Interesting article and short movie with Brig. Gen. Jimmy Stewart

[hammdo]

https://avgeekery.com/jimmy-stewart-joined-the-mach-2-club-in-a-b-58-hustler/

 

 

Also:

https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/20-february-1966/

For some fun aviation history…

-Don

[N201MKTurbo]

When I was a little kid we lived in Fluorescent MO. We would get sonic booms almost every day. One day I was playing out in the street with all the other kids and the mother of all sonic booms happened. It was the most amazing thing I ever saw! All at once all the picture windows in every house on the block shattered at the same time! Holy crap!
 

I thought that was everybody’s reality, but it wasn’t. The government was doing sonic boom tests. I looked it up a few years ago and found the documentation. The day all the windows broke they flew a B58 over our neighborhood at 2000 feet at Mach 2.

Ill look up the report and post it.

BTW, I remember if your window broke, you called McDonnell Aircraft and reported it and a glass company would be out in an hour or so.

 

Found it!

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD0647326.pdf

 

If you look at the ground track of the flights and find Florescent on the map, you will see it really did fly right over our house. 
 

I have found more detailed information about the tests, but I can’t find it now.

 

Personal trivia, My father worked at McDonnell Aircraft as a tool and die maker. He made parts that flew on the first Mercury capsule.

[Sue Bon]

Almost 20% of reports were wall and foundation cracks! Yikes! How did McDonnell Aircraft fix those?

Edit:

Summary: Alleged building damage was superficial in nature.... There were no reports of direct adverse physiological effects.

Recommendations: Reactions for further stimulus exposure be further defined in terms of (a) nighttime sonic booms, (d) large supersonic aircraft such as B-70. Response of structures be further examined (b) in special studies isolated from populated areas where very intense booms could be utilised.

Holy smokes.

[aviatoreb]

Cool movie!  Thanks!

[SKI]

Fun fact, I actually base my Cherokee out of KIDI Indiana county/ Jimmy Stewart field. Jimmy was from Indiana. The local EAA chapter actually found one of his old Cessna 310's in Texas that was about to be scrapped. They bought it, restored it and mounted it on a pole to act as a windvane. It's actually pretty cool. It swings nose into the wind and the props even spin. I look right at it from my hangar. 

[N201MKTurbo]

I love the movie Strategic Air Command. Jimmy Stewart stars in the movie and flies the B-36 and B-47. Guess who did all the actual flying in the movie? Yes the star of the movie, no stunt pilots needed.

[Ragsf15e]

One of my buddies accidentally did one of these sonic boom “tests” over atlanta around y2k (2000) in an F-15E.  Was hilarious, but not for the crew who got in big trouble!  They were at FL480 going from Oklahoma to the depot outside Atlanta.  Since the jet was going to depot, it was completely stripped of all external (and conformal) fuel tanks, bomb racks, etc.  It was very fast.  So they we’re trying to get mach 2 which was legal at high altitude back then. Sort of.  Anyway, they were doing 20 miles a minute at FL480, full afterburner and 1.95 mach when Atlanta center started giving them step downs because they were quickly approaching their destination.  Then they got an altitude restriction below FL200 by 40 west of Atlanta.  They started down in full afterburner and quickly gave up as they realized they might not make the descent.  Throwing the throttles to idle didn’t seem to help… forgot that the engines would protect themselves at that speed by only reducing to full military power.  Speed brake?  Nope, not above 450Kias!  Zero drag, mach 1.5, no way to slow down further, and right over Atlanta in the upper teens.  It was in the newspaper the next day.  The Air Force chief of staff was briefed on it and our commander got a call from the pentagon before the two lieutenants were even at the Atlanta airport to come home and the fastest they saw was 1.98!

[N201MKTurbo]

In 2002 I went to the open house at Edwards AFB (Highly recommend, way better than Luke Days) to see Chuck Yeager break the sound barrier for the last time. He did it in an F-15 at 15000 feet. After my memories from my childhood, it was so anti-climatic. It kind of went "poof". Not the belly busting, smack in the gut I remembered. When I was a kid they sounded like when lightning strikes the light pole in front of your house.

[whiskytango]

Trivia fact: Major Henry J. Deutschendorf, pilot of the first B-58 1,000 km closed course speed record flight, had a son named Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr.  His son changed his name to John Denver and went into the entertainment field.  Sadly, John Denver died after losing control of a Rutan VariEze he had recently purchased. When Denver died, Mary Travers of Peter Paul and Mary, who recorded "Leaving on a Jet Plane", written by Denver, called him "the Jimmy Stewart of folk music."

[neilpilot]

2 hours ago, whiskytango said:

Trivia fact: Major Henry J. Deutschendorf, pilot of the first B-58 1,000 km closed course speed record flight, had a son named Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr.  His son changed his name to John Denver and went into the entertainment field.  Sadly, John Denver died after losing control of a Rutan VariEze he had recently purchased. When Denver died, Mary Travers of Peter Paul and Mary, who recorded "Leaving on a Jet Plane", written by Denver, called him "the Jimmy Stewart of folk music."

If my memory if the incident is correct, he had recently purchased the VariEze and was unfamiliar with the fuel system.  He decided to takeoff for a 1 hour flight without topping the tanks off.  Later he needed to switch tanks, but reportedly wasn't able to reach the fuel selector and also keep the aircraft under control.  He was also flying without a pilot license.     

[EricJ]

6 minutes ago, neilpilot said:

If my memory if the incident is correct, he had recently purchased the VariEze and was unfamiliar with the fuel system.  He decided to takeoff for a 1 hour flight without topping the tanks off.  Later he needed to switch tanks, but reportedly wasn't able to reach the fuel selector and also keep the aircraft under control.  He was also flying without a pilot license.     

https://www.avweb.com/flight-safety/close-up-the-john-denver-crash/

[Hank]

1 hour ago, neilpilot said:

If my memory if the incident is correct, he had recently purchased the VariEze and was unfamiliar with the fuel system.  He decided to takeoff for a 1 hour flight without topping the tanks off.  Later he needed to switch tanks, but reportedly wasn't able to reach the fuel selector and also keep the aircraft under control.  He was also flying without a pilot license.     

Wasn't the fuel selector above and behind his head, and turned using visegrips?

[GeeBee]

When I was in college, I had to take an upper division technical writing course. My instructor Professor W.W. Woods. A nice old man, suffered from a stroke, shuffled around with two hearing aids in class. Had a career in the military industrial complex writing. Our assignment done day was, "writing a bad news letter". He described the situation presented to him in real life. He was on the B-58 program. They were behind and decided to do a test flight on New Year's Day. The test pilot showed up late, fresh from the festivities the night before. He plugged in his visor heat and left the helmet face down in the seat. It caught the seat on fire and burned ship #4 to the main wheels. Nothing left. Our assignment was to write the letter and tell the program commanding General, how they lost an B-58 to fire on New Year's Day. 

[A64Pilot]

17 minutes ago, Hank said:

Wasn't the fuel selector above and behind his head, and turned using visegrips?

Ah, the beauty of Home built  

[whiskytango]

2 hours ago, neilpilot said:

If my memory if the incident is correct, he had recently purchased the VariEze and was unfamiliar with the fuel system.  He decided to takeoff for a 1 hour flight without topping the tanks off.  Later he needed to switch tanks, but reportedly wasn't able to reach the fuel selector and also keep the aircraft under control.  He was also flying without a pilot license.     

You are correct.  The builder of the VariEze changed the original design and put the fuel selector valve behind the pilot.  It was reported that Denver thought if he engaged the autopilot he could turn around in the front seat and reach the fuel selector valve with Vice-Grips on it, as @Hank mentioned.  Also the fuel gages were not visible to the pilot, and Denver had tried to use a mirror to look at the gages.  The FAA pulled pulled his medical before the accident as a result of multiple DUI convictions.

[hammdo]

Here is another interesting short (45 minutes) from WW II era.

this one doesn’t ‘hide’ the results of war — Jimmy Stewart has the intro… Lloyd Bridges does the pilot voice overs…

-Don

[Pinecone]

21 hours ago, Ragsf15e said:

One of my buddies accidentally did one of these sonic boom “tests” over atlanta around y2k (2000) in an F-15E.  Was hilarious, but not for the crew who got in big trouble!  They were at FL480 going from Oklahoma to the depot outside Atlanta.  Since the jet was going to depot, it was completely stripped of all external (and conformal) fuel tanks, bomb racks, etc.  It was very fast.  So they we’re trying to get mach 2 which was legal at high altitude back then. Sort of.  Anyway, they were doing 20 miles a minute at FL480, full afterburner and 1.95 mach when Atlanta center started giving them step downs because they were quickly approaching their destination.  Then they got an altitude restriction below FL200 by 40 west of Atlanta.  They started down in full afterburner and quickly gave up as they realized they might not make the descent.  Throwing the throttles to idle didn’t seem to help… forgot that the engines would protect themselves at that speed by only reducing to full military power.  Speed brake?  Nope, not above 450Kias!  Zero drag, mach 1.5, no way to slow down further, and right over Atlanta in the upper teens.  It was in the newspaper the next day.  The Air Force chief of staff was briefed on it and our commander got a call from the pentagon before the two lieutenants were even at the Atlanta airport to come home and the fastest they saw was 1.98!

Back in the early 80s, the F-101 ANG unit in Houstan had a sonic boom incident.  TAC HQ sent a blistering message down requesting them to explain.  The explanation was a faulty MACH meter.

So TAC HQ told the until to remove the offending unit and send it to them for testing.  Hmm, you tell an ANG crew chief (probasbly an E8) that the "defecive" MACH meter needs to be removed and sent for higher HQ testing.  And SURPRISE, it was faulty.

 

[Shadrach]

14 hours ago, neilpilot said:

He was also flying without a pilot license.     

the thing about untrue rumors is if enough people repeat them, they’re still untrue. This false claim is easily debunked. John Denver was an experienced private pilot by any standard.

“total flight time of 2,750 hours. He held a private pilot certificate, with airplane ratings for single and multiengine land, single-engine sea and gliders. He also held an instrument airplane rating and a Lear Jet type rating”

[Rwsavory]

10 minutes ago, Shadrach said:

the thing about untrue rumors is if enough people repeat them, they’re still untrue. This false claim is easily debunked. John Denver was an experienced private pilot by any standard.

“total flight time of 2,750 hours. He held a private pilot certificate, with airplane ratings for single and multiengine land, single-engine sea and gliders. He also held an instrument airplane rating and a Lear Jet type rating”

Apparently, he did not have a “valid license.“ His medical had been denied.  https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/John-Denver-had-lost-pilot-s-license-3094494.php

[neilpilot]

36 minutes ago, Rwsavory said:

Apparently, he did not have a “valid license.“ His medical had been denied.  https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/John-Denver-had-lost-pilot-s-license-3094494.php

Agree - as I initially posted, I was going by memory.  You know how that goes.  A more proper statement would have been "He was also flying without valid credentials".

[Ragsf15e]

20 hours ago, N201MKTurbo said:

In 2002 I went to the open house at Edwards AFB (Highly recommend, way better than Luke Days) to see Chuck Yeager break the sound barrier for the last time. He did it in an F-15 at 15000 feet. After my memories from my childhood, it was so anti-climatic. It kind of went "poof". Not the belly busting, smack in the gut I remembered. When I was a kid they sounded like when lightning strikes the light pole in front of your house.

Yeah I agree. I saw the space shuttle land at edwards when i was a kid and the double boom was loud but definitely not breaking windows.  I’m guessing you need a large aircraft flying very low to really do it.

[N201MKTurbo]

29 minutes ago, Ragsf15e said:

Yeah I agree. I saw the space shuttle land at edwards when i was a kid and the double boom was loud but definitely not breaking windows.  I’m guessing you need a large aircraft flying very low to really do it.

In about 1998 there was a civilian F104 doing a low pass down the runway at the Scottsdale Air Affare. He got a little frisky with his throttle. He broke a window in the restaurant.

 

[Ragsf15e]

1 hour ago, N201MKTurbo said:

In about 1998 there was a civilian F104 doing a low pass down the runway at the Scottsdale Air Affare. He got a little frisky with his throttle. He broke a window in the restaurant.

 

Those things were awesome!  Notice he didn’t do any turning, loops, nothing.  That thing was faster than a bullet in a straight line though!

[N201MKTurbo]

6 minutes ago, Ragsf15e said:

Those things were awesome!  Notice he didn’t do any turning, loops, nothing.  That thing was faster than a bullet in a straight line though!

I hung out at Mesa Gateway airport a lot right after they closed the AFB. That plane was parked it the big silver hangar for a few years. Nobody knew who owned it. I will admit to sitting in the cockpit, making jet noises and playing with the controls. Everybody was surprised when they finally made it airworthy. The original plan was to fly people down over the Gulf of California so they could break the sound barrier. Eventually the powers that be in the USA and Mexico said no.

[EricJ]

6 hours ago, N201MKTurbo said:

I hung out at Mesa Gateway airport a lot right after they closed the AFB. That plane was parked it the big silver hangar for a few years. Nobody knew who owned it. I will admit to sitting in the cockpit, making jet noises and playing with the controls. Everybody was surprised when they finally made it airworthy. The original plan was to fly people down over the Gulf of California so they could break the sound barrier. Eventually the powers that be in the USA and Mexico said no.

That airplane sat at KIWA for a long, long time essentially as a semi-derelict.    I'd see it during the 2000s when I'd fly on the Intel shuttle and it was still there when I was in A&P school and they were trying to tear down the shelter that it was in.    It showed up for sale on some of the usual sites and I recently saw that it got packed up and shipped to a museum (in Canada iirc).