Virtual reality tour inside a B-36.

Plus, in one case, a real working functional nuclear reactor. It had to be followed by a number of planes - including paratroopers to guard the premises just in case the thing crashed.

 

It was also so heavy that it couldn't carry any bombs with all the reactor shielding.

 

True - it was mainly a proof of concept effort just to see if such a thing could be done. The reactor actually powered nothing related to the plane. It was finally realized that this was a good power source for submarines and aircraft carriers, but was WAY too heavy for a bomber.

The Russians did the same thing in a turboprop Bear - but without the radiation shielding. Their crew were all dead within about 2 years.

 

6 turnin' and 4 burnin'. I would have loved to hear what that sounded like.

 

Unbelievablly LOUD! You can't imagine.

When I was small, we lived under the north end of the N/S runway at Kirtland AFB (Sandia Base) in Albuquerque.

They landed just a few hundred feet right over our house.

I am not exagerating, pictures fell off the wall, dishes in the cupboard vibrated and sometimes fell out, windows rattled, the dog hid.

Those were huge radials and were even louder mounted as pushers. (Sine wave thing.)

They were that loud when they were landing... didn't get to hear a takeoff up close as they took off south across the mesa. That would be even louder.

Don't think the jets were burning during landing... couldn't have heard them anyway.


There was a wood picket perimeter fence across the end of the runway; it was chain link everywhere else... sometimes the B-36's would misjudge and take out the fence - more than just a few times.

A street runs right at the end of the runway perpendicular and sometimes the B-36 main gear would hit on the street and they'd have to repair the asphalt, too. No signals then, you were just supposed to watch out for planes. (They have signals now.) We used to ride our bikes up there and see how close the planes were... like Martinique.

 

In 1952-53 many times we would hear the dishes in the cupboard start to rattle for no obvious reason. The first time it happened we thought that an earthquake was starting but the rattling continued for quite some time. After a minute or two we could faintly hear the low frequency throb of the props and it took at least twenty minutes or more for the B-36 to pass by, the dishes and everything else rattling all the time. A friend was an ATC controller and he said that they tracked it with a ground speed of 120MPH as it continued on to Alaska. They came blubbering by quite often in those days.

 

Headwind... didn't they cruise at 200+ mph airspeed? For like 40 hours?

I think they had a trolly inside to get from the front of the plane to the back.

 

I think somebody once told me that those engines were turbo-compound - that is, they had turbochargers which were geared to the output shafts to increase power directly rather than to compress the intake...the intake charge was compressed by supercharging.

 

I'm told I was the first one to get stuck in the tunnel. Dad (a B-36 engineer) convinced Mom while 8-1/2 months pregnant with me to tour the B-36 in front of the Greater Southwest Airport near Ft. Worth. what possessed her to go down the tunnel nobody knows. Took 2 others to pull us out. Nope, no pictures.

 

In the late 50's an 'incident' occured.

Something fell out of the b bay.

 

There is a story in Fort Worth aviation lore of a distressed B-36 coming in to land at Carswell AFB with "two turnin' and two burnin'."

 

Yes, a B-36 "dropped a hydrogen bomb" very near Albuquerque, in the 50's.

Don't know if it was an error, or it accidently fell out.

The bomb was not armed, but the trigger did go off.


It was not public knowledge for many years. Life in Albuquerque went as normal, including mine.