aero thermodynamic duct), is a form of airbreathing jet engine that uses the forward motion of the engine to produce thrust. Since it produces no thrust when stationary (no ram air) ramjet-powered vehicles require an as ...
s, project only.[Carbonel, p. 103]
VG 94
:VG 92 fitted with an afterburner, project only.[
]
Operators
;
Specifications
See also
Citations
References
*
*
*
*
*
Further reading
*
{{Arsenal de l'Aéronautique
VG90
1940s French fighter aircraft
Single-engined jet aircraft
Carrier-based aircraft
Cancelled military aircraft projects of France