Random pics from today.....

Thanks Mark, great shots. I love the B1 shots. I remember when one of those flew LOW over Boulder, right over my house. God what a noise. Some of the weenies in Boulder talked for days about the "post traumatic stress" they were suffering because of the "terror" induced by the sound. HA HA!

 

Oh, dear God...tell 'em to come out to Oceana in Va Beach when the Super Hornets are shooting landings. That'll cure 'em. Not complaining, I love it!

The B-1 is sooo impressive. I remember being amazed by a B-1 aerobatic routine when I was little...that big thing can do THAT?!! Thanks for the shots, Mark, nice stuff!

 

I have seen 707's rolled ( at altitude), the 367-80 rolled, B-47's performed immelman's to deliver nuclear bombs in the lob maneuver and also loops to do the over-the -shoulder delivery,and when I was a kid I saw a Ford Tri Motor looped at an airshow. It's all in the wrist.
Switches

 

Tex Johnson and the 707 prototype... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vHiYA6Dmws

 

Oh that's right, you were there for the infamous Tex Johnston episode, weren't you? Doing an immelman in a B-47 sounds, um, interesting...I didn't realize they delivered nukes that way, that's pretty tricky, I'd imagine!

 

Yep. Boeing test pilot Dick Taylor pioneered those techniques years ago and the B-47 was as much a jet fighter as it was a bomber. A great airplane and pilot. The lob technique was a delivery where the bomb was released as the airplane was climbing up just prior to going inverted and the bomb continued up into a high trajectory and arced over to a target, the airplane completing the Immelman and diving down to a high speed escape.
The other technique was to pass the target and pull up into a loop and release the bomb at the top of the loop backwards to the target. The airplane continued the loop and kept on going. Both techniques allowed the plane to escape the blast.
I hope that I'm not talking too much. This site triggers the ol' memory and it turns on my recall of many many things that I have experienced and have been a part of. Sometimes I feel that I'm a chat hog and that I should shut up and watch. Old people blab too much sometimes about things that don't matter anymore. I remember that as a kid when my old aunts would start blabbing about stuff in the 1889's and 1900's. Nobody listened .
Switches

 

Keep talking. I'm listening

 

Yeah, no lie, me too!!

So then, I take it pilots were using this maneuver in some of the tests done out at NPG? Talk about pressure...imagine being the first pilot to lob an armed nuke, trying to get out of the way fast! I'd imagine that has to be a high risk procedure. Don't know about a B-47, but I know that in the Citabria you're pretty damn close to stall speed at the top prior to the 1/2 roll. I can't imagine ham fisting it a little, recovering from a stall (spin in a 47?) then remembering, "Oh yeah, I just threw a nuke out of the belly."

 

The B-47 was a clean, fast, and had a lot of energy as it climbed into those maneuvers. I have flown a Citabria and they do not have the energy or relative speed and they have too much drag that kills the airplane quickly when the nose is raised. An armed nuke was never delivered but dummy units with smoke were and the airplane performed as calculated and the dummy performed as calculated. Boeing engineers had this figured to the foot and to them it wasn't much of a risk. The B-47 was knocked by the British because it had " so many low powered engines hanging off the wings" but it set the design criteria for everything that followed. We have to thank the German engineers in WW2 for some of the swept wing technology. Boeing added to it and put it on a very fine airplane that was followed by the B-52 , KC-135, 707, and so on. The worst problem with the B-47 was the tandem landing gear that maintained a high angle of attack upon landing and the wing couldn't unload, thereby making braking a problem when there wasn't enough weight on the gear. The drogue chute was deployed so that the engines could stay spooled up in case of a go-around and it was used for braking on the ground. In the parlance of the Beetles, it was a clean machine.
Switches

 

Me too!

 

keep talking Bob.
we need to hear this stuff, or we'll all turn into "the weenies in Boulder talked for days about the "post traumatic stress" they were suffering because of the "terror" induced by the sound". in my book thats not terror, thats right up there with 8000 rpm V12's and
6000 hp top fuelers crossing the 1000 ft marker.

keep talking!


Tritone

 

I don't want to come across as some kind of "ex-spurt". I simply love aviation and I have been blessed by the Good Lord to be able to stick around for a while after I have been around for a while. Most memories are fresh and being a talker, I like to share. If folks enjoy it, then it is good to pass it on after such a great ride....or more correctly,flight.