Convair F2Y Sea Dart Footage on Water

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newMattokun@reddit

Those were the times when stuff was still tried out even it seemed unlikely to succeed. I'd have loved to be an engineer back then. These days it's all about how much will it cost.

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Era_of_Sarah@reddit

We should just rename this subreddit r/convair. They were so innovative!

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Reasonable-Cheek-214@reddit

That pilot must have *clanked* when he walked.

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Ngf031@reddit

Saw one at San Diego air and space museum

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iheartrms@reddit

I was sailing a boat in that very spot yesterday. And I have landed a sea plane just south of there.

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dootdoot1997@reddit

Got to see it in person and its huge!

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baldude69@reddit

Nice! I’ve been here too, great tiny air museum on a cool desolate Air Guard base.

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Desembler@reddit

This is barely relevant but I once had the idea come to me in a dream of turning an F111 cockpit capsule into a speedboat.

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Erikrtheread@reddit

Now that you mention it, the whole thing looks like a speed boat. Especially the profile where the wings are not as obvious.

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MiG31_Foxhound@reddit

I love that the nose and canopy look directly copied from the X-15 despite having nothing at all to do with North American.

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MartinTheMorjin@reddit

I think you just showed me my new favorite plane.

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kick26@reddit

There is also one in front of the San Diego air and space museum

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I've always wondered if the engineers working on those skids designed them using complex hydrodynamic calculations, or some guy just said, "Hey, I was waterskiing last weekend and noticed something! Let's try it out!"

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unknowndatabase@reddit

Almost certainly. This happens with lots of things engineers make.

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mz_groups@reddit

Part of my question is if any actual rigorous hydrodynamic theory even existed at the time that characterized planing interactions at the boundaries of two fluids, one compressible, one not, and one far denser than the other. It's not like one could pop it into a CFD program back in the mid '50s, and I would suspect that at that time, ski fluid mechanics were probably not a heavily researched discipline.

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HashSlinger2001@reddit

Aerospace engineer here, so I’m actually semi-qualified to answer this.

1) I can almost guarantee that a guy or gal like me was at a lake weekend having a few brews and saw a skier get up, or maybe they were skiing, and had a “HOLY SHIT” moment.

2) My educated guess and personal experience would suggest that the testing was done via physical models first in a small pool. At some point the contract would’ve been funded, and once they verified that the aircraft would indeed float, there would test it on the water at gradually increased speeds, making changes based on what they saw and what the pilot reported. This is also assuming that they knew the airframe would fly as a conventional airplane, which I am assuming was a given.

Even in modern engineering, we have a ton more data and we are much better able to predict the outcomes of our designs. That being said, if your test pilot comes back and says “Yeah. That shit is fucked.” You fix it, even if the data says it’s perfect.

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mz_groups@reddit

That sounds like it is probably correct. It’s interesting that they switched from a single ski to dual skis after the first flight, so there was very definitely an empirical “try and adjust” element t to it.

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T65Bx@reddit

Bold of you to think it can’t be both

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mz_groups@reddit

See my other comment . . .

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bmcgee1332@reddit

That same one outside the San Diego air and space museum. It was flown in San Diego bay in this video

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TrueSoren@reddit

One of the coolest damn jets ever

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Ultrapuert0s@reddit

And then they made a bigger one. The Seaplane Martin P6M SeaMaster with nuclear hability

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_Empty-R_@reddit

i will defend the idea of this still being a model ala b52 today. it is a tactical fault that we never produced them. it is still necessary and practical. idgaf what they say. boohoo maintenance. boohoo corpo sabotage.

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slater_just_slater@reddit

I was waiting for it to jump the shark.

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_Empty-R_@reddit

ha ha

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EvidenceEuphoric6794@reddit

Big Convair Sea Dart fan here, i know alot about this awesome jet but theres one thing I have wondered and I was hoping that someone in the comment section would enlighten me as to when and why this Sea Dart was painted white and red? I've never seen photos of it flying or on water like this, only ones of it sat in fields

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WarthogOsl@reddit

It might have been anti-flash white, which was somewhat the style of the time. I dunno if it was intended to carry a nuke, though.

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Atholthedestroyer@reddit

No, the (theoretical) production version was supposed to be armed with 4x 20mm cannons, 70mm 'Mighty Mouse' unguided rockets (not sure how many) and 2x Air-to-air missiles...not sure where they planned on fitting all of that.

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Mobryan71@reddit

Nuclear air to air missiles were an option at the time.

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Atholthedestroyer@reddit

Not at the time the Sea Dart was being tested. The AIR-2 'Genie' didn't enter service until '58, and the AIM-26 'Falcon' in '61 but the Sea Dart was cancelled in '58.

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Any_Towel1456@reddit

That pilot must be suicidal.

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TetronautGaming@reddit

Only one of the five prototypes failed catastrophically, killing the pilot, and that was in level flight. Somehow this stupid ‘50s concept wasn’t as much of a death trap as it appears.

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butt_crunch@reddit

Gaijin when

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Dr-Beeper@reddit

Looks like a death trap.

And it was:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_F2Y_Sea_Dart

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WarthogOsl@reddit

The actual cause of the crash is rather vague. Best I can find is that the pilot flew too fast while too low. One bit of speculation is that it flew so low that a shockwave formed on the water and bounced back up to the plane, causing it to break up.

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echo11a@reddit

I don't think that only losing one out of five prototypes throughout its entire test program, with the only crash being caused by pilot error, makes it a "death trap"....

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shalol@reddit

Considering the V22 had 6 similarly catastrophic events *with a magnitude more casualties and is still in service today, this thing is as safe as a developmental plane gets in the 1950's

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Healey_Dell@reddit

Indeed, but break up in flight was not what I was expecting…

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TheSweetestOfPotato@reddit

That’s a whole lot of vibration landing on water, and if it’s even slightly choppy that’s gonna bring the life down considerably.

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TheManWhoClicks@reddit

Happy maintenance with all that salt water everywhere

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122922@reddit

San Diego Bay.

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SensitivePotato44@reddit

Salt water and jet engines, what could possibly go wrong

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I_AM_FERROUS_MAN@reddit

Maintenance Hours Needed: Yes

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BryanEW710@reddit

Back when we would try anything to beat the Russians.

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Occams_rusty_razor@reddit

Same engines as the Cutlass. No wonder it never went supersonic. Would an area-rule fuselage have helped enough?

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SnooHedgehogs4699@reddit

I think had they used the area rule and given it a more coke bottle shape, it may have provided enough aerodynamic relief to get it just through the sound barrier. Probably just barely.

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