Vertical takeoff and landing

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FRS.Mk 1 Sea Harrier of the Royal Navy

Vertical takeoff and landing refers to the ability of an aircraft , a drone or even a rocket to take off and land vertically and without a runway . Also common is the English acronym VTOL what "for V ertical T AKE O ff and L anding " stands.

Even helicopters and air wrenches are not strictly VTOL vehicles, but usually the term to fixed-wing aircraft ( aircraft with wing -related). This also applies if the rotary wing aircraft were constructed with stub wings.

If the take-off weight is increased , the vertical take-off can also be carried out with a short “run-up”, while the landing always takes place vertically. British aircraft carriers such as B. the Invincible class , called ski jumps .

Colloquially, the term whiz kid is also used for a person with a rapidly developing career .

history

Lockheed XFV-1 from 1953

The first reliably flying and vertical take-off aircraft was probably the Oehmichen No.2 by Étienne Œhmichen , a quadrocopter from 1922. The development of vertically taking off manned fixed-wing aircraft began towards the end of the Second World War in Germany with the Bachem Natter , a so-called tail starter . However, the VTOL concept did not get a boost in development until the 1950s and early 1960s because of the increased threat to airfields in the event of war, especially from the new missile and nuclear weapons .

A solution was promised by VTOL fighter planes that could take off from paved surfaces outside of airfields and could easily be relocated. Numerous prototypes were developed and tested, in Germany also by Focke-Wulf , Heinkel , Dornier and Messerschmitt and EWR , of which the Do 31 (first flight on February 10, 1967), the EWR VJ 101 (first flight 1963) and the VFW- Fokker VAK 191 B (1970) reached the stage of development. In France in 1962 experimented with the Dassault Mirage Balzac V . However, it was quickly found everywhere that the costs for such aircraft and the logistical effort to relocate the necessary support facilities, such as B. the fuel supply , were too high.

In the military field, the Hawker Siddeley Harrier is currently the only vertical take-off jet aircraft in practical use . The first flight was in 1966 and the model is still in service today. The Harrier is used on aircraft carriers where the ability to land vertically comes into play because of the limited space. Furthermore, the Harrier has mastered some flight maneuvers, which are of great advantage in a combat situation. A Soviet model comparable to the Harrier was the Jak-38 , which was decommissioned in the mid-1990s. The successor Jak-141 was not introduced.

The Bell Boeing V-22 has been introduced to the United States Air Force since 2005 . For 2008 the commissioning of another vertical take-off aircraft was planned with the F-35 . After development delays and significant cost overruns, it went into series production in 2011 .

After the euphoria of the early years in the context of the strategic transition from massive retaliation to flexible response , the importance of whiz-jumpers in the military sector was rated lower from the 1960s, which, along with technical problems, is the main argument for the discontinuation of most programs.

While vertical take-off fighter aircraft remained a marginal phenomenon, the VTOL concept has established itself in the field of short-range transport and close - air support . Since the helicopters used for this purpose clearly lag behind fixed-wing aircraft in their flight performance, the military and developers turned their attention to helicopters and convertible aircraft . The first and to this day (as of 2015) only model in use is the V-22 Osprey.

In the civilian sector there were a variety of VTOL or V / STOL approaches ( V ertical / S hort T AKE O ff and L anding ), for example in Germany. B. the drafts of the Do 231 “V-Jet” , MBB Bo 140 , HFB 600 “Vertibus” , VFW VC 180 , VC 400 and VC 500 . The mid- 60s years, the latest with the oil crisis in 1973 , most civilian VTOL projects, however, were set. The development of the fly-by-wire system is considered to be one of the consequences of these developments; it shapes modern aircraft construction.

V-22 Osprey
An X-35 JSF making its first vertical landing on the flight deck of the USS Wasp on October 3, 2011
A Jak-38 lands on the Novorossiysk heavy flight deck cruiser of the Soviet Pacific Fleet (1984)

Currently in planning or in service worldwide:

technology

A distinction is made between two types of drive, each with a number of implementation variants:

Combined lifting / linear actuators

Separate lifting and thrust drives

VTOL-like variants

Aircraft that cannot, or not always, take off and land vertically, but reach short runways due to special construction methods, are classified by similar acronyms:

STOL

STOL ( S hort T AKE O ff and L anding ) referred to start on very short distances and to land the ability of an aircraft.

STOVL

STOVL ( S hort T AKE O ff and V ertical L anding ) referred to start over short distances, but to land vertically ability. This variant is used, among other things, in the military sector and has the advantage of being able to carry more weapons and fuel with you when you take off. After using them, the weight decreases and the vertical landing is thus made possible.

VSTOL

VSTOL or V / STOL ( V ertical / S hort T AKE O ff and L anding ) is a generic term, which the terms VTOL and STOL resumes.

VTHL

VTHL ( V ertical T AKE O ff, H orizontal L anding ) denotes the vertical takeoff and horizontal landing - such. B. in the unmanned space glider Boeing X-37 .

See also

literature

  • Christopher Chant: Airplane prototypes. From whiz kid to stealth bomber. Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-613-01487-4 .
  • James A. Franklin: Dynamics, control, and flying qualities of V / STOL aircraft. American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Reston VA 2002, ISBN 1-56347-575-8 .
  • Steve Markman, Bill Holder: Straight Up. A History of Vertical Flight. Schiffer, Atglen PA 2000, ISBN 0-7643-1204-9 .
  • Otto E. Pabst: Short take-off and high-flying take-off (= Die deutsche Luftfahrt. 6). Bernard & Graefe, Koblenz 1984, ISBN 3-7637-5277-3 .
  • Wieslaw Z. Stepniewski, PC Prager: VTOL - new frontier of flight (= Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Vol. 136, Part 15). New York Academy of Sciences, New York NY 1966, doi : 10.1111 / j.1749-6632.1966.tb19022.x .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ whiz kid. In: duden.de. Retrieved May 17, 2017 .
  2. ↑ German Museum. A guide through the history and collections of the Flugwerft Schleissheim , 2004, p. 59.
  3. ↑ Flugzeug Classic - issue 08/09, p. 52 ff.
  4. ^ Secret Space Plane to Launch Tomorrow On Second Secret Space Mission. In: popsci.com. April 22, 2010, accessed February 22, 2015 .