The tube pan is traditional used for a chiffon and angel food cake. It's also used for bundt cake. The tube serves two purposes.
The first is it acts as a heating core. Cake normally bakes from the outside in. The center tube allows for heat to distribute from the inside out. This is important when you have the volume of batter required to fill a tube pan. Without a core, the outside will be over baked by the time the center is done.
The second purpose is it acts as a support as the cake rises. If there is no support, the chiffon and angle food cakes will collapse while baking. Chiffon and angel food cake are foam cakes, meaning they depend on egg whites for leavening. Chiffon cake is an interesting hybrid in that it also includes a chemical leavener.
Both chiffon and angel food cakes traditionally cooled upside down. The reason being is they have a much higher liquid to flour ratio. The residual moisture will cause the cake to collapse in on itself during cooling if the cake is not inverted. That said, you can make a chiffon cake without inverting it during cooling. The key is the ratio of flour to liquid ratio.
Another important aspect of baking a chiffon or angel food cake is not greasing the pan. Oil will deflate egg whites. Although the batters contain oils, the addition of oil surrounding the product during baking will destroy the cake. It's also important when beating egg whites that the bowl and whisk have no oil on them. Your egg whites will not beat to stiff peaks if there's a trace of oil in the bowl or on the whisk.
Chiffon cake it's best made with a bleached cake flour. The low protein and bleached flour create a much lighter cake. If you use all purpose flour the cake will be denser and may collapse.
For an angel food cake you cannot use any other flour other than bleached cake flour. If you try to use an all purpose flour or unbleached flour, an angel food cake will simply collapse.
Rose Levy Beranbaum's Orange Glow Chiffon is a favorite of mine. I actually converted this cake to a gluten free version as I cannot eat gluten.
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/orange-glow-chiffon-cake-105984
The chiffon cake by Serious Eats does not require inverting during cooling. It's not as light as a classic chiffon cake since the liquid to flour ratio has been adjusted to allow for cooling upright.
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/06/lemon-chiffon-cake-recipe.html