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

[Matt308]

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.

 

[Bucksnort101]

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.

 

[mlsco]

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.

 

[Matt308]

The crazy '50s.

 

[siznaudin]

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?

 

[lingo]

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.

 

[Waynos]

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

 

[Waynos]

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!?!?

 

[syscom3]

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.

 

[vikingBerserker]

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????

 

[siznaudin]

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

Tupolev Tu-119 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[mkloby]

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.

 

[Waynos]

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!

 

[RabidAlien]

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.

 

[Njaco]

Gearless deck landings

Aircraft carriers made of ice

Backwards landing aircraft

and only the Germans had crazy stuff?

 

[Dans65]

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

 

[Loiner]

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.

 

[Matt308]

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.

 

[HealzDevo]

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...