I remember as a 10 year old kid seeing B-47s sitting on the alert pads at the the Lincoln Nebraska municiple airport and they might have had A-bombs on board but not knowing that I was only impressed with the size and beauty of these birds
The F-100 Super Sabre had an identical flight envelope, where you needed to use the rudder for yaw correction, and never the ailerons. That killed many pilots, till North American enlarged the fuselage and the vertical tail size. The early days were very tough. It remained inexcusable that Boeing neglected the fitment of air brakes, however.
Actually the B-47 used the aft bicycle gear and the out rigger landing gear as speed brakes.You can see that in action in the movie ”Strategic Air Command”…The Germans neglected the same with the ME-262 jets, no speed brakes….
0:40 Sweeping the tail surfaces wasn't for looks, and yes, it does do something for the airflow. What it does is to provide a significantly more gradual cross-sectional area distribution (Whitcomb's area rule) just like it does for the wing. That allows the aircraft to reach and cruise at higher Mach numbers without having to worry about a tail surface going Mach critical.
Training was a generation behind the technology and performance. The plane needed to be faster and higher so the crews needed to be suitably proficient and how would they become experienced in a trail blazing new type?
@@maximilliancunningham6091 Yep. The losses that most aircraft took in this era would in no way be acceptable today. But in all fairness, you don't just have aviation knowledge. You gotta go get it and there's a lot of lesson written in blood.
Yes, it was literally a “Toward the Unknown”….losses were sadly the learning curve. Remember, this advanced thing flew only 2 years after the end of WW2…mostly thanks to advanced German aerodynamics.
@@hertzair1186 The Germans get all the credit and no one knows of R. T. Jones at NACA Langley who also 'invented' simple sweep theory at about the same time.
Spy missions flown by the B-47 near Archangel were a genuine threat to the B-47 crew, with an untold number of casualties. It was a beautiful aeroplane, which was over tasked.
My Dad was a crew chief on B-47’s. Just a kid basically he discovered a problem with some flap components that were being installed on the wrong side during factory assembly. The Air Force awarded him by letting him pick what base he wanted to finish his tour at. Him and my mom moved from freezing Whiteman AFB Missouri to McDill in Tampa.
He describes "The coffin corner" wrongly. From Skybrary: "In aviation, coffin corner (or Q corner) refers to the point at which the Flight Envelope boundary defined by a high incidence stall intersects with that defined by the critical Mach number."
@@pongokamerat8601- Sure, bud. The guy who actually flew these things and as copilot would need to constantly manage fuel and trim to keep the aircraft stable in its envelope is getting it wrong I’m sure. Like damn - what do you think it means when he says “high speed stall?”
@ - Okay, but for real how did he get it wrong? The “corner” of the coffin corner is literally the point at which the line of normal stall meets the point of high-speed stall. Edit: which is to say “high incidence stall (normal) meets exceeding critical Mach (high speed stall” for an aircraft. The only “error” I can see is describing all of that as a “flight plan,” but then again these are in exact terms. “Coffin corner” is itself a colloquialism.
Colonel Boyne was clearly unaware of the flaw in the wing design, which could allow the wings to detach at its roots. As for its high speed, by the time the MIG-17 and 19 were around, there were no speed advantages to be had. As for missiles and climb to height speeds for the interceptors, the odds became stacked against the B-47 very quickly.
I am aware that the decoision to keep flying them was an Airforce decisions, not sure if they thought that is was just a problem that could be fixed in time and I know that they did some work to fix the problem. But the problem did not go away. I do know that they put some limits on the way they would train and that the way that they would launch the atomic bombs was done lesser and less. Them they went to the B52 and it had its share of problem like the rear tai section had a habit of breaking off in flight. Nice to hear from someone that was there and lived to talk about it take care
The Convair XB-46 was a beauty….but it’s straight wings were too conservative, though it perhaps would have been a better jet to transition to from pistons, instead of the ‘coffin corner’ aerodynamics of the highly swept wings of the 47.
Restoration of the Chanute XB-47 is going to be pricey. She had been outside for decades, exposed to the Midwest elements and smeared with corrosive bird crap. I saw her many, many times, and the poor old girl was sitting on flat tires forever outside the museum hangar. Glad she's gone to where people care for her history and can back it up with bucks and labor.
Sure but the facts that the wings just snapping of while in flight killed many pilots and left women with out husbands and children with out fathers. This was completely avoidable. It was shown early in testing that this was possibility yet the air force was in a hurry and had the bombers built anyway they figured they would fix them as they went along. This was the wrong decision.
It is true that the wings came off several B-47s in flight and that it was also avoidable, but you need to go back and investigate a little further. I spent 10 years in the USAF with four of those as a crew chief on a B-47 with the 530th Bomb Squadron, 380th Bomb Wing at Plattsburcgh AFB. When conceived, the B-47 was a high altitude bombing platform. As Soviet missile and fighter jet capabilities increased, the B-47 was no longer safe at altitude. At the time, "toss bombing" had been tried with F100s and that was then attempted with the B-47. This was a decision by the USAF, not Boeing. Testing was accomplished by the Air Force and it was determined that, as long as positive Gs were kept at or below 2 Gs, it was safe. In practice, a B-47 would approach the target at high speed and low altitude, hiding in the ground scatter of the radar. At a given point, they would pull up, staying below 2 Gs, and release the bomb at a given altitude. The B-47 would continue over onto it's back and, when the nose dropped 20 degrees below the horizon, the pilot would roll the plane back upright and continue the dive back to low altitude. Planes that were used for this maneuver were equipped with a special G meter and a yellow light. Not all B-47s were so modified, but mine had been when it was at March AFB. This type of flying was beyond the design capabilities of the B-47 and is what contributed to the wing issue. Between March 13th and April 15th of 1958, five B-47s disintegrated in flight. One of these was a B-47 approaching a tanker for inflight refueling over northern New York. The boom operator on the tanker, who had the plane in sight, said he thought the wings failed at the fuselage just before the explosion. This prompted a thorough inspection of several high-time B-47s. Numerous cracks were found in the fittings around the “Milk Bottle” bolts that fastened the wing to the fuselage. Shortly thereafter the entire B-47 fleet was grounded, pending inspection of the wing root area. Some planes were relatively free from defects. Most, however,had at least a few cracks. Some were cleared to resume normal training missions, while others were so bad that a depot crew had to come in and put temporary reinforcement in place before they could be flown to a depot for a permanent fix. My plane, 51-7052, had a fair number of cracks and was only cleared to fly with a reduced fuel load to the depot in Oklahoma City for extensive repair and modification in what was called “Project Milk Bottle”. The USAF modified the low altitude bombing to what they called "Pop-Ups" where the approach was about the same, but the G forces were reduced. Instead of continuing over onto it's back, the pilot leveled off and the Observer made his bomb release. As far as I know, no B-47s were lost to wing bolt damage after the cessation of toss bombing and the resulting Project Milk Bottle. (I apologize for the length of the post.)
No paranoid warmongers were the gopniks, trying to destabilise the world constantly, "sprrading communism" from middle east to africa, asia, and even south america, but yeah the yaks were the warmongers, not the ones that started the was as hitler's ally. Gfy you incel!
If Stalin had not gone into Korea, if Stalin had allowed elections in Poland as promised, if Stalin had given Poland its pre-war eastern border (which he took by collaborating with Hitler), if Stalin had not agitated Japanese Communists, if Stalin had not annexed or had not applied control over every single country that the Red Army passed through, then I think that the paranoia would've been a lot less pronounced. It still doesn't justify the paranoia and warmongering, by any means, but let us be unbiased here, and realize that this was not a one-side affair, by any stretch of the imagination.
I remember as a 10 year old kid seeing B-47s sitting on the alert pads at the the Lincoln Nebraska municiple airport and they might have had A-bombs on board but not knowing that I was only impressed with the size and beauty of these birds
There is a B-47 on display SAC Aerospace Museum located along interstate 80 between Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska.
Plattsburgh NY has one on display as well. It has an FB-111 keeping it company.
There's also one outside the "Mighty 8th" museum just off I-95, in Pooler (just outside Savanah), Georgia...
There is also at the Nebraska SAC museum a B-47 cockpit simulator that was used in the Jimmy Stewart move “Strategic Air Command”
The F-100 Super Sabre had an identical flight envelope, where you needed to use the rudder for yaw correction, and never the ailerons. That killed many pilots, till North American enlarged the fuselage and the vertical tail size. The early days were very tough. It remained inexcusable that Boeing neglected the fitment of air brakes, however.
I'm sure if USAF had asked and paid, for airbrakes, they would have been fitted.
Actually the B-47 used the aft bicycle gear and the out rigger landing gear as speed brakes.You can see that in action in the movie ”Strategic Air Command”…The Germans neglected the same with the ME-262 jets, no speed brakes….
That's what made Toyota famous. A great 4x4 standard transmission with a damn good 4 cylinder. And a bigger box than every one else!
0:40 Sweeping the tail surfaces wasn't for looks, and yes, it does do something for the airflow.
What it does is to provide a significantly more gradual cross-sectional area distribution (Whitcomb's area rule) just like it does for the wing.
That allows the aircraft to reach and cruise at higher Mach numbers without having to worry about a tail surface going Mach critical.
True
3:00 This guy is sugarcoating the losses. 203 B-47s crashed with 464 deaths resulting. That is horrible, no way around that.
I do agree. Those were the times though. The B-58 was no picknik either, but damb, it was beutifull !
Training was a generation behind the technology and performance. The plane needed to be faster and higher so the crews needed to be suitably proficient and how would they become experienced in a trail blazing new type?
@@maximilliancunningham6091
Yep. The losses that most aircraft took in this era would in no way be acceptable today. But in all fairness, you don't just have aviation knowledge. You gotta go get it and there's a lot of lesson written in blood.
Yes, it was literally a “Toward the Unknown”….losses were sadly the learning curve. Remember, this advanced thing flew only 2 years after the end of WW2…mostly thanks to advanced German aerodynamics.
@@hertzair1186 The Germans get all the credit and no one knows of R. T. Jones at NACA Langley who also 'invented' simple sweep theory at about the same time.
Spy missions flown by the B-47 near Archangel were a genuine threat to the B-47 crew, with an untold number of casualties. It was a beautiful aeroplane, which was over tasked.
This is stupid and flat false
There were 1000 of these Bombers built and so few Storys from its crews.
CuZ half of them died
@@SHAGG13 Yeap like my Uncle USAF in the 50s here was ground crew on B47s in California.
My Dad was a crew chief on B-47’s. Just a kid basically he discovered a problem with some flap components that were being installed on the wrong side during factory assembly. The Air Force awarded him by letting him pick what base he wanted to finish his tour at. Him and my mom moved from freezing Whiteman AFB Missouri to McDill in Tampa.
God Speed Walt, fly high. fly far, fly fast. Thank you.
And SAC lost quite a few of them. I do not think that kind of accident rate would be acceptable today...
He describes "The coffin corner" wrongly. From Skybrary: "In aviation, coffin corner (or Q corner) refers to the point at which the Flight Envelope boundary defined by a high incidence stall intersects with that defined by the critical Mach number."
That's saying the same thing. Just using more technically acceptable language.
@@wesleybender6145 nope
@@pongokamerat8601- Sure, bud. The guy who actually flew these things and as copilot would need to constantly manage fuel and trim to keep the aircraft stable in its envelope is getting it wrong I’m sure. Like damn - what do you think it means when he says “high speed stall?”
@@b.w.22 He got it wrong, BUD!
@ - Okay, but for real how did he get it wrong? The “corner” of the coffin corner is literally the point at which the line of normal stall meets the point of high-speed stall.
Edit: which is to say “high incidence stall (normal) meets exceeding critical Mach (high speed stall” for an aircraft. The only “error” I can see is describing all of that as a “flight plan,” but then again these are in exact terms. “Coffin corner” is itself a colloquialism.
Colonel Boyne was clearly unaware of the flaw in the wing design, which could allow the wings to detach at its roots. As for its high speed, by the time the MIG-17 and 19 were around, there were no speed advantages to be had. As for missiles and climb to height speeds for the interceptors, the odds became stacked against the B-47 very quickly.
Man oh man she sure was one dirty bird on takeoff 😂
There was one at Altus when I was younger.
It's still there!
@nicholasbaranet3798 makes me wonder....
How long now?
@@evan-douglasmason3755 I saw the RB-47 outside Altus AFB about 7 months ago. It looks to be fairly well maintained.
I am aware that the decoision to keep flying them was an Airforce decisions, not sure if they thought that is was just a problem that could be fixed in time and I know that they did some work to fix the problem. But the problem did not go away. I do know that they put some limits on the way they would train and that the way that they would launch the atomic bombs was done lesser and less. Them they went to the B52 and it had its share of problem like the rear tai section had a habit of breaking off in flight. Nice to hear from someone that was there and lived to talk about it take care
The Convair XB-46 was a beauty….but it’s straight wings were too conservative, though it perhaps would have been a better jet to transition to from pistons, instead of the ‘coffin corner’ aerodynamics of the highly swept wings of the 47.
I wish I could find a pilot to interview on my show
Restoration of the Chanute XB-47 is going to be pricey. She had been outside for decades, exposed to the Midwest elements and smeared with corrosive bird crap. I saw her many, many times, and the poor old girl was sitting on flat tires forever outside the museum hangar. Glad she's gone to where people care for her history and can back it up with bucks and labor.
@@lancejohnson1406 i marched by that bird winter of 82.
It's before Homer Simpson called it (nuculer)..😂
Yeah I would probably not brag about Boeing
Sure but the facts that the wings just snapping of while in flight killed many pilots and left women with out husbands and children with out fathers. This was completely avoidable. It was shown early in testing that this was possibility yet the air force was in a hurry and had the bombers built anyway they figured they would fix them as they went along. This was the wrong decision.
It is true that the wings came off several B-47s in flight and that it was also avoidable, but you need to go back and investigate a little further. I spent 10 years in the USAF with four of those as a crew chief on a B-47 with the 530th Bomb Squadron, 380th Bomb Wing at Plattsburcgh AFB. When conceived, the B-47 was a high altitude bombing platform. As Soviet missile and fighter jet capabilities increased, the B-47 was no longer safe at altitude. At the time, "toss bombing" had been tried with F100s and that was then attempted with the B-47. This was a decision by the USAF, not Boeing. Testing was accomplished by the Air Force and it was determined that, as long as positive Gs were kept at or below 2 Gs, it was safe. In practice, a B-47 would approach the target at high speed and low altitude, hiding in the ground scatter of the radar. At a given point, they would pull up, staying below 2 Gs, and release the bomb at a given altitude. The B-47 would continue over onto it's back and, when the nose dropped 20 degrees below the horizon, the pilot would roll the plane back upright and continue the dive back to low altitude. Planes that were used for this maneuver were equipped with a special G meter and a yellow light. Not all B-47s were so modified, but mine had been when it was at March AFB. This type of flying was beyond the design capabilities of the B-47 and is what contributed to the wing issue. Between March
13th and April 15th of 1958, five B-47s disintegrated in flight. One of these was a
B-47 approaching a tanker for inflight refueling over northern New York. The
boom operator on the tanker, who had the plane in sight, said he thought the
wings failed at the fuselage just before the explosion. This prompted a thorough
inspection of several high-time B-47s. Numerous cracks were found in the
fittings around the “Milk Bottle” bolts that fastened the wing to the fuselage.
Shortly thereafter the entire B-47 fleet was grounded, pending inspection of the
wing root area. Some planes were relatively free from defects. Most, however,had at least a few cracks. Some were cleared to resume normal training
missions, while others were so bad that a depot crew had to come in and put
temporary reinforcement in place before they could be flown to a depot for a
permanent fix. My plane, 51-7052, had a fair number of cracks and was only
cleared to fly with a reduced fuel load to the depot in Oklahoma City for extensive
repair and modification in what was called “Project Milk Bottle”. The USAF modified the low altitude bombing to what they called "Pop-Ups" where the approach was about the same, but the G forces were reduced. Instead of continuing over onto it's back, the pilot leveled off and the Observer made his bomb release. As far as I know, no B-47s were lost to wing bolt damage after the cessation of toss bombing and the resulting Project Milk Bottle. (I apologize for the length of the post.)
I’d change the title from Cold War guardians to American paranoid warmongers
No paranoid warmongers were the gopniks, trying to destabilise the world constantly, "sprrading communism" from middle east to africa, asia, and even south america, but yeah the yaks were the warmongers, not the ones that started the was as hitler's ally.
Gfy you incel!
Paranoid yes, warmongering came later.
@ yeah directly after World War Two and it has never stopped
If Stalin had not gone into Korea, if Stalin had allowed elections in Poland as promised, if Stalin had given Poland its pre-war eastern border (which he took by collaborating with Hitler), if Stalin had not agitated Japanese Communists, if Stalin had not annexed or had not applied control over every single country that the Red Army passed through, then I think that the paranoia would've been a lot less pronounced.
It still doesn't justify the paranoia and warmongering, by any means, but let us be unbiased here, and realize that this was not a one-side affair, by any stretch of the imagination.
Oh? Warmongering, huh? How many a-bombs did these aircraft drop in anger?