That was one sight and sound that I'll never forget. The even and steady tone of the engines and propellors was unreal at the time and seemed to go on forever. The image of that huge silver body appearing over the elm trees behind the house at a fairly low altitude was intimidating. BTW, it was June of 1936, not 1935. We could see it cruising over Washington, D.C. most of that day. We lived in Bethesda south of where the Naval Hospital is now in a wheat field that we used to play in.
I looked up our old address in Bethesda and the house is still there and looks very well cared for. 4707 Chestnut Street, just off the Rockville Pike.
Lots of oil being burned there. Reminds me of the older model B-52s (Ds and Gs) we used to see on the OB (oil burner) low level routes. We nearly always saw the smoke trail before we spotted the BUFF.
The 707 left a trail of thick black smoke as did the other jets of the period. Also characteristic then was the belch of black smoke at times when the engines cleared the soot.
So, during run-up at the end of the runway, what's up with the rear stabilizers bouncing around... from the jetwash? Those vert stabilizers and rudders seem pretty small for the size of the plane.
I believe that was due to the water injection. I don't believe the engines were quite that bad without it. When they added the fans, I guess the need for water injection went away and the smoke went down considerably. I saw a B-52G make a high-speed low-level pass at the Merced airshow one year. That was a noisy, smoky experience! And when the 52s did MITO takeoffs, each plane would appear coming out of the smoke trail of its predecessor.
The engines did smoke a bit, the water Injection made it worse. I think that I mentioned it before but I witnessed an MITO of about 12 B-52's and tankers at Moses Lake in the 60's and I have no idea how they kept from hitting one another because the smoke was impenetrable. They were breaking out of it to the left and right as they climbed out. The KC-135's with water injection on take off were painfully ear-splitting, they were the first off.
Jim- No, the old turbojets smoked pretty badly without water injection. Water injection was normally only used for take-offs and even the F-105 had a fairly large water tank in the rear. F-4s, as mentioned, were really bad about smoking until they put a smoke kit on the J79s that mostly eliminated the problem. In combat before the kits, F-4 pilots often cracked min burner to stop the smoke trail that made them so easy to find. Did not help fuel consumption for old Double Ugly.
