Watch a B-52 land in a strong crosswind and it looks like something has gone badly wrong. The bomber comes down the approach pointing well off to one side of the runway, touches down still pointing that way, and rolls out with its nose aimed at the grass while its wheels track perfectly straight down the centreline.

Nothing has gone wrong. The B-52 is the only aircraft in service that lands like this, and it does it on purpose, thanks to a landing gear feature from the early 1950s that almost no other aircraft has used.

How Every Other Aircraft Handles a Crosswind

An aircraft flies with the air mass, so in a crosswind it has to point partly into the wind to track straight along the runway. That is the crab. Landing in a crab would put a heavy sideways load on conventional landing gear, so pilots of most aircraft remove it just before touchdown: they kick the nose straight with rudder, and hold the upwind wing slightly low with aileron so the aircraft does not drift. Airliners, fighters and light aircraft all use some version of this.

On the B-52 that technique runs into geometry. The bomber sits on a bicycle-style gear: four two-wheel trucks lined up under the fuselage, with only small outrigger wheels near the wingtips to keep it upright on the ground. The wing spans 185 feet, the engine pods hang beneath it, and the fuselage is long and slender. Roll the wing down even slightly near the ground and the tip moves a long way.

A wingtip, outrigger or engine pod touching the runway at landing speed is exactly the accident the designers set out to avoid. Their answer was to leave the aircraft crabbed and turn the wheels instead.

The Crosswind Crab System

Both pairs of main gear trucks on the B-52 can be swivelled to either side. NASA’s history of aircraft design describes the system plainly:

Before landing, the crew sets the runway heading on a control in the cockpit. The gear then keeps itself aligned with that heading while the fuselage points wherever the wind requires. The bomber touches down with wings level, still in its crab, and rolls out that way.

The video above, filmed at RAF Fairford in March 2022, shows a B-52H rolling down the runway sideways in a strong crosswind, exactly as designed.

Takeoffs Too

The system works in both directions. A B-52 can take off with the gear set for the crosswind, running down the runway with its nose pointing into wind and lifting off already in the crab it needs for the climb-out. Because the bicycle gear does not let the bomber rotate much, the wing is set at a high angle on the fuselage, so the B-52 lifts off in a nearly level attitude.

What the Reel Gets Right, and What It Overstates

The reel says a crosswind landing done the normal way “should rip its wings off”. That is dramatic but not the real risk. The danger is a wingtip, outrigger wheel or outboard engine pod striking the runway if the pilots lower a wing, and the side load on the tandem gear if they touched down crabbed without the system. Its point about the low engines is broadly right: the pods and outriggers leave little room between the wing and the ground once the aircraft rolls even slightly.

The crab system has occasionally had side effects of its own. During a crab-walk demonstration at the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford in 2023, a B-52 with its wing swinging over the runway edge reportedly took out a row of runway edge lights.

The B-52 is not quite unique in having the idea. Early C-5A Galaxies were built with a crosswind positioning capability for their landing gear, later removed. But the B-52 is the aircraft that has relied on it for seven decades, and with the B-52J re-engining programme it is set to keep doing so into the 2050s.

Sources: NASA, Laurence Loftin, Quest for Performance: The Evolution of Modern Aircraft (NASA SP-468, 1985); US Air Force B-52H fact sheet and photo releases; The War Zone; The Aviationist (2020, 2024); Fear of Landing; Around the Pattern (C-5A crosswind gear); Wikimedia Commons.