1/72 Wings Models NASA Lifting Bodies 

Planes without wings

by Toby Bird

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Hands up all of those of you who remember watching Steve Austin crash his plane at the start of the Six Million Dollar Man back in the 1970's. Well the crash footage was of the M2 F2 Lifting body that actually crashed. The pilot, Bruce Paterson survived the crash to fly again after a lot of surgery but not the extrent of Steve Austin. The lifting body concept was explored as a possible shape for the Space shuttle back in the early 1960's. The first one to fly, the M2 F1 was towed into the air by a car and later in life by a NACA version of the Dakota. Gaining confidence in the concept the M2 F2 was built which was designed to be dropped from the wing of a B 52. This is the plane that was no horizontal or even angles control surfaces purely 2 vertical fins. The amazing thing was that it could actually fly, a rocket engine from an X1 was mounted to give the flights more duration. Stability was a bit of a problem and after a number of flights it crashed on landing and thats where Steve Austin came into the picture. It was rebuilt as the M2 F3. This had the same airframe but with the addition of a central vertical fin at the rear.

The HL 10 was built around the same time but featured a very different shape, basically flat underneath and with 2 angled fins and a central fin. This flew once but handled so badly it was grounded for over a year until a suitable solution in the form of reprofiled leading edges to the 2 outboard fins was fitted. Following rebuilding this became the best handling of the Lifting bodies and reached Mach 1.8 when fitted with the old X 1 engine, which was faster than the original X-1 ever flew at and with no wings!

The X 24A had no flat body surfaces but much larger angled fins. After a large number of flights it was rebuilt into the X24B with an elongated nose and some small horizontal control surfaces.

In total 222 lifting body flights were made between 1963 and 1975.

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Anyway, those images have followed me for a long time until one day browsing on e bay an M2 F2 came up for sale at a price I couldn't resist. This was a vacform, the complete plane was on a single sheet of plastic. The original forms were made by Eagles Talon, but now the moulds have been taken over by Wings Models. The moulding is top class. This looked so good that I bought the rest of the lifting bodies, the HL 10 and the X 24A and B.

I built all 4 models at the same time. The cockpit was scratch built in all cases, the undercarriage taken from Aeroclub white metal F5 accessories and the nose wheels came from the scrap box. The pitot tubes were made from wire. The really fun part that took a long time, even on models this small, was the chrome finish. After a couple of rounds of filling and sanding, panel lines were rescribed and it was on to the NMF. I used a combination of Bare Metal foil grades 'extra bright chrome' and 'chrome', one panel at a time to give a non uniform effect. The decals were applied directly to the foil finish with no Future but a bit of decal solvent was used to help them adhere to the smooth foil finish. 

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Just so you know which is which;

The M2 F2 has the flat topped fuselage and vertical tail surfaces.

The HL 10 is painted white over the rear end and has 2 small angled outboard fins.

The X 24A is basically curved top and bottom with 2 large outbaord fins.

The X 24B looks like something out of Star Wars with its delta form and white/chrome finish.

For those of you interested in this type of thing, 'Wingless Flight - The Lifting Body Story' by R. Dale Reed provides a very good insight into the development of these planes. Many thanks to Wings Models for rescuing the Eagles Talons moulds and continuing the production of these unique kits.

Regards

Toby

Photos and text © by Toby Bird