Piggyback Airplanes
Ten of aviation's most famous hitch-hikers.
- By Lynn Keillor
- Air & Space magazine, July 2012
NASM (81-5675)
Hitchhiker: Bristol Scout C
Mothership: Felixstowe Porte Baby flying boat
England, 1916
The single-seat Bristol Scout C was a screamer. At the outset of World War I, it was one of the fastest airplanes available, reaching a top speed of nearly 100 mph. The Scout’s light weight and agility made it an especially effective fighter. It had one frustrating fault: the underpowered 80-horsepower Le Rhône engine could last only about two hours in the air without maintenance.
As an experiment, British aviation entrepreneurs mated the Scout with an oversized hulk of an airplane called the Felixstowe Porte Baby. The idea to use a longer-range aircraft (the Porte Baby performed oversea operations between England and the rest of Europe, but its top speed was a plodding 78 mph) as a host for a speedy, shorter-range one was a first in aviation.
In the spring of 1916, in the county of Essex, England, a Scout was loaded onto the upper wings of the Porte Baby. The smaller airplane’s fuselage rested flat on the wing, with its wheels hanging over the front edge, propped up by crutches braced on the Porte Baby’s central engine. The Scout pilot controlled the quick-release mechanism that held its tail.
The airplanes took off with designer Commander John C. Porte piloting his eponymous mothership and Flight Sub-Lieutenant M.J. Day in the Scout. At 1,000 feet, Day fired up the Scout engine, released the aircraft, and flew away. If successful, the little fighter could have hitched a ride to protect the slower, more vulnerable Porte Baby on reconnaissance missions in which it might encounter enemy fire.
For unknown reasons, the Scout–Porte Baby pairing was flown only once, but the first host-parasite mission launched an era of experimentation that continues to this day.
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Comments (8)
In 1957 I was the co-pilot on a SA-16A (Grumman Albatross)
Air Rescue Service amphib for a trans-Atlantic crossing, with a stop half-way across in the Azores. We were ferrying the aircraft from Wheelus AFB, Tripoli,back to the Grumman factory where the A/C would be overhauled and upgraded to a B model. If my memory is correct, the leg from the Azores to Argentia, NewFoundland took about 14 hours. That airplane could carry a lot of gas! That was the longest flight I can recall, with the possible exception of a LHR-LAX or a JFK-TelAviv nonstop when I was a TWA 747 Captain.
Posted by William Polk on May 23,2012 | 04:21 PM
I've read in some sources about an alleged fifth operational D-21 flight? Is there any truth to this? If so, what happened to it?
Posted by Gray Stanback on May 23,2012 | 06:41 PM
In the late 1950's I was in SAC 92nd bomb wing. On our base we had a reconnaissance squadron flying B-36R's. The B-36 was towed over a pit in the pit was an F-84R. The F-84 was attached to the bomber and raised up partially into the special bomb-bay. The F-84 was launched and retrieved in flight on the trapeze. The F-84 could be refueled and the film canisters changed in flight. There was even a film processing lab in the rear of the B-36.
We later had U-2's and the need for the tandem B-36 and F-84 was no longer needed.
Posted by JIm Fling on May 24,2012 | 05:14 PM
A specialized aircraft was designed and built to be uniquely carried by the B-36 internally, supposedly for defensive purposes. My recollection was it was built by McDonnell and designated XF-85.
Posted by Kendall Russell Maj Gen USAF (ret) on May 25,2012 | 04:44 PM
In the summer of 1953 following my Midshipman Cruise to Rio, I worked as Assistant PR Director of the first Dayton Air Show. When the Show began, I squired around Howard Sochurek and Marshal Lumsden of Life Magazine. I was able to get the three of us on board a modified B-36 that had its own fighter escort (F-84) join up at 10,000 feet, hook it to its boom and pull the fighter into the bomb bay. Howard and I took many pictures of the event from both the bomb bay and the blisters in the aft fuselage. The Air Force insisted on processing the film and the pictures never appeared in Life as the Air Force claimed that they showed too much secret equipment.
Posted by John B. Neff on May 26,2012 | 11:50 PM
There was also the German Mistel piggyback project that saw limited operatons late in WWII.
In a sense, the X-1, X-2, X-15 and some other experimental aircraft followed the piggyback concept. Only the X-1 was capable of taking off from the ground (and it did it only once) so they needed to be carried to altitude by a bomber.
Posted by Larry J on May 31,2012 | 01:20 PM
I was born in Dundee, and remember my Dad telling me how he had seen Mercury and Maia on the Tay. He could only have been 11 at the time, but was still excited at the memory. I was delighted to find a compilation of Newsreels on You Tube showing the aircraft, including them taking off from Dundee for the flight to South Africa - wonder where Dad was watching them from, and if he's in the background somewhere.
Link to the newsreels:
http://youtu.be/bYtazEBQ1K8
Posted by Mike Brand on June 17,2012 | 07:49 PM
Well, I'm not sure if this could be a piggyback "airplane", but the shuttle Enterprise was piggybacked to a 747 and a least one time separated in flight to test the feasibility of the landing procedure of the space shuttle.
Posted by Fernando on January 23,2013 | 04:35 AM