Oct 082010
Less appealing than the XB-46 but still pretty interesting was the three-engined XB-51 attack bomber. No other post-war American aircraft looked more like it had come straight from the fevered imaginations of wartime German aircraft designers.
Back in the day, the USAF sure loved Day-Glo Orange…
Photo from SDAM via Mark Nankivil.
6 Responses to “Martin XB-51 in Hideous ExxtraneousColor”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Lately, I’ve given some thought to building the model of that thing, but marking it as a B-57 from the early Vietnam years.
That orange is kinda intrusive. Is that color reproduced accurately?
That plane is what happens when you spend too much time looking at photos of the Ju-287 prototype:
http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/LRG/images/ju287-7.jpg
If nothing else, the position of the front engines would make sure the pilot wouldn’t doze off…as they soothed his nerves with their ear-splitting roar.
That aircraft shows up as the “Gilbert XF-120” in the movie “Toward The Unknown”.
It’s a Blasting Beauty!: http://bellx-2.com/ttu/gallery/album04/martin_blasting_beauty
Take the engines off of it, and it looks like a giant manned version of the Matador cruise missile.
The same photo, somewhat smaller, but with better colour reproduction.
http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o163/deMichu/martin-b51-7.jpg
Mike
The plane was probably a workable design, it just had the bad luck of having to take on the British Canberra in the attack bomber competition, and the Canberra was an aircraft as outstanding as the Mosquito in its time.
One problem with the three-engine layout was that it would have made installation of a rear defensive gun turret difficult.
In the movie “Toward The Unknown” it’s shown suffering structural failure in its wing, which may have been inspired by the fact that it was limited to only 3.67 g’s and the second prototype was lost during low altitude aerobatics.
Michael Holt wrote:
“That orange is kinda intrusive. Is that color reproduced accurately?”
If you’ve ever seen an aircraft marked like that, it is indeed mighty bright.
The way it’s painted is odd though; normally the day-glo paint was put on the ends of the wings or fuselage, not over the whole bottom surface of the wings or fuselage. The way they got it painted is more like you would expect for a target drone or test cruise missile.
Day-glo paint was used a lot on aircraft operating in the arctic regions to make them easy to spot against the snow if they crashed or made a forced landing.
In this case I suspect that the aircraft was going to be filmed from the ground while flying at high altitude and the paint was to make it easy for the film crew to keep tracking it.
“No other post-war American aircraft looked more like it had come straight from the fevered imaginations of wartime German aircraft designers.”
Probably because in part it did (Hans Multhopp).
Not actually built, but Martin’s Mighty Midget has a decidedly ‘German’ feel to it as well (same Multhopp tail).