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Some Guy From NY posted:
The B-36 is really quite an impressive aircraft when you think about it. It's World War II-era design taken as far as it could possibly go, and then a little farther just for good measure. The design was originally begun as a long-range bomber capable of hitting Berlin from the east cost of North America if England should fall, and was later adapted to carrying nuclear weapons and targeted at the Soviets from 1936 onward. Remember that two-bank Pratt and Whitney Double Wasp earlier? The B-36 used six 4-bank, 28-cylinder R-4360 Wasp Major engines:  (with a larger 3-bladed propeller tho) This ended up being a widely used heavy-duty radial engine, powering the C-97, B-50 (an engine-swapped B-29), the C-119 "Flying Boxcar" (possibly an inspiration for Baloo's "Sea Duck" in Disney's TaleSpin), and of course, Howard Hughes' Hercules. The B-36D model added four avgas-burning jet engines for greater altitude and faster speed while sprinting towards a target. The altitude capability enabled them to evade early Soviet air defenses, so this plane actually ended up being the predecessor to the U-2 in its RB-36 guise. Later models were stripped down and designated one of three levels of "Featherweight," and were apparently capable of flying in the neighborhood of 60,000 feet. These were evidently impressive aircraft to see flying, likely much more intimidating than the infamously noisy Russian Tu-95. Unfortunately, only 4 remain intact, with parts of a fifth strewn about a farmer's property in Ohio. None of these will fly again, since the airframes are all old and brittle, and maintaining the engines in flying condition was a titanic undertaking, even on an Eisenhower-era military budget. So the ones sitting on the ground are all we have left. 
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Mar 10, 2010 00:14
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| # ¿ May 6, 2024 10:34 |
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