How many Flight Engineers ? One or two ?
The ones that my father flew had three, two in the cockpit at their stations and one that roamed the aircraft while it was in flight. My father said he never really knew what the third FE really did, except bring coffee to him.
And yes, the throttles for the four jet engines are/were above the left seat. The reason they were there was because the early B-36's did not have the jet engines and that was the only place they could mount the throttles for the jet engines after they were added.
By the way, at the time there was a big fight in the Air Force command structure over whether the Flight Engineers should be commissioned officers rather than enlisted men.
It was rumored that senior NCOs claimed that officers would be too dumb to handle the FE duties and the FE panel on the B-36.
