B-36 Peacemaker.

[Bluehawk]

I see those Camel regulars there!

[Sabrejet]

Remote controlled dorsal turret.

 

[Sabrejet]

Inside the Consolidated assembly plant.

 

[Sabrejet]

A big, beautiful bird!

 

[Lee Ragan]

The B-36 made a noise like no other plane before or since. Back in the 50's when they were in service, you could often hear them, but couldn't see them. When I was about 10 years old, I did see one fly over town at a pretty low altitude and everything shook from the throb of those 6 big Pratt & Whitney "Corncob", radials.

Later on when I was in the Air Force in the late 60's, I knew several guys who either worked on or crewed in the B-36 and I did see the one at Chanute AFB close up. Quite an engineering marvel for its day.

[Sabrejet]

The B-36 made a noise like no other plane before or since. Back in the 50's when they were in service, you could often hear them, but couldn't see them. When I was about 10 years old, I did see one fly over town at a pretty low altitude and everything shook from the throb of those 6 big Pratt & Whitney "Corncob", radials.

Later on when I was in the Air Force in the late 60's, I knew several guys who either worked on or crewed in the B-36 and I did see the one at Chanute AFB close up. Quite an engineering marvel for its day.

 

Wouldn't it be something if they could put one back into the air again!? Anyone know how many survivors there are?

[67Rally]

Wouldn't it be something if they could put one back into the air again!? Anyone know how many survivors there are?

 

 

From wiki:

 

Only four complete (and one stored) B-36 type aircraft survive today, from the 384 produced.

 

YB-36/RB-36E Peacemaker, s/n 42-13571, is in the private collection of the late Walter Soplata in Newbury, Ohio. This was the first prototype to be converted to the bubble canopy used on production B-36s. It was on display in the 1950s and 1960s at the former site of the Air Force Museum, now the National Museum of the United States Air Force, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. When the museum's current location at Wright-Patterson was being developed in the late 1950s, the cost of moving the bomber was more than simply flying a different B-36 to the new location and the aircraft was slated to be scrapped. It was cut up at the old museum site by the summer of 1972. Instead, Soplata bought it and transported the pieces by truck to his farm, where it sits today in several large pieces. The bomb bay currently contains a complete P-47N still packed in its original shipping crate.

 

RB-36H Peacemaker, s/n 51-13730, at the Castle Air Museum at the former Castle Air Force Base in Atwater, California.

 

B-36J Peacemaker, s/n 52-2217, at the Strategic Air and Space Museum, formerly located at Offutt Air Force Base, and now just off base near Ashland, Nebraska.

 

B-36J Peacemaker, s/n 52-2220, at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, (formerly The U.S. Air Force Museum) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. Its flight to the museum from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona on 30 April 1959 was the last flight of a B-36. This B-36J replaced the former Air Force Museum's original YB-36 AF Serial Number 42-13571 (see above). This was also the first aircraft to be placed in the Museum's new display hangar, and was not moved again until relocated to the Museum's latest addition in 2003. It is displayed alongside the only surviving example of the massive 9 ft (2.7 m) XB-36 wheel and tire.

 

B-36J Peacemaker, s/n 52-2827, at the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona. It was the final B-36 built, named "The City of Fort Worth", and loaned to the city of Fort Worth, Texas on 12 February 1959. It sat on the field at the Greater Southwest International Airport until that property was redeveloped as a business park (some attempts were made to begin restoration there, during in the 1970s). It then moved to the short-lived Southwest Aero Museum, which was located between the former Carswell Air Force Base (now Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth) and the former General Dynamics (now Lockheed Martin) assembly plant, where it was originally built; some restoration took place while at the plant. As Lockheed Martin had no place to display the finished aircraft, and local community efforts in Fort Worth to build a facility to house and maintain the massive aircraft fell short, the USAF Museum retook possession of the aircraft and it was transported to Tucson, Arizona for loan to the Pima Air & Space Museum. It is now restored and reassembled at that museum, just south of Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona and is displayed at that location.

[Sabrejet]

Excellent....thanks for the info! :thumbsup:

[Sabrejet]

Up, up and away...!!

 

[Sabrejet]

The remote-controlled turrets are awesome!

 

[COOKIEMAN]

B-36 was agreat aircraft. While going through Air Police School at Parks AFB CA, winter of 64-65, used to see them fly over. You could also see F-100s and Navy jets trying to attack them. Great times.

 

Did a quick search through my stuff and found a B-32 2500 Hour Pin, picture attached. It is in the original box, was made by Haltom's (Jewelry), Fort Wort TX. this makes sense, that's where they were made by Convair.

[Sabrejet]

B-36 was agreat aircraft. While going through Air Police School at Parks AFB CA, winter of 64-65, used to see them fly over. You could also see F-100s and Navy jets trying to attack them. Great times.

 

Did a quick search through my stuff and found a B-32 2500 Hour Pin, picture attached. It is in the original box, was made by Haltom's (Jewelry), Fort Wort TX. this makes sense, that's where they were made by Convair.

 

 

Niiiice! That's a very cool souvenir! :thumbsup:

[dadwasajarhead]

B-36 was agreat aircraft. While going through Air Police School at Parks AFB CA, winter of 64-65, used to see them fly over. You could also see F-100s and Navy jets trying to attack them. Great times.

 

Did a quick search through my stuff and found a B-32 2500 Hour Pin, picture attached. It is in the original box, was made by Haltom's (Jewelry), Fort Wort TX. this makes sense, that's where they were made by Convair.

 

Did you mean 54-55 instead of 64-65? Last flight of a B-36 was in 1959!

 

Just wanted to add my two cents worth. This is also my favorite airplane. When I was a kid (about 1969) growing up next to the Ontario Airport in Southern California the weekend wasn't complete without a ride on our bikes to the old Air Museum. The B-36 nose was cut off at the pressure bulkhead and displayed on a hard stand made of railroad ties. As a ten year olf I was still at least a foot taller than the horizontal seam between the nose blister and the upper nose 20mm gun bay. That's how cramped it was for the Navigator/Radar Nav/and front observer (if they had one). Bending down I tried to look into the compartment, but the metal webbing that held the forward (hemispherical) gunsight compass, lamps was so intricate that no space bigger than the palm of your hand was open to look through.

 

One day, the museum abruptly closed down. All of the planes were left abandoned. My brother and dad hapened to be driving by when people were going through UNATTENDED! My brother got to crawl all through the B-36 nose. When they came home that night, they told me all about it. I begged my dad to take me there, so I also could go through the B-36 nose. When we went back there the next morning we were promptly chased out by a security guard. Needless to say, I was overcome with grief. Many nights I layed in bed, dreaming about what the interior of that compartment must have looked like. I pestered my brother to death, asking him questions and details about all of the on-board stations.

 

Low and behold, one day, when I was a freshman in high school (about 1972) I saw that nose again, in a fenced lot on Mission Blvd. My brother and I went down there, after 5:00 p.m. on a weeknight, hoping to get a chance to "hop the fence". One evening, I tried it, only to my horror that THREE BIG ROTWEILERS came after me. I barely got back over the fence (barbed wire and all) with my life. Later in the year, some hippies broke into the lot and pored paint over the nose. These creeps painted peace signs, etc. on her. Talk about the final indignity.

 

A few years ago I bought a copy of Myers Jacobsens's book: "The B-36 Peacemaker- America's Big Stick". It had a picture of that nose, in its vandalized state, sometime before it was cut up for scrap in 1973. I loved that old bird. Some nights I still have dreams that I got to crawl through it.

[Moonpie]

The photo below was taken of the B-36 at the United States Air force Museum at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in the 1960's before they moved to their present location, she looks a bit sad to me.

 

Note the F-82 under the B-36 wing (the young fella in the stroller is not me)!

 

Phil

[ikar]

That was one impressive aircraft, even on the ground.

 

Here's it's cousin:

 

 

and you could work on the engines inflight

 

[SilverWings]

Here is a shot of a B-36 at an airshow in Denver Colorado - Lowery AFB

[Vahe Demirjian]

In the early 1950s Convair proposed an experimental nuclear-powered aircraft based on the B-36, designated X-6. The X-6 would have had the same airframe as the B-36 except that it utilized a new nose section including a 12-ton lead and rubber shield, and four General Electric J53s (the nuclear-powered derivative of the J47 turbojet) were situated below the fuselage center section fueled by a P-1 nuclear reactor. The X-6 was one component of the MX-1589 scheme from Air Material Command to test the feasibility of a nuclear-powered aircraft, the other being the NB-36H nuclear reactor testbed designed to measure the effects of nuclear radiation on the aircrew. The X-6 had to be canceled for budgetary reasons before the planned conversion of two B-36s to the X-6 could begin, but one B-36 was converted to the NB-36H.

 

Source: https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/x-6-mock-up.9406

[Scott C.]

This is another great USMF thread I'm just now discovering. I love the photos above of the NB-36H project model - I was aware of the planned nuclear jet engines, but this is the first time I've seen how they were meant to be applied.

 

Below are some photos given to me by my dad taken during an 'open house' at Sand Diego's Lindbergh Field (now San Diego International Airport) from the late 1950s. The cargo version prototype was designated the XC-99 and only one was built. One of the photos below shows it on approach over downtown near the El Cortez Hotel - at one time, the tallest building on the San Diego skyline. Also included are photos from the open house of a production B-36 - along with a local reproduction of Charles Linbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, and a B-36 1000-hour pin from my collection.