MISSILE AERODYNAMICS- DIM PAST AND INDEFINITE FUTURE

ABSTRACT " The present paper covers two distinctly different subjects. The first subject is the efforts of the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Army to develop aerial torpedos during World War I. The Navy Iteam had such prominent engineers as Elmer and Lawrence Sperry and Glenn Curtis. The Army team included Charles F. Kettering and Orville Wright. Despite these eminent personalities, a successful aerial torpedo was not developed for use in World War I. The second subject area covered in the paper is suggestions for future work in missile aerodynamics. High angle of attack aerodynamics, engine-airframe integration and autopilot-airframe integration are covered. In addition the future of asymmetric vortices, external stores, and computational fluid dynamics are discussed.