Hi, All,
Since I added the flare dispensers, I thought I would go ahead and build some D-21 chaff magazines for the chaff dispensers. I apologize if the following description gets a little long winded.
Updated 7/21/19.
The chaff system on the B-52D was the AN/ALE-27 dispenser system, made by Lundy Corp. It consisted of 8 electrically-operated dispensers, 4 on each side of the 47-section in the tail of the airplane. There were 8 chaff ports on each side with 1 dispenser servicing 2 ports (chaff ports shown below).
The picture below shows 4 chaff dispensers, each holding 2 D21 chaff magazines.
A single chaff magazine is shown in the photo below. There were 16 of these on each aircraft. The magazines were inserted into the dispensers using the two curved hooks at the bottom and rotated to a vertical position, then locked into place with clamps.
The chaff magazines were metal cases about 4 1/2 feet long and each magazine had two chaff channels. Each channel could hold a variety of different chaff bundles. These bundles were different thicknesses so the total number varied depending on the mission. Each magazine had two U-shaped handles that were used for carrying and mounting.
The magazines had spring-loaded “feeders” in each channel that were latched to the top during loading. After loading, the feeders were released. The feeders forced the chaff bundles down to the “gate” of each channel. The gate was a movable plate that held each bundle ready to be ejected. Each plate contained a cutter that ripped open the bundles as they were ejected. The plate could be adjusted for different sized bundles.
Each dispenser had an electric motor that drove four pawls mounted on a shaft, two for each chaff port, as shown below. The pawls had serrated edges that gripped the bundles and forced them out the chaff port. Each dispenser was programmed and activated by its own control panel at the EWO’s position.
One of the many jobs of the ECM tech was to load the chaff magazines prior to a mission. There were 16 chaff magazines per plane and they usually flew 4 planes in a cell, so there could be a lot of magazine loading to do depending on how much they were used.
Once the magazines were loaded at the shop, they had to be carried out to the plane and manually heaved up into the 47 section. This usually involved two technicians. One tech on the ground passed a magazine to a tech on a B-4 stand under the 47-Section hatch and that tech would then heave the magazine up into the aircraft and onto a catwalk that ran through the 47 section.
Each magazine weighed about 40 lb fully loaded, so after heaving 8-16 of these, you were ready for a break. Fortunately, we didn’t have to load magazines for every mission since chaff wasn’t always used. But if any dispenser was used, its magazines had to be reloaded.
Below is a photo of some of the 8 magazines I made.
Cheers,
Russ
