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Little known / experimental aircraft

Griz882 said:
Unknown…I think fewer than 20 built.
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Check that…a little research notes that the only existing version is at P’Cola! The people who flew it called it the “groundhog” and the unkind folks at Pax River noted…"The F6U-1 had proven so sub-marginal in performance that combat utilization is not feasible."
 
GroundPounder said:
That style of cockpit was all the rage there for a few years. I would imagine the people sitting down stair on the B52 would have like to have kept the original version.
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I think it was a manufacturing question.

Fabricating a nice bubble canopy is a lot harder than making a canopy out of several smaller pieces. Getting acrylic plastic to lay down in a mold with compound curves and have a finished product with good, distortion-free optical quality- it's complicated. There's a narrow temperature range for the plastic neatly taking the desired shape. A bit too warm and it will slowly flowing like really thick liquid (look closely at a 100 year old glass pane in old house, the bottom part looks "runny" and the same sort of effect can happen in an oven for manufacturing aircraft windows). A bit too cool and it won't flow smoothly, it will bunch up. A lot too warm and acrylic starts offgassing and smoking.

All that but in a thick canopy for a pressurized airplane is another manufacturing challenge.

If the windshield area is to be strong enough to survive bird strikes and enemy fire up to a given standard, that makes it more complicated.
 
jmcquate said:
I always thought it was because Boeings design for the B-52 was going to be a big B-47.
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I might have misunderstood what you were asking then. I thought you were asking why th B-47 canopy was a birdcage style (bars and windows) instead of one large piece of glass and a bars and windows forward section.
 
I didn't bring it up, GroundPounder did, but your post wasn't wrong. You won't see a "jailbar" less front cockpit until the early 70s with the F-15.
 
jmcquate said:
I didn't bring it up, GroundPounder did, but your post wasn't wrong. You won't see a "jailbar" less front cockpit until the early 70s with the F-15.
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There are exceptions though- the F-86 for example (pressurized and bubble canopy with conventional windshield).
 
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