Flying Forever

The comparatively short ranges of early aircraft dictated operational limits even more stringently than today. Civilian operators faced long stretches - especially on trans-oceanic mail flights with no fuel facilities. To the military operator, with airships and bombers outranging their fighter escorts, some way of keeping escorting fighters with the larger craft had to be found.

Overcoming distance was a challenge which some early trailblazers met by sacrificing passenger and payload space for fuel. This was an answer which defeated the purposes of commercial and military flights. Early mail flying-boats could - weather permitting - even refuel at sea from ships assigned to the task. Extra fuel tanks could be added - the drop tanks of the WW2 fighter being a good example.

A concept pursued up until post-World War 2 was to carry escorting 'parasite' fighters attached to airships or bombers, for release when their services were needed. The idea was modified for long-distance mail flights. But, despite some awkward starts, in-flight refuelling eventually provided a working solution. Today it is familiar enough to record only some early variations on these pages.


PARASITE AIRCRAFT:

R.33 PARASITE EXPERIMENTS - The RAF experimented with a small number of biplane types on the R.33 airship, by way of a self-contained fighter escort.


SKYHOOK - An 'air carrier' concept developed in the United States in the 1920s and '30s, and tested on the airships Akron and Macon, using a trapeze to launch and dock biplane fighters in the early 1930s.


SHORTS S.20 and S.21 - To increase the range of their Transatlantic mail planes, the British Air Ministry and Imperial Airways contracted Shorts to develop this composite design in the late 1930s.


VAKHMISTROV Z-SERIES PARASITE FIGHTERS - The Russian Vakhmistrov parasite fighter program dated from 1931, and was one of the earliest attempts to provide parasite fighter protection for heavy bombers.


McDONNELL XF-85 GOBLIN - A first attempt by the United States to design a parasite fighter to be carried and launched by bombers for defence in hostile airspace.


FICON - Although the XF-85 Goblin project was not a success, a single SAC squadron of modified B-36 bombers carrying variants of the F-84 was briefly active.


IN-FLIGHT REFUELLING:

PRE-WW2 IN-FLIGHT FUELLING - Thought had been directed towards the problem of fuel limiting aircraft range in WW1 or before. From the early 1920s, sound attempts were made to refuel aircraft away from airfields and conventional supplies.


IMPROVISATIONS - Whilst the method of inflight refuelling by lines between aircraft was being developed, one or two other methods were tried.


LONG RANGE FLYERS - The fuel questions which worried trailblazing aviators were also a practical concern for long-distance mail and passenger services.


WW2 IN-FLIGHT REFUELLING - When the war turned from defence to offence for the Allies, the problem became one of reaching a retreating enemy from a home bomber station.