Comparative Drag Measurements at Transonic Speeds of Rectangular Sweptback NACA 65-009 Airfoils Mounted on a Freely Falling Body

Directly comparable drag measurements have been made of an airfoil with a conventional rectangular plan form and an airfoil with a sweptback plan form mounted on freely falling bodies. Both airfoils had NACA 65-009 sections and were identical in span, frontal area, and chord perpendicular to the leading edge. The sweptback plan form incorporated a sweepback angle of 45 degrees. The data obtained have been used to establish the relation between the airfoil drag coefficients and the free-stream Mach number over a range of Mach numbers from 0.90 to 1.27. The results of the measurements indicate that the drag of the sweptback plan form is less than 0.3 that of the rectangular plan form at a Mach number of 1.00 and is less than 0.4 that at a Mach number of 1.20.