The Do-Everything Bomber
With its bid to replace the Convair B-36 bomber, did Douglas promise too much?
- By John Aldaz and Sir George Cox
- Air & Space magazine, January 2010
The Douglas Model 1211-J was a grand scheme that existed only as a model and in blueprints. John Aldaz
On January 26, 1950, when General Curtis E. LeMay, commander of the U.S. Air Force Strategic Air Command, attended yet another conference to discuss the next U.S. long-range heavy bomber, his mind was likely already made up. The Convair B-36 was soon to be obsolete, and a variety of successors had been proposed. But Boeing bombers had served the U.S. military well during World War II, and if LeMay got his way—and he usually did—the next big bomber would be another Boeing product: the B-52 Stratofortress.
The potential contract was huge, and U.S. aircraft manufacturers brought ambitious proposals to the table. One of the designs—the Model 1211-J—came from the Douglas Aircraft Company in Santa Monica, California. Never had a bomber looked so capable—on paper.
Powered by four turboprop engines, the Model 1211-J was a colossus—160 feet long with a wingspan of 227 feet, about the size of the Convair behemoth it was to replace. It was designed around a new 43,000-pound conventional bomb but could carry nuclear weapons as well. It could also carry its own fighter escorts, as parasites under its immense wings. A variety of fighter types were suggested, including Douglas' new ogival-wing jet, the F4D Skyray. The fighters' jet engines were to be powered up to assist the carrier bomber during takeoff; refueling of the fighters was to take place while they were stowed on the mothership's underwing pylons.
Though the concept of parasite aircraft had an appealing ingenuity, flying them was fraught with difficulty. Flight testing had revealed that turbulent airflow would form under the carrier aircraft, causing severe problems as the fighter attempted to reattach itself to the host aircraft.
Would the Model 1211-J have succeeded as a parasite platform? "The combination of the totally new bomber and the totally new fighter, attaching itself in the direct path of the turboprop propeller wash, is frightening to contemplate," says Walt Boyne, a retired B-52 pilot and former director of the National Air and Space Museum. "The inclusion almost smacks of either desperation or a sense of humor on the designers' part." (A few years later, the parasite concept was rendered obsolete by the use of inflight refueling.)
In place of the parasite fighters, large underwing drop tanks and special-purpose pods could be substituted to provide, according to the Douglas proposal, "extreme versatility in operations." Douglas engineers imagined pods—"droppable or not as desired," the proposal states—that could carry reconnaissance or radar equipment, countermeasures, even personnel to supplement the bomber's nine-man crew. One drawing shows the pods in a photo-reconnaissance configuration, complete with cameras and even a small film-processing lab.
Without the parasites, the Douglas bomber could defend itself with a choice of radar-controlled 20-mm cannon or Hughes MX-904 self-guided missiles, stored in an internal rotary launcher like an oversized Colt six-shooter.
The Douglas team had also proposed droppable takeoff gear positioned under the outer section of the 1211-J's enormous wings. "Using droppable gear is always a last resort," says Boyne. "The B-52 had retractable tip gear, which was a heavier but more sensible solution."
Related topics: Air Force B-52 Stratofortress Convair B-36 Peacemaker Cold War Era
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Comments (3)
In '52, I was in the Navy stationed at Adak, AK. My home was Fairbanks, AK. 1500 miles away. I got a leave and went home. My Dad owned the Elbow Room bar. I was helping there on night when Tracy Matthewson and one other test pilots were having a drink. Tracy asked if I would like to come out to (then) Ladd Air Force Base the next morning to see some planes? I almost hyper-vent'ed. I got there and was cleared for "Secret" by them and went into the hangar and got to sit in the XF 101 and the XF 102. They came into the military a few years later. When they took off, we had never heard sound levels like that in Fairbanks. Everyone in town knew when they "lite the wick" on those planes. Ray
Posted by Ray Wallace on November 19,2009 | 11:01 AM
The pictures of the Model 1211-J look a lot like the TU-20/Tu-95/Tu-142 Bear bombers built by the Soviet Union. Any relation?
Posted by Charlie White on November 23,2009 | 01:54 AM
The Douglas 1211 was designed a few short years after Tupolev successfully carbon-copied most of the B-29 into their Tu-4 bomber. It is therefore very possible the Tu-95 did receive like-minded "technology transfers" from the Douglas 1211 studies. Donald Douglas Sr. pointed to the 1211’s unique wing structure, designed to distribute weight span-wise, while reducing critical bending loads at the root, which can also be found on the Tu-95.
However, direct evidence has yet to surface showing the Tu-95 was another product of industrial espionage. In addition, Russian aerospace scholars will rightfully argue the Tupolev design bureau was also capable of brilliant, independent thinking, and that similar requirements often lead to identical design solutions.
The answer to this question may still be buried deep in some old, dusty Soviet archive. However, it would be ironic if the parallel careers of the B-52 and the Tu-95, both exceptionally capable enemy bombers, had started in the same U.S. conference room, back in 1950.
Posted by John Aldaz on November 29,2009 | 07:30 PM