Convair B-36 Peacemaker

Then, on February 13th, disaster struck elsewhere.

A B-36 bomber carrying an atomic bomb experienced engine failure and the crew was forced to jettison and detonate the weapon over the Pacific Ocean.

The quote, broken arrow incident immediately diverted search resources away from the Skymaster and Operation Mike was suspended on February 20th.

The official accident report recommended resuming the search after spring thaw, but it never happened.

And it's an aerial shot, like probably taken from the top of a hangar, some guy up there with a camera.

And it's in the US and it's a B-17 and a B-29 and a B-36 Peacemaker, which is one of my all-time favorite planes because that thing is a beast.

big sob and the difference in size is incredible when you hear these guys saying b29's biggest thing i ever saw clearly you never saw 36. yeah jesus god yeah just a monster

yeah the crazy thing is for the b29 i mean because

An inboard of those four jet engine pods hung in pairs added years after the original design when the Air Force decided the aircraft needed to go higher and faster than anyone had first imagined.

This is the Convair B-36 Peacemaker.

The one at Wright-Patterson is not a replica, not a mock-up, not a theatrical prop.

It flew.

Now, luckily before the plane crashed, the 17 crew members were able to like, you know, jump out and use the whole parachute situation like seconds before the whole thing went down and they like landed somewhere in Canada.

12 of the military crew who were on the B-36 bomber were rescued.

One body was recovered later, but there were four people who were never found.

A couple years later, in 1953, remains from the B-36 bomber plane were discovered.

But the nuclear bomb that was dropped, you know? was never found which is um kind of troubling now again this was during the cold war so some experts say it's likely both planes had something on board that made them a target a bomb maybe and maybe the soviet union took the plane out before a distress call could be made But it wasn't until 1972 that the Alaska Triangle officially got its name, when the FBI tries to cover up an assassination.

I know, what the fuck is going on? So now we're in October, Yes, we are.

I'm TailDrager.

This is the Hangar on Radio Hangar, and today we are talking about the Convair B-36 Peacemaker, the largest piston engine bomber ever constructed, the aircraft that carried America's nuclear deterrent for more than a decade.

and the airplane that, through all of that time and all of those missions, never dropped a single bomb in anger.

Today's show is brought to you by AviationSoul.com, aviation challenge coins for every milestone in your flying life.

The engineering trajectory of the SAC bomber fleet is staggering.

Let's start in the late 1940s and early 1950s with the Convair B-36 Peacemaker.

This was the true leviathan of the early Cold War.

It was the largest mass-produced piston engine aircraft ever built.

I read that the noise was ungodly.

Because you couldn't perfectly synchronize the rotation of all six massive propellers, they created a distinctive, deafening, pulsating throb.

People on the ground could hear a B-36 coming from miles away, feeling the vibration in their chests.

And yet, for all that massive size, the crew of three was jammed into a tiny pressurized compartment in the nose.

Here's something crazy.

So in 1946 on August 8th, the first flight of a nuclear-capable conveyor B-36, the heaviest mass-produced piston-engined aircraft at the time, took off.

And it could operate.

They were trying to see.

The YB-49 contract was canceled.

The Air Force went with Convair's B-36 Peacemaker instead.

A capable aircraft, a good aircraft, not a flying wing.

Most of the XB-35 and YB-49 airframes were cut up for scrap.

"'Agnes, you hear what the radio said? The army's going

to give a trip around the world in a B-36 as first prize in this limerick contest.

All you have to do is fill in the last line and mail

one copy to the Pentagon and the other to the Navy.' The naval mailroom had standing orders to burn all the limericks when they came in, but some of the newer men seemed to think the entire thing was a big joke.

The army will always be there, on the land, on the sea, in the air.

So why should the navy take all of the gravy? To which a sea-going scribe had added, Do not give us ensigns, our share.

The newspapers were filled daily with photographs of mighty B-36s landing on Lake Erie, and grinning soldiers making muck beachhead attacks on Coney Island.

Each man wore a buzzing black box at his waist, and walked on the bosom of the now quiet Atlantic like a biblical prophet.