News websites pick the dumbest images for thier stories. This is off the Bing homepage last week. Image Unavailable, Please Login
I would have liked to have seen that! The B-36 left service in 1958, a bit before I discovered airshows.
Saw them over San Antonio all the time in 1953/54 when Dad was stationed in San Antonio. Most impressive to a young airplane freak to watch a couple dozen go overhead. Lots, and I mean lots, of noise.
My grandfather was stationed at Ramey and my dad says the B36 is the loudest machine he's been around.
As a little kid we lived in Albuquerque just under the end of the N-S runway for Kirtland AFB / Sandia Base (Nukes). B-36's landed right over our house at a few hundred feet. Rattled windows, pictures fell off walls, cupboards opened, etc. Fantastic.
The first AFB I ever visited was Ramey. They were still flying non-camouflaged B-52Gs (with the white undersides) carrying Hound Dog missiles. They also had a WB-47, one of the last Stratojets in service.
Interesting period of airplane development B36 first flight 1946 B52 first flight 1952 B58 first flight 1956 B70 first flight 1964 18 years SR71 and X15 fell in the same period Just a year earlier they were still bringing newly designed piston engine combat aircraft to production. The F22 first flight was 18 years ago The F35 was 9
And the slowest...Eurofighter Typhoon. Started development in 1983 and flew for the first time in 1994 then went operational in 2003. A gen3 fighter born amongst gen4 brethren, sadly, due to the multinational impediments.
Gotta make sure all the right states and all the right countries get contracts. Ever wonder why L.A. Class Subs are named after Los Angeles? Politicians, one step above a child molester
The first flight of the B-17 and the first flight of the B-52 were less than 17 years apart. If the B-17 had the same service life expectancy, we would still be flying them in service today and for a few more decades.
Well if they hadn't cut them all up maybe the boys at PW could have retrofitted them with fan motors.
When the two Avro Lancasters were flying in formation with the Avro Vulcan last summer, a similar timespan was mentioned for those two aircraft types. There isn't much good to say about a war, but it did speed up new aircraft technology tremendously.
A bunch of B-17 acting as close air support gunboats could have been a hell of a thing in Afghanistan and Iraq.
When I think of the B-17 and look at all the things that I have collected about this airplane and having flown in one in 1944, I am made aware that this airplane was an anomaly in aircraft development. It was a transitional expression of old technology applied to the new. Warren Truss was still used in much of the wing structure that was carried over from the 1929 Model 80 and then from the 1932 Mod. 247. Then the fuselage was the then modern monocoque . Unsure of how strong the inner wing structure would be, the spar and rib assembly was covered with double layer of corrugated inner skin and outer smooth skin, making a composite structure that was hard to kill. It was heavily over-designed but still managed to perform. One of Boeing's greatest when we needed the "Greatest". Knocked by many as being an antique in the beginning, it proved to be the preferred mount by many crew who had to face serious action.
Bob- It was certainly a lot tougher than the B-24. No photos of B-17s with both wings folded on top from battle damage.
Good point. I understand they ditched a whole lot better too. A friends father was a beneficiary of that. He parked one in the Channel and it floated long enough for everyone to get out. To his dying day he swore by Boeing Aircraft.
The B-24's performance in bomb load and range was superior to the B-17 below 25,000 ft. but it was difficult to fly and sometimes required two men to keep it straight with an engine out. I never flew one as a pilot but I knew many who did and I had some flights in it. Some swore by it because it was faster and you could drain every once of fuel out of the tanks when you had to. But structurally it was frail and and when hit, it folded up like a wet paper bag and it would flame up easily if hit in the right place. Ditching wasn't too much fun because the nose gear doors were very flimsy and when they ditched , the doors collapsed and and the wheel well became a scoop. The pressure of the water sometimes would break the nose section backward and off of the fuselage. In the recent film, "Unbroken", the crash landing in the water, simulated by computer work, is totally false and almost laughable. The B-24 was a newer aircraft design and the structure was a much lighter type than the B-17 and relied on the monocoque principle to a greater extent than the B-17. The bomb bay and wing of the -17 was braced by a complex network of huge square bolted aluminum tubing trusses and the fuselage was a very stout monocoque shell that was hard to fail. The vertical fin was built with a front and rear spar with ribs in between and "U' section stringers running from root to tip. Hard to destroy it. The horizontal tail was a B-29 unit that was tested first on the B-17E and then incorporated on the succeeding F and G models . The B-17 horiz. tail had a symmetrical section where the B-29 had an inverted Boeing section to react the nose down pitching moment of the B-29 wing. One interesting feature on the B-17 "transition" was the use of English dimensional fractions in the stuff forward of the tail and decimal dimensions in the empennage structure. In 1941 we finally awakened to the modern world on the B-17E and started work on the B-29.
Bob, a few of my friends fathers would have happily gotten you, as a Boeing guy, drunk. I have no doubt they would have felt like they owed you. Company had a lot to be proud of. I remember a few stories as a kid. Seems on camping trips, late in the evening the old war stories started. Wish I had a tape recorder.
NASA still flys two WB-57s. NASA - B-57 Still Going Strong at 59 WB-57 Home And added a third one about two years ago. NASA Martin B-57 Canberra makes its First Flight in 41 Years
A photo of my friend's forced landing. Like the Subaru commercial, "They lived". Image Unavailable, Please Login
I don't know how different the cargo version C87 was from the B24 bomber to fly but Ernest Gann used the words "evil bastard" to describe it and said it could not " carry enough ice to chill a highball".