Cool airplane photo thread

TDM ?

 

Boom- Taif, Saudi Arabia. Spent 198 days there during the first unpleasantness in the Gulf. Taken during Desert Shield since it is in the daytime. Desert Storm we flew 2696 sorties out of 2698 at night. F-111F from RAF Lakenheath and Spark Vark (EF-111A) from Mountain Home.

 

Blue Angels new-to-them F/A-18E/F Super Hornet

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Convair B-36 Peacemaker - Only 4 complete aircraft survive (As of 2004), from the original 384 produced.

What a monster! Next to a B-29 Super Fortress

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10 engines, 6 radial propeller and 4 jet, leading to the B-36 slogan of "6 turnin' and 4 burnin' "



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The Rodney Dangerfield of big bombers. Gets no respect! Built to bomb Japan, but the war ended just before it went into service. And with jet engines coming on, it was obsolete from the start!
Hung on until the B-52 was introduced in '55 .
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That first B-36 photo must be one of the prototypes, since she just has the 6 recips and a different cockpit structure.

"Sitting in a bay window, flying an apartment building."

 

It was the first big airplane to be labeled , "Aluminum Overcast".

 

damn! good eye, I missed that! (tho pretty obvious after pointed out ) I guess I was too focused on the size difference of the B-29
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That is one of the B-36 prototypes in the first photo. But you can see why the B-29 was knocked down two rungs, from a "very heavy" bomber to a "medium" bomber!

 

You ain't seen nothin!!!

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As far as I know it was designet to reach to Germany once the Nazis had conquered all of Europe including Great Britain to drop a thermo nuclear bomb and return to the USA. Some 10 years ago I saw one of the at the Castle Air Force Base. Very impressive! Thanks to the Allied forces the war ended before the use of this weapon was needed.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_B-36_Peacemaker
"As the Pacific war progressed, the USAAF increasingly needed a bomber capable of reaching Japan from its bases in Hawaii, ...."

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And this is the intended successor, the YB-60
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Some lines above:
Development[edit]
The genesis of the B-36 can be traced to early 1941, prior to the entry of the United States into World War II. At the time, the threat existed that Britain might fall to the German "Blitz", making a strategic bombing effort by the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) against Germany impossible with the aircraft of the time.[4]

The United States would need a new class of bomber that would reach Europe and return to bases in North America,[5] necessitating a combat range of at least 5,700 miles (9,200 km), the length of a Gander, Newfoundland–Berlin round trip. The USAAC therefore sought a bomber of truly intercontinental range,[6][7] similar to the German Reichsluftfahrtministerium's (RLM) ultralong-range Amerikabomber program, the subject of a 33-page proposal submitted to Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering on 12 May 1942.

 

The original B-36 specification called for an aircraft that could carry a 10,000 lb payload and fly for 10,000 miles. For short-range missions, the bomb load was as high as 84,000 lbs!

 

The Princess would have been an awesome aircraft to see in the air. I always thought that little radome in the nose looked like a pimple!

 

Another big mistake.

 

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