Talk:Parasite aircraft

Unmanned parasites

Many of the last entries in the list of parasite "aircraft" are unmanned drones / missiles.

Q-2C Firebee, fire practice target drone D-21, reconnaissance drone Pegasus, satellite launcher X-43 Hyper-X, research drone White Knight/X-37, research drone

I wonder whether it is a good idea to include non-manned aircraft/drones/research model aircraft as the line between them and missiles is small (e.g. the Luftwaffe's Mistral programme, or the USSR's MiG 19 based air launched anti-shipping missiles). If unmanned aircraft/research models/drones/largeish missiles are to be included as parasite aircraft there are very many dropped unmanned research "aircraft" not included at present - basically only post war US types are in the list above. Some agreement as to boundaries is probably also a good idea. Winstonwolfe 01:49, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

When is an aircraft not an aircraft

Further to the above, I suggest boundary issues as to when drones/missiles count as aircraft are impossible to negotiate if we let in small remote controlled targets like the Firebee, satellite launching rockets like the Pegasus and research models like the X-43 as "parasite aircraft".

I suggest all non manned "aircraft" should be deleted from the list of parasite aircraft. That would be:

DC-130/Q-2C Firebee, C-130 based drone

Lockheed D-21/M-21, for high-speed reconnaissance, based upon the SR-71 Blackbird (1963)

L-1011/Pegasus, for satellite launches (1990)

B-52/X-43 Hyper-X, a hypersonic research test article

White Knight/X-37, for DARPA's spaceplane project

If you disagree, post reasons under :-). Winstonwolfe 08:20, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Remote controlled aircraft differ from missiles so I would consider retaining those particularly if the carrier was to recover the "drone". I would though leave one or two uses of aircraft as carriers to launch rockets as examples of where the carrier concept can also go. Is the list supposed to be examples or exhaustive. GraemeLeggett 09:17, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I assumed it was supposed to become an exhaustive lsit of parasite aircraft. Leaving aside the Zvenos, do you know of any manned examples not on the list?

Possibly a different section could be added to include those listed above, noting that these are examples of similar ideas or boundary cases, I don't know that the inspiration for unmanned drones or air launched space vehicles resulted from parasite aircraft, so I'm a little uncomfortable with "where the concept could go". If a drone section is included examples such as the German Mistel or Russian KS-1 Kometa / AS-1 Kennel, and Kh-20 (AS-3 Kangaroo) aircraft sized missles - and the unmanned Migs dropped in testing the idea.

Incidentally I understood it was Felixstowe, with an s, as it was named after the seaplane station (and port) of that name.Winstonwolfe 03:15, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Tag & Assess 2008

Article reassessed and graded as start class. --dashiellx (talk) 10:46, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Who you callin' a parasite?

What's the origin of the term? TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 18:00, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

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Baka bomb

Wouldn't manned missles such as the Baka bomb qualify as parasitic aircraft even if they were on one-way suicide missions? Bachcell (talk) 04:19, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Proposed move to "Composite aircraft"

My references mostly refer to "composite" aircraft - often these do not use the term "parasite". I also think that approach would lead to a more useful article. Therefore I propose to move this article to Composite aircraft. Comments/votes welcome. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 15:59, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

To clarify, I have two reasons for this proposal:

1. Most sources discuss the whole "composite aircraft", often with descriptions such as "smaller" or "secondary" craft rather than parasite.
2. "Composite" in the title allows discussion of the carrier ship and the combination, which I think would lead to a better presentation.

— Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 20:50, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not convinced. At the moment I can think of a couple of aspects which need to be addressed. 1) that parasite and composite in these cases are substantially different things. The instances of parasite aircraft include: a much smaller aircraft carried by another generally for the larger aircaft's benefit (parasite fighters defending the bomber or airship) in a reversal of the usual understanding of parasite; the parasite needing the larger aircraft to take off (research aircraft lifted to altitude). On the other hand the Short Mayo seems to be the only instance I'm aware of its type - something akin to a multistage rocket in aircraft form (if you get my meaning). 2) composite as an article title might be confused with composite material (based on a search through the Flight archive turning up that as well as the Short Mayo). 3) now I think of it "compound aircraft" which might be phrase that could apply to the Short Mayo would also be a non-starter due to possible confusion with entities of the form "compound helicopter" "compound gyroplane" etc. GraemeLeggett (talk) 21:09, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

There have been many composite types over the years. Others include the Japanese Oka Kamikaze plane with carrier, the German Mistel converted fighter/carrier variants and Sänger spaceplane projects, the French Leduc ramjet on its carrier, and the American Lockheed M21/GTD21A and 747/Space Shuttle. None of my sources refers to these smaller craft as a "parasite" - the only references I can find are to "parasite fighters". For example Jim Winchester's Concept aircraft, Grange, 2005, covers many of these types, with only two mentions of "parasite" - both in the context of "parasite fighter". Whatever we personally or the World Wide Woolly-heads would like, Wikipedia must reflect the reliably documented consensus, and many of the projects mentioned in this article are composites rather than parasites. Nor can we talk of "compound" or any other undocumented term - "composite" is the only term I can find in use (or recall being used), though we do need to refer visitors to the recent usage in the context of composite material airframes. If you prefer, I could move the composite examples and a summary of the parasites (which also form part of a composite) to Composite aircraft and the meat about the parasites to Parasite fighter. But we cannot leave this material on a page whose title has little if any reliably documented usage. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 20:24, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

I find the term parasite aircraft cropping up in the Flight archives and other parts of the site eg [blog by Graham Warwick]. The archives are not easy to search, separating parasite in this usage from parasite drag, so its hard for me to quantify the incidence.

The search ofr composite but not referring to material of construction has turned up some interesting points. A search of articles about (Major) Mayoturned up this which states that Maia was not a modified Empire but came from a different (earlier) design. This may be the first instance of the "composite aircraft" phrase in Flight. this one to me makes the point that in the composite (as opposed to parasite) the two parts of the aircraft work together until separation.GraemeLeggett (talk) 19:43, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

You can search the flightglobal archives on phrases, although noise also gets returned - I see your point about parasite drag. I have not had time for a thorough search, but a quick look at "composite aircraft" found:

• [1] airship plus zeppelin killer as composite
• [2] Ref to Pemberton-Billing slip-wing fighter proposal (ref Flight Dec 26, 1940, p 550) as composite
• [3] Me109/Ju88 as composite
• [4] misc German designs, inc Mistel (e.g. the above Me109/Ju88) as composite

All those date from 1937-1944. The larger craft is invariably the "carrier", I could see no term for the smaller (other than "upper" as opposed to "lower" for the carrier). The use of Parasite in this context doesn't seem to make an appearance until the 1950's. I unearthed one "parasite aircraft" and one "parasite fighter" before I had to stop and write this. More to follow, hopefully. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 22:06, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

I found I had I had to select a narrow section of years at a time to try and keep the number of pages returned by the search below 100. The instances you listed come post appearance of the Short-Mayo which may be important in that it defined the phrase "composite aircraft" for later. GraemeLeggett (talk) 08:56, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Here are a few more references:

• letter to Flight, 1953. Mentions both parasite and composite in the same context.
• Flight 1960 - 2986, Shorts composite VTOL fighter study: Upper as "jockey aircraft"
• Winchester, J.; Concept aircraft,Grange, 2006 - Tupolev Vakhmistrov Zeno described as a composite with parasites + mother ship, Short Mayo described as a mothership.

Meanwhile I have now stumbled across yet another meaning in the Flight archives for "composite aircraft", giving three in all:

1. Two airframes joined at takeoff, which separate in flight.
2. An aircraft constructed from composite materials.
3. An aircraft comprising parts of multiple cannibalised airframes of different types, joined to make a single airframe.

If we could find an alternative name for the first of these, that might be a better title for the main article. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:07, 29 May 2010 (UTC)