This seems a perfect group to field this question, then: I’ve seen plenty of documentary footage of B-17’s bringing their crews back home even though they’d been badly mangled by enemy fire. Was the B-24 as sturdy? If not, I would think the durability of the B-17 would endear it to the crews and the documentary filmers.
That was my vote, too, mainly because it just looked so damned cool.
Why was the Valkyrie program cancelled, anyway? Too accident-prone? Too expensive? Unneeded, since the B-52 was still going strong? Something else?
A B-1B anecdote.
A buddy of mine’s family owned a nice little fishing pond near here. He and I were fishing there early one spring morning, out in a little aluminum boat.
I heard some sort of whooshing noise and looked around just in time to see a B-1 coming towards us, about 300 ft off to the side, about 200 ft high. He was practically on top of us, the sound right after he passed was an incredible contrast to our idyllic morning. And just as quickly, he was gone. The pond is in a creek channel system in an otherwise very flat landscape, they were barreling through that at what would be lower than the mean elevation of the surrounding terrain. Looked like a lot of fun!
It was too expensive, the technologies were too new and as such the first prototype did not measure up to spec. The second one did, but by then the Valkyrie was already doomed, because they knew that it could never be built in B-52 type numbers and even at Mach 3 at high altitude it was vulnerable to being shot down, as demonstrated by the U-2 downing in 1960. As a result, they turned it into a test-bed.
Still, imagine seeing that beast fly. That would be magnificent.
I’m not sure if the B-17 was actually tougher than a B-24, but it had the reputation of being the toughest plane out there. Just imagine a news reel about the war being seen in the ealry days after America’s involvement. A B-17 with several holes and missing parts of it’s fuselage comes in for a landing, while the narrator (in theat stereotypical narrator voice) proclaims:
“Dateline: England. Here we she a beaten and battered mighty B-17 bomber. She looks to be in bad shape, but don’t worry boys, she still broguht all of you back home. This Flying Fortress can take a pounding and still deliver her payload to the heart of Nazi Germany. Mighty B-17, we salute you. Take that Hitler.”
Now the B-17 is now the symbol of America’s spirit in the war. We have so much determination, that even our planes never give up! So that just prompts more and more people to see the B-17 as the symbol of the air campagin in Europe, and for the war effort as a whole.
Way too expensive, plagued with problems, and outmoded.
The technology of the time was just not up to building a supersonic bomber with the right power to weight ratio. The B-70 used lots of titanium, and we hadn’t yet developed the tools or techniques for working with it. We didn’t have lightweight composites or truly high-power engines or variable-geometry wings for dealing with different handling needs.
The Vietnam war was ramping up, and more conventional weapons had the priority for money. The price tag for the B-70 seemed to be steep at the time.
And, we were developing ICBMs, so the need for a USSR-penetrating manned bomber was less. At the same time, supersonic AA missiles had been perfected, so the goal was not flying faster than a fighter with cannon, but flying faster than a supersonic fighter carrying supersonic missiles. Seemed like a forlorn hope.
The B-1 benefitted from a lot of new technology. Even so, I was against building it at the time, and I still think it’s not cost-effective. I think we should have invested in a B-52 replacement.
Given our current need for multi-role systems, we should have built a truly “modern” bomber:
[ul]
[li]very long range[/li][li]fast (but not necessarily supersonic)[/li][li]stealthy (not as much as the B-2, but even the B1B has stealth features)[/li][li]Stageable, requiring short takeoff/landing and low maintenance in primitive conditions[/li][li]Multi-payload capable[/li][li]Modular, so that upgrades and payload modifications are quick and cheap[/li][li]Small. The B-2 is a good example of a high-capacity bomber that isn’t enormous[/li][/ul]
I am still puzzled why the USAF neglects stageable aircraft. The USSR built their airframes to work from very primitive airstrips, while ours require an entire modern airbase around them. This forces us to ally ourselves with nearby countries, reducing our strategic options. I wonder if this is the AF and Navy at work; the Navy maintaining that its aircraft carriers are the choice for nearby airfields?
The mission profile was to fly across the Soviet border very low, to avoid radar. There’s a famous poster of a B-1B shooting across some Arctic lake with a huge wave of water following behind.
Good question. I have two images stuck in my mind, one of a shot-up B-17 with a guy sticking his hand through a hole, the other of a B-24 with its wing coming off in a ball of flame.
I seem to remember reading that the B-24 was less robust than the B-17. It was particularly prone to wing failures. We did build more of them, and used them in all theaters. I think the B-17 was judged to be obsolete, and we used them in Europe cuz of the short range. Remember that it debuted in 1936; we had 5+ years to work the bugs out. In comparison, Consolidated didn’t even start work on the B-24 until 1939.
Yeah. W007! :eek: Looking at it, I can feel my teeth rattling.
Of course, that must be a Photoshop image. but who cares!
This one had his wings extended and was doing some pretty good manuevering…
I think the main reason the XB-70 wasn’t further developed is because of the SAM threat. But it sort of forced the Soviets to come up with the MiG-25 Foxbat. Fast and could fly high, but not very maneuverable. They ended up with a countermeasure for a threat we didn’t continue.
The B-1A was supersonic. The B-1B wasn’t/isn’t. That was the official word in the mid-'80s. But the pilots winked. 
IIRC the B-1 has 1/100 the RCS of a B-52.
Regarding the B-17, I recall seeing a picture (which, of course, I can’t find online) of a B-17—flying, I believe, out of North Africa—which was rammed by a German fighter. The picture shows a diagonal slash that almost severed the fuselage just aft of the waist guns.
According to the accompanying story, the tail gunner scrambled forward (understandable), and everyone prepared to bail out; but the pilots brought it back to base and a (relatively) normal landing. It was only then, when the aircraft was safely on the ground, that it finally folded up.
It was incidents such as this that cemented the Fortress’ reputation for toughness.
And while I’m aware that I’m violating the definition of “bomber” as used in this thread, I’m still going to nominate the Speedy-D (aka “Slow but Deadly”). It was obsolescent by the time the US entered WWII, but it did win the Battle of Midway among others. And it is pretty well documented that pilots preferred it to its successor, the SB2C (“Son of a Bitch, 2nd Class”).
According to the IMDB, the movie Fail Safe:
A reconnaisance plane with a bomb bay. Yeah, I guess it falls in the sub-chaser category but I snuck it in.
I would probably be in love with the Vulcan if I’d ever seen it flying. A monstrous Delta wing would be impressive without even trying.
The Canadians use to put on a hell of a show with one of their Nimrods. A little too good. They were cranking that thing around like it was an A-10. At the time I thought they were pushing it way beyond aerodynamic limits. A couple of years later they lost one at an airshow. Thought the same thing about the Masters of Disaster show. It looked like an accident waiting to happen. It happened.
To be fair to the hustler , it was not so much a bomber as it was a penetrator. Instead of bombing citys , It was meant for blasting corridors through soviet frontal airspace , so that the follow on B-52’s and the proposed XB-70’s could take out tertiary targets that the missiles had either missed , or were never targeted on.
With inflight refueling , range is not so much a determining factor anymore.
Declan
Not us , we use the P-3 orion thats been rebadged, the Nimrod in question was RAF doing the CNE airshow in Toronto , and went into lake Ontario.
Declan
The Soviets only had to deal with one continental land mass, and up to the eighties , when the Eagle and Falcon started entering full up production, the most high tech aircraft on the Nato side was still the F-4 phantom. So boxed aircraft made some sense. In a high attrition war between Nato and the WarPac alliances, both planes and pilots would have been used up in atrocious numbers.
Neither side could have produced replacement stock as was done in world war two, in the amount of time that the war was expected to last, so each side had its own doctrine on how to wage it.
The Soviets built rough field capable aircraft that could be serviced by very inexperienced mechanics , but may have only had a combat duration of several minutes, while the mainly american doctrine was to have highly capable equipment and people, but expect to go nuclear within several days of crossing the line of departure.
Lastly as I mentioned at the top , while the soviets only had to concern themselves with one land mass , American equipment could have been in operation in all theaters of possible operations.
Declan
I did see one once - it must have been in the 70s - and it was just as impressive as you’d think; low beat-ups over the runway and steep jet-fighter style climbs and rolls. You can well believe that at altitude there wouldn’t be a fighter that could stay with it. A fantastic machine for 1950s technology, I mean, we were still using biplane bombers an eyeblink earlier.