Comments on: Memphis Belle WWII Bomber Contrails – 1944

By: Uncinus

Uncinus — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 16:08:03 +0000

Yes, lots of weather at 25,000 feet. Sailplane pilots have ridden thermals up over 30,000 feet, and mountain waves up to 50,000 feet. There’s lots of movement in the atmoshere – that’s what turbulance is.

The tropopause is not so much like:

more like:

Of, as actually measured over Europe, in blue here:

(from http://www.fz-juelich.de/nic/Publikationen/Broschuere1998/umwelt-e.html )

By: JFDee

JFDee — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 13:53:45 +0000

Troposphere reaches up to 11km minimum, as I learned for my license. That’s around 36060 ft – the bombers were climbing to 25000 ft, according to narrator. That’s still in “weather” range.

By: JazzRoc

JazzRoc — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 12:09:29 +0000

U: “Most likely a thermal. A column of rising warmer air.”

Not so likely at the tropopause or above, surely?

There again, maybe another gaggle of bombers may have preceded them at a lower altitude… so maybe it is QUITE likely, come to think of it…

By: Uncinus

Uncinus — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 22:44:44 +0000

Most likely a thermal. A column of rising warmer air.

By: MikeC

MikeC — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 22:27:41 +0000

Some partos of the video give insight into how the atmosphere is not uniform –

At about 42 and 48 seconds you’ll see contrails “blip” from one of the aircraft in shot – they disappear for a second from all 4 engines – I guess this is because they pass through a small volume of air that has different characteristics – a volume that adjacent aircraft do not pass through.

And from 50-58 seconds (roughly) there is a bomber in the foreground not generating contrails, while those higher in the background all do – illustrating the relatively short distances that can affect contrail formation.

Or alternatively the first one is showing that the pilots knocked their secret spraying switches by accident, and the 2nd one shows that the aircraft spraying their comrades are lighter because they have ditched all that weight……but that might just be the sarcastic cynic in me talking