Rumour has it that the aircraft commander had been personally demoted by Curtiss LeMay by the time he made it to the RAF Boscombe Down Officers' Mess to answer a call from LeMay....

Aviate1138 wrote:- Yes it was the A345.
Mel

Le May had a firm control over all of SAC. Most officers, including my father, held 'brevet' ranks given to them by Le May. Le May could promote someone on the spot, or demote them on the spot. No court-martial, no review board limited paperwork. There was an infamous case of where a Lt. Colonel, who had been a rising star, upset Le May over something, was reduced to a First Lieutenant and was tranfered out of SAC overnight.

Oct. '56
 

I was at school in Ashton-on-Mersey doing metalwork in the machine shop and spotted said 'planes going into Burtonwood. Called over my mate Frank (fellow spotter) and we both spent the rest of the lesson as close as possible to the window watching them going in.:ok:

Sometime in the '50s, would be 55 plus or minus one, I was vectored on to a small formation of B36s heading west over the Midlands at medium altitude. I did a quarter attack, ranging on the tail as recommended, but from line astern the vortices flipped me out and I never caught up again - in a Vampire FB5.

Dick W

A 'small' formation of B36s can there be such a thing?
D

In the summer of 1956 I was playing in my backyard in Palmdale California, when I heard something strange. With all the test flying done out of Palmdale and Edwards seeing and hearing aircraft was not unusual. But this sound was different, it was a low drone that got louded and louder but I could not see a thing. After about 10 minutes I see three B-36 in formation, they must have been at 30,000 feet. The entire time they were visible, about fifteen minutes, the ground vibrated and after they were out of sight I could still hear that drone for another ten minutes. Over fifty years later and I can still picture those three B-36's in close formation fantastic sight.

Likewise, where I grew up, in Santa Monica, the home of Douglas Aircraft.
The very distinctive noise heard, from B-36's at high altitude was...the propellor 'beat' noise, not engine noise.
Those very large (19 foot diameter) CurtisElectric propellors had a very distinctive sound, due largely to them being aft of the wing.
Once heard, the sound was never forgotten.
The ground vibrated for quite a long time.

Along about 1955, the 'featherweight' mod was commenced.
Selected aircraft, stripped on much of their usual 'accomodations' could fly, and bomb, from fifty thousand feet, at 410 knots TAS, thanks to the 4 jet engines.
No Soviet fighter could, at the time, reach these altitudes, effectively.
According to my neighbor, who is a USAF Colonel (retired, and flew B-36's for a long time), the Russians were, as he put it, sh!t-scared of this featherweight modded aircraft, as there was no way they could prevent its appearance over any target in the country.

The B-36 had a huge magnesium content in the structure, which provided for rather large corrosion problems.
Big time.

A couple of videos for your enjoyment.

The B-36, once seen or heard, never forgotton.

Cor, good clips 411a, thanks. A crew of 15, blimey what did they all do? Presume there was some doubling up to allow for rest periods on extended missions.

Loved the line in the first clip about "cruising in the troposphere, where it can be neither seen nor heard". Hmmm, from what's being said by those who have heard one I would have thought they'd still have been easily audible from 50,000!

(Bit like the Met Police's EC145s on Skycops or whatever it's called: "The criminals don't know the helicopter is circling them" says the narrator. Wanna bet? I know it's circling them and I'm five bloody miles away...)

A type I have never seen - must get me over the US again soon and visit Dayton.

I used to go to SAC HQ at Offutt, Nebraska, quite often in the early sixties. They were trying to start up a SAC museum and they had a collection of, IIRC, a B26, B17, B29 and a B36 that they wanted to keep airworthy. Le May wasn't happy as he regarded it as a waste of effort. "There are no free lunches in SAC" was his view.
The way they got around him was to give the B36 a war target so if WW III broke out the B36 would fly somewhere to be bombed up and obliterate some city.

Well the B-36 Flight Engineers earned their pay in those days.
Here's the B-36 F/E's engine panel - 12-across x 5-down, that's 60 dials at least to watch and that's not counting to ones off to the right.

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...tEngineer2.jpg


Like these:

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...ngineStart.jpg

Right!
I spoke to Mum-in-law an hour ago. She said that she saw the "Big aeroplanes with the engines at the back" in October 1956 on a wednesday. She couldn't be more specific than that. Oh she didn't have the radio on at the time!
By the way, is Stratigic Air Command out on DVD in the UK?

Rgds Dr I

SAC Film
 

Yes, I have that film here in Sweden, sent over by a friend from the UK.
I remember first seeing it in the cinema in Lincoln and watched it twice (you could do that in those days by just remaining in your seat)!

The trouble with seeing it at Dayton is that it is so long, wide, etc., that it has other displays under it's wings which rather takes it's 'size effect' away. Nevertheless, hugely impressive, as was the other on my must see list, the XB70, also with aircraft underneath it.

Dr I

I don't think it was officially sold on DVD. Amazon.com in the States sell the VHS version. However, there are several DVD versions on offer on e-Bay, but would assume these are DVD copies of the VHS version.

It was broadcast on TV in the UK about two years ago and I recorded it to my TV DVD recorder and then burnt it to DVD from that.

I used to go to SAC HQ at Offut in the early sixties and they were in the process of establishing a bomber museum. They had a B26, B17, B29 and a B36 that they wanted to be kept airworthy. Le May wouldn't give his approval to this on the basis of 'there are no free lunches in SAC.'
They got around it by giving the B36 a war target so if WWIII broke out the B36 would go off somewhere to be bombed up and obliterate some city.

People use the word "awesome" for just about everything these days, viz "I just had an awesome fish and chips." But the B-36 was awesome as far as I was concerned as a young boy who would see them flying overhead at maybe 15,000 ft every month or two, and once at low level (2000ft?) circling over the town - no doubt lost!

Always identifiable by the noise they made. This aircraft was REALLY awesome, and this thread is very evocative!

B-36 links
 

A fascinating plane.

I got the chance to see a static RB-36 at the Castle Air Museum in California (.: Castle Air Museum - Atwater, California :.) one year and it's HUGE. It's somehow a different type of "HUGE" from say, a 747 or an A380...I guess it's because it represents the last of the heavy recip bombers and the ultimate expression of late 40's aviation technology...like a battleship -- obsolete but still very impressive.

If you're curious about the B36, there are a couple of good websites I've run across. The first is a collection of links to most (all?) things related to the B36:

www.B-36.net

Buried amongst the links is a website forum that has some interesting articles:

http://forums.delphiforums.com/B36forum

The forum interface is a little confusing but there are some fascinating discussions on there if you dig around....

Finally, here is a video of a Pratt & Whitney R4360 (the model of engine powering the the B36) idling with a test club:

YouTube - Pratt and Whitney R-4360 - Run October 2, 2008 Penngrove, CA

Back to the original post - I was at school in Rusholme in the 50s, and we used to see B-36s from time to time on approach to Burtonwood. They would pass close to overhead, probably around 2000ft, and I remember the sound even now. The teachers would be drowned out for quite a while..........

That specific incident I don't recall, but it could not have been related to the Korean war, which finished some years before - the armistice was in 1953.
Perhaps a reinforcement exercise? The B-47 deployments to UK started soon after, in early 1957, though Burtonwood was not used for that.

B-36 wing deployment to Burtonwood was unusual the normal bases used for the 90 day rotations were Fairford or Brize Norton. The 11th bomber wing's stay at Burtonwood was only for a week..