The B-47 "Stratojet":
The B-47 set the pattern for the jet world: Swept wings, podded engines. Most airliners flying to day carry the B-47s DNA in their designs.
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Sunday, October 20, 2013
8 comments:
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Was that clip from Strategic Air Command? Looked like Jimmy Stewart's eyes in that one canopy closeup.
ReplyDeleteBig airplanes with tandem cockpits. Curtis Lemay hated them, which is why the B-52 wound up with side-by-side crew seating.
LRod
ZJX, ORD, ZAU retired
Would NOT have wanted to be a nav on those... :-)
ReplyDeleteLRod, I don't know where the clip came from.
ReplyDeleteOld NFO, didn't the -47s have downward-firing ejection seats for the Nav/BN guy?
grew up in the 50's-60's and it seemed like a B47, B52 or B36 was crashing every couple of days - toss in all the fighters and civil aviation stuff that blew up or fell down plus the A and H bomb tests and all the cold war yammering... well, that gave life a very special kind of ominous feeling... plus Dad was an air traffic controller and some one his buddies were SAC, MATS and TAC pilots... uff da... here's a big list of all the 47's that crashed - run between a few a month to a few every week and lots of crews were killed http://www.ejection-history.org.uk/Aircraft_by_Type/B-47.htm
ReplyDeleteComrade, the B-47A had the two upward (pilot and co-pilot) and one downward (BN) firing seats. Then the 47B replaced these with a deployable windscreen...very unpopular with the crew. The 47B's were later retro-fitted with ejection seats, and the later variants (E's and such) all had them.
ReplyDeleteFor amusement, check out the D model prototype.
That they did CM... and this was the forerunner of the A3D (all three dead) comments...
ReplyDeleteNot to mention that the B-47 was directly responsible for the design of the B-52. Boeing's success with the swept-back wings on the B-47 convinced them that it would work for the B-36 replacement that they were working on also, and the B-47's success with an all-jet engine array similarly convinced them that their earlier turboprop concept was the wrong way to go. In many ways the B-52 is just a bigger version of the B-47. *Way* bigger. And therein was the problem for the B-47 -- it didn't carry a large enough bomb load, far enough, for it to be worthwhile as a strategic bomber. If WW3 had broken out between Britain and Germany again, it would have been useful for bombing Berlin from air bases in Britain. But to bomb the vast stretches of the Soviet Union? Nyet.
ReplyDeleteSo basically the world's most successful bomber design (if you measure success by longevity and combat effectiveness as measured in multiple wars) owes much of its success to a jet bomber that General LeMay hated and got rid of as soon as he had something to replace it with. What a jerk :).
Dear Miss Fit:
ReplyDeleteIn re: downward oriented bang-seat in the Stratojet: It was the McGuffin in a 1950's B-movie titled Bailout at 43,000. In addition to the B-47, it starred John Payne (yes, with a"P").
In re: the B-47: Col. Tony Oliva, (who curates a '77 182Q like N631S and hangs out at the Cessna Pilots Assn. forum) had a long and excellent career driving all sorts of things for the USAF. He hated the B-47. Said it was "always trying to kill me". Apparently underpowered, aerodynamically twitchy, and always in the coffin corner.
Still, it was a truly beautiful airplane.
Regards,
Frank