Cold War ALternate Basing

Kevin Brooks wrote:

"David Lesher" wrote in message
...

There's a long-standing Urban Legend that the Interstate Highway
system was designed to serve as replacement airfields The Day After.

See "One-Mile-in-Five"
http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/airstrip.asp
&
http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/mayjun00/onemileinfive.htm

I seek to debunk this UL on an engineering basis. I think the
Interstate is unusable for multiple reasons, one of which is a 2-lane
highway is simply not wide enough for B-52/B-57, much less a B-36,
gear.

But I have had little luck finding the gear footprint of such
aircraft. Everyone talks wingspan. Suggestions/data?

I'd also like to compare PSI loads for such aircraft with those of
trucks.

Check old copies of the US Army's TM 5-430, IIRC; one was titled "Planning
and Design of Roads, Airfields, and Heliports in the Theater of Operations",
and the various USAF aircraft were listed by type with data regarding
pavement loading and minimum operating strip dimensions. Not sure that the
current TM manual is the same as the older versions; ISTR the older ones
were a 5-500 series pub, but that just may be due to hazy memory.

AFPAM 10-1403 lists required runway and taxiway widths and lengths, as well as
ACN requirements for each type of a/c. Not quite what you're asking for, but
should get you going. fas.org has it online:

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/usaf/...pam10-1403.htm

Until recently all of the army FM/TM were online at TRADOC's website, including
the one Kevin mentions, but it appears that it's now restricted to official use.

Guy

Kevin Brooks
Some European nations (especially Sweden) did indeed design roadways
to handle dispersed aircraft operations, but that was aimed primarily
at tactical fighters.

Indeed. And most (all?) the Swedish jet fighters. An example of
adoption for road bases is the unusual thurst-reversal engine
exhaust of Viggen, which dramatically cuts the lenght of the
landing run.

In Finland too, the airforce planned (and still does) to operate
dispersed from highway bases in war. There are also sections of
highways specifically designed as bases, being wide, straight
and with a runway profile and markings. While not designed for
road bases, the fact that the current F-18's of the FAF are
carrier planes, is helpful. For example, they do arrested
landings on prepared highway strips.

Some Soviet tac fighters, too, are well adapted for operations
from improvized bases, even unpaved runways. MiG-29 being a good
example: STOL, tough undercarriage and unusual alternative air
intakes for take-off and landing for avoiding FOD.

What really surprizes me, is that the US tac fighters of
the cold war era stationed in Europe didn't, as far as
I know, plan for dispersed operatons. Did they really think
that their bases would survive in the 'big' war? And,
consequently, the planes weren't (aren't) that well suited
for such operations either (eg F-16, although I think that
Norway operates its Vipers from road bases too).

What really surprizes me, is that the US tac fighters of
the cold war era stationed in Europe didn't, as far as
I know, plan for dispersed operatons. Did they really think
that their bases would survive in the 'big' war? And,
consequently, the planes weren't (aren't) that well suited
for such operations either (eg F-16, although I think that
Norway operates its Vipers from road bases too).



The South Korean equivalent of the Interstate highway system has wide spots all
over it 200-300' wide and 12,000' long at a guess with taxiways as well. They
exercize them from time to time, at least they used to.

In article ,
David Lesher wrote:

There's a long-standing Urban Legend that the Interstate Highway
system was designed to serve as replacement airfields The Day After.

See "One-Mile-in-Five"
http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/airstrip.asp
&
http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/mayjun00/onemileinfive.htm

I seek to debunk this UL on an engineering basis. I think the
Interstate is unusable for multiple reasons, one of which is a 2-lane
highway is simply not wide enough for B-52/B-57, much less a B-36,
gear.

However, much of the system was just dandy for pretty much anything
except the big bombers, and most of the fighter aircraft of the Cold War
would have had little or no problem flying from some of the wider
Interstate highway sections.

You should also note that some parts of the more remote Interstate
system were wider than two lanes in places that really didn't
technically need two lanes for the traffic involved. If you're
addressing the engineering aspect, you should look at why they built the
Interstates so much wider and thicker than trucks of the day needed, by
a large factor.

I think it's more of a case of "plan on using roads for temporary
fighter fields if we need to." The bombers had enough range to be able
to fly from a much more restricted system of bases or airports, while
the fighters, especially those of the time, would have needed a more
comprehensive list of places to fly from, especially out in the middle
of the less-populated Western and Central states.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.

Chad Irby wrote:

In article ,
David Lesher wrote:


There's a long-standing Urban Legend that the Interstate Highway
system was designed to serve as replacement airfields The Day After.

See "One-Mile-in-Five"
http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/airstrip.asp
&
http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/mayjun00/onemileinfive.htm

I seek to debunk this UL on an engineering basis. I think the
Interstate is unusable for multiple reasons, one of which is a 2-lane
highway is simply not wide enough for B-52/B-57, much less a B-36,
gear.


However, much of the system was just dandy for pretty much anything
except the big bombers, and most of the fighter aircraft of the Cold War
would have had little or no problem flying from some of the wider
Interstate highway sections.

You should also note that some parts of the more remote Interstate
system were wider than two lanes in places that really didn't
technically need two lanes for the traffic involved. If you're
addressing the engineering aspect, you should look at why they built the
Interstates so much wider and thicker than trucks of the day needed, by
a large factor.

I think it's more of a case of "plan on using roads for temporary
fighter fields if we need to." The bombers had enough range to be able
to fly from a much more restricted system of bases or airports, while
the fighters, especially those of the time, would have needed a more
comprehensive list of places to fly from, especially out in the middle
of the less-populated Western and Central states.


The primary purpose behind the Eisenhower National Highway System, IIRC,
was to provide a strategic highway network for moving military goods and
troops. If you look on the DOT pages for the NHS you will find a map
showing most of the strategic highways and they are interstates that
lead to the US borders and strategic points including ports. I think the
aircraft landing portion was just incidental and possibly deliberate in
the more desolate areas.

I was in my mid to late teens when the system was started and ISTR that
the original purpose was as described above. Regardless of reason for
building there are some states and areas within states that it is almost
worth your life to drive the IH system due to poor maintenance. I
certainly wouldn't want to land an aircraft around here in Louisiana
where I live now. Of course we've got enough closed AF bases that we
have lots of big, long runways now. VBG

George

What really surprizes me, is that the US tac fighters of
the cold war era stationed in Europe didn't, as far as
I know, plan for dispersed operatons. Did they really think
that their bases would survive in the 'big' war?

I suspect the planners thought the aircraft would not..

At most bases in Europe the planes were dispersed around the taxiways all over
the air patch. Most were parked in hardened shelters called Tab Vs complete
with blast doors in front and high spped taxiways and IIRC many were sealed and
filtered for chem-bio warfare.. .

From: M *@*.*


snip

What really surprizes me, is that the US tac fighters of
the cold war era stationed in Europe didn't, as far as
I know, plan for dispersed operatons. Did they really think
that their bases would survive in the 'big' war?

Actually there were several dispersment plans. Look at the autobahn, there were
more sites than the Luftwaffe could use. I remember someone pointing out a rest
stop near Stutgardt as being laid out as a parking ramp for fighters. We went
back and looked at it and it seemed plausible to me.

USAFE also had plans for deployment to other countries and civil airports.

It is interesting to note West German bridges used to have orange signs showing
maximum weight for tanks as well as trucks.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

"Chad Irby" wrote in message
. ..
If you're
addressing the engineering aspect, you should look at why they built the
Interstates so much wider and thicker than trucks of the day needed, by
a large factor.

I think it's more of a case of "plan on using roads for temporary
fighter fields if we need to."

Actually, the engineers who designed the roadbeds thought ahead to heavier
/bigger vehicles using the highway systems.

I've scanned the laws that brought the highway system into being, and there
isn't ONE, not ONE, reference to using them as runways for military
operations. There are references to making sure they were X feet wide and
could support vehicles of Y weight, but they were thinking about Army
equipment being transported and not airplanes.

"Chad Irby" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Kevin Brooks" wrote:

"Chad Irby" wrote in message

Like I said befo bombers and heavy transport planes are
certainly a no-go (from sheer width), but fighters wouldn't
overload most Interstates by any stretch. A 50,000 pound plane on
a couple of tires is a lot of load, but compared to a
minute-by-minute pounding from 60,000+ pound semis, not so much.
You only need *really* thick concrete with thick supporting beds
when you plan on building something to take heavy loads and abuse
for a long time with little maintenance.

Eh? Care to imagine what the impact load of that 50K pound plane is
when it *lands*?

Quite high, but it's not like we're talking about doing this sort of
thing long-term. Landing a 50,000 pound fighter on a highway a couple
of times is *not* going to destroy the road. Highways are overdesigned
to take the load of thousands of trucks over several years.

Landing a plane on a concrete surface isn't as big a deal as you'd
suggest, either, since it's putting a *compression* load on the surface,
which is exactly what you want with concrete.

OK, I can see this is about as wasteful an effort as trying to convince you
that your punch-a-hole-in-Three Gorges thoughts were a farse. Your civil
engineering knowledge far outweighs mine, obviously, as you have developed
assumptions and design criteria otherwise unknown, not to mention the
presence of those strange rural "extra wide" interstate sections that you
can't seem to identify specifically, etc.


One other little thing: a lot of the more remote Interstates were
built with thicker concrete because it lasts longer - by adding a
couple of inches of thickness, you can *quadruple* the life of the
road (rule of thumb: for every extra inch of thickness, you double
the road surface life).

Huh? Never heard such a thing in my life as a civil engineer.

You know, I'm not surprised. Do the math sometime and get back to us.

I found that doing the math the last time I argued with you over something
you obviously had no grasp of was a wasted effort, so why bother? You make
these unsupported claims and then expect others to provide concrete
(heh-heh) disprovals, while ignoring the provision of
actual-honest-to-goodness civil engineering basics.


All of the pavment thickness in the world was not going to matter is
the subgrade was poor, or the base course was crummy or of
insufficient thickness.

Here's where your argument falls apart.

Not all of the road locations in the world *have* bad subgrade to begin
with. Lots of them are on hard ground, and are basically just waiting
for someone to overcoat them with a layer of reinforced concrete to be
really, really good roads - or runways.

Oh, goody! A new engineering description! "When a road is to be built upon
"hard ground", the pavment design will not have to consider the subgrade
condition or pay any attention to base course design--see Chad for
evidence." Is that the way it appears in the various design specification
requirements. Do you know what soil plasticity index refers to? Anything
about "liquifaction"? Shrink/swell? Caliche and what may be under it? You
obviously don't, so why am I even bothering asking?


And I don't recall any efforts to "overbuild" the interstate highway
system--the general procedure was to build to design requirments. And
as to adding to the lifetime with extra thickness...seems a bit
screwy given that the usual procedure was to lay by panels, with the
eventual uneven settling of those panels being the usual cause for
later resurfacing.

There you go again with that "usual" silliness. "Usual" isn't what
we're talking about here, no matter how many times you repeat it.

We are talking about a timeperiod here where the use of such roads would
have been even considered, and that means you better be going back deep into
the dark days of the Cold War, *before* the routine use of continuous pour
construction.


All it takes is someone saying "hey, we have a nice stretch of flat
ground with good characteristics, all we need is a bit of extra concrete
and you could land a frigging PLANE on it." Repeat that a couple of
dozen times over the tens of THOUSANDS of miles of Interstate, and there
ya go.

It is obvious now that there is a reason you have never been employed as a
civil engineer or highway construction supervisor, or for that matter in the
runway construction design business--and that is because you are so uteerly
clueless.


If anything, I'd bet that there wasn't a design requirement ahead of
time. Someone just noticed that they had a lot of potential improvised
runways, and went with it. It certainly wouldn't be the first time
someone in the government decided to allow for potential military use of
civilian resources (especially since the Interstates were defense roads
to begin with).

Having worked directly in the business of designing and building roads and
airfields, to include the truly short duration use "theater of operations"
strips and roadways, it is obvious that you again are shooting wildly from
the hip with the above. You might see Bufdrvr's comments as to why this is
not a likely scenario if you won't take my own comments--his notice of the
fact that a stip of pavment does not an airfield make is viable, even for
tactical fighters (you would be wise to read up a bit on the European
practices when it came to developing roadway dispersal strips--they indeed
tpically included *really* wide pavement sections, apron areas, and a taxi
system). The Pentagon is not in the practice of saying, "Hey, we have no
eartly idea if this would really work, but let's plan on it anyway".


But what about the subgrade prep and base course design
requirments??! They are equally as important as the pavment section.

But if you're not planning on using the road for a runway for years and
years, with no long-term damage, it's not as critical as you pretend it
to be. If you're building a thick concrete highway in the middle of
nowhere, the design requirements are *very* similar to medium runway
design. Good bed, a foot or so of concrete, linear and horizontal
reinforcement. It's not something you need for city streets, but if you
look at the cross-sections of runways and heavy-duty highways, you're
not going to see any show-stoppers for short-term use.

You again point to the fact that you are clueless when it comes to pavement
design with the above nonsense.

Brooks


Note that the runway at Palmdale airport has been operating for
*years*, and is only 14 inches thick...

Obviously with one heck of a good subgrade and base.

Gravel, on a clay and sand dry lake bed. Compared to "modern" runways,
not as high tech as you'd pretend. If you have a good solid piece of
ground to start with, you don't need to lay down six feet of work before
doing anything useful. And you only need two or three feet of concrete
over a good foundation if you're planning on landing B-52s or C-5s there
on a regular basis.

I've seen the runways under construction at Orlando International
Airport. They have a *thick* (upwards of six feet) base, with two feet
of concrete, but that's because they're building on a *swamp*. A lot of
places out West are basically rock or hard dirt, with no real variation.
Lock the water out with a layer of clay and a foot of concrete, and the
only wear and tear is going to be whatever you run over them.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.

In article ,
Bob wrote:

On Fri, 6 Aug 2004 16:52:04 +0000 (UTC), David Lesher
wrote:

a) I'm still talking SAC bombers.

Landing, regenerating to war status, and taking off a Cold War B-52
from a highway was about as likely as the 1903 Wright Flyer going to
the moon.

Once a "hot" nuclear-type war started, we weren't going to *have* any
more B-52s or other strategic bombers. They were all going to be going
on one-way trips to Siberia and points west, or were going to be various
kinds of vapor.

Fighter-interceptors and smaller cargo planes? Lots of reasons to plan
for dispersing those.

Like the Europeans and Taiwanese are doing right now, for example.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.