A Correlation of High Speed Drag Data

In fulfillment of the purpose of this investigation, a method of estimating the drag of an airplane at high Mach numbers has been derived. Two sets of curves, one for airplanes having conventional wing sections and the other for those having low drag sections, were drawn to show the percentage increase in total drag with the ratio of free stream Mach number to critical Mach number of the wing. A method for computation of the blocking correction is presented and applied, resulting in good agreement between the wind tunnel and flight tests. Wind tunnel data corrected for the blocking effect were chiefly used to deduce the conclusions, but they were supplemented by all the flight test results available.