North American B-45 Tornado
The North American B-45 Tornado was the United States Air Force's first operational jet bomber: a straight-wing, four-jet aircraft that first flew on 17 March 1947 and entered service in 1948. North American built three XB-45 prototypes, 96 B-45A bombers, ten B-45Cs and 33 RB-45C reconnaissance aircraft. The bombers served mainly as a nuclear deterrent in Europe, while RB-45Cs flew reconnaissance over Korea and, in RAF markings with RAF crews, over the Soviet Union. The B-47 replaced it, the type left operational service by 1959, and three intact examples survive in American museums.
Why It Mattered
The B-45 Tornado was the first operational jet bomber to serve with the United States Air Force, and the first American four-engine jet bomber to fly. At the turn of the 1950s it stood as the Air Force's leading jet bomber. Its reconnaissance version did the type's most sensitive work: RB-45Cs photographed targets over Korea, and others, flown by RAF crews in RAF markings, overflew the Soviet Union. Forty of the bombers were modified to carry nuclear weapons and deployed to the United Kingdom, making the type part of the early Cold War deterrent in Europe. The type was also the first multi-engine jet bomber to be refuelled in mid-air.
Design Notes
The B-45 began with a 1944 War Department proposal for a jet-powered bomber to match the German jet bombers then appearing, among them the Arado Ar 234. North American's answer, the NA-130, was deliberately conventional: aviation authors Bill Gunston and Peter Gilchrist described it as merely a traditional bomber onto which jet engines had been fitted. It kept a straight wing, with four engines carried in pairs in two nacelles slung beneath it; the prototypes used General Electric J35s, while production aircraft flew with J47s. The crew of four sat with the two pilots under a fighter-like canopy and the bombardier in a glazed nose; the only defensive armament was a pair of .50-calibre machine guns in the tail. The bomber could carry up to 22,000 pounds of bombs, conventional or nuclear. For the RB-45C reconnaissance version the glazed nose was faired over for an oblique camera, twelve cameras were carried in four fuselage positions, and a refuelling receptacle was fitted behind the canopy.
Operational History
The XB-45 first flew on 17 March 1947 at Muroc Army Airfield in California, with test pilots George Krebs and Paul Brewer at the controls. Ninety-six B-45As followed, the first flying in February 1948, and the type entered service that November with the 47th Bomb Group at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. Orders were then cut back as budgets shrank: 51 of the 190 B-45As on contract were cancelled before they were built. Ten B-45Cs followed, with a strengthened airframe and provision for in-flight refuelling; the remaining 33 airframes of that order were completed as RB-45C reconnaissance aircraft. When the Korean War began, the bombers lacked the range to deploy across the Pacific, so the Air Force sent them to Europe to deter a Soviet attack. The reconnaissance aircraft went to war instead: three RB-45Cs sent to Korea for an operational evaluation were pressed into service with the 91st Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron. On 4 December 1950 an RB-45C of the 91st was intercepted by five MiG-15s and shot down near the mouth of the Yalu River. From 1950, forty B-45s were modified under the Backbreaker programme to carry nuclear weapons, and the nuclear-capable aircraft reached the United Kingdom by May 1952. Other RB-45Cs, in RAF markings and flown by RAF crews of Nos. 35 and 115 Squadrons from RAF Sculthorpe, flew clandestine reconnaissance missions into the Soviet Union in 1952–54; the missions stayed secret until 1994. On 29 July 1952 an RB-45C crew flew nonstop from Alaska to Japan with KB-29 tanker help, the first such flight by a multi-engine jet bomber, and won the Mackay Trophy. By the mid-1950s the B-47 had replaced the Tornado as both bomber and reconnaissance aircraft, and the type was withdrawn from operational service by 1959.
Afterlife
Most Tornados were scrapped soon after they were struck from the Air Force inventory. A few flew on in test work: two were used in jet-engine development during the 1950s, and one RB-45C remained in use with Pratt & Whitney until at least 1963. The type's final flight came on 22 June 1972, when RB-45C 48-0017 was ferried from Connecticut to the Strategic Air Command Museum in Nebraska. Three intact Tornados survive on public display in the United States: the only remaining B-45A, 47-0008, at the Castle Air Museum in Atwater, California, and RB-45Cs at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, and the Strategic Air Command and Aerospace Museum at Ashland, Nebraska. A fourth relic, the nose of B-45A 47-0063, is kept at the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona.