Bailey said:
Still, the XB-51 looks bloody good! One of my favourite post-war aircraft projects.F-14D said:...in addition to that, this may not be the optimum placement for 2/3 of your power when you're going to be down low and a slug of people are going to be shooting at you...
Love to get a high res of this photo.F-14D said:Bailey said:
...in addition to that, this may not be the optimum placement for 2/3 of your power when you're going to be down low and a slug of people are going to be shooting at you...
TinWing said:It isn't hard to see why the Canberra was ultimately chosen in preference to the XB-51.
TinWing said:It isn't hard to see why the Canberra was ultimately chosen in preference to the XB-51. Consider for a moment that the Avon was the most advanced turbojet of the period and the altogether conventional nature of the Canberra itself was far less risky than the XB-51. Given the nature of the early phases of the Korean War, it was very apparent that an aircraft with the characteristics of Canberra B.2 would have been very useful in combating the initial North Korean advance in 1950.
I'm not going to defend the changes imposed on the basic Canberra by Martin, or the inevitable delays, since the same situation was repeated with the Douglas B-66, which was also far too late due to unnecessary design changes to the A3D. In the end, there was something very wrong with the early USAF procurement process. That's not to say that the XB-51 was entirely worthy of further development and production. My guess is that if the XB-51 had been ordered into production, the type would have had a very, very high attrition rate, even during peace time.
XB-70 Guy said:Love to get a high res of this photo.F-14D said:...in addition to that, this may not be the optimum placement for 2/3 of your power when you're going to be down low and a slug of people are going to be shooting at you...
F-14D said:Now from what I heard and read, unlike USAF making unnecessary changes to the Navy A-3 so that it could be the USAF B-66, the changes made to the Canberra to become the B-57B and later, were improvements, especially in the crew area. I believe even a number of British aviation writers later said as much.
Abraham Gubler said:F-14D said:Now from what I heard and read, unlike USAF making unnecessary changes to the Navy A-3 so that it could be the USAF B-66, the changes made to the Canberra to become the B-57B and later, were improvements, especially in the crew area. I believe even a number of British aviation writers later said as much.
The Canberra’s crew compartment was originally designed for the mission of radar bombing with the two crew in a tandem cockpit under glass which we now consider to be a fighter style cockpit (but was pretty original at the time). But the radar wasn’t available so it was redesigned for a visual bomber position in the nose. Which meant the bombardier-navigator had to be able to move around the plane from the ejection seat behind the pilot to the prone position in the nose. All this meant there wasn’t room for the original fighter style tandem cockpit so the BN was moved down and to the rear and a smaller canopy for the pilot. The B-57 and later Canberras that didn’t have the nose bombardier position so reverted to the tandem cockpit.
F-14D said:TinWing said:It isn't hard to see why the Canberra was ultimately chosen in preference to the XB-51. Consider for a moment that the Avon was the most advanced turbojet of the period and the altogether conventional nature of the Canberra itself was far less risky than the XB-51. Given the nature of the early phases of the Korean War, it was very apparent that an aircraft with the characteristics of Canberra B.2 would have been very useful in combating the initial North Korean advance in 1950.
I'm not going to defend the changes imposed on the basic Canberra by Martin, or the inevitable delays, since the same situation was repeated with the Douglas B-66, which was also far too late due to unnecessary design changes to the A3D. In the end, there was something very wrong with the early USAF procurement process. That's not to say that the XB-51 was entirely worthy of further development and production. My guess is that if the XB-51 had been ordered into production, the type would have had a very, very high attrition rate, even during peace time.
Now from what I heard and read, unlike USAF making unnecessary changes to the Navy A-3 so that it could be the USAF B-66, the changes made to the Canberra to become the B-57B and later, were improvements, especially in the crew area. I believe even a number of British aviation writers later said as much.