Do Planes Really Need a Tail?

Maybe not, but they're a heckuva lot easier to fly if they have one!

Is the lack of stability worth it?

A B52 had one break off in flight. Jan 10, 1964

http://airpigz.com/blog/2011/6/29/video-proof-b-52-vertical-fin-is-optional-equipment-1964.html

There are youtube videos as chase planes photographed the landing event.

The vertical fin is one thing. Yaw control can be done to a certain extent with multi-engine thrust control, and the fuselage itself provides some yaw stability. Without the horizontal stabilizer, however, the plane would have had no pitch stability or pitch control and would have been instantly unflyable.

As stout as the B52 is built, the crew was lucky.

A Canard based airframe can be designed tailless. Pitch control is via the forward wing. The good part of the design is that both the main and forward wings both lift upwards.

Beechcraft Starship (Beech 2000) was a failed canard design. From my memory there was a problem with Beechcraft engineers and Dick Rutan brought in from the outside (fighting). The 3/5 scale model flew well, but full scale had weight issues. As well the canard had to have a mechanism to sweep it's angle, adding much complexity. I worked for the avionics company that provided displays, radios, autopilot and flight management. It did launch a new (Collins Radio division of Rockwell Int. now Rockwell Collins Inc.) product line, ProLine 4, which was sold on many type certifications of aircraft from biz jets to small commuters.

I love the Starship!

I think it had rudder control in the vertical winglets.

It also had problems with the pusher props. Turbulence over the wings reduced the prop's efficiency.

The other problem was cabin noise caused by the fact that the props were not behind the tail of the aircraft, and the blades passed too close to the fuselage inducing unpleasant noise levels in the cabin. (So I heard) They used a system of barbells or pendulums bonded to the fuselage interior behind the cabin to attenuate that noise.

They came to the company I was working for at the time looking for an electronic, active noise control solution that cost less that the pendulums. We could not compete, at that time, with the mechanical solution.

The sound that plane made when flying over was like no other!

lt's too bad that Beechcraft abandoned making improvements. They made their 50 count, so the tax abatement with the city met compliance. I was only on one test flight. Weight drove integrated avionics. So the CRT displays had the graphics generator built in, where previous designs had this remote to 'dumb' displays. It had 19 CRTs in the cockpit which was the most ever at that time.

After that, Beechcraft bought designs, the Mitsubishi Diamond II became the BeechJet model, then they bought the BAE HS125-800 that became the Hawker model.

I knew it was very noisy in the cabin. I was not aware they put in tuned noise absorption. This was done in the SAAB2000 but that aircraft had issues with 'kids' doing the redesign of the SF340. So it had limited production. Seems it shut SAAB down on commercial aircraft production after they produced 50 of them.

Someone flies one of those over my house a couple times a year and I can hear it coming! Those props chop the air stream behind the wings and make a very distinct sound. I think the owner is some kind of Congress Critter cause the plane only shows up for Bohemian Grove and during Congressional recess.

I would say unless there is a complex wing shape actuator set, one cannot achieve stable flight without a tail section, without other means of yaw control (multi-engine aircraft can have some yaw control from throttle settings). It takes a computer to fly the flying-wing aircraft the USAF has, pilot maybe can fly it, but hard to recover from a mistake in attitude of the aircraft, as I recall.

We don't need no stinking computer!

Would you get in one of these things? I'm not sure I would feel all that good about it.

Sure would. Take off in it? NO. But it'd be really cool just to run it up and taxi down the runway.

The early F-117 was originally so difficult to fly that it was knick-named the ''Wobblin' Gobblin'', even with it's V-tail...

Fortunately, the (rough handling) was later ''handled'' by the addition of an appropriate computer, in time to (tour) Baghdad, at night...

I used to fly radio control planes a lot. One of them was a flying wing that was stable all on it's own. The key was what is referred to as a reflex trailing edge. The trailing edge is fixed with a small amount of upturn. In a dive or at high speed, the reflex edge turns the airflow up and pulls up the nose of the plane.

I had one circumstance with a receiver failure where the flying wing took off and maintained stable flight for nearly three miles and then executed on it's own a fairly good carrier landing on a picnic table.

For controlling flight, the wing had two ailerons and a mechanical mixer mechanism so that the elevator servo would move both ailerons together to act as an elevator and a second servo would operate the ailerons in opposite directions to act as regular ailerons.

Good example. I used to make paper airplanes sort of like a delta wing, with no "tail", and they would glide a good distance. It was mainly a matter of balancing the nose weight with the lift curl on the aft part of the wing. I would fold winglets upward at the wing tips to stabilize yaw.

The reflex trailing edge, I guess, does the same job as the horizontal stabilizer in a conventional airplane. I always wondered why bending the trailing edge up on a paper airplane made it fly better, but I never analyzed it. Thanks for the insight.

Birds have tails...

The pterosaur didn't need a tail.

Gustav Whitehead claimed to have flown a powered aircraft April or May of 1899, predating the Wright's flight. There were no photographs taken to verify.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Whitehead

A model of his plane was built and flown on Oct 4, 1997.

A proper publicist can make the difference between worldwide recognition and obscurity...

According to post 2, all they need is a piece thereof.

There are a number of ultralights that have no conventional tail. One of my favorites was the Tomcat:

It had a single moveable control surface at the front acting as an elevon. The dihedral wing supports were said to couple the roll and yaw modes, so no rudder pedals were necessary. Haven't seen one since Oshkosh many years ago.

I saw this plane at a local airport and was intrigued. When I got home I trolled the internet and wasn't finding anything until I entered "business turboprop". It was the first on the list. It seems to be everything the Beechcraft Starship isn't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaggio_P.180_Avanti

It's OK, but the Starship is a much sexier aircraft.

I have to agree with you. The Starship does look sexier. It's less cluttered. Now if we used the Avanti's lifting body on the Starship we would really have something.

This craft looks like it could have been inspired by Enrico Bugatti's 1939 Model-100 design that was rumored to be faster than the BF-109 in competition that year, but it was not quite ready on race-day. The original never flew...

Two separate engines for coaxial counter-rotating front propellers, 120 degree V-tail, fully retractable landing gears, air frame & fuselage mostly built of wood, plus several novel patents. Very advanced, in it's day...

The Blue Max.

I, and many other contributors, have our names engraved in the IP of the only flying model ever built.

Bugatti Model 100 - Wikipedia

While the current B-2 bomber is proof that a tail is not necessary, the statement must be qualified by noting the computing power required to enable the aircraft to be controlled by the pilot. The single known loss of a multi-billion dollar B-2 was on take off due to a blocked instrument tube.

Flying wings (both piston driven and jet powered) built by Jack Northrop illustrated that a pilot was not capable of maintaining the fine control required for practical operation of a tailless aircraft.

Based on the above, one must admit that a tail is not a necessity for an aircraft, but lacking computing power, tailless aircraft are difficult if not impossible to control for even a skilled pilot.

Ironically it is said that the wingspan of the B-2 is exactly that of Northrop's flying wing bombers

I think the Wright Brothers got it right the first time. Somewhere along the way we got lost.

Try flying that from island to island in the Pacific with Japanese fighter pilots breathing down your neck, and a 1000# bomb strapped to its underbelly just for good measure and giggles. Oh, and if you find that Japanese battleship, rest assured you will have to make your dive steep, and already by flying over 300 knots level if you have any chance of making it in to drop that 1000 pounder on their heads. Good luck with the exploding anti-aircraft rounds, and the various machine guns and large bore AAA pouring lead at you.

Now you are in a 450 knot dive, good luck pulling up after bomb release without ripping that thing apart.

Are you sure the Wright Brothers have the last word on airplane design?

Calm down. He's just in a little bit of a temporary, temporal state of confusion. I call it FIFO vs. Stack bafflement.

ROFLMAO once again. Might as well wave a red flag in front of me. I have the finesse of a bull in a china shop.

I do like talking about flying, like being aloft, but I have never been at the controls. I think I am missing out on something (money? time? intent?) that will allow me to pursue this dream. I am already old enough, crashing or fear of it should not be an impediment to trying to get my pilot license. I can't see me getting past medical on this, but you never know.

Rent an hour in a simulator at a local flight school.

You The instructor can set it up to simulate different planes, but I'd stick with a 150 or 172 for my first crashes time flight.

Or, if you really want a treat: Air Combat USA: Be a Fighter Pilot for a Day! You actually fly against another plane.

I've done both. The aerobatic dogfighting was really great fun, right up to the time I started barfing.

That link seems to have a problem staying in their bandwidth. Could not open the page.

I have been a subscriber to "Aces High II", and now "Aces High III" - while that is nowhere near being in a simulator or real plane, it gives the "pilot" (using the term loosely) an experience of how difficult (or easy) it can be to shoot down an opponent, G turning, energy flying, and landing planes that want to crash or float up at the runway.

Even has very intense terrain, clouds, sun, etc. Also has ground vehicles, landing craft, carrier groups, PT boats, various manned gun positions, and various game features such as winds aloft.

What's fun is attempting a landing when whomever (usually a squad mate) is in control of some special event arena and he switches a headwind to a tailwind of about 100 knots. It is sort of a riot of blue speech that ensues. Although, I did get removed from a squad for dropping the "F" bomb on a colonel in the game (also a doggone squad mate whose britches were nowhere near big enough for the butt.

Warning: the game has become so graphics intensive that to play it requires a pretty new gaming computer with a beefed up late release graphics card. It has to do with lag, where the other player is not really where he appears to be.

Air Combat USA on Vimeo

That seems pretty awesome. I have to look into that.

It was.

The instructor said we/I pulled 5.5 Gs in one turn and I definately saw my vision "tunneling" or whatever the correct term is for when it starts looking like a block hole is closing around your vision.

Sickness wise, I was fine until he pushed the stick forward on me because he wanted me to nose down faster. 5 minutes later I was sick.

Yes, negative G sucks especially when you are not expecting it.

Do it if you get the chance.

I did it in 1982 and this company is still around.

Go for it. I learned to fly when I had to spend 6 months in a small town with nothing better to do. Besides being exhilarating, it teaches valuable lessons that apply in other situations, like driving. "Keep your head on a swivel." "Maintain your scan."

Don't sweat the physical. I'm 72 and breeze it.

Maybe so. Part of it is getting time away from work. Weekends maybe. Vacation not likely, since honey do this project, and my physics projects keep me in the shed, or somewhere near the home front.

One of the Nova programs featured building and flying a Wright Flyer. The plane had a couple of serious design flaws.

The Wrights assumed that flying the plane would be like riding a bike and built a plane that was right on the edge of being dynamically unstable. The plane could not be trimmed for hands-off stability and required operator input and correction 100% of the time.

The second issue had to do with vertical surface area. The flyer would sideslip badly on turns, like the airshow B52 crashes where the bank was too steep. On the show, the flyer would slide sideways any time the pilot tried to turn. In the end, the pilot wasn't able to turn around to return to the launch location and eventually parked the replica flyer in a tree.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailless_aircraft

Potentially impressive, as long as it works...

But, the more things you (ask) it to do, the more different ways it has to break down...