Oblique Wing - History

History

The oldest examples of this technology are the unrealized German aircraft projects Blohm & Voss and P.202 Messerschmitt Me P.1009-01 from the year 1944, based on a Messerschmitt Patent. The constructer Dr. Richard Vogt was brought after the war to the USA during Operation Paperclip. The oblique wing concept was rediscovered by Robert T. Jones, an aeronautical engineer at the NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California. Analytical and wind tunnel studies initiated by Jones at Ames indicated that a transport-size oblique-wing aircraft, flying at speeds up to Mach 1.4 (1.4 times the speed of sound), would have substantially better aerodynamic performance than aircraft with more conventional wings.

So far, only one manned aircraft, the NASA AD-1, has been built to explore this concept. It flew a series of flight tests starting in 1979.

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