Posted on 09/22/2013 6:31:05 AM PDT by Kaslin
Yes, in the late 50’s to early 60’s they were white on the bottom. By 1965 they had the forest green camo on top and black on the bottom.
BTW, when we lived there, every now and then a B-36 would fly over at very high altitude. They looked like little silver crosses in the sky.
“...B-52...”
Ahh, The “Buff”.... one of my personal favorite aircraft of all time.
Brings back a memory... I had a MASSIVE scale model of a B-52 when I was a kid. Monogram, or maybe Revell, I don’t remember. Spent about two weeks building it, detailing it, painting it... even painting the crew members... Wheels retracted - and ROLLED, wing flaps worked, everything...
My younger cousin came over... looked at it. I said “Don’t even THINK about touching it...” And the minute I turned my back, he picked it up and LAUNCHED it to see if it would fly.
It tumbled end over end down the cellar steps and got destroyed.
I beat his ass so hard his clothes were out of style when he woke up...
I got in trouble for that. But it was worth it. To this day when we see each other, he laughs about it.
I, however, STILL want to beat his ass when he brings it up!
Seriously? AA Missiles have been able to shoot that high for longer than most people have been alive. Since almost longer than this plane has been around.
yeah I thought it was funny the way they implied the B52 invented that term. Carpet bombing was a term since early WW2.
Ouch!!!!!!! Did you ever get a new one?
My aunt bought me a smaller version, but it wasn’t the same... and she was pissed at me for smacking “her boy” around...
Heheh... it WAS a sound thrashing, indeed.
Now I know why I was able to get some many of them rabbits. I was in the 509th Field Maintenance Squadron 56 - 58 on KC-97s as a prop man. Then the 6th Field Maintenance Squadron from 61 -67 as a bubble chaser for B-52 and KC-135s. On my off time would hunt jack rabbits out east of town. The rancher liked it because one rabbit would eat as much as six cows per area. That is what he told me.
That’s a nice childhood memory.
Yes,the Nuvistors did get used in some TV tuners,and I think some FM tuners,and Nuvistors were used in a number of amateur VHF and UHF receivers and tuners.
There were also low-voltage tubes for portable battery and auto radios that used much less power to heat their cathode than the typical All-American 5 tube radio found in the kitchen.Those tube radios were still sold in large numbers during the 1960s.I have several deluxe tabletop tube radios found at Goodwill(no doubt donated at the recent passing of their owners)and they provide excellent plentiful sound including stereo .Albeit they are seldom on,mostly just nostalgic decoration.
whippersnapper!
***BTW, when we lived there, every now and then a B-36 would fly over at very high altitude.***
I was a child of 8 in Farmington NM (1954 or 1955)when I heard a loud roar in the sky. I looked up, and there was a large aircraft flying very low over me. The thing remember most was the propellers were on the back side of the engines.
Tech books were 3/4 about vacuum tubes and maybe a quarter on those new fangled transistors :)
“The B-52’s service ceiling is 56,000 feet. I doubt there is much of an anti-aircraft threat at that altitude.”
It’s true that no gun system can loft a shell so high. So it is strictly correct to say that no anti-aircraft artillery threat covers that part of the airspace.
But there are a fair number of missile systems that can hit targets there. Indeed, some were designed and built - in small numbers at least - in the 1950s. But few had any capability to hit targets below 5000 ft AGL. Hence efforts to develop attack systems that could cruise lower, plus technological measures (collectively termed “stealth” by the media) to defeat/deceive defense systems. Defense system designers then initiated development of systems able to find, track, intercept and hit penetrating targets in ever-lower altitude regimes.
US political leaders and defense planners (the latter chiefly of the political-appointee stripe) made some critical assumptions based on early and incomplete data. They judged that because some defense systems could hit some targets well above 56,000 ft, it was futile to build atmospheric penetrators that could fly so high or so fast. Half a century later, it is not at all clear they were correct.
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