|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
 Previous Item - TFR for shuttle launch
This will go to the previous thread in this topic. | 
Favorite option: If you want this item to be marked as a favorite, click on the black heart.
It wasn't Anton Chekov after all.... |
|  Next Item - Drain Plug
This will go to the next thread in this topic. |
|
|
|
 |
Charles Pickett - Feb 05,2008
Viewers
| Reply
|
| |
E Mailed to me from Jim Kershaw and worth sharing <br /><br />Thanks Jim <br /><br /><br /><br />Interesting piece of aviation history.<br /><br />On October 30, 1935, at Wright Air Field in Dayton, Ohio, the U.S. Army Air Corps held a flight competition for airplane <br />manufacturers vying to build its next-generation long-range bomber. It wasn't supposed to be much of a competition. In early <br />evaluations, the Boeing Corporation's gleaming aluminum-alloy Model 299 had trounced the designs of Martin and Douglas. <br />Boeing's plane could carry five times as many bombs as the Army had requested; it could fly faster than previous bombers, <br />and almost twice as far. A Seattle newspaperman who had glimpsed the plane called it the 'flying fortress,' and the name <br />stuck. The flight 'competition,' according to the military historian Phillip Meilinger, was regarded as a mere formality. The <br />Army planned to order at least sixty-five of the aircraft. <br /><br />A small crowd of Army brass and manufacturing executives watched as the Model 299 test plane taxied onto the runway. It <br />was sleek and impressive, with a hundred-and-three-foot wingspan and four engines jutting out from the wings, rather than <br />the usual two. The plane roared down the tarmac, lifted off smoothly, and climbed sharply to three hundred feet. Then it <br />stalled, turned on one wing, and crashed in a fiery explosion. Two of the five crew members died, including the pilot, Major <br />Ployer P. Hill. (re. Hill AFB, Ogden, UT) <br /><br />An investigation revealed that nothing mechanical had gone wrong. The crash had been due to 'pilot error,' the report said. <br />Substantially more complex than previous aircraft, the new plane required the pilot to attend to the four engines, a retractable <br />landing gear, new wing flaps, electric trim tabs that needed adjustment to maintain control at different airspeeds, and <br />constant-speed propellers whose pitch had to be regulated with hydraulic controls, among other features. While doing all this, <br />Hill had forgotten to release a new locking mechanism on the elevator and rudder controls. The Boeing model was deemed, as <br />a newspaper put it, 'too much airplane for one man to fly.' The Army Air Corps declared Douglas's smaller design the winner. <br />Boeing nearly went bankrupt.<br />Still, the Army purchased a few aircraft from Boeing as test planes, and some insiders remained convinced that the aircraft <br />was flyable. So a group of test pilots got together and considered what to do. <br /><br />They could have required Model 299 pilots to undergo more training. But it was hard to imagine having more experience and <br />expertise than Major Hill, who had been the U.S. Army Air Corps' chief of flight testing. Instead, they came up with an <br />ingeniously simple approach: they created a pilot's checklist, with step-by-step checks for takeoff, flight, landing, and taxiing. <br />Its mere existence indicated how far aeronautics had advanced. In the early years of flight, getting an aircraft into the air <br />might have been nerve-racking, but it was hardly complex. Using a checklist for takeoff would no more have occurred to a <br />pilot than to a driver backing a car out of the garage. But this new plane was too complicated to be left to the memory of any <br />pilot, however expert.<br /><br />With the checklist in hand, the pilots went on to fly the Model 299 a total of 1.8 million miles without one accident. The Army <br />ultimately ordered almost thirteen thousand of the aircraft, which it dubbed the B-17. And, because flying the behemoth was <br />now possible, the Army gained a decisive air advantage in the Second World War which enabled its devastating bombing <br />campaign across Nazi Germany.<br /> <br />
| | |
|
Rick Oreair - Feb 05,2008
Viewers
| Reply
|
| |
And now we know 'The rest of the Story'. interesting Charlie. Thanks
| | |
|
Kenneth Leonard - Feb 05,2008
Viewers
| Reply
|
| |
Fascinating Charlie. And probably explains why the USAF is so much more process oriented than the other services. (Well, the nuclear Navy is pretty anal too)
| | |
| | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
- About Searey.us -
- Contact Searey.us -
|
- Privacy Statement -
- Terms of service -
|
Copyright © 2024 Searey.us & Brevard Web Pro, Inc. -
Copyrights may also be reserved
by posters and used by license on this site. See Terms of Service for more information.
|
| |
- Please visit our NEW
Chapter Place Website at: chapterplace.com or
Free Chapter Management Website at: ourchapter.org. Good for all chapters, groups or families. |
| |
