You should also notice that the difference between the maximum height and the apex of the semicircle is about 1.5 meters -- about five feet. The tail on a B-25 appears higher than that, and so it -- rather than the wingtips -- is actually the limiting factor if the plane is reasonably close to the middle of the arch.
(That's going to be even more true when we consider the tilt of the arch -- although in the photo it appears to me that they are actually vertical semicircles projected onto the tilted plane of the structure, so the vertical calculation is correct.)
I just checked Dad's letters, and I misremembered slightly: it was a B-17. The guy who did it is called Ken Sherman. Oh, wait, I missed that he was actually in Paris when he wrote this letter, and writes "We ... looked at the Eiffel Tower. ... Ken Sherman is reputed to have flown a B-17 bomber under that tower, and I wanted to see if he could have, and how easily. The opening is semi-circular, a bit over 300 feet wide and about 160 feet high, so a B-17, having a wing span of about 100 feet, could have easily fit."
I don't know where Dad got the Eiffel Tower measurements, but as a WWII navigator himself and a Boeing engineer later, I think he probably got the plane number correct.
There are of course several people who've flown under the Eiffel Tower -- one guy (not Ken) did it during a dogfight with a German plane.
And I saw another aviator quote recently (not sure where) where someone asked him if he could fly a fighter jet through something and he replied, "I probably could, but I want to keep flying at this job for a long time, so I won't."
My father was a bomber pilot, retired on B-52s. He once stated that one of the things they fight against is creativity and thinking outside the box. Because it leads to fewer broken planes.
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It is reassuring to hear that, mathematically at least, it *WAS* feasible.
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(That's going to be even more true when we consider the tilt of the arch -- although in the photo it appears to me that they are actually vertical semicircles projected onto the tilted plane of the structure, so the vertical calculation is correct.)
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I don't know where Dad got the Eiffel Tower measurements, but as a WWII navigator himself and a Boeing engineer later, I think he probably got the plane number correct.
There are of course several people who've flown under the Eiffel Tower -- one guy (not Ken) did it during a dogfight with a German plane.
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My father was a bomber pilot, retired on B-52s. He once stated that one of the things they fight against is creativity and thinking outside the box. Because it leads to fewer broken planes.
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