Boeing's B-47 Stratojet by Alwyn T. Lloyd. Specialty Press, North Branch MN. 2005. $39.95.
Full disclosure: Al Lloyd is a friend of mine, and I am a nut about the B-47. Those facts noted, the only important words in this review are these: this is a fantastically good book.
Lloyd came to this subject as a veteran Boeing engineer, which meant that he could communicate as a peer — not as an interviewer, not as a journalist, but as a colleague — with the principals who created the B-47, the pilots who flew them, and the men who serviced and maintained them through decades of SAC operations. That technical credential opened doors and unlocked memories that would otherwise have remained closed. He had a vast network of sources, all of them eager to help him in what they knew would become the definitive book on the Stratojet.
The result is exhaustively researched and studded with magnificent pictures. The design, paper, and reproduction are all first rate. The coverage is complete: from the progenitors and antecedents of the design through the long and arduous development and testing period, through the introduction of the aircraft into operations, through each variant, and through the experimental types that the Stratojet spawned or inspired. Nothing of consequence is missing.
I have my own strong opinions about the B-47, which I will state plainly: it is the most important multi-engine jet aircraft in history, measured by the influence it exerted on both military and civil jet design. The swept wing, the podded engines, the bicycle landing gear, the thin airfoil — these were not just features of one bomber. They were the template for the jet age. Boeing's subsequent commercial success, the whole line from the 707 forward, is inconceivable without the B-47's prior existence as a proof of concept.
Lloyd's six appendices are indispensable: colors and markings, base assignments, unit histories, and more. Appendix E is pretty sobering to an old B-47 pilot — it reveals the accident rate in terms that make clear just how demanding the aircraft was and how much it cost to operate it at the tempo SAC required. Those numbers deserve to be known.
Lloyd also takes care to credit the full three-man crew of the B-47: the pilot, the copilot who doubled as tail gunner, and the radar observer/navigator/bombardier — the RO/N/B — who carried the full weight of the nuclear mission on his shoulders in the back seat. The B-47's story cannot be told without all three.
I flew with some of the B-47 stars Lloyd writes about — Bob Robbins, Guy Townsend, George Schairer — and Lloyd does them justice. For anyone who flew the Stratojet, served with it, or simply believes that it deserves its place in the first rank of aviation history, this book is essential. Buy it.