@baronvonslambert

6 days ago

Those J79's were ridiculously good.
Speaking of more power.... I wish more people would talk about the F-4X that Israel and MD collabbed on.
Using some titanium and stainless steel bits to resist the heat, and adding conformal water tanks to an RF-4 to supply a special water injection system on a modified version of the final model smokeless J79, it was able to hit like mach 3.2+ on paper. Basically a poor man's Blackbird.
Never went anywhere beyond engine testing though, the Pentagon and the letter agencies weren't keen on exporting something that could potentially chase down the SR-71 and A-12, even if the Israeli's double pinkie promised to only use it for reconnaissance. Also the water injection/cooling system caused significant thermal expansion issues, either the turbine blades cracked and broke as they grew and shrunk as they temp cycled, which caused catastrophic failure as they crapped themselves out the back, or they thermally expanded past tolerances to the point they literally outgrew their tube and for even more spectacular catastrophic failure as fully half the engine explosively discombobulated. Maybe it could have been nailed down with further testing or maybe the metallurgy wasn't there at the time, but either way an interesting little aviation project that's essentially unknown.

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