saying "cooling issues" implies the engines were overheating, but the fires were actually due to the carburetors freezing, leading to uncontrolled fuel flow. The engines being effectively backwards meant the parts that are normally heated by hot air coming off the cylinders were instead being cooled by the air flowing from in front of the engine. I learned that from an Air Force veteran working at an air museum where they had one of those engines on display.
@@cwheels01 yeah but I bet some engineer had an idea like "hey, maybe with the engines this way it would do X better..." And then some higher up grabbed onto it and held on for dear life even when the engineers tested it out and said "y'know, maybe it won't work as well as we thought and we should go back to the drawing board." Or the ever famous "we don't have time to go back to the drawing board on this, so fuck it we go with the design we have."
Sounds very plausible. The pusher config gave greater range less turbulent airflow over the wing, laminar flow. The military is always pushing the boundaries on what's possible because that's what the bad guys are going to be doing. Both engines on the P-38 were critical, not to see how many of our pilots they could kill but because it gave better performance that way.
The B29s all fell out of the sky because their engines loved catching on fire They tried putting close to original enginrs on Doc but after realizing how much they suck, switched to connie-spec radials.
2 turning, 2 burning, 2 choking, 2 smoking and 2 more unaccounted for, the unofficial slogan of the B-36 Edit: Jesus christ, can I get like 20 people to sub to mt channel? This has gotta be my most liked comment
@@cisarovnajosefina4525 No “insight” needed. The engines were designed to be pullers, yet they were mounted to be pushers. Engineering math would show that engines designed to be pullers wouldn’t be anywhere near as productive or efficient if mounted as pushers.
@@cisarovnajosefina4525 More than likely, yes, yet decided to experiment anyway obviously. The wings would’ve needed to be redesigned to mount the pulling engines in a pull orientation, then all the work done to actually do this. Obviously this was decided to be too expensive as the B52’s were starting to come online and sinking money into both projects wouldn’t have made sense.
Somewhat. 28 cylinders per is still a loooooot of moving parts to expect much reliability. Jet engines were a much better choice when available-fewer moving parts, more power for the weight, etc.
Between the age of 3 and 5 I lived on Fairchild AFB (my dad was army Corp of engineers, in charge of runway construction) and I can tell you that they flew...with a thunderous roar. Our house was out at the end of officers row, about were they would break above house house top level. About 0500 5 days a week the whole wing took off.
Fun fact. The B-36 was especially unreliable in Alaska. Because the engines were in a pusher configuration, the arctic air getting into the intakes was NOT good for the aircraft. And may have lead to a broken arrow incident along the Pacific coast of canada.
actually it was greenland not canada close but not canada and there is still missing nuke parts they never bothered to even try tk recover greenland got SACed
@@cl844 I think you have the wrong name, broken arrow is when a US military position gets overrun. It’s a request for all available support, and a status report all in one.
"2 turning, 2 burning, 2 choking, 2 smoking and 2 more unaccounted for" "Sounds like a Kinky party, I m in" "It brings nuclear kaboom too" "Cool, is that some kinda Voldaka cocktail" "sure"
I knew a man who was a WWII aircraft mechanic. He mentioned this as well, but more than anything he despised the F4U Corsair, which is my favorite plane. Said they were the greatest fighter plane ever imagined, but the worst to work on. Every time they took off, he hoped they wouldn't run out of oil. They leaked all over with no hope of stopping it. But considering they were designed, built, and in the air during active wartime, it makes sense they would have been rushed. Incredible plane though
Of course, the B-36 was the most complex piece of machinery ever devised by Man up to that point! More complexity, running on the razor's edge of technology, of course there will be issues.
That's just nonsense it was an absolute failure that forced the development of a better bomber, and was fast obsolete when the Soviets invented the ICBM
Always wondered if they had separate fuel for the jet engines. Kinda expensive to burn high quality gas meant for the radials. On the other hand fuel management would be complex.
Oh absolutely had different fuel systems. Radials are 4 stroke and use high octane gasoline. Jets use kerosene, which is very similar to diesel fuel. Neither are compatible/ interchangeable with the other engine.
@@pickle4332 so, looked it up more, and looks like jets "can" burn gasoline, BUT it will rapidly degrade the mechanical fuel systems most likely. Not so much the engine itself, but kerosene/diesel acts as a lubricant itself, while gasoline acts as a solvent which strips oil from parts. Possible with modifications? Probably. However, one of the greatest benefits of jet fuel (especially in combat situations) is that it doesn't burn easily in leaks or accidents. It's MUCH safer than gasoline.
The B-52 which is still operational also has eight engines. The B-36 had 10, the Dornier Do X had 12, and NASA had a solar powered unmanned aircraft named Helios HP01 with 14 motors.
Fun fact my great grandpa made that emblem😊 its cool to see it in more places than pictures my family has passed down (the strategic air command emblem) his name was Robert Thor Barnes. He won a contest and got to have his art as the emblem for the S.A.C. I didn't think much of it as a kid but I'm happy I got to learn about him as much as I did, we still have most of his old art collection. Man was an insane artist tbh
I was lucky enough to find myself in Dayton, OH for a work trip recently. We had about one hour left to see the Air Force Museum in this video, so we did a speed run in our work clothes. It’s truly massive and everyone that works there are amazing. They gave us great directions to see all the best parts and we were sweating by the end of it. Really glad we went!
Strategic Air Command with Jimmy Stewart is a great movie that featured so many beautiful scenes of the B-36 and the B-47 Worth Watching if you are an aviation lover
@@earlwyss520 No , I just ordered it new DVD on Amazon Thank you looking forward to watching it!!! By the way, I was reading the movie, Doctor Strange love and all the B-52 scenes the Air Force would not give them any access to an actual B-52 interior (still secret) to film that movie so the entire interior of the B-52 in Dr. Strangelove was completely made up and amazingly it was very accurate to the real B-52 .
I worked with an engineer who always wore a B-36 tie tack. He never talked much about it other than to say he flew the B-36. And the story the younger engineers in his department told was that he flew the last operational B-36 to the Boneyard at Davis Monthan AFB.
I can comfirm this. My dad was a USAAF & US Air Force pilot and flight instructor. He mostly flew B29, B50 and their tanker variants. But he and a crew were sent from England to N. Africa to retrieve a B36 back to England "for maintenance"... only to find out that just six of its ten engines were functional. They still were able to get it in the air and make the flight back. Of course, it wasn't "heavy" with a bomb load and might even have had a reduced fuel, since the distance was probably only about 1/4 the airplane's range when unloaded. With a 230 foot wingspan, the B36 was huge! In comparison, a B29 has 141 foot wingspan and over 50 feet less length. Although it was only 3 foot longer than the B52 that followed, the B36 had 45 foot wider wingspan! In fact, only five aircraft with greater wingspan than B36 have ever flown. Three of those were one-off experimental. The two that saw regular production and service were the Antonov AN124 (1982) and Airbus A380 (2005), which the B36 preceded by 36 and 61 years, respectively.
I love the slogans the GIs came up with. My time in was with one of the most diverse, talented, intelligent group of people I have ever been around. I wish I had one of our turnover logs just to admire the artwork inside. One of my coworkers had a photographic memory and could go to the grocery store and had his check (that is an archaic method we used to pay for things) before the cashier had rung up the total. And if the totals were different, he was right.
My dad worked on them when he was in the Air Force he didn't particularly care for them. Air Force was all about getting air frames in the air and this thing was a beast to keep flying.
When I visited the US Air Force museum, I found this plane strange since it had two types of propulsion, but it was very interesting nonetheless. Glad to see other people interested too.
One of the buildings at Wright-Patt I worked in was used to do some material testing on the B-36. They had to do some flex testing on the wings of the plane, and since it would be easier to test the flex if the plane was upside down, they used a couple of cranes inside the building and actually flipped the plane over. There are photos of the work in the building lobby. (Bldg 65, the huge one just off the National Air Force Museum's old runway.)
Curious on why they didn't just fully replace the prop with jets rather than this hybrid configuration. I guess a jet would jut cut the bomber's range?
Two reasons. One, the origins of the program were in 1941, when there was a possibility that we might need to hit Germany from the continental US and liberate the UK from invaders. Two, early model jets lacked reliability, power, and fuel efficiency. This is also why the B-52 had eight jet engines. The earlier B-47 had six, and apparently could be seriously underpowered at the time. They DID, in fact try to rebuild this thing into a jet bomber in the form of the YB-60... which had a high degree of parts commonality with the B-36, but also looked like Convair had copied Boeing's homework.
The absolutely straining the leading edges of recip analog technology. I've heard it took 45 minutes from startup to ready for takeoff just to go through all the checklists. Probably the busiest person in front was the flight engineer, jeez just to monitor 336 spark plugs if they were firing properly etc etc etc. The aluminum cloud.
my Grandfather, funny enough used to tell a story about when he was ATC for the RCAF. "Tower, we've lost an engine!" "Okay, you have any runway." "No, TOWER, WE LOST AN ENGINE." "Do you need emergency crews?" "TOWER, the F-ING THING FELL OFF." No idea when this was, but it always makes me laugh. I sure wish I could ask him which aircraft it was. RIP, Captain T.M.
That is the Strategic Air Command Museum at the Ashland, Nebraska exit about 20 minutes west of Omaha. There are about five acres of floor space, it's a great place to run a bunch of Cub Scouts ragged when the weather prohibits outside activity.
The 707 had J57's (JT3C) and then JT3D'S. It never had J47's they weren't powerful enough. The B-47 bomber had 6 of them as did the F-86 and a number of other early designs.
It's weird that I just went to that museum 2 weeks ago, saw that plane and just thought: expensive, heavy, and the thickest wing spars I have ever seen in my life
My cousin was a Tech Sgt assigned to a B36 wing. He volunteered for a crap assignment to get away from those beast and work on something else. He was almost assigned to a B52 wing but to sent to an assignment in the Philippines during Viet Nam. He told me he was done with bombers. 😂 But I have to admit, when we went to Dayton to the museum, the two planes I most wanted to see was a B36 and the Globemaster.
There would need to be extra crew members just to man the throttle levers! Talk about task saturation! I bet it was quite the experience to fly one when all 10 engines were running right!
@John-qv5ux the 4360 wasn't on the B-29, that was a Wright 3350 duplex cyclone. And yesthat engine had troubles. The Pratt and Whitney 4360 was on the B-50, C-97/Boeing 377, C-124, and many, many others, and served everywhere from tropic jungles to the arctic.
Yeah, every high performance pusher has the same problem. Actually when you look into the history of aircraft the most common reason for a promising new design to fail is a lack of proper heat management around the engine. This makes sense as engines at best deliver ~30% of their power to the shaft and the rest is heat.
The B-36 was a stopgap compromise. Because it could fly from the US to the Soviet Union and back unrefulled, it replaced the B-29 which would have had to been stationed VERY CLOSE, probably Germany, to hit targets in the Soviet Union. And it was big enough to carry the HUGE atomic and nuclear weapons at that time. It held the line until more reliable and longer range jets were developed, such as the B-47 and the B-52.
Well actually it was originally spitballed to be able to make the round trip bomb run to Germany if England fell. In a very contentious competition the B-36 beat out the XB-49 flying wing. Jack Northrup always claimed the AF tried to force him to merge with then Convair the makers of the B-36. What ever transpired behind the scenes the AF was so pissed off they ordered all XB-49's destroyed and then destroyed all the tooling.
Complexity is inversely proportional to reliability. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and the more that can go wrong, the more likely something will.
Seems to me like the cooling issues could have been a simple fix by way of adding ductwork. Of course, it would have involved some structural changes, redesign, analysis, etc. but it would not have been too much involved.
Not sure if people realised but the video clips hes showing is from a amazing 1955 film could strategic air command nearly all of the male actors we're real life veterans so which I like to call them real life superheroes highly recommend that film to anyone who loves planes
These issues were simply a side-effect of giantism. The more equipment you have on board, the more opportunities for failure. If you have a boat with 6 outboard motors, you're 6 times as likely to have an engine failure as someone with a single engine boat. For what it was, the B36 was a colossal achievement of aviation technology. Never dropped a bomb in anger, but it still had the Ruskies sleeping with one eye open.
saying "cooling issues" implies the engines were overheating, but the fires were actually due to the carburetors freezing, leading to uncontrolled fuel flow. The engines being effectively backwards meant the parts that are normally heated by hot air coming off the cylinders were instead being cooled by the air flowing from in front of the engine. I learned that from an Air Force veteran working at an air museum where they had one of those engines on display.
You'd think a lot of people would be saying "hold up, this sounds like a bad idea"
@@cwheels01 yeah but I bet some engineer had an idea like "hey, maybe with the engines this way it would do X better..." And then some higher up grabbed onto it and held on for dear life even when the engineers tested it out and said "y'know, maybe it won't work as well as we thought and we should go back to the drawing board." Or the ever famous "we don't have time to go back to the drawing board on this, so fuck it we go with the design we have."
@@kugelblitz1557sounds like more military contracts 😂
Sounds very plausible. The pusher config gave greater range less turbulent airflow over the wing, laminar flow. The military is always pushing the boundaries on what's possible because that's what the bad guys are going to be doing. Both engines on the P-38 were critical, not to see how many of our pilots they could kill but because it gave better performance that way.
Why the heck didn’t they just turn them around
My grandfather was a b-36 pilot he told me the best part was retiring it and switching to b52s
I bet, . 😊
B36 jet engines ran on Avgas the same fuel used by the rest of the piston engines, which was rare for a jet engine
Did he ever mention about the B-47 Stratojets
@@fastone942 Interesting, did not know that thank you
Lol that's funny!!!
“The _____ was famous for reliability issues” could be used to describe about 95% of military equipment
😂 So true
"Military-grade" means lowest bid! 😅
"Its only gotta work long enough to get there" 😅
Get what you pay for 😅
The B29s all fell out of the sky because their engines loved catching on fire
They tried putting close to original enginrs on Doc but after realizing how much they suck, switched to connie-spec radials.
"And two more unaccounted for." I like that this implies that two of the engines just fell off the aircraft.
Or the also-notorious wiring issues a lot of aircraft of the era had. "Gauges are on the fritz again"
Oh they didn't fall off, they grabbed the parachutes and jumped for it
"They are still there, but sight-seeing!"
You can really feel the frustration and deprecation through that last slogan! 😂 Long past denial and bargaining, they had fully accepted it.
That the joke... ?
From what I’m hearing, it made anything but peace!
Peace Faker
piece maker
@@dj.sauerkraut9022 Peace Taker.
I love this comment
It made peace because it didn't make it to the battlefield
It never dropped a bomb in combat, so one could argue that it excelled at making peace.
Peace with it's maker maybe, never knowing if this was it's last flight...
2 turning, 2 burning, 2 choking, 2 smoking and 2 more unaccounted for, the unofficial slogan of the B-36
Edit: Jesus christ, can I get like 20 people to sub to mt channel? This has gotta be my most liked comment
But this wasn't build by Boeing ? Right ?
@sternencolonel7328 No the "B" prefix is to signify its a bomber aircraft, the B-36 peacemaker was made by Consolidated Vultee, later Convair
People can now understand why the military was very eager to move on to the B52 successor and its reliability!
@@metatechnologistThe BUFF may live for ever.
@@davidtuttle7556a couple years ago I made a pile of landing gear bolts for those from original drawings stamped 1954. It'll never die.
“2 turning, 2 burning, 2 choking, 2 smoking and 2 more unaccounted for” had me rolling 😭😭
My class in a nutshell. 💀
XD
Says a lot about our society lmao
That B-36 is at the US Air Force Museum. Last time I was there, it was leaking oil. Still. Hasn't flown in decades.
The last B-36 flew in 1959.
After all these years it is still giving problems
And its been retired for 60+ years
Amazing
Infinite oil glitch
That's why the US kept that one
You know there are more than one air force museums right?
Had the engines been mounted the way the engines were designed, probably would’ve solved the reliability issue
No way, insight they couldn't have had when it was made😮😮😮
@@cisarovnajosefina4525 No “insight” needed. The engines were designed to be pullers, yet they were mounted to be pushers. Engineering math would show that engines designed to be pullers wouldn’t be anywhere near as productive or efficient if mounted as pushers.
@@jonathonhass4178 and you think they didn't know that back then 🤨🤨
@@cisarovnajosefina4525 More than likely, yes, yet decided to experiment anyway obviously. The wings would’ve needed to be redesigned to mount the pulling engines in a pull orientation, then all the work done to actually do this. Obviously this was decided to be too expensive as the B52’s were starting to come online and sinking money into both projects wouldn’t have made sense.
Somewhat. 28 cylinders per is still a loooooot of moving parts to expect much reliability. Jet engines were a much better choice when available-fewer moving parts, more power for the weight, etc.
One of the most impressive transition aircraft ever. Saw one when I was a kid. Hard to believe it can fly
Between the age of 3 and 5 I lived on Fairchild AFB (my dad was army Corp of engineers, in charge of runway construction) and I can tell you that they flew...with a thunderous roar. Our house was out at the end of officers row, about were they would break above house house top level. About 0500 5 days a week the whole wing took off.
Where.
@@thomasmleahy6218 Fairchild AFB, about 15 miles west of Spokane Washington.
@@cbmech2563bet you never needed an alarm!
Probably had to adjust sleep schedule though
@@memethief4113 the only time it woke you up was when it was foggy and they didn't take off.
Fun fact. The B-36 was especially unreliable in Alaska. Because the engines were in a pusher configuration, the arctic air getting into the intakes was NOT good for the aircraft. And may have lead to a broken arrow incident along the Pacific coast of canada.
actually it was greenland not canada close but not canada and there is still missing nuke parts they never bothered to even try tk recover greenland got SACed
How the hell did a broken arrow incident occur in friendly territory?
@@Natediggetydog its happend at least 4 times only twice in the usa rest were greenland an spain
@@Natediggetydog like the movie what is more scary a singl lost nuke or that it has happend enought to give it a name
@@cl844 I think you have the wrong name, broken arrow is when a US military position gets overrun. It’s a request for all available support, and a status report all in one.
Engineer: how many engines do you want me to attach to the aircraft?
Director: yes
I had an uncle who was a flight mechanic on the 36s. Use to tell stories of going in the fix the engines mid flight and stuff.
"2 turning, 2 burning, 2 choking, 2 smoking and 2 more unaccounted for"
"Sounds like a Kinky party, I m in"
"It brings nuclear kaboom too"
"Cool, is that some kinda Voldaka cocktail"
"sure"
It even sometimes almost didnt catch on fire
Legend has it they even sometimes made it off the runway
I've heard rumors that one time they were actually able to get all the engines to start normally but i'm pretty sure that is just a tall tale
One of the more fun facts I've heard in a while
The thing was a powered glider, like a rubber band engine on a paper airplane
Rubber bands are more reliable
@@budwhite9591underrated comment lol
I knew a man who was a WWII aircraft mechanic. He mentioned this as well, but more than anything he despised the F4U Corsair, which is my favorite plane. Said they were the greatest fighter plane ever imagined, but the worst to work on. Every time they took off, he hoped they wouldn't run out of oil. They leaked all over with no hope of stopping it. But considering they were designed, built, and in the air during active wartime, it makes sense they would have been rushed. Incredible plane though
I would love to see the b36 added to warthunder
jsut to see it burning in the sky ?
Of course, the B-36 was the most complex piece of machinery ever devised by Man up to that point! More complexity, running on the razor's edge of technology, of course there will be issues.
That's just nonsense it was an absolute failure that forced the development of a better bomber, and was fast obsolete when the Soviets invented the ICBM
Even catches fire in the movies
Always wondered if they had separate fuel for the jet engines. Kinda expensive to burn high quality gas meant for the radials. On the other hand fuel management would be complex.
Oh absolutely had different fuel systems. Radials are 4 stroke and use high octane gasoline. Jets use kerosene, which is very similar to diesel fuel. Neither are compatible/ interchangeable with the other engine.
@@MrWhite2222can’t turbine engines burn gasoline even if it’s terribly inefficient/damaging to the engine?
@@pickle4332 so, looked it up more, and looks like jets "can" burn gasoline, BUT it will rapidly degrade the mechanical fuel systems most likely. Not so much the engine itself, but kerosene/diesel acts as a lubricant itself, while gasoline acts as a solvent which strips oil from parts.
Possible with modifications? Probably. However, one of the greatest benefits of jet fuel (especially in combat situations) is that it doesn't burn easily in leaks or accidents. It's MUCH safer than gasoline.
On a smaller bird it would, but on B-36? Adding extra dedicated JP tanks was a piece of cake. They had room to haul an entire RF-84 along too
@@MrWhite2222I know it was built during transition era but, why built a vehicle that needs two types of fuels and engineering.
Jimmy Stewart had no problems with his
Yeah I've always wondered how they did that.....maybe camera tricks?
@cbmech2563 the film was low key usaf propaganda so of course it never had failures
probably the most amount of engines for a single aircraft ever
Spruce goose had 8 4460 engines, flew a little bit over the long beach harbor and that was all.
The B-52 which is still operational also has eight engines. The B-36 had 10, the Dornier Do X had 12, and NASA had a solar powered unmanned aircraft named Helios HP01 with 14 motors.
When your engines are bad you need many
**cries in B-36 fanatic**
I feel your pain
Peacemaker or Piecemaker? 😀
First Peacemaker (Actual name is Peacemaker), now both
Fun fact my great grandpa made that emblem😊 its cool to see it in more places than pictures my family has passed down (the strategic air command emblem) his name was Robert Thor Barnes. He won a contest and got to have his art as the emblem for the S.A.C. I didn't think much of it as a kid but I'm happy I got to learn about him as much as I did, we still have most of his old art collection. Man was an insane artist tbh
I was lucky enough to find myself in Dayton, OH for a work trip recently. We had about one hour left to see the Air Force Museum in this video, so we did a speed run in our work clothes. It’s truly massive and everyone that works there are amazing. They gave us great directions to see all the best parts and we were sweating by the end of it. Really glad we went!
I want to go back and see the new experimental hangar. All the x-planes were off display when I went.
Is the XB-70 still there?
Such a beautiful aircraft and such behemoth, it would be amazing to see one returned to airworthy status
Buddy that thing wasn't air worthy when it was new
@@Veemon657 Of course it was air worthy, it could up to a whole 15 feet of altitude before the engines caught fire
Strategic Air Command with Jimmy Stewart is a great movie that featured so many beautiful scenes of the B-36 and the B-47
Worth Watching if you are an aviation lover
Great film. Ever seen "Bombers B-52?" There is a scene in the film where they're demonstrating the B-52's CLASSIFIED ability to "crab" roll sideways.
@@earlwyss520 No , I just ordered it new DVD on Amazon Thank you looking forward to watching it!!!
By the way, I was reading the movie, Doctor Strange love and all the B-52 scenes the Air Force would not give them any access to an actual B-52 interior (still secret) to film that movie so the entire interior of the B-52 in Dr. Strangelove was completely made up and amazingly it was very accurate to the real B-52 .
I worked with an engineer who always wore a B-36 tie tack. He never talked much about it other than to say he flew the B-36. And the story the younger engineers in his department told was that he flew the last operational B-36 to the Boneyard at Davis Monthan AFB.
Who could've possibly imagined that an aircraft with *_10 separate engines_* might have some mechanical problems?
Oh, I love the Dayton, Air Force museum
I can comfirm this.
My dad was a USAAF & US Air Force pilot and flight instructor. He mostly flew B29, B50 and their tanker variants. But he and a crew were sent from England to N. Africa to retrieve a B36 back to England "for maintenance"... only to find out that just six of its ten engines were functional. They still were able to get it in the air and make the flight back. Of course, it wasn't "heavy" with a bomb load and might even have had a reduced fuel, since the distance was probably only about 1/4 the airplane's range when unloaded.
With a 230 foot wingspan, the B36 was huge! In comparison, a B29 has 141 foot wingspan and over 50 feet less length. Although it was only 3 foot longer than the B52 that followed, the B36 had 45 foot wider wingspan!
In fact, only five aircraft with greater wingspan than B36 have ever flown. Three of those were one-off experimental. The two that saw regular production and service were the Antonov AN124 (1982) and Airbus A380 (2005), which the B36 preceded by 36 and 61 years, respectively.
The 44,000 pound bomb the T-12 Cloudmaker, the heaviest bomb ever made, could only be carried by the B-36 Peacemaker
'' ah yes lets put the engines backwards. nothing can go wrong and we will look so original that we will get a rise''
I love the slogans the GIs came up with. My time in was with one of the most diverse, talented, intelligent group of people I have ever been around. I wish I had one of our turnover logs just to admire the artwork inside. One of my coworkers had a photographic memory and could go to the grocery store and had his check (that is an archaic method we used to pay for things) before the cashier had rung up the total. And if the totals were different, he was right.
My dad worked on them when he was in the Air Force he didn't particularly care for them. Air Force was all about getting air frames in the air and this thing was a beast to keep flying.
I saw this aircraft at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Very cool aircraft. Thanks for the story.
When I visited the US Air Force museum, I found this plane strange since it had two types of propulsion, but it was very interesting nonetheless. Glad to see other people interested too.
One of the buildings at Wright-Patt I worked in was used to do some material testing on the B-36. They had to do some flex testing on the wings of the plane, and since it would be easier to test the flex if the plane was upside down, they used a couple of cranes inside the building and actually flipped the plane over. There are photos of the work in the building lobby. (Bldg 65, the huge one just off the National Air Force Museum's old runway.)
"this is the peace maker"
Ohh okay
"It's a bomber"
What-
There's a peacemaker, now we need a peacebreaker
Curious on why they didn't just fully replace the prop with jets rather than this hybrid configuration. I guess a jet would jut cut the bomber's range?
Two reasons. One, the origins of the program were in 1941, when there was a possibility that we might need to hit Germany from the continental US and liberate the UK from invaders. Two, early model jets lacked reliability, power, and fuel efficiency. This is also why the B-52 had eight jet engines. The earlier B-47 had six, and apparently could be seriously underpowered at the time. They DID, in fact try to rebuild this thing into a jet bomber in the form of the YB-60... which had a high degree of parts commonality with the B-36, but also looked like Convair had copied Boeing's homework.
The modification program would've cost a lot and the USAF wanted to save money for B-52
Convair DID build a prototype with all jet power and swept wings, but the USAF had already opted for the B-52.
@@Britcarjunkie the YB-60. The BUFF actually outperformed it, still.
They did in the competition that eventually went to the Boeing B-52.
Look up the XB-60 for the 8 jet type.
I'm a proud Sportys consumer.
Engineers in the piston engine age just never seemed to have got to grips with the problems of pusher propellor engines.
a buddy of mine's father was B-36 gunner. Said the aircraft caught fire just about every flight.
Awesome looking planes though
The absolutely straining the leading edges of recip analog technology.
I've heard it took 45 minutes from startup to ready for takeoff just to go through all the checklists. Probably the busiest person in front was the flight engineer, jeez just to monitor 336 spark plugs if they were firing properly etc etc etc.
The aluminum cloud.
I think it was Magnesium cloud.
@@GregWampler-xm8hv do you know the alloy used?
There is a B 36 on display between Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska along interstate 80. This B3 six is on display at the SAC Aerospace Museum.
I recognize that shield thats the strategic air command.
my Grandfather, funny enough used to tell a story about when he was ATC for the RCAF. "Tower, we've lost an engine!"
"Okay, you have any runway."
"No, TOWER, WE LOST AN ENGINE."
"Do you need emergency crews?"
"TOWER, the F-ING THING FELL OFF."
No idea when this was, but it always makes me laugh. I sure wish I could ask him which aircraft it was. RIP, Captain T.M.
That is the Strategic Air Command Museum at the Ashland, Nebraska exit about 20 minutes west of Omaha. There are about five acres of floor space, it's a great place to run a bunch of Cub Scouts ragged when the weather prohibits outside activity.
Strategic Air Command - 1955 - Jimmy Stewart
The J 47 engines were also in the Boeing, 707
The 707 had J57's (JT3C) and then JT3D'S. It never had J47's they weren't powerful enough. The B-47 bomber had 6 of them as did the F-86 and a number of other early designs.
Calling military equipment "peacemaker" is the most American thing ever.
“We’ve lost engine one, and engine two is no longer on fire”
Reminded me of the buff when it was first made
The opposite of pusher is tractor, not puller.
Tractors can't fly
Convair: Yeah lets add 6 engines then 2 extra jet ones won't be too complicated at all
Another fun fact: the B36 was so heavy convair thought of adding tracks as the landing gear before eventually just going back to normal wheels
I LIVE BY THAT MUSEUM NO WAY
I’ve talked to old timers who armed the ammunitions in this plane. Pretty wild what they did
It's weird that I just went to that museum 2 weeks ago, saw that plane and just thought: expensive, heavy, and the thickest wing spars I have ever seen in my life
this the one in dayton?
They added more engines. Perfect.
My cousin was a Tech Sgt assigned to a B36 wing. He volunteered for a crap assignment to get away from those beast and work on something else. He was almost assigned to a B52 wing but to sent to an assignment in the Philippines during Viet Nam. He told me he was done with bombers. 😂
But I have to admit, when we went to Dayton to the museum, the two planes I most wanted to see was a B36 and the Globemaster.
"Peace maker" ~ mission design
😂😂😂😂
That second slogan was S tier
There would need to be extra crew members just to man the throttle levers! Talk about task saturation! I bet it was quite the experience to fly one when all 10 engines were running right!
"how many engines should we put on the plane?" "yes"
"and did you want those as props or jet engines?"
"also yes"
“None turning, all burning”
They have one of these at Castle AFB museum in Atwater CA. I go up there on open cockpit days and this thing is massive inside and out
Feels like it would be easier and cheaper to just flip the radial engines around to push instead of sticking four jet engines under the wings
Idk why the engineers didn't figure that out
B29s should have also been renamed "Firebirds".
called the "peacemaker" because it made it to the battlefield in pieces lmao
Peacemaker reliability issues, now I know why the name of that character was chosen.
Oh I wonder why the peacemaker wasn’t effective. It’s not like it’s powered by nearly 8 engines.
This argument would hold water... were it not for the fact that the B-52 is also an eight-engined aircraft.
@John-qv5ux and if the R-4360 wasn't a great engine.
@@thomasgeorge4384 even on the B-29, this engine had no end of problems
@John-qv5ux the 4360 wasn't on the B-29, that was a Wright 3350 duplex cyclone. And yesthat engine had troubles. The Pratt and Whitney 4360 was on the B-50, C-97/Boeing 377, C-124, and many, many others, and served everywhere from tropic jungles to the arctic.
@@thomasgeorge4384 I am mistaken then
"This engine is build to pull."
"Yeah lets make it push."
What did they expect to happen?
Yeah, every high performance pusher has the same problem.
Actually when you look into the history of aircraft the most common reason for a promising new design to fail is a lack of proper heat management around the engine. This makes sense as engines at best deliver ~30% of their power to the shaft and the rest is heat.
The B-36 was a stopgap compromise. Because it could fly from the US to the Soviet Union and back unrefulled, it replaced the B-29 which would have had to been stationed VERY CLOSE, probably Germany, to hit targets in the Soviet Union. And it was big enough to carry the HUGE atomic and nuclear weapons at that time. It held the line until more reliable and longer range jets were developed, such as the B-47 and the B-52.
Well actually it was originally spitballed to be able to make the round trip bomb run to Germany if England fell.
In a very contentious competition the B-36 beat out the XB-49 flying wing. Jack Northrup always claimed the AF tried to force him to merge with then Convair the makers of the B-36.
What ever transpired behind the scenes the AF was so pissed off they ordered all XB-49's destroyed and then destroyed all the tooling.
The flight engineer didn't know what those two engines were doing for sure. Information overload maybe?
Complexity is inversely proportional to reliability.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and the more that can go wrong, the more likely something will.
A bathroom and shower are some of her tricks, two things you can't get in an f-86
I've heard that slogan before and it still makes me laugh!😮😂😂😊
Trust the crews to come up with some fun names for it.
Seems to me like the cooling issues could have been a simple fix by way of adding ductwork. Of course, it would have involved some structural changes, redesign, analysis, etc. but it would not have been too much involved.
Jimmy Stewart failed to mention that last bit of information. 😂
That thing is unbelievably big in person !
General Electric: Makes Kitchen Appliance
General Electric Also: Makes plane/jet engines
Not sure if people realised but the video clips hes showing is from a amazing 1955 film could strategic air command nearly all of the male actors we're real life veterans so which I like to call them real life superheroes highly recommend that film to anyone who loves planes
If nothing else, she was an impressive-looking aircraft (even if her military engines weren’t the best in the world)
These issues were simply a side-effect of giantism. The more equipment you have on board, the more opportunities for failure. If you have a boat with 6 outboard motors, you're 6 times as likely to have an engine failure as someone with a single engine boat.
For what it was, the B36 was a colossal achievement of aviation technology.
Never dropped a bomb in anger, but it still had the Ruskies sleeping with one eye open.
Yeah, I used to have one. But the waste water dump switch kept getting jammed up so I traded it in for a B-52
"That's a number I can live with, good landing boys who says penguins can't fly"
2 turning, 2 burming, 2 choking, 2 smoking-
Oh just like my grand-father.
Two turning, two burning, two choking, two smoking, two unaccounted for.
"Does anyone have a spare... 300 spark plugs I can use?"
It probably just needed more engines. Maybe a couple ram or scram engines to keep with the pattern of mixing and matching
God damn, old slogans are just so funny