[cripplecreek]

Actually I think there was a nuclear aircraft if not actually built it was on the drawing board. Long range bomber I believe.

[CrazyIvan]

Convair NB-36H

[MasterGunner01]

One of the really bad ideas of the 1950s Cold War era was the US-USSR idea of a nuclear powered bomber. The idea was an aircraft with unlimited range in a time before ICBMs. The bomber was only limited by the crew need for food, water, and hygiene considerations. The drawbacks were obvious, buy not appreciated by those air forces on both sides: 1) a crashed aircraft would contaminate a large area with radioactive contents, and 2) the engine exhaust residue was radioactive.

Undeterred, NRDC converted a bomber, the NB-36H, to carry a fully functional nuclear reactor as a feasibility study. Whenever the NB-36 flew from the Convair facility at Dallas-Fort Worth it had a C-119 full of armed paratroopers as a chase plane. If the NB-36 went down, it was the paratroopers’ job to parachute into the crash site and cordon it off until crash investigators and decontamination crews arrived. No word on protective gear for the paratroopers, so they might have been considered expendable.

The stupidity of the NB-36 program was realized and it, along with its now radioactive servicing equipment, were put into very long term secure storage. The pit for the installation and removal of the reactor is still visible at the former Convair (now Lockheed-Martin) site at DFW.

[TexasGator]

“Actually I think there was a nuclear aircraft if not actually built it was on the drawing board. Long range bomber I believe.”

They did some testing with a nuclear powered aircraft but it had only one ‘nuclear engine’. Piston engines provide the main thrust.