Opinion by Bonnie Henry: Giant Cold War plane welcomed

Arizona Daily Star ^ | May 20, 2005 | Ernesto Portillo Jr.

[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.

[Sir_Ed]

The Spruce Goose in Oregon is pretty cool, too.

Ed

[Eric in the Ozarks]

The Seattle museum has an early SR-71 Blackbird spyplane, among other interesting exibits.

[Fred Hayek]

I don't know if Fifi (Confederate Air Force B-29) is still flying, but that bird takes a bit of tuning. Even more so for a B-36.

So it never got ordered to deliver its payload - in SAC, that's a successful mission.

[ken5050]

IMHO, the two most esthetically beautiful bombers the USAF ever had were also, oddly enough, next to useless in terms of mission...the B-58 Hustler and the B-47...