AVSIM Special Feature Screenshot Tribute to FS2002 Part 4

With the war finally over, the world was filled with surplus aircraft, especially in the United States, as there were literally thousands of aircraft stockpiled that would never see combat. Most of these aircraft would end up in the scrapyard, but a few would be sold off as war surplus and would eventually make it into the hands of civilians. War surplus P-51 Mustangs were being sold for as little as a $1,000 while B-17s were only getting $750 on the open market. The giant flying boats of the 1930s were gone and had been replaced by long range landbased aircraft, developed from the many bomber designs of the war years and these landbased aircraft were making use of the many airport or airfields that had popped up around the world. Though a little slow to start, over the next 30 years it would be passenger carrying airliners that would eventually replace the train and the cross-country bus as the primary source of transportation.

In 1948, the former war ally of the Soviet Union closed the border separating West from East Germany, isolating Western Berlin from the rest of the world. Given the options of war with the Soviet Union, giving up West Berlin to the Soviets, or supplying the civilian population by air, the United States choose the latter. Major General William H. "Willie the Whip" Tunner was given command to achieve the impossible task of developing a plan whereby the entire civilian population needs of food, medicine, and coal for heating would be supplied by a continuous line of cargo aircraft. By using hundreds of Douglas C-47s, C-54s, and Boeing C97s tons of cargo were delivered and on Easter Sunday, April of 1949, 13,000 tons of material arrived in one 24 hour period. Separated by a 3 minute time margin, aircraft would have one opportunity to land and if they required a missed approach, they returned to their respective bases, back in Western Germany, for a later attempt to join the continuous chain of aircraft. The Kremlin assumed there were only two options for the West, give up Western Berlin or war and they strongly felt that the United States was not prepared for another war in Europe. They never considered the possibility that Britain and the United States could supply the Western Berlin populace by air, but they did. Between June of 1948 and September of 1949, the Berlin Airlift delivered 2.3 million tons of cargo and the blockade of Western Berlin by the Soviet Union put the Cold War into full swing of which would last for the next 40+ years. After a year, it was obviously that the Soviet Union had failed in their attempt to starve West Berlin, so the blockade was lifted in June of '49. The airlift continued on until September of that year, to build up a stockpile in the event the Soviet Union should once again apply a blockade, but they never did. I would recommend, to all that are interested, to do a search on the web for further information concerning the Berlin Airlift and the connection that FSBerlin and their wonderful FS example of the Douglas C-54 has to this very interesting bit of aviation history.

One interesting Berlin Airlift sidestory, Lt Gail Halvorsen, USAF, a Berlin Airlift flight crew member, rode along to Templelhof on his off day. Once there he walked out along the perimeter fences, just to look around, and noticed a couple of dozen kids watching the cargo planes land. The kids asked for chocolate, but all that Lt Halvorsen had with him was a couple of sticks of Juicy-Fruit gum, so Lt Halvorsen cut up those two sticks into 12 pieces and passed them to the kids through the fence. After returning back to his base in West Germany, Lt Halvorsen got to thinking, "what if I had a couple of dozen chocolate bars, that would sure go a long ways with those kids!"

The next day, when Lt Halvorsen's C-54 flew over the open field on the approach to Templelhof, where these dozen kids were still standing, Halvorsen dropped a whole box load of chocolate bars, each separately tied to a handkerchief which acted like a small parachute. Afterwards, Lt Halvorsen's C-54 became known as the "Chocolate Bomber" and those few dozen kids soon became thousands within a few days, as many of the other cargo aircraft flight crews joined in on the "Chocolate Drop". Once the story of this reached back home to America, it was noted that Lt Halvorsen and his crew had run out of handkerchiefs, string, and cloth to make the parachutes for these chocolate bombs, so thousands of Americans (mostly women) began sending ready-made parachutes, many adorned with racy notes or expensive French perfumes and within weeks, nearly every landing cargo aircraft was dropping chocolate bombs while on approach to Templelhof.

With the Berlin Airlift over, the Cold War intensified and then in late 1949, the Soviet's test fired their first Atomic Bomb, which greatly surprised the United States (which felt that it would be 10 to 20 years before this would happen). With the end of World War II, it was noted that the days of the propeller driven fighter aircraft was over and the age of the jet was fully dawning—and by 1950, the United States had several jet aircraft in service, the F-80 Shooting Star with the USAF, and the F9F Panther with the Navy. On June 25th, 1950, the North Korean Army crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea, prompting President Truman to authorize General MacArthur to send troops and ships to support Seoul (capital of South Korea) and to help at the evacuation of American Citizens. On June 27th, an American USAF F-82 shoots down a North Korean Yak fighter in the first of what would be many such air battles and soon, hundreds of F-51s (formally known as P-51s) joined in, as the F-51 was the only fighter aircraft available in large numbers from the US inventory. By September of 1950, US Marine and Navy F4U Corsairs were arriving and unlike the F-51, the F4U was proving to be an excellent weapons platform.

The Korean War Years

In November of 1950, the Soviet's first jet fighter, the MiG-15 appears and it shakes the US Military to its core, as the F-80 and the F-51 are no match for the very fast little MiG; but the F9F Panther jet and the F4U Corsairs hold their own against this obviously superior aircraft. On December 17th, 1950 the F-86 Sabre arrives in Korea and the era of all jet air battles begins. The Marines call for more F4U Corsairs, as they had proved their worth as an excellent air support aircraft for the Marines and they had proven themselves capable of shooting down anything the enemy could throw at them, including the MiGs. In one incident, a lone US Marine Corsair pilot was jumped by 3 North Korean MiG-15s and the Marine pilot was able to down two of the Soviet built jets before he himself was shot down. The call went out, by the Marines, for more Corsairs, but most had been scrapped at the end of World War II. An interesting side note was that the RAF had 2,200 Corsairs at war's end, but to follow the letter of agreement of the Lend-Lease contract, they had sunk them all out in the middle of the English Channel in 1945. The production of the Chance Vought F4U Corsair began in January of 1951 and would continue until 1954, lending much credence to those historians claiming that the F4U was the best propeller fighter of World War II.

The real aviation story of the Korean War was the great jet battles between the F-86 and the MiG-15 and despite the surprise appearance of the MiG, the US military claimed a kill ratio (Sabre vs MiG) of 8 to 1. It wasn't learned until nearly 40 years later that this claim was very inaccurate, as it turned out that a percentage of the North Korean MiG-15s were manned by Soviet (Russian) pilots and the kill ratio between the Sabre and Russian manned MiG-15s was only 1 to 1. The Korean war ended in 1953 and with it the first example of what aerial combat would be like in the future. The race to develop faster and more effective fighter jets was on between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Lessons Learned from the early jet transports...

During WWII, land based airports had sprung up all over the world to accommodate the many bombers deployed. With this—along with the many larger sized bombers that were easily converted over to civilian use or were the basis for commercial designs—air travel by land-based aircraft became a reality. And with most of the world's civilian airliner manufacturers busy designing and developing propeller driven airliners, especially Douglas, it was the British deHavilland company that had taken the bull by the horns and had advanced the design of the airliner with their deHavilland DH106 Comet, in 1952 the world's first and only jetliner. Though plagued by some early accidents—most were minor, involving ground stalling—the Comet became a world favorite and was hailed as a great technological achievement on the part of the British Aviation Industry.

That all changed very dramatically on May 2nd, 1953 as a BOAC airlines Comet called Yoke Victor broke up while climbing from Calcutta, India in an apparent heavy thunderstorm. It was concluded that the primary cause of the crash was extreme turbulence generated by the storm. On January 10th, 1954 the BOAC Comet, Yoke Peter, crashed into the sea, just south of Elba, after taking off from Rome. The aircraft, like Yoke Victor over Calcutta, broke up while climbing, but this time there were no storms in the area and there were several earwitnesses to the accident. Loud explosions were heard and like the prior accident, the aircraft broke into several pieces before hitting the water. Yoke Peter was climbing through 26,000 feet when it broke up and because there was no immediate answer as to what happened, BOAC suspended all Comet services pending a complete investigation. The deHavilland company, BOAC, and the RAE (Royal Aircraft Establishment) began an in-depth study into the two accidents, but no clear-cut answers were forthcoming. Because of the financial difficulties the grounding of the BOAC Comet fleet was creating, it was decided to perform a "shotgun" fix. Over 50 modifications were performed, like adding armor plating to the fuel tanks and the resealing of fuel lines (the explosion was assumed to be some sort of the kerosene and air combination) and once these mods were completed, the BOAC fleet of Comets were restored into service on March 23, 1954.

Seventeen days later, on April 8th, it was announced that the BOAC Comet, Yoke Yoke, had broken up and crashed into the sea northwest of Messina, Sicily prompting the British RAE to withdraw the Certificate of Airworthiness for all de Havilland DH106 Comets worldwide. Early on, during the investigation, it was noted that each of the lost aircraft had about or just above 3,000 hours of flight time (the most of all Comets in service) and so it was the airframes of other high-time Comets that would be used for testing. After months of exhaustive testing of every conceivable failure, it was discovered that metal fatigue combined with the shape of the passenger windows would lead to a catastrophic decompression of the fuselage that would disassemble the entire fuselage in less than .5 seconds. My explanation here is an oversimplification of what happened, but it is essentially correct and if you desire more detailed information into the failure of the DH106 Comet, I suggest you research the DH106 Comet on the web.

Although additional redesigned versions of the DH106 Comet were put into production, confidence in the aircraft was lost and the aircraft was doomed, thus leaving the door open for someone else to step through with a jetliner—and that someone was Boeing Aircraft of Seattle, Washington. In 1959, Boeing got their first commercial jetliner certified by way of the Boeing 707; that aircraft was a huge success, as history has proven.

It was the British based deHavilland that introduced the jetliner to the world first, with their beautiful deHavilland "Comet," but it was not to be. An early series of mysterious crashes occurred where the aircraft appeared to breakup in-flight, caused the aircraft to be grounded after only a few months in service. A serious design flaw was discovered by the aircraft having square windows versus round windows which lead to cracks appearing at the square corners of the windows. The cracks were caused by metal fatigue from the constant pressurization and depressurization of the aircraft's interior during ascent and descent to and from altitude. The cracks would eventually fail and a catastrophic blowout would occur.

With the cancellation of the deHavilland Comet, the door was left wide open for someone to enter and it was the Seattle-based Boeing Aircraft Company that filled the void for a jetliner, with the certification of their Boeing 707 in 1959.

To say that the Boeing 707 was a success would be a gross understatement and by the mid to late '60s, Boeing began introducing additional jetliner models, including their wonderful Boeing 727.

...While the piston-powered transports thrive

From the end of the World War II until the 1960s, the primary airliner was propeller driven and the sound of radial engines was what everyone associated to air travel. Names like Douglas, Lockheed, Convair, and Boeing are what everyone looked to to get from point A to point B. The biggest seller of propliners was undoubtedly Douglas, with their DC-4 and DC-6 aircraft and this translated into many new airline companies appearing as well as the success of the older traditional airlines. Several of the airports used during the war were converted over to civilian use, but as the popularity of air travel increased, so did the number of airports to accommodate them. The small grass airfields had given way to the more modern airports with a large terminal for passenger use, along with long paved runways somewhere near virtually every major city in North America and Europe.

By the end of the 1950s, it was the Lockheed L-1049 Constellation (and Super Constellation) or "Connie" with its tapered fuselage and triple-tail arrangement that certainly was the most popular among pilots and passengers alike. Despite the fact that the Connie was generally a little bit faster than the aircraft from other manufacturers, the beautiful L-1049 was still regulated to low altitude flying (under 30,000 feet) and subject to the turbulence or the dictates of the lower atmosphere weather. With the success of the Boeing 707, Douglas DC-8, and a few other jetliners to follow, the idea of high altitude smooth, fast, and comfortable travel for the jetliner passenger was now a reality and in just a few short years, the propliner all but disappeared and gave way to the higher flying and faster jetliner.

Regardless of the many advances being made in the aircraft used for air travel, the cost of airfare tickets still kept the average traveler on the ground, keeping the train or bus as the major source of transportation in most countries. By the end of the decade of the '60s, this trend was rapidly changing and soon air travel would replace the trains and buses as the primary form of transportation for even the most common of traveler.

Douglas was one of the front-runners designing and manufacturing commercial airliners with their DC-3, but Lockheed had its original Electra, and Boeing had the 307 and the B-29-based 337.	Used well into the 1960s, domestic (US based) airlines used the many models of the Douglas aircraft, first with the DC-4 and then the 4-engined DC-6 and DC-7.	Not content to allow Boeing all the market for the jetliner, Douglas came out with their DC-8 not long after the 707 hit the market and there are examples of the DC-8 still flying today.
Beginning in the mid-1950s, the turboprops appeared. There were the Convairs, Lockheed Electras, Viscounts, and Fairchild F-27s (built under license from a Fokker design).	Douglas had their 2-engined DC-4 and 4-engined DC-6, but it was Lockheed that introduced the L-1049 Constellation and Super Connies (center right and bottom left). The Connies were easily the most beautiful design of the great 1950's propliners, with its sweeping and tapered fuselage along with its distinctive triple-tail, Connies plied the skies of the world in style.	During the '50s and '60s several large cargo/airliners hit the market, like the Douglas C-124 military transport and their last of the propliners, the DC-7 (used almost exclusively by United Airlines). For the jetliners we had the Convair 880 (lower center right), Caravelle (lower center left), the Vickers VC-10 (bottom), and the 747-100/200 hit the market as well (shown here at top is a SP, special purpose, version).

General Aviation also grew in leaps and bounds during this period, with many new designs from Cessna, Piper, Beechcraft, Globe, Stinson, Taylorcraft, Bellancia, among a whole host of others. Pre-war aircraft were also very popular, especially the Boeing Stearman and Wacos.

The Great Bombers Arrive...

As the 1940s came to an end, the Cold War was directing the actions of both the Soviet and American military and their respective military aircraft designs. Both countries now had the bomb, so designing an aircraft to deliver them was paramount within the military minds on both sides of the world. The Strategic Air Command (or SAC) was formed, lead by General Curtis LeMay and the call went out to all aircraft designers for a long range bomber, capable of delivering the bomb as needed. Though Jack Northrop of Northrop Aviation had unsuccessfully pushed the idea of his flying wing, it would be the Convair Corporation and their B-36 that would get the nod of the military and SAC.

The first all-jet bomber would be the medium range, swept-wing B-47 (manufactured by Lockheed from a design captured from Germany), with Convair following that up with the ultra-fast delta-wing B-58 Hustler. It was in 1954 that Boeing rolled out their latest bomber design, the Boeing B-52 and this aircraft would redefine the nature of the strategic bomber—some 50 years later, the Boeing B-52 or BUFF would still be flying and would perform its duties effectively in the second Gulf War. The Soviets countered the United States' aviation advances with their own long-range bombers, the best of which was their high flying and very fast turboprop, the Tu-95 Bear. The Tu-95 Bear, capable of the altitude, speed, and payload of the Boeing B-52, became a common sight to the SAC fighter escorts along the western edge of Alaska and over the Arctic Ocean.

...And Kelly Johnson's "Skunk Works" Emerges

As the American missile and rocket programs advanced, concerned mounted as to what the Soviets were up to, so a brilliant engineer from Lockheed, Kelly Johnson, was given the green light to form a team of engineers to design an aircraft capable of overflying the Soviet Union and photographing the many test flight centers there. Kelly Johnson had designed the highly successful Lockheed P-38 Lightning during the war, so his newly formed team, called the "skunkworks," set up camp out in the middle of the Nevada desert at a location designated "Area 51" on the Air Force land maps. Their first effort was the hugely successful U-2 spyplane; almost immediately this aircraft began secret overflights of the Soviet Union on behalf of the USAF and the American CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). Though only capable of subsonic speeds, the U-2 had a cruise altitude of nearly 90,000 feet, which put it far above the range of anything in the Soviet inventory—that was until 1959, when Frances "Gary" Powers was shot down while attempting to make it back to his base in Turkey. Put on trial for espionage, Gary Powers was later released by the Soviets in an exchange of spy prisoners in an arrangement designed by Senator John F. Kennedy.

Knowing that the U-2 was now exposed to Soviet missile attack, the "skunkworks" began designing a new replacement aircraft and in 1964, the legendary SR-71 Blackbird was the result. Even though the SR-71 has been out of service for several years now, much about this wondrous aircraft is still highly classified and the only known performance numbers are that it cruised in excess of 2,200 mph at altitudes equal to or greater than 90,000 feet. The SR-71, you must remember, was designed in the era before computers and the engineers responsible for that aircraft designed it using nothing more than paper, pencils, sliderulers, and their own brains. Built almost entirely of Titanium—and using components for which even the tools to make those components hadn't been invented—the SR-71 was and is an extraordinary feat of engineering. In one interesting note of irony, the United States needed the SR-71 to spy on the Soviet Union, but to build it the USA was lacking sufficient amounts of Titanium, so a complex network of spys and dummy companies (mostly in Germany) were set up to purchase the necessary volume of the metal from the only country having the amounts necessary to build the SR-71; that country was of course the Soviet Union.

The Sound Barrier is broken...

In October of 1947, out in the isolated high desert of Southern California and high over the smooth surface of Rogers Dry Lake, Col. Chuck Yeager would break the sound barrier in his Bell X-1 and there would begin a series of test aircraft that would push the speed and the altitude records to the edge of space. Beginning with Col. Yeager's X-1 the X-plane series of test aircraft would push the speed records faster and faster, first with the breaking of MACH 2.0 by test pilot Scott Crossfield and finally ending the X-plane series with the X-15 (which in separate flights exceeded 4,500 mph and 354,000 feet of altitude) in the early 1960s.

On October 17th, 1947 Col. Charles "Chuck" Yeager flew his Bell X-1 through and beyond the sound barrier and back to a safe landing at Rogers Dry Lake, CA (Edwards AFB). A former Air Force fighter ACE from WWII, Chuck Yeager would become one of many famous American test pilots in the decades after the end of WWII. The X-1 that Chuck Yeager flew on that day is currently on permanent display at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum in Washington DC.

Flying in the late 1950s and into the early 1960s, the Lockheed X-15 set speed and altitude records that stood until the Shuttle made its first flights. The maximum speed attained by the X-15 was 4,534 mph and an altitude record of 354,200 feet. As with the Bell X-1, one of the X-15 experimental aircraft (of 3 built) is on display at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington DC.

...As the Space Age is launched

It was on October 4th, 1957 that the Soviet Union rocked the world by their successful launch and orbit of "Sputnik", the world's first artificial satellite, who's electronic beep could be heard on radios around the world. Barely larger than a basketball, Sputnik was the beginning of another offshoot of the Cold War, the Space Race. And so in 1961, President Kennedy promised the American public that the newly formed NASA (National Aeronautic and Space Administration) would put a man on the moon and return him safely to earth before the decade of the sixties would end. Much of the data collected from the X-planes, specifically from the X-15, would be carried over into the American space program. The race to the moon ended on July 20th, 1969 when astronauts "Buzz" Aldrin and Neil Armstrong safely landed their Lunar Module "Eagle" in the Sea of Tranquility on the surface of the moon. Billions around the world heard the radio message when Neil Armstrong announced, "...Tranquility base here, the Eagle has landed!"

Fueled by the Cold War, aviation had advanced from propeller driven airliners and military aircraft to the age of the jets, the confines of earth's gravity had been broken, and man had walked on the moon. The technology of aviation gained more ground during the 25 years between 1946 and 1970 than even its earliest pioneers could have imagined or dreamed. And even though most boundaries had been broken, aviation still offered many new promises for the future.

"Screenshot Tribute to FS2002" continues here:
Part 5: FS2002 Screenshots for 1971-2003