The other thread on Fighter aircraft got me wondering what the longest serving military aircraft of the US is? Including all potential operators ie USAF, USN, CIA NASA ect..

The B-52 springs to mind, but I think the U2 and the WB-57's are older..The C-130 must be around the same age?

Anybody know any older aircraft still in service?

U 2 maybe? First flew in 1955

Just checking the dates, and the B-57 pre dates the U-2...In fact the U-2 was designed to replace the recce version of the B-57....

If it isn't already, the B52 will be the longest serving aircraft. I think the B-52 is slotted for service all the way to 2040.

The C47 had a long lifespan, they decommissioned the last one in 1980. But the B-52 has that beat.

YB-52 (B-52 prototype) first flew in 1952.

The U-2 first flew in 1955 and is still serving.

The B-57 entered USAF service in 1953; it was a version of the English Electric Camberra bomber which first flew in 1949. The B-57 was manufactured by Martin Aircraft. It's been retired for several years.

the B-52 is still serving and therefo4re is the longest serving AF plane.

While I don't think that there are still any in US service, the longest serving military aircraft is undoubtedly the C-47 with probably dozens, if not hundreds of them still soldiering around the world in various militaries...not to mention hundreds of private owners as well.

If by serving, you mean on active duty with one of the uniformed services, without question, it's the B-52. There are many airplanes out there that although older and still flying, did not serve anywhere near as long in the Armed Forces as the 52.

The US Government (NASA or the CIA) still operate three WB-57's that fly high altitude missions over Afghanistan ..

What about trainers and other light aircraft? Any of them still in service from the 1950's?

About 25 years ago, Boeing, P&W and, United Airlines approached the USAF to re-engine the B-52 with the same engines used on the Boeing 757 (Pratt & Whitney PW2037); 4 engines to replace 8.

Boeing would do the design and conversion, P&W would furnish the engines and United AL would perform engine maintenance - it was a win-win for all. The AF would get a more fuel-efficient airplane with greater range and lower maintenance costs. The 3 proposers would get the work!

Unfortunately, the AF rejected this proposal fearing that it would jeopardize the development of the new strategic bomber (B-2). Realizing that the B-52 is the greatest bomb "dump-truck" ever, the AF is now reconsidering the re-engine program.

The T-38 first flew in the 1950s.

My AC-47 SEA ride can't be topped IMO but the Shadow/Stinger 119's should be a close second.

Pete, I view the WB-57 as a different plane than the B-57.
True, it has a (greatly modified- B-57 fuselage, but the wings, engines (4 in place of 2),carry-through structure, wtc. are all different. Here's NASA's site on the WB-57: http://jsc-aircraft-ops.jsc.nasa.gov/wb57/

C-130 entered service in 1954 and I believe it is still in use today.

From Wikipedia:

"The C-130 entered service with U.S. in the 1950s, followed by Australia and others. During its years of service, the Hercules family has participated in numerous military, civilian and humanitarian aid operations. The family has the longest continuous production run of any military aircraft in history. In 2007, the C-130 became the fifth aircraft—after the English Electric Canberra, Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, Tupolev Tu-95, and Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker, all designs with various forms of aviation gas turbine powerplants—to mark 50 years of continuous use with its original primary customer, in this case, the United States Air Force. The C-130 is one of the few military aircraft to remain in continuous production for over 50 years with its original customer, as the updated C-130J Super Hercules."

I wonder if the engineers who designed and built these old workhorses ever guessed they would still be in service 50-60 years later?

C-130.

When everyone on this board is dead and gone, the C-47 and the C-130 will still be serving in militaries around the world. Both are over engineered compared to modern computerized designs and their relatively low performance envelopes put little strain on the airframes. They can simply be re-engined over and over and no one has designed anything that works better yet.

I'll bet a case of good Scotch that they never considered the possibility of longevity. In the late 1940's and 1950's, planes seemed to have a useful front-line-use of about 15-20 years (witness the F-84, F-86, F-80 (although the T-33 version lasted longer), F-94 and, B-47. With greater engine power, larger airframes, smaller electronics and, a move toward multi-role, longevity has greatly increased.

In lots of ways, the performance of aircraft in the late 1950s wasn't all that inferior to those of today. Most of the advancement has been in avionics and weapons systems as opposed to outright raw performance.

I would imagine that given that in the space of about twenty years, the state of the art for a fighter aircraft went from 350 mph at 25,000 feet with three or four .30 caliber machine guns to Mach 2, 60,000 ft. ceiling, and missiles firing BVR, that designers of that era would be flabbergasted that current fighters are not closer to something from Buck Rogers than the things they designed back then.

It all depends on what you call "performance". If it's fast and squirrly, then yeah, you're right. But advancements have been in speed with low level stability, lower radar cross section, MUCH longer range, all weather, overall lifespan of the airframe, ease in maintenance, and ability to fly all day long, rotating out pilots. Those are some of the "performance" upgrades we have made.

But it's true that a F-15 isn't going to go a whole lot faster than an F-104. Service ceiling, rate of climb, and top speed are probably all pretty darned close. (I'm sure the F-15 is ahead in every category, but I doubt there are any huge differences).

T-37 is not the oldest but it has been around quite awhile.
1954 to 2009. Wonder where they are now.
VNAF used to support us with them and they could fly very well.

The first operational B-52 was delivered in 1954. The first operational C-130 was delivered in 1956. Kind of comparing apples to oranges, the BUFF is a single purpose aircraft that was never exported while the C-130 has a multitude of variants and sold to numerous entities. The current BUFF (H model) was built between 1961~1963, would be interesting to see the age of the oldest C-130 still in service.

All that is true but it is all of a evolutionary rather than revolutionary nature. Consider the designs of the late 1950s and early 60s like the F-108 Rapier, the XB-70, the A-12 and SR-71. The performance of those designs has never been equaled, or in some ways even approached since then.

Sure, advances in missile technology made those designs dead ends but in lots of ways, designs like the F-16 and F-15 represented regressions, or scale backs in ambitions. Designers realized that lots technology needed for those other designs hadn't caught up to reality and while they were great advancements, the F-16 and F-15 were designed to fight in ways that the designers of the 1950s thought was going to be long gone by then.

Like I said, those guys given the advancements they had seen and the designs they were working on BACK THEN, would probably be surprised and disappointed that in 2015 there weren't bombers cruising a Mach 10 at 120,000 feet or space planes taking passengers from New York to Tokyo in 2 hours.

Where did you get your info on the WB-57R or any version with 4 engines? I couldn't find that info on your link.

The performance hasn't been equaled that you know of. There are a lot of things that aren't made known to the public for obvious reasons. The Blackbird officially didn't exist for a very long time.

I flew the F/A-18 for a while in the mid-90's. I can tell you that there is a very large capability differential between a 1960's era fighter and what we fly now. Raw speed, maybe not so much, but that's not where the combat capabilities of an aircraft lie. The advancements in avionics and weaponry are staggering. The precision of targeting compared to what was available then allows you to do with one JDAM what would have taken multiple sorties to accomplish back then, all with little collateral damage. The advancements in stealth and radar technology are amazing, there's so much information available to a pilot now that wasn't in the older aircraft that it's almost overwhelming trying to process it all in a fluid environment. I really can't emphasize enough how much more capable the later generation F/A-18's, F-15's, F-16's, F-22's, and F-35's are over their predecessors. It's night and day.

If raw speed is what impresses you then you likely won't see the differences, but trust me they're there. Nobody has seriously challenged American air superiority since the Vietnam era, there isn't anyone capable of it.

Now, actually go read my original post on the subject and see how unnecessary all that was you just wrote. As in I said this:

IIRC they did some flight testing of a radio controled F-16 out of Hickam AFB back in the early '70s. The airframe could sustain a higher G turn rate without damage than a human body can tolerate.

Sorry, I didn't recognize your brilliance in the matter. Carry on.

When all is said and done, I'd almost bet it'll be the C-130... and if not in longevity at least in hours flown. Currently I think there is 92 of 744 B-52's left with the newest having been built I believe in 1962, and if plans are met she'll be around until around 2040 making her some 78 years old when retired. But you have to remember these remaining B-52's are continually being climbed all over being maintained, upgraded and tweaked. Yet the average hours flown are only some 250 hours a year and the average plane only having some 13,000 hours!

Don't have the specs on the C-130 as to average hours flown per year and totals. But I'd suspect that its much higher and with many more as a percentage left of those built, not to mention I believe they're still building them or were at least until recently.

The C-130 is a workhorse that I believe will be around way past the last remaining 52's.

Phil


Phil

Although the old fighter pilot adage of "speed is life" certainly holds true, there is a world of difference between those two. Climb rates I'm sure are close (although I'm pretty sure the Eagle still holds the "0-100K" climb record, the 104 was a loser as a fighter. Horrible turn rate/radius, limited A-A armament and radar... Back to speed, mach 1.5 or even 2 won't help much when a AIM-9 or AAMRAM is coming at you a 5+. Then there's the F-22 and there, NOTHING even comes close in every valid measure of effectiveness as a fighter...

In 1986 I got a request for quotation to upgrade the B52s with new power supplies in the equipment rack. They wanted 100 different outputs. There was plenty of room. They wanted full up air force mil spec, so these would be very expensive power supplies to design.

I started to write a proposal, but management said to stop. They said we had two dozen engineers and we would need twice that many.

So I failed to respond. The customer called me up and screamed at me. No companies had responded to the RFQ. It was too big a job for our competitors too.