The Interstate XBDR was a design for an assault drone - an early television-guided

missile In military terminology, a missile is a missile guidance, guided airborne ranged weapon capable of self-propelled flight usually by a jet engine or rocket motor. Missiles are thus also called guided missiles or guided rockets (when a previously ...

- powered by two

jet engine A jet engine is a type of reaction engine discharging a fast-moving jet (fluid), jet of heated gas (usually air) that generates thrust by jet propulsion. While this broad definition can include Rocket engine, rocket, Pump-jet, water jet, and ...

s, that was designed by the

Interstate Aircraft and Engineering Corporation Interstate Aircraft and Engineering Corporation was a small United States, American aircraft manufacturer in production from April 1937 to 1945, based in El Segundo, California. History Originally known as Interstate Engineering, the company b ...

during the latter stages of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

for use by the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

. Wind tunnel tests of a

scale model A scale model is a physical model which is geometrically similar to an object (known as the prototype). Scale models are generally smaller than large prototypes such as vehicles, buildings, or people; but may be larger than small prototype ...

were conducted, however no full-scale examples of the aircraft were built before the project was cancelled.

Design

Referred to at the time as an "assault drone", and the only aircraft ever designated in the 'BD' series, the XBDR-1 was designed by Interstate in response to a Navy requirement in late 1943 and early 1944. The aircraft featured a tailless design,Parsch 2003 and was essentially a

flying wing A flying wing is a tailless fixed-wing aircraft that has no definite fuselage, with its crew, payload, fuel, and equipment housed inside the main wing structure. A flying wing may have various small protuberances such as pods, nacelles, blis ...

with a small

vertical stabiliser A vertical stabilizer or tail fin is the static part of the vertical tail of an aircraft. The term is commonly applied to the assembly of both this fixed surface and one or more movable rudders hinged to it. Their role is to provide control, sta ...

. The XBDR-1 was intended to be powered by two Westinghouse 19B axial-flow

turbojet The turbojet is an airbreathing jet engine which is typically used in aircraft. It consists of a gas turbine with a propelling nozzle. The gas turbine has an air inlet which includes inlet guide vanes, a compressor, a combustion chamber, ...

engines, which were to be buried in the wing near the

wing root The wing root is the part of the wing on a fixed-wing aircraft or winged-spaceship that is closest to the fuselage,Peppler, I.L.: ''From The Ground Up'', page 9. Aviation Publishers Co. Limited, Ottawa Ontario, Twenty Seventh Revised Edition, 19 ...

s. The planned warload was not detailed, however it was planned that the assault drone would be guided to its target via a television link.Grossnick 1997, p. 670.

Testing and Cancellation

Two prototypes (

BuNo In the United States, all military aircraft display a serial number to identify individual aircraft. These numbers are located on the aircraft tail, so they are sometimes referred to unofficially as "tail numbers". On the Northrop Grumman B-2 Sp ...

s 37635 and 37636) were ordered,NAVAIR 00-80P-1: United States Naval Aviation 1910–1970, Naval Air Systems Command, 1970 and tests of a 1/17-

of the XBDR were conducted in a

NACA The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was a United States federal agency founded on March 3, 1915, to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1, 1958, the agency was dissolved and its assets ...

gust tunnel at

Langley Field Langley may refer to: People * Langley (surname), a common English surname, including a list of notable people with the name * Dawn Langley Simmons (1922–2000), English author and biographer * Elizabeth Langley (born 1933), Canadian perfor ...

in 1944. Requested by the

Bureau of Aeronautics The Bureau of Aeronautics (BuAer) was the U.S. Navy's material-support organization for naval aviation from 1921 to 1959. The bureau had "cognizance" (''i.e.'', responsibility) for the design, procurement, and support of naval aircraft and relat ...

in an attempt to determine the load factors of the unusually configured aircraft, these tests initially encountered difficulty with the

center of gravity In physics, the center of mass of a distribution of mass in space (sometimes referred to as the balance point) is the unique point where the weighted relative position of the distributed mass sums to zero. This is the point to which a force may ...

of the model, but once this was resolved the tests were successfully carried out, and a gust factor of 1.22 was recommended for use in the design. Despite the successful testing the Navy decided not to pursue full-scale development of the aircraft, and the order for the two prototypes was cancelled.

Specifications (XBDR-1)

References

;Citations ;Bibliography * Grossnick, Roy
"List of Naval Aviation Drones and Missiles".
''United States Naval Aviation 1910-1995''. Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1997. . * Leyes, Richard and William A. Fleming. ''The History of North American Small Gas Turbine Aircraft Engines''. American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1999. . * Parsch, Andreas. (2003

Directory of U.S. Military Rockets and Missiles. ''designation-systems.net'', accessed 2010-05-15. * Reisert, Thomas
"Tests of a 1/17-Scale Model of the XBDR-1 Airplane in the NACA Gust Tunnel"
NACA Report WR-L-539, 1944

External links

{{Interstate aircraft BD01R Cancelled military aircraft projects of the United States Twinjets Flying wings Tailless aircraft Unmanned military aircraft of the United States World War II jet aircraft of the United States World War II guided missiles of the United States

Design

Testing and Cancellation

Specifications (XBDR-1)

See also

References

External links