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I grew up as an Air Force brat form 1946 to 1964 when I attended college and was on my own after that. My dad was a B-17 pilot in WW II and was shot down over Germany on July 26, 1943. He returned to the US in late August 1945 and remained in the Air Force initially flying B-29''s out of MacDill AFB, Tampa. He eventually flew the B-47 for years before transitioning to the B-52 which he flew off and on from 1961 until 1971 when he suddenly died on active duty when he was the Commander of Clark AFB, The Philippines. He was only 51 years old. There were some interesting things about the B-47. The early models didn't have any defensive armaments because it was faster than any fighter at the time and could simply accelerate out of harm's way. I don't know how true this is, but my dad told me about it while he was then flying the B-52. During the Cold War about a third of the bomber force was on 24 hour alert ready to take off within 15 minutes. Obviously, if on an actual war time mission, they would have to be refueled just before penetrating the Soviet Union. Some targets were close enough that the B-47 could complete it's mission and return to be refueled. However, some targets were so deep within the USSR that the crew only had sufficient fuel to get to the target and fly a pre-planned escape which would ultimately require bailing out. Those crews referred to them as "dry tanks" alert crews or those who wouldn't return unless they were rescued. I've never seen it mentioned anywhere else, but I trust my dad was telling the truth. Also, we were stationed at Sedalia AFB in MO in the early 1950's. It had closed after WW II but was reactivated in the 1950's. Initially there were only WW II B-25's and C-47''s. Then one day dad took us all to the runway along with most of the rest of the base personnel and families. It was a ceremony for the arrival of the first group of a B-47 wing to be stationed there. As we stood along the runway, all of the B-25's and C-47's took off and a few minutes later the first squadron of B-47's arrived. I was in awe. I had never seen anything like it before and it looked like an invasion of space craft. They were beautiful. Once the landed, three of them demonstrated the new JATO assisted take off rockets that allowed to use less than half of the runway normally required. There were a lot of accidents. I clearly remember hearing about crews that were lost. The families on an AFB were very close, especially in those days and so word spread fast when there were losses. I graduated from College in 1968 and joined the Marine Corps to avoid being drafted into the Army. I graduated from Officer Candidate School, and ended up in Vietnam as a Marine platoon commander, returning to the US in December 1969. I spent two more years in combat and retired from the Marines in 1989. From 1989 to 2015 I worked as a consultant to military technology programs, mostly for Special Forces. Between 2000 and 2015, I was an independent consultant supporting mostly Defense Advanced Research Programs Agency (DARPA) supporting technology development, training the military in the new technologies, and supporting exercises around the world as a technical advisor for those technologies. I retired permanently on December 31, 2015. I wanted to follow my dad as a military pilot, but I wore glasses. Later when I was in the Marine Corps, I honored my dad by becoming a private pilot with commercial and instrument ratings. I also flew gliders and aerobatic aircraft. Had he lived to see that, I think he would have been especially proud.

I was a B-47 crew member. Always proud to service in Strategic Air Command under General Curtis Lemay. 🐻😎👍

I remember Jimmy Stewart flying a B47 in "Strategic Air Command". Being a pilot in the Air Force Reserve, he actually had flown one in real life. In fact, he'd flown many different airplanes, both propeller and jet.

My dad flew B-25 bombers during WW II. He transitioned to the B-47 after the war. I recall how concerned he was in 1956 thru 1958. We were living in Lincoln, Nebraska then and they were blowing up (mid air) about every three months. My dad NEVER said a word about all of this as he was sworn to secrecy. I watched his hair go from brown to snow white in less than a year. The stress on his face was palpable.

My father was a production test pilot on them in the 1950's. They had a sign over the door as they walked into work that said, "What you do not know about the B-47 will kill you." He said, "It was true. I quit after four years because most of my friends were dead." He was the first person to understand all the electronics on the plane, including the people who designed and built them. They only had three crew members, and it was in the time before digital computers but after jet engines. So you had to do a lot of calculus in a hurry with nothing but slide rules and analog computers. In that sense, it was the most complex aircraft to fly or bomb from in history, because anything after that had digital computers and anything before that was slower getting to the target and had a larger flight crew to divide the labor. Their job was to certify they would fly as expected before handing them over to the Air Force. So the good news is they were brand new. The bad news is that every little assembly line error was a potentially fatal crash. Lots of fires and some unbelievable control issues. When my dad told these stories in his late 70's, he remembered altitudes and other extremes to the last digit.

Simon, I am a little surprised that you did not mention the Mackinac Bridge incident. On April 29, 1959, an Air Force captain flew his B-47 Stratojet UNDER the Mackinac Bridge in northern Michigan.

My dad was the navigator/bomber on one of these! The safety issues was the key reason he left the air force as soon as his required time of duty was finished. He had a scary night landing experience where the landing gear got stuck and they had to land on one set of wheels with a nuclear bomb on board.

Pilot fatigue was also an issue. The SAC flights were very long and round the clock with available crews limited. Not one mention of John Wayne in Jet Pilot? Thats my first memory of this bomber. I thought it was so cool as a kid that the pilot could crawl down for a cup of coffee then pop back up in the bubble canopy like a groundhog.

My friend and neighbor is a retired air force officer who was active from 1949 to 1975. During the Korean War he flew the RF-80, from 54 to 65 he flew the B-47 and the B-52, during the Vietnam War the Air Force needed more recon pilots, so he transitioned back to that mission, he ended his service in the RF-4 with 378 combat missions between the Korean War and Vietnam under his belt. The one aircraft he absolutely despised was the B-47! One thing he has mentioned several times was the challenge of managing the fuel supply as it also determined weight distribution and balance of the aircraft .

Possibly one of the first types to experience 'coffin corner' at peak altitude, where any loss of airspeed led to an instant stall, and any increase in airspeed led to compressibility buffetting.

A revolutionary aircraft like the B-47 "pushed the envelope" in many areas. Crews transitioning from propeller bombers to it required learning all new technologies, planning and skills of high-altitude, high-speed flight. Its nuclear strike mission probably required flying the B-47 close to its limits and required considerable pilot skills and knowledge with little room for error. The success of the B-52 was probably the result of B-47 flight testing and operations. The B-58 Hustler was another revolutionary bomber that had a similar accident record and for the same reasons. At Mach 2, things happen awfully fast and some of them very bad with bad results. I remember watching a weather reconnaissance B-47 taking off from Clark AB, P.I. during the Vietnam war. It used lots of runway. It was a very beautiful aircraft. The movie, "Strategic Air Command," has some of the best B-47 (and B-36) footage anywhere. I love that movie.

B-47's were notoriously hard to fly at high altitude, with a razor thin margin between stall speed and Vmax. Great video Simon.

I was stationed at Wheelus AFB, Tripoli, Libya from 1966-1967 and remember sometime in 1966 a B-47 landing. When it departed it was loud, it was beautiful, and trailed lots of black engine exhaust. Those were exciting times.

If you want to see one up close, the Mighty 8th Air Force Museum in Georgia has one on static display. If you're ever in Pooler GA on I-95, it's right next to the interstate on the East side.

Much as I enjoy seeing American technology in the spotlight, I would love to see videos on two beasts from the "other side" of the Cold War; namely the Kiev-class carrier and the Kirov-class battlecruiser. Kiev was half carrier, half battleship, beastly enough to operate alone, and designed to support the fleet submarines. Kirov actually scared America into reactivating the Iowa-class battleships, and still serve to this day. No denying these monsters their proper respect.

I have a Revell' "fit the box scale" plastic kit of the Boeing B-47 Stratojet. The model was first issued about 1955 and was re-produced by Revell of Germany a few years back. Nice presentation of the "Granddaddy" of all large jet aircraft. Thanks for sharing!

i was born in '62. i never knew of the existence of the B-47 until in the '90s i saw a Jimmy Stewart movie starring this jet. Only today did i learn of its true significance. Thank you very much Mr. Whistler and Co. 🖖

I entered the U.S.A.F. in 1959 and was assigned To the 305th Bomb Wing on the B47 aircraft. We never lost an aircraft while assigned to this bomb wing. Being on flight status was a kick for a new airman such as I was. What an experience for a small town person.

In 1966 my dad got stationed to Davis Monthan AFB where the aircraft storage facility was located, a.k.a. The Bone Yard. I was 9 years old at the time and quite enamored by airplanes (and still am). At that time there was a sea of B-47s as shown in a couple of scenes in Simon’s video. It was amazing to see the whole fleet, now retired, in one place. All have since been recycled into many other items maybe even beer cans!

The B47 was the largest plane to ever fly underneath a bridge! Captain Lapco took one under the Mackinaw bridge.Go USAF!

Still, with all of its faults, The B-47 Stratojet was a gorgeous swept-wing jet.

You could go with the engines embedded within the wing roots such as the Comet and V-Bombers (Valiant, Vulcan and Victor). Or you can have the engines in podded nacelles such as the B-47 and B-52. The latter have been far more influential.

Well done Simon. As always, you've excelled yourself with outstanding content and production. Thank you.

A very familiar airframe for me. I grew up near Plattsburgh AFB. There has been a B-47 there on display for as long as I can remember. Every Christmas, they put a giant Santa on it. When I was little, we HAD to drive by it when we were in town.

My great-uncle flew these for SAC for a few years. I never got to talk to him about it, he passed away earlier this year. A good book on the Cold War and the SAC B-47 and B-52 operations is Jet Age Man by Earl McGill.

I don't know if I counts as a Megaproject but I would love to hear Simon talk about the RAH-66 Comanche. That things just cool.

Control reversal was a problem. the wings were so thin and slender that too much aileron would bend the wing, creating the opposite effect than what was expected.

I think that the sheer scale of the technological leap forward that this aircraft was is lost through the lens of history. It’s not that the pilots weren’t trained, it’s that humans didn’t know how to fly or even properly build those airplanes yet. It was completely groundbreaking and those types of advancements have consequences sadly.

Yes so excited you covered this bomber! When I used to work at the Strategic Air Command Museum this was my favorite plane to go inside of and remember a conversation with a vet who flew one saying coming in for a landing felt like driving over the worst dirt road while your cars rattling apart.

It's so amazing that you can see the B-52's origins in the B-47 but you can't see the same between the B-17, B-29 and B-47. The B-47 looks almost like a precursor to the Vulcan. Also, Vulcan need a Megaproject!

I was just a little kid, but I remember cruising by the Duluth AFB in October, 1962, and seeing a flock of B-47s on the tarmac, surrounded by armed sentries, loaded for Russian bear-waiting the word from JFK. One of my most vivid memories from childhood. I thought it was cool as heck. No idea as a kid what a close thing it was.

The bomb toss you're referring too was called the Immelmann turn or Immelmann Maneuver, named after WWI German fighter ace Max Immelmann. Essentially the plane would go into a steep climb and release the bomb, just before the plane went upside down into a loop, going the opposite direction. Once upside down, the plane would then roll back into normal flight. While such a maneuver would be easy enough for a small fighter jet, it was disastrous on the air frames of the B-47s.

Am I the only one who noticed at 14:19 in the video the photo of the airplane shows the inboard engine stations occupied by large turboprops? That would be one of two XB-47D Composite engine test beds to see if they could get more range by combining turboprops and turbojets. I think they only built two of them, so not much must’ve come out of it.

I had a family friend who flew B-47s. The plane remains a thing of beauty, although regarding it as such requires one to take into account the purpose for which it was designed. The airframe could handle the Immelmann manœuvre needed for "toss-bombing" perfectly well, but it required great pilot skill to maintain control at the top of the half-loop, and then to execute the half-roll at high altitude as airspeed fell precipitously and the engines strained at a not-insignificant risk of compressor stall. It was a challenging flight profile for such a large aeroplane - almost the size of a 727 - designed for blazing straightline speed at high altitude.

You talk about how B-47s were set up to take of one every 15 seconds but evidently didn't hear about the base (McConnell AFB Wichita Kansas) with the super wide runway that allowed waves of six B-47s to take off simultaneously putting a lot of jets into the air very quickly. Wichita was a good base for the B-47s since one of the Boeing plants that churned out those B-47s sats on the west side of that runway.

I witnessed an RB-47 doing approaches at McClellan AFB in 1968.

Pilot of the Enola Gay, Paul Tibbets, worked on the B-47 development program. I recall a story he told about one of the B-47 test pilots who took him on a test flight. Crazy pilot named Tex Johnston took Brig. Gen Tibbets 50-60 miles from the higher-ups at the base in Wichita just so he could barrel or aileron roll the plane and show off a “6 engined fighter.” Tex was the same pilot who twice rolled the prototype 707 over Seattle’s Lake Washington in 1955.

I saw one of these in service during a Spring Board military exercise in the early 70s. I got to check out as it was parked near the aircraft I worked on.

Pilot: "But sir, the last two that took off just went down in flames!" Get her up there!

I love that you mentioned the Tybee bomb... I'm from the area and very few people are ever aware of what's laying around, somewhere. Every time I kayak in the area, it's always in the back of my mind in a whimsical weird way...

My father was a bombardier / navigator in B-47's from the early 50's thru '64. One of the first deployed.... He also participated in the nuke testing in the Pacific. My favorite bomber but I' m biased. Thanks for the video!

Very interesting analysis of this aircraft. I finished-up my USAF hitch with F-111s at Plattsburg, NY, where a B-47 sat outside the main gate for decades and may still do so. Never knew much about it, but as stated in this video the three years between the end of WWII and its B-17s and B-29s is absolutely astounding!!

More brain blaze, fact boi. I need the tangents.

I forget who said it,, but: "When you push the Edge of Technology, sometimes Technology Pushes Back!"

I blame SAC's for the losses because LeMay drove these guys to the brink of exhaustion. This plane demanded a lot from the pilot and he had to be proficient. After a scramble and god knows how many hours in the air and then land this rascal trouble could be just around the corner. She is a sexy plane if you ever get to see one its beautiful to behold.

From what I've been able to learn through study the B47 "Stratojet" was a huge technological leap when it was first designed and put into production but much like an army equivalent the M60 Machinegun with age issues started popping up here & there. It's maintenance costs & quite a number of accidents outweighed any of the benefits keeping it in service provided plus technology had advanced significantly towards the end of it's service life it was an amazing aircraft for it's time and should be remembered as such 🙂

Ahhh a Tybee bomb reference, growing up on Tybee I heard about this since I was a child, however some of the other parts of the story could make its own video. There was the story of two young men that got caught in a fog bank off the coast of Tybee. They got picked up and sent on the right directions by a sub. The guys thought the sailors on the sub had an odd accent and then after being shown pictures of different subs by the coast guard, it turned out the sub was Russian. Thanks again guys and I cannot wait to see the next vid

Just to keep things in perspective, the hull loss rate of the Boeing 707 - a commercial airliner - was twice that of the B-47, with far more casualties.

my highschool jrotc instructor practiced those rapid take-off drills in the early 70s, he said that by time the 2nd or 3rd aircraft took off there was an incredibly dangerous amount of turbulence on the runway.

Growing up in Orlando, Florida during the 50s I remember B-47s from the local AFB. I forget the name but it is now the airport for the region. There was a horrific crash that deeply affected the airmen and their families living in the community. It wasn’t long afterwards that the B-47s were retired and replaced by B-52s.

I regularly vacation on Tybee Island and one of the restaurants on the back river have the story of the B-47 incident where the nuclear bomb was lost off the coast. Also the 8th Air Force Museum in Pooler, GA right near the Savannah Airport has a full B-47 on display outside. My dad was on a B-52 base in Albany (Turner AFB) during the Cuban Missile Crisis. After Kennedy's speech all the B-52s left and were replaced by B-47s for short range strikes on Cuba if it came to it.

I grew-up an Air Force brat. While my Dad was stationed at Randolph A.F.B., outside of San Antonio, Texas, one day I saw a B-47 flying over the base at a low altitude with the drag chute deployed in mid air! The pilot landed it okay; but while he was still in the air, I jumped on my bike with a bunch of buddies and we pedaled to base operations as fast as we could. We arrived as the aircraft was taxing up to the building. The aircraft was separated from the base ops building by five or six Air Police pick-up trucks. All had at least one sky cop in the back with a rifle. That's when even us dumb kids figured out that the aircraft had "war loads" on it! The B-47 was one of the best looking airplanes I ever saw. Later in my Navy career, I crewed Navy Super Constellations. Without the radar domes, they were also some of the best looking aircraft in the world!

I lived and worked at my university's airport. The airport manager /chief pilot / check pilot was former B-47. So he was my boss, my landlord, and gave me my PPL check ride. He was a grouchy, unreasonable, mean-spirited SOB. Master of the gruff 3 word answer. But when the talk involved the B-47 he was like a poet describing young love. Said she was a good girl if you understood what she needed. He retired when they retired the 47. He's probably gone now and I don't think he liked me but I admired him and still do. Prick. P.S. He said a lot of the crew losses were due to the fact that the Bomb/Nav ejected downward. Crews stayed with the plane too often when they should have punched out in pattern incidents because there is always a chance of success but ejecting was an automatic death sentence for the Nav.

wings longer than the fuselage is not unusual - other than a few modern jet fighters, almost every type has longer wingspan than fuselage length.

I had lots of experience in the B-47 as a nav/bombardier and still have my 1000 hour pin to prove it. I've also had a ride in a Vulcan which couldn't be beaten for comfort. However, I wouldn't trade the MA-7A bombing radar for it. A couple of incidents but nothing outstanding in my rides but was close enough to know of at least 2 that I wouldn't have been on at the time. The bird was demanding but our 3 man crew was really tight and we worked well together on those long 12 hour flights when SAC was in it's heyday. Almost got a chance to redesign Cuba but thankfully sanity prevailed. I still have an inflight photo hanging over my desk. Love it!

The early jet age was full of staggeringly fast advancements in technology. Just as B-47 made the propeller bombers obsolete, the Soviet Tupolev 16 'Badger' that came just a few years later was of a similar size but with two engines instead of six and an even better aeridynamical shape. The Tu-16 remains in service today!

The B-45 Tornado was actually USA's first operational jet bomber, edged out the B-47. It was introduced in April 1948 versus B-47 in June 1951. A B-45 actually dropped the Operation Buster-Jangle Easy test bomb at the Nevada bombing range in November of 1951. It was also riddled with failures. The dangerous yaw-roll coupling of the tail of aircraft with main wing above fuselage center of gravity is commonly corrected with anhedral (angled-down) wings, such as the Harrier jet. In some cases it's corrected with polyhedral wings, that lower angle at inner main wings, and elevated in the outer wings (like F4 Phantom and WWII F4U Corsair). A more exotic variant is the inner rise of wings, with lowered angle outer wings.

It's a shame there isn't film of the B-47 with the sharp angled RATO take-off which was close to same angle as a Vulcan taking off. As kids we used to stand and watch them take off at a shallower angle (from the then USAF Brize Norton) some years later when the farmers to the West of the airfield complained to the base commander about the drop in production due to animal stress, the B-47s changed their take-off angle to near vertical until the RATO ran out so the aircraft then flattened out. It was exhilarating and scary at the same time. It was also so loud you couldn't breathe.for a few moments.

Time for that Lancaster megaprojects video. It has all the things you want - A plane, a war and a lot of them!

Finally you covered it!!!! My grandfather worked on building the prototypes!

I grew up near Homestead Air Force Base. It was a B-52 Base, when, for one year, they flew all the B-52s away to be upgraded- they were replaced by B-47s for that year.

YAY!!!! New #factboy to enjoy during lunch. Impeccable timing, as always, Simon.

Can you imagine what the designers of the B 47 thought when they heard that they were going to be used to climb rapidly, toss a bomb and then loop over the top of that climb and roll back to level flight with the military evidently not thinking about the huge stress that such a maneuver would put on the wings of the bomber especially the wings. This is a maneuver reserved for fighter planes that are designed for high g loads and incredible wing loading events. I can just see them looking at each other and saying ........they're going to do what with the plane.......are they insane. These planes were never designed to be put under this kind of stress or g loading of the wings and it resulted in high rates of stress fractures in the wings and fuselage of the aircraft and many wing failures which caused a lot of the losses.

Great video Simon! I love the early Cold War era! Could you please do a video on the Convair B-36 “Peacemaker”?

There are only 26 B-47 Stratojets today. Unfortunately, none are flyable. There is one that's being restored to flying status. If so, I'd like to see it fly at Oshkosh.

I would like to see a video on the British V-Bombers if possible! Great video as always

WAIT!!! You’re not even going to comment on the B-47 shown at 14:20??? The picture shows a re-engined B-47 with the inner, paired jet engines (4) replaced with some sort of bizarre turbo-props (2)? I don’t claim to be an “expert” on the subject of the B-47, but I’ve never seen this picture before, and never knew about any program that tested turbo-props on an American bomber… Surely it wouldn’t help a B-47s maximum speed or altitude, so I guess increased range would be the benefit? Possibly better take off or landing performance?? Does anyone have any information or sources on this weird creation, or results of the tests? Oh, yeah- great video as usual, thanks!

My grandfather was a pilot in the Air Force and he went from C47s to RB47s. They both have 47 in the name but completely different aircraft.

I’ve read that in a sudden, steep climb, the wings would break off. One fictional novel, “Wild Blue Yonder,” I believe, described it as if the plane were putting its hands together in prayer. One can certainly see the B-47 heritage in the B-52, which became probably the most successful military plane ever.

It's now at Edwards, but at Chanute we had the #2 B-47, which I saw so many times as a Rantoul brat and a supporter of the museum.. The first prototype was scrapped, but good old 46-66 was a jewel in the museum collection.

In the Greenhouse tests, one B-47 was used on each of the Dog, Easy, and George tests, as part of Project 8.1. Only the boosted fission test, coded as Item, didn't include what were marked in the other tests as B-47 aircraft in Operation Greenhouse documents. All the B-47 aircraft were radio callsigned as Elaine. Project 8.1 was instrumented airframe tests of blast effects on B-47s approaching the detonations.

Excellent video! It's amazing how quickly America and Russia developed swept-wing fighters such as the North American F-86 Sabre and Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-15, both in 1947, yet while the US had a swept-wing bomber in the Boeing B-47 Stratojet by 1947, the Soviet Union didn't have one until 1952 with the Tupolev Tu-16.

My father was a B-47 bombardier from 1955 to 1965. The 307th bomb wing lost quite a few aircraft. One went down at the end of the runway at Lincoln AFB when I was about 6-7 years old. I’ll remember that until the day I die. Our next door neighbor was killed in that crash. The plane was war loaded and departing for a Reflex TDY . One of the outboard engines had a compressor stall at take off and the plane, at about 300 feet, rolled onto its back , flew upside down over the free way (then a state highway), just clearing the packed drive in theater and into the smoking hole at the end of its flight. All 4 on board were killed. The forth crewman was usually a maintenance man deploying with the squadron. It was not an official broken arrow as they recovered the weapon(s) as soon as the fire was put out.

Gen Lemay, SAC CC, in order to get to Russia, forced us to fly it at the limits, with 87k # a/c weighing 210k# for takeoff, using 10,500' of 12500' runway. We only had six 6000# thrust engines plus water augmentation for 1min for 42k # thrust to lift a 100 ton a/c with a thin wing not generating takeoff lift until about 180 mph. So, lose one engine on takeoff and it crashed. Once in the air I breathed a sigh of relief. One time taking off for Spain on a hot August night, we used the whole 12,500 runway when water augmentation (makes for denser air) ran out and we just barely got airborne. Took several miles nursing the flaps up to get any altitude.

From Wichita Kansas where I believe most were built at Boeing Wichita. We have 2 on static display on the same airfield. One at the gate of McConnell Air force base that previously was on display off the side of a highway and anyone could walk up and crawl all over and unfortunately vandalize. On the other side of that airfield one is on static display at the Kansas Aviation Musuem next to the Boeing Wichita facility that made them. Also on same airfield is the older Cessna factory and the former Stearman Factory.

2:35 - Chapter 1 - Development 3:20 - Chapter 2 - Boeing's model 450 design 4:55 - Chapter 3 - Testing 6:25 - Chapter 4 - The B47 9:10 - Chapter 5 - Operations 12:50 - Chapter 6 - Reconnaissance role 13:50 - Chapter 7 - The incidents 16:10 - Chapter 8 - A long legacy

My late grandfather worked on these during the Korean war, I always loved hearing him tell stories about working on these, including the time he accidentally dropped his flashlight into the fuel tank!

You wouldn't want to describe the Dutch-Roll as also causing the "wings to pitch" as that implies oscillation in the lateral i.e. pitch axis or up and down, the wing movement is in the longitudinal i.e. roll axis. Actually it's a dynamic coupling like the largest, slowest form of flutter but involving the entire airframe.

Can you please do a video on the W.A.C. Bennett dam in B.C. Canada? It was definitely a Mega Project in its day and has some interesting history!

I love these videos. As a pilot I find them even more fascinating. Thank you.

The only thought that went through my head when he mentioned 1/3 alerts and MITs was how much the maintenance crews would've been working. That would have sucked

cool to see this. I used to do work that gave me a chance to see the inside of a WB-47 which is part of the legacy of this plane. (hint hint video about the WB-47 long wing...)

Do one on the KC-135. Almost just as old but still flown at incredibly high rates considering the age.

My father flew as a navigator with a test squadron in this aircraft. One program he told me about was launching rocket propelled ICBM RV test shapes while in a steep climb over the Sulton Sea in SoCal. Great short history.

Can you do a video on the B-25 Mitchell and Major General Billy Mitchell that it is named after?

20 June 1986 was the last flight of a B-47. The flight originated at China Lake in Southern California and terminated at Castle AFB, Atwater, California. It was a day VFR flight. The Aircraft Commander was an O-7 who had B-47 and B-52 experience. The Copilot was an O-6 FB-111 Driver. En-route, the B-47 suffered an airspeed indicator loss. A Tactical Air Command T-33 (co-located at Castle AFB) launched and joined up with the bomber and offered airspeed calls. The T-33 provided these calls on final until about 400 feet. The T-33 pulled away and the B-47 was on its own for the landing. The B-47 got slow on short final and into the flare. The B-47 suffered a pod scrape on an outboard engine during the full stop landing. We heard later that SAC HQ was pretty upset with the pilots about this incident. The B-47 now sits proudly at the Castle Air museum at Atwater California. On that same day, I took my initial qualification Checkride in the KC-135A with a Q-1! I missed the B-47 landing but we parked right next to it when the checkride was complete. Interesting day to say the least!

Chuck Yeager ( yes the guy that flew the plane that broke the sound barrier). Even test flew the B47 ( at that time XB47). Supposedly struggled to land it with it being so clean aerodynamically that he literally had to muscle it on to the ground.

I recall seeing an RB-47 in Navy markings landing at Oceana Naval Air Station about 1970. I was about 17 then.

5:55 that got Gorey… very quickly. R.I.P.

In the 60s I lived in Alaska at Elmendorf Air Force base. I witnessed many B-47 takeoffs and landings. You could always tell the ones that were loaded heavy because they used the JATO packs for takeoff.My father told me the B-47 was a handful to fly.

The sling bombing maneuver added to the failure of the B-47. BG-47s were exploding in midair when not performing sling bombing practice. The cabin layout made escape from the now burning ball of fire breaking up in the sky impossible so there were no survivors to give first hand accounts of what went wrong. The Air Force covered up most of these losses if for no other reason than to keep the Soviets knowing how bad the problem really was. The sling bomb maneuver put such strain on the craft that micro cracks formed and would fail catastrophically later under normal fight years later. This ruptured the fuel tanks so there was the loss of thrust, control and subsequent fire. They tried to bolster the strength of the wings but that did not work so the entire remaining fleet had to be withdrawn from front line service.

Can you please do the YF-23 versus the YF-22? There's enough footage, and the US Air Force could have looked A LOT different because of this outcome.

An impressive aircraft, especially given when it was designed. One note: only one nation other than the US operated the B-47. The RCAF leased a B-47 to use as a test bed for the testing of the Orenda Iroquois jet engine being developed for the Avro Arrow interceptor. It was only in Canada for a few years, and was never "operational" in the sense it was designed for. Just an interesting footnote.

The location of the engines under the wings is a natural solution to the needs of the design to locate the plane of thrust with the center of drag of the aircraft and at the same time make them accessible for maintenance. Also, turbine engines when they failed tended to fail catastrophically. Having them outside the airframe had many advantages. Lots of designs arrived at the same solution.

One of the two XB-47s built survives. It had been kept at then Chanute AFB in Rantoul, Illinois and eventually became part of a fairly large collection of USAF aircraft on display at the Chanute airport museum after the base closed. The museum wasn't a success and closed a number of years ago. Thankfully the XB-47 at Chanute, along with many other rare aircraft, was moved and is now preserved at a museum at Edwards AFB in California.

To the best of my knowledge the last USAF Unit to fly the B47, specifically WB 47 E, on regular missions was the Ninth Weather wing, 55th Weather Recon Squadron at McClellan AFB in Sacramento Ca. until late1969.

Whats that at 14:22? Its got props. I think the ME 262 looks more of a ringer for modern airliners than the B47.

You didn’t mention the B-47s role as a SCDV (Santa Clays Delivery Vehicle). One stood on static display beside the main gate into Plattsburgh Air Force Base. Right after Thanksgiving they’d straddle it with a giant Santa. Ho! Ho! Ho! Duck and cover.

Convair B-36 "Peacemaker" was also an impressive aircraft: Six Turning Four Burning !