GAO: Tactical Aircraft: Changing Conditions Drive Need for New F/A-22 Business Case"

"Buzzer" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 19 Mar 2004 09:15:45 -0500, "Kevin Brooks"
wrote:

In 1961 there were some 571 B-52's in service (
http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datab7.asp ), and by the following year
that had climbed to some 673; I doubt that any major program such as the
addition of a TA radar was completed in a period of less than three or
four
years at best for a force of that size (just based upon the '61 size);
doing
it in two years would have required a modification rate of nearly one
aircraft per day, sevven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year.

IF E forward came out with TA then the D is the only one that needed
the mod, and maybe the C...

Most sources seem to indicate the C's, or some of them, did get them. As to
E. I don't know--neither source I checked (Baugher and IAPR) specifically
indicated they were in the aircrraft as they were delivered. Both of those
sources are hardly infallible (as you pointed out with Baugher earlier, and
I noted in IAPR that they mistakenly indicated that the Hound Dog brought
the first thermonuclear warhead to the B-52 warload, when in fact they had
already been carrying freefall TN devices). But I find Baugher's indication
that there were some development/integration problems with the TA radar at
least believable (that would have been sort of cutting edge stuff during
that period), so whether or not the E's had them on delivery is a valid
question.


There was also an airframe
modification program initiated to strengthen the structure so that it
could
absorb the increasedfatigue loads of low altitude work--I have not seen
any
indication of when that effort was completed, either, or whether it ever
addressed either the C or E models.

Some of our D models at Glasgow 64 or so had the stress gauges on them
for the study of the structure mod. Only reason I knew about them at
the time was they were obvious on the inside skin in the tail section
when we loaded chaff. I think the B-52 that crashed in 65 during low
level had them because the Boeing engineers were "reading the tapes"
from a recorder on the aircraft in our maintenance office. I always
figured the recorder was the one that monitored the stress gauges and
other aircraft data. Not positive but the structure mod was probably
during Big Belly. Or not done at all on the Vietnam birds since they
would only be flying high?

I believe your last sentence is the correct one, from what I have been
reading. I am not sure that either the C's or D's ever got those mods; I
think the E's and F's already had them "factory installed", so to speak.


In a maintenance debriefing once there was a discussion about the 2000
hr design life of the B-52D and our planes were at something like
1500/1600 hrs. I'm about 19 years old and a flunky two striper
thinking what a waste of money designing an aircraft for only 2000
hrs. Click and the clock hits 2000 and off to the junkyard. And then
along comes Vietnam...

I wish the Army had designed their trucks that way...in 1993, when I gave up
company command, we still had some of the old "multi-fuel" series five ton
trucks in hand, and they were still wheezing along five or six years later
when the Army announced they were no longer going to carry the repair parts
lines for them. They were not as old as the Buff's, but they were beat all
to hell. How many commercial operators plan to use the same trucks for
twenty-five years or so?

Brooks