Posted on 03/13/2022 7:26:03 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
Much was made of the fact that the wing of the B-36 Peacemaker was deep enough to allow engineers to enter it and maintain the engines in flight.
Conceived during 1941 in case Germany occupied Britain, when US bombers would then have insufficient range to retaliate, the B-36 Peacemaker was to be primarily a ‘10,000-mile bomber’ with heavy defensive armament, six engines and a performance that would prevent interception by fighters.
It was one of the first aircraft to use substantial amounts of magnesium in its structure, leading to the bomber’s ‘Magnesium Overcast’ nickname. It earned many superlatives due to the size and complexity of its structure, which used 27 miles of wiring, had a wingspan longer than the Wright brothers’ first flight, equivalent engine power to 400 cars, the same internal capacity as three five-room houses and 27,000 gallons of internal fuel – enough to propel a car around the world 18 times.
Pilot Lt Col Ed Sandin of the 5th SRW pioneered a hazardous technique for reaching down and inserting a main landing gear down-lock in flight after numerous attempts to make the gear lock down. The narrow crawl-way to this position over the wheel well meant that the job had to be done without wearing a parachute, while trying to avoid looking down into an open abyss below.
(Excerpt) Read more at theaviationgeekclub.com ...
Your slide rule/calculator experience is much like mine.
Finally managed to buy an early HP with RPN after being disgusted how fast those with calculators were able to finish a test versus me with slide rule.
Yeah, it was amazing how vindictive and vengeful Symington was.
Jack Northrop must have pissed him off. Wasn’t a good little boy, went off the rez.
One of my great uncle’s went to work for Northrop in 1939 in Hawthorne. Was like employee #7 or something; had a picture of him and all the originals out in front of the Northrop office. Still cant find that damn pic...anyway he told me about Symington chopping up the airframes back in like ‘69, and I couldn’t understand why anyone would do that. Northrop had big plans to turn them into civilian airliners too, but needed the AF contracts to make it happen. Think of the world we would have had if he had gotten to do that.
About the only good thing that Convair / General Dynamics came up with was the F-16. Everything else was pretty much generic crap.
Stupid headline. Should have read “The B-36 Peacemaker was so AWESOME..”
You’ve probably seen this?
I was raised in Ohio and still remember seeing them flying around out of the air bases there. You could always identify them by the roar of their props.
Back when Americans could accomplish anything...
I’m a model, you know what I mean
And I do my little turn on the catwalk
Yeah, on the catwalk On the catwalk,
yeah I shake my little tush on the catwalk
Just FYI, this company makes HP clones:
Review of the DM42:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ong91Ji3iDk
(if you can stand the grating voice...)
“...being disgusted how fast those with calculators were able to finish a test versus me with slide rule.”
In the early part of the slide rule/calculator transition, there were professors who wouldn’t allow calculators during tests unless everybody had one. It was OK for daily and in-class work but they wanted the field level for tests.
I still use my 15C, and I fully agree with your sentiments on RPN. Much easier to use.
On another topic, none of the kids in my Calculus class had ever seen a slide rule until I brought my Post in.
Once, just after my TI calculator died, I was doing a geophysics problem set, in a lab where a bunch of us would study after hours. I was using my slide rule, and the younger students kept asking about it, saying how their dads used to have one and so forth. I ended up giving slide-rule lessons for much of the evening.
Thanks! That’s really good to know. The 15C might outlive me, though.
My class at VaTech was the last to use slide rule. By the time I got to my undegrad geophysics course I had long chucked my slide rule. (Actually I kept it and mounted it in a frame. Has an hnroed place on the wall of my home office.)
Yeah, I watched it again right after the last post!
Luv it
That was the world that was, huh?
SoCal in the 40s....that was the peak
Nice. Prices look pretty reasonable.
Behind that. Looks like a B-47 to me too. My dad was one of the designers of the B-47, the B-52 and the XB-70. I think he would be both surprised and pleased that the B-52 is still in use.
My son-in-law is an engineer at Rolls-Royce, working on the B-52 repower program.
A Uncle was a crew chief on a B-36 back in the 1950s. He was stationed at Fairchild Air Force base or space near Spokane. It was where he met his wife, my aunt.
It said that the B36 was known as the “Jesus plane”. The reason they called it that is because the 1st time anyone ever saw one up close that’s exactly what they said.
My first memory is about 1962 so I can’t be sure!
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