{"id":31671,"date":"2022-09-13T09:15:01","date_gmt":"2022-09-13T16:15:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=31671"},"modified":"2023-01-30T16:52:45","modified_gmt":"2023-01-30T23:52:45","slug":"air-minded-widowmaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=31671","title":{"rendered":"Air-Minded: Widowmaker"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This was originally part of a 2018 blog post touching on several subjects, mostly unrelated to aviation. Since it didn’t show up in my index of Air-Minded posts, I copied it into a separate post and added it to the index. \u2014 Paul <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other day I mentioned Pima Air and Space Museum\u2019s Martin Marauder<\/strong><\/a>. As with most of my flying-related entries I cross-posted it to an aviation group on Daily Kos (you can see it here<\/strong><\/a>). Judging by the comments there, what folks remember about the Martin Marauder is its reputation as an aircrew killer. The Widowmaker. One a day in Tampa Bay. The Flying Prostitute (no visible means of support, haw haw). And so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Screen<\/a>
B-26 Marauders fly above England in 1944 (AP photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The B-26, introduced in 1941, had a higher wing loading than other medium bombers of the day and consequently a higher stalling speed. That meant you had to fly faster on final approach to landing: 120 to 135 mph depending on aircraft weight. The B-25 Mitchell, a contemporary medium bomber, flew final at 100 mph. That\u2019s what set the Martin Marauder apart and gave it its deadly reputation … or so they said at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact they did crash a lot of them in training at MacDill Army Air Field in Tampa (hence the saying “one a day in Tampa Bay”), but once aircrews learned to fly the airplane properly, the B-26 proved to be a great medium bomber, and I\u2019m still scratching my head trying to figure out why virtually all of them were scrapped and melted down at the end of the war, while lesser medium bombers like the B-25 Mitchells and A-26 Invaders continued to serve into the Korean War and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speed is relative. People ask me what it\u2019s like to fly at more than twice the speed of sound. I tell them that while you can sense resistance as you pass through the transonic shock wave, a feeling of pushing against an invisible soft pillow in the air, once above the Mach everything feels normal again. And since you\u2019re usually way up there when supersonic, far above the earth and clouds, there\u2019s nothing whizzing by to give you a sense of speed. It\u2019s numbers on gauges. By contrast, when you\u2019re on final approach to landing you\u2019re close to the ground and more aware of your speed than you are at altitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Was it really that big a deal for a WWII pilot to transition from an airplane that took off and landed at 100 mph to one that did it 20 to 35 mph faster?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once, when I was flying F-15s in the Netherlands, I hitched a backseat ride in the two-seat trainer version of a Canadian CF-104. The 104\u2019s nickname was \u201cthe Zipper,\u201d because with its tiny thin wings you had to fly fast or not at all. It too was called the Widowmaker, and not without reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Screen<\/a>
CF-104D (photo: Chris Charland)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My F-15 flew final at around 175 mph and touched down at around 140 (I use miles per hour instead of knots because that\u2019s the speed measurement used by the WWII bombers mentioned above and I want readers to be able to compare). F-15 landing speeds were similar to those of the F-4 Phantom and most other jet fighters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Zipper, though \u2026 damn. You flew final at 195 (adding speed for higher fuel weights) and touched down around 175. If you had to fly a no-flap approach you added another 25-30 mph. The 104 was insanely fast compared to anything else I\u2019d flown \u2026 but I didn\u2019t notice the relative difference in speed all that much when the Canadian pilot up front let me fly an approach from the back. When the Zipper was on speed it just felt right, but of course I kept one eye on the airspeed indicator as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In pilot training in the 1970s our primary trainer was the Cessna T-37, a fat-winged little jet that flew final at 115 and touched down around 90. Halfway through the one-year program we transitioned to the Northrop T-38 Talon, a supersonic trainer with thin, stubby wings, intentionally designed to fly like the F-104. The Talon flew final at 155 (again, adding speed for heavier fuel weights) and touched down at around 140 mph. The speed differential between the T-37 and T-38 was even greater than that experienced by WWII aircrews coming to the B-26 Marauder from similar but slower bombers, and yet I don\u2019t remember that being any kind of deal. We never, for example, called the T-38 a widowmaker. Speed is relative, and anyway, that\u2019s what training is for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think the thing with the Martin Marauder was psychological. Whenever I took non-flyers up on incentive flights in two-seater\u00a0F-15s, without exception the main thing they worried about\u00a0was throwing up.\u00a0Their friends\u00a0would\u00a0set them up to be airsick by talking and joking about it nonstop in the hours and days leading up to the incentive flight, and in nine cases out of ten they would indeed fill a couple of barf bags.\u00a0I think something similar happened\u00a0with aircrews learning to fly the B-26 Marauder at MacDill in WWII. They knew they were going to\u00a0tangle with the Widowmaker, a notoriously treacherous airplane, and those planted fears\u00a0became a factor. The\u00a0Marauder had a rep and new aircrews allowed it to live up to it.\u00a0Naming calls<\/strong><\/a>, to use an archaic phrase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 back to the Air-Minded Index<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One a day in Tampa Bay<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1960,3,64,14,2],"tags":[3997,3458],"class_list":["post-31671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-minded","category-flying","category-history","category-military","category-personal","tag-martin_marauder","tag-zipper"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31671"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32573,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31671\/revisions\/32573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}