Convair B-36 Peacemaker
The Convair B-36 Peacemaker was a six-engined piston bomber, later given four auxiliary jet engines, designed during the Second World War to bomb Germany from bases in the United States. It first flew in August 1946 and served with Strategic Air Command from 1948 to 1959 as the backbone of the early Cold War nuclear deterrent, alongside a large family of RB-36 reconnaissance versions. Production is counted differently by different sources, at 383 to 385 aircraft. The B-36 never flew in combat, and four complete aircraft survive.
Why It Mattered
The B-36 was the largest bomber produced by the United States, and the last American bomber powered by piston engines. In the first years of the Cold War it stood as the symbol of American air power, and it was the backbone of Strategic Air Command in that command's formative years. Its reach made the role possible from home bases, since its combat radius matched the great-circle route from Maine to Leningrad. An Air Force general quoted by Air & Space Forces Magazine called it the first major weapon system to enter the operational inventory, perform its deterrent mission superbly, and be retired without firing a shot in anger.
Design Notes
The design began in the spring of 1941, when the U.S. Army asked builders for an airplane that could take off from American soil, bomb Germany, and fly home. Consolidated's answer spanned 230 feet from wingtip to wingtip, and the Army ordered a pair of prototypes on November 15, 1941. Consolidated merged with Vultee in 1943, and the combined company, Convair, carried the project through to production. Six Pratt & Whitney Wasp Major engines were faired into the wing's trailing edges, their 19-foot propellers turning behind the wing in pusher configuration. The wing was more than seven feet thick at the root, thick enough for a crewman to crawl inside and reach the engines in flight. Later variants added two pods near the wingtips, each housing two General Electric J-47 jets — "six turning and four burning" — used for takeoff, for climbing to extreme altitudes, and for dashing across hostile territory.
Operational History
The Air Corps gave Convair a letter of intent for 100 B-36s in July 1943, well before the prototypes had flown. The prototype finally flew on August 8, 1946, a year after the war it was designed for had ended, and the type entered service in the summer of 1948. Production totals are counted differently by different sources: Pima Air & Space counts 383 built between 1947 and 1954, Air & Space Forces Magazine counts 385 delivered, and Wikipedia's infobox gives 384. The bomber's deterrent role placed it at the centre of the 1949 "revolt of the admirals," when the cancellation of the Navy's super-carrier United States set off a dispute pitting the Navy's aircraft carrier against the Air Force's strategic bombing force. In 1951 B-36s flew from Texas to airfields in Britain and Morocco, briefly bringing the Soviet capital and most Soviet territory within their combat radius. Reconnaissance RB-36s, introduced in 1949 and 1950, carried fourteen cameras and an airborne darkroom with crews of up to 22, and the Air Force later bought 73 RB-36H reconnaissance versions alone. The B-36 never went to war and never dropped a bomb in anger. Its first overseas deployment with an Air Force unit came only in 1955, to Britain and Guam, and all B-36s were out of service by the first months of 1959.
Afterlife
The B-36 turned out to be a placeholder for the B-52 Stratofortress, and Convair's all-jet YB-60 derivative was, in Smithsonian Magazine's assessment, inferior in every respect to its Boeing competitor. Two one-off derivatives had careers of their own: the XC-99, a cargo and transport version of which a single example was built, and the NB-36H, one B-36 converted as a test-bed for an airborne nuclear reactor, which first flew on July 20, 1955. Almost the whole fleet was scrapped, and only four complete B-36 aircraft survive. Among them is the last B-36 built, B-36J 52-2827, displayed by the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona.