Make a Twister plane..

[Sybarite]

Better than a spinnaker :-

" The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal embedded into the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car. The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene. The lab finally figured out what it was and what had happened. It seems that a man had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit (Jet Assisted Take Off - actually a solid fuel rocket) that is used to give heavy military transport planes an extra "push" for taking off from short airfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert and found a long, straight stretch of road. Then he attached the JATO unit to his car, jumped in, got up some speed and fired off the JATO! NOTE: Solid-fuel rockets don't have an 'off'... once started, they burn at full thrust 'till the fuel is all gone. The facts as best as could be determined are that the operator of the 1967 Impala hit JATO ignition at a distance of approximately 4.0 miles from the crash site. This was established by the prominent scorched and melted asphalt at that location. The JATO, if operating properly, would have reached maximum thrust within 5 seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of 350 mph and continuing at full power for an additional 20-25 seconds. The driver, soon to be pilot, most likely would have experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog-fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners, basically causing him to become insignificant for the remainder of the event. However, the automobile remained on the straight highway for about 2.5 miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied and completely melted the brakes, blowing the tires and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and impacting the cliff face at a height of 125 feet leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock."

I don't believe the driver got away unscathed.

John

640K ought to be enough for anybody. — Bill Gates, 1981


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[alanporter]

That's an "urban legend". I have heard similar stories involving a motor boat that was supposed to hit a hundred feet up a cliff, a pickup truck that shot over a building, and a glider that went so fast it's wings fell off. I don't know who invents these tales, and I doubt if anyone can get hold of a JATO bottle. I have seen them and they are big and heavy, not easy to sneak out of a military airfield.


<hr width=100% size=1>Alan Porter

 

[peterb]

Urban legend or not, I once watched such rockets pull the wings off an aircraft.

The plane in question was a Stirling heavy bomber; the date about mid 1943. The RATO units were being used experimentally at Farnborough to improve the take-off with heavy bomb loads. The intention was to use four units on each side, fired sequentially through a rotary switch on a bomb distributor unit. Somehow they got fired on the "jettison" setting, which fired all eight simultaneously. The fuselage stayed where it was; the wings took off. (I was a local schoolboy, hiding in the bushes at the edge of the airfield, watching what went on.)

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[ubuysa]

Indeed it is an urban legend, read the full story at the Darwin Awards site <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/index_darwin1995.html> here </A>.

<hr width=100% size=1>There are 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary and those who don't.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by ubuysa on 14/03/2004 15:10 (server time).</FONT></P>

 

[peterb]

But it's listed as a Darwin award, not as an urban legend.

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[ubuysa]

You need to read on, it was thought to be true but has since been revealed as an urban legend. Below is the text at the bottom of the JATO page from the Darwin Awards website.......

<font size=1>This Darwin Award is the most popular of all time. Considered true for years, it was later debunked as an Urban Legend by the Arizona Department of Public Safety. The story fooled the judges in 1995, so JATO has been grandfathered in as a Darwin Award Winner. Officer Bob Stein of the Arizona Department of Public Safety says, "I receive inquiries several times a day about accidents, drug busts, and investigations we are conducting. About two years ago I picked up the phone and researched the answer to what has now become an Arizona myth. Even after all this time, I still receive about five calls a month from people wanting to know, did it really happen?"

The author of the JATO legend would enjoy a cult notoriety were his identity known today. He is unknown; however, there are several who claim of ownership of the idea of strapping a jet engine onto a vehicle. One man's story of the JATO and the Railroad Cart is a 25,000- word essay on what NOT to do if your father own a scrapyard.

Keith Cody reports, "Steve Lubars called the Arizona Highway Patrol in July 1996 to research this story. According to Charles DeCarolis at the Arizona Department of Public Safety, "No such incident has ever been described in any Highway Patrol accident or crime scene reports," and he said I could quote him 'on the record.'"

Edson C. Hendricks says, "Baffles me why anyone would believe the JATO story, because it's physically implausible. Attaching a modern JATO to an automobile so that it will not tear free on firing would be a remarkable engineering feat. Anyone smart enough to accomplish that, would also be smart enough to be nowhere near when the JATO is fired! Leaving that aside, as long as the car stays on the ground, the wheels would have sufficient friction to keep the motion straight, although they would probably lack the traction to maintain stability. Once the contraption became airborne, there would be NOTHING to stabilize the flight. Those doodads on airplanes like wings and tail assemblies are not only for style, but to keep the aircraft level. An airborne automobile propelled by an attached JATO would slam nose down into the ground in very short order." (JATO Unit Photo: Courtesy of Jean and NASA.)

Orphiucus says: "This reminds me of a colleague's reminiscence, which may be the basis of the JATO story. He was a military pilot In the 50's in Guam, when two men strapped not one but two JATO engines to the back of a military Jeep. They took it to Guam's 3-mile airstrip and ignited the engines, which hurled them 200 yards down the runway before the Jeep, now travelling at more than 300 mph, disintegrated. The men were shredded to bits, and the engines broke free from the remains of the jeep and darted wildly around the base before burning out. A film of this incident exists, in a military archive or maybe in a shoebox in someone's attic. " </font size=1>

<hr width=100% size=1>There are 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary and those who don't.