saying "cooling issues" implies the engines were overheating, but the fires were actually due to the carburetors freezing, leading to uncontrolled fuel flow. The engines being effectively backwards meant the parts that are normally heated by hot air coming off the cylinders were instead being cooled by the air flowing from in front of the engine. I learned that from an Air Force veteran working at an air museum where they had one of those engines on display.

My grandfather was a b-36 pilot he told me the best part was retiring it and switching to b52s

“The _____ was famous for reliability issues” could be used to describe about 95% of military equipment

"And two more unaccounted for." I like that this implies that two of the engines just fell off the aircraft.

From what I’m hearing, it made anything but peace!

It never dropped a bomb in combat, so one could argue that it excelled at making peace.

2 turning, 2 burning, 2 choking, 2 smoking and 2 more unaccounted for, the unofficial slogan of the B-36 Edit: Jesus christ, can I get like 20 people to sub to mt channel? This has gotta be my most liked comment

“2 turning, 2 burning, 2 choking, 2 smoking and 2 more unaccounted for” had me rolling 😭😭

That B-36 is at the US Air Force Museum. Last time I was there, it was leaking oil. Still. Hasn't flown in decades.

Had the engines been mounted the way the engines were designed, probably would’ve solved the reliability issue

One of the most impressive transition aircraft ever. Saw one when I was a kid. Hard to believe it can fly

Fun fact. The B-36 was especially unreliable in Alaska. Because the engines were in a pusher configuration, the arctic air getting into the intakes was NOT good for the aircraft. And may have lead to a broken arrow incident along the Pacific coast of canada.

Engineer: how many engines do you want me to attach to the aircraft? Director: yes

I had an uncle who was a flight mechanic on the 36s. Use to tell stories of going in the fix the engines mid flight and stuff.

"2 turning, 2 burning, 2 choking, 2 smoking and 2 more unaccounted for" "Sounds like a Kinky party, I m in" "It brings nuclear kaboom too" "Cool, is that some kinda Voldaka cocktail" "sure"

It even sometimes almost didnt catch on fire

One of the more fun facts I've heard in a while

The thing was a powered glider, like a rubber band engine on a paper airplane

I knew a man who was a WWII aircraft mechanic. He mentioned this as well, but more than anything he despised the F4U Corsair, which is my favorite plane. Said they were the greatest fighter plane ever imagined, but the worst to work on. Every time they took off, he hoped they wouldn't run out of oil. They leaked all over with no hope of stopping it. But considering they were designed, built, and in the air during active wartime, it makes sense they would have been rushed. Incredible plane though

I would love to see the b36 added to warthunder

Of course, the B-36 was the most complex piece of machinery ever devised by Man up to that point! More complexity, running on the razor's edge of technology, of course there will be issues.

Even catches fire in the movies

Always wondered if they had separate fuel for the jet engines. Kinda expensive to burn high quality gas meant for the radials. On the other hand fuel management would be complex.

Jimmy Stewart had no problems with his

probably the most amount of engines for a single aircraft ever

**cries in B-36 fanatic**

Peacemaker or Piecemaker? 😀

Fun fact my great grandpa made that emblem😊 its cool to see it in more places than pictures my family has passed down (the strategic air command emblem) his name was Robert Thor Barnes. He won a contest and got to have his art as the emblem for the S.A.C. I didn't think much of it as a kid but I'm happy I got to learn about him as much as I did, we still have most of his old art collection. Man was an insane artist tbh

I was lucky enough to find myself in Dayton, OH for a work trip recently. We had about one hour left to see the Air Force Museum in this video, so we did a speed run in our work clothes. It’s truly massive and everyone that works there are amazing. They gave us great directions to see all the best parts and we were sweating by the end of it. Really glad we went!

Such a beautiful aircraft and such behemoth, it would be amazing to see one returned to airworthy status

Strategic Air Command with Jimmy Stewart is a great movie that featured so many beautiful scenes of the B-36 and the B-47 Worth Watching if you are an aviation lover

I worked with an engineer who always wore a B-36 tie tack. He never talked much about it other than to say he flew the B-36. And the story the younger engineers in his department told was that he flew the last operational B-36 to the Boneyard at Davis Monthan AFB.

Who could've possibly imagined that an aircraft with *_10 separate engines_* might have some mechanical problems?

Oh, I love the Dayton, Air Force museum

I can comfirm this. My dad was a USAAF & US Air Force pilot and flight instructor. He mostly flew B29, B50 and their tanker variants. But he and a crew were sent from England to N. Africa to retrieve a B36 back to England "for maintenance"... only to find out that just six of its ten engines were functional. They still were able to get it in the air and make the flight back. Of course, it wasn't "heavy" with a bomb load and might even have had a reduced fuel, since the distance was probably only about 1/4 the airplane's range when unloaded. With a 230 foot wingspan, the B36 was huge! In comparison, a B29 has 141 foot wingspan and over 50 feet less length. Although it was only 3 foot longer than the B52 that followed, the B36 had 45 foot wider wingspan! In fact, only five aircraft with greater wingspan than B36 have ever flown. Three of those were one-off experimental. The two that saw regular production and service were the Antonov AN124 (1982) and Airbus A380 (2005), which the B36 preceded by 36 and 61 years, respectively.

The 44,000 pound bomb the T-12 Cloudmaker, the heaviest bomb ever made, could only be carried by the B-36 Peacemaker

'' ah yes lets put the engines backwards. nothing can go wrong and we will look so original that we will get a rise''

I love the slogans the GIs came up with. My time in was with one of the most diverse, talented, intelligent group of people I have ever been around. I wish I had one of our turnover logs just to admire the artwork inside. One of my coworkers had a photographic memory and could go to the grocery store and had his check (that is an archaic method we used to pay for things) before the cashier had rung up the total. And if the totals were different, he was right.

My dad worked on them when he was in the Air Force he didn't particularly care for them. Air Force was all about getting air frames in the air and this thing was a beast to keep flying.

I saw this aircraft at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Very cool aircraft. Thanks for the story.

When I visited the US Air Force museum, I found this plane strange since it had two types of propulsion, but it was very interesting nonetheless. Glad to see other people interested too.

One of the buildings at Wright-Patt I worked in was used to do some material testing on the B-36. They had to do some flex testing on the wings of the plane, and since it would be easier to test the flex if the plane was upside down, they used a couple of cranes inside the building and actually flipped the plane over. There are photos of the work in the building lobby. (Bldg 65, the huge one just off the National Air Force Museum's old runway.)

"this is the peace maker" Ohh okay "It's a bomber" What-

There's a peacemaker, now we need a peacebreaker

Curious on why they didn't just fully replace the prop with jets rather than this hybrid configuration. I guess a jet would jut cut the bomber's range?

I'm a proud Sportys consumer.

Engineers in the piston engine age just never seemed to have got to grips with the problems of pusher propellor engines.

a buddy of mine's father was B-36 gunner. Said the aircraft caught fire just about every flight.

Awesome looking planes though

The absolutely straining the leading edges of recip analog technology. I've heard it took 45 minutes from startup to ready for takeoff just to go through all the checklists. Probably the busiest person in front was the flight engineer, jeez just to monitor 336 spark plugs if they were firing properly etc etc etc. The aluminum cloud.

There is a B 36 on display between Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska along interstate 80. This B3 six is on display at the SAC Aerospace Museum.

I recognize that shield thats the strategic air command.

my Grandfather, funny enough used to tell a story about when he was ATC for the RCAF. "Tower, we've lost an engine!" "Okay, you have any runway." "No, TOWER, WE LOST AN ENGINE." "Do you need emergency crews?" "TOWER, the F-ING THING FELL OFF." No idea when this was, but it always makes me laugh. I sure wish I could ask him which aircraft it was. RIP, Captain T.M.

That is the Strategic Air Command Museum at the Ashland, Nebraska exit about 20 minutes west of Omaha. There are about five acres of floor space, it's a great place to run a bunch of Cub Scouts ragged when the weather prohibits outside activity.

Strategic Air Command - 1955 - Jimmy Stewart

The J 47 engines were also in the Boeing, 707

Calling military equipment "peacemaker" is the most American thing ever.

“We’ve lost engine one, and engine two is no longer on fire”

Reminded me of the buff when it was first made

The opposite of pusher is tractor, not puller.

Convair: Yeah lets add 6 engines then 2 extra jet ones won't be too complicated at all

Another fun fact: the B36 was so heavy convair thought of adding tracks as the landing gear before eventually just going back to normal wheels

I LIVE BY THAT MUSEUM NO WAY

I’ve talked to old timers who armed the ammunitions in this plane. Pretty wild what they did

It's weird that I just went to that museum 2 weeks ago, saw that plane and just thought: expensive, heavy, and the thickest wing spars I have ever seen in my life

They added more engines. Perfect.

My cousin was a Tech Sgt assigned to a B36 wing. He volunteered for a crap assignment to get away from those beast and work on something else. He was almost assigned to a B52 wing but to sent to an assignment in the Philippines during Viet Nam. He told me he was done with bombers. 😂 But I have to admit, when we went to Dayton to the museum, the two planes I most wanted to see was a B36 and the Globemaster.

"Peace maker" ~ mission design 😂😂😂😂

That second slogan was S tier

There would need to be extra crew members just to man the throttle levers! Talk about task saturation! I bet it was quite the experience to fly one when all 10 engines were running right!

"how many engines should we put on the plane?" "yes"

“None turning, all burning”

They have one of these at Castle AFB museum in Atwater CA. I go up there on open cockpit days and this thing is massive inside and out

Feels like it would be easier and cheaper to just flip the radial engines around to push instead of sticking four jet engines under the wings

B29s should have also been renamed "Firebirds".

called the "peacemaker" because it made it to the battlefield in pieces lmao

Peacemaker reliability issues, now I know why the name of that character was chosen.

Oh I wonder why the peacemaker wasn’t effective. It’s not like it’s powered by nearly 8 engines.

"This engine is build to pull." "Yeah lets make it push." What did they expect to happen?

Yeah, every high performance pusher has the same problem. Actually when you look into the history of aircraft the most common reason for a promising new design to fail is a lack of proper heat management around the engine. This makes sense as engines at best deliver ~30% of their power to the shaft and the rest is heat.

The B-36 was a stopgap compromise. Because it could fly from the US to the Soviet Union and back unrefulled, it replaced the B-29 which would have had to been stationed VERY CLOSE, probably Germany, to hit targets in the Soviet Union. And it was big enough to carry the HUGE atomic and nuclear weapons at that time. It held the line until more reliable and longer range jets were developed, such as the B-47 and the B-52.

The flight engineer didn't know what those two engines were doing for sure. Information overload maybe?

Complexity is inversely proportional to reliability. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and the more that can go wrong, the more likely something will.

A bathroom and shower are some of her tricks, two things you can't get in an f-86

I've heard that slogan before and it still makes me laugh!😮😂😂😊

Trust the crews to come up with some fun names for it.

Seems to me like the cooling issues could have been a simple fix by way of adding ductwork. Of course, it would have involved some structural changes, redesign, analysis, etc. but it would not have been too much involved.

Jimmy Stewart failed to mention that last bit of information. 😂

That thing is unbelievably big in person !

General Electric: Makes Kitchen Appliance General Electric Also: Makes plane/jet engines

Not sure if people realised but the video clips hes showing is from a amazing 1955 film could strategic air command nearly all of the male actors we're real life veterans so which I like to call them real life superheroes highly recommend that film to anyone who loves planes

If nothing else, she was an impressive-looking aircraft (even if her military engines weren’t the best in the world)

These issues were simply a side-effect of giantism. The more equipment you have on board, the more opportunities for failure. If you have a boat with 6 outboard motors, you're 6 times as likely to have an engine failure as someone with a single engine boat. For what it was, the B36 was a colossal achievement of aviation technology. Never dropped a bomb in anger, but it still had the Ruskies sleeping with one eye open.

Yeah, I used to have one. But the waste water dump switch kept getting jammed up so I traded it in for a B-52

"That's a number I can live with, good landing boys who says penguins can't fly"

2 turning, 2 burming, 2 choking, 2 smoking- Oh just like my grand-father.

Two turning, two burning, two choking, two smoking, two unaccounted for.

"Does anyone have a spare... 300 spark plugs I can use?"

It probably just needed more engines. Maybe a couple ram or scram engines to keep with the pattern of mixing and matching

God damn, old slogans are just so funny