Spy Planes

Tha accounts of the accidents are very interesting. A few of them look like they would have been repaired and put back in service. I don't live all that far from Beale and have read a fair amount about SR71 and its being built. One of the big reasons they were taken out of service is spare parts. Lockheed had a contract that called for X number of planes and X number of spare parts. All tooling that was used to make them was to be destroyed after the contract was filled. It was going to be VERY expensive to tool up and remake many of the needed parts. They had been robbing parts off of other airframes for some time keeping a few operational.

With those wrecks I know where some of the parts came from.

I used to shoot with a U2 pilot and a crew chief. Interesting what they could say about the 2 aircraft.

 

I don't think so but there have been many accidents.

 

Uro- A large number of the SR-71 and predecessor aircraft (A-12, M-21, YF-12) were lost to compressor stalls in fairly mild turns at very high mach numbers. When the engine stalled, the aircraft would yaw violently into the stalled engine, and the resultant forces due to the high mach number, would tend to, and actually did, break the fuselage in two. We are talking about instantaneous "g" loads too high for the airframe to survive.

In at least one case not related to a compressor stall, the aircraft broke up, there were two successful capsule ejections, and the back seater died because of damage to his pressure suit. Upon landing in the water, his pressure suit, normally water tight, had been damaged during the ejection/capsule separation event, and his suit filled with water and drowned him. The pilot survived. This particular accident happened during an attempted D-21 launch, when the drone impacted the airframe. Kelly Johnson was very distraught after this accident and further development of the D-21 was curtailed.

Incidentally, the YF-12 was the original airframe intended for the Phoenix fire control system eventually fitted to the F-14. Testing on the YF-12 with early versions of the AIM-54 Phoenix missile, however, documented the missile tumbling as it separated from the aircraft and its mach 3 boundary layer.

We were in uncharted territory with the SR-71 and its relatives. The P&W turbo-ramjet engines were well beyond the state of the art, as was the titanium structure of the airframe. Mishaps were just about unavoidable and many brave airmen paid the price. None would have refused the opportunity to fly something still unmatched in performance, however. Says something about the quality of men we have in the military.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

Terry, is the capsule anything like the one in F111?

 

Brian- No, completely different. The SR-71 capsule was more like the B-58's individual crew capsules, designed to let the aircrew-member survive the airblast of a supersonic ejection and separate him at a lower airspeed.

On the F-111 (and similarly on the B-1A, not the current B-1B), a 3000 lb capsule separated the entire crew compartment with a 30,000 lb solid rocket engine. The F-111 capsule had self-righting and flotation bags for water landings and even a bilge pump operated by the pilot's stick to pump water out of the capsule.

Land impacts usually resulted in back injuries, however, as the attenuation bags on the bottom of the capsule were insufficently impact absorbing, and imparted heavy "g" loads directly into the crew's backs. Two of my friends did, however, survive a mach 2+ ejection from an F-111D, and that would not happen with any current fighter. The WSO on that flight ejected successfully one more time and quit. The fickle finger of fate was too anxious to point at him. Luckily, I have the same number of take-offs and landings, a worthy career objective.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

What you are referring to was called an unstart. The compressor isn't stalling, it is the inlet shock being spit out of the inlet and causing the flow to the engine to drop suddenly. On the SR-71, about 70% of the thrust is generated by the inlet, 20% by the ejectors in the exhaust, and about 10% by the engine. Really the engine is more of a pump that is pulling diffused air out of area behind the inlet. On the SR-71 the inlet spike (and the section behind it called the onion because of its shape) moves forward and aft in response to the power demand and airspeed. This controls the area of the inlet and controls airflow to the engine. If you get the area ratios wrong, for the speed and power demand, the inlet shock will move back out of the inlet and the drag gets huge. Unstarts were eventually solved by getting the spike scheduled correctly, and weren't common later in the program. Remember, there were no computers to calculate what was going on, the inlet schdule was all analog in those days so it took a lot of trial and error to get it right. I don't recall actually losing any airplanes due to unstarts, but if so it only happened very early in the program, well before my time there. I don't think at any time there were ever a large number of losses that could be attributed to any one thing.

As we understood it an unstart was a pretty scary experience, with a lot of yaw and a lot of buffetting. In order to get things right the inlet had to be moved back to a positon where it could reswallow the shock wave and then the engine reaccelerated and get the plane back up to speed. There was a cartoon that we had on the wall that showed an old guy with a long beard and a cane, dressed in a pressure suit, walking all hunched over and one airman is saying to another, "What happened to him",,,, The other responds "Oh, he just had an unstart today"

 

I have enjoyed and been amazed at the posts by all you guys who have been involved in the exotic flight machines of our era. Of course, I am behind the curve now and I really am impressed by the accounts that folks like Terry and Russ have posted. But recently I had an incident that is on going but connects me to my distant past. I received an email from an associate with whom I worked 18 years ago at the Kite Factory and he had received an email from a gentleman who had received an inquiry from Germany about a man who was a test pilot and engineer for Dornier before and during the war and then worked at Boeing afterwar in 1957. I was asked if the name Quenzler rang a bell. Rang a bell? ? YES, I worked with him on the 707 and became close friends with him. He had amazing stories to tell about his work on the Dornier flying boats before the war and being a test pilot during the war on his favorite, the Dornier DO-335, push-pull " high speed bomber". He told me some amazing stories about an airplane that to me was the equivalent to the SR-71 about which all of us are talking. The 335 was an absolutely phenomenal airplane in 1944 with a horizontal speed of 485 MPH and Henry Quenzler did a lot of test flying on the airplane in the last stages of the war. He said that he hated the war because the damn P-51's always shot at him before he could complete a test flight. When I asked him if he sustained much damage he said " No! I flew away from them!" I thought that maybe he was stretching things until I read recently in a book that I happened across in the local book store. There was an account of a German pilot who, after the war, was instructed to fly a DO-335 from a base in Germany to Cherbourgh for shipment to the U.S. he was told that he would be escorted by two P-51's to make certain that he would get there. When he arrived , the P-51's were nowhere to be seen. He had outrun them by a half hour." Just to show them that he could." Quenzler is mentioned in the book also as having made the first flight of works number 230-009. He was not a member but attached to the famous group JG26 that was the equivalent of our astronaut group.
Henry Quenzler was instrumental in the design and testing of the DO-335 and I never realized to whom I was talking at the time. He is a legend in Germany and very famous in the glider and test flying community, and certainly at Dornier. He was not impressed with the "Boeing people" but did his best. He was a great guy and accepted me as a fellow even though I was far below his level of technical expertise.
Switches

 

Flying in and out of Nashville recently, I do a quick stop in Birmingham, AL. On the last trip, taking off I looked out and saw what appeared to be an SR-71 static along a road in the neighborhood bordering the airport..

Yep..

http://wikimapia.org/#lat=33.562901&lon=-86.741468&z=18&l=0&m=a&v=2

 

Solofast, Terry, Bob & everyone else, thank you for sharing your insights and stories with us. The enthusiasts can only dream up what you've lived in your times. Thank you.

Keep 'em coming!

 

no computers indeed! it is amazing beyond words that every aspect of that airplane was designed using a slide rule!

a pinnacle of beauty through pure functional engineering.

 

Good read guys. Thanks

 

I was wrong about the DO-335 outrunning the P-51's by 1/2 hour on its flight to Cherbourg. It was 45 minutes ahead of them. On the rear engine alone this airplane could fly at 350-375MPH. The problem with getting into service was two fold. The Luftwaffe had no more pilots experienced enough to fly the airplane---it was very difficult, plus they didn't have enough fuel to feed those two DB-603 engines. Anyway, it was a masterpiece of aerodynamic engineering and mechanical engineering, and would have wreaked havoc with bomber formations and it could carry a 250KG bomb internally. So it would not have ben a nice thing for us to have around.
SWitches

 

Arado 234 (both 2 and 4 engine varieties) were also an amazingly advanced recon aircraft.

BTW, Have you been to the Planes of Fame museum in Chino, California lately? It has been about 15 years ago for me and I wonder if it has changed much - their Me 262 was undergoing restoration at the time, and they let me crawl all around under it and make notes for models, so long as I didnt try to climb up on the wings, etc.

 

I haven't been to Chino yet. I don't or can't travel as much as I would like. Up here at Paine Field in Everett we have several ME-262 replicas flying but I haven't seen those yet either. I failed to mention that the DO-335 was 25 MPH faster in level flight than an ME-262. Amazing.
SWitches

 

Yes, and probably had a far more reliable pair of engines than those ten-hour experimentals. Would guess, though, that the swallow would have eaten it alive in combat, given the mass distribution of those fore and aft engines.

Are those the full size 262 replicas of the two-seat night fighters with bizjet engines? I heard some years back that somebody was doing this as a project, I think somewhere here in Texas.

Might be a good thing to go hunt on the internet for -

 

Yep, those are the airplanes that started in Texas and were brought up here by Bob hammer. They have done a great job on them and I believe that they are down to the last two. They are on the internet also. When I looked at them and saw the pinked edge tape glued over all the fuselage skin butt joints I couldn't help but think that the old ways from fabric covering still were good enough for a jet. Amazing.
The DO-335 was not designed for dog fighting but as a high speed bomber. It was. But with two " Kanonnen" and two MG 82 it would have been bad news for the bomber formations.
Switches

 

Right - I did not know they were fabric covered. Tube fuselage, too?

One thing that amazed me about the real plane in Chino was the highly weird combination of the super-sophisticated, with the nearly Charles Lindbergh era crudity.

For example - the nose gear has a brake...pretty unusual, but they say they needed it for short field work. Not only that, but the brake is a drum brake...and get this: There is a drum and shoes on BOTH sides of the front wheel! The brake mechanism on the off side of the gear leg is driven by a line that goes through the hollow axel spindle. All the control surfaces have not only trim tabs, but little servo and anti-servo tabs driven by counter levers. As well as supplementary bendable small trim tabs.

The main gear, though, are just crudely carved out of what looks like about 5/8 inch plywood with a very thin aluminum cover. Most of the metalwork looks like it was hammered out of tin cans - general shape wonderful, but detail work non-existent.

It also has NACA ducts, way before there was a NACA duct. They consist of two 1/2 inch holes drilled in the engine nacelle, a slot being cut between them, and in front of that the metal is dished in by what looks to be ball peen hammer.

They had one of the 30cm cannon rounds...amazing. They are necked down like a huge 30-06 rifle round - but are at least a foot long and the brass end is at least 1 1/4 " in diameter.

Amazing plane.

 

Here is a link to the group in Everett building the 262's, http://www.stormbirds.com/project/index.html
(For the next page click on the link at the bottom of the page you are viewing.)

 

Evidently their operational altitude puts them right at coffin corner. Just a couple of knots too fast and they exceed max mach speed, just a couple of knots slow and they stall. I was told by a high time U2 pilot it was the most taxing and dangerous flying he has ever experienced. He said once at altitude there is just not a moment to relax, you had to stay on top and fly the airplane every second. Out of curiosity I asked what kind of duration the planes had as a way of understanding this and was told, like many things I asked, that it was classified. In a later conversation reference was made to a 16 hour mission. Thats a long time to be on your toes to that level.

Another time I was told they had a ritual that at the end of a long mission the pilot got a beer after the flight. Seems there was a ferry flight of 3 coming back to Beale after being deployed somewhere across the Pacific keeping a close watch on some bad guys. They were on radio silence as usual I guess. At altitude one of them flamed out, dropped back and down. Once he got down to some air density he could restart, slowly climb back to altitude, some ways back from the other 2. This happened over and over due to some nature of engine trouble. The other 2 arrived at Beale on schedule not knowing what happened to #3. When he finally arrived quite a bit late he asked about his beer and was told the first 2 drank it assuming he was lost in the Pacific. I got the distinct impression that it was not terribly unusual.

I heard another story of one going down on base property because on climb out some structural failure of the exhaust nozzle happened. Pilot tried to save the aircraft. If you have ever seen one climb out it looks like they do it at a 45 degree angle. It wasnt very high and wound up stalling on him and he paid for it the hard way.

The pilot I got to know pretty well told me despite the draining physical and mental requirements he loved his job but he and his wife wanted kids and he could just not expose a family to the dangers of his job so he eventually left flying U2's. He never gave me numbers but he left the impression losing people wasn't too unusual.


I remember him telling a couple of us one other thing, he believed the Aurora project was real. He said they have something out there flying higher and faster than SR71.

 

Cuba.

 

Information on U2 losses most of the way down this page

 

Thought of this thread as I was watching the new Transformers movie.

They are roaming around the air and space museum trying to figure out which of the vehicles is a transformer robot.

Before they showed the inside I crossed my fingers hoping for an SR-71 transformer.

 

Very interesting link. Also very interesting links on that site.

This thread is great reading.