Quote:
Originally Posted by freebeard
Nobody seemed to mind Permalink #363, so here's another aerodynamic oddity or two that are airplanes. First, One of my favorites, the B-36 Peacemaker, six turning and four burning but it never expended ordinance in anger.
I snagged this out of a Youtube video. Cool, Huh? Don't tell anyone. [click the bar]
That nacelle has the two-bank radial behind a firewall with the turbos, intercoolers and plumbing ahead of it. Six separate intakes — air cooling, oil cooling, 2x turbo and 2x intercooler.
Then there's my new favorite airliner that never made prototype, let alone production; the Douglas DC-8. No, not that DC-8 the other one.
It's like a mini-B-36 with clean wings. The propshaft ran the length of the passenger compartment — a front engine rear driver like an Aircobra in reverse. Anyway cockpit kinda like a Ryan Navion.
Bonus what appears to be a prototype of the Davis three-wheeler.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis_Motorcar_Company |
Don’t forget the 12,000-mile range. Six turning and four burning (on the late models with two jet engines per wing). Only four existing from hundreds. Huge crew under SAC.
The one that sat outside Fort Worth’s attempt to upstage Dallas Love Field (Greater Southwest) was the last one built at Ft Worth in 1954. Retired just four years later. Finally removed and restored by Lockheed employee volunteers in the 1990s. At Tucson, now.
Big as are other intercontinental bombers, this one dwarfs the 52 and B1. The atomic-powered model was stranger yet.
YouTube has great clips. Local flyovers with training runs, and from the Jimmy Stewart movie, “Strategic Air Command”.
Outside of B58 Hustler supersonic factory test runs that were a thrill of my young years (nothing like a sonic boom to wake up school classroom), only a MITO (baby elephant walk) of 52’s right thru the 1980s was as impressive as the sight and sound of a 36 circling.
Have been up in Massachusetts and watched C5 Galaxies so big they seemed to hover. (Still not as impressive).
June Allyson has always been reason enough to watch the Stewart movie. And it’s wonderful aerial sequences.
Beauty, and Truth (the spectre of planetary nuclear war).
The sound of that airplane (the drone) had but one meaning.
.