Can you identify this rocket/missile/bomb for me?

[HenrikOlsen]

Would you explain that for me please?

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

Chemicals normally used for stripping paint can be harsh on aluminium too.

[Nicolas]

And a steel brush embeds tiny steel particles into the aluminum, after which it will never shine as "pure" aluminum again. So it gets contaminated with steel, not with plutonium or something.

Anyway, Franky is no more. I have managed to separate the nose from the tail. I'm now in the process of sanding the paint off the nose cone. This thing is a real practice drop bomb for sure. The cone is thick solid steel shaped on a lathe. I'll have to buy ear protection before I continu, because I have a beep in my ears from the little bit of sanding I've done now. It will go away, but I'll protect my ears before I get a beep that won't go away.

[Ara Pacis]

Sounds like a fun job to photograph every stage, every part of your work. And just imagine the fun to be had with nosy neighbors!

"What is that!?" .... "A bomb."... "No way! A BOMB!?".. "Yup, no worries, it's just a nuclear bomb." ... "WHaaaaaaaat!?" ... "Yep, a B61, google it!" ... [pale faces.. shuffling feet.. sounds of dialling cellphones..]

Or he could take it out for parades to be photographed. Perhaps do it on behalf of your favorite local politician: "Vote for my guy, He's da Bomb!" or "Vote for my guy...or else!" Or maybe take it to a fireworks event and tell people it's the finale. Imagine the crowd... Oooo ahhh OhhhMG!

[publiusr]

Or sell photos of the disassembled bomb with promises of Falcon rocket specs to North Korea and sell them Estes rocket plans. Cash only...

[Nicolas]

It's already listed on ebay.northkorea and ebay.iran.

Regarding the request for pictures of the different steps of the restoration: people ask the same thing when I work on the car. But the problem is that I always work on the "in between" moments. And if I then still have to take the camera, make sure the batteries are not empty, take pictures, get the camera out of dust's way...there won't be much work left to be photographed. But I'll certainly take pics of the finished product or the "for the moment finished" phases.

I'm now in the process of removing paint. I'll have to use a different grade to get the dark spots out of the steel, which will also remove the finest ridges of the lathe, but will give it its shiny, flat-as-a-mirror "silver bullet" B61 finish. When I'm (nearly) finished removing paint, I'll start asking around for prices and possibilities of rolling sheets of metal (car steel or aluminum) into the 2 interstage mock-ups.

[Trebuchet]

What's the diameter of the body? You may be able to find a pipe that works.

[Delvo]

I'm thinking of a disassembled display, with some space between the parts (think of the Saturn 5 display). I'll place them on low wooden supports or something.

How much of the original's length is missing?

[Delvo]

on pics I've seen the real one as bare metal, and the bdu-38 trainer as seemingly white. Have you ever seen them in white? The rest of the paint job certainly is after-market.

Do you know anything about why it was painted red & black?

[Nicolas]

What's the diameter of the body? You may be able to find a pipe that works.

Haven't measured, but the internet says 340mm. There are 350mm PVC pipes, but they are hugely expensive.

@Delvo: both the missing hull sections combined should be something around 1400-1500mm, and then there's a cm or 2 missing where they topped off the tail which will not be restored (nobody will know they're missing by the looks, it's like 1% of its length. The chute cap is also missing, but that one is less long than the fins so that doesn't add extra length. And I'll display it with deployed chute anyway.

@Delvo 2: I think it was a departure gift or military bar relic for a guy named Henke or something. Nothing with true military or historical meaning anyway. Buth the cone and tail sections are 100% certainly real. There is no way anything else than a factory-built mil-spec order would result in something like this. A hugely heavy, one piece thick steel nose cone worked on a lathe with 350mm diameter, an aircraft aluminum tail section with difficult to shape fins and aircraft green primer inside... And there's a serial printed inside the tail section. So it is -was- a real BDU-38 and somehow somebody bought/took it off the military.

[HenrikOlsen]

I wonder if we have people on the board who'd know where to ask for more information given the serial number.

[slang]

Do you know anything about why it was painted red & black?

It's red, black, and yellow, the colors of the German flag (and incidentally, also those of the Belgian flag). The name Henke is German as well, perhaps this BDU-38 was, as Nicholas suggests, a gift to someone working on one of the many US airbases there used to be in Germany during the Cold War. I wonder if other NATO countries practiced with this thing as too.... Ah! See this paragraph on the wiki page about the Dutch Airforce base Volkel (no US squadrons there, only Dutch F-16's):

As of 2008, 22 B61 nuclear bombs are believed to be in storage at Volkel, to be used by the Dutch 311 and 312 F-16 squadrons at the base. The F-16s based at Volkel can at times be seen with BDU-38 dummy bombs, which are used to simulate the B61.

Image with a Dutch F-16 carrying a BDU-38 here, on the forum of Scramble, a Dutch aircraft spotters club.

[Nicolas]

The same is true for the Belgian F16's (iirc at the Kleine Brogel base). In fact, Belgian and Dutch F16's are the only ones with the necessary upgrades to fly the Silver Bullet.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm going to buy me some hearing protection so I can continue sanding the beast. I might have an option ready regarding the hull: we might have some half pipes of the right diameter laying around. We'll need quite some luck for them to be the right diameter though...

As for the mockup of the internals: some large old PCB's and a painted gas bottle or fire extinghuisher of suitable size go a long way.

[Nicolas]

I wonder if we have people on the board who'd know where to ask for more information given the serial number.

It appears to me as a very generic serial, maybe referring only to a single part of the whole. There's no letters to be found in there.

[Jeff Root]

Moose suggested that "Henke 41" might be a street
address. That now seems by far the most likely to me.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

[Trebuchet]

Haven't measured, but the internet says 340mm. There are 350mm PVC pipes, but they are hugely expensive.

Sounds like 14 inch pipe, which may have been what they made the practice bomb out of. I wouldn't be surprised if they filled the interior of that section with concrete or something. You might want to check scrapyards for a hunk of pipe. You'd have better luck in the USA, of course.

[slang]

Moose suggested that "Henke 41" might be a street
address. That now seems by far the most likely to me.

Is that common in the US? To have something with your house number, and the street name on it, in the front yard? As far as I'm aware of, that is not done here (the Netherlands), nor in the countries around us (Belgium, Germany). Just the number. Then again, just the fact that I don't remember it doesn't mean much.

[Trebuchet]

Here's a site where you may be able to download the specifications for the device, for US$25.00.

And here's a test report which gives the diameter as 13.3 inches (338mm) and the length as 141.65 inches (3.6m).

[Moose]

Is that common in the US? To have something with your house number, and the street name on it, in the front yard?

Not especially common, but it happens, yes. The reason why I'm thinking this is the case is because, as far as I understand it, that's the format if one were to speak or write a street name in German. (In NA, we'd say the number first, then the street name.)

A quick google shows a HenkestraBe in Erlangen.

It's also possible Henke could be the family who owns the home (uncommon, but happens in NA), which would also mean Franky had been used as an address marker.

[Nicolas]

Nothing marks a spot like an atomic bomb. It doesn't matter now, I'll sand it all of in the near future as it's certainly no original marking.

@Trebuchet: those are the dimensions indeed. I'll remeasure the end of the nosecone to be sure about the diameter. I have some good side views from which I can estimate the size of the different sections. And I'll try to find some good photos of the internals so that I can make a decent mock-up.

[Nicolas]

Nice army video about the B61 here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlH7OuWiPb4

I've done some googling, and I've found no traces of any BDU-38 (let alone B61) offered for sale, not even parts. Franky seems to be the only one. Of course, me not finding it on google doesn't mean it didn't happen before.

I'm starting to wonder what such rare and iconic ordnance as a Silver Bullet (trainer, parts...) is worth to a collector. I really want to have it myself, but as the family is growing and we're looking for another house, everything is potentially for sale.

[Donnie B.]

You know what would be hilarious? For the internals, make up something like the innards of the Fort Knox "device" from Goldfinger... complete with rotating cogs and ticking clockwork.

[Delvo]

Having something like that outside the front door would be rare in the USA for a house, but not for some kinds of businesses, especially pubs.

[Nicolas]

People put strange things in their front yards here. I name a 3 meter scale model of the 747 with shuttle on top, huge crankshafts...but a vintage looking rocket with german colors and a german name in your front yard would still be a bit of a no-go in Belgium. Not legally a nono, but socially speaking people would frown a bit upon it. Even though it stands in my normally closed garage, I put a blanket over the tail section as long as it's not been paint-stripped.

I'll let you know how much frowning I receive for having a Silver Bullet. It's funny: for decades protest groups have been trying to photograph one of the alleged Silver Bullets on one of our military bases. Meanwhile, I own one.

[Nicolas]

http://www.glennsmuseum.com/controller/controller.html

One trace of other B61 hardware in private hands.

[Nicolas]

This is what Franky looked like in 2009:



Below I've added some pictures of the start of the restoration. Getting the nose and the tail separated, some pics that show it's the real deal, starting to sand off the paint of the steel cone, more sanding. The red reflection is my car.

When I'm done with the basic sanding, I need to further polish the steel and aluminum, gets some dents out of the aluminum, remove some more filler, clean the metal's edges and the holes...still lots of work to do.

[John Mendenhall]

(snip)

@Delvo 2: I think it was a departure gift or military bar relic for a guy named Henke or something. Nothing with true military or historical meaning anyway. Buth the cone and tail sections are 100% certainly real. There is no way anything else than a factory-built mil-spec order would result in something like this. A hugely heavy, one piece thick steel nose cone worked on a lathe with 350mm diameter, an aircraft aluminum tail section with difficult to shape fins and aircraft green primer inside... And there's a serial printed inside the tail section. So it is -was- a real BDU-38 and somehow somebody bought/took it off the military.

Agreed. Our squadron flew A3’s, known as ‘whales’, and the Joint Aircraft Maintenance detachment ashore at Cubi Point NAS in the P.I. out of boredom repainted the detachment’s delivery step van in aircraft grey with a large whale on each side, mounted a refueling probe on the roof, and added a sign on each side that said ‘Baby Whale’. It was a work of art and a source of great pride.

Mysteriously this van made a 9000 mile journey across the Pacific to home port at NAS Alameda, CA. (Ship’s crane, back of the hangar bay, stack the squadron gear with it, hope nobody asks . . .) It was about six months of same delivery van duty before some high ranking folks spotted it. Even then wholesome spirit of the affair was recognized. The instructions were ‘Guys, it looks great, but we can’t do this stateside.’ Off it went on the next carrier out, back to its home.

Wish I had thought to take a picture.

[Nicolas]

Indeed, they do that kind of stuff. And the fact that this one looked more like a V2 model than what it actual was might be the explanation how quite sensitive stuff -which the B61 family is- got out of military hands. As said, the only other trace in private hands I could find was a training control panel in a private computer museum and someone selling a B61 chute in 2008.

[Nicolas]

I measured my 'chute. Old B61's used a 17 foot diameter nylon ribbon chute. Mine turns out to be a (approximately) 11.5 foot diameter nylon ribbon chute. Potato, po-tah-to, folded up it looks allright. And as in-house decoration, it's already plenty huge.

I've seen pics of experimental drops that used closed chutes rather than ribbon chutes, but normally it should be a ribbon one as it can be dropped at M1.2. My chute has the correct thin ribbon design, so for the looks of it this one is perfect. And it is army green, which adds to the atmosphere. As does the intense nylon tent smell.

[Nicolas]

The nosecone is now about 100% paint free. It's not polished (it has black spots, no orange/brown rust though), and with this kind of steel that would be a hard task. The inside of the nosecone is quite rusty. It's surface rust, and as the steel is very thick this is no problem in itself. It is very hard to sand it off though, as inside the cone is hard to reach with powertools and the rust is too hard to sand by hand. Should I just leave it as is, or can/should I do something about it?

Meanwhile I've started on the tail. Everything from the fins up is now roughly paint free. There were loads of paint up there, so I had to use rough sanding paper to get through. Below, the aluminum is partially oxidized (dark aluminum "rust") as expected. After finishing with the rough sanding paper, I go over it once more with fine paper to remove the last bits of papers and get a smoother finish. If I'd really want to polish the aluminum, I'd have to work a long time with the right powertools as there would have to be quite some material removed to get at clean aluminum.

Given that it'd be a lot of work to polish the tail, and that it's made of not too thick plate so there is a risk involved, combined with how difficult it would be to polish the top, I think I won't polish them. I'll make them as smooth as possible with the tools I'm using now, and then I'll spray them in some aluminum colour. It'd be the only way to give a steel cone and alu tail the same colour anyway. As the examples you see on the internet have a homogeneous colour as well, they are either all alu (my cone is a heavy BDU steel cone; B61 cones might have been alu) or painted as well. With some primer, sanding of the primer and then colour paint, I think I'll get a smooth finish.

I'm going to move outside to do the rest of the sanding, as the thick paint creates a lot of dust. And I'll buy myself a mask, as I don't know whether it is lead based paint or not.

[Trebuchet]

You might want to get some rust-killing paint (in the US, that would be on the order of Rustoleum) to put on the inside of the nose.

Is it practical to remove the fins? That might make it easier to clean the body as well as to catch any corrosion under the fin attach points.