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Old 26th Apr 2010, 16:40
  #67 (permalink)  
kenparry
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Brighton
Posts: 975
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West Coast

Looking at the pic of the Lightning, what was the goal of the engineers loading the engines on top of one another?
They are not stacked vertically: the lower/forward one is below the wing, the aft/higher one behind the wing - this layout enabled the minimum possible frontal area, as the widest bits of each engine were staggered.

A contemporary of mine worked at Warton on the Lightning (and TSR2); on the former, access to most things was very difficult. A review by EE later suggested they could have made the fuselage 3 inches wider, with negligible performance loss and much better access. Hindsight is wonderful!
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