Long range strategic bomber, the largest mass-produced piston-engined aircraft ever built, and with the longest wingspan of any combat aircraft ever built, at 230 ft (70.1 m).
Equipped with 10 engines, 6 pistons and 4 jet engines, colloquially called six turning and four burning, since her design started when the piston engine was still king, but ended when the dawn of the jet engine began.
A big bomb bay designed for a large nuke. I was a the Air Force museum last month...
ReplyDeleteThat was from Strategic Air Command, a ripping yarn of a movie!
ReplyDeleteSAC, Staring: Brigadier General Jimmy Stewart. Gen. Stewart a movie star we can really admire, unlike the dimwits today!
DeleteVerily!
DeleteJudging from the background planes, this is a restored beauty flying now.
ReplyDeleteI think the jets were only used at takeoff and on the actual bombing run. Otherwise, 200 knots all the way to Moscow.
There are no flying B36's. Even the one at the USAF museum is incomplete and could not be restored to flight status. The aircraft was as likely to catch fire on the way to target as it was to bomb the target. Even with all 10 engine's putting out max power it took a ten mile long runway. It burned more fuel on ONE training flight than the total fuel inventory for the F-86's for that month. It was a slow, gas guzzling fire prone, dangerous dog of an aircraft on it's best day. The USAF got rid of it at the first opportunity and replaced it almost as fast as they got the B-47's to do it with.----Ray
DeleteLet's see regular mission cruise on a B-17 was 230 to 250 knots and B-29's were over 300 I would expect this bad boy to be over 300 on pusher props alone and over 400 with the fan torches lit. Still too slow for the jet age.
ReplyDeleteSpin
Cruising speed seems to have been "slow" - 200 to 230 miles per hour. The B-36 was not meant to be faster, just to fly higher (and longer) than anything else. It did that, for the most part.
DeleteHunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Ga. mid fifties....I was a punk of five when my Dad went to redo the parking apron and taxi lines to accommodate these big boys....I think they used to fly in and out of Mac Dill AFB in Tampa in the 50's....then the B-47s came along....
ReplyDeleteIn the 1980's I did a couple of short stints at Chanute AFB for USAF technical training. This aircraft was on static display on the route we took to and from the training area. Was always impressed. And a B58 was displayed one street over.
ReplyDeleteThe description should read, "....6 piston engines, and four jet engines." And as the piston engines were Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Majors, that would be an astonishing 128 pistons.
ReplyDeleteThe droning overhead of my youth - lived in Dallas, would fairly frequently get high flyovers from the SAC base in Ft. Worth, Carswell AFB.
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