yes you read that correctly, a coal fired plane, the
Kronach Lorin coal-fueled ramjet engine, was an idea that was thought of as the
Second World War was nearing it’s end, a prototype was apparently built, but the war ended before
they could get it to work, the aircraft never made it past the drawing
board, but testing of wind-tunnel models in the DVL high-speed wind tunnel
showed that the design had extraordinary stability into the Mach 2.6 range, at
the end of the war even the prototype DM-1 test glider had not been finished
when it was captured by American forces,
the Americans ordered Lippisch's team who was working on it to complete the glider, and it was then shipped to the United States where it
was test-flown, according to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics
the results were positive and lessons learned were incorporated into NASA's
research aircraft of the 1950s and onwards, film footage exists, (but I could not find it), which shows a gliding test of a
scaled-down model of the P.13a,
you can even buy a plastic model kit of the aircraft, and a paper one, at this site there is a really impressive amount of detail about the aircraft, including the fact that after the war, Lippisch, working with American aircraft
designer Convair, developed and tested the XF-92 based on his designs, leading
to the eventual adoption of the F-102 Delta Dagger and its successor, the F-106
Delta Dart, there is a replica at The Military Aviation Museum in Virginia Beach, Virginia located in the Cottbus hangar, so back to the concept, how about someone designing a clean burn coal fired aircraft engine, to use up some of that unwanted coal?
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