March/April 2004 Air Enthusiast Review

Quick and Dirty Review:
Air Enthusiast March/April 2004

I've always liked Air Enthusiast, as it usually covers a good
selection of interesting topics in a very thorough manner. The
March/April 2004 issue is no exception, and there are a number of
noteworthy articles.

*C-133: Nine page article with 17 photos. This is a very good look at
this short-lived airlifter, going into the reasons _why_ it didn't
last longer. Particularly chilling was the mention of an airliner crew
seeing a "Weenie Wagon" coming out of a cloud base in an inverted
spin. A major C-133 role was the transport of missiles - this was
avery delicate affair - the rails for carrying the Atlas ICBM had to
be placed with a 1.6mm tolerance! There are a number of interesting
illustrations, including a shot of a dissambled CH-54 (itself no mean
aircraft) being loaded into a Cargomaster. One thing I hadn't seen
before was a shot of a C-133 wind tunnel model fitted with twin
vertical tails and carrying a Saturn IB rocket stage atop its
fuselage.

*Seven-page article on the Boeing 307 Stratoliner, the elegant
airliner counterpart to the B-17. There are 18 photos, several
illustrations, and two color profiles showing a TWA aircraft and
Howard Hughes' N19904.

*Part one on an article on the B-17s of the 99th Bomb Group. Seven
pages, nine photos.

*For the WWI enthusiasts, there is a two-page article dealing with the
aircraft designed by the Frederick Sage & Co. Ltd. There are seven
photos of various types, and a three-view drawing of the Sage Type 2
Scout.

*Definitely interesting is the eleven-page article on Swedish SIGINT
operations - there are six shots of Ju86s used in this shadowy work,
plus one color profile. There are four images and a profile of the
C-47s later used in this mission, as well as several images of pieces
from the wreck of C-47 79001, which was shot down by the Soviets in
1952.

*Another weighty article deals with Israeli and Iranian operations
against Iraqi nuclear facilities. There are two Iranian Phantom
photos, plus a color profile of an Iranian RF-4E. There is also a
color profile of an Israeli F-4E(S) and an RF-4E photo. There are two
Israeli F-16 photos and a pair of color profiles, plus a shot of
Israeli F-15s with Syrian kill markings.

*Towards the end of the issue, there are a couple of shots of
preserved Spanish F-86s, and a two-page article noting the phase-out
of the T-2 Buckeye. This is illustrated by five photos, mostly of a
nicely restored civilian example. The Buckeye was a real link to the
past of naval aviation, since the wing planform was derived from the
FJ Fury.

Recommended

Chris
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[quote=Dataview Publishing]
Particularly chilling was the mention of an airliner crew
seeing a "Weenie Wagon" coming out of a cloud base in an inverted
spin. A major C-133 role was the transport of missiles - this was
avery delicate affair - the rails for carrying the Atlas ICBM had to
be placed with a 1.6mm tolerance! There are a number of interesting
illustrations, including a shot of a dissambled CH-54 (itself no mean
aircraft) being loaded into a Cargomaster. One thing I hadn't seen
before was a shot of a C-133 wind tunnel model fitted with twin
vertical tails and carrying a Saturn IB rocket stage atop its
fuselage.

Chris

I am the author of a forthcoming comprehensive history of the C-133 Cargomaster, and flew 1,875 hours as a navigator in the airplane and no one ever mentioned a C-133 spining down out of the clouds. In fact, except for Edwards test pilots, no Air Force pilot was allowed to even stall the C-133, much less to let it get into a spin.

The author of the article, Bill Black, ran the text by me before he published it but the tale of a C-133 spinning out of the clouds got by me. That never happened. I am convinced that it was a corruption of an actual United Airlines airliner crew sighting of part of the events of the last C-133 crash on 6 Feb 1970, near McCook, NE. That airplane crashed because an old skin crack on the left forward fuselage propagated catastrophically, throwing skin into number three. There was inflight fire at 23,000' which was visible to the UAL airplane some miles in trail, at night.

In my two years in the airplane, I heard several tales of the airplane's mythology (most of which proved to be true). A C-133 spinning out of the clouds would have resulted in a crash. Several of the C-133 crashes resulted from the airplane's dramatic stall characteristics. The typical stall, which had no warning, was a sharp right wing drop to as much as 70 degrees, the nose pitched down into an adverse yaw situation and recovery required 1,500 to 3,000 feet. Not until 1965 was a fix for the stall installed. It made the airplane stall level without a break to one side or the other.

Check my web site for more C-133 info:

http://www.angelfire.com/wa2/c133bcargomaster/home.html.

Cal Taylor
The C-133 Project
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