Detailed tour through a B-52 Stratofortress

hello and welcome to the flight deck of a boeing b-52 strata fortress an absolute icon of military aviation this long-range strategic nuclear bomber first flew in 1952 and is not due to be retired until 2050. in this video i'm going to take you on a tour of this aircraft we're going to walk around the outside pointing out the interesting quirks and features and then we're going to climb up inside and then finish up back here on the flight deck so let's get into it i make videos about planes and one train if you enjoy watching trip reports on board aircraft and tours around significant planes in museums then make sure you check out my channel subscribe click the notification bell and find me on instagram and facebook this aircraft on display is a b52g which was a major upgrade and first flew in 1959. the upgraded included modified wings fuel tanks and a few other things i'll mention as i go this particular aircraft first flew in 1960 and served with the usaf until 1990 when it was gifted as a permanent loan to the darwin aviation museum in northern australia one thing i'll be mentioning a lot as we look at the outside of this aircraft is ecm which stands for electronic counter measures and essentially protects the aircraft from attack by jamming and confusing enemy radars they can flood it with a wide spectrum of radio frequencies and smother the return signal or give it false information so the enemy radar thinks it's in another location in fact i heard a story about a b-52 requesting permission to land at a civilian airport and the air traffic controller responded by saying that they were actually nowhere near them the b-52 crew replied with a standby then proceeded to turn off their ecm and then atc could see that they were actually much closer on their radar and approved the landing on top of the nose is an ecm antenna initially it was designed as a high altitude bomber although when the u2 was shot down that changed to a low altitude aircraft that would fly underneath enemy radar but obviously there's a lot more obstacles when flying low these two things dropping underneath the front here were designed to help it flying at low altitude and in poor or no light on the left or the port side is an evs low light television scanner and on the right side or the starboard side is an infrared scanner these are projected into the flight deck which you'll see shortly unsurprisingly these two turrets are not particularly aerodynamic and they are one of the reasons why newer b-52s have a slower top speed than the older ones behind this dome is a radar warning antenna and just in front of that is a small cooling air intake because again the electronic equipment all gets very hot and the air is expelled in the vent below it these three sticks with red ribbons on the end are pitot tubes which measure air speed and underneath here is where the offensive station seats would eject down through there's the entrance hatch which will be opening up shortly and this little thing is the angle of attack sensor which helps the pilots avoid stalling the aircraft continuing on is the air inlet for cooling the ecm equipment bay and behind that are several outlets as all this equipment gets very hot and just in front of you before we enter the undercarriage wheel bay are several ecm aerials so really a lot of these bumps and bulges are to do with ecm inside the undercarriage bay you'll notice a few pipes with insulation wrapped around them the aircraft is pressurized and they do that by bleeding air from the jet engines obviously the air is hot so the pipes are insulated in fact it's all so hot that the bleed air system has to be turned off 10 minutes before a crew member could walk past it along the catwalk which i'll show you later in the video now the landing gear is interesting because both the four and the aft main landing gear can pivot up to 20 degrees from the center line to enable crabbing during cross wind landings and next up is the massive weapons bay up on the other side is a catwalk with a closed hatch one of the crew members during the flight could actually crawl along here and check that the ordinances had all been dropped the b-52 has a weapons payload of 31 tons including bombs and missiles they could also carry test aircraft including the bell x-1 which broke the sound barrier they were essentially a flying rocket with a very minimal range so the b-52 would get it up to cruising altitude before they'd turn it on and here's the aft landing gear and just behind that are some more ecm antennas the b-52a was born the b-52d was to follow shortly after and it was the latter that first went into service with the united states air force strategic air command what do you think now if i zoom in on the tail art it says no buff too tough now buff is actually the nickname of the b52 and stands for big ugly fat fella or something else beginning with f there is radar absorbent material also known as ram here and the sawtooth pattern mitigates radar reflections this extension is a rearward warning radar and on the underside here are flare dispensers just under the horizontal stabilizers are these two outlet valves for cooling air for the rudder and elevator hydraulic pumps the air enters via a ram air inlet just at the base of the vertical stabilizer at the back and on top you've got the drag chute door as they use a parachute to slow down these on landing in fact the brakes are known for being pretty poor and there is talk of updating them soon the top bulb is a radome for the weapons system below it and under that is another ecm radome and then there's the only old-fashioned defensive system on this the remote control quad 50 caliber machine gun the weapon system can detect aircraft up to 7 000 meters away although the gun can't start firing until the target is around 1300 meters away these were used in vietnam where the enemy were using very basic missiles requiring the fighter to fly up closely behind the bomber but as the missiles have improved this gun became obsolete and was removed on the h model there's also more rectangular areas of ram which you can kind of make out if you look closely you may have noticed that the aircraft's tail is far too high to have gone through the door here this was a common problem so the entire vertical stabilizer was designed to bend over towards the right as you can see in this photo now let's continue and check out these massive wings the outer edge of the wing is fiberglass and there's more ecm antennas inside it literally every centimeter of this plane had a purpose on the very end is a small vent as they burn fuel they need to replace the space in the tanks so the air enters here it also acts as a vent for air as they fuel the aircraft on the ground here's a fixed external fuel tank while earlier modelers would drop them once they were empty these are always the last fuel to use as they actually help reduce the risk of flutter here's an outrigger wheel because these wings can droop so much when they're full of fuel and holding four engines each they need their wheels to well sort of hold them up now this makes for an interesting sight they've fully extended their outboard single slotted flaps which works to increase lift during takeoff and landing but since it creates more drag at higher speeds they're fully retracted as you can see with the inboard flaps and now to these famous dual engine pods inside our two pratt whitney j57 turbo jets unlike newer turbo fans all of the air is sucked through the core hence why it's noisy and thirsty in total the aircraft could carry around three hundred and ten thousand pounds of fuel and burn around twenty thousand pounds an hour when cruising or up to eighty thousand pounds per hour during takeoff there are ongoing discussions about re-engining these in fact in 1996 there was the idea of fitting four rolls-royce rb-211s raised although that never eventuated next to engine number three and four is the external pylon mount here you could attach a whole array of equipment including more bombs missiles and even other planes including the bell x1 that i mentioned earlier now let's head inside this beauty via the entry hatch on the right is a ladder leading up to the top floor and we'll check that out shortly in front of you now is the offense compartment on the left is their radar navigator who was also the bombardier they used the radars to target and direct weapons and find refuelling aircraft amongst a few other roles and a lot of the equipment would still be classified and has been removed although thankfully the flight deck is mostly intact as you'll see shortly and the guy on the right was also the navigator although their role was on a larger scale guiding the aircraft for the entire mission from their base to the target above them are these manual bomb releases if the system jams and in front of them is the special weapons release which was for nukes and thankfully was never dropped from one of these there's also switches elsewhere in fact the pilot electronic warfare officer and the radar navigator all had to consent to a nuclear drop by their own individual switches what's really interesting is that these two are both ejection seats when activated by the yellow lever there's a stirrups that wraps your legs to the seat and then you're fired downwards this system can only be safely used above 250 feet since obviously you're being fired down towards the ground as we spin around looking towards the back of the aircraft you'll see racks on both sides where electronic and communication systems are all stored in the distance is the hatch into the wheel bay and we'll go there later but first let's head upstairs to the flight deck immediately on the right and looking towards the back of the aircraft are two more seats that form the defense station on the left is the electronic warfare officer and their role was to control all the defensive equipment including the ecm i mentioned earlier this is a really important role because otherwise the aircraft has very little defensive equipment to avoid enemy missiles or fighters next to them was the gunners position who would be controlling the remote control gun on the tail this was an upgrade from actually sitting back there all by yourself now obviously this guy's job was pretty quiet so they could do other jobs including using the rear radar to coordinate other aircraft flying in formation and both of these were also ejector seats although they both fired upwards and moving back we step over the hatch that i've just climbed up through and straight ahead now is the loo which is uncomfortably close to the ewo seat and it was also the defense instructor's seat which is unfortunate for them there's a urinal downstairs and i'll show you that shortly spinning around and looking up is the periscope sextant this was used prior to gps to work out your position based on the stars this could be used if other navigation equipment broke or if you needed to fly stealth remember that in a large scale war it's likely that gps satellites would be knocked out behind this is the plumbing for the air-to-air refuelling the electronic weapons officer was given the job of watching those windows for any fuel or hydraulic leaks this netting is actually the 10th man seat and in front of that is the instructor pilot seat and on both sides are circuit breakers and here we are entering the flight deck what's interesting is that the xb52 prototype actually had the second pilot sitting behind similar to the b-47 bomber that preceded it but it was decided to sit the two pilots next to each other as this would aid communication and you'd also only need it single controls but it partially explains why the flight deck is so cramped you may recall i mentioned the aircraft's crabbing system where the wheels could twist well this is where they will do that it's been scratched off but here there would be a table with the side wind speed and a recommended crabby angle moving forward other eight throttle levers which is pretty cool to see you'll notice the engine 4 and 5 are sticking out a little further and that's because people like to use those two in-board engines to make small throttle adjustments or you can just use these levers behind which is a very cool thing to do i can't imagine many people having had the pleasure of pushing eight throttles forward inside a b-52 on the right is the co-pilot and their ejector seat would fire up through this panel in the roof you'll notice the glass windows above and that helps the pilots during air-to-air refueling the fuel management is completely manual and there's no in-flight engineer so the pilot would follow a sequence of moving fuel around to try and maintain a center of gravity while also keeping the fuel in the wings as much as possible as that helps reduce wing flutter as i said earlier in the center are the dials for the eight engines now it's impossible to keep an eye on all of them during things like takeoff so you just kind of scan them all above them is the engine fire shutoff switch and moving down you have the engine pressure ratio gauges the tachometer the exhaust gas temperature gauge and fuel flow meter now these two big tv screens are the evs monitors which display footage from those two bulbs underneath the aircraft's nose in poor conditions the crew can fly the plane purely by using those and moving over to the captain's seat you've got the usual gyros air speeds and mac indicators now over here is the water injection system water is normally injected either at the compressor inlet or in the diffuser just before the combustion chambers adding water increases the mass being accelerated out of the engine which increases thrust and also serves to cool the turbines since temperature is normally the limiting factor in turbine engine performance at low altitudes the cooling effects lets the engine run at a higher rpm with more fuel injected and more thrust created without overheating the drawback of the system is that the injecting water also quenches the flame in the combustion chamber somewhat so there's no way to cool the engine parts without also cooling the flame this leads to unburned fuel out the exhaust and the characteristic tail of black smoke and up here are the controls for the air-to-air refuelling in 1957 a b-52 and two specs circumnavigated the world flying non-stop for 45 hours and 19 minutes it was refueled in flight three times and the point of the exercise was to show that they could drop a hydrogen bomb anywhere on earth now let's head back down the stairs to the first level and we'll wander a little way towards the back now there's no in-flight data recorders or black boxes on the b-52 the radar and navigation systems could record but only the position timing and radar pictures there was also no tcas which is what commercial aircraft used to detect each other and avoid if a collision is imminent the coronies just had to be more careful and stick to designated flight paths swinging around to look backwards you get a glimpse of the urinal which is a vital for a 45 hour flight and next to that is the airtight door now if they were ever unsure if an ordinance had been dropped at the end of a mission the most junior or smallest crew member would crawl through here mid-flight and check it out on both sides now other ecm equipment bays you may recall seeing vents on the side of the aircraft well that's for those as again these heat up quite a lot when they're being used you can see the catwalk that you can crawl along that can continue along to the tail of the aircraft here's a reminder of what that looks like from underneath the bombay and that brings to an end this tour of this incredible aircraft if you enjoyed it please give the video a thumbs up and check out my channel for many more similar videos around military and civilian aircraft a massive thanks to the darwin aviation museum for letting me film the aircraft and many others i'd certainly recommend it if you're an ab geek and in the area thanks for watching and i'll see you another time

Channel: Paul Stewart

Views: 1,174,187

Keywords: b52, b-52, boeing, stratofortress, usaf, aviation tour, aviation documentary, airplane, plane, Vehicle, Usaf, United states airforce, Buff, Paul stewart, Planes, Aviation museum, 4th of july, fourth of july, b-52G

Id: wLCuiRtolpM

Length: 18min 34sec (1114 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 16 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/charles222A]

Kinda sad when you consider what Boeing was and what Boeing is now.

[u/infodawg]

One of my favorite airplanes in the world. Right up there with the B-17, the B-29 and the A-10. B-52s first took to the skies in 1952. 1952!! And they will fly combat missions until 2050! That's just fucking mindboggling.