Voyager3
Active member
Definitely worth going, especially for the price: $0.00 US. It gets better...
Don't Throw Your Life Away - Battling Marine Debris from Alaska to Panama
- Thread starter Voyager3
- Start date
Definitely worth going, especially for the price: $0.00 US. It gets better...
Voyager3
Active member
Yeah, the buildings are pretty big. This B-52 took serious damage from a surface-to-air missile over SE Asia on April 9, 1972 but only in the following locations. 56 holes in: the fuselage, left and right wings, nose radome, left aft wheel door, vertical stabilizer, left and right horizontal stabilizers, left and right drop tanks. Engines #1 and #3 needed replacing. Internal damage was 7 holes in the forward fuel tank cell #1, 70 holes in forward cell #2, 40 holes in the mid-body cell #1, one in mid cell #2, 51 holes in the aft fuel tank cell #1 and numerous in the #1 cell of the water tank. Plus holes and dents in the ram air ducts, flak in the in fight refueling manifold, astro tracker busted. You know. Nothing you can't manage to fly home, get repaired and have it flying missions over North Vietnam by December. It's been here since 1978.
This is why we always wear our PPE. SA-7 surface-to-air missile hit on his AC-130E. Helmet took 40 fragments, 3 penetrated, but Sergeant Kenneth Felty recovered.
The B-36 is no easy thing to park either, but apparently we have plenty of space. I don't even see the other end of this hangar...
When I first saw an F-15 on the ground, I could walk under it.
First time I saw an F-117 on the ground, it was roped off and had armed soldiers guarding it.
I had to
CanucksRedRocket
Observer
man that place is awesome!!!
Voyager3
Active member
We ain't done yet
What I like about the F-117 is that it even flies at allYeah, not a place I'd want to actually be hanging out of the plane. I'm not sure that would be my favorite gun position anyway.
Oh, I was on overload.
Voyager3
Active member
B-17s are cool, but maybe you like your bombers a little more.......jet powered. Like a B-47 Stratojet.
I mean that's a good start, but if we're going to have jet bombers you might as well make them fast. So I give you the B-58 Hustler.
And it did hustle. I mean, one J79 in a Starfighter is cool, but four under the pretty slim waisted area-rule fuselage and delta wing of a Convair designed bomber? Lovely. Speaking of speed, I think I mentioned one thing I like about early aviation is the pace of innovation and problem solving. When you look at the B-58, remember that Scott Crossfield went Mach 2 for the first time on Nov. 20, 1953 in a Douglas Skyrocket dropped from a B-29 mothership. Not quite 6 years later on October 15, 1959, the first production Hustler flew faster than Mach 2 for more than an hour. So what if it had a pretty short range, and never dropped any bombs, and wasn't even ever configured to drop conventional ordinance. And then there was safety. Darrell Schmidt, a B-58 pilot from 1966 to 1970, said, “There were 116 aircraft built, 26 of which were destroyed in accidents, with 36 crew members killed. If that doesn’t fit the definition of ‘dangerous,’ I don’t know what would.”
Do I just have a thing for fast, good looking cold war-era airplanes built to a very slim list of mission parameters, with dubious early testing and operational histories, and controversial service records? Perhaps.
So if you don't want to make one super fast, you make it INVISIBLE. Try to spot the stealth bomber in this photo.
Now, the North American F-82 might seems like just a curiosity. It may look like two Mustangs bolted together. Well, it was sort of. It was certainly based on mustang fuselages of late lightweight spec, but really it was a new design all around. So did it work? Actually yes, yes it did. Arriving too late to fill its intended role as a very long range escort for B-29s in the Pacific during WWII, the first 3 enemy aircraft shot down in the Korean War were credited to these. And that very long range? Really quite very long. On February 27, 1947, an F-82B with 4 drop tanks to augment the internal tank flew nonstop Hawaii to New York, 5,051 miles without refueling at an average speed of 347.5mph. The one that did it? The one on display. Betty Jo. That is still the longest nonstop flight ever made by a propeller-driven fighter, and the fastest such a distance has ever been covered in a piston-engined aircraft. Of course in 1986, the Voyager (hehe) designed by Burt Rutan broke the longest unrefueled propeller distance record with its 26,366 statute mile, 9 day 3 minute and 44 second circumnavigation of the world. But that plane isn't here, it's at the Smithsonian, and I have yet to see it.
Here's a peeled F-86 Sabre showing how to carry a pilot and some machine guns into battle.
And a little more Convair beauty. F-102.
The missile gallery means we're getting close to my favorite stuff. Yes, it's about to get even better.
Wind tunnel models for the never realized shuttle we didn't know we needed, cancelled before we realized we wanted it. But the Air Force knew. Really cool program, would have launched on a Titan much like the Gemini capsules and skip its way home to be used again. Which means it would have been MUCH smaller than the orbiter we did get with the Shuttle. Models of this, materials research, and the actual lifting bodies in the next building though were very important in gathering the data and experience needed to build and fly a plane reentering the atmosphere.
I mean that's a good start, but if we're going to have jet bombers you might as well make them fast. So I give you the B-58 Hustler.
And it did hustle. I mean, one J79 in a Starfighter is cool, but four under the pretty slim waisted area-rule fuselage and delta wing of a Convair designed bomber? Lovely. Speaking of speed, I think I mentioned one thing I like about early aviation is the pace of innovation and problem solving. When you look at the B-58, remember that Scott Crossfield went Mach 2 for the first time on Nov. 20, 1953 in a Douglas Skyrocket dropped from a B-29 mothership. Not quite 6 years later on October 15, 1959, the first production Hustler flew faster than Mach 2 for more than an hour. So what if it had a pretty short range, and never dropped any bombs, and wasn't even ever configured to drop conventional ordinance. And then there was safety. Darrell Schmidt, a B-58 pilot from 1966 to 1970, said, “There were 116 aircraft built, 26 of which were destroyed in accidents, with 36 crew members killed. If that doesn’t fit the definition of ‘dangerous,’ I don’t know what would.”
Do I just have a thing for fast, good looking cold war-era airplanes built to a very slim list of mission parameters, with dubious early testing and operational histories, and controversial service records? Perhaps.
So if you don't want to make one super fast, you make it INVISIBLE. Try to spot the stealth bomber in this photo.
Now, the North American F-82 might seems like just a curiosity. It may look like two Mustangs bolted together. Well, it was sort of. It was certainly based on mustang fuselages of late lightweight spec, but really it was a new design all around. So did it work? Actually yes, yes it did. Arriving too late to fill its intended role as a very long range escort for B-29s in the Pacific during WWII, the first 3 enemy aircraft shot down in the Korean War were credited to these. And that very long range? Really quite very long. On February 27, 1947, an F-82B with 4 drop tanks to augment the internal tank flew nonstop Hawaii to New York, 5,051 miles without refueling at an average speed of 347.5mph. The one that did it? The one on display. Betty Jo. That is still the longest nonstop flight ever made by a propeller-driven fighter, and the fastest such a distance has ever been covered in a piston-engined aircraft. Of course in 1986, the Voyager (hehe) designed by Burt Rutan broke the longest unrefueled propeller distance record with its 26,366 statute mile, 9 day 3 minute and 44 second circumnavigation of the world. But that plane isn't here, it's at the Smithsonian, and I have yet to see it.
Here's a peeled F-86 Sabre showing how to carry a pilot and some machine guns into battle.
And a little more Convair beauty. F-102.
The missile gallery means we're getting close to my favorite stuff. Yes, it's about to get even better.
Wind tunnel models for the never realized shuttle we didn't know we needed, cancelled before we realized we wanted it. But the Air Force knew. Really cool program, would have launched on a Titan much like the Gemini capsules and skip its way home to be used again. Which means it would have been MUCH smaller than the orbiter we did get with the Shuttle. Models of this, materials research, and the actual lifting bodies in the next building though were very important in gathering the data and experience needed to build and fly a plane reentering the atmosphere.
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CaptainChaos
Member
If you listen closely, you can still hear the little “brrrrrrrrrrrrrttttttsss” coming from the 30mm cannon on the A-10.
jgaz
Adventurer
Great pics. Thanks for sharing them.
I haven’t been to that museum since the late 90’s. They are doing a much better job of displaying the planes. It seems like there are a lot more under roof then I remember.
Is the cut away of a radial engine still there? You used to be able to turn it over with a hand crank (thru a gearbox) and see the internals move. I find those engines fascinating.
I haven’t been to that museum since the late 90’s. They are doing a much better job of displaying the planes. It seems like there are a lot more under roof then I remember.
Is the cut away of a radial engine still there? You used to be able to turn it over with a hand crank (thru a gearbox) and see the internals move. I find those engines fascinating.
Voyager3
Active member
Still no planned retirement date, I don't think
There might have been a cutaway, but I don't see a picture of it in my phone gallery. But just for you, here's this.
Voyager3
Active member
This trip has been amazing, and I'm grateful for the chance to spend 4 months on the road trying to make a difference on our beaches, lakes and rivers. However, I've been waiting for this day since I was a child. And I needed to have this moment. The volunteer who educated me on the Memphis Belle was walking out of the research and development hangar and it came into view right as he said to me, "well, there it is" because he knew where I was headed over the course of the day. I heard him, I acknowledged him but kept walking and could not break my gaze. I think he understood. This was my first view of it.
You'll notice it is difficult to get all in one photograph sometimes. I was also aware of all the amazing machinery parked under it, and you can park quite a bit under it. It's 186 feet long with a 105 foot wingspan and the cockpit is 20 feet off the ground. The first lap I did around it, I wasn't looking at the X-15 or the X-1B or the spy satellites or any of that. I just had to take it in.
I'll be perfectly honest here, this was an emotional moment for me.
Anyone else notice it towering over the last YF-12A? Pretty cool that that little black jet went Mach 3 isn't it? Well so did the big white one.
You'll notice it is difficult to get all in one photograph sometimes. I was also aware of all the amazing machinery parked under it, and you can park quite a bit under it. It's 186 feet long with a 105 foot wingspan and the cockpit is 20 feet off the ground. The first lap I did around it, I wasn't looking at the X-15 or the X-1B or the spy satellites or any of that. I just had to take it in.
I'll be perfectly honest here, this was an emotional moment for me.
Anyone else notice it towering over the last YF-12A? Pretty cool that that little black jet went Mach 3 isn't it? Well so did the big white one.
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Voyager3
Active member
So why do I love it? Fast? Check. Good looking? Yup. Cold war-era built to a slim list of mission parameters? Affirmative.
So far so good. What about those early tests? First flight, landing gear wouldn't retract and then caught fire on touchdown. The first time it went supersonic it flexed enough to peel a lot of its paint off. The first time it went Mach 3, it came back with 2 feet of the leading edge of the wing missing and was subsequently limited to Mach 2.5. The second Valkyrie, now that they had learned more about the construction processes and design addressed many of those issues and also went Mach 3. Once the temperatures had settled on that one, it was determined that if it had been flying with a full fuel load, it would have been able to sustain Mach 3 for 2.5 hours. Remember this thing first flew when The Animals and Roy Orbison were topping the charts in late summer 1964. No CAD, no digital flight control, no engine management computers. That YF-12A below it was mostly titanium alloy, 93% of its structural weight. Since we didn't have THAT much titanium, the Valkyrie was largely a stainless steel honeycomb with titanium on select portions where it would get the hottest. We had never flown a half million pound airplane over 2,000 mph before....until we did.
The political environment surrounding it was pretty complicated, but the short version was this thing was first flying when we really started to get good at just lobbing nukes at people on top of a missile without bothering with all this. Russian surface to air missile technology was advancing quickly, too. The program was shifted from military goals to research goals fairly early on. It was also a fairly expensive program at around $1.48 Billion. How many planes did we get for that? Just two. Wanna see some funny math? That worked out to almost $6 million per flight hour achieved. Steve Austin, eat your heart out.
Oh and then of course the infamous crash where NASA Pilot Joe Walker, flying in formation with Number #2 during a photo shoot, accidentally collided with it, partly due to visibility limitations and partly the vorticies from the Valkyrie's wingtips. Walker's F-104 exploded and he was killed, and the crippled bomber crashed into the desert. Pilot Al White managed to eject, but co-pilot Carl Cross did not.
Even though it never carried so much as a bomb sight, it taught us a ton about speed and heat, and sonic booms and compression lift, aerospace materials, construction and design. Data was used for the American SST project of the mid 60s and later the B-1.
And I finally got to see it.
So what else was cool on this end of the hangar? Oh just stuff like a Titan IV B rocket capable of lifting 23.9 tons into low earth orbit. In 1997 one of these launched NASA’s Cassini-Huygens spacecraft to study Saturn and Titan. What else is there, a spy satellite? Gambit 1 KH-7. Flown from 1963 to 1967. Capable of resolving a 23- foot object from orbit and the first satellite to feature stereo cameras. 3000 feet of film, which meant that yes, the film had to be dropped in a return capsule and caught in midair. What's that other charred capsule back there? Only the Apollo 15 command module.
The piece of moon rock I saw in Edmonton came back in this. The connections keep coming. Anyone know why the USAF wanted this particular CM in their museum?
That whole thing is a spy satellite. From 1971-1986, 19 missions using these Hexagon KH-9s imaged 877 million square miles. This would do wide area search with similar resoluton, and then Gambits would focus on potential cold war threats. This behemoth carried 320,000 feet of film, ~60 miles of it and 4 or 5 film return vehicles.
A couple of the lifting body aircraft that helped further our knowledge of reentry for space planes. Funny looking, but these went supersonic also. Col when you remember the first lifting body in the program was a glider towed behind a car. Yeah, a 1963 Pontiac Catalina convertible.
Fisher P-75A Eagle. Does the Fisher name sound familiar? It might if you're a GM fan. The Fisher Body Division of GM developed this plane to fill an urgent need for an interceptor early in WWII. At one point there was an order for 2500 of them, but in the end we had the P-47 and P-51 and just didn't need it. The engine was in the back with long driveshafts turning counter rotating props. That engine was essentially two Allison V1710's bolted together to make the V3420, a 3,420 cubic inch double V 24.
Can't seem to get away from this thing, it's rather conspicuous. The engine on the cart is the YJ93, produced only for this and the unrealized XF-108 Rapier Mach 3 interceptor project. Almost 30k pounds of thrust, and the Valkyrie has 6 of them. Oh, and a geeky moment, it was based on an engine that was essentially a larger version of the J79 that powered the F-104 Starfighter, that small plane crush of mine you've seen before which happens to be the plane that crashed into the other Valkyrie. These are the things I find interesting.
The X-3 never really did anything cool, it never broke the sound barrier because it didn't get the engines it needed. But it tested short wings that eventually found use in the Starfighter, so that's good. It's pointy though.
This is the last building. There's more cool stuff coming including Air Force One.
So far so good. What about those early tests? First flight, landing gear wouldn't retract and then caught fire on touchdown. The first time it went supersonic it flexed enough to peel a lot of its paint off. The first time it went Mach 3, it came back with 2 feet of the leading edge of the wing missing and was subsequently limited to Mach 2.5. The second Valkyrie, now that they had learned more about the construction processes and design addressed many of those issues and also went Mach 3. Once the temperatures had settled on that one, it was determined that if it had been flying with a full fuel load, it would have been able to sustain Mach 3 for 2.5 hours. Remember this thing first flew when The Animals and Roy Orbison were topping the charts in late summer 1964. No CAD, no digital flight control, no engine management computers. That YF-12A below it was mostly titanium alloy, 93% of its structural weight. Since we didn't have THAT much titanium, the Valkyrie was largely a stainless steel honeycomb with titanium on select portions where it would get the hottest. We had never flown a half million pound airplane over 2,000 mph before....until we did.
The political environment surrounding it was pretty complicated, but the short version was this thing was first flying when we really started to get good at just lobbing nukes at people on top of a missile without bothering with all this. Russian surface to air missile technology was advancing quickly, too. The program was shifted from military goals to research goals fairly early on. It was also a fairly expensive program at around $1.48 Billion. How many planes did we get for that? Just two. Wanna see some funny math? That worked out to almost $6 million per flight hour achieved. Steve Austin, eat your heart out.
Oh and then of course the infamous crash where NASA Pilot Joe Walker, flying in formation with Number #2 during a photo shoot, accidentally collided with it, partly due to visibility limitations and partly the vorticies from the Valkyrie's wingtips. Walker's F-104 exploded and he was killed, and the crippled bomber crashed into the desert. Pilot Al White managed to eject, but co-pilot Carl Cross did not.
Even though it never carried so much as a bomb sight, it taught us a ton about speed and heat, and sonic booms and compression lift, aerospace materials, construction and design. Data was used for the American SST project of the mid 60s and later the B-1.
And I finally got to see it.
So what else was cool on this end of the hangar? Oh just stuff like a Titan IV B rocket capable of lifting 23.9 tons into low earth orbit. In 1997 one of these launched NASA’s Cassini-Huygens spacecraft to study Saturn and Titan. What else is there, a spy satellite? Gambit 1 KH-7. Flown from 1963 to 1967. Capable of resolving a 23- foot object from orbit and the first satellite to feature stereo cameras. 3000 feet of film, which meant that yes, the film had to be dropped in a return capsule and caught in midair. What's that other charred capsule back there? Only the Apollo 15 command module.
The piece of moon rock I saw in Edmonton came back in this. The connections keep coming. Anyone know why the USAF wanted this particular CM in their museum?
That whole thing is a spy satellite. From 1971-1986, 19 missions using these Hexagon KH-9s imaged 877 million square miles. This would do wide area search with similar resoluton, and then Gambits would focus on potential cold war threats. This behemoth carried 320,000 feet of film, ~60 miles of it and 4 or 5 film return vehicles.
A couple of the lifting body aircraft that helped further our knowledge of reentry for space planes. Funny looking, but these went supersonic also. Col when you remember the first lifting body in the program was a glider towed behind a car. Yeah, a 1963 Pontiac Catalina convertible.
Fisher P-75A Eagle. Does the Fisher name sound familiar? It might if you're a GM fan. The Fisher Body Division of GM developed this plane to fill an urgent need for an interceptor early in WWII. At one point there was an order for 2500 of them, but in the end we had the P-47 and P-51 and just didn't need it. The engine was in the back with long driveshafts turning counter rotating props. That engine was essentially two Allison V1710's bolted together to make the V3420, a 3,420 cubic inch double V 24.
Can't seem to get away from this thing, it's rather conspicuous. The engine on the cart is the YJ93, produced only for this and the unrealized XF-108 Rapier Mach 3 interceptor project. Almost 30k pounds of thrust, and the Valkyrie has 6 of them. Oh, and a geeky moment, it was based on an engine that was essentially a larger version of the J79 that powered the F-104 Starfighter, that small plane crush of mine you've seen before which happens to be the plane that crashed into the other Valkyrie. These are the things I find interesting.
The X-3 never really did anything cool, it never broke the sound barrier because it didn't get the engines it needed. But it tested short wings that eventually found use in the Starfighter, so that's good. It's pointy though.
This is the last building. There's more cool stuff coming including Air Force One.
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jgaz
Adventurer
Because all three members of the crew served in the USAF?
Voyager3
Active member
Bingpot!
Voyager3
Active member
Here's the business end of that YF-12A
And this is the business end of the XF-84H, otherwise known as maybe the loudest airplane ever built. Its 5850 hp turboprop certainly had some torque that was difficult to deal with in flight. Some of its other issues: incapacitating sonic booms from the tips of the propeller even at idle on the ground, it caused severe nausea and headaches for ground crews, could be heard 25 miles away on runup, disrupted air traffic control due to vibration risks and forcing communication with crews by light signals, and the flight test center forced Republic to tow it out on the Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards before running it up. It did not catch on.
Between the eras of old school fighter escorts and in flight refueling we tried parasite fighters again. During testing, the XF-85 Goblin would be carried in the bomb bay of a B-29, lowered on a trapeze, then flown back and docked. About half ended in emergency landings after the pilot failed to get recaptured by the mothership, and with refueling showing promise, the program was cancelled.
I remember flying the X-29 in my old sims
This, the F-107 was nearly operational. Built on the successful F-100 Super Sabre, it was beaten out by the F-105 Thunderchief, but it's a great stop to explain again why the airplanes in this museum are so good. When this prototype stopped flying in late '57, it was just brought here. This place has been around so long, that these great aircraft, especially the experimentals, never have a chance to sit and deteriorate somewhere. They finish their job and then come here. It's well labeled also. The funky top mounted inlet was a variable area inlet duct (VAID). Unique at the time, North American eventually used it on the A-5 Vigilante, the Valkyrie, and the designs for the Rapier that was supposed to share the Valkyrie engine.
Keep children interested. Also, the parking lot was pretty packed, but it's really big in here, so everyone can spread out.
Alright, here's a fun one. The Ryan X-13 Vertijet. It proved a jet could take off from its tail, fly horizontally and then land on its tail again. Sure it eventually made more sense to take off horizontally and fly horizontally, but we had to try.
This funny looking thing did fly. It was called Tacit Blue and it proved, in the wake of planes like the F-117 that stealthy could be curvy. Once it was declassified it came to live here, but it flew 135 times demonstrating the ability of advanced technologies to allow an aircraft to loiter over enemy territory without being discovered.
This one is very clever. Called the NT-33A, based on the Lockheed T-33 trainer, this was used to study the flying qualities, cockpit displays, control sticks, and flight control design of many widely varied aircraft like the X-15, A-10, F-15, F-16, F-18, F-117, and F-22. Modified by civilian contractor Calspan Corporation, it could be programmed to simulate the feel of completely different aircraft and served for 40 years.
And this is the business end of the XF-84H, otherwise known as maybe the loudest airplane ever built. Its 5850 hp turboprop certainly had some torque that was difficult to deal with in flight. Some of its other issues: incapacitating sonic booms from the tips of the propeller even at idle on the ground, it caused severe nausea and headaches for ground crews, could be heard 25 miles away on runup, disrupted air traffic control due to vibration risks and forcing communication with crews by light signals, and the flight test center forced Republic to tow it out on the Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards before running it up. It did not catch on.
Between the eras of old school fighter escorts and in flight refueling we tried parasite fighters again. During testing, the XF-85 Goblin would be carried in the bomb bay of a B-29, lowered on a trapeze, then flown back and docked. About half ended in emergency landings after the pilot failed to get recaptured by the mothership, and with refueling showing promise, the program was cancelled.
I remember flying the X-29 in my old sims
This, the F-107 was nearly operational. Built on the successful F-100 Super Sabre, it was beaten out by the F-105 Thunderchief, but it's a great stop to explain again why the airplanes in this museum are so good. When this prototype stopped flying in late '57, it was just brought here. This place has been around so long, that these great aircraft, especially the experimentals, never have a chance to sit and deteriorate somewhere. They finish their job and then come here. It's well labeled also. The funky top mounted inlet was a variable area inlet duct (VAID). Unique at the time, North American eventually used it on the A-5 Vigilante, the Valkyrie, and the designs for the Rapier that was supposed to share the Valkyrie engine.
Keep children interested. Also, the parking lot was pretty packed, but it's really big in here, so everyone can spread out.
Alright, here's a fun one. The Ryan X-13 Vertijet. It proved a jet could take off from its tail, fly horizontally and then land on its tail again. Sure it eventually made more sense to take off horizontally and fly horizontally, but we had to try.
This funny looking thing did fly. It was called Tacit Blue and it proved, in the wake of planes like the F-117 that stealthy could be curvy. Once it was declassified it came to live here, but it flew 135 times demonstrating the ability of advanced technologies to allow an aircraft to loiter over enemy territory without being discovered.
This one is very clever. Called the NT-33A, based on the Lockheed T-33 trainer, this was used to study the flying qualities, cockpit displays, control sticks, and flight control design of many widely varied aircraft like the X-15, A-10, F-15, F-16, F-18, F-117, and F-22. Modified by civilian contractor Calspan Corporation, it could be programmed to simulate the feel of completely different aircraft and served for 40 years.