Birth of a Bomber

How long does it take to build a new bomber and train airmen to use it? Twice as long as it takes to send a boy through college. By the time the U.S. Air Force officially takes delivery of Boeing's new swept-wing B-47 bomber (in the next few weeks), and "activates" the first B-47 group some eight or ten months later, roughly eight years will have elapsed since Boeing first started work on the ship.

Boeing was confronted with almost insurmountable problems in building the B-47 Stratojet. To begin with, there was no money available for research on jet bombers in the fall of 1943, when the Nazis were ahead of the U.S. in both the jet and rocket fields. In fact, there was as yet no U.S.-made jet engine.

The money problem was licked by getting a Government order to build a new photo-reconnaissance plane. The contracts carefully stipulated that the ship could be readily converted to a bomber.

It wasn't long before everybody forgot all about the photo-recon ship and started thinking about a turbojet bomber. Furthermore, not long after 1943, the Air Force cajoled some money out of the U.S. Government to establish what it called a bomber "requirement." This meant that salaries could be paid and jet models and wind tunnels could be built.

New developments and improvements cropped up almost every month. By September 1945, Boeing had built a whalelike jet bomber model (see cut) and done wind tunnel tests on it. Two months later, in November 1945, after some changes were made in the plane's shape, a complete low-speed wind tunnel model was tested.

The following month, in December 1945, further changes were made, mostly on the swept-back wing shapes. After 15 more months of testing, changing and building, Boeing conducted large-scale flutter tests on a balsa wood and steel model. By then, General Electric engineers had already been at work a long time designing and building the jet engines that would power the B-47.

In December 1947, Boeing's Seattle plant delivered to the Air Force the first real B-47. The Air Force sent its experts and test pilots swarming all over the plane. The result: more than a year later, on Feb. 8, 1949, a swept-wing B-47, equipped with six General Electric jet engines nestled under its wings and JATO (for jet assisted takeoff) equipment, made a record-breaking 2,289-mile nonstop flight from Moses Lake, Wash., to Andrews Field, Md., in 3 hrs., 46 min.--an average of 607.8 m.p.h.

But the Air Force and Boeing still weren't satisfied. The G.E. engines were souped up to have a 5,200-lb. thrust (an increase of 1,200 Ibs. per engine). JATO was discarded for liquid RATO (rocket assisted take-off).

Today, in the B-47, the U.S. Air Force has a medium bomber with a speed above 600 m.p.h., a load capacity of more than ten tons of bombs, and a high (but strictly secret) range.

The current problem of "activating" the first B-47 group means that enough planes must be built to form a group, enough airmen trained to fly the ships, and enough mechanics trained to repair them.

Ironically, the 6B47 will have a life expectancy shorter than the time it took to conceive and build it. Airmen today estimate the life expectancy of a military plane to be only six years.

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