Above and Beyond: Warner and the Whale
How we turned the A3D into a tanker.
- By Hadley Dixon
- Air & Space magazine, July 2011
Before hose-and-reel refueling took hold, the Navy tried a system of rigid tubing. This did not end well.
US Navy
In the mid-1950s, a naval officer in the Bureau of Aeronautics in Washington, D.C., with gold up to his elbows, took a hard look at the Douglas A3D Skywarrior, which would earn the nickname Whale, and thought: Hmmm. Here we have the biggest airplane ever to trap on a carrier—an airplane with an immense bomb bay. Pilots are flying a whole fleet of them around empty, theoretically honing their skills. Gotta do something about that. So he dictated a note to his chief. “Pressurize the bomb bay and make it a VIP transport. Or how about a tanker?”
His note started the paper mill rolling, and eventually a letter of intent went to Douglas Aircraft. The legendary designer Ed Heinemann balked at loading up his Skywarrior with refueling equipment, but the Navy insisted.
At the Douglas test facility at Edwards Air Force Base in California in 1956, flight test engineer Warner Lowe and I had just investigated the high-angle-of-attack engine stalls on A3Ds coming off carrier catapult shots. We were cooling our heels, wondering what fiasco would be tossed at us next, when we were told to go to Douglas in El Segundo, California. An A3D had just been configured into a tanker there, and Warner and I had to fly it to Edwards. For a couple of weeks, the test facility made various tweaks to it.
The tanker had a four-inch-diameter hose with a refueling basket attached, wound on a large reel in the rear of the bomb bay. On the first test flight, we extended hose and basket to its full 60-foot length and listened for what the pilot of our Lockheed T-33 chase plane would say about its stability. Before he could open his mouth, the hose and basket whipped in a large circle and snapped off. Doing his best to sound like Chuck Yeager, Chase said, “Gents, y’all’s hose and basket are on their way down. Looks like a big ol’ snake flyin’ through the air. Better luck next time. See ya.” He did a slow roll and flew off.
The Navy decided to try a “flying pipe” system of rigid tubing that hung beneath the A3D. Though it proved somewhat stable, during one plug with a Grumman F9F, part of the tubing broke off from the Whale but didn’t disconnect from the Grumman. The F9F pilot was very unhappy about landing on the lakebed with several feet of tubing hanging off the nose, and didn’t want anything more to do with us. (Let him grumble. There was always another young test pilot eager to log plug time.) That was the end of the tubular refueling system.
Various sizes of hose, drogue, and basket were then tried. We attempted hooking up with another A3D: That seemed to work after a fashion.
The Navy wanted a pilot new to refueling to try our system. I was an old World War II fighter pilot (P-39, P-40, and P-51), and before the A3D flights had never even heard of a probe. So I was chosen. Although I had been the tanker pilot, I would now pilot another A3D and hook up with the A3D tanker.
The system was still a little unstable, and we were in light turbulence. While Warner, as copilot, wore a big grin, I edged toward the basket at 15,000 feet and eased the probe into it while it danced its little jig. When I thought I had it, I added a little power to make the plug—and missed. I shaved off some power, backed out, and set up to try again. Warner was now chuckling. I gave him a dirty look and again eased the probe into the basket. Bingo! A solid plug. I held it for a few turns, climbs, and descents at various speeds. I grinned back at Warner. “Piece of cake.”
Comments (2)
The KA-3B "Skywarrior" aka "The Whale" was a great bird. I liked to watch them "trap", observing from "vultures row" onboard the USS Independence (CV-62) back in the late 1970's. This was a great and humourous article.
Posted by PR on June 1,2011 | 08:27 PM
I did a lot of flight test flying with Hadley Dixon during the Douglas DC-9 flight test program in the mid 1960s. He and George Jansen were the crew on DC-9 No.1 during the envelope expansion, many of the engineering development testing and,during the FAA certification testing. One of the development testing we got involved with was to determine why the tail cone (aft of the pressure bulkhead) was so hot. I was elected to investigate. After putting on a 60# back pack, 60# 100% oxygen tank, hard hat & oxygen mask and taking a power-gun, with instructions from George, "you check in on the intercom every 30 seconds", I climbed through the hole in the aft bulkhead and they closed the hole. I got so busy that I forgot to check in and George chewed me out over the intercom. We had to do this investigation several more times during the test program. After being back in the tailcone for about 45 minutes I was really hot and sweaty because of all the equipment I had to wear and everytime I climbed back through the hole Hadley was laughing at the way I looked. I would really like to get Dix's e-mail address and communicate with him.
Web Heath
Posted by Webster (Web) Heath on June 3,2011 | 11:19 AM