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The year is 1961. USA needs an edge agaist the soviets. They turned to military supplier Convair, who at the time was looking into various applications of nuclear power in aircraft for the US navy. They had already proposelled the very imaginative submersible seaplane submarine hunter, and naturally had the imagination to think outside of the box. the engineers had so far thought up unmanned nuclear VTOL drones, aircraft caffier launched mach 3 strike craft, both projects that desperately need a future video, as well as giant nuclear seaplanes, much like the Lockheed flying nuclear tug that I put up last week that you can watch right here.
But the US navy wasn't satisfied. they needed something that had the deterrent capacity of a submarine, but would also be able to reach inland targets far from the ocean - after all, if you have ever seen a map of the world, much of the USSR was very far from the sea, and missiles used in the era lacked the flexibility of a manned aircraft.
Thus they needed a craft that could approach enemy terrorty without its presence being known, and then strike quickly. This is what the team at convair came up with.
this top-secret black project would be called the submersible nuclear ramjet. It would be unlike any other aircraft design of the era, and would resemble mroe of a manned nuclear missile than anything. It would have a long sleek design with a diameter of eight feet, as well as being 190 feet in length, with two fuel tanks, one at the front and one at the back, with four different exhaust areas at the rear.
It would have a sea weight of 350,000 pounds, which would lighten up to 240,000 pounds when the tanks were empty. It would be able to carry around 20,000 pounds of nuclear tipped weapons, 24 in total, that would be deployed as parachutes over the target area, allowing the jet to escape quickly. Remember this is the early 1960s, and self guided missiles were sitll just emerging technology.
This is how its mission would work.
this submersible Nuclear Ramjet mission would be one a quick, retaliatory strike. It would be used for operations which had little or no warning, or for when the powers that be deemed a first strike.
The crew of nine would start their deployment being subltly located near the teriroty of a nation, submerged under the sea sitting quiet. The mission profile was long, and would have employed life support systems designed for space missions.
When code red was given, the team would spring to action and pressurise the ballast tanks. These tanks would slowly be heated by the nuclear reactor, forming steam. This would simtaniously start to be released and the aircraft, if we can call it that, would rise from the ocean floor. The water would be vaporise and the jet would launch from the sea like a submarine nuclear missile today.
As the aircraft rose to the sky, it would tilt over until it was facing forward and scream towards the combat zone low to the ground. the ramjet would slowly switch from water to air as a reaction mass and increase up to around mach 4.
Upon reaching the target area, the nuclear weapon would be deployed via parachot from the top of the plane as it soared over ahead, as to not impact the ramjet inlets, and slowly fall down. It would come to rest on the ground, before detonating.
The jet, now presumably outrunning the blast and reaching safer open water, would throttle down its ramjet. It would pull into a vertical climb and then deploy special drag breaks. This would stall the aircraft and it would start to fall almost vertically tail first. Before it hit the water, it would use rocket jets for a rough final deaccelation - much like the space x rockets that we see today!
Once in the water, it would refill its tanks and descend under the waves.
So if it was so incredible, whatever happened to the design?
You might realise that this concept seems very simular to a later one, project pluto, which envisioned a flying nuclear cruise missile, that once completed would dive into the deepest part of the ocean, the marianas trench, to protect the world from the raditation. But as scott from aerospace projects review said in his original aritcle on this topic, the crew are very unlikely to want to sign a one way trip to the darkest and deepest part of the world.
By 1964, nuclear ICMBs were proved to be far more reliable, accurate, harder to stop, and didn't have pesky crew onboard who might have morals about attacking enemy cities with 24 nuclear weapons after spending long months underwater. The project was sunk... well, as far as we know on the USA side.
Whos to say what insane technology the russians have been working on. But thats a video for another time.
29 сен 2024
