Talk:Boeing B-47 Stratojet

anecdote

[The chase plane] was a P-80 [Lockheed Shooting Star] and Chuck Yeager was flying it. Chuck's a hell of a good pilot, but he had a little bit of contempt for bombers and a little disdain for civilian test pilots. Well, we took off, climbed out, and got up somewhere within four or five points of full throttle speed. At that point, Chuck called me on the radio and said: "Bob, would you do a 180?" I thought, Hey, Chuck's smart, he just wants to stay reasonably close to Moses Lake, he doesn't have as much fuel as I do. Well, I turned around, got stabilized, and looked for Chuck. He wasn't there. Finally, I got on the radio and said, "Chuck, where are you?" He called back and rather sheepishly said, "I can't keep up with you, Bob." So Chuck Yeager had to admit to a civilian test pilot flying a bomber that he couldn't keep up! That was something!

I fail to see how this anecdote is relevant to the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.166.155.113 (talk) 09:20, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

I think it is just trying to say the B-47 was fast, but I am sure this could be shown in a more elegant way then the quote. MilborneOne (talk) 09:43, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Its relevant because thats Chuck Yaeger talking. If Chuck Yaeger is talking about your plane, you want it in your article.94.175.244.252 (talk) 09:11, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Not really, no. The P-80 was a mediocre first-generation jet fighter that scored barely a handful of MiG-15 kills over Korea. The MiG-15 had about a 20,000ft altitude advantage over the B-47 and about a 60mph speed advantage. MiG-15s and, more to the point, MiG-17s were quite capable of killing B-47s and did in fact do so. (As it happens, no MiG ever successfully intercepted an RAF Spitfire or Canberra on their reconnaissance flights over the Eastern Bloc in the late 1940s and early 1950s.) Khamba Tendal (talk) 18:23, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Can you expand on the Mig interceptions? Were these (presumably) RB-47s? As there certainly weren't many of these (fewer than the accidents, certainly), shouldn't they be listed here? I probably have the right books for sourcing this in my own ELINT histories, but they're still in the unread piles. Andy Dingley (talk) 20:53, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Few years late, and apologies accordingly, but yes, MiGs did intercept RB-47s, to within gun range, and even opened fire.

https://theaviationgeekclub.com/rb-47-pilot-explains-how-his-aircraft-was-able-to-survive-to-multiple-mig-17-attacks-in-the-skies-over-soviet-union/

Indeed, in 1960, an RB-47 out of England (the aircraft's range limits meant it had to operate from England to reach the western USSR) was shot down by a MiG-19 north of Murmansk. The RB-47 had a six-man crew (the three EWOs were apparently accommodated in the 'bomb bay reconnaissance pod', which does not sound much fun), of whom four lost their lives. The co-pilot and navigator, the sole survivors, were returned to the US on 27 January 1961, a week after President Kennedy's inauguration, seemingly as a goodwill gesture by Premier Khrushchev. They had been detained at the infamous Lubyanka KGB headquarters in Moscow. I see this combat is now in the article, but it remains surprisingly little known, compared to the Gary Powers 'U2 incident'.

https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/tag/1960-b-47-shoot-down-incident/

https://www.airvectors.net/avb47_2.html

Khamba Tendal (talk) 18:35, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Limit speed

"The aircraft's maximum speed was limited to 425 knots (787 km/h) to avoid control reversal..."

That must be 425 knots IAS or CAS or EAS or something-- not TAS anyway? If so, that should be spelled out. Tim Zukas (talk) 22:35, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

RB-47 shot down 1955

The Wikipedia MiG-15 article mentions the following incident. Should it also be in this article?

17 April 1955: The MiG-15 pilots Korotkov and Sazhin shot down an RB-47E north of the Kamchatka peninsula – all three crewmembers perished. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cbmccarthy (talk • contribs) 10:16, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

As long as it has a reliable source, why not. A more tantilizing story might be [1]. Buffs (talk) 03:57, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

There is now an article about the latter incident: 1960 RB-47 shootdown incident -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 18:47, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Reconnaissance

The word "bounced" is used twice with a meaning unfamiliar to the lay person, specifically:

An RB-47 flying out of Alaska was scouting out the Kamchatka Peninsula on 17 April 1955, when it was bounced by Soviet MiG-15s in international airspace....

MiGs bounced RB-47s on three separate occasions in the fall of 1958...

Because the meaning here is not obvious, I suggest either (or both) of the following:

1. Create a Wikipedia article or Wiktionary definition that explains this meaning of "bounced".
2. Use more familiar language to describe the events, in this section.

- Zulu Kane (talk) 20:30, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

This article is a joke at the Reconnaissance section. Things are "bounced" and "jammed" ("whited-out") and a "MD-4 FCS scope" is mentioned... all in the detail-driven discussion of incidents. So the most interesting section is couched in ambiguous mumbo-jumbo.

Downgrade this article to a "start" class. I can't figure out what happened to these planes and crewmen. There's no names, few dates, no news reports, reactions from political leaders, just a bunch of jargon here. I like to saw logs! (talk) 07:06, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree that terms like "bounced" and "jumped" aren't very encyclopedic in this context; I went ahead and replaced them with the term "intercepted". If there's an even more accurate verb to put in there, then by all means it should be added. Additionally, much of the material still requires a citation; if the info isn't readily verifiable, it could always be removed. Cheers! Skyraider1 (talk) 02:02, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Contradiction on the last flight of a B-47.

There is a photo down in the "Variants" section which has a caption reading:

"Last flight of a B-47: in 1986, (52-0166) was restored to flying condition and ferried from Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake to Castle AFB for display"

But slightly below this, in the EB-47E section, it claims that:

"These two aircraft were the last B-47s in operational service, and 52-0410 performed the very last operational flight of a B-47 on 20 December 1977, when it was flown to Pease AFB, NH and put on display at the main gate."

I can see that one says "the last flight" and the other says "the last operational flight", but I fail to see the subtle difference. They were both being ferried to another place for display. Was one still technically on the Air Force books, while the other had been written off and was technically in civilian possession at the time, or what? A little detail would be nice. .45Colt 14:38, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Three or four man crew ?

The Operational History mentions a three-man crew multiple times, as does the specification of B-47E. Yet several crash descriptions mention four-man crews, including B-47E and B. All I can find about larger crews in the article is sections on EB-47E and RB-47H which appears to indicate two or three extra aircrew, giving a total of five or six. Needs to be clarified. Rcbutcher (talk) 02:41, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

"list of crashes"

so I see that most of the crashes are not listed here. Maybe make a separate page containing a list showing every crash and date? The son of a b47 pilot told me today (Feb 2024) a story about a crash here in Riverside California. In the story he said they had special training crew members (examiners?) who would cause a problem on the aircraft and see how the crew reacts. He said this plane crashed because they purposefully turned off one of the engines, to see how everything would go. He told me his father would not let the examiner touch his planes controls after the crash. Typical public relations, the Air Force did not point out this fact regarding the aircraft crash. Odd there was a chaplain on the aircraft?

https://web.archive.org/web/20150709114519/http://www.march.afrc.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123227987

13 October A Boeing B-47B-40-BW Stratojet, 51-2231, of the 320th Bombardment Wing, crashes while taking off from March Air Force Base, California, coming down in what is now the Sycamore Canyon Wilderness Park, northwest of the base. Capt. Edward Anthony O'Brien Jr., pilot, Capt. David James Clare, co-pilot, Major Thomas Francis Mulligan, navigator, and Capt. Joseph M. Graeber, chaplain, are all killed. Crew chief Albert Meyer, of Westchester, California, was not flying with his aircraft that day because he had already exceeded his flight hours. In the accident report, Col. Frederic Huish, investigation board president, concluded the primary cause of the accident was unknown, due to lack of positive evidence.— Preceding unsigned comment added by User:Ruderod (talk • contribs) 05:56, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

"A-bombs"

First of all, this is kind of informal and a period term, it should be "nuclear weapons of the era" or something more encyclopedic. Second, "A-bombs" are not every big, not even in that era. Bomb bay space is useful for large amounts of conventional weapons or for large hydrogen bombs, but they could easily have fit a bomb bar large enough to fit an "A-bomb", whatever kind of gear they used. Little Boy and Fat Man were not that large, and this was almost a decade later. By the 1950s they were carrying atomic bombs under fighter bombers like the F-84F, and in bombers like the A3D. So the tandem gear (that's how they always call it in USAF material, never heard it called "bicycle gear") was not "to allow a bomb long enough for an A-bomb".

Idumea47b (talk) 02:40, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

The aircraft was designed in 1945 and first flew in 1947, so the size of nuclear weapons in the 1950s isn't really relevant - also the fact is cited.Nigel Ish (talk) 18:48, 24 October 2023 (UTC)