Apr 142010
A 1954 US Air Force sketch of the “Tupelov-Gurevich Intercontinental Bombardment Airplane.” Clearly this is meant to be the Tu-95 “Bear” bomber, but it misses the mark in a number of areas… the fuselage is shown far larger in diameter than the actual aircraft, and of course the Bear only had four engines, not six.
It was projected to be powered by six M-028 turboprops, derivatives of the German BMW-028 design. Additionally, a BMW-109-718 rocket motor was to be fitted for added power at takeoff and for short speed bursts. Speed was to be 500 mph and range of 10,500 miles.
21 Responses to “Not quite right: early conception of the “Bear””
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That version is illustrated in this 1953 article from the Modern Mechanix blog:
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2010/04/09/we-are-in-peril/
It would be interesting to know how the Air Force arrived at that hypothetical design for it (particularly the swept wings) and if it was partly based on the turboprop-powered B-52 concepts we worked on.
The B-36 was once planned to have six tractor turboprops, as was the B-60 and the B-52. Maybe there was at that time a need to see that kind of thing flying. Airplane designs follow fads, too.
The drive for using turboprops was the high fuel consumption of turbojets at the time. The early turbojets gave you good speed, but they drank so much fuel that it was hard to get the range you wanted. The Soviet Mya-4 Bison bomber was a flop with its original jet engines, as it couldn’t reach the US on internal fuel if flown from the USSR, and there wasn’t any logical place for the Soviets to put refueling planes on the way from Russia to the US.
One interesting thing about the Bear was that it was one of the few cases where US intelligence _underestimated_ a Soviet aircraft’s performance.
It proved possible to increase the pitch on the prop blades to a figure that our aeronautical engineers thought wouldn’t work, and the Bear ended up being around a 100 mph faster than we thought it should be.
As far as _overestimating_ a Soviet aircraft’s performance, nothing quite beat the “nuclear powered” Bounder bomber:
http://modelarchives.free.fr/archives_P/Aplane/Aplane_Bounder_S.html
Many years ago I read an article that explained that there was a minor industry in Germany in the ’50s that produced plausible but fabricated concepts of all kinds of Soviet planes and fed them to the West. Most of them were based on the assumption that any Russian designs would be derivative of WWII German tech, like the engines here. You can see all kinds of things like this in the aviation trade magazines in the mid-50s. I would bet that this is an example of that.
What we need now is someone in Germany who would follow up on this one. It would fill in some blanks we didn’t know we had, to find the guys who drew the pictures, theorized to Allied Intelligence about the aircraft, and therefore maintained the image of German technological superiority during a second postwar disaster. Besides, I bet they made up good yarns and got a lot of braid and brass all stirred up over something that was invented over beer.
I kept going back to the drawing. Now I see why: the nose and tail are directly from the original configuration of the D-558-2. http://freercplans.com/img-douglas-skyrocket—jet-from-december-1948-flying-models-5525.htm
Another link to the 1948 Skyrocket plans:http://www.fileden.com/files/2006/11/11/368005/Jet%20Plans%20for%20sharing/Douglas%20Skyrocket%20-%20jet%2C%20from%20December%201948%20Flying%20Models.pdf
Does anyone know of any on-line photos of this version? All I have is the small shots in Scott Libis’s book.
Watch the “Captain Midnight/Jet Jackson” serials sometime; the jet plane shown in them is the original Douglas wind tunnel model of the flush cockpit Skyrocket design.
Start at the 3:00 mark in this YouTube video…here she comes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwweVe_K_bI
I always loved the Skyrocket; my vote for most beautiful X-plane of them all.
Also, looking at that clip shows that ejection seat technology has advanced over the years… apparently, in this version, you shoot them up the inside of something like the interior of a big scoop shovel with no headrests, pressure suits, or anything other than really cool painted helmets.
Thanks, Pat. I hope Captain Midnight is available on DVD.
I found the mother lode of images of the flush canopy on the Google LIFE magazine photo collection.
It certainly is a beautiful work of sculpture. I may still have my Revell model stored away.
I think it’s the only X-plane that never killed a pilot.
I hadn’t thought of using the Life image search.
Here’s a photo of the flush canopy version:
http://www.life.com/image/50447931
The pointed tail cone makes it look like it was intended for flying with the jet engine alone, though maybe they were trying to conceal the fact that there was a rocket engine back there.
Eleanor Cameron used the flush canopy Skyrocket as part of her inspiration for the rocket ship in her “Mushroom planet” series. Alas, none of the versions of her books I’ve found so far have all the illustrations from the original hardbacks
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Wonderful-Flight-to-the-Mushroom-Planet/Eleanor-Cameron/e/9780316125406
It also probably influenced Humphrey Bogart’s aircraft for the 1950 movie
“Chain Lightning”:
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/3295067/Hulton-Archive
It’s supposed to be a jet, but I’ve never been able to find a air intake on it, and the thick exhaust when the engine is run up makes it look like a rocket.
Looks like something North American would come up with.
YouTube has the trailer for the movie, and they don’t even show the jet in the trailer, trying to sell the film as some sort of adventure movie.
I think it’s on IMDB as the goof for the movie is that there are no air intakes for the jet. The reason I watched it was because my wife announced that Washington National Airport was the destination. Her father watched the landing sequence intently and pointed out the changes since that landing was photographed.
Back when the movie was made, there wasn’t any agreement on what the difference between jet and rocket was as far as everyday use of the words, and things that were rocket powered were also sometimes called “jet-propelled”, and the Luftwaffe’s Me-163B rocket fighter was often referred to as a jet plane. The use of the under-wing rocket booster pods in the movie was interesting, though I suspect that most X-plane pilots dreamed about having a cockpit as spacious as the one shown in the movie:
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3178338304/tt0042324
I keep wondering how they got the full scale prop plane to taxi around in the movie. Was it towed by a hidden cable? Were the main gear wheels motorized like on the flying wing in “Raiders Of The Lost Ark”? Or did they actually stick a JATO bottle in the rear fuselage and taxi it around via rocket thrust? The violent way the smoke flies out of the tailpipe when it’s taxied makes the last one seem possible.
The wikipedia article says that the mockup was pulled on a chain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_Lightning_(film)
What happened to the mockup? Hmmm….
If you want to see a lot of X-plane footage in a movie, see “Toward The Unknown”, which also has the wild-looking XB-51 in it.
Here’s some X-2 footage from the movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tihb-uVmSUk
36 pictures from Allan Grant’s 1947 Life shoot for the Skyrocket:
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&safe=active&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=skyrocket+grant+source%3Alife&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&start=0&social=false
Thanks, Bill. That’s a wonderful series.
On the last page there’s a blurred shot that looks like it happened when the photographer almost dropped his camera. I’m glad that happens to others.
(Who’s the guy in the dark shot on that page — the one that looks like it was taken in a 1920s bank lobby?)
Crossfield?
“Towards The Unknown”… Ok having a movie-flashback here…
Movie with the flight testing of the X-2, (Ok so far) the web mentions that William Holden’s character “pulls” the General Nolan character out of a ‘tight-situation’ and I flash to a memory of watching on TV as a test flight goes “wrong” and you see one guy throwing open the cockpit of the X-2 and grabbing the pilot as the X-2 dramatically falls away from underneath him. Switch to REALLY dramatic overhead shot as the pilot is ‘dangling’ (with no parachute) half-in and half-out of the drop-bay with his rescuer hanging onto him for dear life and the X-2 falling away beneath the carrier aircraft trailing vapor… and then suddenly explodes!
This the same movie or am I mixing memories here?
Randy