The Aurora Top-Secret Hypersonic Spy Plane

The most compelling report I have seen was the reported crash landing at Farnborough, where a C-5 arrived to take away all the bits. Anyone know any more about this ?

Waynos,

I've heard of the incident you are describing! However, in some of the accounst I've heard the plane was supposed to be a Top Secret Stealth plane similar in design to the Northrop YF-23 ATF prototype.

But then again, who knows?

Tim

Howdy guys. I too have heard of the accident you are describing but it left my mind for a bit and now I remeber even seeing photos of the supposed C-5 at the base and a time line etc. Again I remeber it being theory but a good read. Anyways after some digging into the grey matter and some goggle searchs of different word combinations I found some info.

I was quite happy with my own theory on the SR-71 until very recently, when I was pointed in the direction of an article in the respected British military aviation magazine, Air Forces Monthly. The article related the story of an aircraft crash at Boscombe Down in Wiltshire, England. Boscombe Down is a UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) airfield to which the public, including civilian pilots, are not normally given access.

Normally there would be nothing too unusual about a aircraft crash, except the fact that it crashed which would almost certainly be reported in AFM anyway, but this one was very different. Within minutes of the crash the aircraft was covered with a large tarpaulin and then hauled into the privacy of a nearby DRA (Defence Research Agency) hangar.

link: www.geocities.com...

I'll see what I can dig up again now that I remeber the name of the base etc. I suggest that you guys do the same when you have the chance and we can go over what we find again ofcourse as is the custom. Cheers EH

[edit on 22/08/06 by Canada_EH]

Ahh found the other site.

link: www.dreamlandresort.com...

Its the one I described with photos and a over abundance of "information" on the incident. Let me know what you all think.

Take a look at what I found:

ASTRA stands for Advanced Stealth Technology Reconnaissance Aircraft, and ASTRA was apparently Air Vehicle 6 - AV-6.Northrop is definitely the developer seeing as it is called an 'Air Vehicle' Air Vehicles are designations given to all Northrop aircraft being developed. The B-2A Spirits were Air Vehicles ranging from AV-1 - AV-21 (21 aircraft). So....AV-6 obviously was the 6th aircraft in the ASTRA Series/variants, or was it?

Boscombe Downs Crash

This would seem to suggest that the crash at RAF Boscombe Downs was indeed a Top Secrest spy plane from Northrop Grumman. I would venture to guess that maybe this could be the phantom spy plane we have been looking for. If this is the case, the Lockheed project might not be the spy plane everyone has been thinking.

Has anyone ever seriously considered that the Legiond of the Aroura Spy Plane was born from putting together peices of several Unrelated Black Project and mistaking thinking we were looking at one program, when in reallity we were looking at pieces from 3 or 4 seprate Black Projects underway at the same time?

Tim

I recall re-reading that again last night about the naming of their aircraft for documention purposes. The site that you pulled it from that I linked has "alot!" of speculation but their is some truth mixed in there. Can we verify it? Well the B-2's where called articles much in the same way the CIA also gave the A-12's article numbers as well. Its an interesting tid bit to say the least eh tim?

Its interesting to note that at this time we are also talking about a airliner that seems to have had a similer failure of nose gear and then skidding down a runway much like the sounds of this story.

[edit on 22/08/06 by Canada_EH]

Originally posted by Ghost01
Has anyone ever seriously considered that the Legiond of the Aroura Spy Plane was born from putting together peices of several Unrelated Black Project and mistaking thinking we were looking at one program, when in reallity we were looking at pieces from 3 or 4 seprate Black Projects underway at the same time?

Tim

Well this what has been brought forward as of late for reasoning for the Aurora title in the budget the problem is from what I've heard the Aurora title is in a section that is reference to the actual production of aircraft and not in a R&D section that would link it to just being the Aurora research project and then feeding into the B-2 program.

Yes, Boscombe, not Farnborough. My memory was playing tricks but that is definitely the crash I was referring to.

Ive been fascinated by the Boscombe Down crash ever since I read about it, partly because Ive been to Boscombe Down myself a couple of times.

Unfortunately the Dreamland report of events isn't completely accurate and is mostly based on hearsay. Firstly in 1994 when the incident occured DERA didn't even exist, Boscombe Down was run by the Defense Test and Evaluation Organisation (DTEO), which then became DERA in 1995, which then split into Qinetiq and DSTL in 2001.

Boscombe Down has always been the main site for white and black aircraft testing in the UK, mainly due to its ideal location on Salisbury Plain, a massive, though only partly restricted, army training area.

I have no doubt the UK and USA have collaborated on some projects in the past, the MoD conveniently blacked out information on still secret american projects in its UFO documents.

We will probably never find out what plane crashed at Boscombe Down the information on the matter is so sketchy that the US Gov has no reason to release any info on it.

Is their enough evidence though to say that something did for sure crash though? Is that what your saying gfad? It is an interesting story but is there any phots or anything at all other then the witness reports? If their is anything more solid on this it would stand out from other Aurora and black project stories for sure.

Don't assume the Boscombe Down incident involved a Northrop aircraft just because the term "air vehicle" was used. Air Vehicle (AV) is generic terminology used by Northrop, Lockheed, Boeing, and any number of others.

the reason they have been able to keep the aurora project secret is becuase they have been secretly aliminating people connected to the project. if you dont believe this, here is an example of this. a number of people who worked on the stingray torpedo project for gec-marconi the left gec-marconi have been killed under mysterious curcumstances. the deaths, really assaninations, all appear to have been accidents, and the victom was usually alone. that good anough for you people?!

Originally posted by Canada_EH

Originally posted by Ghost01
Has anyone ever seriously considered that the Legiond of the Aroura Spy Plane was born from putting together peices of several Unrelated Black Project and mistaking thinking we were looking at one program, when in reallity we were looking at pieces from 3 or 4 seprate Black Projects underway at the same time?

Tim

Well this what has been brought forward as of late for reasoning for the Aurora title in the budget the problem is from what I've heard the Aurora title is in a section that is reference to the actual production of aircraft and not in a R&D section that would link it to just being the Aurora research project and then feeding into the B-2 program.

I was referring to the eyewitness desriptions not the line from the budget document.

Tim

Originally posted by Canada_EH
Is their enough evidence though to say that something did for sure crash though? Is that what your saying gfad? It is an interesting story but is there any phots or anything at all other then the witness reports? If their is anything more solid on this it would stand out from other Aurora and black project stories for sure.

Yeah I guess that is what Im saying. All I can find online is the same story repeated (often simply copy and pasted) on several different websites, and all that depends on is hearsay.

Is there any solid evidence that this event actually happened? Ive tried searching for photos of american aircraft at Boscombe Down but it didnt turn anything up.

Can we see evidence that London Control was contacted closing the Boscombe Down runway as it says in the story? Can we get proof the C-5 flew into Boscombe Down the day after? Can we get any independat information to verify this story?

Originally posted by gfad
Boscombe Down has always been the main site for white and black aircraft testing in the UK, mainly due to its ideal location on Salisbury Plain, a massive, though only partly restricted, army training area.

The British test white AND Black projects in the same place? Why do they do that?

Tim

Its either in the interests of racial equality....or...... because Britain is a very small and crowded country and we aren't exactly blessed with vast open plains we can shroud in secrecy, I think the really secret stuff gets sent to Australia where we can be sure the Roo's and Dingo's wont tell anyone.

[edit on 1-4-2007 by waynos]

Originally posted by Ghost01
The British test white AND Black projects in the same place? Why do they do that?

As waynos said, the UK isn't that massive and there are only a few large bases with suitable equipment in areas which restrict obsrvation. RAF Boscombe Down is one of these, as was RAF Macrihanish.

Secondly the same companies/departments develop and build the black and white projects; and for reasons of the size of the country these companies only have a limited number of facilities.

Australia does offer an alternative. When the BAe Taranis is built it will make its ground tests in the UK but its flight tests in Oz.

Originally posted by Ghost01

I've flown a 26 1/2 hour mission in a B-52 and that's as exhausting as a 4 hour mission in the SR-71.

I'm assuming an SR pilot would know what he's talking about. Exactally why this is, I don't know. Maybe it requires more intense concentration to monitor the flight, because everything happens so much faster.

Tim

I was the happy participant in a several hour long bar conversation with one of the pilots once, and I think what he's talking about is the fact that the SR-71 was an asspain to fly.

There are apparently a ton of flight rules it requires about climb rates and turn rates, or you'll get all sorts of nasty instabilities. And on the earlier engine control system you'd get a LOT of crap like on easy turns, the inboard engine flaming out or throwing repeated compressor stalls . And IIRC you had to control the spikes semi-manually. I think the later engine control system would hide some of the less attractive behaviors, but there were still a lot of "gotchas" and "oh s----ts!" that you didn't have on any other airframe.

Except he related some older pilots' U2 horror stories as well, apparently you can stall the tip of one wing and get porpoising on the other in a pretty easy turn if you're not at the right speed or if you're trying to climb and turn at the same time.

As opposed, say, to the F117 which is apparently a really laid back plane to fly.

Personally, I wouldn't know, but I got the overall idea that flying an SR-71 was insanely picky.

Read Sled Driver and The Untouchables by Brian Schull and you'll get an idea of the problems they had. They were pretty cruel about the selection process though.

One of the things they'd do was tell you that you were doing a great job of flying the plane when you were doing the simulator (day 2 or 3 IIRC), and convince you that you could fly the plane without the yaw dampener turned on. They'd turn it off, the simulator would almost instantly snap to full up and at an angle, at which point the simulator tech would come running in yelling "Oh my god! You just broke our $28 million dollar simulator!" (or however much it cost). The whole point was to see how you handled stress.

Unstarts were always a big problem for the Blackbird. Even with the later systems under certain conditions they were a huge problem. Occasionally one spike would move, but one wouldn't, or they would move at different rates disrupting the airflow to one engine causing it.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
Unstarts were always a big problem for the Blackbird. Even with the later systems under certain conditions they were a huge problem. Occasionally one spike would move, but one wouldn't, or they would move at different rates disrupting the airflow to one engine causing it.

Bingo! Unstarts. That's the term he used. I always thought of it as a compressor stall or flameout but they use the term "unstart" for supersonic aircraft.

It always sounded a bit new-speak to me.