Airdrop

Flight Journal, Oct 1998

I enjoyed the article

"Looking Down the Throat of the Bear" in your April 1998 issue. I have a personal interest: I was an RC-135 navigator in the 55th SRW (McKone's and Olmstead's old unit) from 1983 to 1989. When I first arrived at Offutt AFB in the summer of 1983, Col. John McKone was the commander of the 3902 Air Base Wing. As part of my training, I saw a classified briefing he gave on the shootdown. It didn't differ significantly from the account published in "The Little Toy Dog" by William White, which is my "open source."

In this book, Col. McKone speculated that Capt Polyakov shot them down because of a pilotage error; I agree. Polyakov mistook Kanin Cape for Svyatoy Nos. The former was, indeed, directly ahead of the aircraft at the turn point but 60 miles away (and quite visible at that range, depending on the weather), while the latter is a much smaller feature extending just a few miles off the coast At a hearing, Polyakov testified that he took a visual fix off Svyatoy Nos and from that determined that the RB 47H was in Soviet airspace. The Soviets' claimed position for the shootdown plots out in roughly the same relative position as the actual one does with Kanin Cape.

One of the strange things about that area is the visual similarity between Svyatoy Nos and Kanin Cape; the shapes are similar, but the actual sizes are very different However, depending on the altitude, the apparent size is close enough for one to be mistaken for the other. Visually, they're similar, but on radar, they're quite distinct, especially because of the strait leading to the White Sea south of the Kanin Peninsula (I've seen them both, visually and on radar, and speak from experience.) McKone was navigating primarily by radar. Polyakov didn't have radar; he had only the most basic navigation instruments, to which he doesn't seem to have referred; he simply looked outside, decided that the tongue of land up ahead was Svyatoy Nos and opened fire on an aircraft 50 miles off the coast [email]

Michael R Little

It seems as if every pilot is prone to pilotage error at some point. In this unfortunate case, however, it was too bad we had to lose four good men and an RB47H. RP

Runway collision

The April 1998 issue of Flight Journal arrived featuring an interesting article on the F-86 by Steve Snyder. This was topped, however, by aThe P40 talked; I didn't listen" that opened with an event that took place on August 12, 1941, that made me jump the chocks. It was my 15th birthday, and I was at Boston airport that day to fly with my dad in an A-12 that the Reserves were using at that time. Dad was working with Bob Love (Inter-City) but kept his time in with the Reserves.

I watched the P-40 (described by Corky Meyer in the beginning of the article) on its takeoff that day and only saw the Stinson at the last moment when they collided, spinning the P-40 around and sliding it backward, leaving the Stinson jackknifed. Obviously, it was a tremendous shock to me, as it must have been for Corky and his friends.

I have some pictures of the accident taken after the fact. I'm sure some of your readers might be interested in seeing them. Great magazine!

Bob Fogg Jr. Claremont, NH

Thanks for sharing the photos with us, Bob. RP

He 111 bomb storage

In our August 1998 Airdrop,"we asked for information concerning the storage of the bombs in the He 111. Here is a sample of the replies we received.

The bomb bay in the He 111 was originally a four-passenger smoking compartment However, the 10, 250kg bombs could not be stored conventionally if a walkway was to be maintained through the aircraft Our bird does not have the full complement of bombs installed because modern hydraulics take up bay space. Additionally, fewer modifications to the airframe were required to load and drop the bombs vertically. They also could be easily re-fused during flight if the mission profile changed. [email]

J. D. Ritts He 111 flight mechanic

There were two benefits to the He 111s' dropping their bombs tail first it prevented damage to the fins and it raised the center of gravity of the bomb load by a small amount Even today, small objects released via tubes are dropped tail first When the object clears the bottom end of the tube, it doesn't whack its fins against the tube. [email]

Cletus W. Whitaker

He Ills obviously dropped bombs with a variety of fuse settings. These settings, as well as arming, were done by hand on the nose of the bomb. Therefore, the need for accessible noses. [email]

Norman Mainwaring

Be kind of silly to stand impact-fused bombs on their noses in the plane you're flying! [email]

Jim Simpson

Noel Wien

When I saw the cover of the June issue of Flight Journal, I raced to the article regarding bush flying in Alaska. I was impressed with Budd Davisson's inclusion of my grandfather Noel Wien in his look at bush flying in Alaska. Initially, I thought Davisson had his facts wrong about the Fokker F.III. He explained that Noel wasn't fond of the airplane, yet I don't remember my grandfather saying anything negative about any airplane. I checked with my dad, and he reminded me that while the F.III was the only cabin "airliner" available in the U.S. in 1925, it still had no brakes, and being noseheavy, its tailskid was ineffective. The ex-KLM plane called for a landing rollout of 900 feet, which was longer than many of the river sandbars that became Alaska's first airports. It seems Davisson was right, but I think the plane still held a soft spot in my grandpa's heart. Also, a minor correction: Byrd never owned or operated the F.III, preferring instead the later tri-motor Fokker. And for my last nitpick of 75-year-old trivia, Noel wasn't in WW I, since he was only 18 at the end of the War.