Amazing Take Off of B52

Found this link on FB (link to Popular Mechanics which has a video embedded), and had to watch the video of a B52 bomber taking off in fierce cross winds. It is cool how the plane is facing a different direction as it's landing gear - and yo can see the "training wheels" at the ends of the wings.

Comments

[Cop Car]

Cool video, Bogie. About those "training wheels". Obviously, they are there because a fully fueled aircraft's wings might touch the ground otherwise. Not so obvious is the fact that I had to do the forces on those wheels, in 1974, which involved rotating those forces through 4 or 5 successive vector rotations to get them in terms of aircraft coordinates. My kind of fun!

[Cop Car]

P.S. Note that the B-52 in the video has a tall vertical fin/tail; thus, it is one of the earlier models.

[bogie]

Yes, those extremely long wings need the wheels there. I didn't realize that you had worked on those - how cool is that?

Interesting about the tail fin - I didn't know that. Now I'll have to go search for pics of newer versions.

[Cop Car]

Adding to the effect of the long wings is their flexibility. Don't quote me because I'm going from memory: I believe the wings could flex upward 25-26 feet and downward about 16 feet. For visual comparison of the flexure in other aircraft models' wings in testing, go to this interesting posting.