A substantially less crazy-sounding idea than jetliners launching large missiles vertically, in the late 1970’s Boeing (and others) studied the use of cargo jets to carry and launch large numbers of cruise missiles.
The Carter years, for you younguns who don’t remember back that far – and for you old farts old enough to have experienced the 1970’s and managed to repress memories of that dark time – were a time of economic despair, lost jobs, industries in decline and a space program that had been basically shut down. The President was swept into office on the promise of repairing a broken nation dealing with major internal divisions, troubles in the Middle East and skyrocketing oil prices.The President, rather than bringing the nation together, turned out to be rather an incompetent boob, creating *more* division and basically mangling both the economy and foreign policy. Let us hope such times do not come again…
The 1970’s actually did look like this.
Anyway: it was a time when expensive new defense procurements were in massive doubt, the anti-nuke nuts were running rampant and the aviation industry didn’t see much in the future. But still the Soviet Union was lurking just over the horizon, so a need was seen to modernize the nuclear delivery force… on a budget. President Carters cancellation of the B-1 bomber left the US without a new manned strategic nuclear delivery system; without the B-1, all the US had was the B-52 which was starting to appear rather old and obsolete (as opposed to today, when they are two or three times as old as they were then…).
Boeing put forward the idea of using 747 cargo conversions for mass cruise missile attacks. Rotary launch racks would be carried internally in the spacious cargo bay… nine racks each holding eight ALCM’s gave a respectable loading of 72 cruise missiles, each potentially armed with a single nuclear warhead. There was a single launch port on the starboard side of the aft fuselage. The rack next to the port would eject a single missile sideways through the port, rotate the next missile into place, and then launch it. When all eight missile had been launched, the rack would slide to the left; another rack would slide aft into the position just vacated. When *that* rack was empty, the first rack would slide forward, giving room for the second rack to slide sideways, and a third rack to slide aft into position. In this way, nine racks could be carried and moved into position. It would be somewhat cumbersome, and certainly a slower process than unloading the equivalent rotary racks that the B-1A would have carried internally… but then, the B-1 could only carry three such racks.
Boeing filed for a patent on the concept in 1978 and received it in 1980.
“Missile Carrier Airplane,” US patent 4,208,949
This would have been a far easier design to bring to fruition than the BAE vertical launch concept, and would probably have had a greater total load of nuclear whoopass. However, it falls short in the all-important coolness factor, and would have been useless in the micro-satellite launch business or anti-missile duty. Since the cruise missiles, jetliners and rotary racks described thirty years ago (yeeeeesh) are still available and essentially top of the line, the concept would seem to remain valid. In recent years Boeing has discussed in somewhat vague terms the “arsenal plane” concept, where a relatively large and slow aircraft would be loaded to the gills with offensive weaponry. While their artwork has tended to show some sort of blended wing body in that role, the 747 would still be a potential candidate.
NOTE: If you liked this little post, then you’ll love Aerospace Projects Review. Go take a look. NOW. Do it.
12 Responses to “Flying Boomers, Part 2”
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I’ll bet that design scared the living piss out of the Soviets.
You get a hundred of them airborne in a war and you’ve got 7,200 cruise missiles coming in on your country from all sorts of directions, flying below the radar, capable of doing approaches to their targets on courses designed to evade SAM installations, having pinpoint accuracy, and all on a budget.
A former coworker of mine was in the Air Force at the time and said there was some sort of a test program for firing Tomahawk cruise missiles out of nose launch tubes on a converted C-5B like torpedoes also. Ever heard of anything like that?
Bill Gunston was obviously writing his “Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Rockets And Missiles” during the time Carter killed the B-1 in favor of the cruise missiles, as he really went off on the concept in the book and you would have thought the B-1 was a British aircraft program rather than a US one.*
Witness part of the strange entry for the French SE.4200 ramjet powered cruise missile**:
“….Named Caisseur (Smasher) this primitive but effective flying bomb was not very relevant to the Algerian war and did not remain in service after the early 1960’s. But, according to the Carter administration, it would be ideal for the 1980’s!” 😀
* Was it supposed to use a lot of British parts or technical input somehow?
** http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://xplanes.free.fr/stato/stato-9.html
(Looks German, doesn’t it?)
> A former coworker of mine was in the Air Force at the time and said there was some sort of a test program for firing Tomahawk cruise missiles out of nose launch tubes on a converted C-5B like torpedoes also. Ever heard of anything like that?
Cruise missiles? No. Full up ICBMs? Why… yes. Stay tuned.
Though firing Tomahawks from nose-mounted “torpedo tubes” on a C-5 actually seems to make sense.
Oooo…. Sounds neat, but is it sexy enough for the Air Force?
Oh, yeah… I’ve seen films of the Minuteman coming out of the C-5. I really liked the info you dug up on the Minuteman mounted under the B-58 Hustler, which I’d never heard of before.
You know, you throw the Hustler into a zoom climb at altitude before you fired the missile and you could really extend its range..
This article explained one thing I’d always wondered about in regards to the ALCM/747 concept – that being how do you keep the CG in the right place as the cruise missiles are moved to the back and launched out the rear door?
By moving the empty launch racks way up to the front of the aircraft after their load of missiles is launched, you get the leveraged balance weight to make that possible.
Rotary cruise missile racks would be the “killer app” for the nuclear B-36 project!
They may have had something like that in mind; when I was a kid I read a book that mentioned a air launched cruise missile called “Longbow” that was supposed to be nuclear powered, like SLAM was.
The huge bomb bay of the B-36 could carry all sorts of giant things, like this comparative cutaway makes clear:
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/bomber/b-36-DFSC8408873_JPG.jpg
Take its wings and tail off, and a B-17 would fit in there.
I can’t resist this as a size comparison:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/B-29_and_B-36.jpg
Japanese interceptor pilots were awestruck by the size of the B-29’s, one of them describing them as “Huge silver bulls charging through the clouds in the moonlight” (by God, now _that’s_ writing!).
Imagine what they would have thought of a formation of B-36’s showing up one night.
> Imagine what they would have thought of a formation of B-36′s showing up one night.
Bah. Imagine what they would have thought of a single B-2 showing up one night with a bomb bay full of laser guided bombs.
Followed by an armada of A-10’s manned by drunken WWII-era Marines, with F-16s flying cover.
> Take its wings and tail off, and a B-17 would fit in there.
Bah, they actually did put a B-58 in there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxrwpur_Op8
I’m surprised they haven’t done this one yet. The 747 is a proven platform and is a versatile aircraft as proven by all of the different versions built.
Now, only if they arm Air Force One with a few cruise missles and some other weapons, it would make for an excellent proof-of-concept.
I don’t think Air Force One or the other 747 Airborne Command Stations (E-4) have any weapons.
> The President, rather than bringing the nation together, turned out to be rather an incompetent boob, > > creating *more* division and basically mangling both the economy and foreign policy. Let us hope such > times do not come again…
Isn’t Obama doing what you said Carter did: Mangling both the economy and foreign policy? Though Obama seems more “pro-military” than Carter.
I remember as a kid reading about this concept and wondering why they didn’t do it instead of the B-1 and the Stealth Bomber. A lot of excellent concepts did come out of the 70’s and 80’s.
> I remember as a kid reading about this concept and wondering why they didn’t do it instead of the B-1 and the Stealth Bomber.
As KAL flight 007 showed, 747’s are easy meat for even the drunkest of Soviet air defense systems. And a cruise missile launcher would have to get reasonably close to the USSR in order to put the likely targets within range. A B-1 or a B-2 could theoretically get right *to* the target.
I’m very surprised that Boeing hasn’t just taken the wings, with their engines, as well as the tail assembly, off of the 747, married them to a new, slimmer, unpressurized main fuselage with a pressurized crew compartment up front, and said to the Air Force: “Here’s your B-52 replacement; we can do it fast, we can do it cheap, it will greatly improve on fuel economy per flight mile, and if you need to in wartime, you can get most replacement parts from any airline operating 747’s”
>As KAL flight 007 showed, 747′s are easy meat…
There’s the problem, once your enemies know theses things are around, they’re going to start shooting at all the 747’s in the air, just make sure…
It’s the same basic problem as with Precision Global Strike, can’t just put a PGM on an ICBM, the risk of mistaken identity is too great.
>“Here’s your B-52 replacement; we can do it fast, we can do it cheap,…”
>http://www.fas.org/man/eprint/benson.htm
I’ve also seen, somewhere out there, a similar concept, based on a 767…