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Mind you, the jet has only a minimal fuel load on board and no passengers or cargo. She’s not quite as sprightly with a full load.
Mind you, the jet has only a minimal fuel load on board and no passengers or cargo. She’s not quite as sprightly with a full load.
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Yup, take a look at max vs empty weight – 557,000lbs to 304,000lbs. Add 25,000lbs of fuel (enough for 2hrs flying) to 304,000lbs and you get 329,000lbs which is 114 tons below maximum. If the interior is ‘green’ ie no seats, carpets or shell that will save a few tons too.
I’m also willing to bet that the pilots deliberately waited until the last minute to rotate. The extra speed above VR they built up with the wing unloaded was then traded for altitude in that zoom climb.
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Anyone else struck by the irony of a Boeing product other than B52 or KC135 operating in the skies of Vietnam?
Would like to have seen a side-view of the takeoff so that we could see the true angle vice the perspective as shown (which did look impressive, but probably not quite as extreme as it would appear).
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Even from the angle of view it’s pretty extreme. Not vertical as the thing doesn’t have that kind of power available, but it’s still a very large climb angle for an AC like that.
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XBradTC 
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