Originally Posted by
DogTailRed2
Please move if in the wrong forum.
Reading about the Enola Gay during it's bombing of Japan and was intrigued to read that at take off the B29 Enola Gay was 7 tons over weight.
I had always thought that the maximum weight of an aircraft was set in stone and an over weight aircraft was not going to fly very well if at all.
So when is an aircraft actually overweight and how overweight can an aircraft safely be?
It depends.
Here's a second hand story from my CO (many years ago) who flew Huey Gunships (HAL-3 in Viet Nam).
Originally Posted by how I recall the lesson going
By the book, you need to be able to hover at 4' without a 2% droop in your Nr in order to take off without offloading some fuel ...
The Huey's tended to be overloaded, so they used an "in ground effect running takeoff" to get around that limitation.
As the helicopter got a bit more airspeed, the power required reduced so there was enough power to fly away and once through translational lift, you'd soon burn off enough fuel to be back in limits.
But during non war training ops, you'd not have done that.
Also, charliegolf's point on having extra runway to get airborne would play into a go/no go decision.