Could a large aircraft such as a 747 or 757 or the like handle a barrel roll, or is it too heavy/bulky?
Other than damage to whatever is inside being flipped like that and people bouncing around, would there be any problems with the airplane itself?
Thanks
Only on a specially designed treadmill.
The prototype of the Boeing 707 did a roll. Video. Not as large as a 747, but it was a one-g maneuver. In the hands of a skilled pilot, I don’t see why a 747 couldn’t do it.
They can do a Split S. I remember seeing a diagram of that incident, I think they did technically roll, but were heading downhill when it happened.
Absolutely. I do it in Microsoft Flight Sim all the time.
Hey, I hear that gane is pretty darn realistic! Seems like either Flight Sim or one of the high-end simulators used by Boeing would have the computing power to simulate your attempt (and crash you appropriately if it wouldn’t work).
Note that the Master’s column is from 1978. There have been a lot of flights, and advances in computing power and aeronautical engineering since then. Maybe it still hasn’t been tried but what do the computer simulations say?
You can point the nose down in any aircraft and do a complete 360 roll. The question is whether an airliner can do it in <i>horizontal flight</i>. I would say no, but the 747 is likely agile enough to do it if it is carrying a very weak fuel load and no payload, as under those conditions its power to weight ratio is surprisingly high. As the previous poster mentioned, a 707 flown by Boeing’s chief test pilot did it in Seattle.
Thjings don’t get flipped around when you do a barrel roll. Positive g forces are maintained so everything is kept in place against the floor. Bob Hoover demonstrates this well in his Shrike Commander by placing a a cup on the dash and pouring a glass of water while doing a complete roll.
However, large aircraft don’t have anything like the g limits of smaller aircraft. And while you can roll the aircraft and maintain less than 2 gs, the wings in a rolling manoeuvre may be subjected to significantly more gs than the fuselage. This is of particular concern in a rolling/pitching manoeuvre like a barrel roll.
IIRC, a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress is capable of various aerobatic maneuvres, including loops and Immelmann Turns, but it’s greatly frowned apon due to the stress on the airframe and the un-necessary risk (a B-52 is never going to be able to roll or loop fast enough to get much of the benefit usually derived in combat from such maneuvers). The idea of a B-52 doing an Immelmann was that the bomber could deploy a nuclear bomb at the apex of the climb, the bomb arcing away on a ballistic trajectory while the bomber rolled over and ran in the opposite direction. The introduction of cruise missiles mooted the usefulness of this.
That said, there was a B-52 which plowed into the ground a few years back when the pilot tried to put it into a roll, but lacked both the speed and altitude to do it. See above, re: It’s very frowned upon to try. Also, IIRC, due to the payloads involved (lots of fuel and bombs for a B-52 to do it’s job), the plane is much more rugged and much more heavily powered thrust-wise than an airliner typically is.
Do you have a citation regarding that B-52 crash?
Assuming this is the incident referred to, it wasn’t a roll the pilot was attempting but a sharp turn following a missed approach procedure which took the plane into a 90-degree bank and caused the crash.
Sounds like the crash I was thinking of. Must have had the details wrong with the maneuver, but the end result was effectively the same.