Seattle Flight Test
1953 – 1960
In
May of 1953, when the B-47 flight loads program had been successfully
completed, both Brein Wygle and I were called back to Seattle to conduct the
same program on the huge new eight-jet B-52 bomber. The No. 2 B-52A, 52-004, was instrumented with
more than 350 strain gages and became “my” airplane.
In
the 1950s, flight testing was not the precise computerized science that it is
today. We had no computers or flight
simulators. We worked with slide rules
and mechanical calculators. The only way
to find out if something worked and to determine airplane performance was to
take an experimental airplane out, fly it, and record the data for later
analysis.
It
was inevitable that we would encounter problems. Most of them we could handle but once in a
while there would be a fatal crash. From
the B-29 to the 707. We paid at least one flight crew for each new model. During my ten years in Flight Test, we buried
seventeen of our pilot and engineer friends.
Why
did we do it? We were young and we loved
airplanes and the sky. We had faith in
Boeing designers and aerodynamics engineers and we had supreme faith in our
abilities to handle emergencies. We wanted
to help push aviation technology to the limit.
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| Boeing Test Pilot Brien Wygle |
It
could be dangerous, of course, and we all occasionally had hair-raising
experiences. As Brien Wygle used to say,
“Flying for a living is hours of pure boredom interrupted occasionally by a few
seconds of start terror!”
The
closest call that Brien and I had was during the B-52 flight loads
program. The B-52 had never taken off at
more than 380,000 pounds gross weight and our test plan called for data at
gross weights up to 410,000 lbs.
When
we were to take off at high weights, Brian and I had a procedure to see if we
could make it off the 10,000-foot runway at Boeing Field. We each calculated the takeoff roll separately
then compared results. If we calculated
less than 8,500 feet ground roll we went, more and we did not go.
On
the day of our high weight takeoff we were required to take off to the south so
that we did not climb out over the heavily populated Georgetown area of
Seattle. To the south there was only the
sprawling Associated Grocers warehouse at the end of the runway. We had a tailwind but the tower gave us only
a 5-knot breeze.
It
was close. I calculated just over 8,500
feet. As project pilot, Brian had the last
word. His decision was to average our
results and go. It would have been a
good decision except that the gremlins were at work. We found out later that we had two
problems. One was that the tailwind
increased to about ten knots with we taxied out and the other was that there
was an error in the handbook elevator trim settings at that untried weight so
we had one degree too much nose-down elevator trim.
During
the takeoff roll we sense that all was not well. The airplane did not want to fly after the
refusal point of 5,500 feet. We went by
the calculated unstick at 8,500 feet with weight still on the oleos and the big
Associated Grocers warehouse was coming at us fast.
Brien
heaved back on the control column so hard that the oscillography trace recording
control force went off the scale at 235 pounds. He also clamped his thumb down on the nose-up trim
switch. (He told me later that it was
the second time in 15,000 hours of flying that he had braced himself for a
disastrous crash.)
Finally,
just 400 feet short of the end of the paved runway, the big bellowing B-52 got
airborne and started to climb. Through the
little side window at my station in the navigator’s compartment I saw the edge
of the warehouse roof flash by so close that I wondered how the landing gear
cleared it. I glimpsed people scattering
at a dead run from the warehouse loading dock.
Had we hit the building the warehouse and us would have been incinerated
y the more than 200,000 poinds of JP-4 jet fuel we had in the tanks to achieve
that weight.
(Later,
the motion picture film from the theodolite station on the hill recording our
takeoff showed that we had missed the edge of the warehouse roof by a mere
twelve feet. We had been that close to
eternity.)
When
the excess adrenalin subsided, we went about our business of recording roller
coaster maneuver data at the various gross weights as we burned off all that
fuel. It was after working hours when we
landed and taxied to the hangar. We
found then that we were not the only ones who thought we were crashing.
Our
lead Ground Operations Engineer, Ed Foster, had been parked in the radio car
beside the runway at our calculated unstick point of 8,500 feet. When we went by still firmly on the ground he,
too, braced himself to see the apparently inevitable crash and conflagration. Then Ed drove back to the hangar, walked
silently through the offices (his face was said to be white as a sheet), and
disappeared for the day.
When
Brien, the Air Force co-pilot, and I walked into the crew locker room after the
flight Foster was sitting at the table.
He was obviously happily drunk and had a two-gallon coffee thermos in
front of him. He also had glasses, ice,
and a jar of olives. The thermos held
not coffee, but (contrary to company regulations) very dry martinis. It was nearly midnight when I finally found
my way home from that celebration of the crash that did not happen.
