History of the Argentine IA 36 Cóndor passenger jet
The FMA IA 36 Cóndor was a 40-passenger aircraft project studied in Argentina by Kurt Tank in the early 1950s. It had the peculiarity of having five Rolls-Royce Nene II engines arranged in a ring around the rear part of the fuselage and fed by an air intake that completely encircled it.
The ambitious project, which was scheduled to fly in 1956, was delayed and would be buried in 1958 following a change of government.
Río Grande.—Designed by Kurt Tank, father of the Pulqui II, in 1951, the IA 36 Cóndor was a medium-span passenger aircraft fitted with jet engines, and would have been the first commercial jet designed in Latin America at a time when jet aviation was in its infancy, when only the De Havilland Comet, the Avro Canada C102, and the Tupolev Tu-104 constituted the only existing offer. With the Avro shelved for lack of resources, and sales of the Tupolev restricted to countries behind the Iron Curtain, the only option was the British Comet, whose fatal design flaws turned it into a death trap, crashing one after another in 1954. With good design and good engineering, the Argentine IA 36 could have become the leader of modern commercial aviation worldwide; however, with a similar design, it was the Boeing 707 that took the lead in commercial aviation.
The I.A. 36 Cóndor was a passenger transport aircraft project designed in Argentina by the Fábrica Militar de Aviones in the early 1950s. Project studies began in late 1951 with a design by Kurt Tank, from which a 1:34 scale mock-up was built for the wind tunnel, and a 1:1 scale wooden fuselage model.
The project featured five turbines (the turbojets would be the Rolls Royce “Nene II” model) in an enveloping annular configuration, although it was envisaged that they would be replaced by lighter and more powerful ones.
It could accommodate 32 to 40 passengers and reach a speed of 950 km/h (in that decade the British de Havilland Comet 3 developed 780 km/h).
The Cóndor had a wingspan of 34 m and, like the Pulqui II, had pronounced swept wings, benefiting its performance and economy in flight at high speeds, with an estimated range of 5,000 km.
The project was cancelled by decision of the de facto government of the dictator Pedro Eugenio Aramburu during the regime known as the Revolución Libertadora in 1958.
History
Alejandro Franco produced a historical summary of this emblematic aircraft and recalls that it is the 1940s; the course of the Second World War has changed and the Nazis have lost the initiative, thanks to the counter-offensive mounted by the Russians in the massive Battle of Kursk in July 1943. Not only has the German advance been halted, but the Russians have the initiative and will not stop until they reach the gates of Berlin in April 1945. It is only a matter of time before Adolf Hitler’s Germany falls, so, little by little, the Allied countries begin to make plans for the post-war period, even as German bombs continue to devastate Europe.
Among the reconstruction projects is the modernisation of commercial aviation. The aircraft the army uses to transport troops and war matériel—such as the enormous four-engined Lockheed L-049 Constellation—can easily be converted for civilian use, but they remain limited and noisy, even though it has an endurance range of 6,500 kilometres. Many begin to cast a sideways glance at jet technology, which is still cutting its teeth. Jet turbines are faster and quieter, but they are ravenous fuel guzzlers… and their maximum range is lower than the L-049 and similar aircraft of the period.
By the end of the 1940s, three models appeared: the de Havilland Comet (considered the first commercial aviation jet in history), which debuted in July 1949. The following month the Avro Canada C102 appeared, which never got beyond the prototype stage and would never be mass-produced. Six years later the third model debuted, the Tupolev Tu-104 (June 1955), which put the Soviet Union in the skies.
But a fourth passenger jet aircraft could have existed… and it would have been the Argentine IA 36 Cóndor.
This is the chronicle of a home-grown design with an unusual appearance and iconoclastic engineering, which could have put Argentina on the map of the world’s leading commercial aircraft producers. It is a pity the project never went beyond a sketch and only a couple of scale models were ever built.
A revolutionary and deranged design
The person responsible for the IA 36 Cóndor project was Kurt Tank, the father of the Pulqui II. We have already told the story of the Pulqui I and Pulqui II in the relevant article, but it is worth a brief recap here. Tank was a German engineer who worked designing fighters for the Nazis during the Second World War. When the conflict ended he was left unemployed and, unlike many of his peers—who were recruited by Americans and Soviets—Tank was left wandering around Europe without any valid job offer until Perón offered him employment. Perón wanted Argentina to have its own fighter and had tasked Emile Dewoitine—a Frenchman who had been a Nazi collaborator with the Vichy government during the war—with its development. But Dewoitine could not fully master jet technology—his speciality had always been propeller aircraft—and the project, called Pulqui I, had produced an unstable aircraft, difficult to fly and with poor performance. By contrast, Tank was more battle-hardened in jet technology and brought with him the plans for a pocket fighter—the Focke-Wulf Ta 183—which he expanded and refined to turn into the Pulqui II. And although it was superior in many respects to the Pulqui I, it still needed much work to be a practical and stable fighter.
Using the expertise learned in the development of the Pulqui II, Tank began to develop the prototype of a medium-span passenger aircraft fitted with jet engines. The idea was for it to be mass-produced to form the fleet of the newly established Aerolíneas Argentinas (1950). Development began in 1951 and it soon became evident that it was not a conventional design. While the Comet, Avro and Tupolev had their turbines set into the wings—a design decision that improved aerodynamics but made engine maintenance excessively complicated—Tank came up with the idea of putting the engines literally inside the aircraft, in a tail section larger and wider than the rest of the fuselage and mounted over the main section where the passengers were. The five Rolls Royce Nene II engines would use a single nozzle that would project thrust out through the tail of the aircraft.
Although it was innovative, the flaws in such a design were obvious at first glance. The 40 passengers of the IA 36 would be travelling “stuck” to the engines—as if they were strapped to a rocket—and the noise and heat would be unbearable. On the other hand, it was necessary to detach half the aircraft to slide the tail back, expose the engines and be able to maintain them. And the last (and potentially most dangerous) flaw was that if one of the engines failed (or, worse, if it exploded) it would immediately affect the other four, causing not only an immediate loss of power but raising to intolerable levels the risk that a fire would spread to the passenger section in a matter of seconds.
Aside from those details, the IA 36 Cóndor’s specifications sounded promising. It would have a wingspan of 34 metres; the five Rolls Royce engines would give it a maximum speed of 950 kilometres per hour, surpassing by almost 20% the performance of the de Havilland Comet 3, which was the standard of the day and which reached 780 kilometres per hour. Its range was 5,000 kilometres, which was ideal for flights both within our country and to reach most countries in South America without the need to refuel.
But even if the design had been successful, its passenger capacity worked against its viability. When commercial jets became the standard, it soon became evident that operating costs had to be offset by a greater number of passengers per flight. The Comet only became profitable when version 3 appeared in 1954 with capacity for 76 passengers instead of the 36 of the initial version. All these jet aircraft would be eclipsed by the appearance in 1957 of the Boeing 707 which, with capacity for 179 passengers (and turbines installed externally under the wings), would end up becoming the new and definitive standard of commercial aviation, which remains to this day. The rest of the jets mentioned above would fade away in its shadow and only the DC-8 from Douglas Aircraft (later, McDonnell Douglas) would be able to compete for the market by having similar capacity and performance.
Of the IA 36 Cóndor, some plans remained and two wooden models were made: one full-scale 1:1 and one 1:34 scale to be tested in the wind tunnel. With Perón’s fall in 1955 the project would be frozen and would ultimately be cancelled in 1958.