T-33 Shooting Star - Warbird Wednesday Episode 23

well hello there and welcome to another edition of warbird wednesday my name is fred bell i am the vice chairman of the palm springs air museum and today we have one of greg's favorite airplane in fact greg is sublimated that's that my sublimated assistant another tough one greg you've been working me out with these these difficult words uh and so today we're gonna get into one of greg's favorite airplanes the t-33 the lockheed shooting star now this for us will wrap it up in trainer land this is people are going yay no more traders the trainer fans are going i love trainers the reality of it is is this the last one that we have in the collection we're going to wrap it up today and this airplane is really unique and it's where kind of everything started so i'm going to get into it i'm going to go over here and i'm going to grab my model as i use usually do and first thing i'm going to do is what is the name of this airplane greg this is the shooting star what do i have on my head i have a hat that the staff picked for me that is quite apt it has a bunch of stars on it although i look like a wizard more than a shooting star i'm going to take this off i'm going to toss it to my oh nice catch nice catch and it is continuing to be a little warm today so again i think greg is hoping that he cooks my brain a little bit but we're going to start into this airplane with first of all i've got my model now this airplane the reason is the kelly johnson design it's with lockheed and of course lockheed is one of those companies that never really do notices greg one of the companies that never really got gobbled up we've talked about north american and we've talked about beach and we've talked about other a lot of these other companies they've kind of gotten gobbled up along the way lockheed is still around and i'm going to talk about a very cool airplane lockheed airplane at the end of this that is coming in to enter our our permanent collection here shortly but today we're going to talk about the t-33 t for trainer 33 this aircraft there's a plan view this airplane is a version of an interesting airplane the p80 the p80 or the xp80 when it was in design with lockheed actually went into and this blows people away this airplane actually went into design in 1943 can you believe that first flight of the p80 was uh the xp80 was in 1944 and so one of the things on the design here is this is when american designers were trying to play ketchup we knew the germans were working on jets we hadn't seen the me262 but we knew that the germans were working on jets and the american and the british designers were all working on trying to catch up in in design land and catch up with the performance now this particular jet the p80 which was a fighter p is greg pursuit and then after the war they went to f which is for fighter also for fred it's exciting i almost feel like i'm doing like a sesame thing f is for fred but uh the uh and i digress greg i've completely blown my train of thought so the the p80 was a step into the land you have to remember at that time we were working also on the p59 the p59s performance was subpar and actually i want to call them and we'll go jurassic park here greg the apex predators of the time which were like the bearcat the later versions of p51 later versions of the p47 all highly evolved piston engine airplanes the p59's performance at the end of the day just wasn't up to par with those piston engine airplanes so the p59 was essentially a technology demonstrator i only think greg they built like 60 of the they were very they ordered more but they realized getting into production that it wasn't going to work the p80 which was the fighter version of this airplane became much more important in design ge at that time was working on a turbojet engine a single axial turbojet engine and the which was based off of the whittle design and if you're out there the kids go out and look up the whittle design the whittle engine and so the we were trying to figure out how to beat the germans initially in their superiority ultimately what was the other uh scary part of this greg it was the mig-15 which will color the conversation a little bit later so the germans were trying to get the 262 the british were trying to get the meteor and we were working on different versions of this jet now this had a turbo jet engine in it it breathed air through those uh breathers up in the front you had a jet engine and an energetic jet came out the back now that turbo jet as i said was a single axial turbojet get excited about that greg you do get excited about that now we got that was a turbine engine and where does turbine come from this goes way back greg goes back to 1822 with berdin which was or i believe it was burdine i probably butchered that name but he came up with turbine off the latin word turbo can you believe that i had no idea but latin for turbo and he came up with the turbine now turbines can be steam turbines they can be water termites in this case there's a combustion chamber and this is a jet turbine which is an air breather but they uh they were working on this single jet uh the single axial engine this turbo jet and greg can throw up we'll probably get an animation on how a jet engine works i'm going to talk about fans in a minute but the um the turbojet worked through combustion i believe on the j33 which was the engine in this that there were 14 combustion chambers around this turbine and greg can can come up with that animation they required essentially the explosions with the fuel to drive the turbine obviously and then the jet came out of the back that engine uh generated about four thousand pounds of thrust up to about forty 600 pounds and if you water injected the engine you could get a little bit more thrust out of it which is in later versions now greg who do you think built that engine and i it is hot out here again today so i'm going to wipe off a little bit of that sweat it has been hot in california the last uh what about three weeks greg we've been very warm the ge built that engine but who did they farm it out to you have any idea another very familiar name allison allison built 6 000 of those engines ge only built a few of them and the reason for that was quite simple greg it was that the allison had the production line and could turn it out and ge couldn't if you can believe that allison decided that they could turn out more engines or they decided they could turn out more engines and that was the reason that they did that now this airplane because of its design there's a couple of things about this that are very unique one i have heard this airplane described and until by the way this is a flyer we fly this airplane you can actually go out to our ride site and buy a seat in this airplane [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] on our website you can buy a seat in this airplane go check that out but until i got really deep down into the engineering on this airplane i've heard it described as a world war ii airplane with a jet strap to it and when you think about when it was designed in 1943 what were they using at that time they were using off-the-shelf parts with this airplane and they were using all those other fighter technologies so that is an apt description of this airplane the other thing you'll notice right off the bat is that straight wing the straight wing was remember we've talked about this before especially with german designs the germans were experimenting with swept wing technology but they didn't fully understand it and the issue about the swept wing technology and it goes back to the f-100 is that when they were sweeping the wings they didn't understand what would happen with the air vortex if you were to stall the airplane so when they were dealing with wing design remember with the f-100 we got the saber dance the reason was that the wing was stalling at different periods the air wasn't flowing over the rent wing properly and the wing was losing lift so the the saber would do the saber dance in a certain performance these straight wings airplanes they had much better feel for and so that is why they stayed initially with the with the straight wing remember on the german me262 which is a comparable airplane the swept wing didn't have anything to do with aerodynamics we've talked about it before greg why did it why did they do that they did that for center of gravity because of those big uh jumo engines hanging off underneath they actually swept the wings back to help the airplane deal better with with center of gravity now this particular airplane in a fighter version was one of the frontline airplanes that actually survived the war as i said the p-59 was a disappointment and so what they ended up doing is they went with this airplane instead now it was not when we went into the korean war we got a nasty surprise and how do we get a nasty surprise the airplane's been on the show before the mig-15 and why did we get that surprise because the british licensed the russians an engine and the russians reverse engineer and the engine had a lot more thrust and so the mig could outperform anything that the americans were fielding at that time and so the p80 going into the korean war now became the f-80 and the f-80 was nowhere near a match for the mig 15. now some of you p80 drivers or f80 drivers out there can argue with me and please let me have it in the comment section but if you read about these two airplanes the the mig and this airplane going up against each other this airplane quickly became relegated to ground attack as another airplane that we're going to talk about the f-86 came more into favor that was a north american product this airplane became much more ground attack now there is a similar airplane and what was that craig what was that the panther the panther and the cougar airplanes on the navy side also used similar jet engine technology and just didn't have the performance early on in the war now this airplane in the two-seat version was um a huge success in training command the airplane was fairly docile it uh it had some kind of wonky characteristics but it was very very good in the training command it was also very good as a greg a hack airplane in other words guys would fly this airplane around it is notoriously um thirsty is the kind word on fuel it uses a lot of gas and its performance is better up at altitude better up above 20 000 feet top speed is about 600 miles an hour so it's subsonic it is a non-after-burning airplane the big thing about the t-33 and a lot of these made it into private hands which we'll talk about is that with these early jet engines you had to be very very careful about response time when we see modern fighters whether you see the f-18 or the f-15 or whatever you see them put it to the gas or you watch top gun you see those huge afterburner plumes come out of those engines they have tons of power and the thrust to weight ratio is massive but the reality of these airplanes is that with this jet engine it was all about engine management because what happens greg you put that throttle forward and this thing doesn't immediately respond and if you don't or if you're not managing your airspeed a lot of guys will land this airplane short or they'll get into maneuvers where they don't have enough energy remember aircraft trigger what law greg and this is for the kids at home this is the fred fun fact i want you to go out and look this one up they trigger what law kids i want you to go home the kids that send me questions and stuff all the time newton's third law of motion i want you to go out and look at that we're not going to spend any more time on it but newton's third law of motion now this particular airplane and these these early jets caused the development and especially in airliners of fan jets the biggest difference between the jets that are in this and the fan jets is that the in the fan jets and modern airplanes and what i'm talking about a fan jet you see those jet engines that have that big opening and those fans spinning there's a jet engine in there but that's driving an axle that drives the fan and the fan the air goes over the outside of the jet engine and then comes out of the back it gets squeezed out of the back this is accelerates what happens there is those fan jets get most of their efficiency not from those combustion cans that we talked about that are around the engine like the 14 that around this j-33 what they do is they get most of the energy from the fan so the fan provides 30 to 70 percent of the thrust of the engine as opposed to that combustion driving the turbine so what ends up happening there is those fan jets are much more efficient which is why you've seen and they're less thirsty and because they're getting that they're getting that power from a byproduct of the of the en of the combustion not the convention itself so those jet engines they get 30 to 70 percent of their power from that fan isn't that cool greg i think that's really cool somebody just sneezed off camera and i think they may need medical help that sneeze was that loud greg we may have to stop and check that one out so the uh the engines in this uh were were first generation they caused a lot of changes now the one other change and then we're going to talk a little bit about this airplane is that this airplane derived into a couple of different things the one thing that it derived into was the f i want to i think the f 94 the f 94 was the first after burning and if you look at look up that airplane you can see a clear design relevance to this airplane this airplane built into that was the first after burning airplane that the air force had so that's another thing that greg can throw up there the uh interesting thing also about this is there's a whole other airplane that came out of this greg the sky fox not many people know about that the sky fox is a derivative airplane it was actually started in the mid 80s they bought 20 of these airplanes and what they did is they actually put fan jets in the cells on the outside of the hall and they closed the back of the airplane and they're actually marketing that airplane kind of like the a7 remember the a7 was modified into a strike fighter they kind of and i'm going to reach over here you notice how i'm doing this greg without turning my head and having him flip over we'll talk about gratuitous product placement the sky fox had the engines on the outside boeing actually bought the uh the rights to that and was developing it after a couple of years they parked that design it didn't happen greg can find a picture of the skyfox my understanding and greg we should find this airplane it's like up in oregon somewhere we should get it that's an airplane we should get a hold of i understand it doesn't have the engines on it anymore but it's sitting somewhere so if any of you know anybody knows where the skyfox is we'd love to have that airplane bring it down here we'll put it next to this one but the uh the sky fox only lasted a little with a bit of time with boeing and then they discontinued the project now having said that the airplane made it all the way out until military service greg until uh 2017 where it retired with the brazilian air force you can believe that we've had this airplane in the inventory for about 10 years it was donated i'm going to do my my tribute here with my stage 2. it was donated by a guy named phil hickson phil if you're seeing this phil is a huge supporter of our museum and we love you and we thank you and if you are a fan of the t33 we're going to salute you but we're going i'm going here and another star look greg is just on fire today with stars this is new grape soda since 1921 i am always afraid of anything that has colored now greg you're running this one this is this is actually dangerous this is 200 calories and 75 milligrams of sodium oh yes greg is rubbing his tummy and you get some calories here now the other thing that's a little scary about this is it's best by zero 920 i'm not seeing the telltale preservative ring that nearly killed me with some of this other stuff we're going to give it a shot to phil and all you t33 drivers out there thank you so much we appreciate you greg i think he's he's smiling again look he oh man that's the last three have been oh it's just this is like cough syrup oh man well new grape is not a sponsor of the program give it one more shot as i always do oh my goodness man that is nasty greg has accomplished look at that smile accomplished his mission now this airplane like everything we do and i'm going to move a little bit in the shot here and greg can follow me this airplane all of the airplanes in the inventory are tied to local people either squadrons or veterans because we believe it is extremely important to support our folks this aircraft is actually in colors of a fighter interceptor wing that flew out of march air force base which is really cool and then with a lot of our airplanes you can come and you can see all the names these are all pilots who flew this airplane there's phil hickson's name there he was in the united states air force a lot of pilots maintainers people that were in the united states air force but it's really nice if you see this airplane in an air show you can check it out and see all these cool names and also hopefully we'll get this thing over to march air force base and we can get it photographed with some of the airplanes as i said this airplane actually is uh the jet that we operate in the fleet it is really cool to fly in you should see that now i'm going to put this down and i'm going to pick up my gratuitous product placement now my gratuitous product placement today is look at this beautiful beautiful made from the highest quality materials united states air force hat look at that it's got it on the back this is a nice hat this will be on our website you're going to want to pick up one of these puppies here greg wants five i can see that right now yeah he's nodding his head so get out to our website on our gratuitous product placement and pick up this beautiful hat you know if you're a united states air force veteran and again the big thing about this airplane i'm going to move back over here again the big thing about this airplane is that think about the p59 as a demonstrator this really in historical terms is the first kind of practical u.s fighter jet fighter that was deployed right after world war ii it has a major place in history because of that it continues to serve on in affectionato hands we have them there's a number of them did you know that t-33 greggs were flying chase for experimental aircraft as recently as the 737 max so they're still flying chase in some of these programs nasa's use them they're they're still flying chase for some of the development programs so they're still being operated to this day if you get a chance see one at a an air show near you or come out and check this one out at our site remember my name is fred bell i am the vice chairman of the palm springs air museum we really appreciate you being with us today smash that subscribe button like us on facebook we can use your donations as well we can always use your donations and remember you need one of these united states air force hats more than anything you need to go out and buy one of those i want to thank you and have a wonderful day [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Palm Springs Air Museum

Views: 3,125

Keywords: Palm Springs Air Museum, Patreon

Id: 27MzN964Hxo

Length: 24min 4sec (1444 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 26 2020