Re: A Very Strange Military Plane

On Sep 20, 12:25?pm, "John Carrier" <j...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Rob Arndt" <teuton...@xxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:1190309393.256959.285540@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

On Sep 20, 9:34?am, javawizard <javawiz...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
The United States Strategic Air Command invented an atomic powered
airplane. There were some problems. Even though carrying twenty tons
of lead to shield the pilot, only crews who had already had children
could be used due to the radiation exposure. If the plane crashed,
there would be no way to contain the contamination. Fortunately, the
military had the good sense not to develop this plan fully. - from www-
odd.info.com

No, the Convair NB-36 was only used as a testbed for the nuclear
reators that would power nuclear turbojets put forth with the YB-60
design that was never built.

Not exactly. The YB-60 was the Convair answer to the spec won by the B-52.
It was essentially a B-36 fuselage with swept wings and 8 podded engines.
Performance was notably inferior to the Buff.

The Nuke aircraft (utterly infeasible IMO) was a completely different design
proposal. The YB-60 flew, the nuclear bomber never got past the early
concept drawing phase, although I believe a prototype engine did make it to
the test bed.

R / John

YB-60/B-60 Nuclear powered aircraft:

On April 27, 1949, a conference was held at Oak Ridge National
Laboratory, Tennessee (ORNL), between NEPA contractors, the Air Force,
and AEC personnel, with the intent to plan Oak Ridge participation in
the NEPA project. The ORNL NEPA effort was called the Aircraft Nuclear
Propulsion project (ANP) and was established under Air Materiel
Command project officer Lt Col Clyde D. Gasser.

ANP was a more vigorous program than the original NEPA project, and
really began to seriously tackle the many problems posed by nuclear
flight. Fairchild was dropped as the prime contractor and major design
efforts began at Lockheed and Convair's Fort Worth division. While
many types of engines were studied by ANP, including giant propellers
driven by steam turbines, as of 1951-52 the Air Force's vision of an
operational nuclear-powered bomber centered on the mammoth Convair
YB-60, a swept-wing, turbojet-powered modification of the B-36
strategic bomber. It was a far cry from Newsweek's compact 1945 flying
wing. NEPA's July 1947 report had set its sights on the goal of
building an aircraft in the 300,000 lb gross weight range, with a
speed of 515 mph at 35,000 ft and a weapon load of 12,000 lb. The B-60
closely followed those criteria.

The nuclear powerplant designed for the B-60 was the General Electric
P-1, an air-cycle reactor with a thermal output probably in the 50
megawatt range, which was married to four powerful GE XJ53 turbojet
engines by a complex tangle of air ducts. The reactor would be cooled
both by the airflow from the turbojets and by boron-laced shielding
water circulating through its shell. As the XJ53 had a rated thrust of
about 17,500 lb, the four nuclear-heated engines would have had
approximately the same thrust as all eight conventional J57s on the
rival Boeing XB-52.

Air from the turbojet compressors would flow directly through the
reactor core, where it would be heated to some 2,000 degrees F before
being returned to the engine turbine sections. Though this was a
relatively simple and direct method of constructing the nuclear
engine, it had the drawback of producing an exhaust plume that would
contain radioactive particles and contaminants.

A prototype GE X39 nuclear-heated turbojet, based on the J47 used in
the B-47 bomber, shows air duct scrolls for connection to the reactor
(arrows). With a thrust output of between 5,000 and 7,000 lb, this
engine was used for ground testing of reactor prototypes.

When the P-1 engine was applied to the actual B-60 production nuclear-
powered bomber, the reactor/J53 engine complex apparently would have
been installed in the aft bomb bay area of the fuselage, as far as
possible from the crew compartment. The XB-60 flew numerous times
powered by conventional turbojets, but never with the nuclear engines.
Heavy shielding was planned, consisting of tanks of a water-boron
solution (boron-10 isotope is an excellent neutron absorber), plastics
(possibly polyethylene with boron or lead additives) and layers of
metal such as lead, steel and tungsten. The crew compartment itself
would have had additional shielding. This "divided shielding" concept
was considered one of the major technical breakthroughs of the early
NEPA project.

Rob












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