To the radars of 1946? Not really. Of 2026? Hell yes.
The towing fleet also has a big signature.
Interesting. A Lun class wing-in-ground patrol ship. (Technically not an airplane since they only get a few meters airborne above sea level. More like a hovercraft but using short wings with enclosed ends for ground-effect lift rather than lifting fans and a skirt.)
Where and when was this picture from?
Of course, the XG-20 (about which I didn’t know until @JKellyMap’s post) was obviously the biggest and (probably) most expensive glider ever built, its predecessors in WWII were much cheaper.
The one-way nature of the missions meant that they were treated as semi-expendable leading to construction from common and inexpensive materials such as wood. Most nations seriously attempted to recover as many as possible, to re-use them, so they were not originally intended to be disposable, although resource-rich nations like the US sometimes used them as if they were, since it was easier than recovering them.
And I daresay that even the XG-20 was much less expensive than other military aircraft being developed after the war, and if the intended mission had proved necessary, they might have been more economical than powered transport aircraft.
We are talking gliders for var. dozens of soldiers…
My wag is: yes, they should show up in late 1940ies radar
From wiki:
- Length: 77 ft 1 in (23.50 m)
- Wingspan: 110 ft 0 in (33.53 m)
- Height: 33 ft 10 in (10.31 m)
That was not a svelte plane, I rather a big Bertha type of airframe
Magiver gave a great source for the Caspian Sea Monster. Thanks. Google lens search also has a number of images. I’ll look for the source of this exact picture. Probably a dawn/dusk picture before the recent move. A fascinating aircraft/vessel watchacallit.
That thing has a tailgunner position!
Just read that BA has a job posting for a pilot to taxi 3-4 planes a day from terminal 5 to terminal 3 at O’Hare. $90-100,000. Anyone interested?
Interesting. The airlines I’m familiar with use specially-trained aircraft mechanics to do that work.
I wonder if maybe O’Hare ATC has had enough excitement with mechanics that they’re now demanding only rated pilots do that work.
BA O’Hare Sounds like ATC. Crazy that they’re not allowed to use a Tug. Knowing O’Hare that could be an 8 hour a day job.
There are ordinary tugs that move airplanes only slowly; 3-5mph. There are also so-called supertugs that can make 15mph. What they’re not good at is accelerating or slowing.
O’Hare is so busy and so congested and so fast-paced all day every day that even supertugs are obstacles to the airport’s productivity.
FWIW typical taxi speeds on straightaways are 20-25mph. Curves and intersections are of course much slower. O’Hare, and certainly the convoluted path between those two particular terminals, is lots of sharp turns and curves with very little straightaway. Suggesting that tug performance isn’t the limiting factor.
United Airlines jet landing at Newark hits light pole, truck crashes on New Jersey Turnpike
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said the plane was on its way to Runway 29 when it hit the pole, causing damage to the pole and a tractor-trailer traveling south on the turnpike. The driver was taken to the hospital with minor injuries and was later released, the Port Authority said.
“OK so NOW you believe when i say, you guys are coming in too low when landing on 29?”
Landing on EWR 29 is a rare and nasty experience. I’ve done it maybe twice in 35 years. Here’s the FAA Airfield diagram - KEWR.
The norm is landing on the outboard 4R/22L and taking off on the inboard 4L/22R. A few of the turboprops or RJs would use 11/29, but only under unusual conditions.
29 is 6725 feet long. So shorter than LGA or DCA which are ~7000. I don’t recall anywhere we took 767s with such a short runway. IIRC you don’t find 767s at LGA or DCA.
Clearly somebody was waay more worried about runway length than they ought have been and so flew the approach some combination of at a shallow angle and aiming close to brick zero. Either (or worse yet both) of which drag your gear through passing vehicles and obstacles.
I’ll be real curious to hear why anyone was trying to put a 767 on 29. Both why ATC (presumably) started it and why the pilot finished it.
I’ve been on the turnpike when a plane made a successful landing on 29; I can tell you it’s a pucker factor just being in a vehicle!
If I were the pilot I’d tell ATC my company landing mins for a 767 are 6,726 ft.
I suspect a few approach lights got a haircut with this landing.
Not now, but the 767-400 was designed to Delta’s specifications for a widebody that could get into LaGuardia, as a replacement for the L-1011s that they were using there.
Funny that there’s a ballpark right in the middle of the airport! Must make for some wild Little League games.
(I kid. Apparently “Ball Park” is the name of a tarmac zone).
Also, interesting that change in magnetic variation has ceased. Is this the pause before the apocalypse?
(Again, I kid. The magnetic poles are always moving, but apparently New Jersey happens to be a place where the associated slow sloshing happens to cancel out in recent years).
I never flew the L-1011, but I rode in them a lot.
Sitting in the cockpit looking over the Captain’s shoulder as he (back then all he) shoe-horned that thing onto that short runway and then around the crowded narrow taxiways to the far too-small terminal was always an exciting show.
For a big and fast airplane, it had remarkable short-field performance.
As mentioned upthread, I visited the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tuscon, AZ. Here’s a photo album of some of the 350+ aircraft on display. I barely had time to scratch the surface.
Right next door, but unfortunately no longer offering tours, the Boneyard.
