British Special Projects

Description

British Special Projects: Flying Wings, Deltas and Tailless Designs examines the lesser-known and frequently secret British projects undertaken for research or military purposes during the last century and also covers those aircraft that were built and in some cases entered service. The first commercially successful British flying wing biplane designed by John Dunne undertook limited military reconnaissance duties during the First World War.

Various flying wings followed but the German development of the delta would prove massively influential with post-war British aerodynamicists immediately recognising the potential for a new generation of high-performance designs. Parallel research into advanced flying wings would produce plans for the superb looking Barnes Wallace supersonic swing-wing bomber, although his design was too far ahead of its time to progress any further.

There were also dead-end projects for bombers powered by atomic propulsion, vertical take-off concepts and over-ambitious ideas for British spacecraft that utilised delta- and blended-wing bodies, but were too technically challenging and costly to develop further. Nevertheless, many of these designs that stemmed from the simple flying wing remain influential today.