This Date in Aviation History: October 21 - October 23

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 10/23/2020 at 12:35 • Filed to: wingspan, Planelopnik, TDIAH

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Welcome to This Date in Aviation History , getting of you caught up on milestones, important historical events and people in aviation from October 21 through October 23.

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October 21, 1947 – The first flight of the Northrop YB-49. In any fixed-wing aircraft, it is the wings that generate the lift required to fly. The tail structure, or empennage, helps control the the pitch and yaw of the aircraft in flight, but the the fuselage provides little to no lift. While necessary for passengers and cargo, the fuselage imparts !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and adds extra weight. But what if you did away with the fuselage and empennage entirely, and created an aircraft that was just a wing? !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! doggedly pursued the answer to that question throughout the 1930s and 1940s with his flying wing aircraft, and the story of the jet-powered YB-49 begins with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , its piston-powered predecessor, and the story of both aircraft tells a frustrating tale of what might have been.

The propeller-powered YB-35. The problematic piston engines and props were removed and replaced with jet engines to create the YB-49.

In April of 1941, the US Army Air Forces, fearing the fall of England and the loss of bases in Europe, identified a need for a bomber that could attack Nazi-occupied Europe from bases on the US mainland. They requested proposals for a new bomber, one that could carry 10,000 pounds of bombs on a 10,000 mile round trip. While other manufacturers responded with large, traditional bombers, Northrop proposed the YB-35, a huge flying wing that was powered by four piston engines turning !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . But the piston engines proved to be the YB-35’s Achilles heel. The engines and the propellers had never been tested together, and problems with vibrations made the power plants unreliable. Jack Northrop considered them dangerous. Through a fiasco of competing interests, the Army, who supplied the engines, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the maker of the propellers, and Northrop could not agree on a resolution. So Jack Northrop himself grounded the YB-35 until a suitable powerplant could be found, or until the Army fixed the engines they had provided. But the Army now believed that the future of aviation lay with the jet engine, so they directed Northrop to replace the four propeller engines on the YB-35 with eight turbojet engines.

The YB-49 takes off on its maiden flight

The re-engined flying wing was now designated the YB-49. The eight !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turbojet engines immediately gave the YB-49 better performance, allowing the bomber to soar to 40,000 feet and exceed 520 mph in test flights. The performance validated the flying characteristics of Northrop’s design, and indeed the entire flying wing concept, but the trade off for this performance was a dramatic decrease in the bomber’s range. The thirsty turbojets cut the YB-49's range in half, thereby eliminating it from consideration as a long range strategic bomber. Though the YB-49 lost out to the gargantuan !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a bomber of traditional design that was likely more appealing to Army Air Forces brass, the Army ordered testing of the YB-49 to continue, and existing YB-35 airframes were slated for conversion to jet power. Ultimately, though, only three YB-49s were produced from converted YB-35s, and two YRB-49 reconnaissance models were built before the program was cancelled and all the aircraft were scrapped.

YB-35 bombers awaiting conversion to YB-49 jet bombers. With the cancellation of the program, all finished and unfinished aircraft were broken up, and not a single airframe was left, even for a museum.

Northrop believed that the cancellation was entirely political, but there is no question that the YB-49 was over budget and behind schedule and, even though the Peacemaker was an essentially obsolete WWII design, it offered the Air Force a more comfortable option to the radical flying wing. The Air Force tried to make amends to Northrop by awarding the company a contract to build the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! interceptor, and Northrop eventually produced just over 1,000 copies. However, it’s doubtful that Jack Northrop was mollified. Despite the cancellation of the YB-49, the flying wing concept did not die. Northrop’s vision was eventually vindicated with the introduction of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! stealth bomber in 1997. A short time before his death, Jack Northrop was allowed to see and hold a model of the Spirit when the project was still top secret. Unable to speak because of his illness, Northrop reportedly wrote on a sheet of paper, “Now I know why God has kept me alive all these years.” Jack Northrop died 10 months later.

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October 22, 1955 – The first flight of the Republic F-105 Thunderchief. As the nuclear bomb became the Air Force’s strategic and tactical weapon of choice in the 1950s, the doctrine of a fleet of high-flying strategic bombers carpeting a target with conventional bombs was replaced by the concept of a small number of tactical bombers or fighter-bombers flying at very high speeds and very close to the ground to penetrate enemy airspace and deliver a single nuclear weapon. Maneuverability was sacrificed for high speed, low level handling, and long range. In response to this doctrinal shift, the design team at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! led by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! developed the F-105 Thunderchief, the first aircraft designed specifically for this nuclear penetration mission.

One of two YF-105A pre-production prototypes. The F-105B would receive updated air intakes and an area-rule fuselage.

The F-105 had begun as a private venture by Republic to find a replacement for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the ultimate development of the straight-winged !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The US Air Force was initially interested in the project and had planned to purchase 200 of the new tactical bomber, but the realities of the Korean War led the Air Force to cut the order to just 15 aircraft. Nevertheless, Republic continued the development of the F-105, and used lessons learned from Convair’s !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! program to redesign the fuselage of the Thunderchief to take advantage of the recently discovered !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , which helped to reduce transonic drag. The F-105A, though underpowered like so many fighters of this era, still managed to break the sound barrier on its maiden flight. The redesigned F-105B, with an afterburning !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! axial-flow turbojet and modified with the Thunderchief’s characteristic forward-swept, variable-geometry air intakes, topped out at Mach 2.15, or about 1,420 mph. Further development led to the F-105D, the definitive production variant and the one built in the largest numbers. The D model included an all-weather attack capability provided by the AN/APN-131 navigational radar. And the Thunderchief was big. In fact, it was the largest single-seat, single-engine combat aircraft in history, weighing in at 50,000 lbs.

The Thunderchief, or “Thud” as it was called by its pilots, entered service in 1958 as the tactical nuclear bomber it was designed to be. However, it was pressed into service in the Vietnam War in 1964 as the Air Force’s primary ground attack aircraft. In conventional combat, the Thud’s size and power meant it could carry a greater bomb load than the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! or !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! from WWII. And despite its ground attack mission, Thud pilots still managed to claw 27.5 North Vietnamese aircraft out of the sky. But the F-105 was vulnerable to antiaircraft defenses and enemy fighters, and its combat losses were high. In December 1966 alone, 14 Thuds were lost to North Vietnamese fighters. As a result, the F-105 became the first US warplane to be withdrawn due to combat losses.

An F-105 is brought down by a Soviet-made S-75 Dvina surface-to-air missile over Vietnam ca. 1966

The F-105 was phased out in favor of newer aircraft, particularly the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , though the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! electronic warfare variant served until the end of the Vietnam War. The F-105B briefly served as the platform for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! demonstration squadron, but after just six shows the team switched back to the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! following a fatal crash caused by an overstressed airframe. Ultimately, 833 Thunderchiefs were produced, and the type was fully retired by 1984.

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October 23-26, 1944 – The Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history, and the first successful organized kamikaze attack. By October of 1944, the Allies had regained considerable territory from the Japanese and were drawing closer to the recapture of the Philippines. An invasion of the Japanese homeland looked like a distinct possibility. Japan could not match the industrial might of the US, and the numbers of Japanese ships, aircraft, and trained pilots dwindled rapidly while those of the US and her allies continued to increase. The Japanese faced a critical shortage of experienced combat pilots, while the Allies seemingly had an endless supply. The Pacific battlefield was becoming more and more tilted in favor of the Allies.

The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! arose from the planned operation to invade and retake the Philippine islands of Leyte, Luzon, and Samar. The result was the largest naval battle of the entire war and possibly the greatest naval battle in history. The battle opened when the American submarines !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (SS-227) and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (SS-247) attacked the Japanese fleet in the Palawan Passage, sinking the heavy cruisers !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . W hat ultimately came to be known as the Battle of Leyte Gulf actually encompassed four smaller engagements: the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . By the time action came to a close on October 26, the Japanese had suffered approximately 12,500 casualties, lost one fleet and three light carriers, 10 cruisers, 11 destroyers, and more than 300 aircraft. American and Australian naval forces lost one light carrier, two escort carriers, two destroyers, and one destroyer escort sunk, along with about 3,000 casualties. Allied forces destroyed about 300 Japanese aircraft while losing about 200 of the own. The Japanese defeat spelled the end of the Japanese Navy as an effective fighting force. But out the desperation in which the Japanese found themselves, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! was born.

The word kamikaze is usually translated as divine wind in reference to typhoons in the years 1274 and 1281 that helped the Japanese repel Mongol invaders. The flying units that carried out the missions were called tokubetsu kgeki tai ( special attack unit ) and, while the term kamikaze is most commonly associated with suicide air attacks, it is not limited to aircraft. Throughout the course of the war, pilots of both sides had deliberately crashed their aircraft into ships, but usually when the aircraft was damaged beyond flyability or if the pilot was mortally wounded. The kamikaze attacks during the Battle of Leyte Gulf were the first deliberate and organized suicide missions of the tokubetsu kgeki tai under the direction of 1st Air Fleet commandant Vice Admiral !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Speaking to officers in Manila just days before the battle, nishi said, “I don’t think there would be any other certain way to carry out the operation [to hold the Philippines] than to put a 250 kg bomb on a Zero and let it crash into a US carrier in order to disable her for a week.”

The escort carrier USS St. Lo (CVE-63) explodes following a kamikaze attack during the Battle of Leyte Gulf

On October 25, five !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! fighters, each armed with a single bomb, attacked escort carriers of the US fleet off the Philippine coast. Four of the kamikaze aircraft were unsuccessful, but the fifth hit the escort carrier !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (CVE-63), igniting fires which detonated the ship’s magazine. The carrier eventually sank, killing 143 members of her 889 man crew. It was the first major US warship to be sunk by a kamikaze attack. Based on this initial success, the kamikaze program was expanded. By war’s end, the Japanese carried out over 4,000 attacks, including missions to ram bombers attacking Japan. Ultimately, though, all the tokubetsu kgeki tai achieved was the loss of irreplaceable pilots and aircraft. Only 14% of the kamikaze attackers got through, and only 8.5% of the ships that were hit were sunk. Those that weren’t sunk were quickly repaired. Ultimately, the damage inflicted by the tokubetsu kgeki tai was no greater than that achieved in 1942 by traditional tactics. The Imperial Japanese Navy, short of fuel, ships, pilots, and aircraft, ceased to be an effective fighting force in the Pacific, and Allied victory over Japan had become inevitable.

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October 23, 1939 – The first flight of the Mitsubishi G4M. When the Japanese laid their plans for the conquest of the western Pacific, they hoped to create what they grandiosely called the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . They were well aware of the vast stretches of ocean or large swaths of Southeast Asian jungle they would have to cross. Aircraft carriers, basically mobile airfields, would cover the Pacific, but land-based aircraft would have to have exceptional range in order to be effective.

Mitsubishi G4M bomber, known to the Allies as the “Betty”

Work on the G4M began in 1937 as the Japanese Navy sought a replacement for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (Allied reporting name “Nell”), which first flew in 1935. They paid articular attention to increasing both range and speed over the earlier bomber. The G4M (Allied reporting name “Betty”) was completed in 1939 and the bomber entered service in June 1941, six months prior to the Japanese !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! on Pearl Harbor that dragged the United States into World War II. The Betty could fly a little more than 100 miles farther than the Nell, and had a greater maximum takeoff weight. However, the increases in range and payload were bought at a dear price to the Betty’s pilots. Mitsubishi had wanted to build a four engine bomber, but they reduced it to two engines under pressure from the Japanese Navy. To save more weight, the manufacturer chose not to fit the new medium bomber with protective armor plating for the crew, or self-sealing fuel tanks. So while the Betty had excellent range, it was extremely susceptible to gunfire from heavily armed Allied fighters, and often burst into flames with the slightest hit. Allied pilots took to calling the Betty the “one shot lighter,” while the Japanese pilots referred to it as hamaki, which means cigar , a reference to its overall shape but perhaps also an allusion to how readily it burned.

Mitsubishi G4M bombers from the Misawa Naval Air Group (Misawa Kaigun Kktai)

The G4M formed the backbone of the Japanese bomber force and served throughout the Pacific theater. In the early years of the war, the Betty fought very effectively when it had sufficient fighter cover, but losses began to mount as the Allies gradually gained air supremacy. Final variants of the Betty did add armor protection and rudimentary sealing for the fuel tanks, but these upgrades came too late for the Betty to have a significant impact on the outcome of the war. By the final stages of WWII, with dwindling numbers of Japanese fighters to protect them, Bettys were mauled by US Navy and US Army Air Corps fighters and many of the bombers were shot down before they could launch their attacks.

G4M carrying an Ohka piloted kamikaze rocket

The Betty became a jack of all trades for the Japanese, bombing land targets and attacking Allied shipping with both bombs and torpedoes. Late in the war, it served as the mother ship for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a rocket-powered, piloted bomb that carried 2,646 pounds of explosives in the nose and was used for !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! attacks. The Betty also took center stage in a pivotal event in the Pacific War, when Japanese General !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack and commander in chief of the Japanese combined fleet, was !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and killed in 1943 while flying as a passenger in a G4M during an inspection tour of Japanese bases. More than 2,400 G4Ms were produced, but no flyable examples remain today, and only one complete aircraft exists.

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Short Takeoff

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October 21, 1966 – The first flight of the Yakovlev Yak-40, a small airliner specifically designed to operate from poorly equipped airports with short or unimproved runways and the world’s first commuter trijet. The Yak-40 was developed to take over shorter routes from older piston-powered airliners and could carry up to 32 passengers with a range of just over 1,000 miles. Over 1,000 were produced from 1967-1981, and they provided local service throughout Russia and served over 30 international customers. The Yak-4o remains in service today.

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October 21, 1961 – The first flight of the Breguet Atlantique , a turboprop-powered, long-range maritime patrol aircraft that was designed to perform reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare (ASW) missions. Developed to replace the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! then in service with NATO forces, the aircraft were delivered in two batches: 87 Atlantique   1 aircraft were built from 1965 to 1968, while the Atlantique 2 was produced from 1972 to 1974 with more powerful engines, updated avionics, and the ability to fire the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! anti-ship missile. A total of 115 of both variants were produced.

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October 21, 1950 – The first flight of the Martin 4-0-4. The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! made its first serious foray into the civilian airliner business when it developed the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to compete with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Production of the unpressurized airliner was stopped due to structural faults, so rather than fixing the 2-0-2, Martin developed it into the pressurized 4-0-4. The company also stretched the fuselage to accommodate up to 40 passengers. The 4-0-4 entered service with Eastern Air Lines and TWA in 1951, while the US Coast Guard operated two as executive aircraft designated the RM-1. Those aircraft later served the US Navy as the VC-3A. Though superseded by newer turboprop airliners, the 4-0-4 continued to serve smaller regional airlines and charters into the 1980s. A total of 103 were produced from 1951-1953.

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October 21, 1942 – A B-17 transporting American WWI ace Eddie Rickenbacker ditches in the Pacific Ocean. The public explanation for Rickenbacker’s trip was an inspection tour of American bases in the Pacific Theater. However, the true nature of the former WWI ace’s mission was to personally deliver a message of rebuke to General Douglas MacArthur from President Franklin Roosevelt for negative comments the general had made about the Roosevelt administration. The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! departed Hawaii, but then strayed hundreds of miles off course and was forced to ditch in the Pacific Ocean far from normal travel routes. Rickenbacker and the crew drifted in life rafts for 24 days before a US Navy !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! crew spotted and rescued the seven survivors. After his recovery, Rickenbacker completed his mission to deliver the letter to MacArthur.

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October 23, 2003 – The Concorde makes its final passenger flight. Air France had made its final passenger flights on May 30, 2003, and British Airways ended Concorde service with a flight from from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York to London’s Heathrow Airport. Two other Concordes made round trips over the Bay of Biscay and to Edinburgh, Scotland. All three aircraft then circled London before landing. The flights closed the book on the Concorde, which entered service with British Airways in 1976 as the world’s second operational supersonic passenger airliner, coming just one month after the Soviet !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Following a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 2000, Concorde flights were suspended for a year, but the airliner remained unprofitable after its return to service in 2001, leading BA and Air France to begin phasing out the SST.

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October 23, 1967 – The first flight of the Canadair CL-215, known as the Scooper, the first in a series of amphibious firefighting aircraft developed by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and later !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Powered by two !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! radial engines, the CL-215 can scoop 1,440 US gallons of water in 12 seconds from lakes or rivers and drop it over wildfires. Special design considerations such as its high, straight wing allow for operations at low speeds or in the gusty conditions often found over forest fires. A total of 125 were produced, and the CL-215 was subsequently developed into the CL-215T and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! which are powered by two turboprop engines.

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October 23, 1952 – The first flight of the Hughes XH-17, a super heavy lift helicopter and the first project developed by the helicopter division of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Built from parts scavenged from several different aircraft, the XH-17 was capable of lifting over 10,000 pounds with a maximum takeoff weight of 43,500 pounds. The XH-17 was powered by two turbojet engines that ducted bleed air through the hollow rotor blades to tip-mounted jets, and massive helicopter still holds the record for the world’s largest rotor system. Only one was built before the program was cancelled and the aircraft was scrapped.

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October 23, 1951 – The final daylight bombing mission of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. By the end of WWII, the development of large four-engine bombers reached its zenith with the B-29, but its advanced design saw the Superfortress serve into the Korean War. At first, B-29s flew daylight bombing missions as they had in WWII. But the arrival of jet fighters made the slower bombers vulnerable to faster, heavily powered enemy fighters. The final daylight mission was an attack on an airfield in North Korea, but three of the 10 bombers were shot down, four were forced to make emergency landings in South Korea, and three were badly damaged but able to return to Okinawa. The B-29s were switched to nighttime bombing missions before being withdrawn in 1953.

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Connecting Flights

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If you enjoy these Aviation History posts, please let me know in the comments. You can find more posts about aviation history, aviators, and aviation oddities at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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benn454 > ttyymmnn 10/23/2020 at 12:47

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 I'm glad Jack Northrup was vindicated before he died. It's too bad he didn't live long enough to get to fly in a B-2, but at least he died knowing he was right.

user314 > ttyymmnn 10/23/2020 at 12:57

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Obligatory:

Also, from Air & Space Smithsonian’s April/May 1991 issue: “ My Body Will Collapse Like A Falling Cherry Blossom ”.

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 10/23/2020 at 13:35

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I always think of this photo whenever I hear about a Kamikaze attack:

T he sailors saw the attack coming and scrambled to the other side of the ship. This proved to be the wrong move. The bomb the plane was carrying passed through the ship and exploded on the far side - right in front of everyone who was on deck, hoping the superstructure would protect them from the plane’s impact on the other side. Right after snapping this photo, the good doctor made his way through a passageway and was also standing on the port side deck when the bomb exploded.

You can read a better accounting of the story here: https://www.usskidd.com/ship-tour/the-site-of-the-1945-kamikaze-attack/

ttyymmnn > TheRealBicycleBuck 10/23/2020 at 14:43

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The longtime French horn professor at UT was Wayne Barrington. He served in the infantry in WWII, and went ashore on or soon after D-Day. When the Allies were rehearsing the landings, with thousands of men aboard ships in the Channel, the fleet was attacked by German E-boats, similar to our PT boats . Mr. Barrington was in a shallow draft troop carrier standing off from a larger troop transport. As he told it, h e saw the torpedo come directly for his boat, but it passed under him and struck a larger LST , which went down with hundreds of dead (2 LSTs were sunk in the attack on Exercise Tiger, with the loss of 749 servicemen).

Once ashore, Mr. Barrington was on his way to the Battle of the Bulge when his unit was redirected to the south of France to blockade German soldiers on the coast. He spent the rest of the war there, with each side occasionally tossing a shell or two at each other, living in a French home and eating bouillabaisse until the end of the war. He came home in 1946, then went back to Korea, before coming home for good and having a stellar career with the Pittsburgh, Chicago and Los Angeles orchestras before settling down in Austin in 1966.

All of that could have been lost but for a couple of fateful moments. I guess it just wasn’t his time. 

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 10/23/2020 at 15:34

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Cool story. Greatest generation, indeed.

glemon > ttyymmnn 10/24/2020 at 12:37

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Great as always, the flying wing is oh so cool, featured in many science science fiction and period films, I remember it from my childhood, though I am too young to have ever seen one in person.

ttyymmnn > glemon 10/24/2020 at 12:49

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Thanks!