Art, Sylvia Dongieux

It seemed to me that a small chute could be engineered to release from the tail of a tank when dropped. No one looked into this simple modification and the project was abandoned due to too much parasite drag from the retained tanks. Afterburning is the introduction of fuel aft of the turbine where there is a lot of flame to ignite it. It results in about a third more thrust at tremendous cost in fuel. This requires a system to increase the size of the exhaust path. In the 94C, it is a pair of clam-shell shaped doors at the end of the tail pipe that automatically open and can be opened manually without A/B afterburn resulting in greatly reduced thrust at non afterburn power setting, and this in conjunction with an installed drag chute, deployed just before touch down, reduced landing to a few hundred feet of fall out. It feels like running into a pile of hay.

Sylvia Dongieux