Very cool Virtual Tour of the cockpit of a B-36J "Peacemaker"

[A HERETIC I AM]

The B-36 was a post WWII, early cold war long range bomber that had 6 propeller engines and 4 jet engines.

http://www.nmusafvirtualtour.com/media/062/B-36J%20Engineer.html


Enough switches and gauges for ya?

This is a B-36;

[upaloopa]

1. Go get a copy of the movie "Strategic Air Command" if you

like B-36's.
I was in grade school when they flew those.
We were told to duck and cover in the event of a nuclear attack. The reason for those planes was to bomb Russia if they launched an attack on us. They would fly over the North Pole while our interceptors tried to shoot down the Russian bombers.
We were kept scared shitless so we would spend money on those planes. We had air raid drills and radio allert tests on and off.

[Cooley Hurd]

4. Great movie w/ Jimmy Stewart...

Lotsa B-47's as well, IIRC.

[Eleanors38]

29. "One a day in Tampa Bay" was the rep for B-47s

as they were known to stall coming out of MacDill AFB. My cousin saw the chutes from crew ejections in one instance. I believe the bomber went to Rocket Assisted Take-Off (RATO) in some configurations afterwards.

[lpbk2713]

6. I remember radios with the Conelrad logo on the dial.

[Cooley Hurd]

9. How I long for the Cold War...

or this:

[ChazII]

37. My high school had one of these.

The shelter wasn't used except for storage. In 2004 the school was demolished and the shelter was deemed unsafe for tours prior to the demolition.

[A HERETIC I AM]

10. Watched it the other day! n/t

[badtoworse]

33. Great flick

[Cooley Hurd]

2. Six turning and four burning!

Ya made my night, AHIA!!

[EX500rider]

22. Six turning and four burning....which was frequently more like:

Two turning, two burning, two smoking, two joking, and two unaccounted for...

The 336 spark plugs made tune-ups sort of a chore...lol

[HereSince1628]

3. I recognize the dangers of jingoism...but I find aircraft such as this fascinating

The push of technology vs the pragmatism of past experience...

Here we have swept back wings...better for higher speeds...and a very B-17ish tail assembly

Propellers along with soon to be dominant turbojet engines.

Delivery of hydrogen bombs notwithstanding that is just a very interesting aircraft

[Cooley Hurd]

5. Yeah, "Peacemaker" was a bit OTT, however...

...this aircraft has always fascinated me. Convair actually gave it complete jet power and swept the wings back much further with the YB-60 (same fuselage but all jet):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_YB-60

Now THAT was a BUFF (Big Ugly Fat Fucker)!

[HereSince1628]

7. And when you consider how Soviet aircraft went forward with turboprops

you see in this plane the coming fork in the road for American aircraft engineering

[Cooley Hurd]

8. Have we reached the apex in bomber design when there have been...

...little-to-no improvements since 1955 (with the B-52 and the Tu-95)?

[A HERETIC I AM]

11. They got there with the XB-70

In my opinion, one of the, if not the most beautiful aircraft ever to take to the skies.

[Cooley Hurd]

15. I totally agree. It was everything wrapped into one...

It's only accident wasn't even a design fault...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyrie#Mid-air_collision

[GGJohn]

20. I was always partial to the B1-B Lancer in it's beauty.

[Strelnikov_]

24. I was visting my Bro who was stationed at Ellsworth AFB in the day

Saw a B-1 take off. Holy shit, the noise, the power.

Also, the damage from where one crashed on take off (landing?) was still evident.

[GGJohn]

28. The sheer power of it's engines were awesome.

Another aircraft I found fascinating was the FB-111 Aardvark.



The Vietnamese used to call it Whispering Death due to that they wouldn't hear it until it was right on top of them.

[awoke_in_2003]

26. I always like the B58 Hustler

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_B-58_Hustler#mediaviewer/File:B-58_Hustler.jpg

[GGJohn]

30. Looks similar to the Convair F-106 Delta Dart.

[awoke_in_2003]

31. Definitely built by the same company. nt

[FLPanhandle]

35. I've always been fastinated by the Convair B-58 Hustler

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First operational supersonic bomber.

[HereSince1628]

13. I think the B1 movable sweep wing and computer control of the b2 certainly are advancements

but I would agree that the 1950s was a time of remarkable innovation and experimentation with airframe configuration

[Cooley Hurd]

17. B-1's and B-2's are being phased out while B-52's are being upgraded...

...I agree that both the B-1 and B-2's are remarkable aircraft, but the B-52 (at 60+ years old) is still very viable for its mission.

[Strelnikov_]

23. Excellent point

Aren't turboprops coming back due to the fuel efficiency aspect?

[upaloopa]

16. It was never used in anger it is said

There also was a RB36 for loaded with photo flash bombs.

[Brother Buzz]

12. The flight engineers got most of the bells, buttons, and whistles

They're nervous Nellies without them.

[VScott]

14. Wheres the CRM 114 Discriminator located in that thing?

[A HERETIC I AM]

18. On the Belvin Panel.

Next to the Kanutsen Valve.

Top right.

Behind the coffee maker.

[awoke_in_2003]

27. I should have scrolled all the way down...

before posting the same thing.

[Xithras]

19. I've been in there.

They have a B-36H at Castle Air Museum (though without most of the gauges), and twice a year they have open cockpit days when the public is allowed to climb in and around their collection. Back in the mid 90's they used to let people go into the cockpit and climb into the two rear seats, and the other seats in the deck below. As the crowds grew over the years, they first stopped letting people get all the way into the seats, and limited them to just poking their heads up into the cockpit to look around. The last two times I've visited on open cockpit day, they didn't have it open at all. You could only stick your head up into the bomb bay. One of the docents told me that it was just too tight to get that many people through. They could do it when they had a few hundred people show up, but nowadays they get thousands.

[ThoughtCriminal]

21. Graveyard of the B-36

http://thoughtcrimewave.blogspot.com/2008/06/graveyard-of-aluminum-overcast.html

At the Historic Aerials website, you can find images of the aircraft "boneyard" at Davis-Monthan AFB in 1958. By my count, there are 160 B-36 aircraft that are awaiting scrapping or are in the process of being cut up. There are 24 more south of this image link below, and two more on the north side of the base.

[awoke_in_2003]

25. Where is the CRM114 Discriminator?

[wain]

32. they made the earth shake

I remember as a little boy in Detroit standing in the back yard a seeing the white contrails of a squadron of B-36s way up in the sky and how the very ground shook and rumbled from the engines. The moments one remembers from so many decades past.

[longship]

36. Selfridge Air Force Base.

I remember many big prop planes flying over Detroit in my youth, including the "Boxcars". But also the big bombers.

Grew up in the city. In autumn, 1962, we were scared shitless in October, when Cuba missile crisis happened. I was attending Cadillac junior high school and had an afternoon Detroit News route, so I was allowed to ride a bicycle to school. (That and the fact that it was a mile and a half from home to school.) There were two times when the papers were late. The first was that two weeks in October, 1962. There were many big airplanes overhead during those weeks. The second time was on November 22, 1963. When the Detroit News was finally delivered on that tragic day, the newsboys were universally horrified by the headline.

Here it is, the editor should have been fired on the spot:

[FLPanhandle]

34. I would love to have those panels for my office

Amazingly cool aircraft sitting on the border between propeller and jet power.