The B-36 Peacemaker: The Absolute Unit that Carried America to Cold War

the second world war was a Renaissance of strategic bomber technology a time of desperate Innovation and bootstrap solutions they led to many of the Great heavy bombers of all of history from early bombers like the short Sterling and the Flying Fortress to The Liberator the Lancaster and finally the super Fortress strategic bomber aircraft were instrumental in the Allied effort to win the war for the entire conflict the formula was simple more bombers in the sky dropping more bombs on more targets to bring the war to a conclusion but in 1946 a new strategic follow first took to the sky and made one critical change to the way that longrange bombers would work if this new aircraft ever ever carried out its primary Mission objective then the world as we knew it was already over this is the story of the conveyor b36 Peacemaker the Behemoth of an airplane that ushered the United States and the world out of World War II and into the long tense winter of the Cold [Music] War now if you taken the b36 piece maker back in time to a decade prior to its first flight it would have looked no more recognizable to the people of the day than an alien spaceship might look to someone of the 21st Cent Century far bigger than any airplane the world had ever seen featuring jet engines that were cutting edge in their time The Peacemaker was as much about technological achievement as it was about military strategy the problem that the b36 addressed had been on the mind of American military strategists for almost a decade before the plane entered active service the program that eventually led to The Peacemaker was first conceived in 1941 amidst widespread fears in the United States that Nazi Germany would be able to force a surrender or a favorable peace against the British and thus cement their place as Europe's new superpower even this early in World War II it was clear to both the Germans and the Americans that their two nations were more likely to end up in a conflict than to join forces a prospect the German minister of Aviation answered with their so-called America bomber program both sides understood that with the Atlantic Ocean keeping them apart at their nearest point and Imperial Japan standing in the way of either Nation trying to get at each other through the Pacific in Asia any hostilities that did take place would have to be resolved through Ultra longrange strategic bombing but at that time neither Hitler nor Roosevelt had any tools in their Arsenal that would even come close to touching each other's territory it was this predicament that led the US Army Air Force to issue a request for a new aircraft one that could cross the entire Atlantic bring Nazi Germany to its knees and come back to land on American soil all in a single sing Le flight before we continue with today's video I do want to take a moment to tell you about our fantastic sponsor Squarespace I love Squarespace why is that well Squarespace is the ultimate all-in-one platform for anyone 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your first website or domain purchase using the promo code Mega projects there's a link below and now back to today's video they listed their demands in no uncertain terms a top speed of 450 mph a cruising speed of 275 a service ceiling high enough to keep it above anti-aircraft fire at 45,000 ft and a maximum range of 12,000 mil that's almost half the distance around the world the trouble was these demands were in 1941 completely unfeasible and just a few months after the Army Air Force released their first set of Demands to a discouraging reception they tried again this time they requested a plane with a cruising speed between 240 and 300 mph a ceiling of 40,000 ft and a bomb load of at least 10,000 most important of all they needed an effective combat range of at least 4,000 mil far enough away that a b36 flying out out of the US city of Boston could reach Berlin drop its payload and come home this time American defense firms were interested and with the outbreak of the war in the Pacific Theater shortly afterward demand for a longrange strategic bomon increased several companies submitted design proposals and two of them labeled the b35 and b36 were considered for production by 1943 the Army Air Force was ready to enlist the Consolidated aircraft Corporation to the project with Consolidated having the most impressive bomber design because of the demands of time production the usaaf waved their usual procedures around testing and procuring aircraft and instead ordered a production run of aund of the bombers already named the b36 before their two prototypes were even available by then Consolidated had merged with valy to become con and the company got to work trying to meet their initial delivery deadline of August 1945 unfortunately for the usaaf conve was not able to meet that particular expectation the demands of the war had meant that the Consolidated B24 liberators produ uction line took precedence and a change in the location of the b36 project led to months of additional delays so too did changes in the aircraft design as well as the USAF requirements for a new radio and radar system but luckily for the entire United States World War II was one without a need for a b36 instead it was one on the back of the b29 super Fortress the plane that carried out the first attack of a hostile power using a nuclear weapon just 14 days before the b36 was unveiled to the public from there it took its first flight almost exactly a year later on August the 8th 1946 and by the time the USAF became the United States Air Force in 1947 the plane was almost ready to enter active service by 1948 American Strategic Air Command received its first operational model and The Peacemaker was in [Music] business now of all of the peacemakers impressive numbers perhaps none stand out more than its sh size at a length of 162 ft and 1 in and a wingspan of 230 ft exactly it was the largest plane ever made at the time it was delivered and even today its wingspan is the longest of any combat aircraft ever at its tallest point the aircraft stood nearly as tall as a five-story building at just under 47 ft and its wing area 4,772 ft was nearly five times the square footage of the average American home at the time sitting empty at £66,000 or 83 tons the plane could fly at well over double that weight the final version of the b36 the j3 maxed out at £410,000 or 205 tons the plane was powered by 6 3800 horsepower pratton Whitney radio piston engine each fitted with a three bladed Pusher propeller and four General Electric j47 turbo Jets producing 5200b thrust each and paired in mounted pods on each Wing at his maximum speed The Peacemaker could push a pace of 430 5 mph although it was far more comfortable and fuel efficient at its cruising speed of 230 the plane featured a combat range of 3,985 mil and a ferry range of 10,000 Mi meaning that operating at cruising speed a full tank of fuel could keep it in the air for Upward of 43 hours The Peacemaker hit its service ceiling at 43,600 FT in altitude it could reach in just under 20 minutes at a climb rate of 1,995 ft per minute it payload capacity could go as high as £86,000 of bombs full8 into half times what the Army Air Force had originally asked for Not only was that over 10 times the capacity of the B7 Flying Fortress but it was enough that someone could have conceivably chopped up an actual B7 into little pieces and stuffed it into the Bombay and still had plenty of room to spare in terms of its Weaponry the b36 was fitted with a remotely operated tail turret featuring two 20 mm Auto cannons to cover its back early versions of the plane had an additional six retractable gun turrets plus a fixed turret on the knows but these were stripped out in the name of design efficiency when it became clear that air to- air missiles made them obsolete the plane's massive size was largely a facet of its mission objectives with bigger Wings directly equating to more fuel storage capacity so thick were the wings in fact that the crew could move through them in a craw space in order to access the engines during flight the lift generator by the plan's Wing area allowed to fly higher than any piston or jet fighter aircraft of the 1940s meaning it was essentially Untouchable by the planes that were seen as the Great greatest threat to such a bomber at the time it was built with modifications later versions could fly as high as 55,000 ft for short periods and sustain flight at 50,000 ft its unique merger of propulsion systems was also to The Peacemaker benefit not just because it combined prop and jet engines but because it used pushing rather than pulling propellers in flight this gave it high maneuverability at high altitudes to the point where it could have evaded much faster jet intercept as at altitude just by making a tight turn at that altitude the Jets of the time had hardly any turning capacity meaning that so long as the b36 could Dodge it didn't actually need that much speed that plus the fuel efficiency of its propellers compared to an all jet design gave it a cruise option that dramatically expanded its range the jet engines weren't actually part of the aircraft at first but they were grafted onto all planes once they were available and the combination of engines gave the plane its signature slogan six turnning four burning in total that's more engines than any other aircraft to ever be mass-produced and it gave the plane a far better takeoff performance and the ability to dash at higher speeds if needed if all the engines were firing the aircraft could command a total of 40,000 horsepower the rough equivalent to over a 100 Modern Mac trucks now it's not unheard of for similar size planes in the modern day to operate with fairly small crew a 747 cargo plane for example requires just three crew members two pilots and a flight engineer but The Peacemaker with such a complex Mission required as many as 15 crew members to make it work this included a pilot co-pilot radar operator SL Bombadier a navigator a flight engineer two radiomen and a total of eight Gunners although this went down to one after later modifications long flights also required a replacement crew members seeing as it's not a fantastic idea to land a plane after being awake for 40 hours straight and the crew were provided a pressurized flight deck and crew compartment plus flight suits to travel into unpressurized parts of the aircraft crew members slept in the nose compartment stringing hammocks up on some occasions and in six bunks and special dining area in the rear compartment finally there's the subject of nuclear weapons and although the b36 hadn't been designed with Warheads in mind due to the intense secrecy of the Manhattan Project it was able to carry early warheads and even the first generation hydrogen bomb the mark 17 one single Mark 17 came in a diameter of 5 ft a length of 25 ft and a weight of 42,000 making it the heaviest nuclear bomb the United States has ever produced and although the b36 had to be modified to have its bomb bay combined in order to carry the thing it still did the job in terms of conventional arms it was also the only plane designed to carry the T12 a so-called earthquake bomb that acted as a bunker Buster against underground Targets in another unique touch early versions of the plane were built to accommodate the McDonald xf85 Goblin a parasite fighter aircraft that would have defended it from [Music] interceptors now in many ways The Peacemaker it was actually obsolete by the time it entered active service although it did utilize jet engines it was essentially piston powered in an age where first generation fighter jets were already becoming abundant and with time they would inevitably give way to aircraft that could pose more and more of an issue to the b36 but at the same time the plane did things that no other American aircraft of the time was capable of matching it was the only plane with the range to attack the Soviet Union from North America without refueling it was able to carry nuclear weapons that its rival the all jet engine b47 could not its payload capacity was better than both the b29 and the later B52 and its cruising altitude and ability to fly for nearly two days at a time meant that it could comfortably stay out of range of most contemporary interceptors and anti-aircraft guns with ICBM technology nowhere near ready for use The Peacemaker was the only option to deliver a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union or well for that matter anywhere in the world but it's here that we get into that quandra three we mentions all the way back at the outset of today's video The Peacemaker as formidable as it was was a nuclear armed bomber in the early days of an emerging Cold War and within about a year of its introduction to service the other side had the bomb too very quickly the Americans and the Soviets alike had figured out that the best way to ensure a nuclear weapon wasn't used against them was to ensure that they could retaliate at a moment's notice even if critical targets had already been destroyed what that meant for The Peacemaker was that if it was ever directed to carry out a nuclear strike on a Target then all was already lost and the world had ended a countdown toward a sort of inevitable destruction that would take hundreds thousands if not millions of lives and so The Peacemaker ultimate Mission objective was to Simply exist to be visible public and understood clearly by the Soviet Union as a plane that could visit death and destruction if the Soviets were to attack the United States or Continental Europe it was a deterrent the sort of weapon that exists mainly as a threat in the hopes that conflict can be avoided entirely early in its service life it was expected to be put aboard the proposed super carrier the USS United States which would have been able to launch massive fleets of strategic bombers in future Wars but that carrier ultimately never came to be instead the b36 would fly in exclusive service to the Air Force for its entire service life from 1948 to 1959 in those years the plane was kept on constant Readiness by the Strategic Air Command Crouch watchingg eagerly on its runways and flying patrol flights in order to respond to an outbreak of hostilities from the perspective of its Cruise the b36 was something of a mixed bag sure it was highly capable even an incredible aircraft in terms of its Feats but it was also cramped despite its size and it was seen as a rather unwieldly tool for its pilot Crews on deployment generally lived and worked out of forward operating bases in Alaska and Greenland faced with the constant awareness that if they were ever part of a flight that did launch nuclear warhead the b36 wasn't believed to be fast enough to get out of the blast radius of its own bombs the plan's frequent engine fires also led to a change in the slogan from six turning four burning to two turning two burning Two Smoking two choking and two more unaccounted for its regular maintenance also included the required replacement of 56 spark plugs on each of its prop engines and the changing of several dozen light bulbs in the Bombay which had a tendency to shatter anytime someone fired the plane's guns the plane was also too big to fit in most hangers meaning that Crews serving with their be 36ers in the Arctic would have to perform maintenance outdoors in temperatures as low as- 60 F then there's the cruise on desert bases in Africa who had to do their work at temperatures of over a 100° and there's also the fact that their guns tended to freeze their Electronics interfered with every radio on board the propellers had a fascinating tendency to both ice over and catch on fire and the engines vibrated wildly and when it was ready to fly his pre-flight checks included a total of 600 steps despite all of that the plane was largely respected by its flight Crews and compared to the other aircraft of the time they received special praise for their safety and construction luckily for well the whole world the b36 was never called upon to enter combat the plane missed most of the Korean War and was replaced a few years later by the B-52 which still forms a Cornerstone of American Strategic Air capabilities to this day a successor craft the YB 60 was never put into production and the Soviet mig5 fighter with its speed and service ceiling meant that The Peacemaker altitude could no longer keep it safe adding in The Peacemaker inability to receive aerial refueling and the plane became obsolete not long after the conclusion of a war that it wasn't even a part of as for how it might have performed in combat in its Heyday either by dropping nuclear or Conventional Weapons we'll simply never know and unfortunately the b36 got a reputation for different reasons during its service life specifically for accidents although it safety record was better than most other planes of the day its large crew compliment meant that a single crash would have a human impact of 15 single seat of plane crashes and the magnesium in its airframe LED crash planes to burn easily adding to the casualty count when it did crash an accident in 1953 led to the deaths of 23 Airmen in New Finland Canada including a brigadier General in September 1952 a tornado swept through Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth Texas damaging a full 2/3 of the Air Force's b36 Fleet and 19 aircraft required extensive repairs the planes were also involved in two Broken Arrow incidents accidents where American nuclear weapons were lost including one in unpopulated region of Canada and one near Albuquerque New Mexico both of which saw the conventional Warheads in their bombs detonate but the b36 is years of service were not all bad instead it was a critical early reconnaissance aircraft before the arrival of the U2 spy plane The Peacemaker altitude made it ideal to foil Soviet interceptors and in reconnaissance versions of the plane its interior was remodeled to include aand camera compartments with a dark room Plus photo flash bombs and additional fuel tank and defensive countermeasures carry the er's heavy cameras so precisely that they could a golf ball at 45,000 ft and it could fly continuous routes from the Arctic across Russia and to Asia or Africa or vice versa in this configuration the plains Cruise world to 22 on versions still armed with its many defensive guns during the 1950s the reconnaissance designated rb36 flew numerous flights over Mainland Russia although later advancements in Soviet anti-air defenses would push the plane out and away from the best defended Soviet territory other versions of the plane were used for experimentation most notably the mb36 H designed that successfully completed dozens of flights while powered with a nuclear reactor however that design was never put into production given the role of a combat aircraft that would essentially fulfill its Mission by never seeeing combat the b36 was set up for failure where the Press was concerned and between its deployment delays and its General lack of use it was termed a billion doll blunder by sources of the day the US Navy was its leading critic emphasizing the aircraft carriers and Naval bombers that might have been built if the government hadn't listened to those fools over in the Air Force add to that the b36 is reputation for creating problems for its flight and ground curious and it should have been no surprised that the b36 was phased out as soon as the B52 came along in large numbers that newer better airplane arrived in force in 1955 and by February 1956 b36 were being flown directly from their operational squadrons to an air base in Arizona where they were to be scraps the planes that weren't taken immediately had their lives extended for a year or two due to cutbacks in the B-52 program but by February 1959 3 years after the planes began to be phased out the final b36 concluded its service today only four of the planes preserved in museum while the rest have given away to history a rather quiet end to the life of one of the biggest military behemoths to ever [Music] [Music] fly m

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 229,214

Keywords: b-36 peacemaker, convair b-36 peacemaker, united states armed forces, peacemaker, learn history, united states air force, military history channel, military aircraft documentary, strategic air command, us military, history facts, bomber aircraft, aircraft, us bomber, ww2 bomber, convair bomber, b-36, superplane

Id: 1CtLCeBkdHM

Length: 20min 29sec (1229 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 20 2023