jamesdevice

It was designed to carry both conventional and non-nuclear armament. In a maritime-patrol aircraft, I'm not sure how it would fair from the endurance standpoint as it was turbojet powered (even the Nimrods were powered by turbofans).

As a tactical-bomber, there's nothing that says you can't use a strategic bomber to bomb military targets. It could fly fast at low altitude for a large aircraft, it was said to have good handling characteristics, and it was a sturdy aircraft (the incident that resulted in a structural failure resulted in a g-load of 9g or more) probably capable of pulling at least 6g.

I have seen some concept drawings of this...

did you just bump the thread by deleting the post and then reposting it?

Reason I asked the question about non-nuclear use was whether it would be any use in the current Libyan problem. Offers a third solution in the land vs carrier dispute. Or would potential sea-state problems be too much of an issue?

Good question about the efficacy of the Martin aircraft in Libya today:rolleyes:. Oddly enough I don't think even the RAF would still be using a 55 year old design in front line service though, and don't pull the B52 thing, the current frames are only 50.

OK, be sarcastic if you want, but what if you had a modernised equivalent? Its the concept I'm getting at. And who knows - if it had gone into service, it may have had a production run as long as the B52. I wonder what the Seamaster development equivalent to the B-52H would have been

What, 10 years?

yep. And the remaining 'H models are scheduled to last until 2045
Supposedly.... If it happens it'll make the surviving ones 82 years old at retirement
The oil's going to run out first

I thought they were already flying some on fruit and veg

OK, I'm not having a dig to have a dig, but... The longevity of BUFF is quite remarkable, but it had a relatively short production run, which is to what you originally referred.

OK, so I'll re-ask my question in a way thats less open to misunderstanding,
Could a modern sea-plane bomber provide a useful alternative to land or carrier based aircraft in a conflict such as that currently in Libya?
Could you safely base it with and replenish it at sea from your surface fleet?

In essence not really!

The fleet would have to have access to sheltered water - sheltered not just from the weather but also from 'bad people and things'.

Seaplanes have landed offshore - and some of them have actually taxied or beeen towed home - but the sea state needs to be very reasonable - so this adds a massive constraint.

Seaplanes made a lot of sense when building long runways was difficult or expensive, now that is comparatively easy with the mechanised equpment we have. The constraints in terms of payload, operations (weather, maintenance, support etc) simply make it all too hard to be worthwhile

The SeaMaster was a fascinating machine. Ask even a well informed online forum to name two 1950s nuclear bombers designed for low-level operations and the answer will be "Valiant B.2 and .... errrmmm?".

There's quite a lot out there about the tech, but not so much on operational plans. What were they going to do, lurk in a fjord in Iceland and mine the :mad: out of Murmansk?

the fact they contemplated powering it with a nuclear reactor makes it even more intriguing. Just how long could you keep it aloft before crew fatigue issues kick in? It doesn't look big enough to carry any relief crew.
or maybe the reactor was simply to avoid lengthy at-sea refueling: replenishment at see would just mean reloading the bomb bay (did you notice this was done from ABOVE via the rotating carousel?) and exchanging crew

JD - The nuclear-powered concept was a different and much larger aircraft.

Also, for V-bomber fans - the definitive SeaMaster history...

(mine is on the bookshelf next to the Rottweiler's food bowl)

... doesn't talk about turboramjets at all. The original planned engine was the Wright J67, an Americanized Olympus.

jamesdevice

Well, in truth if a sea-plane strike force really took off, carriers would have gotten the short-end of the stick.

I suppose it depended on where you'd attempt to land, but modern day with night-vision technology such an aircraft could takeoff and land at night without trouble.


Harley Quinn

Irrelevant, for the following reasons

1.) The P6M was actually a newer design than the B-52

• The XB-52 first flew in 1952; the XP6M first flew in 1955
• The YB-52 first flew in 1954; the YP6M first flew in 1958
• The B-52A first flew in 1955; the P6M-1 was to enter service in 1959 or 1960.

2.) If the P6M entered service, it's likely there would have been several variants of the P6M built of which the newest ones hypothetically could have remained in service until present.


Willard Whyte

I think he meant the total number of years in service...


John Farley

Are you talking about something like biodiesel, or are you talking about ethanol, or something else?

I don't think it's a good idea to make fuel from fruit and vegetables because it will drive up the price of food; as for biodiesel, you don't need fruit and vegetables to do that; you can make biodiesel from deep-fryer oil, methanol and lye.


gasax

For Libya, you could operate out of the Mediterranean, use aerial refueling as necessary; then attack Libya with cruise-missiles, or overfly Libya and use precision guided bombs. At low-altitude it could fly at Mach 0.9, and behaves better than a B-52.

Still, there are numerous land-bases in the mediterranean that could be used for the same purpose and I think a B-1, an A-10, or an F-18 would be better suited for the task.


LowObservable

Actually, in those days that seems like it might have been a good idea :}

Okay, that makes sense. How much larger anyway?

I'm guessing the statement about turbo-ramjets or J58's was either misinformation, or was information that pertained to a proposed Mach 4 seaplane which Convair did some work on.

Well, as I understand it, it was a more powerful variant of the Bristol Olympus's that were then in service. Eventually more powerful variants were developed obviously.

Jane-DoH & John Farley
Actually, the B-52 flew on (and is now certified to use) a Fischer-Tropsch fuel derived from natural gas.

It was a USN F/A-18E that flew on a 50/50 blend of conventional jet fuel and a biofuel that comes from camelina, a hardy U.S.-grown plant that can thrive even in difficult soil.

However, various private and commercial jets have flown on various bio-fuel/jet fuel mixes.

Fischer-Tropsch

An excellent name for a cocktail, since after three you couldn't pronounce it without getting 86ed for spitting on the bartender.

Piet and Raithel say that the whole Seaplane Striking Force concept - which included the SeaMaster, the F2Y Sea Dart for air defense and the R3Y Tradewind for logistics - started after the Truman administration canceled the USS United States, the first supercarrier. The Navy was worried (as was the Army) that they would suddenly become irrelevant if all war was to be nuclear.

The P6M's primary role was minelaying but it was also tested with nuclear bomb shapes. It was a difficult and (for the 1950s) long development program - the P6M-1 was far from operationally suitable and the P6M-2 was different in many ways and only just emerging from development when the project was shopped.

It's near the top of the "damn, why did the bu99ers have to scrap all of them?" list.

GreenKnight121

That makes more sense.

Okay, that sounds better than using corn.


LowObservable

The supercarrier was the preferred choice because at the time the US Air Force was not just trying to achieve a nuclear monopoly -- but they were trying to sink the Navy. They were effectively arguing that the Air Force and Army could do everything that the US Navy could (and in fact, during parts of WW2, the USAAF was doing a better job at laying mines from the air, than the Navy was from the sea). The Air Force roundly disliked carriers because it was one aerial asset that they could not fully control.

While the USN could have developed a flying-boat nuclear-bomber at the time, which would have been better from a practical standpoint it wasn't the best choice from a political standpoint as the USAAF/USAF could argue that they could operate sea-planes too. The carriers however were, an asset the USAF couldn't control, USAAF/USAF pilots were not trained to operate off carrier decks -- and for this reason, the USN wanted a carrier-based nuclear-bomber which of course necessitated a new carrier to be built to operate them.

Even though the USS United States was cancelled, the motions the Navy went to, simply to build the bomber and carrier effectively gave the USN the justification to basically exist. Once that was done, the Navy could now focus on other options (more practical ones too) which included the Seaplane Strike Force.

Yup, which kind of makes it similar to the TSR-2 (though admittedly, not quite as cool) -- a great design that could have worked but politics doomed it.

In a way, had this seaplane strike force worked, it's possible that carrier-aviation could have been hurt or killed.