bomber – Page 7 – Aerospace Projects Review Blog

B-60 photos

Apr 062021

The B-60 was Convairs failed effort to compete against the Boeing B-52. It began as a modification of the B-36; the wings were snapped off and swept back, the piston engines were removed and replaced with four turboprops and was originally dubbed the B-36G. When the turboprops were replaced with eight dual-podded turbojets, it was designated the B-60. Compared to the B-52 it was woefully obsolete, with World War II aerodynamics married to Korean War engines; it was incredibly fat and draggy and could not hope to compete with the advanced B-52. Still: it’s a B-36 with jet engines.

A while back someone on eBay sold a few vintage photos. I thought they might be of interest.

March 2021 rewards

bomber, hi-rez, hypersonic, jetliner, launch vehicles, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, Recon, rockets, space shuttle, spacecraft, spaceplane, transports, VTOL No Responses »

Mar 312021

Just released, the March 2021 rewards for APR Patrons and Subscribers. Included this month:

Diagram/art: a large format scan of an artists concept of the XC-14. This was printed with a large number of signatures; they seem to be Boeing engineers.

Document 1: “Project Hummingbird.” An FAA document summarizing the characteristics of STOL and VTOL aircraft circa 1961, including bogh built and proposed types. This was scanned from a clean original!

Document 2: “The Thor Missile Story.” Old, old, incredibly old school media… a film strip propaganda piece about the statues of the Thor IRBM.

CAD diagram: the WWII era German DFS 228 rocket powered high altitude recon plane, proposed operational version.

If this sort of thing is of interest, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.

Because I forgot to mention the January and February rewards… subscribers/patrons got these (new subscribers can order them as back issues):

January 2021: Titan IIIC/IIIM booster rockets; CAD diagram of Post-Saturn concepts; a Convair Heavy Bombardment Airplane brochure; a fractional XF-103 mockup review and technical description; a fractional Westland paper on VTOL; a General Dynamics report on a proposed turboprop transport for Saturn stages.

February, 2021: An Aerion SST brochure; a Lockheed SST diagram; Dornbergers report on a commercial rocket powered airliner (scanned from a clean vintage copy); an early Convair jet flying boat bomber brochure; a CAD diagram comparing General Atomics’ ten-meter Orions for the USAF and NASA.

MC-747

bomber, jetliner, nukes, rockets, transports No Responses »

Mar 072021

A video (made with a few contributions from yours truly, and, yes, attributed as such within the video) describing the 1970s Boeing design for an ICBM-carrying airliner, the MC-747. This is described and illustrated in US Bomber Projects issue 21, AVAILABLE HERE.

An interesting idea to be sure, but an unsafe one. Were one of these aircraft to go down for whatever reason, the results would be No Damned Good. Almost certainly the warheads would not go nuclear, but it’s always possible that the combo of the crash, the burning jet fuel and the solid rocket propellant merrily burning away might cause the chemical explosives in the warheads to go off, potentially scattering plutonium all over hither and yon. Worse still would be if the plutonium got sprinkled with the solid propellant and the plutonium combusted, scattering not just chunks and bits of plutonium, which would be bad enough, but clouds of plutonium oxide or plutonium chloride.

Perhaps more dangerous would be the Soviet reaction. They’d be in a constant state of freaking out every time one of these took to the sky, and they probably would have difficulty telling an MC-747 from an E-4 or a civilian 747. And, of course, they’d have to have their own. the AN-124 would be the logical choice for an ICBM carrier, and chances are good they’d do as good of a job with it as they did with Chernobyl, the Kursk or the Polyus.

XB-58 Pods

bomber, nukes, Recon No Responses »

Mar 062021

From well before the B-58 program began, the Convair designers intended for their four-engined supersonic bomber to have a relatively gigantic pod underneath containing fuel and a nuke. The illustration below shows an early B-58 concept with the outboard engine nacelles located above the wing, together with a collection of potential bomb/fuel pods. “Freefall” contains an H-bomb; “Ferret” is electronic intelligence gathering; photo recon is obvious; and PPB is… hmmm. Note that none of these seem to have rockets in the tail, the ferret and photo recon pods doubtless were intended to return with the aircraft rather than be dropped.

XB-46 photos & early F-111 concept

bomber, fighter, hi-rez, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon No Responses »

Jan 102021

A few seemingly random (because they are) photos. First: a display model of an early General Dynamics concept for what would become the F-111.

And then… two photos of the Convair XB-46 in flight.

I’ve uploaded the full-rez versions of these to the APR Dropbox, into the 2021-01 APR Extras folder. This is available to any APR Patron or Subscriber at the $4 level and above.

December 2020 APR Rewards

bomber, hi-rez, launch vehicles, Monthly Historical Documents Program, nukes, Patreon, rockets, space shuttle, spacecraft No Responses »

Dec 312020

Just released, the December 2020 rewards for APR Patrons and Subscribers. Included this month:

Diagram: a large format diagram of a Lockheed cruise missile. The designation of the missile is not given, but this looks like a SCAD design.

Document 1: Consolidated Class VB Carrier Based Bomber, from 1946

Document2: “Economic Aspects of a Reusable Single Stage To Orbit Vehicle,” a paper by Phil Bono on the ROOST launch vehicle from 1963

Document 3: “Shuttle Derived Vehicles,” a NASA-MSFC briefing to General Abrahamson from 1984

CAD Diagram: XSM-64A Navaho, the configuration that would have been built as an operational vehicle had the program gone forward

If this sort of thing is of interest, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.

NAA B-70 Valkyrie Variants

bomber, Dyna Soar, hypersonic, jetliner, launch vehicles, nukes, PDF Review, Recon, research, rockets, spacecraft, spaceplane, transports, VTOL No Responses »

Nov 242020

Hey! Anybody hereabouts interested in unbuilt variants of the North American B-70 bomber? I know a guy who can hook you up:

https://media.defense.gov/2020/Nov/23/2002540204/-1/-1/1/B-70%20VARIANTS.PDF

An official publication from the AFMC History Office, edited by noted aerospace author Tony R. Landis. Recommended.

Aug 212020

Recent eBay procurements

bomber, launch vehicles, Monthly Historical Documents Program, nukes, Patreon, rockets, spacecraft, transports No Responses »

Aug 132020

One of the main purposes of the Monthly Historical Documents Program/APR Patreon is to get rare aerospace items from eBay. These items are then made available to subscribers/patrons via monthly votes and catalogs.

Below are some of the items I’ve recently paid for (though not as yet received). If you are interested in getting high-rez scans and/or helping me save these sort of things for future generations (as well as keeping my cats in food and litter), please consider signing up for the Monthly Historical Documents Program or the APR Patreon.

XB-46 photos

bomber, hi-rez, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon No Responses »

Aug 082020

A trio of photos of the Convair XB-46, including a rare one in color. The much larger full-rez versions have been uploaded to the 2020-08 APR Extras folder on Dropbox, accessible to all $4 and up Patrons and subscribers.

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