Yuku free message boards

There is real Nav history here. Navs, NavBombs, RecciNavs, RadraNavs, WeatherNavs, EWOs, & Ravins were all deeply involved in these weather matters: by the tens of thousands! More so than any other type of crewmember. Often there were more navs (types of navs) on a plane than pilots, especially on the early weather planes.

Three great public policy decrees by the US government came in to effect circa 1950-1955: These were as far as the US military goes about Cold War "Required Operational Capabilities." ROCs.

The first was the US Navy had just lost the Strategic Forces Implimentation role: the USAF via SAC (all new force structure) had gained the ROC of Strategic Targeting & Bombardment, Ref the "Key West Agreement." Carriers (CVs) were to give way to USAF aircraft by Presidential decree by Truman, so the B-36 was built. There was an outright Naval Command staff revolt over this! Some carriers just then being built were stopped in mid construcion. A good book on this is: Building a Strategic Air Force by Walton S. Moody and Case Studies in Strategic Bombardment by R. Cragill Hall, Editor. Long story short: SAC was to be the Strategic warfare kingpin.

The second great change was that SAC, lead by LeMay and supported by some of the best aeronautical engineering to take place, maybe ever, immediately followed with the building of the B-47! By the thousands! Remember in the late 40s the plane of the day was the B-29/B-50. There was no such thing as jets as we know now! A great document on this is the book; Boeing's B-47 Stratojet by Alwyn T. Lloyd. There is or was a subset-of-technologies that supported the development of the B-47 too: the jet engine, the radar bombardment system MA-6A/7A, and the aerial-refueling tankers.

Air Training Command was at its very best putting this all in to place; thus the Texas based Undergraduate Nav Program called Navigator Basic Training (NBT) and the Graduate Radar/nav programs at Mather AFB, CA. came in to being: all with adjunct weather courses flying various configuration of the Convair T-29.

Side note: there is no T-29 in the USAF Air Force Museum although more Navs, RadarNavs and NavBombardiers were trained on this type of plane than any other trainer in the USAF, to this very date.

The third and to this day the longest term ROC that came about was the decision by President Eisenhower to build lots of what then was called the "super" bomb, i.e., the thermo-nuclear 'fussion' warhead-bomb. Prior nuclear warheads were the bigger heavier 'fission' bombs. Fussion warheads are, if one can say, more cost effective/efficent and lots smaller (weigh lots less too) than most fission warheads. Until the two ton B-28/W-28 nuclear warhead: fussion bombs were big! Like the Mark-17 fussion bomb which weighed in at 20 tons! And the USSR had one bigger! The mass production of the smaller nuclear bombs (be they more powerful than any earlier bombs) meant that the B-47 could carry a note worthy pay-load. The small nuc is the core of the very reason of why and how the B-47 was considered such an effective weapons system during the Cold War. The B-47 could carry two B-28-one-megaton nuclear bombs. A B-28 was 100 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Between 1949 and 1955,,,, over 2,000 B-47 were built! The B-47 remained in the USAF & US Navy (test support) inventory until 1970 although phase out began in the early 60s, due to the introduction of the reliable Minute Men ICBMs.

All of the above being said: it meant that in the time period 1950, to 1955 hundreds of B-47s were going in to the air, monthly. The target was the USSR. USAF nuclear srikes were to be flown from all over the world..... so lots of weather information was needed. Thus the ROC for Weather Recci aircraft & crews. Hundreds of B-47s were modified and/or built as weather recci planes. Large fuel pods were fitted onto the B-47s wings to extend range and duration time of flights. The navigator needed to be a weatherman too! On board the WB-47Es were weather specific sensors and drop sondes. Very detailed weather related flight logs were also kept and turned in after each flight for compilation by the USAF Weather Service.

Weather navs were employed by the thousands right up and until the Tyros/Nimbus weather satellites were all up and approved which was not fully done until the late 70s by NASA.

Navs on all other flights also gave hourly "PIREPS" describing in detail the weather along their flights via HF radio. The USAF Weather Service was a huge part of the USAF at that time.

All in all, one can see why "weather" was a big part of nav training. AETC at Randolph has the history of the Nav-Training courses. AFNOA has the Weather for Aircrew Trainees Manual AFM 105-5 circar 1951. This AFM is 160 pages of detailed weather training information to include fold out weather charts and atmospheric crossections. The plane pictured in the front of the is AFM is a B-36. The ATC training records Form 240 indicates that 27 hours of class room instructions was given during NavBasicTraining (NBT), titled Weather.

AFNOA would like to hear from any "weather nav." Send us your story. As best I know the USAF has no documentation as such on these navs. Ron Barrett, AFNOA Historian www.ronaldpbarrett@yahoo.com , www.ronbarrett.com