AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 178 / 319

Plate 178 of 319 · Early jet age · Intercontinental strategic bomber

Convair B-36 Peacemaker

B-36J-III 52-2827, painted as Convair B-36J-III Peacemaker 52-2827, a ‘Featherweight III’ of Strategic Air Command, displayed at the Pima Air & Space Museum, Tucson, Arizona: the largest piston-engined bomber ever in service, with six Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major radials driving pusher propellers from the trailing edge of its 230 ft wing and four General Electric J47 jets in two pods outboard, ‘six turning, four burning’, its gun turrets removed to the Featherweight standard: polished bare metal overall, a white panel over the crew compartment, a black anti-glare panel on the nose, the SAC ‘Milky Way’ sash and shield on the nose, ‘2827’ and ‘U.S. AIR FORCE’ on the forward fuselage, star-and-bar insignia on the rear fuselage, ‘22827’ on the fin with a black fin cap, a white tail radome and red intake cowls on the jet pods, as photographed at Pima (no B-36 is preserved in a UK museum; shape from the Convair B-36B three-view checked against photographs; wing insignia left off as no photograph shows the wings from above or below).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as Convair B-36J-III Peacemaker 52-2827, a ‘Featherweight III’ of Strategic Air Command, displayed at the Pima Air & Space Museum, Tucson, Arizona: the largest piston-engined bomber ever in service, with six Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major radials driving pusher propellers from the trailing edge of its 230 ft wing and four General Electric J47 jets in two pods outboard, ‘six turning, four burning’, its gun turrets removed to the Featherweight standard: polished bare metal overall, a white panel over the crew compartment, a black anti-glare panel on the nose, the SAC ‘Milky Way’ sash and shield on the nose, ‘2827’ and ‘U.S. AIR FORCE’ on the forward fuselage, star-and-bar insignia on the rear fuselage, ‘22827’ on the fin with a black fin cap, a white tail radome and red intake cowls on the jet pods, as photographed at Pima (no B-36 is preserved in a UK museum; shape from the Convair B-36B three-view checked against photographs; wing insignia left off as no photograph shows the wings from above or below). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.9 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (B-36A to B-36J); engine, crew and dimensions are for the B-36J-III 52-2827 modelled here.

History

The B-36J Peacemaker

In April 1941, with Britain’s survival in doubt, the US Army Air Corps asked for a bomber that could reach Europe from America and come home again: 10,000 lb of bombs carried 5,000 miles and back. Consolidated, which merged with Vultee to become Convair, won with a giant six-engined design whose Pratt & Whitney R-4360 radials sat in the trailing edge of a 230 ft wing and pushed rather than pulled. The war’s other priorities held it back, and the XB-36 did not fly until 8 August 1946, at Fort Worth.

The B-36 entered service with Strategic Air Command in 1948, and for most of the next decade it was the United States’ main means of delivering nuclear weapons, able to carry the largest of them across the world. Even so it was slow by the standards of the new jet fighters, so from the B-36D Convair added four General Electric J47 jets in two pods under the outer wings. With six engines turning and four burning it could reach about 435 mph and fly above 40,000 ft, and crews flew missions of more than thirty hours. RB-36 versions carried cameras for long-range reconnaissance, and one, the NB-36H, flew with a working nuclear reactor on board.

In 1954 the Featherweight programme lightened the bombers so they could fly higher: Featherweight III aircraft, like the last fourteen B-36Js, kept only their tail guns and flew with a smaller crew. Convair built 384 B-36s in all. The B-52 replaced them, and the last was retired in February 1959 without ever having dropped a bomb in anger. Four survive, all in the United States; none is in a UK museum.

This airframe

B-36J-III 52-2827 ‘City of Fort Worth’

52-2827The airframe modelled

52-2827 was the last B-36 built, rolled out at Fort Worth in the summer of 1954 as a B-36J-III Featherweight with its gun turrets deleted except in the tail. It was the last B-36 in service, retired from the 95th Bomb Wing at Biggs Air Force Base, Texas, in February 1959, and was then lent to the city where it was built. Named ‘City of Fort Worth’, it stood outdoors at Amon Carter Field, later Greater Southwest Airport, for some twenty years, and the Texas weather took its toll. In the early 1990s volunteers, many of them former Convair workers, dismantled it and moved it into the factory where it had been built to restore it, but in 2006 it was agreed that it should go to the Pima Air & Space Museum, Tucson, and it was taken there by road and restored over four years. It is still owned by the National Museum of the US Air Force. The model shows it as photographs of it at Pima do: polished bare metal overall, a white panel over the crew compartment, a black anti-glare panel on the nose, the Strategic Air Command ‘Milky Way’ sash and shield on the nose, ‘2827’ and ‘U.S. AIR FORCE’ on the forward fuselage, star-and-bar insignia on the rear fuselage, ‘22827’ on the fin under a black fin cap, a white tail radome and red intake cowls on the jet pods. Its shape comes from Convair’s B-36B three-view, checked against photographs. The wing insignia are left off because no photograph shows the wings from above or below, and the tail ends in its radome without guns, as displayed.

Where to see one

Not on charge

Four survive in the United States, among them B-36J 52-2827 at Pima Air & Space, Tucson. None is in a UK museum.

All 319 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.