Weird Winged Aircraft
Designer Custer poses with his channel-wing light-twin, another idea that did not catch on for various reasons.
By Norm Goyer
When I need a subject to write about I usually make myself a nice hot cup of Agentina tea, head for my research wall and dig into the history of aviation, one of my favorite topics. A few weeks ago, while doing research on STOL aircraft of World War II, I came across a photo of a Westland P12. This aircraft looks like somebody with a severe hangover chopped off the rear fuselage of a Westland Lysander and added a second short wing with twin vertical stabilizers to the second wing’s tips. It was certainly a weird-looking airplane and I could not imagine why anyone had taken the very beautiful Lysander and bastardized in such a way. Now I know.
In 1940, England fully expected Germany would invade the British Isles. To prepare for the upcoming battle for the beaches, a search for a very maneuverable aircraft, which could fly at very low levels, strafe the beaches, make fast, low turns and come back for a second run. The P-12 could do all of that, and in fact, was a very highly maneuverable aircraft. Westland installed twin cannon on the outside of the wheel covers, giving the plane heavy-duty forward-fire power. Twin machine guns were also installed in the tail turret so the plane could hit the enemy coming and going. Initial flight tests proved positive, but by then the scope of the war changed and the Westland P12 was never produced. End of story.
This is one version of the mid-1930s Burnelli transport with an airfoil-shaped wide fuselage. Very small numbers were built and put into service.
Meanwhile, in the United States Burnelli believed that having a long narrow fuselage with a rounded profile was wasting possible lifting areas. His designs changed the shape of the fuselage so it was very wide and had an airfoil shape. Twin-engines were installed on the outside of the cabin area. Burnelli then had booms extended to the rear for the control surfaces. The interior of the fuselage was very large and allowed for some exotic passenger conveniences. The Burnelli design was produced in small numbers and did show some promise, but the idea never caught on. Eventually the lifting body idea was switched to the military for their series of lifting body aircraft. The Space Shuttle is a form of a lifting body pioneered by Burnelli.
Custer tackled added thrust in a different manner. He thought that there was a lot of wasted thrust slipping off the ends of the propeller blades. His idea was to contain the thrust and increase power without increasing engine size. His idea did have merit, but other forces diminished the overall effectiveness. His channel wing was tested on several different aircraft, but eventually was dropped. Model airplane flyers went one step further and contained the entire prop, now called a fan, within a duct, and the ducted fan pseudo-jet engine, was created. Custer’s version only ducted one half of the propeller diameter.
The Westland P12 was intended to protect the beaches from the expected German invasion; the plane was never produced.
All of the above ideas were ahead of their time; the Westland P12 idea can now be seen in the Fairchild A-10 tank buster, the Burnelli idea in space vehicles. Currently there is some minor experimenting with channel wings in the homebuilt aircraft hobby.