ARADO CRESCENT CRITICICISM

Harry Fraser-Mitchell writes...

I cannot let you get away with the canard on page 3 (of the Winter Newsletter) that HP got the idea for the crescent wing from Arado. I have already taken Ralph Denning to task over this!

Tne version of the Arado 234, not in fact built, had a swept wing, the outer panels of which were given less sweep in order to get the centre of lift nearer the C of G. The aircraft originally had straight wings and the pure swept wing which they investigated could not be made to balance.

The idea behind the 'crescent' was aerodynamic in that in that it was kinked in order to limit the amount of boundary layer build-up towards the tips. A vortex was shed from each kink which tended to reduce the outflow.

Both Godfrey Lee and Dietrich Kuchemann, then Head of the RAE Aero Department, averred that the specific Arado work on the 234 was not used by Handley Page in 1946, and of course the Ar 234 did not have the linked thickness-sweep relationship designed to keep critical Mach constant across the span, which was the other feature of the crescent wing.