Both the front and rear bogies can be set at angles of as much as 20° to either side of the straight-ahead position. An interesting feature of the B-52 landing gear greatly eases the problems posed by crosswind landings. As compared with their location on the B-47, the outrigger wheels are positioned much nearer the wingtip on the B-52. Air Force iconic B-52 bomber was designed in such a way the landing gear can be set up to 20 degrees left to right of centerline for both takeoff and landing.Īs explained by NASA (that has been a BUFF operator) on its website, “the landing gear of the B-52 is of the same bicycle arrangement as employed on the B-47 but has four two-wheel bogies instead of the two bogies used on the earlier aircraft. Here’s a description of the characteristic swiveling landing gear of the B-52 from a previous article: You can clearly see the lights “fall victim” to the the outrigger wheel, designed to keep the wing tanks from skidding on the runway.
The video below, taken by our friend Misael Ocasio Hernandez, shows the full display of the B-52 including the taxi part. Interestingly, during the “crabwalk”, the outrigger wheel of the Stratofortress aircraft hit some of the runway lights (18). The most impressive part of the display (most probably cut short because of the weather that affected RIAT throughout the weekend) came after landing, as the BUFF (Big Ugly Fat Fellow) taxied down the runway using its peculiar steerable dual-bicycle landing gear to face the strong crosswinds at RAF Fairford.
Flying as SURGE 22, the strategic bomber took from runway 27, spent some time in a holding to the east of the airfield then carried out a flypast with tanker KC-135R QID 71 from Mildenhall in the lead and eventually returned for an overhead break for a visual landing.
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