Nuclear Missile Boeing 747 - Never Built Cold War Project
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- čas přidán 6. 03. 2021
- This Boeing 747 doesn't carry passengers, nor is it a freighter plane... it carries a far more horrifying and deadly cargo of nuclear blastic weapons. With a capacity to fly across the ocean and disappear into the fog of war, this crazy cold war plan turned the 747 from a weapon of peace into a weapon of mass destruction, one that couldn't be beaten and if it had been built, would have been the ultimate Soviet deterrent.
During the cold war, the US military faced a challenge. It needed to keep its nuclear arsenal protected away from first strike from the soviets. It came up with three plans - land-based sites would be hardered from a nearby strike, submarines would carry a nuclear arsenal under the sea, and the airforce would find a way to keep their own nuclear weapons out of sight of the enemy.
But finding a way to carry the latest and large nuclear missiles would be a challenge. The air force already had long-range bombers with the capacity to deliver nuclear-tipped weapons, but these aircraft were easy to intercept before launching their payload and would require plenty of protection in flight.
Thus they needed a new platform that could carry heavy nuclear weapons that could be deployed at a moment's notice - perhaps still within the US airspace. A plane that could be parked at 1000s of airports across the country, and much like the nuclear submarine, vanish into the sky at a moment's notice and be untraceable by the soviets.
In 1973, Boeing offered the solution - the Boeing 747.
Boeing would take its 747-200 freighter plane, swap out the cargo and put in place several nuclear warheads. The design would have been able to carry two of the heaviest MX missiles or up to seven of the lightest.
To launch the missiles it would drop the missle out of the lower bomb bay doors in the aft compartment.
Parachutes would deploy on the rocket stabilize its fall and tilt the nose of the rocket upwards by 30 degrees. Eight seconds after falling out of the plane, the rocket would ignite. As the rocket still had the forward momentum from the 747 flying at cruise speed.
But the real ingenuity came from the layout inside of the plane.
For an aircraft carrying four ICBMs, the nukes would be loaded through the front cargo door and stacked side by side in the main fuselage cargo compartment, with the fourth nuke loaded in the ready-to-launch position in the aft launch bay. A second missile would be brought from the main cargo section via a built-in overhead crane system and readied in position. This whole process would take around 3-5 minutes to reload and launch each missile.
The rest of the cabin of the plane would be taken up by crew facilities and the flight deck. The launch bay would be unpressurized, but the main cargo hold would be pressurized to allow the crew to inspect and maintain the missiles while in flight.
For the 747s that carried seven of the lighter versions of the MX missiles, they would be dropped from both the front of the plane and from the rear with separate doors for each. But this whole setup would require an extended front section by 125 inches.
The crew would be located on the upper deck behind the cockpit, with additional crew facilities loaded into the plane.
When the country was at peace, the aircraft would fly without any weapons onboard, performing training sorties and shuttling around to the many airports across the country. If the geopolitical situation got tense, it would land at a marshaling facility and load its payload - taking about two hours to do so. The planes once loaded would fly to a almost random airport in the country with a runway of at least 6000 feet to await deployment. If things got really bad, then the planes would take to the skies and vanish into the countries airspace, or perhaps beyond. They were required to have a range of at leat 6,000 nautical miles fullloaded.
The aircraft were designed to remain in the air for 12 hours at a time, up to 24 hours with mid-air refueling before landing for servicing.
In the end, this design was passed in favor more accurate nuclear warheads based in hardened ground silos, submarines and strategic bombers like the B-1 Lancer.
During the B-1 Lancer development, defense contractors Orbital ATK and BAE, offered to have another crack at the 747 missile carrier as recently as 2005. The plane would be for a 747 carrying 32 or more missiles, each missile capable of launching a 2000-pound JDAM weapon a range of 500 or more miles. In order to meet the required capacity, a fleet of 150 aircraft would be needed.
In the end, I'm personally kind of glad that the 747 never became a weapon of war and stayed as a peaceful civil alternative where the most explosive thing onboard is a shaken can of coke in turbulence.
Now if Airbus turned the A380 into a nuclear plane.... well that one I'll leave to your imagination in the comments!
The US airforce actually did something like this when they used a C5 galaxy (if I remember correctly) to launch a Minuteman missile, there's even footage of them testing it. So this idea actually wasn't as outlandish as it sounds.
This what you are talking about?
czcams.com/video/96A0wb1Ov9k/video.html
true
edit: found it btw czcams.com/video/96A0wb1Ov9k/video.html
“The 747 is a weapon of peace to unite the world...”
Air Force: “A weapon, you say?”
I mean, if this actually happened, the soviets would probably do the same thing which will result in a copy which will mean a Soviet plane which could be shown in this channel in some video in a opposite universe.
Who's to say they didnt? (they didn't)
The other channel would be Explained and Found
It happened except it was a train and it was wayyyy before this
@@jairusjoaquinombao1502better name. Lost and unexplained
Kid in Soviet Union sees a plane
The kid: Panik
Its a 747
The kid: Kalm
The 747 launches a missle
The kid: Panik
Lol
The entire Soviet union: cyka B (gets blown into smithereens)
Check out: aerospaceprojectsreview.com/
There was also a later design to turn a 747 into a cruise missile carrier. I'll have to do a video on it after this!
🔥
Yeah that makes a lot more sense.
have you heard of the Arado Ar E.555, a Nazi flying wing jet bomber?
Love his work on aerospace projects!
Or a heavy bomber
Imagine seeing this in Operation chrome dome.
Yea
@Logan Book yeah instead of a bomb with less consequence
Honestly, making them a continuous flight rotation makes a lot more sense than only taking off when things are already hitting the fan.
Americans: Plans To Build ICBM 747 Nuker!
Soviets: *Call Antonov! Get them build a nuclear ICBM An-225 ASAP! We are falling behind US tech!*
They built a nuclear powered Tu 95 instead so they wouldn't need to constantly refuel it :)
@@captainmorgan9066 yeah... actually, the Ukraine renounced its nuclear weapons in the 90's because NATO and Russia guaranteed they would not threaten its territorial integrity.
Woops...
@@takix2007
Taking into account style of my comment, did you not notice that I was continuing the "What if" scenario from the original comment?
And, as we all know, the Russian guarantee under the Budapest Memorandum was as tangible as thin air...
@@captainmorgan9066 no problem. Guess you never know how knowledgeable someone you write to on the Internet really is 😉
The 225 didn't exist back then
Flying Ryanair feels like you're in a missile carrier.
"Untraceable" how? It's a big flying piece of metal like any other jumbo jet. Do you mean they'd paint "TWA" on it and pretend to be flying passengers?
usually you track a plane via its transponder. but my guess the idea was it would not really leave USA as it would just reach canada and then launch everything it can muster.
Hiding in plane sight
Exactly. Disguise it as any normal commercial jet airliner. Sometimes hiding in plain sight is the best way to go. Because at that point just about every major airline was using a Boeing 747. That large jet has been around since 1968.
@@RedWolf777SG that is absolutely dangerous. Every commercial 747 will be perceived as a threat
I mean it's not like the Soviets had radar stations capable of getting high definition images of North American airspace if they had any able of reaching that far at all. They might be able to get an intermittent bead on a plane everyone in a while when it lands or maybe by satellite but that's it.
The project could also have led to a boycott of the passenger version of the aircraft, either by certain countries, or by certain groups of passengers. Obviously the Soviet bloc countries wouldn’t have bought one, but I could see some non-NATO nations refusing to allow their flag carriers to use them, or prohibit them in their airspace.
If Airbus turned the A380 into a missile carrier...it would still be ugly.
Ugly and useless.
Idk man I think the A380 looks good.
Cruise missiles are gonna have a field day
The A380 is better than the 747.
a380 is chubby a320
good it is
Meanwhile the Soviet Time traveler: Hm I see.
Well, KAL 007 was a good, unfortunate demonstration of what happens when the Soviets got paranoid with a 747.
Boeing really came out with the 747 and said "aight, how many wacky things can we do with this aircraft?" They wanted it to be a natural gas transporter, an aircraft carrier, and an ICBM launch vehicle.
Dude, when this came to my recommendation, it has 747 views, that was what shown in my scene
Dude! That's incredible haha! Come and watch!
I've heard of an Experimental *Nuclear Powered Plane which was a converted Convair NB-36H "Crusader", and a concept about a 747 Airborne Aircraft Carrier, but I've never heard of a plane that carries ICBMs itself. The closest to this is the Virgin Galactic's Cosmic Girl which launched a 2-stage Space Rocket while Flying though it is attached under the wing like a typical fighter jet.
This channel do really knows what to find for content lmao.
Honestly I’m blown away with some of the projects that are forgotten in time.
On one hand these never built projects are quite amazing, on the other hand I'm really glad they were never built.
Virgin orbit: Hold my beer, watch this.
I had visions of KAL 902 (although that was a 707) happening every day. That is the type of thing that happens when you use civilian aircraft for attack roles, some trigger-happy sky jockey will end up killing hundreds of civilian passengers.
Think it’s a bit more like Kal 007. However in both cases it seems like the fighter pilots knew or at least suspected that these were civilian airliners and only pulled the trigger after being ordered to.
While this aircraft could have lead to more misidentification incidents, it would have most likely not flown anywhere near enemy territory and thus wouldnt have caused the same issues.
A380 as a drone carrier...is that too much like James bond, or overly realistic to the demands of our modern airspace?
No, that's something from Ace Combat 7. There's a superweapon called the Arsenal Bird. Which is a massive unmanned flying wing drone carrier.
All of this sounds crazy complicated to do - but on the other hand, ICBMs can be launched from a submarine - which is under water!
So how much harder can it be to ignite a missile inside a 747 xD
SLBMs aren't ignited underwater, instead are first pushed out of water before ignition. A hot launch would be devastating to the carrier vehicle. Silo lCBM can use hot launch tough.
The Virgin Orbital 747 does air launch the equivalent of an intercontinental ballistic missile as a satellite launcher. So it is possible.
Boeing 747 literally ended as a weapon of peace anyway, because every militarized version of Boeing 747 has been canceled.
Like 747 aircraft carrier and 747 missile carrier, even KC747 tanker aircraft was canceled for US Air Force, only 1 built and operated by Iranian Air Force.
They did actually build a laser shooting 747. Although yes it was a test-bed, it was still built and apparently it was a successful project so you know that if in a time of war you see a flying 747 it's better to just run away or accept your fate ahahah.
@@faranbutt180 The range of ABL is still inadequate though, the plane would have to fly along enemy border to hunt missiles. Plus the chemical COIL laser has only 10 shots.
This reminds me of the time when the US dropped and fired a minuteman missile out of a C-5
I remember reading "The Moscow Offensive" by Dale Brown, in 2019, where he explored a similar "Cruise Missile Airliner" concept. In the story, the Russians buy a small cargo airline of 737 aircraft and use them to infiltrate US airspace to stealthily deploy cruise missiles out of nowhere. Just like this delivery system.
Several versions of this concept have bounced around, ranging from the type of airliner to the type of missile. As much of a sci-fi concept that is, the mechanisms behind it are scarily realistic.
Hmm... another military topic, interesting 👀
Well, they are the ones with the wackiest projects.
@@aarondewindt I mean how else can they spend their money from taxpayers
You should do a video on the supposed Goodyear blimp missile carrier you mentioned in this video. I curious how the blimp would deal with the massive increase in extra weight without making the balloon unfeasiblely large.
Loving this channel more and more, its perfect for me for the 3 months in between Mustsrd uploads.
There would be so much content to include in a video game where the Cold War went hot. Imagine budget spending increased from what already had
I always see these kind of videos on simply flying, really good stuff
This channel is like a poundland, dollarstore mustard
Americans: The Boeing 747-Nuclear
Soviets: oH nO wE'd BeTtEr WaTcH oUt!
ah, just imagine a coincidence that these 747s had a failure and the control went haywire. I couldn't imagine how the explosions would be. anyway, I see that in every video your renderings keep getting better and better. keep it up, man!
Boeing E-4 Advanced Airborne Command Post (AACP) is a modified 747-200B for the National Emergency Airborne Command Post (NEACP) program.
I’m ppp
Imagine a missile carrier wearing Delta, TWA, United, etc livery!!!! Sneaky.
Why not do an soviet ekranoplan?
high altitude launch missiles= more range = less fuel burn = reaches the target faster. even if the ekrano plane was flying fast, he would fly just above the waves = not so high.
Ekranoplanes fly close to the water to hide from both radar and sonar. So there is still a function.@@Hotaru-jp
This is really amazing!
Thanks for coming and your nice words! see you next time :)
I love your videos! Having worked for LH Cargo for well over 20 years, I especially love the 74F videos. Just one question. When you say upper and lower decks, are you meaning the crew area as the upper deck, and the main cargo area as the lower deck? We called the cockpit deck the flight deck, and the main deck was where we could load 10 or 20ft containers and the like. The lower deck was where the LD-3's and pallets up to 65in tall could be loaded.
yes sorry, it would have had a flight deck with cockpit and cabin crew, then the main deck would have the nukes and an additional flight crew. Not sure what the cargo deck/lower deck would be, extra fuel tanks?
@@FoundAndExplained nothing to be sorry for! Everyone uses different terms, I just wanted to make sure I understood. There are very few CZcams channels as well done as yours. The amount of work you put into each video really shows.
Wonder of the plane could remain stable, dropping such a large payload from the rear... That's a sudden shift in its center of mass.
As long as it shift the center of gravity _forward_ it would probably be manageable.
The 747 project is the best project ever done, it is the best plane, she looks great and there where so much prototypes of it
An Ace Combat superweapon, but in real life.
I'm glad it was never built because that is a really dumb idea.
Excellent video well done 👏 ✔
Watching from Canada 🇨🇦 😌
Boeing: *makes planes*
USAAF: is for me?
I was totally on board all the way up till you Brought up the point that they would be seen as a provocation every time one of them took off into the air. That's a very good point.
There is a whole genre of videos out there, waiting to be made, about nothing more than "interesting real and proposed alternate uses for jumbo jets". We have this ICBM carrier here. Mustard did the 747-as-aircraft-carrier one.
As for "still un-CZcams'd" subjects, I know there was a scheme to launch space rockets from a NASA-modified 747 with LOx and LH2 tanks and space shuttle main engines in the back to push it as high and vertical as humanly possible right beforehand. There are (real) once-passenger jets flying around today with charity hospitals inside, like for cleft paltes or cataracts or something. And then the fire-fighting ones with gigantic tanks and dump-doors on the bottom. There's also the telescope one, and the laser-shooting one too. Who knows what else.
You should do a follow up with the subsequent development of the long range and tie ship missile. (LRASM) Seems to be a logical development of this earlier effort, able to fire stealthy antiship missiles from far outside the detection range of enemy radar. System uses conventional, military, transport aircraft,such as the C130 or the C 17, without any modifications the load master merely opens the rear cargo door, and drops dozens of missiles, the same way he would drop a parachute payload. Missiles are stealthy, cruising at extremely low altitude, and can seek out enemy warships with their own reader. Every cargo aircraft owned by the United States and its allies suddenly becomes a long range bomber. Of course, this will supplement the existing fleet of B 52, B1, and B2. Even the worlds largest navies, could be wiped out in a few hours, using such a system. The launch systems have already been successfully tested fired. Range could be in the hundreds of miles. If necessary, the planes can fly back to their bases, thousands of miles away to reload for follow up strikes.
I still want to see a two engine revamped 747!
I think the USAF actually successfully launched an ICBM from a Lockheed C-5 as a test.
Hello, I saw your video for the first time recently. I like your video very much. Your background music is very well chosen. I really like that you can turn the background music up a little bit louder when you talk. It won’t overwhelm your voice
America: turns 747 into icbm nuke plane
Antonov: MAKE ANTONOV AN-500
Airbus: converts the beluga
Awesome video!
Thanks! And cheers for hanging around for so long!
Real interesting vídeo ! i've watched twice... 👍👍👍
Dude, you're like the new Mustard, but produces videos a lot more frequent 😮
Why not have both of them around?
This is a great idea
If they had a cold launch system and slanted inner pods like the ekronaplan’s outer design, this would be quite a scary airline.
I love your voice, it’s good for narrating.
Kid: I wanna watch mustard
Mum: we have mustard at home
Mustard at home:
It turned from a weapon of peace, to a weapon.
Very interesting. Having lived through "The Cold War' the 747's possible use was plausible, but the end of the USSR as an entity (to a neo-democracy) was the final straw. Thanks again for your video.
I'm not sure how this would work with the CG. As the missiles moved rearward, the plane would become tail heavy, then nose heavy when they were launched. They would have to be very lightweight = Low yield.
Launching missiles from the front of the plane: What about the nose gear?
747's really need a runway of about 10,000 feet. You can use an 8000 foot runway, but you better be light. Takeoff will be scary, but landing.....Talk about hot brakes!!!
I'm really not sure of the advantage of this weapons system. It was impractical, that's why it was never built. Instead, the MX missiles were to be housed in tubes under the ground on tracks and shuttled around, invisible to Soviet satellites. There was no way the Soviets could take them out with a first strike, but this system was never built due to arms reductions treaties.
Spot on. Why this was never built and never real made it past the design phase
While I’m not exactly sure how they would have combated the sudden weight changes (maybe an automated system that would adjust the aircraft’s control surfaces as the weight was shifted), i can certainly see the military merit of such a system as part of the nuclear deterrent.
It really combines the advantage of an aircraft bomber delivery system over a silo or submarine (the visible show of force with ability to call back), with the silo advantage of launching the warhead out of weapons range of the enemy, and the submarine’s advantage of shorter flight times & surprise. And yes, the enemy could target airborne aircraft with long range fighters and air to air nukes, however these aircraft could fly in the civilian air lanes over the ocean and be hard to detect through all of the traffic. It would take alot of fighters/missiles to counter them thus making them more covert like a submarine but without the worry of an enemy sub tracking/trailing them.
Finally you have the advantage of using a production airframe that would of course need heavy modifications but would also share many off the shelf parts & maintenance with the civilian jets thus (in theory) be a lower cost to operate vs a new purpose built aircraft.
In the end, i too am happy it was never built simply because it would have only raised cold war tensions. It’s too much of a first strike threat.
The channel is like Mustard but less quality and more quantity. And that's not a bad ting
how can i improve the quality?
@@FoundAndExplained its the animations are a bit..... blocky and not so high res. but it´s still really enjoyable
The modern version of this is called 'Rapid Dragon' ... pack a whole box of nuclear tipped cruise missiles into the back of a cargo plane, push them out the back, and they fly off to hit their targets.
This would have been a very versatile bomber. If they designed it to be modular they could even add a shorter forward bomb bay. That way conventional munitions could also be dropped from both forward and aft bomb bays. With the mid section carrying extra ordnance.
(Dufenshmerts voice) a boeing 747?
Boewing 747: Launches nuke*
(Gasp) MC BOEING 747!?
Soviets: Thats why we shutdown those 747
Nothing special about this since they have nuclear bombers for a long time even before this concept.
Yeah, but those drop unpowered bombs or cruise missiles. Here we're talking about full ICBMs that have enough speed to fly halfway around the world.
Plane, suffers catastrophic failure from 20 year old tail strike hidden by bad doubler plate
ww3: cowabunga it is
Super 😀👌🤩🤩
well... another problem would be change of center of gravity if they would deploy it like it was in animation. there was similar program to launch a rocket from transport aircraft and the biggest problem was center of gravity change. it was a bit more extreme since rocket was launched like they drop cargo.
It was actually intended to be painted as a civilian airliner as well.. Can you imagine all the havoc that would have created
Vry interesting and meaningful Vlog
Ah yes, the most deadly bird in the skies.
Imagine the 747 replacing the AC-130 for close in air support
The cold war era was wild
You should do the 747 airborne aircraft carrier
A weapon of peace? I am not sure what that would even be.
ayo do a video on the hybrid aerospace-underwater aircraft with magnetic field technology
It’s in the schedule
Don't think the Gigantic 747 would be invisible to the Soviets. More like a moving target.
You better hope it doesn’t crash!
New score streak in cod cold war be like :
Seems like something in an Ace Combat game
The Soviet Union would just copy and paste the 747 Nuker
People in 1960-1980's: oh look! it's the largest airlines (at the time) the 747! the 747: NUKE TIME!!! the People: shit, the plane dropped a nuke *entirely of that town blows up*
"...and up to 7 of the lightest"- proceeds to show a Titan II, the heaviest ICBM we ever fielded. Weight of 170% of a peackeeper. Then you show a Minuteman and call it "a lighter version of the MX". Also, they'd never put a hypergolic ICBM on its side in a plane
i bet my whole life savings if we actually made it it would be nicknamed the REEEEEEE
So convoluted. Just make a back door, add a parachute at the back of the missiles and let them roll out dragged by the parachute. Not even needed to make any device to release the parachute, let the ropes burn by the rocket engine.
Who's kidding who?? You know they reconfigured a dozen of those aircraft and tested them , and then stuck them in a hanger somewhere!
Seeing as a satellite rocket was fired from a 747, the concept is pretty close to reality
Awesome Video!
Like and Abo!
Maybe this is part of the reason those pill shaped blimp things you see in the news every once in a while are kept secret.
Basically, a 747 Bomber.
Explosives on a commercial airliner. That usually never works out wel..
Airbus a380 turned to be misille carrier
Me : Why not the Antonov 225 ?
something like 787 would be good at replacing b52s
I Was Going To Ask About What Would Happen If They Turned A AIRBUS A380 Into One 🤔. Then At The End He Answered My Question 😂
But why? There's a reason those missiles called ICBM, yet they want to make an aerial launcher that has higher risk to crash rather than simply launch missiles from silos that can reach most part of the world
i was expecting tactic:
yes this normal plane its just fly there, yes its normal.
It is a great idea if you want to paint every 747 a target to every military in the world.
Please do a video on project pluto!
Me Minecraft plane builder.every time he uploads a new video.let’s go build this planes
Imagine how many commercial 747 would be shot down. This is a bad deal for Boeing.