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From: leem@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Lee Mellinger)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: B52 trivia
Message-ID: <1991Feb20.051418.27976@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 20 Feb 91 05:14:18 GMT
References: <1991Feb5.034059.116@cbnews.att.com> <1991Feb7.012450.29693@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
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From: leem@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Lee Mellinger)
In article <1991Feb7.012450.29693@cbnews.att.com> eli@PWS.BULL.COM (Steve Elias) writes:
:In news footage, i've noticed that B52s seem to land rather strangely.
:The nose stays pointed down until the last minute, when the plane
:apparently
:the actual touchdown.)
:One of their instructors was an ex-B52 pilot.  Apparently,
:the B52 somehow gets more relative lift on the tail end than do
:most planes.  If the pilot doesn't get the nose up fast enough,
:the plane actually will take off tail first, riding the nose wheel!  
	
The attitude has nothing to do with the relative lift of the wings
versus the tail.  The B-52 was designed to fly with a three degree
nose down attitude.  I was told by a Boeing engineer at the
modification facility on our base (Fairchild AFB, 92nd SAW) that the
plane flew more efficiently in this attitude.  After 3 years and more
than 200 air hours, I sort of got used to it.

BTW, there is no nose wheel, per se, there is one set of tandem main
gear fore and aft on the fuselage and one tip wheel on each wing.
Lee

"Mit Pulver und Blei, die Gedanken sind frei."

|Lee F. Mellinger                 Caltech/Jet Propulsion Laboratory - NASA
|4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109 818/393-0516  FTS 977-0516      
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