GENERAL ELECTRIC'S MACH-2 MASTERPIECE! The turbojet that propelled America's fastest aircraft.

what does this Navy attack Jet this supersonic air force bomber and this 600 MH commercial airliner all have in common let's find out on celebrating Aviation with Mike masat By Request special thanks to General Electric Aviation engineer John Sada for the suggestion of the topic for this presentation now if you said that two of these three aircraft were built by conver you would be correct but they're also all powered by the General Electric j79 Turbo Jet product of the flight propulsion division of General Electric in the Evendale Ohio and Linn Massachusetts production facilities the jet age in the United States began in October 1942 with the First Flight of the experimental B XP 59 era Comet powered by General Electric turbo jet engines since that time General Electric has continued to play a leading role in the development of jet propulsion and by the mid 1960s had produced nearly 50,000 jet engines which had logged more than 50 million hours in Flight by 1965 more than half of the world's total flight time recorded at speeds above Mach 2 was flown in general electric powered high performance aircraft this wealth of flight experience resulted in proven and reliable termit engines for commercial airliners helicopters military Fighters bombers attack aircraft executive Jets and even one-of-a-kind experimental prototypes at the end of this video we're going to show you some surprising non-aviation Vehicles powered by General Electric turbines as as well things were different back in the 1960s and this is a two-page ad seen in all the major magazines touting the new j79 which pays off in speed engine was unveiled to the public in Washington DC June 12th 1957 and to give you an idea of the size of this power plant look at the two figures here and look at the engine and compare it to the two figures here this is the general electric IIA a license-built engine uh based on the Whittle engine in uh England and that was applied to this airplane as mentioned the Bell XP 59 seen here on the ground in its official uh top secret guys complete with fake balsawood propeller the engines covered and uh really giving no clue as to what the airplane really looked like the IIA engine evolved into the j31 which produced 2,000 lb of thrust each and had a time between overhaul of three hours the uh engine evolved to the j31 uh 2,000 lbs used in the Ryan Fireball a hybrid prop and jet aircraft and the Allison GE j33 Allison took over the production contract at this point and the j33 was used in a number of aircraft uh but mainly the locki t33 shooting star trainer now equipped with an After Burner the j33 produced 7500 PBS of thrust and this was used on the conver XF 92a America's first deltawing airplane and you can see the pronounced extension of the rear fuselage housing the afterburner Republic's f84 thunderjet prototype powered by the Allison j35 producing 4,000 lbs of thrust and then came the j47 which was the first 5,000lb class turbojet engine used in the f86 saber the Boeing b47 Strat jet and the Martin xb-51 triet bomber but for this episode we're going to be uh focusing on the j79 uh the first flight of a j79 was under a North American eb45 tornado test bed with a retractable the cell like you like the one you see here that flight occurred on May 20th 1955 for accuracy the eb45 in this photograph is shown carrying a Curtis Wright j67 but it was the same configuration now whenever we get into specifications this is always kind of quicksand because if you flew these airplanes if you worked on on these airplanes you may have different numbers than what I'm showing here but full disclosure these are General Electric provided specifications and let's take a look at some of the different kinds of airplanes let's start with jet fighters the j79 in the Air Force version flown in the Lockheed f104 and McDonald F4 Phantom the locki X f104 was the Prototype which first flew with a right j65 and this is going to be the first of three different airplanes that all started with j65 and evolved to the j79 although some were experimental the production configuration locked f14a used the j79 D3 and then there was this machine this is my photo of the week I love this picture it's the Grumman f11 f1f super tiger the second of our airplanes that uh first started their careers with right J 65s and then upgraded to the j79 although this particular airplane did not go into production this one did however and that's the McDonald f4h first version of the Phantom that became the f4b for the Navy and Marines f4c for the Air Force and then there was this machine the North American a3j vigilan originally an attack bomber and then morphed into a photo reconnaissance aircraft the ra5c now I'm including this photo just because it's so cool but the airplane never flew with an Armament load like you see here but it was a promo shot for North American uh kudos for a nice try the a3j original designation was uh an amazing airplane low and fast on the deck the ra5c was considered the Navy's ultimate high-speed photo Recon carrier-based aircraft then there was the the f-21 kafur which stands for lion and that was powered by an Israeli built bedek GE j79 this was used for US forces as an aggressor airplane uh flying Target for Top Gun and uh red flag maneuvering for commercial airliners the beautiful conver 880 and the 990 used the CJ 805 family 880 using the Straight turbojet version D3 seen on top 990s using the -23 turbo fan aft turbo fan seen on the bottom now here's your Barbed question what air what airliner had the most names in a a one-year period well this started as the converse Skylark became the Golden Arrow and then they said well wait a minute it Fly 600 miles hour we'll call it the conver 600 and someone said wait a minute how how many feet F feet per second does an airplane cover at 600 miles an hour and the answer was 880 so they wind up with the convert 880 and these are the beautiful slim Nels on the straight j79 Turbo Jet CJ 805 the 990 the 880s big brother got uh 100 numbers higher and this was considered the world's fastest commercial airliner before the Concord uh you see the afan uh CJ 85-23 uh afan turbo fans on the pylons plus two uh speed pods uh woodcomb um shot cones as they were called on each Wing trailing Edge and this mitigated the shock wave at that speed along the boundary layer of the wing uh primary user in the United States was American Airlines uh those uh shot cones doubled as fuel tanks you can see the American jet jettisoning fuel from the Outboards in the inset and in Europe primary users were SAS and Swiss Air then there was this airplane the caravel Santa Maria which originally came to the us as a demo uh in an intended cross marketing campaign with Douglas that never came to pass but General Electric used the airplane in the inset photo at top you see it equipped with the original Rolls-Royce Avon power plants on the bottom the CJ 80523 same as the 990 but in a two-stage Nell tww had ordered the Mark 10 as it was called and uh unfortunately the airline was going through some very tough Financial Times uh they were already considering the Boeing 727 which had Pratt engines that would integrate better into its Fleet and so the tww caravel never came to be as for guided missiles here's the third in our series on original j65 aircraft it's the VA regulus the original version was equipped with landing gear so it could be recovered after test flights the SM n-9 powered by wri j65 here's a better picture of the regulus for you and then this version the 9A uh was ground launched with a solid rocket booster and this was equipped with the GE j79 supersonic bombers now this is really where the engine came into its own started with the b-58 Hustler America's first actually the world's first supersonic bomber in 1956 and take a look at this airplane this is from the 305th bomb Wing at Bunker Hill Air Force Base Indiana and uh look at the combination Fuel and weapon pod on a center line under the fuselage compare it to this this is is an engine test bed uh b58 carrying a general electric j93 this was to be the power plant for the xb7 North American Valkyrie Tripes Sonic uh bomber that never saw production but the B70 did fly and it reached the speed of Mach 3.06 in 1965 and it was the largest airplane ever to fly at Mach 3 this photo gives you an idea of the massive size of the airplane and the engines there were six total and here's an engine change and whether it was coming or going it was a formidable shape in the sky now this led to the supersonic transport in the late 60s I should mention the B70 first flew in 1964 and the j93 evolved to the ge4 j93 was a 30,000lb CL class Turbo Jet ge4 was a 60,000 lb thrust class engine and you see there the mockup for the Boeing 2707 this is a view looking up from the ground you can see again the massive size of this airplane it began as a variable geometry Wing 2707 series 100 and wound up as a fixed Wing 27730 however uh due to political pressure and a number of other factors these airplanes uh never uh left the mockup stage but Boeing was building a different airplane in 1971 and that was this machine uh this is a Boeing 747400 the last version of the original design and this was powered by General Electric CF 6-8 C2 engines at 62,000 lbs thrust each so when we think of the j79 uh it's usually involved in in Fighters but uh did you know that there were Maritime ships and land speed record cars powered by this engine let's take a look at top we have the HS Dennison maritime ship powered by the uh uh marine version of the t-58 turbine the USS plane view built by Lockheed had twin j79 and these were air of airplanes these were ships that flew above the water and reached speeds as high as 65 knots these were bonaval speed record cars powered by j79 the spirit of America by Craig Breedlove and art offens arin's green monster both set official sanctioned uh land speed records the two cars on the bottom the North American Eagle fashioned out of an f104 and the advanced Spirit of America shell s lsrv uh did attain those speeds but did not uh make official records so the j79 General Electric's Mach 2 Turbo Jet a significant power plant and there you have it a look at an amazing time in American and World aviation history and how General Electric contributed to the advancement of Commercial and Military Aviation special thanks to the great people and institutions that uh make these presentations possible and thank you for celebrating Aviation with Mike Maat hope you enjoyed this episode and if you haven't subscribed we' love having you on board until next time take care

Channel: Celebrating Aviation with Mike Machat

Views: 28,864

Keywords: #generalelectri, #jetengines, #turbojetengines, #jetfighters, #jetbombers, #jetairliners

Id: bPfm4KkPq8M

Length: 14min 44sec (884 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 11 2023