Originally Posted by
noneofyourbusiness
I am going to Ramble on. Even with a clutch, the prop placement of Raider/Defiant is an accident waiting to happen. Unlike a Black Hawk, with a high mounted tail rotor.
Igor Sikorsky, truly an aviation genius, used two jet engines on opposite sides of the helicopter, to provide forward thrust on the ABC demonstrator. Then someone at Sikorsky had a wet dream that they would use a single large pusher prop instead.
The XH-59B was the intended follow on to the XH-59A, and it had a ducted pusher prop design going all the way back to ca 1980.
/S-69-11.jpg)
Interestingly, Igor died a year before the XH-59A first flew. He was quoted posthumously by Ben Kocivar in popular science's Sept 1982 piece on the "ABC copter" as having once said:
Having two overhead rotors on a helicopter is like having two cooks in the kitchen. They will not get along.
Genius indeed
