[Otto]

Remember about 10 years ago when that Navy P3 Orion was hit by the hotrodding Chinese fighter plane off the China coast?

If nose shape is insignificant and the afterbody is what really defines drag, then the P3 should have flown just as fast and well after its nose cone was knocked off as it did before. After all, the fuselage and afterbody was not changed in any way, but the radome/nose cone was knocked off the P3.

Well, that thing was an absolute ***** to keep airborne due to buggered flow and uber-high drag. Speed dropped radically, as did control and stability. I'm sure fuel consumption spiked, even at much lower speed.

Maybe it's time to dispense with the old wives' tale that nose shape is relatively unimportant. Otherwise, we're saying Porsche, Ferrari, Nascar, and Mother Nature are all flat wrong. If nose shape were relatively insignificant, largemouth bass could swim as fast as tuna. Can they?

Maybe, like Heinrich Hertel, it's a good idea to look to Mother Nature and see her empirical handiwork of the past 200 million years. I bet Mom could give us a few pointers on cooling drag, re-introduction of spent cooling air back into the slipstream, nose and afterbody shape, etc..