Split USAF tanker/transport buy

Think it was in use up into the mid 60’s. Just tacking a couple fans on the wings does not make it in the jet age!. An interesting stopgap measure.

TAC used the KB-50 as three point hose & drogue tankers until the mid 60s.
There are all kinds of photos showing them with F-100s, 101s, 105s, B-66s.
I have read one account of them being used over Vietnam. If it happened, it happened early in the war. As a kid, I recall seeing a lineup at Johnson AB, Japan in 1963.

Interesting note. The KC-97s of course, had the same wings, and when the “L” models were converted, they used the entire outer wing panels from mothballed KB-50s.

The KC-97L came about after a pilot with the Illinois ANG out of O’Hare suggested the jet agmentation as a safety measure to help get the loaded aircraft off from “short” (i.e. not SAC 13,000 ft) runways. The extra cruising speed didn’t hurt either.
Of the few surviving K/WB-50s, at one time the Pima museum had two.
The other aircraft is now at Castle.
I visited Pima within days of their opening in 1976 and beyond a rope “Do Not Enter” area (which of course I entere…after all there was a wingless F-94 lying there!) there was a B-50 fin laying on its side in the sand, its fabric rudder in tatters.

Yes….KB-50…..Brain is connected to fingers but sometimes stray!:D

Need to get in there again sometime and get some pics! Last time I was in, didn’t get a chance except at night….not good for taking pics. Think it was in use up into the mid 60’s. Just tacking a couple fans on the wings does not make it in the jet age!. An interesting stopgap measure.

…They were still using the KC-50’…

I’m sure you mean KB-50s…

Remember, Douglas had plenty of work back then…they were (unlike Boeing) Not just a heavy transport/bomber builder.

Off the top of my head, they were producing:
A-1 Skyraiders, A-4 Skyhawks, F-6 Skyrays, A3D/B-66, B-47s, C-133s as well as DC-7s in the mid 50s.
Plus they were supporting many out of production aircraft that were still in wide use…C-47s, C-124s, F-3Ds, A/B-26s, DC-4, DC-6/C-118s..and I’ve probably overlooked a few.

Douglas had a very wide product line…I can’t think of a major defense contractor that was as well diversified…but Lockheed comes close.
I’m sure they would have loved a tanker deal..they were hoping to sell turbine C-124s as at least a stopgap tanker…but with the devlopment of the DC-8 and a smaller regional airliner (at one time called the DC-10), they had a lot going on.

It is a bit ancient history, but they are still flying! Just went on a field trip with my son’s CubScout pack to MacDill AFB and saw the 135 squadron there. The Air Force was in a bit of a hurry to get tankers. They were still using the KC-50’s (one of which is on Gate-Guard at Mac Dill along with a Phantom and an F-16). Refueling jets with prop planes adds that much danger to the operation with the jets hovering just above stall and the tanker going full out.

Now talking about the new tankers coming on line, THAT will fall in the Modern Military forum

Isn’t this the wrong forum for this topic?

Oops, I had forgotten about Lockheed, what got me posting the question was this wiki article (I know I know but it is sometimes useful).:)

Douglas was lukewarm about the jet airliner project, but believed that the USAF tanker contract would go to two companies for two different aircraft (as several USAF transport contracts in the past had done). In May 1954, the USAF circulated its requirement for 800 jet tankers to Boeing, Douglas, Convair, Fairchild, Lockheed, and Martin. Boeing was already just two months away from having a prototype in the air. Before the year was out, the Air Force had ordered the first of an eventual 808 Boeing KC-135 tankers. Even leaving aside Boeing’s ability to supply a jet tanker promptly, the flying-boom air-to-air refueling system — as first fitted to the KC-97 — was also a Boeing product: developing the KC-135 had been a very safe bet.

Just four months after issuing the tanker requirement, the USAF ordered 29 KC-135s from Boeing. Donald Douglas was shocked by the rapidity of the decision which, he said, had been made before the competing companies had had time to complete their bids, and protested to Washington, but without success. The U.S. Air Force would buy more than 800 strategic tankers over the next ten years, and every one of them from Boeing. In financial terms, the Boeing 707 would have an armchair ride, while Douglas would be short of cash from that time on.

Nothing. That is, in effect, what did happen, as Juan Trippe split Pan Am’s order between the commercially-proven-as-leader Douglas, with a paper project (DC-8/20) and the commercially-proven-as-bad Boeing, with a funded project (717/KC-135, adapted as 707-120). The cascading volume that was to reach 1,010 C-135/137 may have diverted some orders to open slots on the DC-8 line, but Boeing’s volume prowess had been set on 888 C-97. Douglas was the reference standard of airline-volume, was in parallel with Boeing on the 4-jet and led them on the small twinjet (DC-9 v.737). Yet they were defeated: not by Boeing’s early delivery slots, nor, at first, by Boeing superiority in any sense – certainly not unit price. Lockheed split the (unexpectedly modest) TriJet market, on which Boeing passed, but commercial was not the driver in these Corpns’. fates: big missiles. Thor was not, Minuteman was the base of a very long happy time.

Well, the real question is Boeing vs Lockheed, now isn’t it?

Lockheed had won the jet tanker competition, and Boeing built the Dash-80 (prototype for both the KC/C-135 series and the B707) as a private venture.

The USAF decided to buy a limited number as “interim tankers” pending delivery of the Lockheed plane… which was to have a greater transferable fuel load and a faster cruise speed (and more powerful engines).

The KC-135 was “good enough, and available now”, so the USAF quietly ordered lots of the Boeing birds, and informed Lockheed that their tanker was no longer wanted.

Here is a link to a discussion about the events, with drawings of the Lockheed tanker proposal:

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,1348.0.html

“On March 26, 1952, Boeing’s president, Bill Allen sent a memo to his division heads, asking if they thought they could fly a prototype jet transport in just two years. Jim Barton in Boeing’s cost-accounting group said it would cost $13 to $15 million. On April 22 Boeing’s board of directors unanimously approved $15 million for Project X, or the Model 367-80, better known as the Dash-80. This project posed an enormous risk, for the military had not described the specific performance details that it wanted, and the $15 million investment represented more than twice Boeing’s profits from 1951. Although the plane had civilian uses as well, if the Dash-80 failed as a tanker, Boeing could fail too.

At SAC’s Requirements Conference in November 1953, General LeMay called for 200 jet tankers. The Air Force announced a design competition for a jet tanker on May 5, 1954, and invited Boeing, Convair, Douglas, Fairchild, Lock—heed, and Martin to participate. At that point Boeing’s leaders could only forge ahead with the Dash-80, which had its first successful flight test on July 15, and pray that it would win the competition.

On August 3, 1954, with the jet-tanker design competition still in progress, the Air Force decided to buy interim tankers. The Air Force Secretary, Harold E. Talbott, announced an order to buy 29 tankers from Boeing. Less than two weeks later the Air Force said it would buy 88 more Boeing tankers. It looked as if Boeing was set to win the competition, but it didn’t.

In February 1955 the Air Force announced that Lockheed had won the competition and at least one of its tankers would be funded for construction. In the very same announcement, however, Talbott said the Air Force would buy an additional 169 tankers from Boeing. Eventually it canceled Lockheed’s paper proposal.”