Talk:Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star

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Query

Do any of you know the wing loading for P-80. It would be good if it's P-80A.

Thank You.

New Refrence

The P-80 seems to appear in a new video game, Fallout 3, on a destroyed aircraft carrier. The game takes place hundreds of years after world war III has come and gone in a world where America never left the sterotypical culture of the 50s, largely in the irridated ruins on Washington D.C. The largest, most prosperus settlement in the game is known as Rivet City, and is in fact a beached and broken aircraft carrier, and if you go up on deck, what appears to be P-80s are everywhere. Just thought I'd add the refrence if anyone here cares to mention it in the article, since as you can probably tell from this post I'm not the best person to be editing actual aritcles HA! Lich —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.235.153.251 (talk) 20:02, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Notes

The original version of this article is below:

Lockheed Chief Pilot Milo Garrett Burcham, age 41, was killed at 5:11 PM on Friday, 10/20/1944 while flying the second production prototype YP-80 aircraft. He took off from Lockheed Air Terminial (now the Pasadena/Burbank airport), flamed out on take off and crashed into a gravel pit in North Hollwood. He purposely directed his aircraft away from populated areas in an effort to bring it down away from houses. My Uncle, the late Gene Gerow, a TWA check pilot in Connies, said he was on the ramp that day, and let Milo take off before him. Gene may have been one of the last people to talk to Milo in this world.

As it says in the Book of John, "Man hath no greater love than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

(Notes by Mike Gerow, San Diego, CA)

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Units

In what units should thrust be written? In units of mass (e.g. kg or lb) or in units of force (e.g kN or lbf). I am a bit confused because of the pound-force. Best regards. --XJamRastafire 03:08, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)~

As kg and lb

I prefer to list thrust in lb and kN rather than in kilograms. It seems more appropriate. -- ArgentLA 23 Dec 2004

Thrust is a force and thus measured in newtons. (Pound-force and kilopond (kilogram-force) were used historically, too, but are not SI units and thus obsolete.) --172.183.240.241 21:25, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Both pounds-force and kilograms-force are still in use. And historically, most rockets in both the U.S. and Russian space program were originally measured in one or the other of these units, and the original measurement should be retained as a good indication of the precision of the measurement and as a check on the correctness of the SI values which are necessarily conversions by someone. And the SI units are newtons, not Newtons. It's pretty weird that you use both the kilopond and kilogram-force names of that unit, and link the article titled "Kilogram-force" to your kilopond rather than to your kilogram-force. Gene Nygaard 21:48, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Kiloponds are officially obsolete since 1978, and they had replaced the kilogram-force long before that - my link deliberately uses the least obsolete name. --172.183.240.241 23:44, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

First of all, whether they are called kiloponds or kilograms-force is mostly a matter of geography, not of chronology.

Second, I have no idea what event of 1978 you imagine to be significant.

Note that kilograms-force have never been a part of the International System of Units, and have never been on the lists of units acceptable for use with the SI. The SI was introduced in 1960.

But the one thing that you don't seem to understand is that there is no general requirement that we use the International System of Units.

The units used to measure thrust are not in general regulated. There are a number of various types of standards-setting bodies which might throw in their two cents worth on this issue, but none of them has plenary, worldwide uthority in this area.

Some activities are regulated, and do require certain units--but this is not one of them. Some of the most heavily regulated areas deal with the sale of goods; but this discussion has nothing whatsoever to do with that field of activity. Note that there is nowhere in the world where kilograms-force are legal units for the sale of goods by weight. There is nowhere in the world where pounds-force are legal units for the sale of goods by weight. There is nowhere in the world where newtons are legal units for the sale of goods by weight. But both pounds and kilograms are legal for the sale of goods in the United States, for example. In the U.K. too, so far. And kilograms, at least, are legal for this purpose throughout the world.

Kilograms-force were the usual, customary units used for thrust in the Russian space program into the late 1980s or early 1990s, around the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union, though if anything that might have only slowed the changeover. Even today, I have seen several signs that kilograms-force remain the primary units for this purpose in the Chinese space program. Pounds force, of course, remain in use in the aerospace industry in the United States. Check the web sites of some of the engine manufacturers, for example.

But as I pointed out before, even if everybody involved in making these measurements were to instantaneously drop every other unit, and from today on never use anything but newtons, pounds force and kilograms force are still very relevant because they were the units in which many of the historical vehicles were measured. It isn't even possible to go back and remeasure most of them in newtons, even if anybody were inclined to embark on such a fool's mission. So they still very much have a place in Wikipedia. Gene Nygaard 04:36, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

UK and US gas turbines are measured in pounds (lb) static thrust (st), this is the thrust produced by the engine at sea level with the engine static, i.e., not moving through the air. European engines use metric measurements, i.e., kilograms. Because the gas turbine aero engine market was/is dominated by UK and US firms, the usual unit of measurement is still the lb despite metrication, but both are sometimes quoted.

Dimensions

I've put the dimensions in a new table at the bottom of the page, with both the XP-80 and the P-80A's dimensions, for comparison. (Both the old and new tables are at User:Logawi/P-80 dimensions temp.) This isn't standard, but it's useful to see how the sizes of the two versions compared. The change of engine prompted a significant redesign of the aircraft. I think it might also be instructive to include dimensions for the T-33 and/or F-94, although I don't plan on doing that right now. Logawi 21:18, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Agree. Also, since we've got capacities for the Ouragan & F-84, can we get how much fuel the F-80's tiptanks carried? And how much fuel total was usual? Trekphiler 10:51, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Answered. (Serves me right not just looking it up...) 8[ Trekphiler (talk) 12:14, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Dead link

During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!

• http://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/SP-468/cover.htm%7Caccessdate=2006-04-22
  • In A-6 Intruder on Sat Jun 3 22:43:46 2006, 404 Not found
  • In A-6 Intruder on Tue Jun 6 23:30:02 2006, Socket Error: (111, 'Connection refused')
  • In P-38 Lightning on Tue Jun 13 20:16:35 2006, 404 Not found

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maru (talk) contribs 00:17, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Try http://www.nasa.gov/centers/hq/home/index.html

Trekphiler 11:01, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

rewrite

The timeline became a bit convoluted in the telling of who was killed flying what and when. My rewrite tried to simplify that and restore the chronology, also reducing the number of dangling short phrases. There were a few minor inaccuracies, also corrected. Most of the material seems to have come from Joe Baugher, a good source, but Baugher got his material (some of it word for word) from Dorr. So I went to Dorr for reference during the re-write.--Buckboard 14:45, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

--Specifications---

More realistic specifications about p 80 (which wasn't faster than Messerschmitt 262) at site: http://www.aviation-history.com/lockheed/p80.html

You can read about post war tests in USA which confirm that fact at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_262 Part titled: Postwar evaluation, history and design influence

Spirit in the sky

The article says the P-80R was a modified prototype. IIRC, she was virtually hand-built, with features that would never appear (& weren't intended for) series aircraft, including a J73; again, IIRC, she was more like an F-94 prototype. Can anybody confirm? Include it? Trekphiler 10:59, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Early Development History

I believe this article http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/1993/2/1993_2_44.shtml describes the 180 day contract and delivery of the first P-80 better than the description in this article. The time was a bit longer to the first flight than is stated here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.33.99.141 (talk) 17:04, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree and its material is now summarized in the history and documented.--Reedmalloy (talk) 06:32, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Wing and a prayer

I'm not by any means expert, but from what I've read, the pos of the 262's jetpods was at least partly due to aerodynamic considerations of flow into the inlets. (Recall, they didn't have the fancy splitters & such common now.) Trekphiler 16:56, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

The Me 262 (like the competing He 280) had two engines because the-then (c. 1939/40) most powerful jet engines were not powerful enough to give a single-engined aircraft any advantage over the piston engined fighters then-current. This was the same reason the Meteor was also a twin. The advent of the Halford H.1 (Goblin) changed that, as it was more powerful than previous engines and de Havilland thought that with development it would be able to give an adequate thrust for use in a single engined jet fighter - hence the de Havilland Spider Crab (Vampire). This engine was then used for the P-80, which was also the first US single-engined jet - the Airacomet was a twin.

This relatively low-power of the early engines was the reason that the Vampire was designed with a twin-boom layout, as this minimised the length of jet pipe that was required, reducing the thrust losses caused by a long jet pipe. This is also one of the reasons that the Airacomet had its engines installed like they were, to keep the jet pipes as short as possible. By the time the P-80 was designed the Goblin had reached a stage in its development where such a short jet pipe was no longer a necessity.

Incidently, the reason that de Havilland was being generous in sending Lockheed the replacement Halford H.1 engine for the one destroyed in ground runs was because that was the only remaining engine de Havilland had built. As both the Spider Crab (Vampire) and the H.1 were built privately by the company, i.e., not under a government contract, they built two engines, one for the Spider Crab prototype, the other a spare. The spare was the engine sent over to Lockheed for the XP-80, and which was then destroyed in ground runs. This left only the remaining engine intended for the Vampire. Sending Lockheed this engine delayed the Vampire but allowed the US to get a usable jet fighter into the air before the end of the war - the UK already had the Meteor. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.40.254.21 (talk) 12:59, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

UK use

One P-80 was loaned to Rolls-Royce who were developing their Nene at the time. IIRC, it was based at Hucclecote. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.40.251.46 (talk) 22:35, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

That aircraft was 44-83027. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.40.254.21 (talk) 13:41, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

This aircraft (44-83027) has the distinction of being the aeroplane in which the first Rolls-Royce Nene was flown. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.4.57.101 (talk) 22:01, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Talking tiptanks

Did (do) the tiptanks affect the wingtip vortices generated at all? Does the change in position (tip to underslung)? TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 06:25, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

The Article completely disregards British Data/Aid.

British Jet Aircraft data which was sent as a gift to the USA during WW2 is the primary reason that the P80 was able to be designed so fast and enabled the USA to 'catch up' with the German AND BRITISH (not mentioned at all) lead over the USA in this area.

The article implies that it was USA 'excellence' alone, and Kelly Johnson/Lockheed who 'caught up' with the Germans in a very short time, with data that it took the Germans years to obtain.

I think the article should mention that the UK gave ALL of its data on Jet AIrcraft to the USA during WW2, and THIS allowed the USA to 'catch up', with the lead that Germany AND BRITAIN, had over them.

To not mention this is a distortion of history.

80.229.17.248 (talk) 04:27, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

That's a gross oversimplification of the issue. Nost, if not all, of the data given to the US by Britain was about jet engines, not aircraft airframes. This article is about the aircraft, not the engines. - BilCat (talk) 11:38, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

It's also wrong. No matter how good the engine, if the airframe is a dog, the engine alone can't make up for it, & there's plenty of examples. Moreover, the P-80 was re-engined within indig U.S. designs. It ain't all about the Brits. TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 11:59, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the intent of the original comment was that he felt there was a complete absence of any reference about British technical aid that led to the development of the P-80. What that extent may be is (obviously) open to interpretation, but I would agree with his "overall" point that something should be noted. Of course it would be helpful if he would have offered a possible sentence or sentences to be added rather than the typical Talk complaint of this article is lacking and "someone" should fix it. However to answer this point, I would respond with the fact that if the above questioner had simply read on, he would have seen just what he was looking for in the 3rd paragraph of "Design & Development":

The impetus behind the development of the P-80 was the discovery by Allied intelligence of the German Messerschmitt Me 262 jet in the spring of 1943. After receiving years of British jet aircraft research, the commanding General of the U.S. Army Air Forces Henry H. Arnold believed an airframe could be developed to accept the also British-made jet engine, and the Materiel Command's Wright Field research and development division tasked Lockheed to design the aircraft. With the Germans and British clearly far ahead in development, Lockheed was pressed to develop a comparable jet in as short a time as possible.

In my mind, this is exactly what he was looking for and therefore this is a moot point. Ckruschke (talk) 17:23, 21 March 2011 (UTC)Ckruschke

XF-90

This is a proposed mention of the obscure XF-90 which many aviation writers have noted as bearing a family resemblence to the Shooting Star as a follow-on if not a proper derivative design. It is not fair to call the XF-90 a derivative, but it pretty obviously shows that the F-80 was a starting point for the XF-90 and is not an unrelated design even if it did not share any parts, much more clear than the F-100 was related as a follow-on to the F-86. The F-104 was also based on fighter pilot input from the Korean War. North American and Republic fielded successful swept wing trans and supersonic fighters (F-86, F-100, F-84F) while the XF-90 was a dead end before the F-104 was introduced. Redhanker (talk) 22:04, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Unlike jets such as the Grumman F-9 Cougar and the Republic F-84F Thunderstreak which were based on straight-wing jets, the F-80 was never developed into a swept wing variant. However the final 1947 layout of Lockheed's next Lockheed XF-90 emerged reflecting experience with the F-80 adapted for near supersonic flight. It retained air intakes forward of a low-mounted wing with wingtip fuel tanks, but with a sharply pointed nosed and a swept wing. Designed as a penetration fighter to escort bombers and perform ground attack, it could exceed the speed of sound in test flights but it never saw production

http://www.vectorsite.net/avf104_1.html

The first XF-90 prototype.

Not a chance. This is mainly pure hokum. Kelly Johnson set out the design team of Dan Palmer and Bill Ralston who came up with as many as 65 different configurations based around the Penetration Fighter proposal. None of these were either derivatives or modifications of the basic F-80 design according to Jay Miller, David Donald, Bill Gunston and especially, Steve Pace, in his X-Fighters: USAF Experimental and Prototype Fighters, XP-59 to YF-23. St. Paul, Minnesota: Motorbooks International, 1991. ISBN 0-87938-540-5, p. 82, describing the design of the XF-90 in detail. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 22:29, 1 August 2011 (UTC).