Did you fly the early KC-135 with the old engines that had water on takeoff? How much thrust did those engines have...both with and without
water?
Yes. I got on the 'water wagon' in 1970 after returning from Vietnam flying 0-2s as a FAC. ??? The J-57 put out an astonishing 12845lbs thrust dry and using the 5600lbs of water (in 2 minutes) pushed it up another 100lbs. That is the Dash 1 numbers and it never made any sense because the difference between a 'dry' and 'wet' takeoff was very noticeable. And even more noticeable if you lost water on a pair of engines.
When I got on tankers, it had just changed from LEFT/RIGHT water injection to INB/OUTB. Needless to say, one has to wonder how long that problem existed before someone figured out the solution to some real asymetric thrust problems. And the only powered control surface on the Boeing 717 (real one) was the powered rudder.
It's my understanding that the max takeoff weight for the 135 (under war time conditions) was 300,000 lbs. Is that correct?
Max taxi was 301,500 with max takeoff at 297,000. Out of Thailand for the fighter refuelings our usual configuration was '165 wet'. (110k empty gross, 5600lbs water, 165,000 fuel for a takeoff weight of around 280. With little more than 50,000lbs of thrust, you can see the takeoffs were always somewhat exciting. At 280k, the Vr would be around 180kts.
Just want to calculate the thrust to weight is with one engine inopt. I heard the plane, at 300,000 lbs, didn't fly too well with one engine inopt.
We had an 'S1' instead of a V1 but it was essentially the same. Never lost one below S1 but did lose one after S1 and it was just another Boeing. And like other Boeings, the magic number was 210kts. Get 210kts and clean, you are home free.
I had the privilege of going to the Instructor school at Castle in Merced. We really got to play with the machine doing lazy 8s (as much as one can in a KC-135) with a B-52 on the boom; 3, 2 and single engine approaches with missed approach (yes, below 170,000lbs you could fly a single engine approach but the go-around was very interesting and you used a fair amount of the 200ft from the CatI mins).
When I was assigned the tanker, I was quite upset. I had done a tour and had been promised fighters. I figured any machine with more than one engine and more than one engine had a basic design flaw. My ops officer, a grand fellow, pulled me aside and told me the tanker was a great design and to prove his point he asked me to go find another airplane that would lift approx twice its empty gross weight, would do 0.90M all day, had a ceiling (which I took it to) of 42,000ft (oxygen mask limit.. not airplane), had legs to cruise to Europe or throughout the Pacific and where you could still smoke and have a good cup of coffee (pre-Starbucks and before no-smoking regs).
I still check tail numbers when I see a re-engined tanker. Hard to believe something I flew almost 40yrs ago is still doing the job.
now back to our regularly scheduled thread..