I remember that the Brits had a really cool looking long-range bomber called the “Vulcan” It is a really striking looking aircraft, with big delta wings. i believe the Brits used them in the falklands war of 1982, and had to refuel 3 times in flight to get them down there! Are these still in service?
I think the people who will find themselves the target of B-52 attacks will be able to give you a much better answer.
Then again, they may not.
It appears from this discussion that the bombers have numbers (model numbers?): B-52, B70, etc. Why did they start over again with B-1, B-2? And did the same happen with fighters? (F-104 was before F-15, F-18, etc?)
The last Vulcan went out of service not too long ago.
Another reason the B-52 is still around is because once again, the world changed. Just as the XB-70 (and the Canadian Avro Arrow) were developed for a role that became obsolete before the aircraft was developed, the B-1 sort of fell into the same category. These bombers were originally developed for low-level penetration a long distance into heavily defended airspace. Specifically, to be able to penetrate the Soviet Union and deliver a nuclear payload.
Once the Iron Curtain Fell, the U.S. found itself in a position where it could establish air superiority over virtually any foe whenever it wanted to. So the skies got a lot safer for the bombers, and therefore the B-52 got a new lease on life.
I thought that the B-1Bs that crashed in the late 80s and early 90s were often due to bird hits – the swing-wing design I think was particularly vulnerable, as were the engine intakes. I could be remembering wrong. I think this is because the B-1B was designed to fly low and fast and be manueverable to get to targets. As others have said, now we have F/A-18s, F-16s, F-15s, cruise missiles, and a whole host of other things to do more surgical strikes. You don’t need more than one bomb to hit a target nowadays, and if you do (for instance with carpet bombing), you don’t need to be low and fast about it. So, use a fighter-bomber, a cruise missile, or just use a B-52. I could be wrong about it all though.
Another thing to remember about the B-1B was that the B-1A was developed and then cancelled by Carter. Reagan restarted the program, and by that time they needed to redesign (to make the B-1B).
In other news, I am 98% certain that B-2s were used for the first time in Kosovo. I even remember a hit percentage being published. Also, a bunch of B-1Bs were moved to the Gulf region last week for some war games. Whether they stay there after the war games will be up to the military.
In this situation, I can’t really imagine a scenario where a B-52 or a B-1B could accomplish something that fighter-bombers or cruise missiles couldn’t. We are talking about small, generally non-hardened targets dispersed over wide regions. Better to use a few bombs on each than just saturation bombing of the whole region.
I used to work on the B-1 Project at Edwards AFB. I was told the B-1B was subsonic. But it was said with a wink. Although I never found out officially, I had always assumed that it would go past Mach 1. Looks like it’s official now.
Yeah, I seemed to remember that being the official line at one time too, Johnny. I used to be confused as to why the “new and updated” B version seemed to have “less” performance than the A.
Not only did the world change around the B-52, it more-or-less adopted the mission it was assigned by default. Originally, and perhaps still at least in name, the B-52 was a strategic asset–a nuke-carrying plane.
Practically, it was an excellent platform for delivering conventional weapons. When the B-1B and the B-2 came along, the strategic role was in part taken up by those planes. However, by then the B-52 had proven itself an excellent conventional weapons system. It moved easily into that role, as well as serving as a backup strategic system during the long, long periods of time in which the B-1B has been grounded.
Now all they have to do is build real “Old Dogs”. That would be beyond cool…
Originally, each service had its own numbering system.
The Army Air Service, (later the Army Air Corp, then the Army Air Force, and finally the USAF), issued a simple letter prefix followed by the model number. Variants were designated by a letter suffix (so that the -A variant was generally the second try). When the USAAF broke free of the Army and became the USAF, the Army made no serious changes to their system, although, since they were limited to helicopters and unarmed aircraft, some of their numbers did not perfectly match those of the Air Force.
Common Army designations included Pursuit aircraft, (P-38, P-40, P-47, P-51, P-80), Bomber aircraft (B-17, B-24, B-25, B-26, B-29), Cargo aircraft (C-46, C-47, C-54, C-69), Attack aircraft, (A-20, A-26), etc.
The Air Force left most of that system in place, changing the P=Pursuit to F=Fighter so that the P-51 and P-80 became F-51 and F-80, for example. And they tended to drop the Attack designation, so that when the B-26 was retired, the A-26 was redesignated B-26).
The Navy and Marines used a rather different approach, with a one or two-letter use designator (PB = Patrol Bomber, F = Fighter, SN = Scout trainer, SB = Scout Bomber, R = Resupply (instead of C = Cargo, etc.) To that they affixed a Letter suffix indicating the manufacturer: A = Brewster, B = Boeing, C = Curtiss, D = Douglas, F = Grumman, U = Chance-Vought, Y = Consolidated, with a bunch I’ve skipped. The first fighter by Boeing was the FB; the first fighter by Grumman was FF, the first Patrol Bomber by Consolidated was PBY, etc. When a new model was added, it got a numeric suffix. When a new plane was designed, it got a number in front of the manufacturer’s code, thus Consolidated’s second Patrol Bomber was the PB2Y and the F6F was the sixth model considered by the Navy from Grumann.
This meant that (from an Air Force perspective) there were multiple F4 fighters: F4B Boeing biplane fighter from the 20s, F4F Grumman fighter from the very late 30s, F4U Chance-Vought fighter from the 40, and the F4H McDonnell fighter known to even those not excited about aircraft as the Phantom II.
The two systems also caused confusion because an Air Force C-47 was the same plane as the Navy R4D. (And the Navy’s F4U and TBF, when built by General Motors during WWII became the FM and TBM although you’d need to look at the registration to tell them apart.)
In 1963, the military was ordered to standardize across all services. The Air Force tended to win out over the Navy as the Navy’s manufacturer code was dropped. Several codes were “normalized” between the services, and all future development was to start over from 1. The XB70 was already on the drawing boards, so it kept its high number. The Navy had several fighters with low numbers that were allowed to keep numbers in that range with the translations being: FJ-3 = F1C, F2H-3 = F2C, F3H-2 = F3C, F4H-1 = F4B, F8U-1 = F8A, F9F-8 = F9J, and F3D-2 = F10B. The Air Force had a Phantom II on order, but they accepted it as the F4C instead of the F110 that they had expected.
Planes designed and ordered after 1963 started with the lowest unused number available.
There are “apparent” and real exceptions. The F5A was ordered in 1962, but was assigned the number F5 instead of the available F112, apparently in anticipation of the rules changes, on the other hand, the F111 was given that higher number, despite being requested after 1963. The F117 is an anomaly. F117 was a “flight register” number that was not part of the numbering system. Since it was a super-secret plane, no official number was assigned until its presence in the USAF inventory was revealed. At that time, someone said, "Oh, heck, let’s just leave it the F117) (despite the fact that it is an attack weapon, not a fighter).
Tomndebb,
Any idea how the Phantom and SkyRay both got the F4 designation?
The McDonnell F4H-1 Phantom II (the original Phantom was the short-lived FH of the early 50s) became the F4B in 1963.
The Douglas F4D SkyRay became the F6A in 1963, but it was so close to retirement that nearly all literature on it uses the F4D identification.
The Navy had so many planes that changed designators, that it was hard for the personnel to keep track (and, of course, some “names” just stuck around: I ran into some sailors from a carrier in 1965 on an overlook in Quebec. I was asking about their E1 Early Warning planes. They “corrected” me, “Those are Willy Fudds.” (From the original Navy code WF for Electronic Warning (model 1) by Grumann.)
From what I understand, the B-1B doesn’t have less performace, it was optimised for a different mission. The original B-1A’s engine inlet was designed for high speed and altitude, the B-1B’s was optimised for low-level penetration. A couple of years ago I worked on a B-1 project and the pilots told me that although the B-1B wasn’t too spectacular up high, it was the fastest aircraft in the world below 1,000 feet.
Agreed Jet. On paper though, if you look at Max altitude and speed, the B1A seems to have the edge on the B though… however like you said you have to know they’re for a different mission.
There was a time, not too long ago, when some “official” sources also claimed that the Whatever-117 was subsonic. I think I even once saw a cite which quoted a “subsonic” speed of 700 some odd MPH.
Actually I am under the impression that the F-117A is subsonic.
Basically what happened was that B52’s were designed by mature technology. In the 1950’s, there was an awareness that a lot of new aviation technology was being developed and some of it would be incorporated into future bombers. However, designers realized that some of these upcoming ideas would work well and others would not. And there was no way to predict in advance which was which. So the decision was made to develop a bomber using proven existing technology and then, when the new ideas had been reviewed and evaluated, replacing them with the next generation of planes. The B52 was the plane based on the best of 50’s aviation technology.
What happened then was unexpected. Some of the ideas that were being developed didn’t work out as expected and were dropped. Other ideas appeared to be worth incorporating into new bombers but ran into engineering or production difficulties. Proposed improvements on developing technologies and whole new lines of thought also came along. In general what happened was that designers never reached a readily apparent plateau where they felt they could comfortably rest. So the B52’s that were intended as a stopgap design continued in service while its replacements were always around the next corner.
(One more quick comment on the F4D vs F4H designations:
Since, in the old Navy system, the manufacturer’s suffix was integral to the ID, it never bothered the Navy to have two “F4x” planes. In WWII, the Grumann F4F and Chance-Vought F4U had overlapping operational service lives. Similarly, Grumann and Chance-Vought (Ling-Temco-Vought by then?) each had an operational fighter in the 50s designated F7F and F7U.)
[Off Topic]
Can anyone tell me how the XB-70 Valkyrie was supposed to actually carry any bombs? This picture shows the underside of the Valkyrie and all I see is engines. By the time the engines are done you are left with just a bit of wing that wouldn’t seem to have any internal storage capacity.
Was the plane supposed to carry missiles on underwing mounts or something?
[/Off Topic]
The XB-70’s bomb bay was tucked in between the left-side and right-side inlet ducts, about in the middle of the box structure below the wings. The inboard sides of the inlet ducts did not go straight back to the #3 and #4 engines; they curved away from each other and back in, with the bomb bay fitting between the curves.
The F-117 is very subsonic.