Model Forum / General / Models / February 2010

First four, #1  through #4, those were the ones Carter cancelled. Tail
for #2, B-1A/158 was the one that crashed, had a nice logo on it. B-1A/
001 was modified and kept in the B-1B program, B-1A/174 the last one
left flying was sent to AF museum, in Euro camo later went to the
Omaha SAC museum (its about 40 miles from Omaha, but its called the
SAC museum - nice place.) Its been repainted in the current grey style
it never flew in. B-1A #3 was sent to Rome AFB in NY, which later
closed, as a maintenance trainer, don't know what happened after that.
AF owned them all, but we had a Combined Test Program, CTF, Rockwell
and AF flew flight tests together. Beats the old system of contractor
doing stuff, then AF repeating it as they didn't trust them.

Schaeffer has a book out on the Arizona Boneyard with some B-1s on the
cover, will order it shortly.

I wasn't impressed with the V-2 book, some photos were scanned and
resolution of some original photos was garbage. I know the original
photo was better, but you're looking at scan lines rather than details
you could use for modeling. If that's the publishing wave of the
future, references for modeling are going to be getting worse. Web
site on line was much better.

I saw some published photos that B-1B/068 a/c #28 was still flight
testing at Edwards, in grey scheme. Bit over 20 years after I first
started doing data off of it.

Different aircraft were used for different things. B-1B/068 had the
long weapons bay rather than the 3 bays of earlier models so carried
the ALCM for tests. I seem to recall it did the first test launch of
an ALCM out of the B-1B.

For a while there were some neat nose art on the operational B-1s, but
that would be hard to see on 1/144 models. Some general ordered it all
removed. Later it was allowed again. I heard rumors some was almost up
to the WWII stuff but never saw a lot of the early artwork, maybe
somebody has it in a box in a closet somewhere. Test aircraft never
had any as far as I know.

Though one of the sergeants painted a nice mural looking at a B-1 face
on at the front door of the CTF where you went left for data and test
engineers and right for all the maintenance and tech order types.
Floor to ceiling easily at least 10  feet or more along the walls.
Outside the conference room where we did all the Flight Readiness
Review (FRR) there was a 1930s photo, boots, white coveralls, leather
jacket, scarf, pencil moustache, dashing figure getting into the
cockpit, underneath was a title 'Rockwell test pilot'.