Forgotten Aircraft - The Douglas XB-19
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- Опубліковано 8 чер 2007
- The XB-19 project had its origin in a secret Army Air Corps project of the mid 'thirties for an advanced long-range bomber. On February 5, 1935, the Army Air Corps initiated a secret project for an experimental long-range bomber, with the goal of seeing just how far the state of the art could be pushed. It was assigned the codename "Project D", and was classified top secret. No production was envisaged, since "Project D" was more of a proof-of-concept vehicle than it was a serious proposal for a production military aircraft.
- Авто та транспорт
Even though there are bigger planes around today, the sheer SIZE of this beast is incredible! It's crazy to see that something that huge could get off the ground with radial engines in 1940 (albeit not entirely smoothly)! Today you expect something like that, but 60 years ago? Amazing.
2:38 this plane had a potential range of over 7000 miles fully loaded? That is very impressive for an aircraft of 1935 origin.
At 2:26 we see a dangerous oscillation....
The test pilot was my Great-Granddad. Maj. Stanley Umstead. We have one of the steering yokes from the plane that was converted to a...desk lamp and presented to him. The rest of the plane was chopped up. Sad.
A desk lamp? Better than nothing, I guess, too bad there isn't more left of that beautiful plane. Your great-grandaddy must have had a lot of great stories.
Rick I think this was the only airplane in the Army Air Corp that had the possibility of reaching Tokyo, bomb the city, and return to Midway Island. And, it could have conducted the mission three months before the Doolttle Raid of April of 1942. Do you have any knowledge that your Great Grandfather fostered such an idea?
Rick Eaton pretty cool
Honestly, they should’ve at least saved one of the turrets which would’ve housed the 37mm cannon, or maybe the engine
lOOKS LIKE PITCH CONTROL ISSUES IN THE FLARE.
Yes, and it is weird because most of the abandoned experimental aircraft had problems with the engines (delivery, power, etc)..
This was the largest aircraft for a couple of years until the B-36 I think...
Great company, Douglas.
2:56 He greased it in right on the porpoise trough. Great landing.
I could've sworn I saw this plane in a Bugs Bunny film with Yosemite Sam.
So could I, but checked the cartoon right now: it´s not, since Bugs´ plane is a six-engine. But both planes have a passing semblance, though, especially the fin & rudder.....
This plane was in the Bugs Bunny cartoon with a Gremlin trying to sabotage it in flight. " Good thing for us is.we ran.out of gas! " after the plane went into a climatic nose dive. and stopped before it could crash.😁
John Bockelie “Yeah, you know how it is with these ‘A’ cards!”
It looked severely unbalanced when it was lifting off and even more so during the landing. If I remember right, it was underpowered too.
In deed, at that time the available piston engines were to weak for those heavy planes. See also the Lockheed Constitution, the Bristol Brabazon or the big seaplanes of that time. The solution came some 10 years later with the turboprop engines. A soviet TU-114 is of comparable size and had 14000 horsepower. In one of its 4 engines!
@@peterofenbaeck405 It was underpowered cos it was too big. Before gas turbines they had 4 row radials delivering like 4 grand hp (which weighed tons). The Continental had 3 grand hp ones. This plane would need the 4 row radials, cos the extra power means more weight and so you need even more power again. Turbines are extremely light, however, making it easier to make bigger planes. But the gas turbines suck juice a lot compared to pistons, so that offsets the weight advantage a little bit.
Unbalanced is an understatement!!! The pilot had his stuff together to keep that bucket from pancaking right after take-off. Ive seen another video of this bucket and again, the pilot obviously had it together. It was a documentary about the B36, I think. This beast must be out of balance ... CG not well calculated. That other video showed the thing go nose up just before touchdown then bounced at least 3 times. I was surprised to see that it did not stall out and flatten all of the gopher mounds on the runway. Test flying is not for everyone, for sure !!! (Especially me.)
VERY underpowered.
@@dancolley4208 Flying is not the word for what that plane was doing. It looked like model on a string from a low budget 1950s movie. I even have a title for it. "To Tokyo and Not Back".
With wings like that, the Ground Effect must have been enormous.
Kyllein MacKellerann Shows in how 'lively' it was during landings especially.
It's that bomber from the 1942 Superman cartoon " The Japitours "
I know, THATS THE PLANE BUGS BUNNY WAS UP IN ALONE WITH A DEADLY GREMLIN ON BOARD,
HELL BENT ON DESTROYING THE CRAFT!!!!
Is that where the robot pilot bails out ?
bush nbush NO IT IS NOT
Love that episode lol. Hitting the bombs with a mallet
@@noahno
YEA, YA GOT TO HIT EM
JUST RIGHT!!!!!💥✈
The opening music, which seemed for a time interminable, was terribly annoying.
I get that it was a scene-setting move, but it was still way too loud.
Some excerpts from an article by Bill Gunston on the XB-19 in the December 1991 edition of "Aeroplane Monthly" magazine: :- "As speed climbed through the 75-70 mph level Ulmstead pulled back on the big wheel. Nothing happened, so he pulled further. Suddenly the nose began to rise, but the trouble was it did not stop rising. In two or three seconds the giant was at an alarming nose-up angle, totally unsuitable for any aircraft of 1941, let alone one with such a low power/weight ratio. Gen Mark Bradley said, "He damn near lost the airplane". Ulmstead learned in the quickest and hardest way that the B-19 responded all right, but thought a bit before doing so. He said later "You soon learned how to turn corners before you got there." Having adopted the right frame of mind, the numerous Army and Douglas pilots who flew the giant found it quite likeable." ..." the giant spent 1942 trucking cargo all over the USA "... "in early 1943 the decision was taken to spend a considerable sum giving it a total rework from nose to tail to make it a much better freighter. All weapon provisions were eliminated, the fuselage was gutted and rearranged purely for cargo and many systems, including radio, were upgraded. The original engines and nacelles were removed and replaced by the engine that had failed to appear seven years earlier; The Allison V-3420. The V-3420-11 was rated at 2,600 hp and two V-12 power sections were geared to a 19ft Curtiss Electric propeller with four blades... They transformed the XB-19A, as the rebuilt aircraft was designated, and it became a well-liked hauler of heavy cargoes".... "It was finally scrapped at Davis-Monthan AFB in1949." - I should point out that Bill Gunston's assertion that the bomber completed its rebuild and was found widespread use as a freighter is at odds with other descriptions on the internet.
Reminds me of Howard H's Spruce Goose. Seems to be longitudinally unstable.
martin murphy looks like the cg is to far aft
the first thing i thought was it needed 2 more engines
And a whole lot of prayers!
Yes , I was supprised when I saw it , that it did not have 6 engines .
Wyr
God bless
@@DBAllen Yes !
Wyr
God bless
Thanks B-G; I just love this classic airplane stuff!
The B-19 also mentioned in a Spike Jones tune and several times by Bugs Bunny. Also shown in an animated segment of Disney's "Victory Through Air Power."
thanks for the video Bomberguy - the music is great too!
I *believe* it was elevator blanking...Increase pitch and the elevator would move down into the turbulent air of the wing/flaps. with the flaps causing a LOT of turbulent air. The elevator loses effectiveness so the nose dips raising the elevator back into undisturbed airflow making it effective again, rinse and repeat. :)
Was I the only one scared watching that landing?
If you noticed, the takeoff showed the pitch instability also.
Excellent video! My dad saw the B-19 fly at March Field; he joked that when it approached the field you could see the tail long before you saw the rest of the plane.
Holy Cow, tail heavy!
Tail heavy in looks alone. If it were tail heavy it would not have flown. Underpowered. It had a lower powered version of the Wright R-3350 used on the smaller B-29.
Scooter George I dunno, sure looks excessively pitch sensitive @ 2:52. Maybe I'll amend my comment to be "not nose heavy enough" ;-) You are correct though, a tail heavy plane wouldn't have made it to 2:52
Scooter George a tail heavy aircraft will still fly, albeit vary poorly. are you referring that the engineers wouldn't have released it for flight with an improper cg? to that i say is it possible that the engineers calculated the CG position wrong and they balanced the aircraft correctly to an incorrect location?
jason stout
Not too difficult to calculate CG. Place the wing in a wind tunnel and find the center of lift. Balance the aircraft slightly forward of that point and take her up. Better slightly nose heavy. Stable and much less likly to go into an unrecoverable stall.
Scooter George you think its nose heavy? i never said the CG wasn't easy you do realize that an aircraft that big cannot just be picked up and balanced like a model plane. it takes math and calculations from a datum point on the aircraft (which is not the location of the CG) to other stations in the aircraft, plus you must know correctly all the individual weights and locations of any item placed within the aircraft to have a correct CG. in fact all aircraft are balanced this way it is absolutely possible to know where your CG should be and not have it in the correct location. weather or not that's the case i cant know for sure from a video. although i dont see how more power would have stopped the oscillating at take off.
the only other thing i can think of is incidence that would cause a take off like that.
Both the giants XB-19 and XB-15 were used as transports during the war. In this video it appears to have short mode longitudinal instability landing - most likely corrected afterwards.
It looks a bit pitch sensitive on both takeoff and landing.
+Ted Smith I saw that too. Making me wonder if the stick controls had hydraulic servos, or just very long lever arms like some of the Clippers which needed the strong arms of both pilots for some maneuvers. Could make for an awkward and tentative rotation, unlike the clippers which would just stick to the water a bit longer before liftoff.
This aircraft appeared to be very slow and like a rocking horse taking off and landing (pitch sensitive?). The B-17 was nearly contemporary. Smaller, no doubt, but a better plane?...and the B-29 was certainly on the drawing board when the decision to not put the XB-19 into production was made. Sound about right?
The B-29 didn't have an official spec until December, 1939. I made it's first flight in September, 1942, a very fast development cycle, but one driven by war. The B-29 was more a successor to the B-19 than a contemporary. Douglas grew to hate the XB-19 and wanted to cancel the project. The War Department mandated it continues because of the enormous propaganda value of an aircraft touted as being able to bomb Europe and return. In reality, it would have been able to bomb Europe, just not get back again. When the original engines were replaced with the 2,600hp Allison V-3420-11 in 1943. the B-19 finally had enough power to become a useful aircraft. By then, the B-29 was in production and B-19 was obsolete as a bomber. She did some useful work hauling high priority passengers and mail after then new engines were installed. Her cruising speed went from a leisurely 170 mph to 250 mph so she was able to make cross country trips in a reasonable time. There was some hope airlines postwar would find a use for an aircraft like the B-19 postwar but no airline wanted the white elephant. The Air Force wanted to preserve her as a piece of aircraft history and sent her to Davis-Monthan for mothballing. The Air Force wasn't able to find the money and a museum willing to to take the the B-19 so it was unceremoniously cut up for scrap in 1950. It wasn't until 1971 that the Air Force itself had a museum that could have housed the B-19.
Hope the test pilot didn't soil his pants! That looked close.
You made the first B29 flight in 1942? You'd have to be 100?
I grew up looking at those hangars & airfield. I could hear the steam whistle at Douglas Aircraft that signaled shift changes & break times. All gone now, & the yup yups who bought houses next to Santa Monica Airport want it closed, too noisy. What did they expect when they move in next to an airfield?
The dummies tried that with DFW airport too. It was built out in the sticks and then the houses followed in a few years. When the yupyups sued the airport, the judge made them pay the airport's legal fees after telling them the airport was there before any houses were, so they knew they were moving in next to an airport when they came and what did they expect? Airports art noisy!
My dad's sister's "life partner" worked at the Santa Monica plant from just before Pearl Harbor until the plant closed. He worked on the last of the civil DC-3, then the A-20 for a while until C-54 production started (late '42), civil DC-4 after the war, then DC-6, DC-7, and finally, DC-8. He and my aunt lived two blocks from the plant for over 40 years.. He walked to work every day. Went home for lunch which was usually a sandwich and two 12 oz. beers (!), a "good working man's brand" like Rheingold.
Excellent!
16 years ago bomberguy uploaded this video and today I found it
Such a beautiful plane.
+ChingaChe: The plane we sold to the Japanese was the DC-4E. They had it for a short time and 'informed' us that the plane had crashed into the Sea of Japan, when all the while it was being reverse-engineered to develop their own military aircraft.
Japan also got a license to build the DC-3. They built about 500 of them and it was their most numerous WWII transport.
Sadly the only part of the plane that is left, is one of the main landing tire and wheel, at Wright Patterson Air Force museum
It is hard to imagine why they would scrap a one of a kind aircraft.
Douglas aircraft are pretty sexy too. Not just Lockheed or Boeing own that. Douglas had some winners in its day
No, it was not one of these. There was only one XB-19 ever built and it was scrapped in 1949. The big plane that sat at Lackland was the XC-99. It's now at the USAF museum.
It was big, lumbering and out of date before it was completed. Even Douglas wanted to scrap the building of it before it was completed but the Army wanted it.
Loss of a great piece of aviation history ✈✈✈
Damn, that thing is huge!
I saw the landing gear of this up close today. Never seen such a big lump of rubber in my life
Thanks, I wish I knew that before I mixed this video!
wow, great machine
The tail fin is not big enuff it needs more stability by bringing it further up the fuselage to counter instability
Don't know if it's still there, but one of these used to sit off the edge of the ramp at Kelly AFB TX. Last time I saw it was probably 1989.
Ted Lawson was involved with the design of the flaps. Is his name familiar to you? It sure should be, he wrote, "THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO". He even mentions the B19 in his book.
george sager I read that book a long time ago. If I recall correctly, he broke both of his shoulders when the "Ruptured Duck", the B-25 he was in, crashed in the East China Sea near China. I think he also lost a leg as a result of other injuries sustained in the crash.
broke both shoulders and lost a leg Hollywood did make his book into a movie by the same name, a good movie and you will see a lot of unknown actors in it who became famous after the 50's Ted Lawson also helped with the development of 110 octane aviation gas as well
Technology at the time wasn't ready for an aircraft of this size. Still It must have worried potential enemies at the time.
where do you get all these videos bomberguy?
Probably a good reason this one is best forgotten.
The ground pressure generated by a single main landing gear wheel must have been enormous - similar to the original main gear on the B-36.
It's sad that all of these warplanes came to an end as pots and pans, but we must remember that newer designs were already on the horizon while WW II was being fought, that the Army Air Force's mission was already changing to extreme long range bombardment (SAC), and thousands of planes that had an expected useful life of a few hundred hours had no mission or crews to man them. A B-17 with only test hours and a full complement of fuel could be had at war's end for about $1500. No takers.
The Indians managed to salvage some B-24s from a bunch of deliberately-wrecked ex-British "Lend-Lease" planes: I believe they were used as sea-patrol aircraft into the 1960s.
Some 18,800 B-24s were built and none had a future beyond the war's end: only a handful survived, and the whole lot had cost some $90,000,000,000 (just to build) in modern-day funny-money.
@@None-zc5vg From Mike Mc: Correct. The only flyable B-24 today is maintained and flown by the Collings Foundation of Stowe, MA in the USA. It was one of about nine of the Indian Air Force's retired fleet that was acquired by Doug Arnold of England. Another was purchased from him by David Tallichet, who in turn, sold that B-24 to Kermit Weeks of Florida. It's currently non-flying, but is capable of being restored to flying condition. The others were disbursed to various museums, including the Pima County Air Museum in Arizona and the RAF Museum in Hendon (near London). There is another plane, an LB-30 owned by the Commemorative Air Force in the USA which has been modified to appear as a B-24A that is also in flying condition.
@@mikemccarty9534 Thanks,Diane, for the feedback.
It looks like you could have had a rousing game of ping-pong in the front office of that thing!
What was the problem with multiple wheels? It seems the manufactures were really reluctant to switch to double bogies! They just kept making the wheels bigger and bigger. I think this was about the end and they did switch soon, but what was the holdup?
It's still one hell of an impressive aircraft.
I'd imagine that engineers, collectively, learned a lot from the ungainly nature and flight characteristics of this aircraft. She certainly is beautiful in her naked aluminum cladding. It seems to lift-off like a B-52 though a bit more wobbly.
This aircraft was intended from the first as a technology demonstrator. No orders for it as a service aircraft were ever considered.
From the Wikipedia:
The XB-19 project was intended to test flight characteristics and design techniques for giant bombers; Douglas Aircraft wanted to cancel the expensive project. Despite advances in technology that made the XB-19 obsolete before it was completed, the Army Air Corps felt that the prototype would be useful for testing. Its construction took so long that competition for the contracts to make the @1943 the @1949.
COOL!
Two points:
1. As others have pointed out, it looks very unstable in pitch.
2. If the original specification had included six or eight R2800? The B-29 and B-36 would have probably never existed.
the B-29 was already under development.
Back then general aviation works would design the wheel size in proportion with the aircraft size. That idea quit during the B-36 try-outs. So they tried multi-smaller tires on the main struts, Wa-Li! it works!
HawgMech, that plane at Kelly was a transport version of the B-36. Its being refurbished and is at the AF museum in Ohio.
No seriously they learned soooooo much from this project.
Scary porpoising take off and landing, reminds me of an early Wright Flyer, unstable pitch. No doubt the test pilot reports: "Handles like a dream, almost flies itself, best plane I ever flew!"
watch it rock up and down liftin off and landing
Thanks for the video.....never heard of this plane before. Since so many people are into Luftwaffe '46 scenarios, imagine if the Army Air Corps changed their mind and decided to make this a production airplane for long distance bombing back in 1939-1940?
I loved the song
It is now that's for sure stuntmanmike37. My Pop worked at Kelly back in the day. The area the AF didn't close down.
Is that plane unstable in pitch?
Please, what is the title and the name of the band who plays the intro music? Same question about your DC4 tri-tail video. I know the song, but not the band. I am quite well versed in the big band, but just don't have a clue! Thank you!.
as I understand it, the XB-19 project fizzled out when the USAAF accepted the B-17 (Boeing model 299). However, the B-19 as it became called, remained flying around for publicity (even Bugs Bunny at one point thought he was the B-19!) until the end of WWII. It was then scrapped.
Because once an aircraft is built it is obsolete. The next generation is then designed from the lessons learned. The B-29 design began only five years later, and the B-36 one year after that.
@2:56- 3:06 I've always wondered what was happening here. Is it a center of gravity problem?
possibly, but we will never know as it was sadly scrapped in 1949, the data collected is lost to time too so we barely have any proof it even existed
Back in that day, the mind set was main gear tire size in proportion ratioed to the plane size. That went on until way into the B-36 proto development and someone finally spoke up. --- Stop it! Multi tires on main gear struts for now on and much better weight distributing foot-print will come with it. 092418.
Narrator says 2,000 HP engines; must'a been the R-2800's. The B-29 used R-3350's and even those weren't quite up to the mission assigned to the Superfort's. Getting those aloft with full bomb, fuel, and ammunition loads in the very hot, humid South Pacific climate proved to be a challenge. That air doesn't have the density and hence the oxygen content the engines needed.
Wikipedia says: 4/Wright R-3350-5 18 cylinder engines of 2,000 HP each.
XB-19B had 4/Allison V-3420 24 cylinder engines (2X12 cylinder liquid cooled engines) of 2,600 HP each.
Those eight-foot-tall tires lasted only until tractor gear were developed. Only a few runways in the United States could accommodate the B-19's weight on its' original landing gear---same thing which happened to the B-36 Peacemaker.
1:06 The rudder is 42 yards long??????
Yes.
sad that its gone it would be awesome to see it fly through the air with its massive wings and engines but minus the bombs
Same difference, but yes, Kelly. ;)
It actually worked & served as a freighter until the late 1940's. Too bad they didn't have the capability to preserve it for a museum piece. All that's left is a wheel assembly.
Fascinating. Was this called B-19 because after B-17? And X because experimental?
$82,000 insurance about the same as my 2018 350 Ford Super Duty
Not exactly lol. It was 1935. That's about 1.5 million today...
Slim Gaillard had a song about the B-19. Too bad they didn't use it in the sound track.
@mandaltby If you compare the B17, B29, B36, C124 Globemaster and B50 the tail assemblies look superficially similar. Three different companies. The Boeing B15 and B17 were slightly earlier designs than the B19.
the single wheel main landing gear put too much weight on the runways, the plane had stability issues and was out classed by the B-29 & B-36.
I surely had forgotten this. Imagine our future ememies figured that pitching meant she'd be nimble under an horrendous bomb load. And can you picture the Pacific foe, waiting for us to spring those on them, since we hadn't given out more information? It's a thought. Probably not intended, but worthwhile if it happened. The best way to defeat your enemy is leave him guessing fearful things.
June 24, 2020---Thanks for the video as this is one of the X planes I hadn't heard about or realized it had been developed so early time wise. This could make into a nice looking "what if" diorama/idea. Instead of the B-29 going into production, the under powered engine problems got solved. Or some Germans see some of these movie shorts in a theater and send copies of them to the Luftwaffe which realizes it DOESN'T have a long distance bomber, then convinces Hitler to authorizing the designing of one. It's basically 4,000 miles between NYC and Berlin and the range on this thing is suppose to be 8,000. Of course, that's with no bomb or weapons load? Germany takes Iceland or Greenland and when the U.S. enters the war, Germany starts bombing our shipyards and ports.
And how many out there are modelers and also into 3D printing? Be interesting to see someone design/build/print one of these.
What a shame that it was scrapped. Anyway: Thumbs up! :)
Two more engines would have been great !
It seems to me that it would have made a good transatlantic passanger plane, or at least a good troop carrier if it had the range (kinda like Howard Hughes's H-4 Sprouce Goose prototype, but only smaller)...
Ahhh the infamous b19 That bugs bunny and the gremlin flew in in short “falling hare”
That is the way they went with tho B-24 double rudders.
brings tears to my eyes when I think of all the beautiful piston-engined aircraft that were sent to Arizona to be scrapped. Especially the aircraft with multiple combat missions such as the B-17.
We were in such a damn hurry to down-grade our military after the war. We paid dearly for this in Korea in 1950!
rampking1, actually, doing this cleared the way for an incredible modernization of the military. The new USAF weeded out a lot of concept aircraft left over from WWII and came up with the F-80 (later the T-33), the F-84, F-86, F-100, and the rest of the century series fr their arsenal. The B-29 served in Korea, later became the B-50 and the KB-50 tanker. The KC-97 followed that and ultimately gave way to the KC-135 tanker for SAC. The B-36 and B-47 served until the B-52 came along.
All in all, the weapons we scrapped after WWII were archaic in 1945 and never would have performed well in Korea.
but how many crew would it need and how many more would of been lost in ww2
The cockpit looks as spacious as a mall atrium.
Looks like it had some phugoid mode instability in the earlier flights.
must have been underpowered for its size - and it seems to pitch a bit - but pretty cool though
Are there any of these planes left today?
+Chris Walton Thanks for the insight
This was the first post WWII Army Boondoggle, it flew and landed like a BOAT! Which is why they never accepted any or built anymore than this flying tub.
Quote: "No production was envisaged, since "Project D" was more of a proof-of-concept vehicle than it was a serious proposal for a production military aircraft."
Regarding the B-19: As with the Boeing B-15, both were strictly developmental airframes that incorporated much technology that was already in the pipeline with other designs, like the B-17, with the quest for extreme heavy lifting capacity and a strategic bombing platform. Neither Douglas Aircraft or Boeing could lick the problem of unsuitable powerplants to power their aircraft to altitude with a heavy payload. Both planes spent WW II as stateside transports and were later scrapped.
A real 'BIG' deal for it's time. Crewmen could walk inside the wings for engine inspections during flight! On one particular flight during an engine insp. by flight personnel, a fuel hose became disconnected, spraying fuel everywhere. The crewman figured he was soon to be toast unless the flight engineer noticed a fuel pressure loss for that engine. The loss of fuel pressure was noted, and the engine shut off before the fuel caught fire. All in a days work!!.
It looks like the B 29, minus the nose. The wings and tail are the B29
It's a shame it didn't make it into a museum somewhere.
Holy PIO, Batman!
Looks like it had a super sensitive elevator control. - Almost like some planes in MS Flight Simulator.
@TrashWinston Tell me about the Leduc 022
What in the hell was that that hit the ground that looked like something that was large at the front of the plane at about 2:30..I couldn't tell exactly where it came from on the front of the plane..
It was a large bird.