B-47 pictures - to fight forum flaccidness

[Distiller]

From back in those early years of the 1950's when Comrade Dschugaschwili in Moscow was still as dangerous as a snapping turtle (and folks down in Texas would shoot communists on sight), tailfins on Detroit's iron were still small (and a stock Cadillac entered the 24 hours of Le Mans race). In 1950 a Cadillac Series 62 Convertible costed 3600.- USD. Can you believe that? The first issue of Playboy with Marilyn as CF was still three years away. Why, and there was a small war going on in a cold land nobody knew anything about.
One Stratojet costed about 1.9mio USD (flyaway back in the early '50s).
In 1957 SAC had 28 wing with about 1300 Stratojets standing ready to bomb the hell out of the Reds; plus 600 more for training, reccon, EW.
The last mission of the Stratojet was flown on 20Dec1977 (U.S. Navy's EB-47E), which was 30 years and 3 days after the maiden flight of the XB-47.
[Remark: The final flight of a B-47 was made on 17Jun1986, when B-47E #52-0166 was flown from the NWC China Lake to Castle AFB to be put in the museum there. Btw it was built in Tulsa by McAir.]















<-- doing the "LABS" (an Immelmann). The B-47 was the only SAC bomber doing aerobatics; not even the B-58 was cleared for that kind of fun. Propably the largest aircraft to do it.

<-- note the TF34!

<-- AACS/MATS' "Sweet Marie"

<-- MAW and PAW

<-- Orenda sticking like a leech to the butt of that CL-52

And then there was that GD testbed with a F-111 nose. But I've never seen a picture of it. Dunno it ever exists.

[WACHENR0DER]

do you have pictures of the cockpit? I'm really interested into seeing whether there's enough room in that cockpit for 3 crewmembers

[PhantomII]

If I'm not mistaken, the pilot and rear gunner (navigator?) occupied the "main cockpit" (i.e. the part with the fighter-style canopy), while the bombardier (navigator?) was located in the nose.

[WACHENR0DER]

Thanks Phantom. The cockpit certainly doesn't look like it could hold 3 people, so I was wondering where the 3rd person would sit.

[Mark2]

They had a B-47 laying around at China Lake back in the late 80s. Wonder if it is still there. Got to take a look inside. Quite the cockpit arrangement as you say. As was stated, the third seat was arranged below the other two seats. Not much of a view to the outside world as I recall...

Mark

[djnik]

Here is a picture of me in front of the B-47 at the airplane museum in Seattle,right next to the Boeing factory.

[Mark2]

Thread got me interested in some 'other' versions...

http://www.rb-29.net/HTML/biomaster/...&RB-47Hist.htm

And from this site....

http://www.militaryairshows.net/gallvis7.htm





And a few more....





Some interesting variations

And finally from....

http://www.55srwa.org/



Mark

[Arthur]

And then there was that GD testbed with a F-111 nose. But I've never seen a picture of it. Dunno it ever exists.

That was O-34296, originally an RB-47H. It was SAC's last operational Stratojet (flown into storage on Dec. 29, 1967), and only spent a short time at Davis-Monthan before being resurrected by General Dynamics. There is a picture of it with it's F-111 nose in IAPR #6, which has a B-47 variant rundown. The aircraft survives, it is now preserved at Eglin AFB but with it's F-111 nose replaced by a regular nosecone.

While the B-47 indeed used the toss/loft bombing method (one way was an Immelman, but a steep climbing curve was used more often), the airframe wasn't really suited for such hefty maneuvres. Although only 100 some aircraft were actually assigned to deliver their payload this way (for the use of hydrogen bombs against well-defended high-priority targets, Moscow or something like that), but the airframe just wasn't designed for repeated 2g and 3g maneuvring. A number of B-47s actually broke up doing these stunts and many others got cracks because of it. A crash-program to strengthen the wings was ran as project Milk Bottle, to make the Stratojet actually capable of what it was supposed to do...

[Transall]

[quote=Distiller]From back in those early years of the 1950's when Comrade Dschugaschwili in Moscow was still as dangerous as a snapping turtle (and folks down in Texas would shoot communists on sight), tailfins on Detroit's iron were still small (and a stock Cadillac entered the 24 hours of Le Mans race).


Hi Distiller,

Nice description of the early 1950's.
The thing about the folks in Texas reminded me of what happened when that ex-marine went crazy in the 1960's and started shooting people from the tower in which he'd blocked himself.
If I remember correctly, this tower was in a university campus.
Anyway, it is said that he received many more rounds of return fire than he fired off because Texan citizens stopped their pick-up trucks, took their rifles from the rack and shot back at him.

There is no other aircaft for which I wish more that they'd produce a resin and photo-etch update kit for the the 1/72 scale kit than the B-47.

Best regards, Transall.

[frankvw]

Here 2 pictures of the B-47 Cockpit: The Pilot and the Copilot (I don't have any from the navigator seat, sorry)

I took them at March ARB Museum, Ca.