Marquardt Corporation was one of the few aeronautical engineering firms that was dedicated almost solely to the development of the ramjet engine. Marquardt designs were developed through the 1940s into the 1960s, but the ramjet never became a major design and the company turned to other fields in the 1970s. They suffered a particularly bad financial crisis with the ending of the Cold War, and went bankrupt in the 1990s.
The Lockheed D-21 is an American supersonic reconnaissance drone. The D-21 was initially designed to be launched from the back of a M-21 carrier aircraft, a variant of the Lockheed A-12 aircraft. The drone had maximum speed in excess of Mach 3.3 at an operational altitude of 90,000 feet. Development began in October 1962. Originally known by the Lockheed designation Q-12, the drone was intended for reconnaissance deep into enemy airspace.
The Lockheed X-7 was an American unmanned test bed of the 1950s for ramjet engines and missile guidance technology. It was the basis for the later Lockheed AQM-60 Kingfisher, a system used to test American air defenses against nuclear missile attack.
The Republic XF-103 was an American project to develop a powerful missile-armed interceptor aircraft capable of destroying Soviet bombers while flying at speeds as high as Mach 3. Despite a prolonged development, it never progressed past the mockup stage.
The Hiller YH-32 Hornet was an American ultralight helicopter built by Hiller Aircraft in the early 1950s. It was a small and unique design because it was powered by two Hiller 8RJ2B ramjet engines mounted on the rotor blade tips which weigh 13lbs each and deliver an equivalent of 45 h.p. for a total of 90 h.p. Versions of the HJ-1 Hornet were built for the United States Army and the United States Navy in the early 1950s.
The AQM-35 was a supersonic target drone produced by the Northrop Corporation.
The Nord 1500 Griffon was an experimental ramjet-powered fighter aircraft designed and built in the mid-1950s by French state-owned aircraft manufacturer Nord Aviation. It was part of a series of competing programs to fill a French Air Force specification for a Mach 2 fighter.
The Bristol Thor, latterly Bristol Siddeley BS.1009 Thor, was a 16-inch diameter ramjet engine developed by Bristol Aero Engines for the Bristol Bloodhound anti-aircraft missile.
The NHI H-3 Kolibrie was a small helicopter developed in the Netherlands in the 1950s by Nederlandse Helikopter Industrie.
The Keldysh bomber was a Soviet design for a rocket-powered sub-orbital bomber spaceplane, which drew heavily upon work carried out by Eugen Sänger and Irene Bredt for the German Silbervogel project.
The Mil V-7 was an unusual experimental four-seat helicopter with AI-7 ramjets at the tips of the two rotor blades. It had an egg-shaped fuselage, skid undercarriage, and a two-bladed tail rotor on a short tubular tail boom. Four aircraft were built in the late 1950s, but only one is known to have flown, with only the pilot aboard.
The Nord Gerfaut (en:Gyrfalcon) was a delta wing experimental research aircraft, originally designed and built by SFECMAS – Société Française d'Etude et de Construction de Matériel Aéronautiques Spéciaux which was later merged with SNCAN – Société Nationale de Constructions Aéronautiques du Nord to form Nord Aviation.
The Leduc 0.22 was the prototype of a Mach 2 fighter built in France in 1956.
The MQM-42 was a supersonic target drone developed by North American Aviation. Developed in two subvariants, Redhead and Roadrunner, it was used by the United States Army in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Heinkel P.1080 was a proposed Emergency Fighter powered by two ramjet engines.
The Marquardt MA-74 was a ramjet engine built by the Marquardt Corporation for use in supersonic target drones in the 1960s.
The Wright XRJ47 was an American ramjet engine developed in the 1950s to help propel the rocket-launched SM-64 Navaho supersonic intercontinental cruise missile. Although the design flight Mach Number was 2.75, a peak flight speed of Mach 3.0, at altitudes up to about 77000 ft, was envisaged. This very large ramjet had a number of design problems, including some difficulty in light-up. Development of the Navaho missile was cancelled along with the ramjet engine in 1957.
