A Summary of a Half-Century of Oblique Wing Research

Oblique wing aircraft hold the promise of combining efficient supersonic and subsonic flight with excellent low speed endurance. For this reason, there has been recent renewed interest in developing oblique wing aircraft. This paper will provide a historical review of oblique wing demonstrator aircraft and other major oblique wing research. A significant amount of early theoretical work was done by R.T. Jones of NASA Ames, beginning in the 1950s. In the past 35 years, a number of small test aircraft were flown to prove the feasibility of oblique wing aircraft flight control. Small gliders, several small remotely piloted aircraft and the manned AD-1 aircraft, were flown by NASA. In the 1990s, Steve Morris of Stanford University built and flew two oblique flying wing aircraft – the first powered oblique flying wings to fly. Numerous conceptual design studies and research papers have addressed oblique wing-body-tail or oblique flying wing designs. A number of wind tunnel tests have been performed on both oblique wing and oblique flying wing designs. This paper provides an overview of the research, testing and flight demonstrations related to oblique wing and oblique flying wing aircraft over the past half-century.