Warbird Information Exchange

I have read that the C-97/KC-97/Stratoliner liked to be landed nosewheel first, and certainly many photos of it landing show it with a distinct nose-down attitude in final-final approach, though I've never seen a shot of one being wheelbarrowed.

Is this nosewheel-first thing a myth? I find it hard to believe.

My late dad flew the B-377 (Stratocruiser) for Pan American out of SFO for years.
He wrote a book for our family and in there, I distinctly remember him saying
that they were landed nosewheel first. Hope this helps.

Technically, the B377 is like any other airplane in that it's designed to land mains first. However, because of the extreme angle of incidence on the wing, the airplane was difficult to land on the mains without floating a long ways when at light weights due to the need for a fairly high approach speed. When A2A Simulations was working on their B377 for FSX several years ago, there was a long discussion about this between the pilots and crew of KC-97s and B377s they interviewed, the manuals (which advocate a "flat" landing attitude), and extensive photo and video research. The result they came to was this -

1) Boeing advocated landing flat (all 3 at once) or slightly nose up by pulling power off as you crossed the threshold.

2) Pilots, not liking pulling power so early and being worried about stalling if they flew slower approaches, tended to be a bit fast and with a bit of power, so they almost had to land nose first to prevent floating down the runways, which back then were often pretty short for such a large airplane.

3) When landing at very light weights after international or transcontinental flights, the plane just refused to get the nose up unless you were practically stalled (and thus unsafe).

I know that at least with the A2A example, it's pretty true to this. If I pull the power when Boeing says to, I almost always get the stall horn prior to landing and end up landing "firm" because of it. If I carry power a little and try to land flat, I end up floating way too long and having to get hard onto the reverse power to get stopped, something I imagine neither the crews nor the engines really appreciated in the real world.

Not sure if this answers your question but these pictures were taken about two seconds apart.

Not a myth.

377s had a stall strip installed on the wings between the inboard engines and the fuselage to help alleviate the problem.

367s (KC-97s) did not have these stall strips and they tended to land nose wheel first.

B-29s have the same problem.

Are B-50's the same?

Hawkins & Powers Aviation's C-97, N1365N, flew its last season as an airtanker in Alaska in 2003.

In early May, shortly before she left for her final flight to Fairbanks, they were conducting relief crew training when the (relief) pilot landed just short of runway 15. There was no damage.

Word got around H&P pretty quickly as to what had happened. A day or two later, I landed on 15 and made it a point to see if I could identify any marks. As I approached the runway, I could clearly identify four distinct sets of tracks where the mains had hit the dirt. Curious, I drove out there afterwards for a closer look. The tracks were about 25 feet long; they weren't very deep.

I can't remember, now, if the tracks went all the way to the start of the pavement. All of the runway threshold lights were intact. It had been a dry spring so the ground was by no means soft. They landed close enough to the runway that it would have put the nosewheel over the pavement. I wouldn't think they bounced the airplane; I would guess once they hit the ground, she stayed put. They had it centered perfectly to avoid taking out any runway end lights, however.

I never knew the airplane had the tendency to land nose first. With this unusual landing configuration, I wonder what the position the nosewheel was relative to the pavement as the mains were in the dirt.

Every time I landed on runway 15, those tracks were visible for the rest of the summer.

Craig

Are B-50s the same?

I can't answer that. It does have the same wing airfoil as the 29s, 367s, and 377s, so I suspect it does have the same problem.

I have about 2000 hours in the KC-97. I have considerable time in FIFI and have done all the flights on DOC so far.

The airplanes being discussed do not like to be landed nose wheel first......period!!!! There are and were pilots that simply landed them too fast and that results in the nose touching first. Proper speed control and power reduction couple with continued flare results in touchdown on the mains and allows the nose to be lowered/flown to the runway.

It's all about flying airplanes as opposed to driving airplanes.

... 1965 ... at Ontario, CA (ONT) ...

... N1024V, the first Guppy conversion ...

... this is a take-off, lifting off mains first ...

The original Super Guppy - N1038V / N940NS would lift-off mains first. This was due to the airplane wanting to come off of the ground at lower than rotation speed. The pilots would hold forward pressure on the yoke to keep the airplane on the ground until proper speed, thus would end up wheel-barrowing down the runway. On landing it would also touch down on the nosewheel first.

My friend worked at Ellington Tower from the 1970s to the early 1990s... When NASA got the Super Guppy in 1979, he was working in the tower and the first time he saw the Guppy land, he thought it was crashing and grabbed the crash phone!

_________________
**
WANTED --> F-101 Voodoo photos, slides, negatives, memorabilia.
**
WANTED --> photos, slides, negs of Aircraft in storage at NAF LITCHFIELD PARK.
**
WANTED --> ADC Interceptor Magazine - 1959-1979
**