This week in AFLCMC history - March 21 - March 27, 2022

  • Published
  • By Air Force Life Cycle Management Center History Office
In this edition of Heritage Hangar, you'll learn about old and new airplanes and tidbits of what happened this week many years ago. 

21 Mar 1949 (Tinker AFB/Bombers Dir.) 
 
Tinker Air Force Base was designated a supply base for B-36 bombers. The first repairs began on 27 May and the Air Force named Oklahoma City Air Materiel Area the worldwide repair depot for the B-36 fleet that summer. The Convair B-36 Peacemaker was designed during WWII for long-range missions to Japan, but became an iconic symbol of the early Cold War Strategic Air Command as the first intercontinental-range nuclear bomber. Its unique setup of six massive radial piston engines with pusher propellers supplemented by four J47 turbojet engines in later models earned it the moniker “six turning and four burning.” 
 
22 Mar 1948 (Mobility and Training Aircraft Dir.) 
 
The first flight of the prototype Lockheed TP-80C Shooting Star, a 2-seat training aircraft. It was best known to decades of Air Force pilots in its production model designation (after May 1949): the T-33A. The aircraft was an extended-fuselage modification of the original single-sear P-80C, which was the second American jet fighter to go into production. It was far more successful both from a design and operational standpoint than the Bell P-59 that preceded it. The Shooting Stars used variants of the J33 centrifugal-flow turbojet engine, designed by GE based on the imported British Whittle engine, but manufactured by Allison. The last T-33 retired from USAF service in 1997. 

24 Mar 1966 (Digital Dir./Hanscom) 
 
The Electronic Systems Division at Hanscom announced that an electronic device which would allow the joint use of military radar information for air traffic control had been jointly developed by ESD and the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA). Known as a "Common Digitizer," the analog-digital processor was designed to meet the combined data processing and transmission requirements of both the Continental Air Defense (CONAD) Control and Warning System and the proposed semi-automatic FAA National Airspace System for Air Traffic Control. It was expected that the common processing and transmission of radar data would result in a considerable cost savings to the government. 

25 Mar 1943 (Hill AFB) 
 
The state of Utah signed, sealed, and delivered a deed showing cessation of jurisdiction over 2,967.81 acres that it transferred to the US government. This area was adjacent to the site of the Ogden Ordnance Depot that had been in place since 1920. The act was essentially a formality, as the government had taken possession of the land five years earlier and began construction in late 1938 on what became the Ogden Air Depot and part of what is now Hill AFB (see 26 Mar). 

26 Mar 1942 (Hill AFB) 

Construction of an Airplane Repair Shop at the Ogden Air Depot completed at a cost of $1,387,147. Work on it started on 3 February 1941. Hangar space totaled 114,110 square feet; repair shops, 109,610 square feet and offices, 20,110 square feet. Two more hangars, completed in the spring of 1943 brought the total space to 321,486 square feet and the total cost to $2,537,816. Workers used the huge hangars to dismantle and repair airplanes (fuselages, ailerons, landing gear and hydraulically operated equipment). 

27 Mar 1957 (Fighters & Advanced Aircraft Dir.) 

The first flight of the McDonnell F-101B Voodoo. The original aircraft was designed as a high-speed, long-range bomber escort, initially called the XF-88. It was subsequently adapted for nuclear weapons delivery, as well as for tactical reconnaissance. By the mid-1950s, the introduction of jet bombers like the B-47 and B-52 obviated fighter escorts. That coincided with the need for aircraft to intercept Soviet bombers, leading to further modifications of the F-101 for that mission, including a second crew member, fire control radar, Falcon air-to-air missiles, more powerful engines and afterburners, and eventually the Genie air-to-air nuclear rocket. This version was dubbed the F-101B and used until the early 1980s. 

100 Years Ago This Week in AFLCMC History: 23 March 1922 

On 23 March 1922, Physicist Edgar Buckingham of the US National Bureau of Standards completed a study for the Army Air Service Engineering Division (McCook Field), entitled “Jet Propulsion for Airplanes.” The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) 
published the study as Technical Report 159 in 1923. 

The term “jet” propulsion until the World War II era meant any means of propulsion using the generation of hot, expanding gas to create a reactive force for forward motion, including rockets. However, Buckingham’s report specified what we think of as jets today: systems that use atmospheric air for combustion, rather than rockets that carry their own oxidizer. 

The first proposed aircraft jet engines, circa 1908, used conventional internal combustion engines to provide the hot gas, which was expelled for thrust, rather than to turn a crankshaft. The idea of using a gas turbine, where combustion gasses spun a turbine con-nected to a front air compressor, and then were ejected at high speeds/temperatures originated around the same time for industrial purposes. The first recorded study of using aircraft gas turbine engines was done in Britain in 1920, but estimates of weights, size, and fuel efficiency were dramatically high. 

It isn’t known for certain whether the McCook Field Power Plant Section engineers came across that British report, but it was their standard practice to collect as much foreign technical literature on engines as possible, specifically to inform design. 

Whatever their impetus, the Engineering Division Power Plant Section found the money to fund the Bureau of Standards to study jet propulsion before they committed any resources to experimentation. This sort of more fundamental research was typically the province of the Bureau or the NACA, both of which emphasized science and had the staff on hand (like Buckingham) to do it. By practice and statute, McCook Field was limited to applied technology development and test. 

As part of the Bureau’s staff, Dr. Edgar Buckingham was well-qualified for this task. He was an American physicist educated in Europe, expert in soil mechanics, thermodynamics, and had published a seminal method of dimensional analysis that is still used today. What did he conclude? 

Like the British study, he determined that fuel consumption for jets was extravagant (4x higher), as were weight and size. While correct within his parameters, he assumed a maximum flying speed of 250mph, which was reasonable given the existing knowledge of aerodynamics and structures (wood, cloth, and some metal). However, if he projected out to higher speeds, using improved supporting technologies, he might have determined that jets could be a very efficient means of propulsion. 

The NACA took another look a decade later and came to the same conclusions. Historians regard these reports as some of the major impediments to American investment in jet engine research during the Interwar Period. As late as 1941, American studies continued to dismiss jets, even as England and Germany had each secretly developed and flown turbojet aircraft. It was only through Gen Hap Arnold’s importation of the British Whittle turbojet engine in 1941 that the US began to catch up in the field of aircraft jet engines.