Who Likes Aircraft ?
- Thread starter Auggie56
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Car Nut
Well-Known Member
Car Nut
Well-Known Member
In January 1952 Jim Connor flew his B-36 from Carswell AFB in Texas towards Boscombe Down for his first visit to England. A Wiltshire snowstorm hid the airfield and the bomber circled for some two hours. At last the crew were relieved to see the recently installed obstruction light on the spire of Salisbury Cathedral and then, a short distance away, the runway lights of the airfield. They started their approach.
However, what they saw was a funnel of lights which led to the runway. They were part of the wartime Drem system that was still in use at Boscombe Down. The B-36 crew had experience solely of American airfield lighting in which only the runway was outlined in lights. They were therefore unfamiliar with and confused by lead-in lights.
The Boscombe Down controller said ‘You are two miles from touchdown, on centre line’. The pilot responded ‘I’ve landed’ and, after a slight pause, ‘My, isn’t your field rough’.
The B-36 had touched down in a field, ploughed through a fence, demolished a haystack and a shepherd’s hut, crossed a couple of ditches and the Amesbury-Salisbury road and ended 400 yards short of the airfield boundary fence.
The VHF/DF operator in his little hut near the end of the runway rang the tower to say there was an aeroplane outside his hut. He was told ‘We haven’t time to talk to you now. We’re waiting for a very important aircraft’. Meanwhile, the B-36 shut down all but one of the engines which was kept running to provide electrical power. A crew member shone a torch on the spinning blades to prevent anyone walking into it. A Boscombe Down staff member was driving home after a night out in Salisbury and stopped his car. He politely told a crew member ‘If you want the airfield it’s over there’ and drove off.
Despite the embarrassment, some redeeming features emerged. It was a cold night and the ground was frozen hard and it had easily taken the weight of the bomber. The next morning, a bulldozer borrowed from the construction workers who were building the airfield at Greenham Common scraped off the thin topsoil revealing the hard chalk beneath. The B-36 was towed through a gap opened up in the perimeter fence. Boscombe Down engineers made a new bolt to substitute the broken one in the port undercarriage and the propeller damaged by the shepherd’s hut was replaced.
Before the exercise, General Curtis LeMay had told the pilots that if anyone damaged their aircraft they could walk east until their caps floated and then carry on walking. As it was, the B-36 was safely flown home within two days. Jim Connor, apparently demoted from Colonel to Lieutenant in a phone call by LeMay himself, rode as a passenger with the gunners in the back.
However, what they saw was a funnel of lights which led to the runway. They were part of the wartime Drem system that was still in use at Boscombe Down. The B-36 crew had experience solely of American airfield lighting in which only the runway was outlined in lights. They were therefore unfamiliar with and confused by lead-in lights.
The Boscombe Down controller said ‘You are two miles from touchdown, on centre line’. The pilot responded ‘I’ve landed’ and, after a slight pause, ‘My, isn’t your field rough’.
The B-36 had touched down in a field, ploughed through a fence, demolished a haystack and a shepherd’s hut, crossed a couple of ditches and the Amesbury-Salisbury road and ended 400 yards short of the airfield boundary fence.
The VHF/DF operator in his little hut near the end of the runway rang the tower to say there was an aeroplane outside his hut. He was told ‘We haven’t time to talk to you now. We’re waiting for a very important aircraft’. Meanwhile, the B-36 shut down all but one of the engines which was kept running to provide electrical power. A crew member shone a torch on the spinning blades to prevent anyone walking into it. A Boscombe Down staff member was driving home after a night out in Salisbury and stopped his car. He politely told a crew member ‘If you want the airfield it’s over there’ and drove off.
Despite the embarrassment, some redeeming features emerged. It was a cold night and the ground was frozen hard and it had easily taken the weight of the bomber. The next morning, a bulldozer borrowed from the construction workers who were building the airfield at Greenham Common scraped off the thin topsoil revealing the hard chalk beneath. The B-36 was towed through a gap opened up in the perimeter fence. Boscombe Down engineers made a new bolt to substitute the broken one in the port undercarriage and the propeller damaged by the shepherd’s hut was replaced.
Before the exercise, General Curtis LeMay had told the pilots that if anyone damaged their aircraft they could walk east until their caps floated and then carry on walking. As it was, the B-36 was safely flown home within two days. Jim Connor, apparently demoted from Colonel to Lieutenant in a phone call by LeMay himself, rode as a passenger with the gunners in the back.
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In the early 1950's, the British RAF was filled with new jet fighters and bombers, but they were all subsonic. Looking for a high speed (mach 2.5) interceptor/bomber, AVRO was awarded the contract to build their proposal Avro 730. Unfortunately, after a few years of work their efforts were cancelled in 1957. Much testing with engineering scale models, wind tunnels and heat ovens had already been accomplished, but not yet a flying prototype of what was now designed for mach 3. A lot was learned with this eight-engined aircraft, and after cancellation some of the design information was transferred to the Concorde project.
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