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| Post-War A place to discuss post WWII to Vietnam. |
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05-03-2009, 02:03 AM
| #1 |
| Senior Member  Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Orange County, CA
Posts: 10,283
| What The Heck Were They Thinking? B-29 Project "Tip Tow" Project Tip Tow: Boeing B-29 with Republic F-84 Thunderjet. TIP TOW F-84D TESTS One of the more interesting experiments undertaken to extend the range of the early jets in order to give fighter protection to the piston engineed bombers, was the provision for in-flight attachment/detachment of fighter to bomber via wingtip connections. One of the several programs during these experiments was MX106 done with a B-29 mother ship and two F-84D "children", and was code named "Tip Tow" (not Tom Tom as stated above) A number of flights were undertaken, with several successful cycles of attachment and detachment, using, first one, and then two F-84s. The pilots of the F-84s maintained manual control when attached, with roll axis maintained by elevator movement rather than aileron movement. Engines on the F-84s were shut down in order to save fuel during the "tow" by the mother ship, and in-flight engine restarts were successfully accomplished. The experiment ended in disaster during the first attempt to provide automatic flight control of the F-84s, when the electronics apparently malfunctioned. The left hand F-84-1-RE 48-641 rolled onto the wing of the B-29, and the connected aircraft both crashed with loss of all onboard personnel. The pilot of the right-hand F-84D-1-RE 48-661 wrote of the Tip-Tow experiments in an article entitled Aircraft Wingtip Coupling Experiments published by the Society of Experimental Test Pilots. The photo above was taken during the longest "hookup" on 20 October 1950. File:Boeing B-29 TomTom.jpg - Wikimedia Commons Goleta Air and Space Museum: Flying Aircraft Carriers of the USAF: Wing Tip Coupling: B-29B/F-84D FICON project - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia One of the veterans at the B29 forum had this to say: "It was real and all three of them crashed in the process. Another goofy idea that looked great on paper. If memory serves the B-29 was 44-62093 and the crash occurred 11/20/51."
__________________ "Pilot to copilot..... what are those mountain goats doing up here in the clouds?" |
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05-03-2009, 06:22 AM
| #2 |
| Senior Member  Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: A Swede living in Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 15,144
| Hmmmm....another of those crazy ideas from the '50's.
__________________  JAN "Felicis Tredecim" "I´m going back to the front to relax" "THE BLACK CATS FLIES TONIGHT" "Find your enemy and shoot him down - everything else is unimportant!" "When you're out of F-8's... You're out of fighters!"  |
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05-03-2009, 06:33 AM
| #3 |
| Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1,766
| My God nutty as it looks, at least in flight the F-84s would have been generating some lift, on the ground they're just an awful lot of dead weight right at the very extremities of the B-29's wings; the accident doesn't really come as a great surprise, what comes as a surprise is that it didn't fold up just trying to get off the ground - that stage of the ride must have been a real pucker-clench for the F-84 drivers... Assuming worst case, if the bomber got all the way out to the target and the F-84s were required in defensive combat ie some rigorous fuel-burning, would the pair of them (assuming both survived) have the fuel to make it home? Or would there be some contingency airfield they could stage through? |
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05-03-2009, 06:35 AM
| #4 |
| Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: A Swede living in Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 15,144
| Can't imagine them trying to hook up at the wingtips again...or?
__________________ JAN "Felicis Tredecim" "I´m going back to the front to relax" "THE BLACK CATS FLIES TONIGHT" "Find your enemy and shoot him down - everything else is unimportant!" "When you're out of F-8's... You're out of fighters!" |
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05-03-2009, 09:18 AM
| #5 |
| "World Traveller"   Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Royal Deeside/St Andrews, Scotland, UK
Posts: 15,224
  | Interesting. Pretty crazy idea and not something I would really want to try. Not surprised they had an accident during the testing phase - or that they shelved it.
__________________  "Success is not Final, Failure is not Fatal, it is the Courage to Continue that Counts" Sir Winston Churchill "To him the People of the World Largely owe the Freedom and Liberties they Enjoy Today" Enscription on Hugh Dowding's (AOC Fighter Command 1936-40) statue in London WW2 Talk: A WW2 Discussion Forum My Photo Collections on Flickr |
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05-03-2009, 09:29 AM
| #6 |
| Older Than Dirt   Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Virginia Beach, Virginia
Posts: 7,309
| What a strain that must have been during take-off. They would have been better off piggy-backed. Charles
__________________  I can only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow doesn't look good either.... |
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05-03-2009, 01:37 PM
| #7 |
| aka Dickcheese  Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Washington State
Posts: 13,386
| Can you imagine trying to connect wingtips with the wing vortices in full swing? What a crackpot idea. And I'm with you guys, surely that had to beef up the outter wing spar/panels on the B-29.
__________________  "Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the [U.S.] Marines don't have that problem." -- Ronald Reagan Master of Duplicate Posts |
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05-03-2009, 03:27 PM
| #8 |
| Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Florida
Posts: 277
| Um, folks, the aircraft did not take off coupled. They coupled once airborne and decoupled to land. |
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05-05-2009, 01:34 PM
| #9 |
| aka Dickcheese Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Washington State
Posts: 13,386
| Ohhh... what a great idea then. 
__________________ "Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the [U.S.] Marines don't have that problem." -- Ronald Reagan Master of Duplicate Posts |
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05-05-2009, 01:48 PM
| #10 | |
| Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Orange County, CA
Posts: 10,283
| Quote:
__________________ "Pilot to copilot..... what are those mountain goats doing up here in the clouds?" | |
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05-05-2009, 05:43 PM
| #11 |
| Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Phila, Pa
Posts: 3,446
| Extra planes, extra pilots. Wierd ideas. "What the hell, we give it a whirl." |
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05-05-2009, 07:26 PM
| #12 |
| The Pop-Tart Whisperer  Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: South Jersey, United States
Posts: 10,237
| Same idea as the Camel suspended below a dirigible for fighter protection. One bad updraft and you're gone!
__________________  "If you can read this, thank a teacher. If it's English, thank a soldier!" http://www.njcacoa.org/ |
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05-05-2009, 08:56 PM
| #13 |
| Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Florida
Posts: 277
| Well, we're talking about a time when USAF had more dollars than sense. Ever read about the US Navy's soft carrier deck experiments designed to cushion the landings of planes without landing gears? Yep, the thinking was if planes didn't need landing gear they could be built much lighter and carry more fuel and ordnance. So, a resilient deck was experimented with and they actually tested it by pan-caking (gear up) some Grumman Cougars on it. It didn't work either. Same period, BTW. I suppose if the one was going to be stupid who was the other to be any different? |
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05-05-2009, 10:44 PM
| #14 |
| The Pop-Tart Whisperer Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: South Jersey, United States
Posts: 10,237
| You're right Sweb. We can scratch our heads at all the goofy stuff the Luftwaffe came up with during the war but we've had some doozies right here in the ole US of A!
__________________ "If you can read this, thank a teacher. If it's English, thank a soldier!" http://www.njcacoa.org/ |
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05-05-2009, 11:11 PM
| #15 |
| Senior Member  Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Posts: 651
| Reminds me alot of the F-85 Goblin XF-85 Goblin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia I saw on the history channel once that the Air Force had a concept to link three B-36's together and fly them into enemy territory to save fuel and get a longer range... Can't find it on the web though |
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