Mustard yesterday, Real Engineering today… the holiday season has started early

So that's the inspiration for the sound of my laptop's performance mode

That quadruple take off at 2:34 is insane

I remember reading about an office in Japan where the workers all suffered from headaches during the working day and they did a lot of investigating into why from looking into gases or outside interference but one day the found if. The problem was that they had a fan that was on all the time and just one of the blades was slightly bent which sent out a very low sound that would induce these headaches in all the workers.

Gotta love how the test pilot's first assumption was "You will have to fight me to get me back in that plane."

Your introduction to this 'abomination' was awesome. I wasn't entirely interested at first, but after hearing how you introduced it, I was hooked and had to keep watching.

I LOVE the XF-84 Thunderscreech! It's my favorite obscure plane of the cold war. There's not a ton of readily available information on it as it was only flown a handful of times in testing. I'm really glad you put this video together as it highlights why the engineering behind the plane ultimately didn't work.. I know it caused illness, but I would be curious to hear what it sounds like upon startup, takeoff, and a fly-by..

One of the engines that was in this monster is currently on display at the Kansas Aviation Museum in Wichita. It is just one of the two coupled turboprop engines, but it is still pretty fascinating in a horrendous way. It was described as a 'mechanical nightmare' to route the power through the two driveshafts from the rear of the aircraft to the front, and then to route all that power into a single gearbox. The best I can describe it is *'janky doesn't even scratch the surface'* Oh and I almost forgot, as stated in the video, the engine itself was mechanically unreliable and failed all the time. So yea.

Seeing those 4 jets launch from the Carrier in doubles was awesome! You get some insane footage for these videos.

When you thought Tu-95 was really loud, I don’t even want to know how much louder this plane would be

This aircraft seems absolutely terrifying to fly, I got to hand it to the pilots that flew it on test runs! I've flown several single engine aircraft and done a lot of RC flying in my day so I know a little bit about aircraft knowledge. And you're absolutely right about the sopwith camels.... I had a giant scale that was a handful to fly! That sucker would not turn unless you are giving it full rudder, even if you banked it at 35° it would just want to go straight. I couldn't imagine having a scale model of the thunder screech, that would be one interesting RC model to fly!

I just realized - it's fascinating how similar the profile of these supersonic propellers are to the wing of the F-104! Short, thin, sharp leading edge, no camber...and indeed, that wing is *extremely* effective at producing lift above Mach 0.7 or so!

suprised they didnt deploy it as an area denial weapon by destroying ears wherever close it flew

I have never heard of this plane before and it is fascinating

I liked the RF-84 Thunderflash (the reconnaissance version of the F-84) at first sight because it was one of the first jets to move the air intake from the nose, to the wing roots, and looked truly sleek. So did the "Thunderscreech", but I'd heard of its horrendous noise. I didn't know anything about all the other problems the plane had, though. Thanks for the great video.

It makes me so sad to hear this described as an "abomination". This was a serious feat of engineering and it deserves to be respected from a problem solving perspective. I wish there were still living examples of this scientific marvel. I would love to hear it fire up!

Early in the video, it is mentioned that early jets had poor "climb performance" - to be clear, the issue was that early jet engines could not throttle up and down quickly. To change from "0% thrust" to "100% thrust" took a long time - many seconds. Some very early jet engines could take more than a minute. That means making rapid throttles changes are impossible. While top speed was high, and even maneuverability was good, dogfighting often requires rapid changes in throttle, which jets were bad at. Piston engines can *VERY* rapidly change throttle settings (think about how quickly your car can go from idle to redline when you floor the pedal in neutral.) The Navy specifically wanted rapid throttle change because when coming in for a landing on an aircraft carrier, the plane needs to be at low/idle throttle, but if they miss the arrestor wire, they need to throttle up to 100% very rapidly to be able to lift off again before running off the end of the deck. Something jets of the time couldn't do - if an early carrier jet missed an arrestor wire, the pilot would eject and the plane would dump into the sea off the end of the carrier deck. The Thunderscreech's big benefit (as mentioned ~8:40) is that they could change the blade pitch to run the jet engine at one speed and change the amount of thrust it was producing by changing the propeller pitch. So it could have the speed of a jet, with the rapid-thrust-change of a propeller plane. In the late '50s, early '60s, jet engines were developed that could rapidly change throttle, allowing for full jet fighters to be more reasonable for use on carriers.

“I like planes." - Wendover Productions Nice touch there 😂

Wonderful video. As a former P-3 mechanic, I have to say your explanation of how a propeller works was amazingly informative and you explained it on a level easily understood by a non aviation type. Excellent video. Very impressed. You gained a new sub.

This aircraft is a literal aerodynamic's lesson. As a CFI who used to teach aerodynamics ground school, I appreciate that :D

In defense of the Northrop Tacit Blue, it (like Lockheed’s Have Blue) was just designed to demonstrate stealth characteristics in aircraft, and never was intended to enter service. The technologies it pioneered were applied to the B-2, so other than its looks, it could hardly be considered a failure.

I grew up with this plane mounted on a pylon outside of the BFL, Meadows Field airport passenger building. I remember The Red Baron P-51 team trying to borrow its propeller for a speed record attempt without success.

Honestly your channel is by far my favourite engineering channel as not only very informative but your straight talking without any BS is excellent. Keep it up, the entertaining descriptions are second to none. 👍😉

One of the best, most concise and educational videos I’ve ever seen. This was fascinating.

Huge props to the cameraman for suffering the thunderscreech's deafening noise on our behalf and providing us with good footage

“Ten of eleven test flights ended in emergency landings. Between this, the plane violently vibrating from the two driveshafts spinning 14,000 rpm, on both sides of the pilot; the sudden rolling due to the propeller surges; and of course the immense sound that was capable of knocking people over.. the plane never got past the test phase.” 😆 😂

For many years, one of the aircraft shown in these clips sat on a display pylon at the entrance to Meadows Field airport in Bakersfield, CA. Meadows' history goes back to the days of hot air balloons in the 1890s. During WWII, it was improved by the Army Air Force so they could use it as a night-flying training field. In 1944, military operations were discontinued, and the field sat idle until the mid-1950s, when it reverted to civilian use. Somewhere along the way, one of the two XF-84H Thunderscreech aircraft ended up on that display pylon, with a small motor rotating the prop at a blessedly-silent several seconds per rotation. In 1992, the Air Force bastards took it back, leaving a nondescript T-38 trainer in its place (until 2015, when the T-38 was moved to Minter Field Air Museum in nearby Shafter).

Absolutely love how you animate these videos to make them easy to understand

"Our jets cant take off from aircraft carriers." "So lets fund research into better engines, right?" "No, lets build a supersonic prop monstrosity loud enough to make ground crew vomit!"

Tacit(not tactic) Blue was not an actual production plane but a technology demonstrator. It lives on in the great B-2 stealth bomber. Tacit Blue worked as intended.

Another excellent video. I think it would be nice if you could do a whole video on gyroscopic procession. I learned about it as a young helicopter crew chief in the U.S. Army 🪖 back in the 80s. It's a truly fascinating property of rotating systems and it seems to come up over and over again in your videos. It's one thing to hear the definition, but another altogether to see visual representations of it in action. Just think about it. Good work again!

Fascinating blog... will definitely do all I can to support your productions. It's important we not lose sight of our past as we all continue to benefit from it every new day. Good job! 👍🏽

"You aren't big enough, and there aren't enough of you to put me back in that plane." This was riveting, thank you!!!

To be fair, annoying your enemy into submission is undoubtedly the most satisfying victory.

I saw FS-059 at the Air Force Museum near Dayton Ohio. I really like your animation of a like new air craft. The real one looks like it has been through well, flight testing. Also your explanation of the aerodynamics is enlightening. Thanks.

It will only be the loudest plane until a Harley Davidson executive sees this video and says "We can beat that."

Imagine being on an aircraft carrier, somewhere down deep in the engine rooms, and you can tell that the next combat air patrol is taking off by the fact that your eardrums are shattering

God these videos keep getting better and better if I ever get hired into aircrafts manufacturing I hope to work real engineering

Excellent video. I enjoyed the detailed explanation of why the Thunderscreech was what it was - noise and all - and why it didn't quite work as planned. No massive computing power to help design airplanes back then. Engineers did what they could with their slide rules, but the only way to find out for sure if a design was viable was to fly it. That plus massive Cold War defense budgets gave rise to some really strange and wonderful airplanes. The Thunderscreech was surely one of the strangest.

7:20 increasing the propeller velocity results in increasing airplane velocity too. You're doing an mazing work, thanks !

i love how even the cgi clips have camera shake

TACIT Blue was a stealth testbed and ground radar demonstrator. It was also insanely successful in the data it gathered for use of compound curves in stealth architecture. It was the first such aircraft ever built. The radar it pioneered is now in service so there's that.

2:12 that guy casually rocking that plane up and down lmaooo

The loudness seems like a selling point honestly if you could sound proof the inside of it 🤔 The sound and sonic booms could be a good weapon itself

I have been studying engineering at university for 2 years and I watched real engineering for a couple years before I went to Uni, what is surprising me now is how he is able to explain some very complex mathematical concepts in a very simple way. Coming from the position of learning these concepts the traditional way and then Hearing him explain them he has done a great job of keeping the relevant info in without overcomplicating things.

“Worst of all” Despite it’s looks the the tacit blue was actually quite a good aircraft in terms of stealth.

Reminds me of a comment by a test pilot concerning a different plane. "Entering the cockpit is extremely difficult. It should have been made impossible".

00:07 -- "...Fairchild Republic A-10 Warthog." It was the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt. Warthog was nickname.

McDonnell XF-88 Voodoo also tried to fly using a supersonic propeller. It would be interesting to see a video about it. Thanks for the animation. This is the first time I've seen such a detailed explanation of the propellers and aerodynamics of the XF-84H Thunderscreech.

Hey, I just got a devious idea. How about we combine the sound of a Stuka with the volume of a Thunderscreech?

Fun fact: This aircraft produced a sound of or exceeding 200 decibels. Sound is _no longer considered sound_ beyond 194 decibels.

Yesss! Was waiting for a video about this plane! Thank you!

Wow, this plane seems to have a role in explaining the absolute limits of what prop driven aircraft can accomplish.

The Tacit Blue project ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Tacit_Blue ) was NOT a failure as it was never meant to go into production it was a second-generation stealth-aircraft technology demonstrator meant to test and mature the manufacturing technology for second-generation stealth, these lessons were then applied to the F-22, F-23 and B-2 programmes.

Shoutout to groundcrew bouncing the nose at 2:13 like the thing was a low rider. You're the OG.

I remember always seeing one of these on display at the Air Force museum in Dayton and being blown away by the concept of playing that was so loud that it could physically knock people over or make them sick. I was further away by the fact that they would have had to have known this plane was going to have a lot of problems, but they decided it was worth building and testing anyways.

To anyone who disc golfs… this channel low key surprisingly helped me understand flight patterns of my discs and has seriously improved my game 😂

Love the experimentation, the new animations look absolutely stunning. I am excited to see what is to come in the future of this channel and the associated series.

Bro, this should've been scrapped back to the drawing board, based on the noise issue alone, yet they still tried to make it work! Nuts!

Assuming you could make the design smaller for carriers, you could minimize the propeller size even further with a twin engine design, like the P38 thunderbolt

I wish this caliber of content was produced for schools. Learning would be captivating and would yearn to see more of this.

I can't believe I hadn't heard of this airplane before, and now 10 minutes later I still get random outbursts of giggles over all the absurd details.

The speed of air leaving the propeller is dependent on the circumferencial speed and the local pitch (blade angle). It is possible to design a prop blade where the velocity leaving the blade is constant from the minimum radius to the maximum radius.

I have heard of this aeroplane before, but knew little to nothing about it. Great stuff, thanks!

"The sopwitch camel had to use left rudder for both left and right turns" Got me laughing

Great job guys. I felt lost w/ the history channel giving out decades ago. Its so sweet to see peeps like you pick up the torch. And frankly well done.

The Thunderscreech may have had a horrid sound, but god damn it's beautyful. This is in my opinion one of the best looking planes ever.

This video had me interested every minute it run, very good animations, explication and subject as always, thanks real engineering!

One other issue I didnt see mentioned is the fact that they used ended up using a dual prop setup with counter rotating blades to counter the torque effect also meaning that the sonic booms would collide amplifying the sound even more

Loved the video overall, but just huge props to the person behind the rendered animation. Absolutely top-level stuff with great attention to detail! Like the desk scene in the intro is just lovely and extremely well done! Or the ground scene with the trees and leaves in the wind, my god it's awesome!! And the material of the plane... Just simply amazing and I really hope all this effort goes appreciated! Makes me wonder what rendering software is being used

It is my understanding that the need for the propeller was NOT for shorter take-offs but for improved thrust-response. The jet engines of the time had very sluggish throttle response. If a landing had to be aborted it took time for the engine to increase power. Hardly ideal for a touch-and-go on a short carrier deck. The same is true when trying to adjust for sudden changes in tail vs headwind on landing approaches. Contrast this to a propeller aircraft can which can adjust thrust on-the-fly simply by changing the blade-pitch. The engine can be left at high rpm in case power is suddenly needed. Even today, turbo-props deal with micro-bursts far better than jet-airliners and generally can set down better in fast-changing wind conditions.

That's one wild plane for sure. I'm a retired aircraft crew chief from the Air Force and I can tell you I've seen a LOT of military war birds. I've never heard of the Thunderscreech so I've learned something new today.

I have been in and around aviation my whole life and had never head of this plane, incredibly fascinating concept and my whole life thought that the tips of the prop and the speed of sound was the limit. My Father was and aircraft engineer for Belanca out of MN and that was what he taught me the prop tips have cannot go supersonic because all efficiency is gone. Amazing video and I learned a whole lot!

Can you imagine if the USAAF use this thing in Vietnam as a psychology war weapon ? .

A superb overview of a strange aircraft: a dead end, but a lot learned.

You guys do a great job. I subscribe to both this channel and Nebula. Thank you keep up the good work.

That big reduction gearbox was also probably one of the major sources of the noise on this aircraft; I can't imagine they were helical cut gears.

I first read about this bird a few months ago, so glad you're covering it in depth 👍

I'm no engineer, but I think some of these problems could be eliminated or greatly reduced by two solutions. 1. Counter rotating props. Two smaller propellers rotating on the same axis but in different directions. This would eliminate the torque problem, since the two props cancel each other out. And and by the use of two props their diameter could be decreased without decreasing blade area, lowering the prop tip speed. 2. Move the transmission behind the cockpit and have 1:1 gears in the propeller end. This would decrease the driveshaft rpm and reduce vibration.

What a complicated, convoluted solution to a problem, that was ultimately solved by a catapult launcher on aircraft carriers.

Great video! One thing, at 0:23, the aircraft's name is TACIT Blue, not TACTIC Blue.

because of how insane this plane is, it's one of my all time favorite planes alongside the xb-70 and a few others

Hey man, long time viewer of your videos here. Im a broke college student (aeronautical engineering) so I can't subscribe to Nebula, but I've had my adblock off on your channel to support it as best I can. You truly are one of the greatest channels on UKposts!

You can really tell it was purely a propeller "proof of concept" platform rather than a testbed for a whole aircraft just because of how slapped together it was. "Here's an aircraft, make it work" A single turbine with a pusher prop configuration would have made a lot more sense *for a plane*, but as a proof of concept this did exactly what it was intended to do.

Well made video! Informative short tangents to explain things, excellent animations, and good free body diagrams. Thanks for making

Great video buddy. My first of your videos. I especially like how you changed the plane model as you described changes made in the design to fix problems they ran into. I thought I knew quite a lot about this aircraft however you proved me wrong. Well done man, I will be watching more.

Finally a truley enjoyable and fun video. Great job. Im not an engineer but i love the content!!

What this really needed was a double propeller design with each spinning in opposite direction, like the bear bomber. Even more advanced noise levels too I would imagine, just fly low over the enemy as a weapon.

“Recordings give us this fairly standard droning noise” Me, who lives directly under the glide slope of an airport that military aircraft often land at: “Dear god, it sounds like two portals to hell have opened on each of my eardrums”

12:47 “these drive shafts turn at an rpm of 14,200” F1 drivers: First time?

Very good video. A new level of insight. Keep on the good work, looking forward for the next video

Forget the screeching sound, the science behind the prop is what got me!

As a person with a hobby interest in Military aviation history, I've never heard of this aircraft (pun very much intended) Great video, fair play to ya. Your efforts are very much appreciated. 👍

2:30 i dont think ive ever seen this 4 plane launch being performed. Amazing.

Brilliant program. Very well done. So very interesting and we'll put together. Congratulations. Many of these "amatuer" productions are far better than many mainstream ones.

Seen this aircraft in person at the airforce museum! They have the engines also on display beside the aircraft. The plane has a special charm about it. But I'm glad it got canned, cool on paper, not on the runway.

Lowkey, thunderscreech is one of my favorite planes of all time

Your animations are absolutely beautiful, keep up the good work!

When modern jet planes go full throttle and you hear that buzzsaw sound, it's from the tips of the fan blades breaking the sound barrier.

It's insane how much horsepower that plane had :o. Also it sure would be scare to fly it, knowing you have those driveshafts next to you.