Saab Tunnan

The Saab 29, popularly called Flygande tunnan ("The Flying Barrel"), was a Swedish fighter designed and manufactured by Saab in the 1950s. It was Sweden's second turbojet-powered combat aircraft, the first being the Saab 21R. Despite its rotund appearance, the J 29 was fast and agile, serving effectively in both fighter and fighter-bomber roles into the 1970s. In the aftermath of the Second World War, it was decided that Sweden needed a strong ai... more

The Saab 29, popularly called Flygande tunnan ("The Flying Barrel"), was a Swedish fighter designed and manufactured by Saab in the 1950s. It was Sweden's second turbojet-powered combat aircraft, the first being the Saab 21R. Despite its rotund appearance, the J 29 was fast and agile, serving effectively in both fighter and fighter-bomber roles into the 1970s. In the aftermath of the Second World War, it was decided that Sweden needed a strong air defense built around the newly developed jet propulsion technology. Project "JxR" began in the final months of 1945 with two proposals from the SAAB design team led by Lars Brising. The first, codenamed R101, was a cigar-shaped aircraft somewhat similar to the American P-80 Shooting Star. The winning design however was the "barrel" design, codenamed R1001, which proved to be both faster and more agile. The original R1001 was designed around a mostly straight wing, but after the Swedish engineers had obtained some German research data on... less