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10:00 - Scrapped? Nuclear bomb toss was a standard USAF procedure LONG after the B-47 was retired. The aspect that had gotten rejected was having _heavy bombers_ doing this. USAF jets as big as the F-111 continued doing bomb toss up to the Aardvark's retirement in the 1990s. And I see no reason why nuke fighters to this very day are not still trained in this delivery method. A good thing to add is the explanation as to why these jets deliver nukes via bomb toss. That's to help them get away and survive the impending blast.
I remember Jimmy Stewart flying a B47 in "Strategic Air Command". Being a pilot in the Air Force Reserve, he actually had flown one in real life. In fact, he'd flown many different airplanes, both propeller and jet.
@MusicMaster1987 well .... im a liberal and a man. I have a pilot license have flown both single and multi engine propeller and jet. Have you? Guess you aren't real man then.
I do believe that the plane in “Strategic Air Command” an Excellent movie, was a B-36 with 6 turning and 4 burning. 6 pusher propellers and 4 jet engines.
@@GuntherRommel yes, Kimmy Stewart was a Legitimate Hero having flown numerous bombing runs during WW2, and remained with the Air Force until retiring as I believe a General! His WW2 service started long after he was a legitimate MAJOR Hollywood star! He was also a True Gentleman by all accounts I have read, right up to his pranks during another favorite movie of mine, 1966’s “Flight of the Phoenix “ which I read about just this morning! His numerous spots on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show are available here on TH-cam and several are very funny!
I grew up as an Air Force brat form 1946 to 1964 when I attended college and was on my own after that. My dad was a B-17 pilot in WW II and was shot down over Germany on July 26, 1943. He returned to the US in late August 1945 and remained in the Air Force initially flying B-29''s out of MacDill AFB, Tampa. He eventually flew the B-47 for years before transitioning to the B-52 which he flew off and on from 1961 until 1971 when he suddenly died on active duty when he was the Commander of Clark AFB, The Philippines. He was only 51 years old. There were some interesting things about the B-47. The early models didn't have any defensive armaments because it was faster than any fighter at the time and could simply accelerate out of harm's way. I don't know how true this is, but my dad told me about it while he was then flying the B-52. During the Cold War about a third of the bomber force was on 24 hour alert ready to take off within 15 minutes. Obviously, if on an actual war time mission, they would have to be refueled just before penetrating the Soviet Union. Some targets were close enough that the B-47 could complete it's mission and return to be refueled. However, some targets were so deep within the USSR that the crew only had sufficient fuel to get to the target and fly a pre-planned escape which would ultimately require bailing out. Those crews referred to them as "dry tanks" alert crews or those who wouldn't return unless they were rescued. I've never seen it mentioned anywhere else, but I trust my dad was telling the truth. Also, we were stationed at Sedalia AFB in MO in the early 1950's. It had closed after WW II but was reactivated in the 1950's. Initially there were only WW II B-25's and C-47''s. Then one day dad took us all to the runway along with most of the rest of the base personnel and families. It was a ceremony for the arrival of the first group of a B-47 wing to be stationed there. As we stood along the runway, all of the B-25's and C-47's took off and a few minutes later the first squadron of B-47's arrived. I was in awe. I had never seen anything like it before and it looked like an invasion of space craft. They were beautiful. Once the landed, three of them demonstrated the new JATO assisted take off rockets that allowed to use less than half of the runway normally required. There were a lot of accidents. I clearly remember hearing about crews that were lost. The families on an AFB were very close, especially in those days and so word spread fast when there were losses. I graduated from College in 1968 and joined the Marine Corps to avoid being drafted into the Army. I graduated from Officer Candidate School, and ended up in Vietnam as a Marine platoon commander, returning to the US in December 1969. I spent two more years in combat and retired from the Marines in 1989. From 1989 to 2015 I worked as a consultant to military technology programs, mostly for Special Forces. Between 2000 and 2015, I was an independent consultant supporting mostly Defense Advanced Research Programs Agency (DARPA) supporting technology development, training the military in the new technologies, and supporting exercises around the world as a technical advisor for those technologies. I retired permanently on December 31, 2015. I wanted to follow my dad as a military pilot, but I wore glasses. Later when I was in the Marine Corps, I honored my dad by becoming a private pilot with commercial and instrument ratings. I also flew gliders and aerobatic aircraft. Had he lived to see that, I think he would have been especially proud.
Cool story. I dont think you needed to be a pilot to make your father proud. Your resume is very impressive, im sure your dad would be extreamly proud.
Thanks for your service. I crawled through B47s twice in the early 60s as a guest of Lowery AFB Denver. Lowery was the interim USAF Academy in those days. Awesome mess hall!
My dad flew B-25 bombers during WW II. He transitioned to the B-47 after the war. I recall how concerned he was in 1956 thru 1958. We were living in Lincoln, Nebraska then and they were blowing up (mid air) about every three months. My dad NEVER said a word about all of this as he was sworn to secrecy. I watched his hair go from brown to snow white in less than a year. The stress on his face was palpable.
My father was a production test pilot on them in the 1950's. They had a sign over the door as they walked into work that said, "What you do not know about the B-47 will kill you." He said, "It was true. I quit after four years because most of my friends were dead." He was the first person to understand all the electronics on the plane, including the people who designed and built them. They only had three crew members, and it was in the time before digital computers but after jet engines. So you had to do a lot of calculus in a hurry with nothing but slide rules and analog computers. In that sense, it was the most complex aircraft to fly or bomb from in history, because anything after that had digital computers and anything before that was slower getting to the target and had a larger flight crew to divide the labor. Their job was to certify they would fly as expected before handing them over to the Air Force. So the good news is they were brand new. The bad news is that every little assembly line error was a potentially fatal crash. Lots of fires and some unbelievable control issues. When my dad told these stories in his late 70's, he remembered altitudes and other extremes to the last digit.
My Dad also test flew the B-47 in the early 1950's, we were at Boeing in Witchita and then he went on to master it and loved flying it and the challenge.He was WL Scott and flew the B-47 for 509th out of Peace AFB for years to Morocco. It was called the widow maker.
Simon, I am a little surprised that you did not mention the Mackinac Bridge incident. On April 29, 1959, an Air Force captain flew his B-47 Stratojet UNDER the Mackinac Bridge in northern Michigan.
My friend and neighbor is a retired air force officer who was active from 1949 to 1975. During the Korean War he flew the RF-80, from 54 to 65 he flew the B-47 and the B-52, during the Vietnam War the Air Force needed more recon pilots, so he transitioned back to that mission, he ended his service in the RF-4 with 378 combat missions between the Korean War and Vietnam under his belt. The one aircraft he absolutely despised was the B-47! One thing he has mentioned several times was the challenge of managing the fuel supply as it also determined weight distribution and balance of the aircraft .
My dad was the navigator/bomber on one of these! The safety issues was the key reason he left the air force as soon as his required time of duty was finished. He had a scary night landing experience where the landing gear got stuck and they had to land on one set of wheels with a nuclear bomb on board.
Pilot fatigue was also an issue. The SAC flights were very long and round the clock with available crews limited. Not one mention of John Wayne in Jet Pilot? Thats my first memory of this bomber. I thought it was so cool as a kid that the pilot could crawl down for a cup of coffee then pop back up in the bubble canopy like a groundhog.
@@barryflick54 oh man its been awhile. What id remember is probably mixed with 30 years of dreams and other media. The Duke is a local hero and favorite airport so id be biased😊
I was stationed at Wheelus AFB, Tripoli, Libya from 1966-1967 and remember sometime in 1966 a B-47 landing. When it departed it was loud, it was beautiful, and trailed lots of black engine exhaust. Those were exciting times.
Possibly one of the first types to experience 'coffin corner' at peak altitude, where any loss of airspeed led to an instant stall, and any increase in airspeed led to compressibility buffetting.
A revolutionary aircraft like the B-47 "pushed the envelope" in many areas. Crews transitioning from propeller bombers to it required learning all new technologies, planning and skills of high-altitude, high-speed flight. Its nuclear strike mission probably required flying the B-47 close to its limits and required considerable pilot skills and knowledge with little room for error. The success of the B-52 was probably the result of B-47 flight testing and operations. The B-58 Hustler was another revolutionary bomber that had a similar accident record and for the same reasons. At Mach 2, things happen awfully fast and some of them very bad with bad results. I remember watching a weather reconnaissance B-47 taking off from Clark AB, P.I. during the Vietnam war. It used lots of runway. It was a very beautiful aircraft. The movie, "Strategic Air Command," has some of the best B-47 (and B-36) footage anywhere. I love that movie.
I have a Revell' "fit the box scale" plastic kit of the Boeing B-47 Stratojet. The model was first issued about 1955 and was re-produced by Revell of Germany a few years back. Nice presentation of the "Granddaddy" of all large jet aircraft. Thanks for sharing!
i was born in '62. i never knew of the existence of the B-47 until in the '90s i saw a Jimmy Stewart movie starring this jet. Only today did i learn of its true significance. Thank you very much Mr. Whistler and Co. 🖖
In 1966 my dad got stationed to Davis Monthan AFB where the aircraft storage facility was located, a.k.a. The Bone Yard. I was 9 years old at the time and quite enamored by airplanes (and still am). At that time there was a sea of B-47s as shown in a couple of scenes in Simon’s video. It was amazing to see the whole fleet, now retired, in one place. All have since been recycled into many other items maybe even beer cans!
Much as I enjoy seeing American technology in the spotlight, I would love to see videos on two beasts from the "other side" of the Cold War; namely the Kiev-class carrier and the Kirov-class battlecruiser. Kiev was half carrier, half battleship, beastly enough to operate alone, and designed to support the fleet submarines. Kirov actually scared America into reactivating the Iowa-class battleships, and still serve to this day. No denying these monsters their proper respect.
@@soulsphere9242 As true as that may be, Kuznetsov should at least get out of repair drydock and actually complete a trial run before getting a video. 😁
If you want to see one up close, the Mighty 8th Air Force Museum in Georgia has one on static display. If you're ever in Pooler GA on I-95, it's right next to the interstate on the East side.
We have a B-47 at the March Field Air Museum in Riverside, California. Colonel Hal Austin, who sat on the board of our museum for many years, flew a daylight spy mission in a B-47 over the USSR in 1954. Before taking off, he checked with the wing intelligence officer. "Are there any MiG-17's where we're going?" he asked. (The MiG-17 was brand new at the time.) He was assured that there were no MiG-17"s in the area, only MiG-15's which couldn't fly high enough or fast enough to intercept a B-47. "I knew we were in trouble when I looked over my shoulder and there was a MiG-17 flying off our wing," he told me. The B-47 was damaged by cannon fire but Colonel Hal and his crew escaped from Soviet airspace, tanked and made it back to their base in the UK. The mission was classified "top secret" for more than 40 years.
Vmax is the maximum airspeed the aircraft can attain before structural damage occurs. With the high altitude conditions having relatively low air pressure. You had to fly very fast to maintain the correct amount of lift for that altitude. Like the op said, razor thin indeed.
Yes so excited you covered this bomber! When I used to work at the Strategic Air Command Museum this was my favorite plane to go inside of and remember a conversation with a vet who flew one saying coming in for a landing felt like driving over the worst dirt road while your cars rattling apart.
@@daviddunsmore103 The B-47 was one of the first military jets installed with a parachute in the back to assist with landing and on many of the shorter runways the speeds they'd be coming in at required a steep drop which would buffet the bomber. These bombers also were some of the first to use a retractable bicycle style landing gear which was a big departure for many of the pilots used to flying the bigger B-36.
I have read a lot of things good and bad about my BABIES B47s but nobody says anything about something dragging behind every later B47e in the fleet prior to landing. It is called a BRAKE CHUTE. I definitely know what it is used for. And so does my BACK after 4 years of changing them 3 or 4 times or more per night. 75 lbs with only a 6 ft ladders. ? If I remember correctly size was 20ft or more per chute.
Can you imagine what the designers of the B 47 thought when they heard that they were going to be used to climb rapidly, toss a bomb and then loop over the top of that climb and roll back to level flight with the military evidently not thinking about the huge stress that such a maneuver would put on the wings of the bomber especially the wings. This is a maneuver reserved for fighter planes that are designed for high g loads and incredible wing loading events. I can just see them looking at each other and saying ........they're going to do what with the plane.......are they insane. These planes were never designed to be put under this kind of stress or g loading of the wings and it resulted in high rates of stress fractures in the wings and fuselage of the aircraft and many wing failures which caused a lot of the losses.
I entered the U.S.A.F. in 1959 and was assigned To the 305th Bomb Wing on the B47 aircraft. We never lost an aircraft while assigned to this bomb wing. Being on flight status was a kick for a new airman such as I was. What an experience for a small town person.
My dad test flew the B-47 for Boeing in Witchita and then went on to master it for the 509th SAC and loved flying it for the challenge. He won an award for the most perfect flight missions flown in the Eighth AIrforce for Heads-Up in the 1960's. I used go out to the flight lines and watch him take off and land. It was an incredible experience The ground shuck and we had to use earplugs, so sleek and graceful yet powerful. Those totem poles outside the bases reflected the loss of aircraft or crew.
My great-uncle flew these for SAC for a few years. I never got to talk to him about it, he passed away earlier this year. A good book on the Cold War and the SAC B-47 and B-52 operations is Jet Age Man by Earl McGill.
A very familiar airframe for me. I grew up near Plattsburgh AFB. There has been a B-47 there on display for as long as I can remember. Every Christmas, they put a giant Santa on it. When I was little, we HAD to drive by it when we were in town.
I had lots of experience in the B-47 as a nav/bombardier and still have my 1000 hour pin to prove it. I've also had a ride in a Vulcan which couldn't be beaten for comfort. However, I wouldn't trade the MA-7A bombing radar for it. A couple of incidents but nothing outstanding in my rides but was close enough to know of at least 2 that I wouldn't have been on at the time. The bird was demanding but our 3 man crew was really tight and we worked well together on those long 12 hour flights when SAC was in it's heyday. Almost got a chance to redesign Cuba but thankfully sanity prevailed. I still have an inflight photo hanging over my desk. Love it!
I grew-up an Air Force brat. While my Dad was stationed at Randolph A.F.B., outside of San Antonio, Texas, one day I saw a B-47 flying over the base at a low altitude with the drag chute deployed in mid air! The pilot landed it okay; but while he was still in the air, I jumped on my bike with a bunch of buddies and we pedaled to base operations as fast as we could. We arrived as the aircraft was taxing up to the building. The aircraft was separated from the base ops building by five or six Air Police pick-up trucks. All had at least one sky cop in the back with a rifle. That's when even us dumb kids figured out that the aircraft had "war loads" on it! The B-47 was one of the best looking airplanes I ever saw. Later in my Navy career, I crewed Navy Super Constellations. Without the radar domes, they were also some of the best looking aircraft in the world!
I had a family friend who flew B-47s. The plane remains a thing of beauty, although regarding it as such requires one to take into account the purpose for which it was designed. The airframe could handle the Immelmann manœuvre needed for "toss-bombing" perfectly well, but it required great pilot skill to maintain control at the top of the half-loop, and then to execute the half-roll at high altitude as airspeed fell precipitously and the engines strained at a not-insignificant risk of compressor stall. It was a challenging flight profile for such a large aeroplane - almost the size of a 727 - designed for blazing straightline speed at high altitude.
I lived and worked at my university's airport. The airport manager /chief pilot / check pilot was former B-47. So he was my boss, my landlord, and gave me my PPL check ride. He was a grouchy, unreasonable, mean-spirited SOB. Master of the gruff 3 word answer. But when the talk involved the B-47 he was like a poet describing young love. Said she was a good girl if you understood what she needed. He retired when they retired the 47. He's probably gone now and I don't think he liked me but I admired him and still do. Prick. P.S. He said a lot of the crew losses were due to the fact that the Bomb/Nav ejected downward. Crews stayed with the plane too often when they should have punched out in pattern incidents because there is always a chance of success but ejecting was an automatic death sentence for the Nav.
You could go with the engines embedded within the wing roots such as the Comet and V-Bombers (Valiant, Vulcan and Victor). Or you can have the engines in podded nacelles such as the B-47 and B-52. The latter have been far more influential.
@@winterwatson6811 : I recall them having some aerodynamic advantages too, but the engineering logistics (including the question of how you get to them for maintenance) are stacked against them.
Ahhh a Tybee bomb reference, growing up on Tybee I heard about this since I was a child, however some of the other parts of the story could make its own video. There was the story of two young men that got caught in a fog bank off the coast of Tybee. They got picked up and sent on the right directions by a sub. The guys thought the sailors on the sub had an odd accent and then after being shown pictures of different subs by the coast guard, it turned out the sub was Russian. Thanks again guys and I cannot wait to see the next vid
I love that you mentioned the Tybee bomb... I'm from the area and very few people are ever aware of what's laying around, somewhere. Every time I kayak in the area, it's always in the back of my mind in a whimsical weird way...
I'm surprised that he didn't mention the B-47 that vanished without a trace over the Mediterranean Sea with several live nuclear bombs on board. It was part of a formation of similar planes from the same squadron that had descended through a cloud layer to meet up with a tanker for refueling, but this one aircraft simply wasn't seen to emerge from the cloud layer, and without any distress call. The crew and their bombs are completely missing to this day, with no evidence as to what happened to them.
Gen Lemay, SAC CC, in order to get to Russia, forced us to fly it at the limits, with 87k # a/c weighing 210k# for takeoff, using 10,500' of 12500' runway. We only had six 6000# thrust engines plus water augmentation for 1min for 42k # thrust to lift a 100 ton a/c with a thin wing not generating takeoff lift until about 180 mph. So, lose one engine on takeoff and it crashed. Once in the air I breathed a sigh of relief. One time taking off for Spain on a hot August night, we used the whole 12,500 runway when water augmentation (makes for denser air) ran out and we just barely got airborne. Took several miles nursing the flaps up to get any altitude.
I am an 88 year old U.S. Airforce veteran, and I am one of the guys who kept these monsters flying. I can tell you this: All us guys who worked on them and flew them already knew most of the flaws you pointed out, but kept them flying anyway. A lot of guys that flew them are dead and can’t tell the full story. Those born later can't identify with the desperation that boiled in the minds of the pilots and ground crews that threw these imperfect beasts into the face of the threatening USSR and laughed at their weak response. Those who lived that nightmare understood that America and the USSR were on the naked edge of nuclear holocaust, and the utter loss of American freedom. It can be said that the Boeing B-47 Stratojet was America’s first guided missile-the pilot being the guide. It was beside the point that these frazzled buzzards were dangerous; we didn’t matter that they were built in a hurry in a war of one-upmanship; all we knew was that we HAD to beat the Russians. To fall to second place would have turned the Earth on its civilized head! I’ll tell you one more thing: All of these guys that worked on the B-47 will emphatically tell you the so-called Cold War was anything but cold. While America was carrying on their daily business, these inferred “rattletraps” were flying over the heads of citizens of America and the free world, keeping the peace. That, is the real story behind the B-47. The following is a story few ever hear about these war birds: When they would land after a mission, there would be a line of them coming down the taxi-way, one behind the other, spaced far enough apart to dodge the rocks from the ones in front. Those six J-47 engines wanted to drag that Pterodactyl faster than it wanted to go, so the pilot had to ride the brakes to curb its enthusiasm. But the brake linings squealed like a prehistoric monster, so there would be this line of them, their necks craned into the air, all squealing their displeasure. What a sight! The pilots drove them into their particular parking bays as near as possible, but some of them had to be towed into place. The bombay doors were then opened and safety pinned in place. Hanging from the ceiling would be this atomic egg, straight from the stratosphere, still covered with frost. I ran my hands over these packages of American freedom and hoped they would never hatch.
It's now at Edwards, but at Chanute we had the #2 B-47, which I saw so many times as a Rantoul brat and a supporter of the museum.. The first prototype was scrapped, but good old 46-66 was a jewel in the museum collection.
My father was a bombardier / navigator in B-47's from the early 50's thru '64. One of the first deployed.... He also participated in the nuke testing in the Pacific. My favorite bomber but I' m biased. Thanks for the video!
You talk about how B-47s were set up to take of one every 15 seconds but evidently didn't hear about the base (McConnell AFB Wichita Kansas) with the super wide runway that allowed waves of six B-47s to take off simultaneously putting a lot of jets into the air very quickly. Wichita was a good base for the B-47s since one of the Boeing plants that churned out those B-47s sats on the west side of that runway.
I was just a little kid, but I remember cruising by the Duluth AFB in October, 1962, and seeing a flock of B-47s on the tarmac, surrounded by armed sentries, loaded for Russian bear-waiting the word from JFK. One of my most vivid memories from childhood. I thought it was cool as heck. No idea as a kid what a close thing it was.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, SAC implemented their dispersal program. Detachments of B-47's were deployed to a number of civilian airports and non-SAC air force bases.
In the Greenhouse tests, one B-47 was used on each of the Dog, Easy, and George tests, as part of Project 8.1. Only the boosted fission test, coded as Item, didn't include what were marked in the other tests as B-47 aircraft in Operation Greenhouse documents. All the B-47 aircraft were radio callsigned as Elaine. Project 8.1 was instrumented airframe tests of blast effects on B-47s approaching the detonations.
Excellent video! It's amazing how quickly America and Russia developed swept-wing fighters such as the North American F-86 Sabre and Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-15, both in 1947, yet while the US had a swept-wing bomber in the Boeing B-47 Stratojet by 1947, the Soviet Union didn't have one until 1952 with the Tupolev Tu-16.
Control reversal was a problem. the wings were so thin and slender that too much aileron would bend the wing, creating the opposite effect than what was expected.
I regularly vacation on Tybee Island and one of the restaurants on the back river have the story of the B-47 incident where the nuclear bomb was lost off the coast. Also the 8th Air Force Museum in Pooler, GA right near the Savannah Airport has a full B-47 on display outside. My dad was on a B-52 base in Albany (Turner AFB) during the Cuban Missile Crisis. After Kennedy's speech all the B-52s left and were replaced by B-47s for short range strikes on Cuba if it came to it.
From what I've been able to learn through study the B47 "Stratojet" was a huge technological leap when it was first designed and put into production but much like an army equivalent the M60 Machinegun with age issues started popping up here & there. It's maintenance costs & quite a number of accidents outweighed any of the benefits keeping it in service provided plus technology had advanced significantly towards the end of it's service life it was an amazing aircraft for it's time and should be remembered as such 🙂
Very interesting analysis of this aircraft. I finished-up my USAF hitch with F-111s at Plattsburg, NY, where a B-47 sat outside the main gate for decades and may still do so. Never knew much about it, but as stated in this video the three years between the end of WWII and its B-17s and B-29s is absolutely astounding!!
The early jet age was full of staggeringly fast advancements in technology. Just as B-47 made the propeller bombers obsolete, the Soviet Tupolev 16 'Badger' that came just a few years later was of a similar size but with two engines instead of six and an even better aeridynamical shape. The Tu-16 remains in service today!
I blame SAC's for the losses because LeMay drove these guys to the brink of exhaustion. This plane demanded a lot from the pilot and he had to be proficient. After a scramble and god knows how many hours in the air and then land this rascal trouble could be just around the corner. She is a sexy plane if you ever get to see one its beautiful to behold.
An impressive aircraft, especially given when it was designed. One note: only one nation other than the US operated the B-47. The RCAF leased a B-47 to use as a test bed for the testing of the Orenda Iroquois jet engine being developed for the Avro Arrow interceptor. It was only in Canada for a few years, and was never "operational" in the sense it was designed for. Just an interesting footnote.
I think that the sheer scale of the technological leap forward that this aircraft was is lost through the lens of history. It’s not that the pilots weren’t trained, it’s that humans didn’t know how to fly or even properly build those airplanes yet. It was completely groundbreaking and those types of advancements have consequences sadly.
I saw one of these in service during a Spring Board military exercise in the early 70s. I got to check out as it was parked near the aircraft I worked on.
Am I the only one who noticed at 14:19 in the video the photo of the airplane shows the inboard engine stations occupied by large turboprops? That would be one of two XB-47D Composite engine test beds to see if they could get more range by combining turboprops and turbojets. I think they only built two of them, so not much must’ve come out of it.
It's so amazing that you can see the B-52's origins in the B-47 but you can't see the same between the B-17, B-29 and B-47. The B-47 looks almost like a precursor to the Vulcan. Also, Vulcan need a Megaproject!
What I always found interesting was that the debut of the Avro Lancaster and the Avro Vulcan was only 12 years. That shows how fast things were evolving back then.
From Wichita Kansas where I believe most were built at Boeing Wichita. We have 2 on static display on the same airfield. One at the gate of McConnell Air force base that previously was on display off the side of a highway and anyone could walk up and crawl all over and unfortunately vandalize. On the other side of that airfield one is on static display at the Kansas Aviation Musuem next to the Boeing Wichita facility that made them. Also on same airfield is the older Cessna factory and the former Stearman Factory.
Growing up in Orlando, Florida during the 50s I remember B-47s from the local AFB. I forget the name but it is now the airport for the region. There was a horrific crash that deeply affected the airmen and their families living in the community. It wasn’t long afterwards that the B-47s were retired and replaced by B-52s.
I grew up near Homestead Air Force Base. It was a B-52 Base, when, for one year, they flew all the B-52s away to be upgraded- they were replaced by B-47s for that year.
I’ve read that in a sudden, steep climb, the wings would break off. One fictional novel, “Wild Blue Yonder,” I believe, described it as if the plane were putting its hands together in prayer. One can certainly see the B-47 heritage in the B-52, which became probably the most successful military plane ever.
my highschool jrotc instructor practiced those rapid take-off drills in the early 70s, he said that by time the 2nd or 3rd aircraft took off there was an incredibly dangerous amount of turbulence on the runway.
The bomb toss you're referring too was called the Immelmann turn or Immelmann Maneuver, named after WWI German fighter ace Max Immelmann. Essentially the plane would go into a steep climb and release the bomb, just before the plane went upside down into a loop, going the opposite direction. Once upside down, the plane would then roll back into normal flight. While such a maneuver would be easy enough for a small fighter jet, it was disastrous on the air frames of the B-47s.
The Air Force referred to the bomb toss as a LABS maneuver, for Low Altitude Bombing System. Yes, it was composed of an Immelmann turn, a common aerobatic maneuver, but it wasn’t referred to as such.
Pilot of the Enola Gay, Paul Tibbets, worked on the B-47 development program. I recall a story he told about one of the B-47 test pilots who took him on a test flight. Crazy pilot named Tex Johnston took Brig. Gen Tibbets 50-60 miles from the higher-ups at the base in Wichita just so he could barrel or aileron roll the plane and show off a “6 engined fighter.” Tex was the same pilot who twice rolled the prototype 707 over Seattle’s Lake Washington in 1955.
The sling bombing maneuver added to the failure of the B-47. BG-47s were exploding in midair when not performing sling bombing practice. The cabin layout made escape from the now burning ball of fire breaking up in the sky impossible so there were no survivors to give first hand accounts of what went wrong. The Air Force covered up most of these losses if for no other reason than to keep the Soviets knowing how bad the problem really was. The sling bomb maneuver put such strain on the craft that micro cracks formed and would fail catastrophically later under normal fight years later. This ruptured the fuel tanks so there was the loss of thrust, control and subsequent fire. They tried to bolster the strength of the wings but that did not work so the entire remaining fleet had to be withdrawn from front line service.
You wouldn't want to describe the Dutch-Roll as also causing the "wings to pitch" as that implies oscillation in the lateral i.e. pitch axis or up and down, the wing movement is in the longitudinal i.e. roll axis. Actually it's a dynamic coupling like the largest, slowest form of flutter but involving the entire airframe.
It's a shame there isn't film of the B-47 with the sharp angled RATO take-off which was close to same angle as a Vulcan taking off. As kids we used to stand and watch them take off at a shallower angle (from the then USAF Brize Norton) some years later when the farmers to the West of the airfield complained to the base commander about the drop in production due to animal stress, the B-47s changed their take-off angle to near vertical until the RATO ran out so the aircraft then flattened out. It was exhilarating and scary at the same time. It was also so loud you couldn't breathe.for a few moments.
A shout out to Moses Lake!! Just over the hill or two from me. I get fly byes occasionally from the pilots from the Air Force base their. Was their last week to watch my nephew play a Jr high football game. 👍👍👍
My late grandfather worked on these during the Korean war, I always loved hearing him tell stories about working on these, including the time he accidentally dropped his flashlight into the fuel tank!
Chuck Yeager ( yes the guy that flew the plane that broke the sound barrier). Even test flew the B47 ( at that time XB47). Supposedly struggled to land it with it being so clean aerodynamically that he literally had to muscle it on to the ground.
20 June 1986 was the last flight of a B-47. The flight originated at China Lake in Southern California and terminated at Castle AFB, Atwater, California. It was a day VFR flight. The Aircraft Commander was an O-7 who had B-47 and B-52 experience. The Copilot was an O-6 FB-111 Driver. En-route, the B-47 suffered an airspeed indicator loss. A Tactical Air Command T-33 (co-located at Castle AFB) launched and joined up with the bomber and offered airspeed calls. The T-33 provided these calls on final until about 400 feet. The T-33 pulled away and the B-47 was on its own for the landing. The B-47 got slow on short final and into the flare. The B-47 suffered a pod scrape on an outboard engine during the full stop landing. We heard later that SAC HQ was pretty upset with the pilots about this incident. The B-47 now sits proudly at the Castle Air museum at Atwater California. On that same day, I took my initial qualification Checkride in the KC-135A with a Q-1! I missed the B-47 landing but we parked right next to it when the checkride was complete. Interesting day to say the least!
That plane was only marginally airworthy. They didn't, or couldn't, retract it's gear on that last flight, and it had other mechanical issues besides losing the airspeed indicator.
The location of the engines under the wings is a natural solution to the needs of the design to locate the plane of thrust with the center of drag of the aircraft and at the same time make them accessible for maintenance. Also, turbine engines when they failed tended to fail catastrophically. Having them outside the airframe had many advantages. Lots of designs arrived at the same solution.
WAIT!!! You’re not even going to comment on the B-47 shown at 14:20??? The picture shows a re-engined B-47 with the inner, paired jet engines (4) replaced with some sort of bizarre turbo-props (2)? I don’t claim to be an “expert” on the subject of the B-47, but I’ve never seen this picture before, and never knew about any program that tested turbo-props on an American bomber… Surely it wouldn’t help a B-47s maximum speed or altitude, so I guess increased range would be the benefit? Possibly better take off or landing performance?? Does anyone have any information or sources on this weird creation, or results of the tests? Oh, yeah- great video as usual, thanks!
XB-47D, testing the Wright YT-49. The performance wasn't really affected, and the reversing props cut landing roll, but wasn't pursued beyond 2 prototypes because of engine development issues creating delays, and by then, the BUFF was in service and work was going on with the B-58 design.
There are also photos around of the B-47 temporarily loaned to the Royal Canadian Air Force in order to test a large afterburner equipped engine called the Orenda Iroquois which was intended to take the Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow to speeds in excess of Mach 2. That huge engine was mounted in a pod on the left side of the B-47's rear fuselage below the stabilizer. The whole rear fuselage had to be reengineered and strengthened to take the weight and thrust of that monster engine. Google should be able to find you a photo of it. 😉
My father flew as a navigator with a test squadron in this aircraft. One program he told me about was launching rocket propelled ICBM RV test shapes while in a steep climb over the Sulton Sea in SoCal. Great short history.
Just to keep things in perspective, the hull loss rate of the Boeing 707 - a commercial airliner - was twice that of the B-47, with far more casualties.
@@fredkruse9444 Please remember that this was almost an all Theoretical Design, where you had some research and very little actual experience to base your design on! "Sometimes when you post the Edge Of Technology, Technology Pushes Back!" (Forget who said that....)
@@timengineman2nd714 Maybe I wasn't clear: I was referring to the research supporting Simon's incorrect statement about wingspan, not actual B47 research. (And to also be clear, I like Simon's videos.)
cool to see this. I used to do work that gave me a chance to see the inside of a WB-47 which is part of the legacy of this plane. (hint hint video about the WB-47 long wing...)
The B-45 Tornado was actually USA's first operational jet bomber, edged out the B-47. It was introduced in April 1948 versus B-47 in June 1951. A B-45 actually dropped the Operation Buster-Jangle Easy test bomb at the Nevada bombing range in November of 1951. It was also riddled with failures. The dangerous yaw-roll coupling of the tail of aircraft with main wing above fuselage center of gravity is commonly corrected with anhedral (angled-down) wings, such as the Harrier jet. In some cases it's corrected with polyhedral wings, that lower angle at inner main wings, and elevated in the outer wings (like F4 Phantom and WWII F4U Corsair). A more exotic variant is the inner rise of wings, with lowered angle outer wings.
B-45 is pretty small for a bomber, only 11 feet longer than an F-105 and shorter than the Mig 25. If anything it's more of a large strike fighter akin to what the F-15E developed into.
@@Fadaar It was a staged (smaller to larger) concept test before more powerful jet engines were developed to power much larger planes. Also, small bombers are excellent reconnaissance planes for added range with more fuel capacity, without heavy bomb payloads on board. B-36s were central in air command platforms during Pacific nuclear tests, because of their long range and flying time, until replaced by B52s for Operation Redwing in 1957. Consider that the B-36 behemoth had pusher prop engines before jet assist engines were later added to aid in takeoff power.
You didn’t mention the B-47s role as a SCDV (Santa Clays Delivery Vehicle). One stood on static display beside the main gate into Plattsburgh Air Force Base. Right after Thanksgiving they’d straddle it with a giant Santa. Ho! Ho! Ho! Duck and cover.
My dad was a pilot and said the B-47 is the first military program that delivered far more than anyone could have dreamed of,(much less actually hoped to achieve) and a host of problems that would take years to truly understand. BUT the bad asses of SAC made it work somehow Mad props
As a Crew Chief on many of these birds from 61 to 65 at Mountain Home AFB Idaho. You forgot the worst problem the resetting the brakes after engine start. As they were hydraulic and had to be reset or you might find your bird in a field somewhere. Check to make sure the CHOCKS are solid and reset. Oh by the way forgot about the Barbecue behind the tailpipes on all engine starts.
My grandpa Maj. Paul Richard Ecelbarger flew bombers in WW2, and was killed in a RATO malfunction at Lincoln AFB back in the 50's. I think the jet is as good looking as a bomber can be. and I know that my grandpa loved to fly these military aircraft, as much as I love building them. Building the F35 would have been quite interesting to him, but not as much as the B2!
Fun fact: George Carlin enlisted in the Air Force to avoid the risk of being drafted into the Army, and he ended up serving as a B-47 navigator-bombardier.
I've never heard that one before about George Carlin. According to Wikipedia, George Carlin did indeed enlist in the Air Force. He "trained as a radar technician. He was stationed at Barksdale AFB in Bossier City, Louisiana and began working as a disc jockey at the radio station KJOE in nearby Shreveport. Labeled an "unproductive airman" by his superiors, he received a general discharge on July 29, 1957. During his time in the Air Force, he had been court-martialed three times and received many nonjudicial punishments and reprimands." If this is indeed true about George Carlin's time in the USAF, I don't think you'd want him as a "navigator-bombardier" in a nuclear bomb carrying, Strategic Air Command, Boeing B-47 bomber.
@@WAL_DC-6B Yeah, while he did train as one, he did not stay as one for very long. His disciplinary record often had him grounded from flights until he was finally permanently pulled. In many ways, his behavior spared him from many of the dangers that came with being in a B-47. It was also during his time in Louisiana that much of what would become his views and attitude about racism was cemented. One of the most formative moments was when he and two other airmen were arrested by a Louisiana sheriff and held in jail. What happened? They were driving through that sheriff's county, but the airman who was driving at the moment of the stop and arrest was black. This was one of the very few times when the Air Force actually had Carlin's back despite his record, as they forced the sheriff to release him and the other airmen.
To the best of my knowledge the last USAF Unit to fly the B47, specifically WB 47 E, on regular missions was the Ninth Weather wing, 55th Weather Recon Squadron at McClellan AFB in Sacramento Ca. until late1969.
The last B-47 to fly, landed at Castle Air Force. I don’t know where the flight originated from. I believe it was in the early 70s that it almost crashed at Castle Air Force Base while landing, being part of Castle Air Force Air Museum. Heck of a great pilot. That’s Castle Air Force Base at Atwater, California, where my Dad was a mechanic on the engines of the B-52’s. He’s still alive at 94. He received many good citations for keeping The B-52’s flying.
The B47 was groundbreaking and certainly a challenge to fly. But the high number of losses really lies at the feet of the USAF. To quote the US Airforce Magazine: “The majority of accidents occurred with crews where the aircraft commander was a reserve officer with relatively high total flying hours, but only a small amount of time in the B-47…”. Assigning inadequately trained officers to a challenging aircraft would be unconscionable today. Things were different in the 1950s and to force modern normalcy on that time is….counter intuitive.
The only thought that went through my head when he mentioned 1/3 alerts and MITs was how much the maintenance crews would've been working. That would have sucked
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New channel idea! A new father gets some well deserved rest. You could call it either SleepProjects or Napographics.
No thanks, I don't play video games because I am not a child.
Sounds interesting but I don't have 20 minutes to devote to this kind of thing.
10:00 - Scrapped? Nuclear bomb toss was a standard USAF procedure LONG after the B-47 was retired.
The aspect that had gotten rejected was having _heavy bombers_ doing this. USAF jets as big as the F-111 continued doing bomb toss up to the Aardvark's retirement in the 1990s. And I see no reason why nuke fighters to this very day are not still trained in this delivery method.
A good thing to add is the explanation as to why these jets deliver nukes via bomb toss. That's to help them get away and survive the impending blast.
I remember Jimmy Stewart flying a B47 in "Strategic Air Command". Being a pilot in the Air Force Reserve, he actually had flown one in real life. In fact, he'd flown many different airplanes, both propeller and jet.
Jimmy Stewart was a literal hero, several times over.
@MusicMaster1987 Or Trump with his "bone spurs".
@MusicMaster1987 well .... im a liberal and a man. I have a pilot license have flown both single and multi engine propeller and jet. Have you? Guess you aren't real man then.
I do believe that the plane in “Strategic Air Command” an Excellent movie, was a B-36 with 6 turning and 4 burning. 6 pusher propellers and 4 jet engines.
@@GuntherRommel yes, Kimmy Stewart was a Legitimate Hero having flown numerous bombing runs during WW2, and remained with the Air Force until retiring as I believe a General! His WW2 service started long after he was a legitimate MAJOR Hollywood star! He was also a True Gentleman by all accounts I have read, right up to his pranks during another favorite movie of mine, 1966’s “Flight of the Phoenix “ which I read about just this morning! His numerous spots on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show are available here on TH-cam and several are very funny!
I grew up as an Air Force brat form 1946 to 1964 when I attended college and was on my own after that. My dad was a B-17 pilot in WW II and was shot down over Germany on July 26, 1943. He returned to the US in late August 1945 and remained in the Air Force initially flying B-29''s out of MacDill AFB, Tampa. He eventually flew the B-47 for years before transitioning to the B-52 which he flew off and on from 1961 until 1971 when he suddenly died on active duty when he was the Commander of Clark AFB, The Philippines. He was only 51 years old.
There were some interesting things about the B-47. The early models didn't have any defensive armaments because it was faster than any fighter at the time and could simply accelerate out of harm's way. I don't know how true this is, but my dad told me about it while he was then flying the B-52. During the Cold War about a third of the bomber force was on 24 hour alert ready to take off within 15 minutes. Obviously, if on an actual war time mission, they would have to be refueled just before penetrating the Soviet Union. Some targets were close enough that the B-47 could complete it's mission and return to be refueled. However, some targets were so deep within the USSR that the crew only had sufficient fuel to get to the target and fly a pre-planned escape which would ultimately require bailing out. Those crews referred to them as "dry tanks" alert crews or those who wouldn't return unless they were rescued. I've never seen it mentioned anywhere else, but I trust my dad was telling the truth.
Also, we were stationed at Sedalia AFB in MO in the early 1950's. It had closed after WW II but was reactivated in the 1950's. Initially there were only WW II B-25's and C-47''s. Then one day dad took us all to the runway along with most of the rest of the base personnel and families. It was a ceremony for the arrival of the first group of a B-47 wing to be stationed there. As we stood along the runway, all of the B-25's and C-47's took off and a few minutes later the first squadron of B-47's arrived. I was in awe. I had never seen anything like it before and it looked like an invasion of space craft. They were beautiful. Once the landed, three of them demonstrated the new JATO assisted take off rockets that allowed to use less than half of the runway normally required.
There were a lot of accidents. I clearly remember hearing about crews that were lost. The families on an AFB were very close, especially in those days and so word spread fast when there were losses.
I graduated from College in 1968 and joined the Marine Corps to avoid being drafted into the Army. I graduated from Officer Candidate School, and ended up in Vietnam as a Marine platoon commander, returning to the US in December 1969. I spent two more years in combat and retired from the Marines in 1989. From 1989 to 2015 I worked as a consultant to military technology programs, mostly for Special Forces. Between 2000 and 2015, I was an independent consultant supporting mostly Defense Advanced Research Programs Agency (DARPA) supporting technology development, training the military in the new technologies, and supporting exercises around the world as a technical advisor for those technologies. I retired permanently on December 31, 2015.
I wanted to follow my dad as a military pilot, but I wore glasses. Later when I was in the Marine Corps, I honored my dad by becoming a private pilot with commercial and instrument ratings. I also flew gliders and aerobatic aircraft. Had he lived to see that, I think he would have been especially proud.
God bless you and your family! 🙏🏻Thank you for your service and the sharing of your history!
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Pilot or not, a CV like you just described would be enough to make any parent extremely proud. Ooh Rah!
If you ever travel to Whiteman AFB again, make sure to notice the B47 on display towards the flightline.
What a great stoary. Thanks for taking the time to write that all out!
Cool story. I dont think you needed to be a pilot to make your father proud. Your resume is very impressive, im sure your dad would be extreamly proud.
I was a B-47 crew member. Always proud to service in Strategic Air Command under General Curtis Lemay. 🐻😎👍
LeMay was *badass* he was the USAF version of Patton!
Thanks for your service. I crawled through B47s twice in the early 60s as a guest of Lowery AFB Denver. Lowery was the interim USAF Academy in those days. Awesome mess hall!
What years? I wonder if you knew my dad.
Thank you! USAF brat. Pease AFB from 58-64...
Awesome! I was a B52H Gunner and proud to have been in SAC.
My dad flew B-25 bombers during WW II. He transitioned to the B-47 after the war. I recall how concerned he was in 1956 thru 1958. We were living in Lincoln, Nebraska then and they were blowing up (mid air) about every three months. My dad NEVER said a word about all of this as he was sworn to secrecy. I watched his hair go from brown to snow white in less than a year. The stress on his face was palpable.
It appears wing metal fatigue became a problem but mission was deemed more important.
My father was a production test pilot on them in the 1950's. They had a sign over the door as they walked into work that said, "What you do not know about the B-47 will kill you." He said, "It was true. I quit after four years because most of my friends were dead." He was the first person to understand all the electronics on the plane, including the people who designed and built them. They only had three crew members, and it was in the time before digital computers but after jet engines. So you had to do a lot of calculus in a hurry with nothing but slide rules and analog computers. In that sense, it was the most complex aircraft to fly or bomb from in history, because anything after that had digital computers and anything before that was slower getting to the target and had a larger flight crew to divide the labor.
Their job was to certify they would fly as expected before handing them over to the Air Force. So the good news is they were brand new. The bad news is that every little assembly line error was a potentially fatal crash. Lots of fires and some unbelievable control issues. When my dad told these stories in his late 70's, he remembered altitudes and other extremes to the last digit.
Thank you for that.
My Dad also test flew the B-47 in the early 1950's, we were at Boeing in Witchita and then he went on to master it and loved flying it and the challenge.He was WL Scott and flew the B-47 for 509th out of Peace AFB for years to Morocco. It was called the widow maker.
Simon, I am a little surprised that you did not mention the Mackinac Bridge incident. On April 29, 1959, an Air Force captain flew his B-47 Stratojet UNDER the Mackinac Bridge in northern Michigan.
My friend and neighbor is a retired air force officer who was active from 1949 to 1975. During the Korean War he flew the RF-80, from 54 to 65 he flew the B-47 and the B-52, during the Vietnam War the Air Force needed more recon pilots, so he transitioned back to that mission, he ended his service in the RF-4 with 378 combat missions between the Korean War and Vietnam under his belt.
The one aircraft he absolutely despised was the B-47! One thing he has mentioned several times was the challenge of managing the fuel supply as it also determined weight distribution and balance of the aircraft .
My dad was the navigator/bomber on one of these! The safety issues was the key reason he left the air force as soon as his required time of duty was finished. He had a scary night landing experience where the landing gear got stuck and they had to land on one set of wheels with a nuclear bomb on board.
Pilot fatigue was also an issue. The SAC flights were very long and round the clock with available crews limited.
Not one mention of John Wayne in Jet Pilot? Thats my first memory of this bomber. I thought it was so cool as a kid that the pilot could crawl down for a cup of coffee then pop back up in the bubble canopy like a groundhog.
Glad you brought up the movie Jet Pilot...opinions??
@@barryflick54 oh man its been awhile. What id remember is probably mixed with 30 years of dreams and other media. The Duke is a local hero and favorite airport so id be biased😊
I don't think too many ppl have seen that one. To many jet noises in it too. Overused sound effect
I was stationed at Wheelus AFB, Tripoli, Libya from 1966-1967 and remember sometime in 1966 a B-47 landing. When it departed it was loud, it was beautiful, and trailed lots of black engine exhaust. Those were exciting times.
Possibly one of the first types to experience 'coffin corner' at peak altitude, where any loss of airspeed led to an instant stall, and any increase in airspeed led to compressibility buffetting.
A revolutionary aircraft like the B-47 "pushed the envelope" in many areas. Crews transitioning from propeller bombers to it required learning all new technologies, planning and skills of high-altitude, high-speed flight. Its nuclear strike mission probably required flying the B-47 close to its limits and required considerable pilot skills and knowledge with little room for error. The success of the B-52 was probably the result of B-47 flight testing and operations. The B-58 Hustler was another revolutionary bomber that had a similar accident record and for the same reasons. At Mach 2, things happen awfully fast and some of them very bad with bad results.
I remember watching a weather reconnaissance B-47 taking off from Clark AB, P.I. during the Vietnam war. It used lots of runway. It was a very beautiful aircraft. The movie, "Strategic Air Command," has some of the best B-47 (and B-36) footage anywhere. I love that movie.
I have a Revell' "fit the box scale" plastic kit of the Boeing B-47 Stratojet. The model was first issued about 1955 and was re-produced by Revell of Germany a few years back. Nice presentation of the "Granddaddy" of all large jet aircraft. Thanks for sharing!
i was born in '62. i never knew of the existence of the B-47 until in the '90s i saw a Jimmy Stewart movie starring this jet.
Only today did i learn of its true significance. Thank you very much Mr. Whistler and Co. 🖖
In 1966 my dad got stationed to Davis Monthan AFB where the aircraft storage facility was located, a.k.a. The Bone Yard. I was 9 years old at the time and quite enamored by airplanes (and still am). At that time there was a sea of B-47s as shown in a couple of scenes in Simon’s video. It was amazing to see the whole fleet, now retired, in one place. All have since been recycled into many other items maybe even beer cans!
I was at D-M in 1969 and there were still plenty of B-47s in the boneyard.
Are there any B47s left in D-M ?
Much as I enjoy seeing American technology in the spotlight, I would love to see videos on two beasts from the "other side" of the Cold War; namely the Kiev-class carrier and the Kirov-class battlecruiser. Kiev was half carrier, half battleship, beastly enough to operate alone, and designed to support the fleet submarines. Kirov actually scared America into reactivating the Iowa-class battleships, and still serve to this day. No denying these monsters their proper respect.
I'm with guy!
Never, never underestimate the Russians!!
I'd like that too!
@@soulsphere9242 As true as that may be, Kuznetsov should at least get out of repair drydock and actually complete a trial run before getting a video. 😁
People love to shit on US technology, so I like these videos
If you want to see one up close, the Mighty 8th Air Force Museum in Georgia has one on static display. If you're ever in Pooler GA on I-95, it's right next to the interstate on the East side.
We have a B-47 at the March Field Air Museum in Riverside, California. Colonel Hal Austin, who sat on the board of our museum for many years, flew a daylight spy mission in a B-47 over the USSR in 1954. Before taking off, he checked with the wing intelligence officer. "Are there any MiG-17's where we're going?" he asked. (The MiG-17 was brand new at the time.) He was assured that there were no MiG-17"s in the area, only MiG-15's which couldn't fly high enough or fast enough to intercept a B-47. "I knew we were in trouble when I looked over my shoulder and there was a MiG-17 flying off our wing," he told me. The B-47 was damaged by cannon fire but Colonel Hal and his crew escaped from Soviet airspace, tanked and made it back to their base in the UK. The mission was classified "top secret" for more than 40 years.
B-47's were notoriously hard to fly at high altitude, with a razor thin margin between stall speed and Vmax. Great video Simon.
Vmax is best rate of climb right?
@@bradenwoods1111 Its the maximum speed i believe
Vmax is the maximum airspeed the aircraft can attain before structural damage occurs. With the high altitude conditions having relatively low air pressure. You had to fly very fast to maintain the correct amount of lift for that altitude. Like the op said, razor thin indeed.
@@bradenwoods1111 Velocity Max, top speed
5 KIAS over max speed the wings would fold! 5 KIAS under max speed and it would stall!!
Yes so excited you covered this bomber! When I used to work at the Strategic Air Command Museum this was my favorite plane to go inside of and remember a conversation with a vet who flew one saying coming in for a landing felt like driving over the worst dirt road while your cars rattling apart.
That will keep you focused every time I bet...
Was the aircraft buffeting into a stall, or why would it have been shaking so much? 🤔
Landing approaches should be silky smooth in calm conditions.
@@daviddunsmore103 The B-47 was one of the first military jets installed with a parachute in the back to assist with landing and on many of the shorter runways the speeds they'd be coming in at required a steep drop which would buffet the bomber. These bombers also were some of the first to use a retractable bicycle style landing gear which was a big departure for many of the pilots used to flying the bigger B-36.
I have read a lot of things good and bad about my BABIES B47s but nobody says anything about something dragging behind every later B47e in the fleet prior to landing. It is called a BRAKE CHUTE. I definitely know what it is used for. And so does my BACK after 4 years of changing them 3 or 4 times or more per night. 75 lbs with only a 6 ft ladders. ?
If I remember correctly size was 20ft or more per chute.
@@bryangonzalez1398 Right on BRAKE CHUTE.
OHmy Back haha
Can you imagine what the designers of the B 47 thought when they heard that they were going to be used to climb rapidly, toss a bomb and then loop over the top of that climb and roll back to level flight with the military evidently not thinking about the huge stress that such a maneuver would put on the wings of the bomber especially the wings. This is a maneuver reserved for fighter planes that are designed for high g loads and incredible wing loading events. I can just see them looking at each other and saying ........they're going to do what with the plane.......are they insane. These planes were never designed to be put under this kind of stress or g loading of the wings and it resulted in high rates of stress fractures in the wings and fuselage of the aircraft and many wing failures which caused a lot of the losses.
Still, with all of its faults, The B-47 Stratojet was a gorgeous swept-wing jet.
I entered the U.S.A.F. in 1959 and was assigned To the 305th Bomb Wing on the B47 aircraft. We never lost an aircraft while assigned to this bomb wing. Being on flight status was a kick for a new airman such as I was. What an experience for a small town person.
My dad test flew the B-47 for Boeing in Witchita and then went on to master it for the 509th SAC and loved flying it for the challenge. He won an award for the most perfect flight missions flown in the Eighth AIrforce for Heads-Up in the 1960's. I used go out to the flight lines and watch him take off and land. It was an incredible experience The ground shuck and we had to use earplugs, so sleek and graceful yet powerful. Those totem poles outside the bases reflected the loss of aircraft or crew.
My great-uncle flew these for SAC for a few years. I never got to talk to him about it, he passed away earlier this year. A good book on the Cold War and the SAC B-47 and B-52 operations is Jet Age Man by Earl McGill.
A very familiar airframe for me. I grew up near Plattsburgh AFB. There has been a B-47 there on display for as long as I can remember. Every Christmas, they put a giant Santa on it. When I was little, we HAD to drive by it when we were in town.
I had lots of experience in the B-47 as a nav/bombardier and still have my 1000 hour pin to prove it. I've also had a ride in a Vulcan which couldn't be beaten for comfort. However, I wouldn't trade the MA-7A bombing radar for it. A couple of incidents but nothing outstanding in my rides but was close enough to know of at least 2 that I wouldn't have been on at the time. The bird was demanding but our 3 man crew was really tight and we worked well together on those long 12 hour flights when SAC was in it's heyday. Almost got a chance to redesign Cuba but thankfully sanity prevailed. I still have an inflight photo hanging over my desk. Love it!
I grew-up an Air Force brat. While my Dad was stationed at Randolph A.F.B., outside of San Antonio, Texas, one day I saw a B-47 flying over the base at a low altitude with the drag chute deployed in mid air! The pilot landed it okay; but while he was still in the air, I jumped on my bike with a bunch of buddies and we pedaled to base operations as fast as we could. We arrived as the aircraft was taxing up to the building. The aircraft was separated from the base ops building by five or six Air Police pick-up trucks. All had at least one sky cop in the back with a rifle. That's when even us dumb kids figured out that the aircraft had "war loads" on it! The B-47 was one of the best looking airplanes I ever saw. Later in my Navy career, I crewed Navy Super Constellations. Without the radar domes, they were also some of the best looking aircraft in the world!
I had a family friend who flew B-47s. The plane remains a thing of beauty, although regarding it as such requires one to take into account the purpose for which it was designed. The airframe could handle the Immelmann manœuvre needed for "toss-bombing" perfectly well, but it required great pilot skill to maintain control at the top of the half-loop, and then to execute the half-roll at high altitude as airspeed fell precipitously and the engines strained at a not-insignificant risk of compressor stall.
It was a challenging flight profile for such a large aeroplane - almost the size of a 727 - designed for blazing straightline speed at high altitude.
she's a beauty alright.
I lived and worked at my university's airport. The airport manager /chief pilot / check pilot was former B-47. So he was my boss, my landlord, and gave me my PPL check ride. He was a grouchy, unreasonable, mean-spirited SOB. Master of the gruff 3 word answer. But when the talk involved the B-47 he was like a poet describing young love. Said she was a good girl if you understood what she needed. He retired when they retired the 47. He's probably gone now and I don't think he liked me but I admired him and still do. Prick.
P.S. He said a lot of the crew losses were due to the fact that the Bomb/Nav ejected downward. Crews stayed with the plane too often when they should have punched out in pattern incidents because there is always a chance of success but ejecting was an automatic death sentence for the Nav.
Well done Simon. As always, you've excelled yourself with outstanding content and production. Thank you.
Thank you. Credit to the writer and editor really though :).
You could go with the engines embedded within the wing roots such as the Comet and V-Bombers (Valiant, Vulcan and Victor). Or you can have the engines in podded nacelles such as the B-47 and B-52. The latter have been far more influential.
You are so right, but the wing root engines will always look futuristic to my eyes!
Combine the two and you get the B1/Tu-160!
Tu-16 and derivatives use wing root engines
VC 10 says 'Hold my Pimm's' : )
@@winterwatson6811 : I recall them having some aerodynamic advantages too, but the engineering logistics (including the question of how you get to them for maintenance) are stacked against them.
Ahhh a Tybee bomb reference, growing up on Tybee I heard about this since I was a child, however some of the other parts of the story could make its own video. There was the story of two young men that got caught in a fog bank off the coast of Tybee. They got picked up and sent on the right directions by a sub. The guys thought the sailors on the sub had an odd accent and then after being shown pictures of different subs by the coast guard, it turned out the sub was Russian. Thanks again guys and I cannot wait to see the next vid
The B47 was the largest plane to ever fly underneath a bridge! Captain Lapco took one under the Mackinaw bridge.Go USAF!
Yeah, and I think that he got grounded for that stunt! 😱
Ass! Why risk life, and potential loss of massive tax dollars.
I love that you mentioned the Tybee bomb... I'm from the area and very few people are ever aware of what's laying around, somewhere. Every time I kayak in the area, it's always in the back of my mind in a whimsical weird way...
I'm surprised that he didn't mention the B-47 that vanished without a trace over the Mediterranean Sea with several live nuclear bombs on board. It was part of a formation of similar planes from the same squadron that had descended through a cloud layer to meet up with a tanker for refueling, but this one aircraft simply wasn't seen to emerge from the cloud layer, and without any distress call. The crew and their bombs are completely missing to this day, with no evidence as to what happened to them.
Gen Lemay, SAC CC, in order to get to Russia, forced us to fly it at the limits, with 87k # a/c weighing 210k# for takeoff, using 10,500' of 12500' runway. We only had six 6000# thrust engines plus water augmentation for 1min for 42k # thrust to lift a 100 ton a/c with a thin wing not generating takeoff lift until about 180 mph. So, lose one engine on takeoff and it crashed. Once in the air I breathed a sigh of relief. One time taking off for Spain on a hot August night, we used the whole 12,500 runway when water augmentation (makes for denser air) ran out and we just barely got airborne. Took several miles nursing the flaps up to get any altitude.
2:35 - Chapter 1 - Development
3:20 - Chapter 2 - Boeing's model 450 design
4:55 - Chapter 3 - Testing
6:25 - Chapter 4 - The B47
9:10 - Chapter 5 - Operations
12:50 - Chapter 6 - Reconnaissance role
13:50 - Chapter 7 - The incidents
16:10 - Chapter 8 - A long legacy
14:22 WTF is that ;)
I am an 88 year old U.S. Airforce veteran, and I am one of the guys who kept these monsters flying. I can tell you this: All us guys who worked on them and flew them already knew most of the flaws you pointed out, but kept them flying anyway. A lot of guys that flew them are dead and can’t tell the full story. Those born later can't identify with the desperation that boiled in the minds of the pilots and ground crews that threw these imperfect beasts into the face of the threatening USSR and laughed at their weak response. Those who lived that nightmare understood that America and the USSR were on the naked edge of nuclear holocaust, and the utter loss of American freedom. It can be said that the Boeing B-47 Stratojet was America’s first guided missile-the pilot being the guide. It was beside the point that these frazzled buzzards were dangerous; we didn’t matter that they were built in a hurry in a war of one-upmanship; all we knew was that we HAD to beat the Russians. To fall to second place would have turned the Earth on its civilized head! I’ll tell you one more thing: All of these guys that worked on the B-47 will emphatically tell you the so-called Cold War was anything but cold. While America was carrying on their daily business, these inferred “rattletraps” were flying over the heads of citizens of America and the free world, keeping the peace. That, is the real story behind the B-47. The following is a story few ever hear about these war birds: When they would land after a mission, there would be a line of them coming down the taxi-way, one behind the other, spaced far enough apart to dodge the rocks from the ones in front. Those six J-47 engines wanted to drag that Pterodactyl faster than it wanted to go, so the pilot had to ride the brakes to curb its enthusiasm. But the brake linings squealed like a prehistoric monster, so there would be this line of them, their necks craned into the air, all squealing their displeasure. What a sight! The pilots drove them into their particular parking bays as near as possible, but some of them had to be towed into place. The bombay doors were then opened and safety pinned in place. Hanging from the ceiling would be this atomic egg, straight from the stratosphere, still covered with frost. I ran my hands over these packages of American freedom and hoped they would never hatch.
It's now at Edwards, but at Chanute we had the #2 B-47, which I saw so many times as a Rantoul brat and a supporter of the museum.. The first prototype was scrapped, but good old 46-66 was a jewel in the museum collection.
I don't know if I counts as a Megaproject but I would love to hear Simon talk about the RAH-66 Comanche. That things just cool.
Dunno if you count as that. We should talk to your parents/spouse for that...
Given how much money was spent on it only for it to be canceled? That would be a megaproject video.
Cool, I can do that.
The Ka-50 or 52 would be badass
@@Dank-gb6jn That also is an absolute war machine.
My father was a bombardier / navigator in B-47's from the early 50's thru '64. One of the first deployed....
He also participated in the nuke testing in the Pacific.
My favorite bomber but I' m biased. Thanks for the video!
You talk about how B-47s were set up to take of one every 15 seconds but evidently didn't hear about the base (McConnell AFB Wichita Kansas) with the super wide runway that allowed waves of six B-47s to take off simultaneously putting a lot of jets into the air very quickly. Wichita was a good base for the B-47s since one of the Boeing plants that churned out those B-47s sats on the west side of that runway.
I was just a little kid, but I remember cruising by the Duluth AFB in October, 1962, and seeing a flock of B-47s on the tarmac, surrounded by armed sentries, loaded for Russian bear-waiting the word from JFK. One of my most vivid memories from childhood. I thought it was cool as heck. No idea as a kid what a close thing it was.
Thats a crazy story. Thx for sharing
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, SAC implemented their dispersal program. Detachments of B-47's were deployed to a number of civilian airports and non-SAC air force bases.
In the Greenhouse tests, one B-47 was used on each of the Dog, Easy, and George tests, as part of Project 8.1. Only the boosted fission test, coded as Item, didn't include what were marked in the other tests as B-47 aircraft in Operation Greenhouse documents.
All the B-47 aircraft were radio callsigned as Elaine.
Project 8.1 was instrumented airframe tests of blast effects on B-47s approaching the detonations.
Excellent video! It's amazing how quickly America and Russia developed swept-wing fighters such as the North American F-86 Sabre and Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-15, both in 1947, yet while the US had a swept-wing bomber in the Boeing B-47 Stratojet by 1947, the Soviet Union didn't have one until 1952 with the Tupolev Tu-16.
Control reversal was a problem. the wings were so thin and slender that too much aileron would bend the wing, creating the opposite effect than what was expected.
I thought that this was why the B-47 had differential spoiler activation for roll control, known as "spoilerons", instead of conventional ailerons. 🤔
I regularly vacation on Tybee Island and one of the restaurants on the back river have the story of the B-47 incident where the nuclear bomb was lost off the coast. Also the 8th Air Force Museum in Pooler, GA right near the Savannah Airport has a full B-47 on display outside. My dad was on a B-52 base in Albany (Turner AFB) during the Cuban Missile Crisis. After Kennedy's speech all the B-52s left and were replaced by B-47s for short range strikes on Cuba if it came to it.
From what I've been able to learn through study the B47 "Stratojet" was a huge technological leap when it was first designed and put into production but much like an army equivalent the M60 Machinegun with age issues started popping up here & there. It's maintenance costs & quite a number of accidents outweighed any of the benefits keeping it in service provided plus technology had advanced significantly towards the end of it's service life it was an amazing aircraft for it's time and should be remembered as such 🙂
Very interesting analysis of this aircraft. I finished-up my USAF hitch with F-111s at Plattsburg, NY, where a B-47 sat outside the main gate for decades and may still do so. Never knew much about it, but as stated in this video the three years between the end of WWII and its B-17s and B-29s is absolutely astounding!!
The early jet age was full of staggeringly fast advancements in technology. Just as B-47 made the propeller bombers obsolete, the Soviet Tupolev 16 'Badger' that came just a few years later was of a similar size but with two engines instead of six and an even better aeridynamical shape. The Tu-16 remains in service today!
I blame SAC's for the losses because LeMay drove these guys to the brink of exhaustion. This plane demanded a lot from the pilot and he had to be proficient. After a scramble and god knows how many hours in the air and then land this rascal trouble could be just around the corner. She is a sexy plane if you ever get to see one its beautiful to behold.
An impressive aircraft, especially given when it was designed.
One note: only one nation other than the US operated the B-47.
The RCAF leased a B-47 to use as a test bed for the testing of the Orenda Iroquois jet engine being developed for the Avro Arrow interceptor.
It was only in Canada for a few years, and was never "operational" in the sense it was designed for. Just an interesting footnote.
I think that the sheer scale of the technological leap forward that this aircraft was is lost through the lens of history. It’s not that the pilots weren’t trained, it’s that humans didn’t know how to fly or even properly build those airplanes yet. It was completely groundbreaking and those types of advancements have consequences sadly.
I saw one of these in service during a Spring Board military exercise in the early 70s. I got to check out as it was parked near the aircraft I worked on.
Am I the only one who noticed at 14:19 in the video the photo of the airplane shows the inboard engine stations occupied by large turboprops? That would be one of two XB-47D Composite engine test beds to see if they could get more range by combining turboprops and turbojets. I think they only built two of them, so not much must’ve come out of it.
Are the wing surfaces covered with solar panels?
@@rpbajb NO
Pilot: "But sir, the last two that took off just went down in flames!" Get her up there!
Imagine being next in line to try for the first time the maneuver that just killed your fellows
Right? Its like "did he pitch too far the one way? ... Or the other way? Maybe it was the flaps... Too much? Little?" Ah shit time for takeoff."
It's so amazing that you can see the B-52's origins in the B-47 but you can't see the same between the B-17, B-29 and B-47. The B-47 looks almost like a precursor to the Vulcan.
Also, Vulcan need a Megaproject!
I've never had the slightest problem in seeing how the B-17 was the precursor to the B-29.
@@johnhobson9165 but not the then very current B-29 to the B-47, was the point. Even the B-36 was a quantum leap forward!
What I always found interesting was that the debut of the Avro Lancaster and the Avro Vulcan was only 12 years. That shows how fast things were evolving back then.
The British Vulcan had only 4 engines, but was a wonder for its time in Britain.
From Wichita Kansas where I believe most were built at Boeing Wichita. We have 2 on static display on the same airfield. One at the gate of McConnell Air force base that previously was on display off the side of a highway and anyone could walk up and crawl all over and unfortunately vandalize. On the other side of that airfield one is on static display at the Kansas Aviation Musuem next to the Boeing Wichita facility that made them. Also on same airfield is the older Cessna factory and the former Stearman Factory.
Growing up in Orlando, Florida during the 50s I remember B-47s from the local AFB. I forget the name but it is now the airport for the region. There was a horrific crash that deeply affected the airmen and their families living in the community. It wasn’t long afterwards that the B-47s were retired and replaced by B-52s.
McCoy AFB . Even today it's designator is MCO.
I grew up near Homestead Air Force Base. It was a B-52 Base, when, for one year, they flew all the B-52s away to be upgraded- they were replaced by B-47s for that year.
I’ve read that in a sudden, steep climb, the wings would break off. One fictional novel, “Wild Blue Yonder,” I believe, described it as if the plane were putting its hands together in prayer. One can certainly see the B-47 heritage in the B-52, which became probably the most successful military plane ever.
my highschool jrotc instructor practiced those rapid take-off drills in the early 70s, he said that by time the 2nd or 3rd aircraft took off there was an incredibly dangerous amount of turbulence on the runway.
Time for that Lancaster megaprojects video. It has all the things you want - A plane, a war and a lot of them!
The bomb toss you're referring too was called the Immelmann turn or Immelmann Maneuver, named after WWI German fighter ace Max Immelmann. Essentially the plane would go into a steep climb and release the bomb, just before the plane went upside down into a loop, going the opposite direction. Once upside down, the plane would then roll back into normal flight. While such a maneuver would be easy enough for a small fighter jet, it was disastrous on the air frames of the B-47s.
Uh no, the bomb toss is not the Immelmann Loop
Immelmann did it in canvas and wood biplanes, but as another comment said, I don’t think that is an Immelmann turn exactly
Ha just started watching and was scrolling the comments wondering if he’ll mention the half loop.
American pilots called it the idiot loop
The Air Force referred to the bomb toss as a LABS maneuver, for Low Altitude Bombing System. Yes, it was composed of an Immelmann turn, a common aerobatic maneuver, but it wasn’t referred to as such.
Pilot of the Enola Gay, Paul Tibbets, worked on the B-47 development program. I recall a story he told about one of the B-47 test pilots who took him on a test flight. Crazy pilot named Tex Johnston took Brig. Gen Tibbets 50-60 miles from the higher-ups at the base in Wichita just so he could barrel or aileron roll the plane and show off a “6 engined fighter.”
Tex was the same pilot who twice rolled the prototype 707 over Seattle’s Lake Washington in 1955.
orcstr8d, the video footage of that barrel roll is spectacular!
5:55 that got Gorey… very quickly. R.I.P.
The sling bombing maneuver added to the failure of the B-47.
BG-47s were exploding in midair when not performing sling bombing practice. The cabin layout made escape from the now burning ball of fire breaking up in the sky impossible so there were no survivors to give first hand accounts of what went wrong. The Air Force covered up most of these losses if for no other reason than to keep the Soviets knowing how bad the problem really was.
The sling bomb maneuver put such strain on the craft that micro cracks formed and would fail catastrophically later under normal fight years later. This ruptured the fuel tanks so there was the loss of thrust, control and subsequent fire. They tried to bolster the strength of the wings but that did not work so the entire remaining fleet had to be withdrawn from front line service.
I would like to see a video on the British V-Bombers if possible! Great video as always
Great video Simon! I love the early Cold War era! Could you please do a video on the Convair B-36 “Peacemaker”?
You wouldn't want to describe the Dutch-Roll as also causing the "wings to pitch" as that implies oscillation in the lateral i.e. pitch axis or up and down, the wing movement is in the longitudinal i.e. roll axis. Actually it's a dynamic coupling like the largest, slowest form of flutter but involving the entire airframe.
Finally you covered it!!!!
My grandfather worked on building the prototypes!
I forget who said it,, but: "When you push the Edge of Technology, sometimes Technology Pushes Back!"
It's a shame there isn't film of the B-47 with the sharp angled RATO take-off which was close to same angle as a Vulcan taking off. As kids we used to stand and watch them take off at a shallower angle (from the then USAF Brize Norton) some years later when the farmers to the West of the airfield complained to the base commander about the drop in production due to animal stress, the B-47s changed their take-off angle to near vertical until the RATO ran out so the aircraft then flattened out. It was exhilarating and scary at the same time. It was also so loud you couldn't breathe.for a few moments.
A shout out to Moses Lake!! Just over the hill or two from me. I get fly byes occasionally from the pilots from the Air Force base their. Was their last week to watch my nephew play a Jr high football game. 👍👍👍
My late grandfather worked on these during the Korean war, I always loved hearing him tell stories about working on these, including the time he accidentally dropped his flashlight into the fuel tank!
Chuck Yeager ( yes the guy that flew the plane that broke the sound barrier). Even test flew the B47 ( at that time XB47). Supposedly struggled to land it with it being so clean aerodynamically that he literally had to muscle it on to the ground.
I love these videos. As a pilot I find them even more fascinating. Thank you.
20 June 1986 was the last flight of a B-47. The flight originated at China Lake in Southern California and terminated at Castle AFB, Atwater, California. It was a day VFR flight. The Aircraft Commander was an O-7 who had B-47 and B-52 experience. The Copilot was an O-6 FB-111 Driver. En-route, the B-47 suffered an airspeed indicator loss. A Tactical Air Command T-33 (co-located at Castle AFB) launched and joined up with the bomber and offered airspeed calls. The T-33 provided these calls on final until about 400 feet. The T-33 pulled away and the B-47 was on its own for the landing. The B-47 got slow on short final and into the flare. The B-47 suffered a pod scrape on an outboard engine during the full stop landing. We heard later that SAC HQ was pretty upset with the pilots about this incident. The B-47 now sits proudly at the Castle Air museum at Atwater California. On that same day, I took my initial qualification Checkride in the KC-135A with a Q-1! I missed the B-47 landing but we parked right next to it when the checkride was complete. Interesting day to say the least!
That plane was only marginally airworthy. They didn't, or couldn't, retract it's gear on that last flight, and it had other mechanical issues besides losing the airspeed indicator.
YAY!!!! New #factboy to enjoy during lunch. Impeccable timing, as always, Simon.
More brain blaze, fact boi. I need the tangents.
...alledgedly
Must. Flog. Danny. HARDER.
More into the shadows!
We don’t get enough of Simon as is..... lmao
Nah Mondays are definitely a mega projects type of day.
@@jacobmarkham2162 and casual criminalist we need much more!
My grandfather was a pilot in the Air Force and he went from C47s to RB47s. They both have 47 in the name but completely different aircraft.
The location of the engines under the wings is a natural solution to the needs of the design to locate the plane of thrust with the center of drag of the aircraft and at the same time make them accessible for maintenance. Also, turbine engines when they failed tended to fail catastrophically. Having them outside the airframe had many advantages. Lots of designs arrived at the same solution.
WAIT!!! You’re not even going to comment on the B-47 shown at 14:20??? The picture shows a re-engined B-47 with the inner, paired jet engines (4) replaced with some sort of bizarre turbo-props (2)? I don’t claim to be an “expert” on the subject of the B-47, but I’ve never seen this picture before, and never knew about any program that tested turbo-props on an American bomber… Surely it wouldn’t help a B-47s maximum speed or altitude, so I guess increased range would be the benefit? Possibly better take off or landing performance?? Does anyone have any information or sources on this weird creation, or results of the tests? Oh, yeah- great video as usual, thanks!
XB-47D, testing the Wright YT-49. The performance wasn't really affected, and the reversing props cut landing roll, but wasn't pursued beyond 2 prototypes because of engine development issues creating delays, and by then, the BUFF was in service and work was going on with the B-58 design.
like the b-52, they used b-47's for engine development since there really wasn't anything else with plenty of extra jet engines to spare at the time
There are also photos around of the B-47 temporarily loaned to the Royal Canadian Air Force in order to test a large afterburner equipped engine called the Orenda Iroquois which was intended to take the Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow to speeds in excess of Mach 2. That huge engine was mounted in a pod on the left side of the B-47's rear fuselage below the stabilizer. The whole rear fuselage had to be reengineered and strengthened to take the weight and thrust of that monster engine. Google should be able to find you a photo of it. 😉
Whats that at 14:22? Its got props. I think the ME 262 looks more of a ringer for modern airliners than the B47.
Convair B-36 "Peacemaker" was also an impressive aircraft: Six Turning Four Burning !
My father flew as a navigator with a test squadron in this aircraft. One program he told me about was launching rocket propelled ICBM RV test shapes while in a steep climb over the Sulton Sea in SoCal. Great short history.
Just to keep things in perspective, the hull loss rate of the Boeing 707 - a commercial airliner - was twice that of the B-47, with far more casualties.
When a 707 went in, there were usually a lot more than three people on board.
Okay boomer... Simmer down..
wings longer than the fuselage is not unusual - other than a few modern jet fighters, almost every type has longer wingspan than fuselage length.
Yeah, not too much research on that one.
@@fredkruse9444 Please remember that this was almost an all Theoretical Design, where you had some research and very little actual experience to base your design on! "Sometimes when you post the Edge Of Technology, Technology Pushes Back!" (Forget who said that....)
@@timengineman2nd714 Maybe I wasn't clear: I was referring to the research supporting Simon's incorrect statement about wingspan, not actual B47 research. (And to also be clear, I like Simon's videos.)
cool to see this. I used to do work that gave me a chance to see the inside of a WB-47 which is part of the legacy of this plane. (hint hint video about the WB-47 long wing...)
The B-45 Tornado was actually USA's first operational jet bomber, edged out the B-47. It was introduced in April 1948 versus B-47 in June 1951.
A B-45 actually dropped the Operation Buster-Jangle Easy test bomb at the Nevada bombing range in November of 1951. It was also riddled with failures.
The dangerous yaw-roll coupling of the tail of aircraft with main wing above fuselage center of gravity is commonly corrected with anhedral (angled-down) wings, such as the Harrier jet.
In some cases it's corrected with polyhedral wings, that lower angle at inner main wings, and elevated in the outer wings (like F4 Phantom and WWII F4U Corsair). A more exotic variant is the inner rise of wings, with lowered angle outer wings.
B-45 is pretty small for a bomber, only 11 feet longer than an F-105 and shorter than the Mig 25. If anything it's more of a large strike fighter akin to what the F-15E developed into.
@@Fadaar It was a staged (smaller to larger) concept test before more powerful jet engines were developed to power much larger planes.
Also, small bombers are excellent reconnaissance planes for added range with more fuel capacity, without heavy bomb payloads on board.
B-36s were central in air command platforms during Pacific nuclear tests, because of their long range and flying time, until replaced by B52s for Operation Redwing in 1957.
Consider that the B-36 behemoth had pusher prop engines before jet assist engines were later added to aid in takeoff power.
Ah the good old days of the military brothers of MAC, SAC, and TAC.
You didn’t mention the B-47s role as a SCDV (Santa Clays Delivery Vehicle). One stood on static display beside the main gate into Plattsburgh Air Force Base. Right after Thanksgiving they’d straddle it with a giant Santa. Ho! Ho! Ho! Duck and cover.
My dad was a pilot and said the B-47 is the first military program that delivered far more than anyone could have dreamed of,(much less actually hoped to achieve) and a host of problems that would take years to truly understand. BUT the bad asses of SAC made it work somehow
Mad props
As a Crew Chief on many of these birds from 61 to 65 at Mountain Home AFB Idaho. You forgot the worst problem the resetting the brakes after engine start. As they were hydraulic and had to be reset or you might find your bird in a field somewhere. Check to make sure the CHOCKS are solid and reset. Oh by the way forgot about the Barbecue behind the tailpipes on all engine starts.
My grandpa Maj. Paul Richard Ecelbarger flew bombers in WW2, and was killed in a RATO malfunction at Lincoln AFB back in the 50's.
I think the jet is as good looking as a bomber can be. and I know that my grandpa loved to fly these military aircraft, as much as I love building them.
Building the F35 would have been quite interesting to him, but not as much as the B2!
Fun fact: George Carlin enlisted in the Air Force to avoid the risk of being drafted into the Army, and he ended up serving as a B-47 navigator-bombardier.
I've never heard that one before about George Carlin. According to Wikipedia, George Carlin did indeed enlist in the Air Force. He "trained as a radar technician. He was stationed at Barksdale AFB in Bossier City, Louisiana and began working as a disc jockey at the radio station KJOE in nearby Shreveport. Labeled an "unproductive airman" by his superiors, he received a general discharge on July 29, 1957. During his time in the Air Force, he had been court-martialed three times and received many nonjudicial punishments and reprimands." If this is indeed true about George Carlin's time in the USAF, I don't think you'd want him as a "navigator-bombardier" in a nuclear bomb carrying, Strategic Air Command, Boeing B-47 bomber.
@@WAL_DC-6B Yeah, while he did train as one, he did not stay as one for very long. His disciplinary record often had him grounded from flights until he was finally permanently pulled. In many ways, his behavior spared him from many of the dangers that came with being in a B-47.
It was also during his time in Louisiana that much of what would become his views and attitude about racism was cemented. One of the most formative moments was when he and two other airmen were arrested by a Louisiana sheriff and held in jail. What happened? They were driving through that sheriff's county, but the airman who was driving at the moment of the stop and arrest was black. This was one of the very few times when the Air Force actually had Carlin's back despite his record, as they forced the sheriff to release him and the other airmen.
I witnessed an RB-47 doing approaches at McClellan AFB in 1968.
I watched them at Ramey AFB
Drogue chutes on final to keep engines at go around power. 52's were fun to watch crabbing in on final.
Do one on the KC-135. Almost just as old but still flown at incredibly high rates considering the age.
To the best of my knowledge the last USAF Unit to fly the B47, specifically WB 47 E, on regular missions was the Ninth Weather wing, 55th Weather Recon Squadron at McClellan AFB in Sacramento Ca. until late1969.
The last B-47 to fly, landed at Castle Air Force. I don’t know where the flight originated from. I believe it was in the early 70s that it almost crashed at Castle Air Force Base while landing, being part of Castle Air Force Air Museum. Heck of a great pilot. That’s Castle Air Force Base at Atwater, California, where my Dad was a mechanic on the engines of the B-52’s. He’s still alive at 94. He received many good citations for keeping The B-52’s flying.
@@ronaldmewkalo7605 I guess if I had a J57, or TF33 that needed work, he would be THE MAN.
@@ronaldmewkalo7605 The last B-47 flight was out of China Lake NWC to Castle AFB in 1986.
Can you please do a video on the W.A.C. Bennett dam in B.C. Canada? It was definitely a Mega Project in its day and has some interesting history!
The B47 was groundbreaking and certainly a challenge to fly. But the high number of losses really lies at the feet of the USAF. To quote the US Airforce Magazine: “The majority of accidents occurred with crews where the aircraft commander was a reserve officer with relatively high total flying hours, but only a small amount of time in the B-47…”. Assigning inadequately trained officers to a challenging aircraft would be unconscionable today. Things were different in the 1950s and to force modern normalcy on that time is….counter intuitive.
The only thought that went through my head when he mentioned 1/3 alerts and MITs was how much the maintenance crews would've been working. That would have sucked