Air Force 'Extra Large' - The Supermassive Boeing Pelican - LARGEST CARGO PLANE EVER!

this video is sponsored by the ridge wallet with the ability to transport an army brigade of 3 000 troops and seven and a half thousand tons of equipment within 96 hours this colossal aircraft design would have put america's army right on the world's front door and it couldn't be built fast enough with the pentagon ramping up the design to deliver a fleet of aircraft by the end of 2020 its 500 foot wingspan would make it the largest military transport in the world regulating the antonov 225 to look like a regional jet but the accountants at boeing thought why stop there they came up with grand plans to change commercial and cargo aviation as well but this future never happened and the year 2020 came and went without the ultra plane gracing our skies this is the story of the never built pelican super transport [Music] see this plane on the screen right now this plane is carrying puppies and candy for all of my subscribers see this jet with this missile i'm gonna shoot down this plane if you don't subscribe because according to my analytics only 11 of my viewers are subscribed so if you're not subscribed i'm gonna give you five seconds to click that red button or i'm gonna shoot down this plane five four three two oh oh there we go it looks like one of you saved the day so thank you so much for subscribing let's jump into the video polycarnis onochronolis or it's commonly known the pelican we have plenty of them here in my native australia as well as in most parts of the world it may be an oddly shaped old bird but there's something undeniably graceful even aerodynamic about a pelican when it's lazily flying around coastal areas it's no surprise that boeing engineers came up with a ginormous aircraft akin to a seaplane inspired and designed with the pelican in mind it was an aircraft set to take long-haul mass transit aviation to the next level it was to be a numbers juggernaut in terms of scale and many aviation related parameters it was also a case of an aircraft design gone too far or rather simply too big it would be called the boeing pelican ultra or the ultra large transport aircraft named the boeing pelican super transport was the brainchild of the boeing phantomworks a division of the massive influential boeing corporation the boeing pelican ultra was initially intended to be a large capacity transport aircraft initially for the military use with potential thereafter as a commercial cargo or freight plane which was set to fly in and out of the world's largest cargo centers a project this huge in ambition and potential scope is deserving of an analysis so let's take a closer look at the boeing pelican inspired super transporter [Music] design work on the pelican super transport plane began at the boeing phantom works in the year 2000 boeing phantom works has an interesting history in itself it was in fact founded by boeing's rival mcdonnell douglas until it was bought out by boeing the primary focus of the boeing phantomworks is developing advanced military products and technologies into usable prototypes and includes work for the military departments of allies such as britain australia and india similar divisions would be the skunk works of lockheed martin those guys who made the sr-72 and the eagle works at nasa projects on which the development boeing division is known to have worked on include the boeing phantom eye a high-altitude long-endurance reconnaissance drone the xs1 a sub-audible space plane and the boeing a160 hummingbird helicopter but many more of its projects to date have been top secret and highly classified the pelican super transport plane was one such project the brief from the united states military was fairly straightforward a design a plane large enough to transport thousands of troops weapons military equipment and other needed provisions during wartime or at the height of battle as fast as possible by the way of comparison one performance standard the military demanded would be the ability for the aircraft to deploy an army brigade of three thousand troops and seven and a half thousand tons of equipment within 96 hours or four days max compared to the usual 91 to 183 days or three to six months that would normally be required to move these numbers of troops and equipment interestingly the boeing phantom works team considered at least three different possibilities the first was a large blimp or dirigible airship the second a smaller but wider airship that created dynamic lift while in forward motion and the third a larger airship with wings spanning 700 feet or 213 meters that would fly at a low altitude all three designs were rejected also rejected by the team at boeing were ideas for a fast ocean-going ship and a sea-based vehicle with a ground effect boeing phantomworks then settled on a ground-effect land-based aircraft that would form the basis for the giant pelican super transporter of course for the pelican to have such a large carrying capacity it would have to be super efficient at carrying things on board something which our wallets don't do very well that's why i use a ridge wallet it's able to hold up to 12 cards plus room for cash and comes in over 30 colors and different materials including titanium which is what the sr-71 is made out of it's so durable that every wallet has a lifetime warranty that's not all with every dollar spent on the website before september 18th you'll be entered to win an off-road optimized convertible 2020 jeep gladiator or 50k if you prefer cold hard cash to get 10 percent off and get a chance of winning that jeep jump onto ridge.com fna okay back to the show it's important to note that the pelican was not designed for contact with bodies of water meaning it couldn't take off or land on any water surface it would need a runway instead it was designed to be lighter and more aerodynamic than other large planes of the seaplane variety this was because the pelican was able to exit ground effect to climb a few thousand feet and thus enter into its descent like any other aircraft the pelicans wing span thereafter allowed the aircraft to fly beyond ground effect this beyond ground effect i keep saying the capability of which the pelican was unlike other massive ground effect aircraft such as the soviet union's cranoplan or the caspian sea monster which could only fly at low altitudes in order to maintain constant ground effect due to its relatively narrow wingspan the pelican would spend most of its time flying between 20 and 50 feet or roughly 6 to 15 meters above the surface although it would have the all-important ability to cruise at up to 20 thousand feet or 6.1 000 meters in order to avoid terrain or lower altitude weather its specifications also included a 500 foot or 152 meter wingspan a wing area of over one acre which is 43 000 square feet or 4 000 square meters a maximum takeoff weight of 6 million pounds or 2.7 million kilograms which is equal to seven and a half fully loaded boeing 747s it would also have a payload of 1.27 000 tons of cargo and the ability to move the equivalent of 17 m1 abrams tanks so you can already see that unlike the other design proposals this one was a winner right out of the gate it was bigger it could transport more and it could fly over mountains and other large land masses where say the soviet union ekranoplan ground effect designs definitely could not the ground effect factor was a big selling point for the military as deborah baron radon the head of strategic development within boeing phantomworks said at the time the poeken is land-based and that's where we're garning most military support it seems to have gained a lot of traction recently within the defense department whether or not there is a civil interest our focus is on the military version for strategic deployment by the way the pelican was conceptually also very simple it was a massive conventional wing body tail cantilevered mono plane whose payload would be carried in a standard sea going containers inside the enormous unpressurized fuselage that's right the same containers that they use on cargo ships the carnivorous hull would be able to fit containers in too deep on the main deck which would also be able to carry outsized vehicles such as the military's large battle tanks an upper level could be used to store further single layer of containers or be outfitted for passenger cabins in short the pelican was to be a glorified hulk of a cargo plane the boeing division applied for a patent in october 2001. the design submitted for the painted illustrate features such as a tea tale upward pointing positive dihedral winglets and a loading ramp at the back of the fuselage also in the design was an additional middle row of landing gears now you can already tell by this point in the story boeing was hugely proud of its pelican design referring to the plane in early 2002 as what would be the biggest bird in the history of aviation no wonder boeing said that the boeing pelican super transport would have dwarfed all other aircraft at the time including what was than the world's current largest aircraft ukraine's an225 with the pelican able to transport five times more than the ukrainian aircraft's payload and so the boeing pelican super transport was formally introduced to the public in july of 2002 at the farm borough international air show the design featured closely resembled the original painted design although its winglets were now pointing upwards to attain maximized lift however at the show boeing also announced that the pelican could fly only up to 2000 to 3000 ft or 600 to 914 meters in altitude with a wingspan of only 262 feet or 80 meters in width both the specifications were way below the eventual specifications of the pelican that they had originally designed on the other hand the payloads that boeing bragged about at the show were far bigger than the payloads that the pelican was eventually set to handle what the crowd saw of the pelican super transport at the farnborough air show that july day wasn't exactly the pelican that later evolved and that the company would ultimately axe boeing would later brag that it was jointly studying the aircraft with the u.s defense advance research projects agency or darpa you know the same crowd who mostly invented the internet as we know it today boeing also boasted that the us army was evaluating the pelican in war games in an effort to beat ships across the ocean which was very big talk indeed however boeing would eventually admit that the full concept studies for the pelican would not commence for at least another five to eight years and that the aircraft would take at least 20 years before actually entering service this would equate to roughly some time deep into the 2020s or beyond for the final versions to hit our airspace it wouldn't be the first time that the boeing corporation was blowing hot air about one of its converted and much publicized projects and you wouldn't believe what would happen next by 2003 the pelican was being showcased on the boeing phantomworks website and being presented by the division at high tech expositions boeing announced at the next farm bow air show held in 2004 that the pelican was already undertaking wind tunnel tests and the aircraft surface ceiling had increased from twenty thousand feet to twenty five thousand feet or seven point six thousand meters meaning it could fly over most mountain ranges in the entire world its design was updated to be powered by sixty to eighty thousand horsepower engines housed in four cantilever nacelles it would also have four sets of contra rotating propellers even more impressive was that the giant plane had the ability to fly non-stop across the pacific ocean a big plus for the plane whether as a military transport airship or as a commercial cargo plane of massive proportions by the way the pelican would also need 76 wheels for its landing gear just in order to distribute all of its immense weight that is compared to most modern airliners that only have 6 to 10 wheels or even 18 used on the boeing 747-400 the plane would also have no less than 38 fuselage mounted landing gears it seems that the world was ready to finally usher in the new age of an ultra jumbo so what happened things quite quickly deteriorated for boeing's pelican project a big setback came in 2005 when the united states congressional report ranked the boeing pelican super transport as only the 6th out of 11th similarly military platforms be assessed for their feasibility congress gave the pelican project a lower score due to the sheer scale and thus development and build cost of the aircraft as well as its use of what congress deemed to be high-risk technologies also boeing's ability to produce the aircraft in time for the requested 2015 deadline was in serious doubt by april 2006 even boeing wasn't making any public announcements about the pelican with internal memos showing that the corporation was instead focusing on low cost and environmentally efficient passenger planes of conventional size like the boeing 787 without much fanfare or even an official announcement boeing quietly discontinued any further development of its pelican project said to be sometime in late 2006. some experts have the opinion that the boeing pelican was simply too expensive ugly and too impractical for both the boeing corporation and the us military to give a green light and enter into production ah that seems too unfair too expensive it may have been but its practicality is debatable after all imagine a full potential of transport aircraft such as the pelican during a war or indeed as a commercial cargo gentle giant during peacetime and as for not being beautiful says who i've seen some decidedly beautiful pelicans in my time odd shaped and ungainly as they might be so who's to say how beautiful the boeing pelican super transport may have looked flying in our skies hey there don't forget to also check out my other channel aviation station with a link down below to see all sorts of quirky reviews information about the industry and for more aviation content and if you enjoyed this video today and want to support the channel then why not become a patreon you get to see videos early give me suggestions of what to do next and get your name in the credits just like all these lovely people so thanks again so much for watching and i can't wait to see you in the next video where we're going to explore another hidden mystery of the world of aviation

Channel: Found And Explained

Views: 1,186,828

Keywords: boeing (business operation), lockheed martin, fighter jet, air force, air force ones nelly, air force 1, air force basic training, us air force, united states army, boeing pelican, super planes, biggest planes, mustard, paper skies, super aircraft carrier, boeing, airbus, boeing 747, big planes, biggest plane takeoff, secret projects, top secret, conspiracy, ufo, us airforce secret, area 51, huge plane, cargo plane, an-225, 225

Id: 0Yf-5B7uai0

Length: 17min 46sec (1066 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 17 2021