Pardon my ignorance but what's MWR?

 

Thanks for sharing. Great pics!
Agree with you it's visually one of the hottest looking planes around. When I visited the Fighterworld museum in Newcastle, there was a forward section of a Mirage where visitors could sit in the cockpit. It was tiny, even for someone like me who's 5ft4in. One wonders how a 6ft tall pilot could fit inside and not lose their legs if they had to eject.

 

The small cockpit was an issue, however the ejection seats were equipped with retractors that pulled the pilot's legs back onto the seat pan as it ascended, thus reducing the likelihood of impact on the canopy bow.

This is an old graphic illustrating the layout, but it's probably not much changed today.

 

BE1900D is just terrible to maintain. Pilots love them. But maintenance is a absolute nightmare for example to change a oxygen bottle you have to remove all avionics and avionics trays from the nose of the aircraft to get at the bottles. There is other very stupid designs as well.

SA227 is junk for pilots and maintenance. Everything is completely terrible for access. Pressurization issues non stop and the wings leak fuel non stop, crazy thing is it’s mostly acceptable depending on location of the leaks… I call them death traps. If I walked out and see that was my plane to fly on I would actually turn around get another ticket.

 

Military Watch Resource

 

Hahaha

Who was around when the B-52 was still new?

Image courtesy of Avgeekery.com

 

It doesn't have enough winglets/strakes/spoilers .

I'm just surprised as to why Beech didn't fit canards as well, just to balance out the external appendages.

 

I saw a newsreel at the local movie theatre when I was a young kid, it had a B-52 as well as other US aircraft, I think it was something to do with the Cold War, but I only remember the aircraft.

The next time I saw one was about 25 years later as it approached a strip I was duty crew on. I could tell it was a B-52 by the trails of black smoke it was pumping out of the old P&W J57s.

 

Ah yes, the black smoke trails. It's an incredible aircraft isn't it? I wasn't even a twinkle in my father's eye when it first entered service.

Most of the ones we see here in Oz are based in Guam I believe.

I was lucky enough to have a close look at one at the air museum in Darwin during the early 1990s. The aircraft was a gift from the USA. Apologies for the poor quality of the pics as they're "pictures of pictures":


B-52G. Aircraft no. 59-2596. USAF 43rd Bomb Wing.
The aircraft was purchased in fiscal year 1959 so it was already over 30 years old when this pic was taken.


Tail art. Note the bombs on the palm tree masquerading as coconuts. The inscription says "No Buff Too Tuff - 43rd Maintenance"


Nose art "Darwin's Pride"

The next time I saw a B-52 again was some years later at the Australian International Airshow at Avalon.

 

Hahaha.
Yes, there's quite a few bits and pieces hanging off it isn't there. It's almost like the designers thought "Oh heck, I forgot to do this" or "Heck, I didn't make the rudder big enough. Better add some little fences on the tailplane..."

 

They just signed an agreement with Rolls Royce to re engine the aircraft thus extending its life well beyond 2050. The KC135 and all other 707 based equipment can use the engines from the B52s with some fairly minor modification or case changes.

 

Wow! The B-52 in service till 2050? That's at least 70-80 years for some airframes. Won't there be problems with metal fatigue etc?

 

Nah, most of the stringers, frames and skins will have been replaced somewhere along the line during its lifetime. Military maintenance and civilian maintenance are two different animals as the military chaps don’t consider cost for one second where as us civilian guys it’s all about the cost.

 

Did you get inside? It's VERY cramped and small, at least if you are a normal sized human being. I have been in a lot of military aircraft over the years, so all kinds of fighters (F4, F14, F15, F16, etc.) plus different transports, and even other bombers like the B1, but this thing was terribly cramped and felt like you had to be part contortionist to get into the cockpit area. More room for bombs and gas I suppose...

 

No, I couldn't get inside unfortunately. The bomb bay was open though. Didn't seem as big as I thought it would be when I recall old footage of B-52s dropping huge numbers of bombs over Vietnam.

How'd you get the chance to get into in all those aircraft? I would have loved it.

I've been fortunate enough to have flown in a few military aircraft as well, such as the C-130, DHC-4 Caribou, UH-1 and UH-60 Blackhawk. In a former life, I was an air force medical officer, so we needed to train for aeromedical evacuation in those types.

 

I worked in security for a major airshow here for 15 years. Most of the pilots were anxious to show off their aircraft, and since we were around when the crowds were not, that afforded a lot of opportunities to get inside these planes. Saw some wild stuff in those 15 years...broken windows from an F4 pushing it just a little too much (was a PR nightmare for the show), a CF-18 nearly pancaked one year (and I was close enough to nearly crap my pants, because I'm not sure I would have been clear of it - I was assigned to a boatload of photographers so we were on the adjacent taxiway that wasn't far from where it would have crashed - plane was grounded because he had to pull up so hard), tire rims failing and blowing the detached ring 50 meters away (could have killed someone), planes running into each other, and of course the parties...I do wonder how in the world any of these pilots actually flew their planes the next day.

I stopped doing that in the late 90's, and then after 9-11, the airshow basically folded because no one would insure it. It has since started up again, but it is very different now. It was once primarily about military aircraft, but it is a lot of civilian stuff now with aerobatics, and that sort of thing.

 

Me and the crew standing on the end of strip apron at Willytown waiting for four aircraft to arrive so we could check and connect missiles/guns.

F111 from Amberley had just taken off to go back home and did a tight turn at the other end of the strip and came around for low pass at high speed.

As it went over us at "legal" fast low level, a huge sheet of skin delaminated from the stabilator and drifted down toward us like a giant falling leaf. A couple of the troops started running so I just screamed "DOWN" and jumped under our strip truck, quickly followed by the other two who hadn't bolted.

It was only a SWB Toyota Landcruiser so it was pretty crowded for a minute or two and the skin floated to a soft thud about twenty metres from the truck.

A lot of dusting off clothes and "Yeah, I wasn't scared, just being safe" talk, and then a bit of a laugh.

That delayed ops for a while so we just sunbaked on the grass at the edge of the apron while ATC sorted things out.

 

I can relate. The initial sort of disbelief with the CF-18 thing when we all sort of looked around at each other and said "Did that just happen?"

Then it was some nervous laughter...and then we pulled back a bit...

 

@Archer @JimInOz
Thanks for sharing those stories guys. Scary stuff!
Your stories remind me of this video I saw about what happens when the arresting wire on a carrier snaps...

 

Courtesy of Avgeekery.com