The countries that can independently design and manufacture fighter jets in the world today mainly include the United States, Russia, France, China and several other countries. However, the Nordic country of Sweden is unique in the design and manufacture of fighter jets. Several advanced fighters have been produced, such as the JAS39 Gripen fighter, which has excellent performance and is exported to several countries, and today I will not say more. Now let's talk about sweden's SAAB35 Dragon fighter in the 1950s.
Speaking of Sweden, it is a permanent neutral country. Since its proclamation as permanent neutrality two hundred years ago, neither world war has been fought. But the basis for neutrality is to have strong national defense strength. World War II was = when this country with an area of 45,000 square kilometers and a population of several million at that time organized more than 300,000 troops, and several Nordic countries, only Sweden was alone. After the end of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union competed for hegemony, Sweden also often made unremitting efforts in the development of weapons in army construction, with the country's developed industrial base, the Swedish Saab Company developed a new fighter in 1952, and carried out a test flight in October 1955.
Saab's new fighter model is the SAB35, code-named Dragon. As soon as this fighter was born, it attracted the attention of all countries with its unique aerodynamic shape. In the 1950s, fighters pursued high altitude and high speed, so the Dragon fighter adopted a special tailless, double triangular wing body fusion layout, and the flat round engine intake duct was arranged at the base of the wing. The aircraft is designed with a large swept vertical tail and a small triangular antenna in front of the vertical tail, which is useful for avoiding stalls.
The Dragon fighter has a fuselage length of 15.34, a fuselage height of 3.87 meters and a wingspan of 9.42; the SAAB35 Dragon has a maximum take-off weight of 10,500 kg, a maximum range of 2,250 km, a combat radius of 900 km, and a practical ceiling of 18,300 m.
Originally, the Dragon fighter was designed to have a speed of Mach 1.4, but with the development of weapons in neighboring countries, especially the former Soviet Union is developing supersonic bombers, the Dragon fighter as a high-altitude interceptor, Mach 1.4 times the speed of sound has been far behind. So Saab wanted to improve the engine. Because sweden is industrially developed, but after all, the country is small and sparse, and the industry with high-tech technology such as aero engines has not developed, and the Dragon fighter uses the British "Evan 200" turbojet engine. The engine had a thrust of 6.8 tons, but was improved by the Swedish side to become an "RM6B" engine, and the thrust was increased to 7.9 tons, so that only a single-engine ASSB35 Dragon fighter reached a speed of Mach 1.8 and reached Mach 2 at an altitude of 11,000 meters.
In terms of weapons mounting, the Dragon fighter is equipped with two Ardennes 30 mm cannons and can carry air-to-air missiles such as RB-18 and RB-24, and can also carry bombs of various weights, with a maximum single amount of nearly 3 tons.
The Dragon began service in 1960 and produced more than 650 of them, as the excellent performance at that time was exported to Austria, Finland and Denmark in addition to the Swedish Air Force's own use. The Saab35 Dragon of the Austrian Air Force was not retired until 2005.
The disadvantage of the SAAB35 Dragon is that the short take-off and landing performance is poor, and the single amount is small, which is mainly due to the fact that the aircraft is a single engine and is designed as a delta wing for high-speed interception, which cannot be done in an all-round way. However, this was already very good at the time when a small country like Sweden could design and produce fighter jets, and it has always occupied a place in the world aviation industry.