Re: Junkers Ju EF 009 jet engines galore!

Bluuuue Rajah <Bluuuuue@Rajah.> wrote in
news:Xns9B17C6B151A78lkajehoriuasldfjknak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

Russell Watson <russell-watson@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:uuolc4l08sr4nq095i5h6cu62ktcp8cs2b@xxxxxxx:

On Fri, 12 Sep 2008 02:29:57 -0700 (PDT), LIBERATOR
<nogeekluv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

An amazing airplane from the 30's, I don't suppose there ever was a
prototype that existed and was filmed. I would love to see this fly.
Jet engines encapsulate the fuselage.
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http://www.luft46.com/junkers/juef009.html

Junkers Ju EF 009
This unusual design dates from the late 1930s, and was one of a
number of early jet aircraft designs from Junkers. It was officially
known as the Hubjäger.
The fuselage was short and cigar-shaped, and a conventional
tail unit was fitted to the rear. Wide, short wings were mounted low
on the fuselage, and contained the entire fuel supply for
approximately six minutes of flight. Ten small jet engines were
clustered around the fuselage at the wing's leading edge, six on top
and four beneath. Takeoff was to be achieved by either a takeoff
trolley, or in a vertical position at 77 km/h (48 mph). It would then
transition to horizontal flight when its operational altitude was
reached. To help cope with the expected high G forces on takeoff, the
pilot lay in a prone position. Landing was to be unpowered (that is,
gliding in after the fuel was exhausted) on a central skid located
between the two lower most turbojets. Armament was to consist of two
MG 151/20 20mm cannon, or alternately two MK 108 30mm cannon.
Since the endurance was so short, the EF 009 would have
been
deployed around strategic locations as a "point-defense" interceptor.
Aircraft design advances made this project obsolete almost before the
ink was dry on the drawings.

10 turbojets to produce less power than the single (though much more
dangerous) alcohol/peroxide rocket motor of the Me163 Komet which
performed the same sort of role. The Germans definitely came up with
some *** righ out of Buck Rogers, though: jets, rockets, swept
wing/swing wing/forward-swept wing, etc, some of which would not
appear again on operational aircraft until 2 or 3 decades later.

They should get one of those for the Smithsonian.

It seems to have a lot of power plant redundancy, which means that
it's either heavily overdesigned or the engines were extremely
inefficient, failed frequently, either case making it a deathtrap.
The noise in the cockpit must have quickly and permanently deafened
the pilots, and I wouldn't want to be in there when a poorly balanced,
high friction engine decided to tear itself apart and throw pieces of
it's blades through the fuselage.

It similarly looks like it would very easy to make the obvious mistake
of over-throttling the thing, thus pushing it fast enough to tear the
wings right off the body. Either way, you'd have to be suicidal to
get into it, which I guess the Nazis may have been, considering how
badly WW II turned out, for them.

On secod thought, I'm thinking that the engines must have been
"underdesigned," and the ratio of the thrust per nacelle to the laden
aircraft weight must have been much less than today's units. Of course,
the steels they had to work with were of a much lower quality than
today's steels, which would have required the use of lower powered
engines, to keep down the centrifugal forces on the blades and prevent
the engines from tearing themselves apart.

But I still think that the pilots would go deaf pretty quickly.
.