Simviation Forums

hello to you:

just wondering as I fly my jets, my dad was a bombardier on a b17 stationed over in England, when I was young he told me when all the bombs were loaded and during take off a lot of times they will hold the brakes at a stand still and let the engines/ propellers rev up until the crew begin to feel the beginning of some shakiness release the brakes and take off with half of the runway, well the runways back then was not that long to begin with. .now that being said in real life can the pilots do that with a passenger plane? I know I do that with my jets and take off at least half of the runway. the 380s its like little over half way.

bombardier

bombardier wrote:hello to you:

just wondering as I fly my jets, my dad was a bombardier on a b17 stationed over in England, when I was young he told me when all the bombs were loaded and during take off a lot of times they will hold the brakes at a stand still and let the engines/ propellers rev up until the crew begin to feel the beginning of some shakiness release the brakes and take off with half of the runway, well the runways back then was not that long to begin with. .now that being said in real life can the pilots do that with a passenger plane? I know I do that with my jets and take off at least half of the runway. the 380s its like little over half way.

bombardier

Hi, in real life life a passenger plane "can" do a maximum performance takeoff as you describe but they normally don't.
All passenger Jets do a calculation of the runway required before each flight taking into account their weight, the winds, the runway conditions etc etc. Then they are required to only take off on a runway that meets that flights minimum requirements. Modern Jets are very powerful and they don't need to run up their power very much before brake release. A max perf takeoff is very scary for passengers due to the engine noise, the shaking and the g-forces pushing them back into their seats after brake release. If you have ever taken off in something like the Learjet on a max perf takeoff you will know what I mean.
In other types of aviation where heavy takeoff weights, short runways, low engine power etc. are involved max perf takeoffs can be common and required to get off the ground. Glad your Dad got through his B-17 Wartime missions OK.

hey flacke thanks for that:
yeah my dad plane takes off from England to bomb germany he can tell the speed of the wind by the way the smoke from the smoke stacks are blowing and then he would calculate that into the equation of the timing of the bomb release and also the speed of the aircraft is calculated into that also. it was all hand mind and brain calculations on papers no cell phones or anything like that, i know he bombed dussaoldurph I cannot spell those german airports. but whats funny my dads grand parents were german, and he speaks some german not much. he tried to teach me when I was 10 years old I spoke some german when he was teaching me when I was small but with anything else if you do not practice it you going to loose it. I believe his group was on like 5 bombing missions maybe more cannot remember he told me I forgot.

the 8th air force bombardier group

bomberdier

The standard airfields in the UK in WW2 (once they'd actually built runways, as opposed to the old grass fields) had 6000ft main runways and 2 x 4200ft secondaries. Heavily laden bombers did often struggle to stagger airborne!

UK WW2 Class A Airfields

As mentioned above, static takeoffs are still sometimes used today for performance reasons.

This may be just me, but powering up under brake and then letting go seems to put some stress on the airframes & engines. To that end, it may not seem wise to do with commercial or private aircraft, which earn their companies/owners their bread & butter, but in time of war, bombers and the like have already been written off for lost, in anticipation. So it seems in the case of the latter, there's not much to lose, even if those aircraft are government assets. I could be wrong, and sometimes am.