XB47-D

[Robbie Stuart]

USFG PHOTO

Never ran across one of these before.

[tom d. friedman]

who's the pilot, rube goldberg??

[sdennison]

Photo-voltaic cells on the wings? Solar powered

[The Inspector]

The one, and only thing the abortive D model was notable for was the ability of the turboprop engines and props to make dogs for miles around feel queezy and nauseous. Obviously an attempt to get close to the same bang for fewer bucks by replacing 4 of the J-47's. The panels on the wing were segmented yarn tufting areas so the chase plane could fly along and film airflows over various parts of the wings and then the cartoonists (sorry, engineers) could study each segment seperately if needed.

[Obergrafeter]

What were they smoking when they came up with that one?

[b29flteng]

The same engineers that came up with the idea of putting tank type tracks on landing gears in stead of wheels.

[Tailspin Turtle]

What were they smoking when they came up with that one?

At the time, turboprop engines provided better low-speed thrust and lower fuel consumption for cruise. I'm not familiar with this particular attempt at substituting turboprops for jets, but my guess is that it was hoped that the turboprops would improve the range and the remaining jets would provide extra speed over the target and better OEI capability. (The Air Force didn't worry all that much about takeoff performance.)

[Second Air Force]

The two airplanes converted to this configuration were test beds. The USAF was still holding out hope of developing a turboprop bomber at the time and used these B-47s to test the T49 engine. I once read a pilot mini-report on the XB-47D and it mentioned that if one of the turboprops shut down the airplane immediately started rolling--hard!

Scott

[Mgawa]

This subject come in right moment- I talk today with a friend and state how it is very hard to get Hasegawa kit of this plane in 1/72 scale!. Very interesting machine

[K5DH]

What a "flying freak"! I realize that it's for real, but it almost looks photo-shopped (like the "single-engined B-17" and many other unlikely subjects).