Canberra Bomber Bows Out After 55 Years
Financial Times ^ | June 24 2006 | Stephen Fidler

The aircraft that took Bomber Command intothe jet age retired from operations yesterday, 55 years after it first entered service.

Two Canberra PR9s returned to RAF Marham in Norfolk after five months in the Middle East and flying photographic reconnaissance missions over Afghanistan.

The Canberra held a number of records, including the first double crossing of the Atlantic and in one day - August 26, 1952. One reached a record altitude of 70,310 feet on August 28 1957.

Design of the longest serving aircraft in Royal Air Force history started during the second world war at English Electric in Preston.

The first flew in 1949. Variants for photographic reconnaissance appeared soon after and the PR9 prototype first flew in 1955.

The PR9s, which entered service in 1958-61, had a crew of two, the navigator hunched in the nose cone.

Over the past 12 years, the PR9s have supported operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Rwanda and the Horn of Africa. The Ministry of Defence says that the reconnaissance role can be carried out by various other aircraft.

One of the pilots of the three remaining Canberras in service, Squadron Leader Terry Cairns, is at 61 the oldest serving operational pilot in the RAF, but was not born when the Canberra first reached the drawing board.

The aircraft, with a top speed of 350 knots and powered by two Rolls-Royce Avon Mk 206 turbojet engines, will be sold by the Defence Disposals Agency.

The Canberra was built under licence by Short Brothers in Belfast, which produced 23 standard PR9s between 1958 and 1962. The first operational sortie by a PR9 was in 1960.

Below: A Canberra PR9 shows off its large wing area and offset cockpit that identifies the type.

There are some things that continue to provide valuable service no matter what their age and the B-57 aircraft is one of them.

Developed by a British firm, the English Electric Company Ltd. in 1944 the B-57 made its first flight in May of 1949.

The United States Air Force chose the B-57 Canberra to reinforce its aging Douglas B-26 Invader fleet from a flight demonstration of several aircraft in 1951. The B-57 made a record breaking flight across the Atlantic Ocean, without refueling, in only four hours and forty minutes. It won hands-down over all the others for its time.

Although various models were built, the "F" model survived with several modifications. The aircraft was put into service with the 58th Weather Reconnaissance Squadron at Kirtland, AFB in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1964 and was designated as a WB-57F ("w" standing for weather).

After several years in service the wings showed signs of stress, corrosion and cracks, and it was decided to replace the wings on only a few aircraft and retire the rest because it was financially prohibitive to repair the entire fleet. In the meantime NASA had contracted the Air Force to operate research missions that were part of the Earth Resources Technology Satellite program (ERTS). NASA chose the WB-57F for its High Altitude Research Program. The two WB-57's were then assigned the numbers NASA 926 and NASA 928.

The NASA 926 and NASA 928 high altitude weather aircraft can fly day and night with a range of approximately 2500 miles. Two crewmembers in pressurized suits pilot the plane to altitudes in excess of 60,000 feet and the aircraft can carry a payload of about 6,000 pounds.

Research such as Cirrus Regional Study of Tropical Anvils and Cirrus Layers - Florida Area Cirrus Experiment (CRYSTAL - FACE) and Clouds and Water Vapor in the Climate System (CWVCS) join a long list of atmospheric and weather related experiments aided by the use of the WB-57.

NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) operates the only two WB-57's still flying in the world today from Ellington Field, Houston, Texas.

Above:  The NASA 926 WB-57 aircraft on a research mission gathering data to understand Earth's environment.

 

Above:  Payloads up to 6,000 pounds can be carried in the aircraft's belly, aft fuselage, tail cone, wing pods, wing hatches and/or the nose cone.

 

Above:  Flight and ground crew pose in front of one of the two WB-57's still in service.

 

Above: A bottom view of a USAF WB-57 Canberra showing its two leading edge wing pods and bottom mounted instrument pods.  The size of the main turbofan turbines is very apparent in this view.  The WB-57 wing is much larger than that of the RAF Canberra PR9.