The pilot sat just aft of the pointed nosecone intended to house search-tracking radar for interception of enemy fighters and bombers. The cockpit offered excellent vision thanks to its wide-area, unobstructed canopy. The fuselage was given a squat, rounded shape with elegantly tapered to the rear. The tail unit encompassed a single vertical fin with low-mounted horizontal planes. The mainplanes were fitted near midships and mid-mounted along the sides of the fuselage. Each member had sweptback leading edges and near-straight trailing edges not unlike the F-16. Also as in the F-16, there would be wingtip mountings for Short-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (SRAAMs) with an additional missile / drop bomb hardpoint to be featured under each wing as well. Internal cannon armament (2 x 27mm types) would be housed in wing pods to keep the fuselage as clean of components as possible. Finally, ground-running would be through a conventional tricycle arrangement with the nose leg found under the intake and the main legs set as part of the wing gun pods under each wing. Airbrakes were cut into each aft side of the fuselage.
The slimness of the empennage was designed so as to allow the underslung engine installation to exhaust properly aft when in horizontal flight. The engine was fitted to a ventral structural extension that encompassed the intake at front and the positional liftjets along the sides. From a maintenance standpoint, this placement of the system gave excellent access by ground crew to the engine, as well as its lift jets, and airflow needed to aspirate the air-breathing engine was extremely simple with a direct "front-to-rear" approach not requiring customary elbows / turns / curves. Additional air would be pulled through side intake doors when vertical flight was needed.
Structurally, the HS.1205-5 model proposed was estimated to have a running length of 54 feet with a wingspan of 36.9 feet. Weight reached 30,500lb and maximum speeds were proposed near 1,115 miles-per-hour (roughly Mach 1.45). Service ceiling was to reach beyond 35,000 feet. The fighter's take-off run was under 275 feet and compared well against modern lightweights which managed between 1,000 feet and 5,000 feet depending on design.
Despite the unique and promising nature of the HS.1205, the design went no further than drawings for there proved technical and aerodynamic challenges related to the perfect placement and operation of the positional lift jets in the lightweight design. Nevertheless, work that was dedicated to designs like the HS.1205 ultimately helped pave the way for more versatile combat warplanes that eventually evolved into types like the all-modern Lockheed Martin F-35 "Lightning II" VTOL form (detailed elsewhere on this site).
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