John R Posted December 31, 2017 Share Posted December 31, 2017 Seeing Mr Ed's XAD4-1 in RFI led me to pick up Bob Rahn's book 'Tempting Fate' and read about testing the Skyhawk. In it there is a picture captioned 'First flight of the XA4D, June 1954' which shows the a/c fitted with an auxiliary tank under the belly. Was this really the case? It seems an odd thing to do. John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted December 31, 2017 Share Posted December 31, 2017 (edited) 20 minutes ago, John R said: Seeing Mr Ed's XAD4-1 in RFI led me to pick up Bob Rahn's book 'Tempting Fate' and read about testing the Skyhawk. In it there is a picture captioned 'First flight of the XA4D, June 1954' which shows the a/c fitted with an auxiliary tank under the belly. Was this really the case? It seems an odd thing to do. John Was it a tank or tank converted for use as an instrumentation pod? The latter would make more sense. Edited December 31, 2017 by Wez Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John R Posted December 31, 2017 Author Share Posted December 31, 2017 Now there's a thought...Thanks Wez, we'll see if anyone comes up with any hard information John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted December 31, 2017 Share Posted December 31, 2017 In Naval Fighters No 44 on page 3 is a photo of the first flight with a 150 gallon size tank. It is only mentioned as a fuel tank. Robert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheRealMrEd Posted January 1, 2018 Share Posted January 1, 2018 Here's the tank on the aircraft on the day of the roll-out. Note the A/C data is still covered by the tape and paper on the rear fuse. This picture probably taken before first flight: Ed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NAVY870 Posted January 1, 2018 Share Posted January 1, 2018 That doesnt look like a Bravo tank to me (we only used them on the ship) I'd guess an instrumentation pod as there's bugger all room for anything in the fuselage. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheRealMrEd Posted January 3, 2018 Share Posted January 3, 2018 Probably a gutted 150 gal tank? The same shape appears on the roll-out photo, but the A/C was trucked from Douglas to Edwards AFB for first flight. Don't think they needed to worry about personal baggage on the first flight...? The last photo above is from a later flight (note antenna under nose). I'm convinced this is a personal luggage carrier, made from whatever shape BUT it may very well have contained instrumentation. I do know that there was one kind of location device mounted into something similar... Ed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John R Posted January 3, 2018 Author Share Posted January 3, 2018 Curiouser and curiouser! I wonder if we will ever know but I am willing to accept that there was something like that there on the first flight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tailspin Turtle Posted January 3, 2018 Share Posted January 3, 2018 It's definitely the 150-gallon tank but it's very likely that it was repurposed to house flight-test instrumentation like a data recorder or photo panel. As Navy870 stated above, there was minimal interior volume that didn't already have something in it. There are also pictures of early flight-test A2Ds with a similar external store that was almost certainly contained research instrumentation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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