Hi everyone,
I've been following this thread and it's really strange how some people think.
When the B-52 was first shown, it was the "wow" factor, everyone thought it was great achievement.
Then it crashed and almost everyone, at least here in the US, started criticizing Gordon: it was too heavy, not engineered right,
didn't have any composite's in the structure, too complicated, too big, and on and on.
An amazing turn around, wonder if the reaction would be the same if it was still flying.
Give Gordon credit, he had a dream, he got the resources together, engines, radio's etc, to make the dream come true. He built the BUFF, flew it around 50 times before it went in. And just to refresh everyone's memory, it went in because of pilot error, not because it was structurally and/or system deficient, so he must have done SOMETHING right when he designed and built it!
If it wern't for dreamers like Gordon and people who want to push the envelope, we'd still be flying single channel tone w/vacuum tubes.
BRG,
Jon