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The crescent wing design seen on the Victor bomber seems to have a great number of advantages...

  • the critical mach remains more constant along the span, so the formation of shock waves is more even and has less pitch trim changes at high speed
  • higher inboard sweep at the point where the wing is the thickest increases the overall critical mach and thereby improves transonic performance
  • the curvature (somewhat?) reduces spanwise flow, thereby lowering tip-stall effects at low speed
  • when such a stall does occur, it happens at a point closer to the MAC, so the magnitude of the pitch-up is lower
  • because of the geometry of the approach, some designs will have a natural flare built-in - this was a major positive benefit on the Victor, although not a design goal

So... with all of these advantages, why doesn't everyone use them? Is there some disadvantage that is not being mentioned?

Maury Markowitz
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    The requested disadvantages are covered in the linked post, which would be a candidate for being a duplicate per meta: Questions may be duplicates if they have the same (potential) answers.* This includes not only word-for-word duplicates, but also the same idea expressed in different words.* –  Mar 13 '18 at 15:42

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