B-52 Scramble

They DO levitate..

Amazing machines and capability.. glad they belong to "the good guys" and not tinpot despots like NK and others..

 

Que the green people to cry about the emissions haha.

Awesome vid. Watching the wing flex is incredible. Id love to see videos of the airframe testing back in the day.

 

I am fortunate to have been "in the day" since I spent two years working on the B-52 and saw (and helped) it rise from the wood and aluminum mock up to the first flight of the XB-52. The inboard wing was set at 7.5 degrees of incidence and twisted to minus two at the tip (in flight). It couldn't be rotated on take off because the rear set of wheels is too far aft of the MAC, so, the inboard wing gets the lift started and the airplane simply rises from the runway making it clear to be put into a climb angle. The wing cannot be fully fueled on the ground because of the flexibility and droop would overload the outriggers and prevent a takeoff. So it is topped off in flight filling the wing and external tanks. I know that I have posted this before but it was long ago. The wing flex took us all by surprise on the first take off because the outer wing starts to fly long before the rest of it and as if by magic, the airplane simply levitates. I was able to witness a max effort launch at Moses lake in 1960 when more than 12 B-52's scrambled and the noise from the water injected J-57's was deafening . They were preceded by a bunch of KC-135's that were even worse noise-wise but the worst thing of all was the impenetrable pall of thick black exhaust smoke that they were going through blind on take off. As they became airborne they were breaking left and right to clear each other and I will always remember the dangerous thing that transpired before us.Impressive as hell , and scary.

 

They cannot rotate much with the tandem bogie (bicycle) landing gear.

The wings are at takeoff angle while on the ground, so for that reason, when you see one flying, the fuselege is actually slightly 'nose down' with the wings level.

Look up the B-47, the earlier Boeing jet bomber. It also has tandem (2 bogies instead of 4) bicycle gear. It sits very nose high on the ground. It doesn't really rotate either, but it's gear is such that it's at takeoff angle.

 

The "bicycle gear" on the B-47 and B-52 was more headache than assistance. The B47 had a built in take off angle with the landing gear set for that purpose. BUT on landing the landing gear prevented the wing from unloading and the residual lift kept the weight off the wheels so that braking was almost nonexistent. The B-52 did it a little differently by setting the wing at an angle but ground spoilers and evenly weighted wheels helped. The drogue chute on the B-47 was used not for braking but to allow near full throttle on approach if a go-around was required. Spool-up time was lengthy then and could cause deadly problems in a late decision to go-around. Talking to some of the PD guys later I got statements that they would never use the tandem landing gear on anything again.
It still boggles my head that here I am 90 years old and my first job in 1950 was working on the first B-52 and it is still going strong and better than anything else that has come along. I'm still trying but I think that the B-52 will be here a long time.

 

Bob- 2040 last time I heard and acting like an arsenal ship for near peers, but pretty good at close air support with PGMs in a permissive environment.

 

Kneecap flew over my position. I was sitting in a car when the thing came over for a touch and go. scary airplane.


In the mid 80's, I visited Carswell and noticed the BUFF's sitting on alert.

 

The elephant walks have been toned down since the old days Bob was discussing. Too dangerous, and they used to do it with live nukes on board. Spain ended most of the live nuke flights, except for transport aircraft.

 

Someone should post a good 'max effort' video for comparrison.

Regards,

Art S.

 

Vid gave me a total flashback to my UPT T-38 solo cross country...

Flew from Willie in Phoenix to Castle Cali. After refueling, got stuck behind one of these big ugly fat f'rs (BUFF) on the taxiway to the active. Spent about 15 minutes behind the guy. Burning fuel at idle in a Talon translates to lost miles very rapidly. So, between math calculations, I used my time to imagine what they were doing inside that thing...checking that 5000 circuit breakers were closed? Calculating SEPTOS? (That's a joke as fighters calculate SETOS, single engine takoff speed...we joke BUFFs must calculate seven engine TOS). Maybe dropping a growler after a morning cup of coffee?

Anyway...coolest thing ever...guy gets cleared for takoff, eventually. He does his flight control checks right before taking the active and I have a front row seat to watch control surfaces the size for entire barn walls moving so rapidly and freely as if they were tinker toy parts. It really was impressive just how big this plane is. The spoilers that popped up on top of the wings seriously looked as if they were bigger than my entire T-38! Takeoff was a fantastic show too. So loud.

I calculated I had the gas I needed to get home, made it to the Valley of the Sun when over Sky Harbor, Willie went single runway ops for a Harrier crash. That changed my min fuel immediately and I didn't have what I needed to get back to Luke without declaring emergency fuel, so I landed at Sky Harbor. I got a three hop solo cross country! As did about a half dozen of my classmates who were all returning from different places at the same time. Great day...thanks to the BUFF!
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These planes are as old as I am!

I wish I could get as upgraded as these planes have ... my bombing days are long over now.

 

Amazing airplane. I think Bob was the one talking about the steerable landing gear on the later B52's allowing them to shorten the vertical stabilizer. It allows better crosswind take offs and landings. I am wondering if they will ever put bigger fan jets on a B52 before they are retired. Maybe leaving the old engines on scares the enemy because you can hear them coming miles away. When I visiting North Dakota many years ago we crossed into a section of highway that was around the test range, and the B52's were out practicing. I never saw it but was told they go over the highway sometimes under 1000 ft.

 

I think all the current ones were re-engined like 20 years ago or more? Not sure what motors though.

 

I can't remember when but the old J57's were replaced with the fan version and they are a lot quieter and have more horse pressure too. A previous post mentioned the big spoilers on the B-52 and I was thinking about the size of everything on it. I recalled the big " pipe" about 8 inches in diameter that ran aft from the fuselage fuel tanks. In the middle of the aft fuselage it made a complete 360 Deg. vertical loop and vented somewhere aft. The loop kept the line from cracking when the fuselage flexed. I have a photo somewhere looking back at a B-52 in a steep turn and there was a considerable angular difference between the wing and horizontal tail, the wing at more of an angle, naturally.

 

Proud to say that I worked on the first article (and many that followed) of both of those Boeings in the photo.

 

All B-52's had "steerable" wheel bogies as far as I know. They could be set for crosswind landings; it would land at a crabbed angle to the runway.

Don't think the shorter vert stabilizer had anything to do with the landing gear. Couple B-52's had their v. stabilizers depart the plane. (One actually flew half way across the country totally without one. Lowered the rear gear for stability. Landed safely. Do a search, there's a pic.) The new v. stabilizers are 8 feet shorter than the originals... I think only the H has the short one.

There was a proposal to re-engine again (for the third time) with four big fanjets in lieu of the eight it has now. Deemed too expensive, especially with the huge inventory of the existing engines, TF-33's. Originals were J-57's.
The switch was with the H model production, over 50 years ago.

 

The interesting thing about the B52 and KC135 are the numbers they got and the timeframe. Around 740 B52 and 800 tankers. I'm not sure about the B52s but the AF got 80 tankers per year for 10 years. Seems to day we are doing good to get 10 airplanes a year.

 

Those huge numbers of KC-135s are why Boeing made money on the 707, even though it was a larger airframe than the 135, and Douglas' DC-8 did not make money.

As stated by Terry, all the B-52 "A"s through "G"s had versions of the J57 and the H was originally fitted with the same TF-33s (updated versions now) they fly today. All we fly today are the H models. Because of START, most of the rest of the fleet was guillotined to guarantee they could not be flown as nuclear capable aircraft. At one point, we had nuke capable and non-nuke capable B-52s, with a panel added to the non-nuke birds so the Russians could tell them apart with "national technical means" (satellites).

 

The earlier B-52's and all that followed had STEERABLE landing gear in order to taxi on the ground. The H was the first to have CASTERING landing gear that was coordinated with the rudder. The reason for the shortened vertical fin as I recall was passed on to us by the B-52 project guys.

 

T-Car, I owe you an apology regarding the B-52 short tail. After digging through my limited contacts now (most B-52 people that I knew are gone) I have learned that the tail was shortened as a weight saving measure and it required a new yaw damper in the process. Still dredging for facts on when the castoring landing gear was installed.

 

I finally found a retiree who had the full story on the castoring landing gear and the vertical fin redesign. As I mentioned, the fin was shortened as a weight saving measure. The "crabbing landing gear" was always a part of the original design but kept secret for some time. i had incorrect knowledge. Must have been a bad microphone. So, you are correct in your statements.

 

Thanks... I wasn't 100% positive, just what I heard.

We have a B-52B here at Wings Over the Rockies museum (Boeing GB-52B Stratofortress No. 52-0005). They used to do interior 'tours' before vandalism (fire) forced them to fence it in.
There was a card discussing the landing gear crabbing ability.

I think the 'B' was the first operational version.

Wings Over the Rockies is a part of the old Lowry AFB here in Denver (the Air Force Academy started here before the new campus was built.)
B-25's here during WWII.

 

The Boeing archivist sent me a picture of the XB-52 sitting crooked on the runway at BFI with the gear crabbed. I was working on B-52 drawings at the time and, at least in our group, nobody knew.

 

still cool to see