The Martin XB-48; Neither Simple nor Innovative Enough
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- Опубликовано: 15 окт 2024
- After the Second World War, Martin aimed to maintain their position as one of the USA's foremost bomber builders. But their offering, the XB-48, just didn't cut it.
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You forgot to mention the xb48 's most innovative feature , the martin patented rotating bombbay wich then also was applied to the xb51 and licensed to blackburn for use in the buccaneer some 10 years later
I always assumed that was a Blackburn innovation! Thanks for setting me straight.
Also used on the licence built B57
Oh XB-51: You were too beautiful for this world.
XB-51 was well ahead of its time….very innovative. You can see it in action in the movie “Towards the Unknown”
Waiting for Roden or some other Ukrainian model kit mfg. to make a model kit of the XB-51, XB-46, and the Xb-48….
The B-47’s engine placement was NOT standard at the time but very innovative.
Convair’s XB-46 is absolutely drop dead gorgeous 😍😍.
If only they’d stuck swept wings on it.
I suspect that the engine arrangement on the XB-46 ruled out swept wings. Not only because you'd need a very different interface between the wings and the big pods on each side, but also because it would have shifted the plane's center of gravity well aft.
Yes, the B-47 was much more innovative than this uncompetitive design, and the engine pods on pylons were the biggest part of it. I can't understand what Martin was thinking with their engine installation, which probably slowed the airplane so much that it didn't even need swept wings.
Engine placement in the wing was the “standard” though everything with jet aircraft was so new that the books were being rewritten with each new model. Take for instance the Gloster Meteor, Canberra, and even the XB-46 all had the engine in the wing or very closely blended into the wing.
The other point about swept wing versus straight wing, I think that access to the German data and example aircraft was initially controlled by the government. So it’s quite likely that Martin may not have known about swept wings.
@@chrismaxfield9123to your last point. The Boeing proposal originally had straight wings, and in 1945 when Boeing received the German swept wing research they chose to sweep the wings. Martin also had access to this research, which is evidenced by the Martin XB-51 which was designed in 1945 at the same time that Boeing was redesigning what would become the B-47. I think Martin was just too committed to the straight wing because of the engine layout. Plus it probably was not seen as super crucial for a bomber to have swept wings.
I knew an old gentleman who worked for Martin before becoming an Eastern Airlines pilot. He said one day the old man came through an office and fired everyone standing with a cup of coffee. You could have your caffeine fix but it had damn well better be while you’re still actively working. He and the company accomplished amazing things but there is no telling the talent he ran off at the same time.
Martin's P6M Sea Master was the company's crowning achievement.
Crowning disaster you mean? They produced on bummers in the jet age.
It looked like something out of the thunderbirds 8).
To bad we couldn't save these pioneering jet bombers in a museum. Hope to see more of this kind of content. Another beautiful jet at that time was the Curtiss - Wright XF-87 Blackhawk
The Martin B-51 was seemingly advanced by lost out to the EE Canberra which looked more conventional. At least Martin got the production contract for the Licence build. Their innovations on that were brilliant, the fighter style tandem cockpit and the rotary bomb bay.
It's a handsome beast! Reminds of something from the mind of Gerry Anderson, with that triple engine pod design.
As somebody that grew up in Maryland I can tell you with definitive clarity that when you say "we sent that to Aberdeen" that means it got blown the blankety blank up.
Aberdeen Proving Grounds
Another little nugget is that the XB-51 at 9:09 was never ordered for production. But the English Electric Canberra was. is there a video in this story Ed?
Well, I covered one of the variants:
ruclips.net/video/r0IYxrl1D3c/видео.html
Good one, Ed. I've always been intrigued by these early jets. Most of the failures came down to a conservative design philosophy and underpowered engines (which everyone suffered from back then). I'm assuming you'll get around to covering the XB-51 at some point.
Video Topic idea!
I just watched a poorly made 2 minute video about "Saunder-Roe SR.53" and I am not exactly sure what kind of information is out there on the topic but I think it would make a great video.
Cheers!
Clint
A great very interesting video as always about a plane I knew nothing about.Have a good one Mr.Nash.
Martin sure was in the thick of it in the early days of aviation. It might have been easier to list all the aerial luminaries he did not have some influence over? Quite the man.
Thank you for another lesson on early aviation history. I always find your videos to be very informative.
The tandem gear B-26 was known as the "Middle River (location of Martin's plant) Stump Jumper
As for straight wings being obsolete, you need to tell English Electric and its Canberra
ah, well, yes, however the broad chord Canberra wing had several advantages to the more traditional narrow chord large span wings.
THANKS ED.....
Shoe🇺🇸
One generation later ...........
And most folk watching this video were probably looking at that Wing & Engine layout very sceptically *before* Ed confimed how it all went horribly wrong for Martin.
Perfect headline describing the B-48 good job Ed
Great video, Ed...👍
I agree, the B-47's engine layout was unique
Interesting picture of Wm Boeing holding a "Canada P.O." mail bag
Interesting planes can be spotted in the background in some pictures...
Also the IL-28 has a straight wing and that can reach 560 mph.
Dear Ed,
Please make a video on the XB-53. I think this would be a great followup.
Glenn Martin sold the first TWELVE to the USN. When pilots in the USN were required to have/be issued pilots licenses, Martin was issued USN license number #1. The Wright brothers (who were NOT beloved by the USN, favoring the Army), are actually license numbers 11-12.
Nice history lesson, Ed! I remember seeing this plane in an old plane catalog when I was a kid. Excellent description! Some fascinating designs were created during that time frame.
Interesting video! I knew of the XB48 but not many details. Thank you!
It's interesting to see all the post ww2 experiments. I think the old Martin factory is still standing in Baltimore. Last I I heard it was a drone and go cart track. My favorite is still the marauder. Thanks for the video.
Life is wonderful in hindsight and Boeing had the bravado to endorse German swept wing knowledge . But perhaps Martin with their huge previous record simply got too big for their boots ! .......Fascinating .... Thanks once again Ed.
Please do a video on any FW 190!
I’m sure there’s plenty of strange prototypes to look at :)
Very nice video but I hope you will do videos on both the Martin Maryland and Baltimore as they seem to have been forgotten an vanished from history but were both vital to the Royal Air Force thank you
Both are firmly on the list, never fear 😁
Thank you for that
The problem for the XB-48: it looked uninnovative compared to the revolutionary XB-47, which had a top speed of over 600 mph! When the B-47 first flew, the 600 mph was faster than most jet fighters at the time.
There are certainly a few modern features on it, but that tail and that wing. And I really dislike the tandem landing gear.
Well Done Sir. Great history lesson.
Excellent.
Sort makes me wonder how a 6-engined Soviet Canberra would have turned out. Good analysis.
Point to note here is that Boeing were given access to the German data. The inference being that Martin wasn't.
Love your work, great video! Thanks!
It would be nice if you could do a video of the winner, the B-47. While it looked beautiful, apparently it was kind of a deathtrap to fly. I'm sure there's a story there worth telling.
Thanks for this 👍✈️
The XB-51 should have gone into production.
Um did you mean B-45 and not the B-25 at 3:34?
Indeed.
Ed Nash: Women want him, men want to be him.
Could you please do a video on the very weird Messerschmitt me 334 or the Messerschmitt m 34?
The B-47 Wetdream
The revolutionary XB-47 yielded the B-47, an amazing plane with perhaps the worst safety record, ever, for any bomber.
The Soviet T-22 might have been worse or maybe a close second in terms of safety.
Why were the Enola Gay and Boxcar built at the Martin plant, rather than the Boeing plant in Kansas? Is there connection between the Martin plant and the first two "atomic bombers", beyond coincidence?
TY 🙏🙏
The XB-48 is so very familiar, with the absence of a swept wing being the easiest and most obvious difference between it, and the B-47. Which itself was notable for failing at the left wing root, exploding and killing everyone on board.
I am guessing that due to over enthusiasm for conservative design or a lack of German data or testing time, they did not incorporate wing sweep as early as they might have.
The similarity is though, so extreme that Boeing & Martin might have been 2 variants from the same company. With one more matured and the other more experimental. With Martin likely having to adopt the engine lay out of the B-47 when in a swept back configuration, for finer balance and wing stress management?
I would like to know what features of the engine design made some so bad, with the "I can see the air stacking up in front of them" and all that. What was the problem, and how is it different from today?
You said it.
(tcalss) Air flow hit those triple engine pods like a brick wall, or a huge, permanent air brake. That is bad aerodynamically (i.e. drag).
By contrast, note how the engines on the B-47 (and its "younger bro", the B-52) are in small nacelles and spaced out, so that air flows not only into them, but also around and between them and the wing.
Apart from the air brake effect, reduced air flow also makes jet engines work harder and be less efficient, i.e. they work by compressing huge amounts of air - much like the portable compressor in any mechanical workshop - and then blasting that air through burning fuel.
On one level, it's remarkable that no one foresaw this problem at the design stage. However, this was literally one of the very first jet bombers to get airborne, so I guess that 1940s aero engineers, being used to piston-prop engines "pulling" themselves through the air, had yet to grasp the importance of minimising frontal area.
As such the engine configuration on the B-48 egregiously violates an aerodynamics principle that was virtually unknown at the time: the "area rule" (although some designers got it instinctually). That is, if we imagine "cutting" the whole aircraft into thin slices, from nose to tail ("cutting" left-right), including the whole width of the wings, each cross-section should vary as little as possible. ( By comparison, that's much easier in designing gliders because - apart from the reduced weight - they don't require the large air intakes of jet engines, which are innately draggy.) The area rule is why, from the late '50s, we started to see designs that compensated for the frontal area created by the wings, along with anything normally carried on the wings, such as engine nacelles, wingtip tanks, weapons pods etc. So designers started incorporating (e.g.) waist-y fuselages that curved inward around the wing roots, to reduce the cross-section facing into airflow.
@@TheGrant65 Nice! 👍
@@TheGrant65 That's a pretty good summary, however, if you follow that logic the way the designers of this plane did, it lead to trying to combine the engines into the wings, to reduce frontal area, and fewer square feet of surface for air to act upon. Why is it better to put a nacelle separate from a wing and have 2 surfaces + the surfaces of the pylon, than to at least attempt to tuck them into the wings somehow (possibly not with the "cooling air tubes" that this design has)?
While not a very clean example of "engines in wing", the SR-71 comes to mind. Though, I would call that more of a "the engine nacelles are sideways, and it's a lifting body, intended for full-time supersonic rules".
Hi Buck; in short, it's about lift. Those triple engine bays have the effect of creating rectangular bulges in the wings' front profile (crudely, somewhat like -□- ), which is bad for lift. Whereas, the big advantage of mounting engines in nacelles attached to under-wing pylons, is that it (i.) gives the wings a much straighter front profile overall (i.e. -.- ) and (ii.) allows much greater airflow _directly_ under the wing; both of these features mean extra lift. That is, only the pylons themselves, minimally, interrupt airflow directly under the wings.
As you alluded, another solution, often used on early British multi jet aircraft, is to build-in/blend the engine/s as much as possible with the wing
(i.e. -•-). That configuration obviously works far better than Martin's triple pods. (And, in fact Martin soon adopted the "British" config, when it got the license to build the EE Canberra, as the B-57.) As to whether built-in/blended is an inherently better/worse mounting than nacelle+pod, I can't say; I'm not an aeronautical engineer. Although I would note that virtually all of the larger jets now in the air have nacelle+pylon (not built-in/blended mountings).
Its like if a Toyota Corolla were a bomber
75 corolla?
A beige Toyota Corolla at that! 😂
@@ThreenaddiesRexMegistus brown interior
@@ThreenaddiesRexMegistus Vinyl seat covers?
More a Lancia Beta.
0:07 Ah yes! Who needs a 'chute when COOLer on your back...
3:32 Should state "B-45 Tornado", not "B-25 Tornado".
When did the J-31 ever put out 3,200 lbs. of thrust?
I'll guess this plane, while slower than the B47, was a lot easier and safer to fly. Allies usually went overboard on wing sweep angle and the kids flying them paid dearly for it.
Oh mate, when I go to heaven, I want your channel subscription tended to, but then it is heaven right? Some shows are just an endless blast. More and betterer information, and facts that not only aren't obvious, but only you Ed, even know of their existence. I have no idea how you do this, but we need more subscribers to stay on the case. Fear not mate, we'll figure it out. (bullshit)
One day, I'll have a Military matters marathon. Great fun. Just to refresh my memory.
Good Lord, that nacelle drag 🤯
Given the issues that popped up with the B-47, there's an argument to be made that the B-46's design was actually just right. But that's hindsight for you.
Where did they get the idea to start mounting engines under pylons?
7:38 "more conventional engine placement"? Conventional? Really? Ed, you're disappointing me. XB-47 was the second aircraft in the world to fly with the jet engines placed on the underwing pylons after the Soviet IL-22. This engine placement would become "conventional" like 20 years later!
Me: who did Martin merge with?
Also me: oh yeah
Martin didn't get the German data on swept wings like Boeing did. So they were put at a great disadvantage.
Please give speed in knots. Air navigation is done in nautical miles. 1 nautical mile = one degree of arc on a great circle on the Earth's surface.
when therre was enough money to pay for "intermediate" types, imagine trying that move today.
So without Martin there would be no F-4s no B-26s no Boeing etc or maybe even no US airforce as we know today...fascinating
The straight, narrow wing looks undersized for the plane. The engine pods look cool, but cool will only get you so far
Lift varies with the square of airspeed. That's why a Phantom F-4 can carry as much bomb weight as a B-29 with a much smaller wing.
@@grizwoldphantasia5005 yeah, it just looks wrong to me. I'm basing this on the if it looks right, it probably is right.
I wouldn't want the XB-48 being the RB-48 especially over Korea during the Korean War.
The B-47 had a habit of exploding in service (to the point where they were losing one per week) due to fuel system problems… but they discovered that somewhat later.
Top banana Ed 😂
B47 was on the way. Why all this trial and error guess work from SAC.
They too could have benefited from captured German data or aircraft designer.
0:11 And he funded it all through his paper route.
.....until it was destroyed 😭😭
Did nobody do wind tunnel testing as a routine part of concept development? I don’t understand how such an obviously poor design gets to the prototype stage before such fundamental flaws are discovered.
wtf
please do a video on the J-21 Jastreb
0:42 That prop😅😂🥸 Das booofen glazen spinnun Moostarchie pushin die air gut ja ?
On a more serious note I was always perplexed as to why Martin spread the engines like that (XB-48) but made strange ducts between them. Extra lift? How can they be serviced like that? Were they trying to create a flow entrainment situation for more thrust? The outrigger wheels didn't necessarily need a little wing to fold into eg XB-47, Yak-25 & 28 etc.