B-52 refueling

Awesome! A buddy of mine from high school is going to be flying KC-135's based out of England, doubt I'll ever get a view like that in one of them though.

 

Man! That was so great! Wonderful! I can't believe that I worked on both of those airplanes in the 50's. I did the assembly drawings on the pilot's and co-pilot's emergency overhead blow- off panels before they were modified to have sky-lites. I was in charge of the electrical and plumbing installation drawings on the wings, struts, engines, keel beam, and wheel well on the KC-135. I can't tell you how much fun that was for me. I'll be looking at that one many more times. Thanks so much.

 

Those emergency exit panels were opened by the detonation of a 20mm cartridge that quickly rotated the cams shafts that locked the panels in. Then the pilot or co-pilot ejected from their positions up through the openings. I will always remember seeing the co-pilot ejecting from the Bud Collins incident in Spokane and shooting clear of the airplane only to descend into the fireball after the impact of the plane. He was too late.

 

Great share!

Here's some old terminology, when I was little, my old man served with the 452nd AREFW, which is now the 452nd AMW. He took a promotion to the 940th ARG, which is now the 940th WG. Though he was administration and not crew, he always hopped on a '135 flight on TDY.
As a kid, I always liked going out to the Base to when my mother would visit him.

 

Wow! That looks like a brand new airplane.

In the 80's all the ones I saw looked terrible. I guess they *are* fairly "new" airplanes now with all the mods and updates.

That paint looks alot better than that old OD green paint. (plus it's clean, which has changed as well )

I can't believe it, doesn't look it's age at all.


Nice videos.

 

Those airplanes have always looked menacing. maybe not the prettiest...but surely one of the most menacing ever built.

 

Reminds me of the opening sequence of "Dr. Strangelove" -- "Try a little tenderness."

 

I would bet that both of those planes are older than any of the men in them.

Geffen

 

haha, Stanley Kubrick doesn't just make movies, he makes sub-themed movies within a movie. At face value, this USAF tanker/bomber refueling footage, Dr. Stangelove opened with a phallic subliminal to set the sub-theme of the movie.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qs7EikHQGlA[/ame]

 

Bob, as an engineer, I never skip a single word of your posts. Always extremely interesting and informative!

 

That footage acts as a good reminder at how much both aircraft have changed since 1964!

 

But you don't have to refuel straight and level...
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Thanks, I enjoyed my times messing around with airplanes and too many times the video's and comments trigger some things from the past. I try not to come across as an expert or know-it-all, I'm not. I've been around a long time. I lack the ratings, the diplomas, and the advanced training that so many of you have but I have seen and participated in a few things and I enjoy chatting about it I keep trying to finish my writings about but I keep remembering " another thing" to add. Getting close to the end, though.

 

Great pictures and video!

So the pilot and co-pilot can eject from a B-52? What about the rest of the crew?

 

As I recall, the pilot and copilot eject upward and the GIB's(Guys in The Bottom) seats tilted forward and fired out of the bottom. The tail gunner in the A-model fired explosive bolts that held his capsule to the fuselage and the whole thing left the airplane. He then exited the capsule on the way down.

 

That wasn't a bad idea when the aircraft was first designed as a high-altitude bomber, but it doesn't work too well when you're on a low-level mission.....

 

How true. That brings up the extensive redesign of the airframe when it was assigned low level penetration missions that had it running through turbulence and meteorological guillotines that rapidly tore the airframe apart. More malleable alloys were used in the wing skins and innumerable beef-ups were necessary. The airplane as it is today is nothing like the original. It may look the same but it is an entirely different beast.The original was a beautiful airplane without all of the bloops and bulges sticking out of it.One of its designers, Bob Withington, just passed away at 94 years. He and his team created the perfect answer to high Mach subsonic high altitude flight...thanks to the Germans.
I'll never forget the incident when Tex Johnston wandered into Canadian airspace on a B-52 test flight in 1952. They caught him on his way back and took it for an invader. They scrambled everything they had and Tex picked up their radio traffic. He put the B-52 in a climb and pushed it. The Canadians couldn't reach it or catch it. Our fighters didn't either.
I, by chance, caught the glimpse of an F-89 one day chasing a B-52 over Seattle on a clear sunlit day and he tumbled out of the chase when his airplane quit flying.Those were exciting days in Seattle because the B-52 flite test was done at Boeing Field and we saw a lot of exciting stuff.

 

The only time I was ever inside a '52 was during my stint in Seattle in the early '90s, when one was put on display adjacent to the Museum of Flight during Boeing's 75th anniversary celebration. It was tighter inside than I expected, and I would not have wanted to be one of the lower-deck guys, facing backwards, with no way of seeing outside, and having to eject downwards if necessary.

Examining the four main gears with their crosswind-landing capability was interesting, and standing under the open bomb bay was like standing inside a cavern!

At the same event, I had the pleasure of chatting with the late, great Tex Johnston, who was right next to the aircraft he helped make famous, the 367-80, the 707 (and KC-135) prototype which he rolled twice over the Gold Cup hydroplane race on Lake Washington. The aircraft is now proudly on display in the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles airport.

 

I share your awe of the B-52. When I went to work at Boeing in 1950 and looked at the mock up the first time, I couldn't believe that they could get anything like that into the air but I saw the first take off in 1952. I started working on the -80 in 1953 and saw its first flight in 1954 with Tex at the controls of that one too. I saw the two rolls later over Lake Washington and then saw many of the test flights at Boeing Field of both airplanes that I mentioned before as being a very exciting and interesting period. Tex buzzed Boeing Field with the B-52 one day and we couldn't believe how much of a negative angle the fuselage assumed when it was flying level, a zero AOA. He then pulled it up into a beautiful chandelle over Beacon Hill. The wing flex was astonishing when it pulled up.

 

During my three-month stint at Douglas in Long Beach in 1987 (on C-17), I attended the big fly-in at the Merced airport. A B-52G made a low-level, high-speed pass - very loud and smoky! That woke anyone up who might have been dozing!

 

Reminds me of the Zeros trying to intercept the B-29's over Tokyo.

There is a B-52 on outdoor display at "Wings over the Rockies" at the old Lowry AFB in Denver. Fenced off now (vandalism - spray paint, dents, etc.), but it used to be just sitting on a pad in front of Hanger 2.

On Armed Services day you could crawl around inside. You climbed up a stepladder and they made you wear a construction hard hat; I still bumped my head many times. Tight quarters.

I'm guessing the nose down posture in level flight is due to the inability to 'rotate' on takeoff with the bicycle landing gear. The wings had to be 'pre-rotated - tilted up' when the fuselege was level to take off.

Seems like it's predecessor, the B-47, had a taller front bogie than the rear bogie to solve that problem. We used to see them both at Kirland AFB in Albuquerque. (And B-36's).

I've always wondered why the fuselege skin was so wrinkled on them (B-52's)... seems like both in flight and on the ground. I'm sure there's a lot of flex.

Well, here I am saying a heckofalot less with a lot more words than Bob... oh well.

 

I just saw a news report that Holden "Bob" Withington, the last of the original six engineers that laid down the design concept for the B-52 in 1948 passed away on December 9.

They emerged from a weekend session in a Dayton, Ohio hotel suite with their slide rules, design, and a handmade balsa scale model.