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Old 04-26-2007, 01:13 PM   #8 (permalink)
tommy321
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Default Re: Why do jets have swept wings?

From the famous Roskam Aircraft Aerodynamics and Performance text book :

Basically, if you take your the critical mach number for a straight wing, and divide by the cosine of your sweep angle, you get a new higher critical mach number. Critical mach number, as has been said is the point at which you start to see a large increase in drag.

Tom
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