Posted on 05/20/2005 7:03:17 PM PDT by AZHua87
One pilot likened it to "sitting on your front porch and flying your house around."
Another crew member called it "a horrible, lazy beast to fly."
Janet Hess has another view of the B-36 - one admittedly gained at ground level.
"I loved that plane," says Hess, who did modification work on the bomber during the early '50s.
Designed to fly long distances at high altitudes and drop nuclear payloads, the huge, 10-engine plane never did go to war.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailystar.com ...
They never installed a reactor to power the aircraft, but they did have a functioning research reactor in the aircraft.
It got pretty hot.
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~pettypi/elevon/baugher_us/b036-13.html
Thanks!
I knew I had seen some info at one time about this experiment.
Turboprops? what new-fangled ideer is that?
6 Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major air cooled radials - 28 cyliners/engine, 2 sparkplugs/cylinder - plug change: not a minor job
I went to college with a vet who was a B36 crewman. If I remember correctly they could patrol during each flight for over a full day.
And another... The longest recorded B-36 flight lasted 51 hours and 20 minutes, non-stop and without being refueled.
I remember as a kid growing up in Miami (near Homestead AFB) during the 50's, and hearing the occasional B-36 fly over. I could always tell by the deep, rumbling drone of the engines what it was, and I would run outside, look up to see the unmistakable outline of this huge flying behemoth overhead.
Childhood memories are returning for many tonight.
Talked to a Crew Chief at Tinker AFB years ago and he told me that the B-36 was "so much airplane" that they always had something broke when it flew.
Armigerous,
I flew as an Aircraft Performance Engineer (Flight Engineer) from 1955 to 1957 on B-36's at Ellsworth AFB, Rapid City, SD. Engineers handled the six R4360's and the pilots controlled the four J-47 jets. We didn't have airial refueling but one might have been modified for it. I loved flying in that beast!
sp
We lived directly across the lake from the end of the main runway. Remember that low, growling incessant bzzzzzzzzzzz they made? When they took off to the north (over the lake, then our house), the vibrations shook the house --actually shaking plates out of the kitchen cabinets.
I'll never forget the night we heard one coming down the runway...then stop. We hadn't been aware of the sound, really...until it stopped. Then, we wondered what had happened, what had we "heard".
We went out on the back porch and, there, off our dock, halfway between the two shores, was a B-36 -- in the lake, back broken, burning.
Most of the crew died in the crash. Something had gone wrong on takeoff and they had ditched the great beast in the lake, avoiding all the homes across the lake. Including us...
Don't forget about the XC-99.
That's interesting. Wow, think about how long a tune-up would take!
I was stationed at SondreStromFjord (Bluie
West 8) Greenland in '53/54. Also not a very popular post, although nobody was shootin' at my arse up there.
You should visit the Seattle Space Museum.
Aerial refueling dates back to the "Question Mark' test flight piloted by Capt. Manuel Quesada in 1936 or so when a hose was hauled in by hook from the nearby tanker and connected directly to the fuel tank. On the B-36 I mentioned. a probe was rigged to fit into the socket of the floating 'basket' that a KC-97 trailed behind it. The entire flight was a testbed for a number of systems.
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