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From: geoffm@EBay.Sun.COM (Geoff Miller)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: SeaDart
Message-ID: <1990Aug23.014325.1010@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 23 Aug 90 01:43:25 GMT
References: <1990Aug10.010802.29891@cbnews.att.com> <1990Aug15.032235.26328@cbnews.att.com> <1990Aug21.025500.2527@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
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From: geoffm@EBay.Sun.COM (Geoff Miller)


In article <1990Aug21.025500.2527@cbnews.att.com> simpkins@manta.nosc.mil (Michael A. Simpkins) writes:

>They have a Sea Dart on display in front of the Air and Space museum here in 
>Balboa Park. This is absolutey the strangest looking plane I have ever seen.
>(But it says on the plaque that it did indeed fly a couple of times.) It 
>sure doesn't seem that there would be enough room in the bay for that thing to 
>be doing flight tests, there must have been a lot less around back then.


I've always thought the whole Sea Dart concept rather odd.  I can understand
why the military of the day would have considered jet fighters that could
take off and land on the water, but the corrosion problems would've been
incredible.  A small flying boat would've been a halfway practical approach,
at least from the corrosion standpoint; the British even tried that out
with the Saunders-Roe whatever-it-was.  (Practical from a corrosion stand-
point, anyway.  Flying-boat hulls aren't exactly optimized for aerodynamic
efficiency, the Martin Seamaster notwithstanding.) But the thought of plopping
a jet fighter bodily into salt water makes me cringe.  It *was* a neat-looking
little critter, though.


Geoff


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    Geoff Miller                 | "It's a fried telephone book! We gave it a
    geoffm@purplehaze.sun.com    |  fancy French name, and you ordered it!"
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