If you had a straight-wing for supersonic use, or possibly if the shockwave swept back beyond the

sweep-angle of the wing you'd use a symmetrical foil.

The reason is that the some of the principles behind a regular airfoil -- the curved portion of the
top section of the foil producing a low-pressure zone on the top seems to go largely in reverse at
supersonic speeds. Convex curvature increases pressure and slows the airflow down which
reduces lift. AoA will have to be increased to negate this, and more to produce positive lift.
While inverse-camber would be better for supersonic flight as pressure would be increased on the
bottom, it often isn't exactly the best choice as the design would produce negative lift at subsonic
speed requiring higher AoA's to get positive lift while subsonic. Since supersonic foils are kind of
thin, this could make takeoff speeds very high, and critical AoA's quite low. So instead
symmetrical are typically used since it's the next best thing. Sure at 0-degrees AoA it produces no
lift, but once you get the AoA up you start producing lift. It produces better performance at
supersonic speed than a standard subsonic airfoil, without substantial losses at subsonic speed
(although there are some losses). I should note that even with this said, you will still require a
higher AoA at supersonic speed as the L/D ratio falls off due to the thicker boundary layer,
increased turbulence, and a lower pressure differential (the low-pressure zone up top isn't as low
as at subsonic speed), but it would be substantially better than a subsonic airfoil.
These particular airfoils only have some limited applications. Straight wings experience a massive
shift in the center of pressure (on a straight wing once the upwash up front goes away, the center
of pressure shifts back to the 50% mark). This produces a strong nose-down tendency in
supersonic flight requiring considerable longitudinal trim deflections which produce excessive
amounts of drag if you're looking for endurance. Not to mention, the thickest point on the wing is
often half way down the wing (due to the center of pressure being at 50% instead of 25% at
subsonic flight) which does degrade low-speed performance (Still better than an inverse camber
supersonic-foil). The airfoil-thinness can pose a problem as fuel might not be able to be carried in
the design (the F-104 could not carry any fuel in it's wing and needed the fuselage to do the
whole job). The serious advantage they do have is that they have very low drag when flow over
them is fully supersonic compared to other airfoil types. They call this supersonic-drag. In fact
even if shockwaves produced on the other parts of the plane sweep beyond the wing's leading
edge, it's not that big a deal. Tapered, or trapezoidal wings (low-sweep) a'la the F-104 type will
feature a shockwave that will form on the root and sweep back... even if they sweep back well
beyond the wing's leading edge, it's not a significant problem. In fact, the F-104 aircraft's
geometry (if airframe and temperature restrictions weren't an issue -- and they are) could easily
allow for speeds in excess of Mach 3 maybe 4 (I've been told it's shape could allow for twice the
speed if engine temps and structual limitations didn't matter)
There are other types of airfoils though used for supersonic flight though and a large number of
them do not have fully-supersonic flow over them.
One example is a swept-wing. In addition to sacrificing span for a lower thickness/chord ratio
(behaves better at high-subsonic and transonic speeds too), at Mach 1, the shockwave only
forms off the wing-root, leaving the rest of the wing behind it, and as long as the shockwave is
equal or less (or at least in *front* of) than the sweep-angle of the wing, some of the flow field will
behave subsonically, at least the parts at angles to the wave (if you pointed an object dead
ahead, you'll still get a shockwave). This subsonic effect enables one to design most of the wing
(except maybe the root) with blunt leading-edges and such like you would on a subsonic plane,
still achieve low pressure suction zones across the front, and retain some low-speed handling
inherant in blunt-leading-edges. The subsonic effect only covers so much of the wing, the leading
edges and a bit aft of that, but eventually it will go fully supersonic. Highly swept-wings generally
have a lower shift in the center of pressure, and their stall onset is usually more gradual than a
straight wing which is much more abrupt. They have some negative side-effects though including
noticeable span-wise flow at subsonic speeds. The airflow despite the wingsweep at subsonic

speed goes pretty much front to back over the wing (technically the inward spiraling vortices
which are at the tips do cause the flow to slide inward a bit, but not factoring that...), on swept
wings there's a tendency for the flow to slide sideways across the wing in such a way that could
actually seriously reduce aerodynamic performance and even produce a stall. Stall fences, slats,
and proper aerodynamic-contouring of the wing can deal with this problem. Another problem is
flexibility. Swept-wings flex a lot which pose a number of problems, including aileron reversal in
which the aileron deflections cause the wing's leading edges to twist in opposition nullifying and
even reversing direction of roll. For supersonic flight there may even be a flutter-risk in some
cases, although I'm not sure how big a problem that is. Swept wings designed for supersonic
flight do often fly at higher indicated airspeeds as well which puts more stress on the wing during
banks and turns, so they are often stiffened up -- this can result in a weight penalty. Tip-stall is the
next problem, on a typical straight wing, it stalls at the root. Stalling occurs at the back of the wing
where the flow has lost a lot of it's energy after flowing over the whole wing, so in this case it
stalls at the inboard rear of the wing. This disrupts the downwash which is a downward flow off
the back of the wing which increases the downward load on the tail (tails produce a negative lift
since the center of pressure is behind the center of gravity which is necessary to produce
stability), the reduction in downwash causes the tail to become less effective causing the wing's
natural tendency to pitch down to take-over... once the wing's AoA lowers and recovers from the
stall, the downwash is restored... On swept wings the tips tend to stall first, which along the span
is much further aft... when it stalls, the inboard part of the wing which is further forward keeps
lifting and the plane pitches up even further, AoA goes up with it and it makes stall recovery much
more difficult than a root-stall. The solution involves twisting the wing such so that the inboard
leading edge is at a higher angle of incidence than the outboard trailing-edge. Another problem
that swept-wings have is known as dutch-roll, a type of lateral instability, believe it or not, not
named after some kind of pastry, but actually the way that Dutch sailors used to stumble and roll
all over the place while drunk on leave. Turbulence can cause yawing, which causes more airflow
to go over one wing than the other, with swept wing, the effects of sideslip (which is like AoA on
the sideways axis) cause one wing to dramatically produce more lift than the other -- the result is
substantially increased roll rate over a straight-wing. Eventually the tail slows the yawing down
and the plane starts yawing the other way, then causing another roll-rate in the new direction. It
gets worse every cycle too. The greater the wing-sweep, typically the nastier the dutch roll... It's
very difficult to correct because the amount of yaw input to cancel out the motion is often very
little at high-speeds, and the pilot puts too much in aggravating the problem. There are a number
of solutions which include increasing the tail area which would stop the yawing in its tracks
typically, and the addition of a yaw-damper, a device which works through the autopilot and
makes small movements to the rudder by detecting sideslip, cancelling out the motion before it is
able to get too severe.
Another example is a delta-wing. The delta wing provides a number of aerodynamic advantages
for a high-speed aircraft. It is naturally a rigid structure which does not require extensive structural
beefening. It has a lot of external area which produces a lighter wing-loading than a swept wing
could, and greater internal-area which allows for lots of fuel to be carried if needed. It's high
leading-edge sweep angle causes a vortex to form at the root and flow spanwise ultimately
merging with the wing-tip vortex, while the wing-tip vortex plays a role with downwash, it
degrades lift and increases drag like any other... however the leading-edge vortex helps energize
the flow over the leading edge causing the wing's critical AoA to be much higher than one would
expect from that particular airfoil cross-section, even when stall occurs, the flow is still stable over
the control surfaces mounted on the aft of the wing allowing easy recovery -- in stall, descent rate
increases substatially though, however pushing the nose over will fix that problem. To my
knowledge the same effect can occur with some highly swept (~60-degrees) wings too. Like
highly-swept wings, the stall onset is more gradual than a straight wing, which occurs more
abruptly. The delta-wing's leading-edge except the root rides behind the shockwave and as a
result has a subsonic-flowfield over the leading-edges and over significant parts of the wing. This
allows blunt leading edges as on the swept-wing and even a type of camber called conicalcamber in which the leading edge kind of curves downward-- nonexistant at the root, and getting

progressively more noticeable in terms of chordwise coverage and to an extent curvature as you
get further and further down the span, with the curved wing often blended with a downward
curved wing-tip which helps overall in the process, may even reduce vortex-drag. This conicalcamber like blunt leading-edges will increase suction on the leading edge, increase the L/D ratio
at supersonic speed and drastically improve low-speed handling. The problems with the deltawing is while delta-wings may (due to large wing-area and vortex-lift) perform nicely at lowspeeds, still take off and land at very high angles of attack which produces undesirable amount of
drag. This reduces initial acceleration and climb-rate until the angle lowers a bit. Also, during
approach it's very easy to end up losing too much speed with the AoA getting too high requiring
large amounts of thrust to jack the speed up to get the AoA to a reasonable level for approach.
Also, the difference in takeoff and landing speeds are further apart than you would see with most
wings as well. Additionally since a delta is traditionally a tail-less design, the trailing edge of the
wing needs to be deflected up which is contrary to what you'd ideally want on a wing, the problem
is generally overcome once supersonic as the drag produced by having a tail would actually be
more so than having elevons; at subsonic speed and transonic speed a tail produces an
advantage. Delta wings because of their larger areas experience a greater shift in the center of
pressure than highly swept wings. If the airplane is small like a fighter, the thrust to weight ratio
should be able to overcome the trim-drag, larger designs would probably shift the fuel into
rearward trim-tanks to put the CG and the Center of Pressure near eachother to provide low
enough trim-drag. One of the biggest problems with Delta-wings, and it's not a huge one unless
you plan to fly REALLY REALLY FAST, is that once the shockwave sweeps behind the wing drag
increases to the point that a straight wing would be better.
Now there are other wing-designs that exists, but I'm rather tired right now and feel frankly like
getting a good nap.
Andrea Kent