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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: area rule
Message-ID: <1991Mar25.064841.29263@amd.com>
Date: 25 Mar 91 06:48:41 GMT
References: <1991Mar7.012839.29519@cbnews.att.com> <1991Mar8.022040.7569@cbnews.att.com> <1991Mar13.001146.4618@cbnews.att.com> <1991Mar14.035349.26827@cbnews.att.com> <1991Mar18.001230.19455@cbnews.att.com> <1991Mar22.042711.21405@cbnews.att.com> <1991Mar23.061709.4950@amd.com>
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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
>From: johnm@vme.heurikon.com (John Mahoney)
>I don't seem to recall there ever having been an F-102B. I was under the
>impression that the speed problem was discovered on the prototype XF-92
>and the design changes were incorporated into the F-102A. Even the two-seater
>102 was labelled the TF-102A, if memory serves. I'm pretty sure that the
>follow on, instead of being the F-102B, was the venerable F-106. (IMHO one
>of the sexiest looking airplanes ever built!) Or am I just having
>another one of those pesky memory faults?

I think you need to get somebody to run diagnostics on that memory. :-)
However, you did get some of it right, and I goofed on the designation...

The XF-92 did not discover the problem because the 92 was subsonic by design.

The first two 102s were YF-102s (there was no XF-102); first crashed early,
but problems in transonic performance were already evident; second confirmed
them... with production 102s (admittedly, meant for use in the development
program) already on the line.  Months of frantic work produced a drastic
redesign, prototyped as the YF-102A, a rebuild of 102 number seven.
This one reached Mach 1.2 without difficulty.  Some problems were found on
the way to 1.5, but it was eventually achieved.  The production aircraft,
based on this design, was the F-102A.  The trainer was the TF-102A.  An
advanced version using the J-75 engine was originally put under contract
as the F-102B, but ended up being almost totally different and became the
F-106 instead.
-- 
"[Some people] positively *wish* to     | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
believe ill of the modern world."-R.Peto|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry