Between 1949 and 1959, the massive 70 metre wingspan, ten engined B36 was the delivery vehicle for Americas 'cold war' Nuclear Deterrent, - their means of delivery of massive nuclear bombs from mainland USA to the USSR.
The 'Peacemaker' had a payload of 33,000 kilos and an intercontinental range of 16,000 kilometres without re-fuelling.
Following my post about the Colt "Peacemaker" Revolver, a mate John drew my attention to this other "Peacemaker" I'd never heard of it - as despite working for an airline for twenty-nine years, - I'm not that fascinated by aircraft or by sitting inside them!
- The truth is that I actually hate flying and spend the hours when I'm locked-up inside those metal tubes testing the floor by intermittently pushing against it with my feet to check that it's still there.
The thickest point of those huge wings was 2.3 metres giving a crawl space inside the wing that let the crew work on the engines in flight - which is lucky, as those engines, - all ten of them, were not very reliable.
- The six propeller Pratt & Whitney engines had three bladed 5.8 metre propellers and were mounted backwards as pushers. - Problem #1 was that they were designed to point the other way and the reversed mounting caused overheating, engine fires, and carburettor icing.
B-36 TAKE-OFF
- Then the two turbo-jets each mounted in pods near the wingtip were very thirsty (and smokey!) so were mostly shut-down and their intakes blanked-off by louvres operated from the flight deck. But the four General Electric jet-engines did greatly help with take-off power and gave a sprint capacity when speed or extra height was needed.
On Take-off, the Captain of the 15 man crews would report to the control tower " - Six turnin' and four burnin' ".
Over time, with a history of poor running, overheating and engine fires - this catch phrase changed to:
" - Two turning, two burning, two smoking, two choking, and two more unaccounted for!".
The aircraft was too big to fit inside hangers for maintenance and tech crews despaired of such tasks as changing the 336 spark plugs on the freezing ground in Northern Arctic Continental America where the B36 operated from. - Each of the six 28 cylinder radial engines had 56 spark plugs!
One extreme experiment using a B36 was 215 flight hours equipped with an air cooled nuclear reactor being carried to see what effect it might have on the aircraft systems(!) during which test time the reactor became 'critical' for 89 hours! - They were investigating whether nuclear powered propulsion was usable for aircraft. - "Only in America!" - But they did have a four ton lead disc shield in the middle of the aircraft between the reactor and the cockpit.
Worth reading more about the B36 'Peacemaker' on Google, - if you're into aircraft history eh.
Marty K
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