# What The Heck Were They Thinking? B-29 Project "Tip Tow"



## syscom3 (May 3, 2009)

Project Tip Tow: Boeing B-29 with Republic F-84 Thunderjet.

TIP TOW F-84D TESTS

One of the more interesting experiments undertaken to extend the range of the early jets in order to give fighter protection to the piston engineed bombers, was the provision for in-flight attachment/detachment of fighter to bomber via wingtip connections. One of the several programs during these experiments was MX106 done with a B-29 mother ship and two F-84D "children", and was code named "Tip Tow" (not Tom Tom as stated above) A number of flights were undertaken, with several successful cycles of attachment and detachment, using, first one, and then two F-84s. The pilots of the F-84s maintained manual control when attached, with roll axis maintained by elevator movement rather than aileron movement. Engines on the F-84s were shut down in order to save fuel during the "tow" by the mother ship, and in-flight engine restarts were successfully accomplished. The experiment ended in disaster during the first attempt to provide automatic flight control of the F-84s, when the electronics apparently malfunctioned. The left hand F-84-1-RE 48-641 rolled onto the wing of the B-29, and the connected aircraft both crashed with loss of all onboard personnel.

The pilot of the right-hand F-84D-1-RE 48-661 wrote of the Tip-Tow experiments in an article entitled Aircraft Wingtip Coupling Experiments published by the Society of Experimental Test Pilots.

The photo above was taken during the longest "hookup" on 20 October 1950.

File:Boeing B-29 TomTom.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Goleta Air and Space Museum: Flying Aircraft Carriers of the USAF: Wing Tip Coupling: B-29B/F-84D

FICON project - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



One of the veterans at the B29 forum had this to say:

"It was real and all three of them crashed in the process. Another goofy idea that looked great on paper. If memory serves the B-29 was 44-62093 and the crash occurred 11/20/51."


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## Lucky13 (May 3, 2009)

Hmmmm....another of those crazy ideas from the '50's.


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## Colin1 (May 3, 2009)

My God
nutty as it looks, at least in flight the F-84s would have been generating some lift, on the ground they're just an awful lot of dead weight right at the very extremities of the B-29's wings; the accident doesn't really come as a great surprise, what comes as a surprise is that it didn't fold up just trying to get off the ground - that stage of the ride must have been a real pucker-clench for the F-84 drivers...

Assuming worst case, if the bomber got all the way out to the target and the F-84s were required in defensive combat ie some rigorous fuel-burning, would the pair of them (assuming both survived) have the fuel to make it home? Or would there be some contingency airfield they could stage through?


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## Lucky13 (May 3, 2009)

Can't imagine them trying to hook up at the wingtips again...or?


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## Gnomey (May 3, 2009)

Interesting. Pretty crazy idea and not something I would really want to try. Not surprised they had an accident during the testing phase - or that they shelved it.


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## ccheese (May 3, 2009)

What a strain that must have been during take-off. They would have
been better off piggy-backed.

Charles


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## Matt308 (May 3, 2009)

Can you imagine trying to connect wingtips with the wing vortices in full swing? What a crackpot idea. And I'm with you guys, surely that had to beef up the outter wing spar/panels on the B-29.


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## Sweb (May 3, 2009)

Um, folks, the aircraft did not take off coupled. They coupled once airborne and decoupled to land.


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## Matt308 (May 5, 2009)

Ohhh... what a great idea then.


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## syscom3 (May 5, 2009)

Matt308 said:


> Ohhh... what a great idea then.



It was so great, the B29 crashed.


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## timshatz (May 5, 2009)

Extra planes, extra pilots. Wierd ideas. "What the hell, we give it a whirl."


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## Njaco (May 5, 2009)

Same idea as the Camel suspended below a dirigible for fighter protection. One bad updraft and you're gone!


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## Sweb (May 5, 2009)

Well, we're talking about a time when USAF had more dollars than sense. Ever read about the US Navy's soft carrier deck experiments designed to cushion the landings of planes without landing gears? Yep, the thinking was if planes didn't need landing gear they could be built much lighter and carry more fuel and ordnance. So, a resilient deck was experimented with and they actually tested it by pan-caking (gear up) some Grumman Cougars on it. It didn't work either. Same period, BTW. I suppose if the one was going to be stupid who was the other to be any different?


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## Njaco (May 5, 2009)

You're right Sweb. We can scratch our heads at all the goofy stuff the Luftwaffe came up with during the war but we've had some doozies right here in the ole US of A!


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## Flyboy2 (May 5, 2009)

Reminds me alot of the F-85 Goblin
XF-85 Goblin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I saw on the history channel once that the Air Force had a concept to link three B-36's together and fly them into enemy territory to save fuel and get a longer range... Can't find it on the web though


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## mlsco (May 14, 2009)

Let's not forget the nuclear-powered aircraft studies during the 1950's, as well. 

Consider building a reactor well enough shielded not to fry the crew and still light enough to get off the ground...


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## Matt308 (May 14, 2009)

Which one? There was the B-36 that had the nuclear reactor in it and then there was a nuclear propulsion powered bomber that was contemplated that was supposed to have high speed/intercontenental range and as a "bonus" spew radioactive exhaust over enemy territory. Gotta love the 50s.


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## Soundbreaker Welch? (May 14, 2009)

Did they ever figure out a way to have light enough nuclear reactor aboard a plane?


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## Matt308 (May 14, 2009)

Light enough if you consider it fit in a B-36. Not exactly small... nor light.


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## Flyboy2 (May 14, 2009)

Soundbreaker Welch? said:


> Did they ever figure out a way to have light enough nuclear reactor aboard a plane?



I'm not sure.. I thought theoretically they were able too, but I'm not exactly positive.. The airforce ended up pullling the plug on the NB-36 program right before its first flight, so who knows


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## Matt308 (May 14, 2009)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5024190.ece

The United States tested a nuclear-powered jet engine on the ground and also carried out flight tests with a nuclear reactor on board a B-36 jet with a lead-lined cockpit over West Texas and Southern New Mexico. The reactor “ran hot” during the flights but the engines were powered by kerosene. The purpose of the flights was to prove that the crew could be safely shielded from the reactor. 

Each flight was accompanied by an aircraft packed with marines ready to respond to a crash by parachuting down and securing the area. 

The test programmes were abandoned in the early 1960s when the superpowers decided that intercontinental ballistic missiles made nuclear-powered planes redundant.


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## Bucksnort101 (May 15, 2009)

Read Clarence "Bud" Andersons book "To Fly and Fight" on his WW2 and post WW2 aviations expolits. He was very involved in this project and describes several horrowing events that occured during testing.


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## mlsco (May 15, 2009)

I was particularly impressed by the idea of flying about with a liquid metal reactor. 

If a single rifle shot to the cooling system might bring down a P-51 (or whatever) in an unspectacular way, consider how much more interesting an isolated breach exposing elemental sodium to the atmosphere in an aircraft would look.


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## Matt308 (May 15, 2009)

The crazy '50s.


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## siznaudin (Jul 15, 2009)

mlsco said:


> Let's not forget the nuclear-powered aircraft studies during the 1950's, as well.
> 
> Consider building a reactor well enough shielded not to fry the crew and still light enough to get off the ground...



Didn't the ruskies do the same thing, but saved weight by cutting down on the (expendable) crew shielding?


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## lingo (Jul 15, 2009)

Sweb said:


> Ever read about the US Navy's soft carrier deck experiments designed to cushion the landings of planes without landing gears? Yep, the thinking was if planes didn't need landing gear they could be built much lighter and carry more fuel and ordnance. So, a resilient deck was experimented with and they actually tested it by pan-caking (gear up) some Grumman Cougars on it. It didn't work either.
> 
> The British also tried this using a Vampire flown by Eric 'Winkle' Brown. A great way to scrap aircraft.


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## Waynos (Jul 15, 2009)

I wasn't aware the USN had also tried gearless deck landings, I thought the RN took all the blame for that one. So who was daftest, the service that thought of it first or the one that said 'ooh, we'll try that' 

There have been several attempts to make bombers carry their own fighters, ever since WW1, but I think syscom's tiptow is the maddest of them all. At least the others were 'sort of' sensible, in a purely relative sense, by hooking the planes fuselage onto something designed for the job, however badly


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## Waynos (Jul 15, 2009)

I also think one of the maddest schemes ever was the USN VTOL fighter project that resulted in the XFV-1 and XFY-1. Take off and flight were one thing, but landing vertically backwards!?!?


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## syscom3 (Jul 15, 2009)

Waynos said:


> I also think one of the maddest schemes ever was the USN VTOL fighter project that resulted in the XFV-1 and XFY-1. Take off and flight were one thing, but landing vertically backwards!?!?




I forgot about that.


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## vikingBerserker (Jul 15, 2009)

Waynos said:


> I wasn't aware the USN had also tried gearless deck landings, I thought the RN took all the blame for that one. So who was daftest, the service that thought of it first or




Why do I keep thinking of a Nerf Carrier????


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## siznaudin (Jul 16, 2009)

Yeah - as usual, I got it half right  Here's Wiki's version of the project.

Tupolev Tu-119 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## mkloby (Jul 17, 2009)

Waynos said:


> I also think one of the maddest schemes ever was the USN VTOL fighter project that resulted in the XFV-1 and XFY-1. Take off and flight were one thing, but landing vertically backwards!?!?



Kinda scares me even thinking about landing the damn thing. There's a natural tendency to drive the plane in the direction that you're looking... and landing in that regime looking backward over your shoulder would be very dangerous with respect to drift.


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## Waynos (Jul 17, 2009)

It would be wierd/difficult enough on a runway. Transfer the experience to a Carrier at sea, with the deck rising and falling beneath you and thats going to give you brown underpants!


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## RabidAlien (Jul 17, 2009)

Maybe a rear-mounted camera hooked in to a tv monitor in the cockpit? Kinda like the backup camera in SUV's nowadays?

For a carrier landing, I'd imagine a similar setup to how they land helicopters in heavy seas (correct me if I'm wrong!), where they lower a cable and basically hover, the carrier winches the helicopter down on the deck.


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## Njaco (Jul 17, 2009)

Gearless deck landings

Aircraft carriers made of ice

Backwards landing aircraft

and only the Germans had crazy stuff?


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## Dans65 (Jun 8, 2010)

Some things are best kept secret, huh! I heard about this idea a while back, but never seen pictures, and forgotten over time. This is during a time when essentric ideas were a norm. We needed new ideas for the Cold War, and we had crazy pilots to experiment with...And they loved it! Without ideas like these, we wouldn't come up with better ones to toss these in the file 13 drawer. Thanks for posting...Really cool!

Dan


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## Loiner (Jun 11, 2010)

Just thinking aloud here, but I'm surprised something like this wasn't tried early in WWII when fighter escorts didn't have the range to escort bombers all the way to their targets in Germany. Perhaps some bombers could have been dedicated as glider tugs (similar to how Stirlings operated later) and each towed a couple of gliding Spitfires over with them, so they could start their engines when near the target, provide some fighter cover and cruise back on their own.


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## Matt308 (Jun 16, 2010)

Loiner said:


> Just thinking aloud here, but I'm surprised something like this wasn't tried early in WWII when fighter escorts didn't have the range to escort bombers all the way to their targets in Germany. Perhaps some bombers could have been dedicated as glider tugs (similar to how Stirlings operated later) and each towed a couple of gliding Spitfires over with them, so they could start their engines when near the target, provide some fighter cover and cruise back on their own.



Tried in WWI with dirigibles and parasite fighters. Not a new concept.


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## HealzDevo (Nov 20, 2010)

It was a serious attempt at a solution to what still remains a problem today. That fighters are vastly shorter-ranged than the bombers that they need to protect. And now bombers largely don't carry as much real offensive protection that fighter envelop lack could really be critical against a comparable opponent...

The conflicts the US has been involved in, with the current generation of bombers, really are against opponents that haven't had comparable air-power. 
In a conflict say, with China, the US Bombers would get absolutely mauled, I think, especially with current updated Chinese Equipment. 
China is catching up to the US in terms of military technology. They are starting to field a Humvee Avenger look alike, which the US only retired fairly recently.
This is a big catch-up. Chinese numbers, along with modern equipment would make any conflict with them very deadly and dangerous...


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