B-47 questions.

I found this site while searching for pictures of the B-47 cockpit to show my wife how small it was.
I rode a 47 from Upper Heyford, England to Ohio in 1964 as the 4th man. Wow, what a ride.

The navigator enter the plane and crawled left at the top of the ladder. The pilot next to the top of the ladder and snaked left and up to his seat.The co-pilot angled right and up onto his seat. As fourth man I had a section of the crawl way at the top of the ladder. Lift the hinged flooring and it became my backrest. The ground crew closed the outer door after pushing the sectional ladder up. The fourth man lifted a curved section of the fuselage and locked it to complete a sealed cockpit for pressurization. Reverse it during an emergency and it became my bailout station.
Surviving a jump was minimal and almost zero with ECM pods on the side.

None of the crew could "walk" around during flight. The pilot and co-pilot had plenty of stretch room in their seats. Remember Jimmy Stewart
stretching during the movie. I crawled forward to give the navigator his in-flight meal and just handed the other two crew members lunches up.

The co-pilots seat swiveled 180 degrees to the gun radar and two 20mm cannon controls. His controls locked forward to do this. I was
permitted to climb up and hang over his back to watch him fire and dump the chafe. The plane shook and felt like it moved sideways.

Movement was very limited due to space and equipment you wore. The AC told me the survival kit I set on would help me survive five minutes in the North Atlantic. That is if I survived the jump.

Those six engines pinned you to your seat during take off. Our six hour flight turned into almost eight because: We lost 10% power on #6 during take off, lost cabin pressure after topping off from a KC-97 off Scotland, stated on full oxygen (except to eat) because of glass flakes in
the cabin due to recent canopy repair and forward main gear wouldn't indicate down on final. I crawled back to the circuit breakers and found none "popped". Another hour of circling and waiting while the runway was foamed, sitting on taxiway while pins were put into gear locks.

Finnally frest Finally fresh air at 2200 hrs. Would I do it again? Nope. Will I remember it forever? You bet ya.

Thanks for listening and if you have questions feel free to e mail me.

TT

Sweb,
Thanks for the input.
I was PCS at Heyford and also made many trips over to Brize Norton. I spent three years in England.
Both bases received B-47's from all over the Eastern part of the US for their reflex tour. If you got to know the crews well, they would bring you items you could not get in the UK. One Thanksgiving a 47 came loaded with turkeys on a sled in the bomb bay. Refrigeration was already there at 30,000 feet!

Terry T, have you ever visited the March AFB museum? They have a B47 on display and a B47 cockpit in the hanger.

As a kid I was a CAP cadet and got to hang around the SAC base at Lincoln, Nebraska. They had maybe 100 B-47s there and also KC-97s. Every day there would be a drill and the crews would start the bomber engines and black smoke and noise would abound. I don't remember them all taking off in mass but there would always be some coming and going though, probably training.

I was always attracted to the guns on the tail of a B-47, twin 50's, and the crewmen laughed at my questions. They didn't place much trust in their armament. They also talked about how the navigator was a dead duck if there was trouble on takeoff. I also remember some dark talk about what they thought their chances were if they ever went over the pole.

The lower deck of a KC-97 was full of what looked like propane tanks like you would see on a farm but all painted medium green. This was where the fuel was carried for inflight refueling.

The food at the mess halls was unbelievably good. I had shrimp one night and they were the size of drum sticks off of a small turkey. I didn't know shrimp got that big and have never seen them that size since. Around the mess halls (there were two) were posters advocating weight loss. This was because the bomber crews were getting fat I was told.

One of the volunteers at the Planes of Fame was a B-47 copilot before flying for American Airlines. I'll ask this Saturday and report back in with the info he passes on.

I've watched "Strategic Air Command" many times. Bought a VHS tape of it first, than a DVD copy. Sure do wish they could find an original "Vista Vision" copy intact to restore, rather than the current "pan and scan" available. I bet it would look great on my wide screen.

I NEVER get tired of watching the amazing cinematography. That startup and takeoff sequence is incredible. June gets on my nerves from time to time, but the rest of the movie is great!

OK, I asked Captain Fran Pieri, who flew in SAC in B-47's for some time and also during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

He says the throttles are on the right and you can move around in a small passageway down the left of the seats. The crew members can even get into the bomb bay iiflight. The B-47 had a service ceiling of about 50,000 feet and was, indeed, cleared for the LABS manuever. Fran got to ride through one LABS maneuver and got to fly through another one. He says they mostly cruised around at 280 - 420 knots bout could get fast whenever they wanted to do so, and they could oputperform a MiG-15, though he isn't so sure about the MiG-17.

With all that wing, they get high and fast and when the MiG's committed to an attack profile, they'd simply turn into them and cause the MiG's to overshoot and, many times, lose a lot of altitude when they tried to tur harder thanthey could at high altitude.