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Six turning and four burning

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NutmegCT

NutmegCT

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My favorite scene in one of my favorite aviation movies, Strategic Air Command, 1955. It's taking off over Fort Worth, where I was a kid going to Bluebonnet Elementary School.


Altho' the B-36 Peacemaker was designed during WW2 with six piston engines (P&W Wasp Majors), two double-jet pods were added soon after. The Majors faced aft, so cooling was a problem - might be better described as “two turning, two burning, two smoking, two choking and two more unaccounted for.”

A big plane. Size matters.

image6.jpg



A B-17, B-29, and a B-36. A prize for identifying the fourth aircraft - top center!
 
Basil said:
I would guess C-47 Skytrain?

PS: Strategic Air Command is one of my all time favorite movies!
Click to expand...

C-47 - gettin' farther away. Closer to the DC-2.
 
Another wild stab - pictures not that clear of the front, but could it be a B-18 Bolo?
 
Basil said:
Another wild stab - pictures not that clear of the front, but could it be a B-18 Bolo?
Click to expand...




Bolo it is! That's the pre-WW2 bomber that convinced the army they needed a larger aircraft - the B-17.


Hardly anyone remembers the B-18 - bravo!
Tom M.
 
When you compare it to the B-17, B-29, B-36 it's hard to imagine that as a bomber. Doesn't;'t look much bigger than a Beachcraft 18.
 
Love the B-36, amazing plane, wish I could have seen one fly. My uncle (long gone) remembered working on these at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois. Yes also on "Strategic Air Command". Talk about a period piece.
 
I feel really lucky that I grew up along with the 36. They flew over our neighborhood (south Fort Worth) almost every day. You felt them before you heard them or saw them.

Take a look at the aircraft at the Castle Air Museum in California. A large collection, only one I know that includes the B-17, B-18, B-23, B-29, and B-36.

https://www.castleairmuseum.org/collection

Wow.
 
I did a tad of research on the Big Stick long ago.
They pulled the pods off the B-47 assembly line and tried them out.

Trivia:

What type of fuel did the jets burn?
 
Back then it could have been JP-1, basically Kerosene. Then JP-3, a mixture of 65% gasoline and the rest Kerosene. JP-3 would vapor off easily due to the high content of gas in it. We used mostly JP-4 in the Cougars and Furys, don't remember the compound. Later the ratings and ident numbers changed to A, B and whatever. PJ
 
Nope. There was never any dual-fuel capabilities in the 36.
AvGas.

Apparently you can jet (joke?) a jet to run on just about anything.

Since the jet pods were primarily to get a war load off the ground in a SAC mission, the PTB (powers that be) did not want to compromise overall range by adding JetA tanks in place of AvGas.
 
Yea I know jet engines will run on just about anything, but better on some fuels than others. We had a couple Navy TV-2s, (AF T33s) with GE Allisons in them and it was specified they would run on avgas in an emergency, but JP was the fuel of choice.
 
There was also...a C-119 Flying Boxcar with an auxiliary jet on top of the wing root...same thing, avgas.
 
And of course, the 1939 Ercoupe, with rocket assisted take off.


Ercoupe 415 - a very cool little aircraft. Safer than most of the era.
 
We are also fortunate to have a B-36 nearby at the SAC museum between Lincoln and Omaha. Several years ago our local club did a cooperative display with them over the winter including my Healey 100, commemorating the Curtis LeMay-sports car racing connection.

il_340x270.1874904159_qsii.jpg
 
That is a great photo of a great car and a great Thunderstreak! And now, for LeMay and his Corvette:

fc34591a9d641971_large.jpg
 
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