Once upon a time, there were 384 of these aluminum monsters. Designed to allow us to strike targets in Europe from bases in the continental United States, for ten years--from 1949 through 1959--they stood ready to make America's enemies rue the day that they transgressed against us. But they never saw combat or delivered bombs in anger and eventually they were replaced with newer, smaller jet bombers.
But at 162 feet long and with a wingspan of 230 feet, the B-36 will always be remembered as the largest US bomber ever to take to the skies. Of the 384, four survive intact today in museums. (I've seen three of them.) Pima has one of them, and this aircraft in particular is one of the ones that I came here specifically to look at.
To watch the B-36 in action, check out this video:
Or review this older post and a clip from a movie that features both a B-36 AND James Stewart, who was a real-life Air Force bomber pilot and General in addition to being one of Hollywood's greatest actors.
Here's a clip from the 1955 movie Strategic Air Command, with Jimmy Stewart, himself a real Army Air Force bomber pilot in World War Two and an Air Force Reserve General by the time he retired. Granted, you can only see him for a few seconds in the first cockpit shot, but he's there, as is actor Harry Morgan, who sits with his back to the camera but speaks at 02:45 and 03:04.
And then there's the Convair B-36 Peacemaker bomber that was the real star of this movie. Yes, they were real. They really flew. The one in this movie is really flying.
There were 384 of these bombers built, and they were operated by the US Air Force for ten years, from 1949-1959. They required a crew of 15, and they had a range of 10,000 miles. The original idea when they were designed was to be used to bomb Europe from American airfields if England fell, but during the Cold War, they were tasked with dropping the nuclear hammer on Soviet Russia if the need arose. And they were big; three feet longer than today's B-52s and they had a wingspan 45 FEET greater to lift that massive fuel and bomb load and to hold six prop and four jet engines.
The B-36 bombers never dropped nukes on Russia, but they did accidentally drop two of them due to emergencies in training operations, losing one atomic bomb into the Pacific off the coast of British Columbia in 1950, and one hydrogen bomb into the desert outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1957. Whoopsie.
There are five of these aircraft left today. Just five out of three hundred eighty four. Wright-Patterson Air Force Museum has one in Dayton, Ohio. I've seen it. There's another at the Strategic Air Command Museum in Offutt, Nebraska. I've seen that one, too. Both are stored indoors and you can really get up close and personal with them.
A third is at Pima Air Museum in Tucson, Arizona, and a fourth one resides at Castle Air Museum in Atwater, California.
A fifth one was bought by military collector Walter Soplata and he's deceased now but the B-36 is reportedly still in pieces in his yard in Newbury, Ohio. The rest were taken out to the Davis-Monthan AFB in the Arizona desert and destroyed.
And the B-36 at Pima barely survived. I found this excellent article on what it took to save that one, with no real help from the Air Force.
