AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2015 - 80

Unless you're prepared for it, the sight
of seriously wrinkled skin on the sides
of the forward fuselage can be alarming,
but this is not the result of abuse. The
wrinkling is due mostly to wing bending
and largely disappears as the wings arch
upward during flight. Such aeroelasticity
enables each wing tip to move through a
32-foot arc, 16 feet up and 16 feet down-
an interesting sight in heavy turbulence.
The B-52 is a broad-shouldered, highwing airplane, but the wings droop so
much when on the ground that the tips
almost touch the tarmac. Standing near
a wing tip, you can see along the wing's
entire upper surface. Landing gear, called

THE 1950S-ERA cockpit (below)
is little changed from when it
was designed. The crab-angle
selection knob (far right) on
the center pedestal is used to
select the desired crab angle of
the crosswind landing gear.

80 | AOPA PILOT May 2015

outriggers, supports the wing tips and prevents them from scraping the ground. The
main quadricycle landing gear is similar to
bicycle landing gear, except that there are
four landing-gear trucks instead of two.
Because of wing droop and the outriggers, you cannot make a conventional
crosswind landing in a B-52. Instead of
touching down in a wing-low slip, the airplane must be landed while crabbing into
the wind with wings level. This is not a
problem, though, because the airplane has
crosswind landing gear.
The B-52's Fowler flaps have only two
positions, full up and full down. The same
flap setting is used for takeoff and landing. An advantage of this is that flaps need
not be reset during a missed approach or
touch-and-go landing.
You enter the B-52 by climbing a short
ladder through a belly hatch into the lower
cabin. This is where the bombardier and
navigator are stationed; they sit in downward-firing ejection seats. Climb another
ladder to reach the upper cabin and cockpit.

In addition to the pilots, this is where the
electronic warfare officer is stationed.
Those on the upper deck sit in upwardfiring ejection seats. I was an extraneous
crewmember and did not have an ejection seat, which was OK by me. My bailout
instructions were to dive headfirst through
one of the holes remaining after someone on
the lower deck had ejected, pull my D-ring
when clear, and enjoy the view.
During much of my eight-hour flight
I sat in the instructor's seat aft of and
between the pilots' seats. One would
expect such a large airplane to be roomy,
but not so. Little space is provided for creature comfort. The cockpit is so cramped
that you have to disconnect the control
column and push it fully forward (on the
ground or in the air) to have enough room
to crawl into a pilot's seat.
Only the pilots have windows. Other
crewmembers have no view or sense of the
outside world-which, I was told, can lead
to airsickness. Helmets should be worn
when moving about the cabin (especially
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2015
