What if the B-52 was a passenger plane?
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It would probably be very effective when it comes to getting the passengers to leave the plane -just open those big doors at the bottom of the plane.
lol... gives a clearer meaning to the term, "Where would you like to be dropped off?"
FA: “Sir, do you have a ticket?”
Passenger: “Oh! Sorry, I must have dropped it somewhere around here…”
FA: opens bomb bay doors.
FA to the other passengers: “No ticket”
*POV: you don’t have a ticket*
Repatriate all the illegals coming into the country. Free vacation. Here's your parachute.
It would save a lot of fuel for midway stops.
Those are for quick disposal of blind passengers. "HE DIDNT HAVE A TICKET!"
That awkward moment when the Bombay doors opened and you lost 75 passengers
"Attention passengers, you will now getting off in Hawaii."
Pilot opens bomb doors.
@@johnbockelie3899 direct flight ✈️ with no layover
They were probably already dead from hypoxia since the bomb bay is not pressurized.
😂😂😂😂
only 75?
One huge factor: even if you ignore the huge load-bearing ribs when placing seats, the rear of the B-52 is not pressurized, nor designed to be…so you’d arrive with lot of suffocated and frozen cargo 😅
He does mention that toward the end. I kept thinking... "ah, you're missing a big problem here...." :)
@@mattj65816 yup, too soon. Still, I’d be honored to have my frozen carcass delivered by B-52 😄
Right near the beginning, he clearly states *Passenger* version......
He never said the passengers were alive.
Yet that was no problem for the TU-95 to TU-114 although that is an entirely different fuselage.
Love how at 3:39 you’re like “oh yeah 4 seats wide no problem” and then overlay the seats and the seatback is fully sticking outside the fuselage.
If this plane were to be built it would be better to make it a wide body fuselage. It would be too claustrophobic otherwise.
He also fogot to spare room for the landing gear, or are the passengers just squeezed by it?
Think of it as outdoor dinning.
Just a chunkier B-52
The Tu-114 required an entirely new fuselage for conversion from bomber to passenger plane.
and the wings had to be completly moved.
Exactly
@@benrgrogan And the wings themselves featured larger flaps to improve it's field performance.
They're called Mumbai doors now.
Can I say "oops"?
A similar question I always had was what if the A350 was turned into a bomber. Considering neither France nor Germany have a dedicated bomber aircraft currently.
Who needs it when a fighter can deliver the same payload?
edit 1: i was supposed to say that a fighter like the f-35 could carry a nuclear payload (b63) but never the full conventional payload of a strategic bomber
You seem unaware that the UK has a major part of Airbus as well?
@@deathsquadron3311 No fighter aircraft has the same payload as a dedicated bomber
@@DefinitelyNotEmma you can crash it
it wouldn't work because no engineer worth their salt would design a bomber with high bypass engines
I've been on a B52 at an airshow. Saying it was cramped was an understatement.
You obviously have no idea what you're talking about.
The advantage the Tu-114 had was mainly due to the fact the Tu-95's fuselage was removed from the equation and a totally new, larger fuselage was put in its place. The same was done by Convair with their experimental XC-99 cargo and troop transport, built out of the B-36B, Consolidated turning the B-24 Liberator into the Model 39/R2Y LIberator Liner and by Boeing itself funny enough, with the B-17 Flying Fortress into 307 Stratoliner and the B-29/B-50 Superfortress into the C-97/377 transports, tankers and airliners. Likely, the same would need to be done with the B-52. Same control surfaces and landing gear, but the fuselage is a totally new design that has very little in common with the original airframe. In terms of jet bombers, the Avro Vulcan and Convair B-58 both had planned airliner/transport versions, which never got off the drawing board.
TU-104 was the first one not the 114
I was going to add a note about the B-29/Boeing 377 Stratocruiser conversion but I see you covered it, demonstrating the bomber to airliner makeover has been done before.
@@mdteletom1288 I wonder how cool would a XB-19 version of an airliner be.
Speaking of the XC-99, they actually planned an airliner variant of their YB-60 prototype, borrowing the wings, tail & engines from it, using the XC99 fuselage (2 decks) & B36 cockpit window configuration, planned and cancelled in the 1950’s, this would have been the 1st jumbo jet 2 decades earlier than the Boeing 747!
Even when I was little and first getting into planes, I’ve always wondered why the B-52 was never made into an airliner. I love these sorts of presentations.
Military planes have wildly different needs. The Tupolev tu-95 was turned into one for the Soviet premier and it was godawful.
The BUFF is not efficient at all. It doesn't need to be. It wasn't made to meet profitability standards, just carry an absolutely colossal payload in a very small fuselage. It also doesn't have the same maintenance intervals
There were also plans to make a mach 3 business jet from a mig21 and it just would have never worked.
There have been a few large Military planes that were looked at for passenger service. Due to all of the specialization after the "piston era", it just doesn't work out. For example, they don't need the heavy duty (and thus heavier) landing gear.
@@rex8255 Yes, it worked after WW 2 as you could get the plane for scrap value and you could manage without a pressurized cabin for one thing.
The cabin on the B-52 is large as its the only part who is pressurized I assume? Know the B-29 and 36 had an center crew quarter but that was for guners.
Also the engines on a B-52 is very old and inefficient, does not matter as they don't fly much compared to commercial planes
@@magnemoe1engines have been replaced with newer, more efficient engines several times over the years. It’s currently being retrofit with high bypass engines used on several more modern airplanes. Most notably the B717, the upcoming Dassault Falcon 10x and the Gulfstream G500/600/700 series.
@@colinmartin9797 yeah, thats why military to commercial is dumb. But the opposite makes sense. They could make the 747 into a bomber. Or, use commercial cargo planes instead of the c-130, 17. They are meant to land on austere runways but mostly do not.
Who here is trying to extend the b52s life span who
The latest J and K models will operate until a service life of 100 years.
@@uingaeoc3905 do you hate the EU????
@@chrischeezy7316 Who doesnt? Its just a bunch of aristocratic scumbags who work for the US government and a bunch of global agendas.
@@chrischeezy7316 Absolutely - a total obscenity of a set of institutions bent on destroying European nations - although 1d10ts think it is something to do with European culture.
We haven’t gotten a legit album out of them since 2008 so I’m hoping if we keep them all alive long enough they’ll eventually shit one out.
Having flown on B-52s during my years in the USAF, I was curious to see how you were going to modify the interior of this plane to address passenger comfort. I know how confining it was with just six or seven airmen aboard, so the idea of hundreds of passengers was unthinkable to me.
We had a “relief can” that served as our comfort station. It was located just behind the navigators' position in the lower deck, and it was NOT private-this was the military after all. The truly massive structure of the bomber was its wings, which in large part helped carry the quarter-million-plus pounds of fuel that give the plane its extended range.
Military gear in general is not designed for human comfort, but for utility, so form must follow function. Ergo they are designed from the ground up. Ditto with airliners.
Interesting video nonetheless.
As another B-52 guy, pilot, I was curious where the fuel, to get the amazing range, was going to go when the fuselage was filled with passengers. We carried a LOT of fuel in fuselage tanks, we wouldn't het anywhere near the quoted max range without the fuselage tanks. And then you have the issue that, with max fuel on board, the payload was only about 10,000 lbs. To get that 60,000 lb bomb load, you. would need to reduce fuel load by 50,000 lbs, but you wouldn't have room for that fuel anyway.
Where is the wing box area ? The wing box attaches each wing and the fuselage all together, every other plane that I have seen has a wing box. On a low wing aircraft, people are sitting on top of the wing box. On a high wing aircraft like the C5, C141, C17, C130 they a along the top of the fuselage. The B52 wing box is where the passenger would be sitting, the airplane has to have a wing box where else can you attach each wing to each other and to the fuselage ? The picture in the video seems to missing this critical part of the aircraft structure all plane have a wing box.
Explain this thing called "passenger comfort?" It's 2023, we have no concept of that anymore.
I once saw a comic of a B-52 with warp nacelles. The subtitle was "Are they EVER going to retire that thing?"
I believe it.
The upcoming J models get all-new turbofan engines
As I was a crew chief on the B52 H. One flaw is your upper seating deck is all fuel tanks and if you take them out then your range is cut drastically. Sure during Vietnam on the D models they did do the big belly mod of taking out the mid body tanks to put more bombs in the bays. Also I doubt you get 4 seats and a center isle in that fuselage. The landing gears takes up a huge area and goes pretty much to the bottom of the fuel tanks. In the end you would never get a B52 to use in the civilian aviation as the H model are nuclear capable. No way they will give anyone access to that. It to mention current engines on the bomber can use 3 to 4 quarts of oil in a 8 hour flight. Also the ride isn’t that great. Tastier to take the tankers which are basically commercial airframes and convert those. Even cargo planes would be better suited.
You're responding with facts and logic to something that is complete nonsense and should embarrass the hell out of the perpetrator and the fools he think his idea is not only possible, but good.
Thank you for sharing all that, it really aided my understanding of the issues in converting a buff to a biff! (big ineffecient financial failure!)
He also calculated passenger weight without including things like seats, overhead bins, extra bathrooms, sound deadening, etc.
More interesting would be a Globemaster video.
What about noise? I doubt any B52 was sound proofed to any degree.
The first thing that came to my mind was those 8 engines - I mean the main reason airlines recently retired 747s was due to modern 2 engined airliners now being able to do what once needed 4 engines. I imagine most airline execs would laugh at anyone who pitched the idea of an 8 engined airliner.
the eight engines were actually a design choice at the time, and the aerodynamics of the wings & tail are designed around eight different thrust vectors: as the aircraft is re-engined, it gets new engines that produce an equivalent amount of thrust for smaller size/better fuel economy, but there has to be eight of them to fit the aerodynamics.
The only thing that would be better would be to resurrect and rebuild the 10 engine B-36.
You could replace the 8 engines with 4 bigger ones. Problem solved
@@theodorbutters141 Actually, that wouldn't be possible. Newer engines have a much larger fan section and bypass ratio giving the engine cowling a much larger physical size. That would clearly cause a problem, especially for the outboard engines
@@sterlingstroebel Four engines would also require a larger vertical stabilizer and rudder. Possibly the entire empennage needs redesigning as well as the wing.
When you calculate the weight of a typical passenger, you forgot to include the weight of the seat and cabin floor beneath that he/she will sit on :) Also, the bunk cargo shelves and windows alongside the fuselage will weight the whole aircraft down quite some.
The figure was just about right for the "per passanger weight including carryons", which is 85kg for males and 66 kg for females (on average).
Of course, you have to add 16kg for an economy seat, the extra weight from pressurizing the cabin etc etc.
And dont forget the toilets? Galley , Stewardesses and food etc, etc
@@57thorns80 kg in America? Is that per leg?
No accounting for luggage weight either. This is a ridiculous attempted calculation. Final result would be more like 50 passengers.
@@foomoo1088 or 30 Americans :)
I have always wanted a C5 Galaxy half buried in a field of grass in a clearing in woods, an aircraft as house. I worked on C5's and they are BIG inside. It would be like the old New England house with several attached barns and outbuildings. And....the tail would make a really cool deck, high over the field by 60 feet. Four Sikorski helicopters in harness to deliver it. Nice
Hmm, when I win the lottery maybe, might take a couple years to convince my wife though.
Love you’re dream dude
I worked on the C-5 from 1978 until 1981 at Dover AFB in Delaware, and at the Rhein-Main AB in Germany. You speak of a deck on the top of the tail. One of my regular duties, as a radio specialist, was to maintain and repair the flight recorder, which was located on top the tail, on the outside. Can you spell "acrophobia?"
I’d buy a ticket just to watch the delivery
The AA livery looks great on the B-52!
This just goes to show how quickly airplane design advanced in the mid 20th century, and of course, how planes are purpose-built.
Agreed! Looks fantastic
Planes just look amazing in chrome AA or NASA livery
yea the old livery lol.
Fun to think about! Keep in mind the high wings require a wing box structure to connect to the fuselage and each other, so no passengers in that area either.
I've never been inside a B-52. But I've flown airliners with a similar wing configuration, F-50 being among them. There's a reduction in cabin ceiling height under the spars, but that's all.
Due to this, the airline I was with had a maximum height of F-50 crew at 179 centimetres.
You've clearly never been in a bae-146.
@@LordSandwichII Worth noting these are planes designed from the get-go to hold passengers, with design considerations and sacrifices made to not interrupt the passenger cabin. The BUFF was designed with none of this in mind, and modifying the wing box is probably simply infeasible, it's a structurally integral part, it's not like some solution can just be slapped on the thing. Yeah, other high-wing planes have wing boxes that don't interrupt the cabin, because this was a primary design consideration, and it's easier to build a plane up around those than come through 70 years later with a hacksaw, a dream, and a shitton of FEA.
Many problems with this presentation. Not only will the wing box affect the passenger count, but also system (electrical, a/c, waste and water), there's also need for baggage, lav and galley and door egress. Also complete structural redesign for a pressurized cabin.
Some commenters mention the F-50 and BAE-146, both are single deckers, this is proposed as a double decker. And because of the payload capacity the wing box is probably much larger than those smaller aircraft.
The B-52 has 8 low bypass turbofans. They built it with 8 engines for redundancy, but it's incredibly inefficient. If the USAF is paying, it's not a huge issue, but commercial airlines wouldn't want that.
On the bright side, the B-52 is getting new engines and a technology update of some sort, so more environmentally favorable and remember, the B-52 came off the drawing boards in 1952. So, it’s 71 years old already (give or take) and an amazing, iconic airframe already.
Would love to see it in American Airlines livery anyway. Thanks for the great video.
Generally, bombers are optimized to carry weight; airliners are optimized for volume. This will be a limiting factor whenever you try to do a conversion like this one way or the other. When you factor in things like legroom, headroom, luggage space, and being able to exit in an emergency people are orders of magnitude less dense than bombs. You can see this when you look inside tanker aircraft originally designed to carry passengers, they have mostly empty space.
On the plus side, the empty space in tanker planes means they can easily be used to ferry cargo & military passengers, in addition to fuel.
@@jonathantan2469 use the empty space, amazing how some people won't think of that on their own
I have a buddy who was a member of a B-52 crew -- he told me the very first thing the plane has to do when reaching 30-32k altitude is hook up with a tanker because at that point they are flying on fumes. Sounds a bit dangerous to have a plane packed with people.
@@michaeloconnor6683 B-52 has a combat range of almost 9000 miles unrefueled. Maybe they burn a lot of gas on takeoff and it makes sense to refuel after the climb since they are close to base with a tanker to increase that even further, but they are not "running on fumes".
@@aquariandawn4750 well once you fill up on weight you can't use the empty space, putting more stuff in would put you overweight
A few other issues with converting a BUFF into a pax plane: the loss of a significant amount of range because you'd have to remove the three fuselage tanks to accomadate passengers. And there's that pesky center wing box (that also serves as a fuel tank). I imagine you'd make up some of that range lost with the BR700 engines that's replacing the current TF33's though
How much of that fuel storage could be made up if you had large fuel tanks on the external pylons? Either that or mount pods for luggage/cargo? Would the drag penalty be worth it?
@@johngalt2506 it's been a really long time since I worked on a B-52 so I don't remember how much fuel those tanks hold but I know it's a pretty significant percentage of the jet's total capacity. I am leaning towards the idea of external tanks being unfeasible though. I think the drag penalty would just be too high.
@@clangston3 The C and D models carried 300 gallon external tanks on every flight. Certainly they weren't unfeasible. They were very streamlined as you should recall and with modern engines efficiency they might be done away with but maybe not for the longer range versions.
edit: correction 3,000 gallons each. See my other post replies for documentation.
@@johngalt2506 considering that it has a range of nearly 9000 miles im guessing if you cut that down to 1/3rd without a heavy load (passengers are relatively light) losing 2 out of 3 tanks wouldnt be that big of an issue. and plus... its narrow so everyone gets a window row!
@@chrisbaker2903 the external tanks carry around 375 pounds of fuel max in each. unfortunately they largely contribute to the jets weight and balance so you can't just get rid of them. the fuselage tanks carry a large portion of fuel as well, albeit the majority is in the 4 wing tanks. you could potentially compensate for the weight and balance the fuselage tanks provide with the passengers instead, but with that you shorten the range greatly.
The future of commercial air travel: First, imagine an uncomfortable, smelly, dangerous subway car. The End.
I would go the opposite route and make it an all luxury liner with private lounges, have a bar up front just behind the entrance with stairs to get to the upper deck, have an elevator to access a kitchen in the upper deck ahead of the bar. That way your weight distribution stays more even.
The B-52 has an incredibly small fuselage. When my family visited the Boeing plant in 1994, there was one sitting on delivery parking area adjacent to 767 and 747 it looked tiny like a 737 with big wings
Folks complain about traveling in Greyhound busses. They'd really ask for their money back, if they had to ride in a B52. Its a working plane, not a riding plane.
For a long time, there was a B-52 on display at Orlando International Airport. I was also surprised how small the fuselage was, compared to the wings.
Oddly enough even though it's smaller than a 747, when you see one coming for a low slow pass over the runway during an airshow at Edwards AFB they come in straight from a LONG way out. You can see them easily at 20 miles and then it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger till it seems like a real leviathan sized plane is going past. I haven't seen a 747 do the same thing, not sure they can fly slow enough, need to compare stall speeds when lightly loaded.
The biggest airplane I ever saw was an F-4 Phantom II, at Point Mugu during their "Space Fair", that got a bit off course and flew straight over my head in the grandstands, with the flaps down and the hood down and I would swear that it was only about 200 feet up. That viewpoint made it the biggest plane ever built! LOL I'd love to have heard the debriefing he had to undergo after the show.
More than a passenger B52, why not an airline C141, C5 or An124?
It is not an anorexic 777 it is just into lean fliying...
First class (officers?) Would be the one with working radar and elint screens, and of course the movie should be something like dr. Strangelove, war games, damnation alley or hunt for the red october...
The landing gear are attached to very sturdy bulkheads that extend to the top of the fuselage. So, remove the landing gear and put them in "pods" like the C5.
Or just design A wide body fuselage
@@sirclarkmarz these are both good ideas, but keep friction in mind. The wider and less streamlined the body is, the shorter the range gets.
doing this it'd also potentially lose its crosswind crab feature on the gear, which is a detriment
When you look back at aviation history's , nearly all the manufacturer have converted bombers into commercial use. I believe the Avro company had considered turning the Vulcan B.1 bomber into a passenger carrying plane, there would have been some major changes to the airframe, the idea was drop due to cost.
Concorde might get close to the vulcan 😬
The B-52 might be feasible as a freight hauler with the new Rolls Royce engines which are being developed.
I have collection of many 1:200 model planes and including the B52, it looks even smaller than a 757 and most of it's size is actually come from it's wing rather than fuselage, so no chance.
In present day clearly not. Interesting to ponder if they'd built such instead of the 367-80 and 707 though, surely (like all other airliners based on bombers) they would have made the fuselage much larger to carry more people, at the expense of range. Bombs are very dense and need to be carried very long distances, while passengers weigh less, need more space, but don't need to go as far without refueling stops.
They are really small compared to what we see in videos. Stationed on minot afb and seeing them up close, the wingspan makes up the majority of the plane. Doubt there could be anymore than 50 people in it if it were a commercial liner.
This is why just using numbers doesn't work. If you actually see one next to even a 737 they are rather small.
Saw this concept described in an aviation "series" book on the B-52 many years ago. The book had to be from the mid-late 60's since i saw/read it around 1971. The proposed model was Boeing 464, I think. It addressed the gear problem regarding seating you described. The BUFF was a great plane, I flew the G and H models both during the waning days of SAC, some planes were actually older than I was. Quite a plane, still amazed they'll be flying til' 2050...
Be the first time the US copied a Soviet passenger plane idea
No. Factory designation 464 (with sub-versions) was the proposed bomber design that eventually became B-52 itself.
I had a LIFE book from the 60s as a kid my parents bought used from the library (I’m in my 20s) and the 747 was used as a concept for a military transport aircraft with no mention of it as a passenger jet where it found it’s eventual success.
I worked on G models 87-91. I think the noise would be an issue.
They made the ground shake.
The narrator didn't mention losing the tail gunner. That would make it interesting. Always be given priority at the airports.
The Air Force right now is flying everything they have until they break. That 2050 limit is actually the point at which engineers have stated that the majority of airframes will need significant structural repairs due to the stress of flying. The B1 is being flown under similar conditions, though they're only expected to last until 2040.
A contributing factor is that the Air Force only has around 70 long range strategic bombers mission capable at any time (a rough estimate from public releases) and they need them all for deterrence, routine missions like Freedom of Navigation, or urgent missions like air support. That's 70 aircraft including the entire fleets of B52H, B1B and B2. The Air Force wants a fleet of B21 Raiders to take over that entire role, but it's a stealth bomber like the B2. Only 60% of B2s are mission capable at any given time, so is the B21 is just as reliable they'd need 120 or so aircraft. That doesn't sound like a huge deal when Boeing is pumping out 787s at 2 per month (120 in 5 years), but the Northrop Grumman factory struggled to produce 2 B2 bombers per year. That means that they need to keep their old planes around as long as they can for the B21 factory to pump out enough planes to replace the old planes. Otherwise there would be a gap of a few years where they'd have to curtail missions due to insufficient planes.
This was fun to watch. The fuselage would need to be made over for pressurization throughout, whatever expense that might entail. There are but 80 or so complete airframes left of the original 744 built, so not much in the way market share or spreading effect. Nonetheless, the idea is charming and I would love a ride on such a beast.
This is really cool. I appreciated the effort involved, even for such a silly idea.
I was waiting for you talk about how thirsty those 8 engines are and the cost per passenger kilometer to fuel and maintain those guzzlers as compared to say a 787 or A350.
The re-engining program that's about to get underway will alleviate some of the gas guzzlling.
Not to mention the cost to maintain eight engines. This is the reason why many major airlines are moving away from four-engined jets including the relatively newer A380 to two-engined ones.
@@jonathantan2469
@@jaadow77 Time to remove the 8 engines and their cowlings and replace them with 4 engines in new cowlings. 😉
Exactly!
If the B-52 was converted into a passenger plane, its transformation would be similar to the Tu-95 when it was converted into the Tu-114, where the aircraft's body was widened, and the wings were lowered from an anhedral configuration into a dihedral configuration like other passenger airliners.
If you watch one fly observe the wings any time they have a decent load those wingtips go up about 18 feet and it has dihedral just from that. When the wing tanks are empty and the plane is at rest on the flight line, the wing tip landing gear is about 5 to 6 feet off the ground.
If they did what you say, they wouldn't be even similar to the B-52 as the look is so very distinctive. There's nothing else in the air anything like it.
Yup, Mustard did a video on that a few years back
@@shaider1982 I learned it first from watching heavily loaded B-52s take off from March AFB before it was demoted to an ANG base. Another fun watch was watching a heavily loaded group take off one after the other in a MITO (forgotten what it stands for) takeoff where one starts to roll as one is halfway down the runway and one is climbing over the end of the runway at a thousand feet or so. The last ones tend to wobble a lot due to the turbulence from the planes in front of them.
Then another interesting sight was watching them lift off of Guam's runway and then drop down out of sight below the cliffs off the end of the Anderson AFB Runway only to see them struggling for airspeed and altitude as they come back above the horizon of the cliffs, maybe 10 miles out.
This was a fun video. A B-52 in AA livery is beautiful.
Convair had some passenger designs for the C99, the cargo version of the B36. They designed both land and seaplane variants.
Also a nitpick: I think you would also lose passenger space at the wing root. All that inconvenient structure for the wings.
There were plans for a passenger version of the Handley Page Victor. And the Lockheed Galaxy originally started out as a rival to the Jumbo Jet. And there a number of others. The Avro York was a civilian version of the famous Lancaster.
He has made a video about passenger version of galaxy in the past th-cam.com/video/xvQmAMF-fms/w-d-xo.html
You're sort of mixing things up - the 747 started out as a rival to the Galaxy but lost the competition
@@sundhaug92Sorry your right. For some reason I was thinking the two were rivals for passenger transport rather than military transport. I think it is probably because the 747 was such a success in the passenger role that in my own mind I was thinking that is what it was designed for.
It's somewhat ironic that the 747 is now being contracted to transport military supplies.
@@bigblue6917 Even funnier when you consider that the passenger-version of the 747 was supposed to be a temporary solution - it was meant to be replaced by the SST 2707 in that role and then rebuilt to carry cargo
The same for the Avro Vulcan and the Vickers Valiant. Of the two, the Avro proposal went furthest as the Atlantic - a delta-winged 120 seat transatlantic airliner. The government decided to go instead with the Vickers VC-7/V-1000 which would have been a four engine turbofan that outperformed the then far-off Boeing 707. The prototype was 90% complete when the entire project was cancelled in 1955.
Loved the imagery, nice job making the civilian Buff. Lot's of commenters have mentioned the placement of passenger seats where fuel tanks are located as being a showstopper. I haven't seen any comments on the landing gear. The outrigger wheels on the wings are nearly 150' apart. The Buff requires a 200' or wider runway AND TAXIWAYS. The tandem lading gear design places a lot of weight on a relatively small footprint... Buff runways needed to be built to handle the more concentrated loads, especially in the touchdown zones. Many commercial airports do not have the runway width or strength to support routine Buff operations. In my days as a Buff pilot, I got to squeeze a Buff onto some runways for airshows for a "one time only" visit. We had to transfer fuel so one wing would be heavy and we could taxi with one outrigger wheel about 6 feet off the ground.
The B-52 is actually not as large as some think it is. But I was amused, one day many years ago while waiting to catch a Delta flight, by a somewhat inebriated individual who had just stepped out of an airport bar who insisted that the 747 is the civilian version of the B-52. He was one of those know-it-all drunks who got smarter with every drink! They say you can't argue with a drunk, so I didn't try.
Planes that look absolutely nothing like a B-52: 1. Piper Cherokee. 2. Boeing 747
@Found and Expained in which program do you make your animations for videos? They are amazing! 🤩
Cool video, but:
- seats weight should be counted, as well as the weight of other systems dedicated to passengers, like sound insulation or oxygen tanks.
- a passenger plane needs a lot of cargo room inside the cabin, as well as in the belly of the plane.
- wing spars penetrate into the fuselage, vastly decreasing space and usability.
- seems like fuselage tapering wasn't considered.
All in all, it might be able to carry some 100 passengers.
As much as the Boeing 737-100, which however has an empty weight of 28 tons, against the 83 tons of the B52.
Zero chances that it could become a commercial plane. Even as a recycled plane, its fuel consumption would be unacceptable.
To add: 80kg is too low a number per passenger, unless they're happy to fly with no baggage. 100kg per passenger plus baggage is a normal rule of thumb figure to use.
Also don't forget it wasn't designed to be pressurized in that area so you'd have a lot of structural modifications needed
Boeing developed the 307 Stratoliner alongside the B-17, but it had a larger fuselage in order to accommodate passengers. I believe that it was the first aircraft with a pressurized cabin, before the B-29. Igor Sikorsky, on the other hand, intended for his 4-engine bomber to be a passenger plane, however some jerk shot some Archduke in 1914 and it was quickly re-designed as a bomber. I guess it made sense in the early days of aviation, not so much now.
Since you just mention about it, it's probably being stored somewhere in either Montona or California. Getting all prepped up for the manitory evacuation order coming up in a few weeks
Funny enough I think the area where the rear turret used to sit could actually be a fitting space for the crew to chill and have amenities for the passengers onboard. Having a B52 as a passenger plane isn't far fetched, the high altitude it could reach can make things more comfortable. The biggest downsides however would be the amount of preperation a plane like this would most likely need and maintenance... And of course fuel. It would just cost way too much to have something like this a passenger plane but would be extremely cool to have that's for sure.
As someone who works in the airport. You would need the whole bottom part of the plane for cargo (luggage or actual cargo) and you can convert part of that for fuel as well like what the A321 do for longer flights. So maybe you can get 1 row for passengers and bottom for cargo. It would be a narrow body (1 aisle) so the cargo would be lose. Unless you build in a moving system to have cargo containers to be used
Loading cargo as usual, open bay doors to drop it... Extra points for doing it before arriving in airport... "Passengers of strangelove airways... Please pick up your luggage on interstate b53"
So basically you would have a 757 that used way more fuel.
Not to mention the wingspan of the B52 is more than most airports are capable of.
Not the whole bottom for luggage.
@9983sp between luggage/cargo and fuel, and wheels yes. That's the bottom. You won't have passengers on the bottom
Well it would definitely suck as a passenger plane. Bombs are skinny & heavy. Most people aren't.
The only plausible way they could have made a B-52 based airliner would have been to use a different fuselage design. There were a lot of airliners based on bombers, not just the Tu-114, but they all had wider fuselages. But Boeing decided to make a passenger/tanker design from scratch instead.
keep in mind that the B 52 has just received a new lease on life with the new Rolls Royce power plants that are in approval and production. Adding creature comforts to this very capable air frame would not be a big deal for Boeing as they have been the premier passenger airliner manufacturer for many decades. Using more modern materials and techniques, this transition to civil service is not that big a stretch.
Am I alone in finding the irony in the Soviet Tupolev airliner having upper and lower class seating arrangements. 😂
Well, the class struggle should be kept alive, right?
As for your double deck idea, that wouldn’t work either. You might as well just leave it for baggage and cargo. Otherwise, you’d likely get a lot of angry passengers at their destinations.
"a lot of angry passengers" - would that really deter the passenger airline industry? Have you flown recently?
@@jebeda Not going to ever fly again unless i win a couple of billion in the lottery. The indignities they inflict on passengers is so bad I wonder why ANYONE would fly commercial ever again.
Not so much angry passengers but definitely make the lower deck cargo holds purely because of weight distribution
@@jebeda its called guessing
@@jebeda Believe it or not, that would actually deter airlines from buying. You make a valid point but, Airlines aren't expressly going out of their way to piss you off.
The B-52 has huge wings, but the fuselage is actually pretty small. It’s very tight inside.
"Or perhaps, more realistically, 80kg in America"
Me laughing and then going silent as I realize I'm holding a 44oz soda from Whataburger
"2 levels of seats"
the main landing gear: i will NOT tolerate this
Curious what you could do with a C-5 Galaxy. It almost looks like you could make a triple decker, and its weight capacity is around double the B-52. Granted, it doesn't have great range, but it might be nice for a JFK-LHR flight.
What I'm hearing here is passenger plane with mid-air refuelling..... ;-)
There was a concept by Lockheed called the L500 that could carry 1000 passengers. It was a C5 Fuselage
@@sunshine135 My thought too :D I know that concept and i really think they should have gone forward with it. I don´t think it would have been so successfull as a passenger-only aircraft, but as a combi aircraft or civilian freighter? Yes, there would have been a market. I think it would have been perfect to fit in the same market that´s held by the Ukrainian AN 124´s. That probably would have been an option for Lockheed to get them out of the shitty situation they were in the 80´s and 90´s.
@@joesheridan95 Antonov design team had a project of converting An-124 into An-418, a mid-range carrier of up to 800 passengers. The project got cancelled in early 90s due to lack of funding, when the Soviet Union dissolved.
@@alexandersulpovar8595 Yeah i heard about that.... i am glad for that end of the cold war, but i feel bad about all the good aerospace tech that humanity has lost due to lack of funding. Newer versions of the Antonovs, Energia, Buran.... it´s a shame that all of that got lost for good when you don´t look at it from an american, european or russian perspective, but from a human perspective.
Dont forget the massive wing box that would eat a huge amount of space in the cabin.
This was the comment I was looking for before I posted the same thing.
Oh man this is good stuff! I was joking with some friends just the other week about a picture of a B-52 Photoshopped to have Pan Am livery, leading to a series of jokes about Pan Am being a paramilitary organization that did covert strikes against the U.S.S.R.
This was made all the better by the fact that the last Pan Am flight flew just TWENTY-TWO days before the collapse of the U.S.S.R.
No interior volume cubes. The struts make for hard landings. The long flexible wings can make fir a bouncy ride especially around Douglas, WY in August at 500 feet.
You forgot to mention that a big part at play for the long range are the huge fuel tanks in the fuselage. Add this, and you might have enough room for maybe 50 passengers ^^
So each pax would have to pay for some 300 kg of fuel per hour. Ouch. :-)
@@coriscotupi Yup ^^
Considering that most of that B-52 upper "passenger" deck is fuel tanks you might be able to move some of those tanks to the lower deck. Your 50 passenger estimate could even be optimistic, since that upper deck might still need to be 50% tanks to get the range with the seating being a combination of 1x1 seating in First and tight 2x2 seating for Coach. The passenger experience would be like spending 10 hours in a CRJ.
This proposal shows strong indications of cranial:rectal inversion...But look at the views.
@@coriscotupi Onde tem avião, vejo comentários seus! 😂
@@Renan_c É mais forte que eu. 🙂
Another precedent was the first Soviet passenger jet, TU-104.
"The design request was filled by the Tupolev OKB, which based their new airliner on its Tu-16 "Badger" strategic bomber. The wings, engines, and tail surfaces of the Tu-16 were retained with the airliner, but the new design adopted a wider, pressurised fuselage designed to accommodate 50 passengers."
I, for one, would enjoy being deployed into my vacation spot like a strategic warhead.
The cross section plans show several interior partitions. Maybe the just seperate the pressurized and atmospheric compartments or are they structurally necessary?
I could see them in a niche market for luxury accommodations with, sleepers, dining areas o long haul routes...
Don't forget the wingspan is far too large for most airports. it also needs little wheels on the edge of the wings to stop them from scraping the ground.
The B-52 wing span is way less than that of a 747
@@MrRandomcommentguy 10.4 feet.
It’s already got the wingtip wheel.
The passengers issue can be addressed by giving it a larger fuselage just like a Tu-114 alongside lowering the wings and extending gear length
Yes, but as there are no props, no need to extend the landing gear. Just put the fuselage above the wings. But let's forget it. If 4 engine planes are out of equation now, it goes double for 8 engines...
An angle im surprised you didn't mention was the expanded room for comically large, fuel efficient, modern turbine engines that could be hung from those ultra high wings. I low key think new boeing desings will go back to have high wings expressly for this feature
Id insist that my B52P had tail guns if I was the Airline CEO
A few issues:
1. The weight-calculation you did ignores the weight of seats etc
2. Boeing already made the 377 Stratocruiser, based on the superfortress
3. The B-52 uses low-bypass engines, which have terrible fuel-efficiency compared to modern high-bypass engines
Not to metion
4. Room for toilets, a galley, exit rows and crew seating
5. Would overhead luggage compartments fit?
The CERP addresses this.
“You have been rather naughty on this flight today”
**Opens bomb bay doors to kick you off the aircraft**
Has other uses. I once heard from a B-52 aircraft commander that they attempted - unsuccessfully - to throw a bag of poop out of the bomb bay because they didn't want to keep it on board. That whole story she told - of a training mission to drop mines for the Navy to practice dealing with - was hilariously absurd, sounded more like a mom in a minivan than a strategic bomber mission. Should be titled "Do I need to turn this Buff around?" Would be offensive to anyone who respects the military but has never served, while those who have served would have just thought "Yep, that's Military life!"
Baby away!
One of the problems with this idea, and pretty much all the military variants of large arial vehicles, is that the high wing design can leave the engines in the way of seeing out the window, though it would allow an unobstructed view of the ground. Also, absolute dimensions shouldn't be used for calculating interior space, since you can't just place seats up to the skin of the aircraft. There's structural elements, wiring, accessories, and sound deadening that needs to be taken into account. As narrow as it is, I think the estimates for the seating configuration are awfully optimistic. The illustrations even show the seats being clipped off by the cabin. Having the lower deck overlooks a serious issue: Most commercial aircraft also carry luggage/cargo. This plane shouldn't be an exception.
There is a reason why a 737 doesn't have a lower level of seating. Now, it would be unconventional, but it could get some good range, by keeping the wing tanks. It doesn't seem practical to me, but it does look cool as a retro-style American Airlines plane. It would probably be somewhat fun to ride in. It would have good power & speed. However, the economy would probably be worse than even the 747. Though neither is likely to happen, it would probably make more sense to un-retire the 747, than attempt to convert a B-52. Maybe, a cargo plane, like the C-17 or C-5 might be a better fit.
B-52 loses an engine and declares an emergency.
All the other pilots "watch out he's only got 7 engines left!"
Just like with the TU-104 and TU-114, a passenger B-52 would likely get an entirely new, much larger fuselage.
You can also tag in the B-29 converted to the Stratoliner in this, by way of the Stratofreighter, if memory serves.
@@j.michaelpriester8973 Even earlier is the Boeing 307. which used the wings and tail of the B-17.
@@murphsmodels8853 Yes, good catch!
I was thginking the same thing. Widen the fuselage. You could probably go 50% without having a major affect on the overall aircraft capability.
@@j.michaelpriester8973 I rode a few cross country flights in KD-97s that were fitted for VIP travel. I was going TDY and was very definitely not a VIP but it was going where my orders said and it was pretty empty so away I went. We left Ellsworth AFB in South Dakota one day and flew straight back to March AFB (at the time, 22nd bomb wing headquarters) and about 10 minutes after we left a KC-135 also left but was headed to Maelstrom AFB in Montana where it made a stop to offload and onload something I never found out about, but it then took off and headed for March AFB and got there 2 hours before we landed in that KC-97. But it was a pretty comfy ride.
I like when you showed the 4 abreast seating, the window seats were sticking out of the fuselage…
You get to stick your head into the wind like a dog on a car ride!
Right, they would need to stick with a single deck which means that passenger capacity is like a 737-700.
The Boeing Stratocruiser does not look like a Superfortress, but it was based on the B-29 design.
The Soviets did the bomber to passenger jet conversion decades ago. The Tupolev design bureau converted the Tu-16 bomber into the Tu-104 passenger airliner. While the British Comet 1 was grounded, the Tu-104 was the world's only jet airliner and was a very good looking aircraft. It even made stops in New York and got tons of press for its futuristic appearance.
Only later did it become apparent that the bomber's design did not translate over very well to the passenger carrying role. The bomber's wings were designed for speed and bomb carrying and they lacked thrust reversers and spoilers for air braking. Not well suited for slower landing speeds and many commercial airports didn't have the long runways needed for the Tu-104.
Don’t forget bathrooms and galley at the front, middle, and back. Also, those seats at the outside edge would have no headroom. You’d likely need to lower the seat deck down to also allow for overhead bins making it only one deck of seats.
The center line fuel tanks would take up most of the upper deck seating area along with the wheel wells. Take the fuselage fuel tanks away and you lost your range.
Passenger aircraft don't need such huge range to be useful, as they can stop and refuel. It costs time, but if the benefit is lower operating costs or more passengers its worth it. Bombers don't have that option, they have to be able to get to the target deep into enemy territory. A bomber can't just stop in Murmansk and say "Fill 'er up please, 300,000 pounds jet fuel on pump two, we're on our way to bomb Moscow!"
I never knew the landing gear retracted like that. That's an interesting design
It also takes off horizontally. As in it doesn’t pitch it’s nose but rather changes it’s wings dramatically
You missed the biggest issue: the BUFF uses low bypass turbofan engines. These are loud and inefficient when it comes to creating thrust. When the time came to re-engine the BUFF, Boeing actually looked at a 4 engine configuration rather than the current 8 engine configuration. The military decided that the work needed to re-engine with four large engines was not viable, so it uses new low bypass engines.
Not a good idea cause besides to its small size compared to other commercial passenger aircrafts, the landing gear takes up a lot of space inside the fuselage.
It's a nice idea to think about, but when looking at passenger comfort the first thing that came to my mind was the fact that the wings would shadow most of the windows. Technically you would be flying in a tin can. Plus, the fact that the airframe is built for de pressured flight, would mean conversion to a pressurised version to be costly.
It would also be uneconomical considering the fact that the wingspan is too high. Like other people said, the bottom deck would just be a waste due to the gear well. Might as well use it for fuel and luggage?
There is a B52 at our local air force museum and when they first got it you could climb all inside of it. Quite a thrill for a 5th grader. I spent a lot of time pretending that I was a B52 pilot.
Good luck getting those airframe donations: The Buff will be flying earth-to-mars bomb runs before it's ever retired.
Keep the bomb bay doors for misbehaving passengers
Wings would have to be lowered to somewhere around the red line or lower for the design to work. The fuel consumption would be amazingly horrid, would be a good cargo craft for FEDEX lol
You know, not a bad plan instead of sitting around a boneyard. The double decker variant seems nice.
There is a photo of a B-52 refueling from an Airbus A330 MRTT, seen from above. It is incredible how the B-52 looks small and slender when compared with the A330.
The other one to look at was the Convair B36 "Peacemaker" and it's orphaned derivative the XC-99.... which was planned as an early twin-deck passenger aircraft, if not for the delay in suitable turbo-prop engines, and use of Pratt & Whitney R-4360-41 Wasp Major 28-cylinder radial engines, in pusher configuration.
F&E has done a video on this one!
th-cam.com/video/tbeosvK7WF0/w-d-xo.html
To convert a B52 to a passenger plane, it would have to be totally rebuilt and the engines would need to be upgraded to what they are using on other jet passenger planes. It would be more practical to add the wings from a B52 along with upgraded engines to some existing passenger jets. B52's have a lot of wing area, so there might be some efficiency gain from using wings like those.
I used to work near LAX directly under the path of incoming airplanes ,
W 103rd St & Prairie Ave, Inglewood CA , a B52 landed at LAX , the amount of noise it made was horrendous , I felt as if my ear drums about to rupture , until they get the noise problem fixed I doubt it will be ever used for civilian Aviation .
I was a B-54 Navigator. The Buff was a very uncomfortable airplane, is too narrow for passengers and isn't even fully pressurized.
That was fun. I wonder if it’s replacement could be built from the ground up with this in mind even if it were to serve as a personnel carrier.
to re engine the b-52 would be hard because modern engines are high bypass and way bigger than the 707 engines currently used, so space is a problem
After all, that is why the 777 has only two engines; the B-52 has eight small ones
New engines are in the process now. Not any more powerful, but a lot more efficient. An increase in range would also be possible.
We are now in the age of twin engines for airliners. While you could design and build an 8 engine B-52 like airliner, good luck getting any airline anywhere in the world to buy one! Passenger variant versions of most all larger bombers and transports are proposed, they seldom get passed the paper drawing phase.
It would be cold, noisy, trailing smoke, and always late. The plus side is there are very few 10,000-foot runways for it to use when the density altitude is high.
An interesting thought experiment for sure. Certainly wouldn't make any sense in present day, but is interesting to consider if Boeing had made a passenger version of it way back in the '50s, before they began development of dedicated passenger jets as the Dash 80 and subsequent 707 (which incorporated a lot of knowledge they gained from the B-47 and B-52 projects). The Tu-114 wasn't the only example, around that time there were tons of bomber-to-airliner developments, such as the Boeing 307 based on the B-17, Boeing 377 based on the B-29, Avro Lancastrian based on the Lancaster, and many others. All of these had different fuselages from the bomber versions, basically used the systems, engines, wings, tail, but with a wider fuselage. A B-52 derived airliner would probably have the same wings, tail, engines, maybe cockpit, but a different (wider) fuselage and likely more conventional landing gear. Though the 367-80 flew only two years after the B-52, was clearly already in development, so it seemed Boeing already had in mind to go that path rather than a bomber-based design. The 707 wasn't as large or heavy as the B-52 (using half as many of the same engines), somewhat lower weight, much less range, but surely far more economical to operate.
When I first saw your subject. I was totally in the WTF mode. LOL. You nailed it perfectly! I pushed that beast around the skies for decades. The fact that you got the wheel wells and gear stowage nailed was fantastic! Very well done Sir! Oh yeah..... Comment.. Big crew cabin?!?!?! Uh, you cant stand up in that thing. the only place to stretch is the ladder between decks. Your channel is awesome, keep it up!!!
If you was about 4 foot tall you could stand up 😊. Being 6’2” I hated to be hunched over to pin the upper seats. Bottom deck wasn’t so bad
If the B-52 became a passenger plane, I would suddenly find endless reasons to travel.
My favorite quote from a former B-52 Pilot: "They told us the b-52 has 152 miles of electrical cabling in it. Fully loaded it weighs as much as 10 locomotives. And has the carrying capacity of 60 boxcars. And It flies like a locomotive dragging 60 boxcars tied to it with 152 miles of electrical cabling." It costs the Airforce $72,000 per hour to operate one B-52. It costs Airlines $35,000 an hour to operate an Airbus A380. I think the US Air Force's investment in infrastructure supporting the B-52 and it's specific mission requirements has more to do with it's longevity than anything else. If airlines needed to keep their airliners in the air for over 40 hours and strategically drop passengers on any airport in the world. And an airline would probably need to buy between 60-70 B-52s to make all the infrastructure changes worthwhile.
Unlike other bombers, the B-52 is very available to loose civilians at typical air shows! I've walked inside the bomb bay at the Goldsboro NC air show two times! It is remarkable how thin the fuselage is! And at the same show they had a KC-10 refueler, which is similar in dimentions to a modern wide-body passenger airplane. Wow it is much higher off the ground, much wider, more intimidating in fact! Of course it was designed like 30 years later, and that's still like 40 years ago.
Did the same several years ago at the Dayton Air Show. Its not as massive as you'd think. Did the same with a B-1 and its not as large as you think.
The KC-10 wasn't just "similar in dimensions" to a wide-body airliner, it was literally built on the airframe of an existing wide-body airliner, the DC-10.
Even though there are some high wing airliners, the problem is that in a ditching at sea, the wing is the part that floats and tends to put the fuselage underwater. The "Miracle on the Hudson" for example would have a different and far worse ending with a high wing.
Major T. J. Kong Quotes
“Well, boys, I reckon this is it. New-q-lure combat, toe-to-toe with the Rooskies.”
The Wings and fuselage outside of the Bomb bay and the old Rear gunner tunnel and Cockpit are Mostly Fuel Tanks, Remove those and Add Passenger Interior and Passengers and the Plane would Only Fly About 500 to 600 miles to the Tank full, so there goes the 8500 mile Range.