B-36 combat survival

[slugman]

Would the big Peacemaker have survived combat?  

I believe in WW2 yes due to speed, altitude and armament.   Korean war maybe due to altitude. Over Russia in mid/late fifties,  no way. What says you??

Also, we need an affordable 1/48 kit of this beast too!!!

[11bee]

Interesting question.  In WW2 and Korea, would have been good to go.  Russia up to the mid/late 50's?  Maybe the stripped down Featherweights would have done ok.  Keeping mind that the USSR only had a very limited number of SAM's / fighters that could fly at night. 

 

Nice hypothetical....

 

 

[Spruemeister]

In the mid to late 50s, the high value targets would have been visited by B-47 and B-52 aircraft, and the one way fighter bombers would have carved a path with tactical strikes on defensive airfields far in advance of the B-36s and their city busting payloads.  I think the survival rate would have been greater than one might think.  But it would not have had impunity, that's for sure.  The handwriting was definitely on the wall by 55ish when the US Century series fighters where making easy intercepts at altitude.  But with 85%+ of the Soviet fighter assets in Western Russia/Soviet bloc and the Soviet Far East, the Northern frontier was nearly undefended and penetrable by long range bomber.  By the time the Big Stick went to the boneyard in 59, not so much. 

 

A 1/48 B-36 kit would be a momentary temptation.  Then sanity would kick in and close the door.  I'll be happy if I ever build the two 1/72 kits I already own. 

 

Rick L.

[ChesshireCat]

11 minutes ago, Spruemeister said:

In the mid to late 50s, the high value targets would have been visited by B-47 and B-52 aircraft, and the one way fighter bombers would have carved a path with tactical strikes on defensive airfields far in advance of the B-36s and their city busting payloads.  I think the survival rate would have been greater than one might think.  But it would not have had impunity, that's for sure.  The handwriting was definitely on the wall by 55ish when the US Century series fighters where making easy intercepts at altitude.  But with 85%+ of the Soviet fighter assets in Western Russia/Soviet bloc and the Soviet Far East, the Northern frontier was nearly undefended and penetrable by long range bomber.  By the time the Big Stick went to the boneyard in 59, not so much. 

 

A 1/48 B-36 kit would be a momentary temptation.  Then sanity would kick in and close the door.  I'll be happy if I ever build the two 1/72 kits I already own. 

 

Rick L.

The USSR had a deep fear of the B47 bomber, and it was at their forefront of their mindset to get rid of them. The B52 in the early to mid fifties was still under constant development. By 1960 the B52 had moved into one of the most feared weapons system on the planet. Still in Vietnam, the B47 would have done very well as a low level strike aircraft. Over Korea, the MIG15 would have been hard on a B36. Yet had the Korean war gone into 1954, you would have seen the B47 in action. Remember the B47 evolved out of a WWII German concept, and the U.S. took it an ran with it. All the while, there were other ideas looming in the mid fifties. The F105 strike fighter and later the F111. The B52 was a constantly evolving project employing data gleaned from all sorts of airframes. Even the SR71!

gary 

[punder]

I've read some stories about RB-36s operating so high that MiGs would stall out trying to get into firing position. 

 

'Course, nukes might weigh more than cameras, lowering the max altitude. But I'd bet enough B-36s could have gotten through to make a pretty severe, uh, impact.

[punder]

Aha, see the last page of this article.

 

http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/b-36-bomber-at-the-crossroads-134062323/?c=y&page=6

 

[Gordon Shumway]

The B-36 was certainly quite a bomber at a crossroads period in military aviation. Life spans of aircraft were quite short relative to more modern  aircraft, where we see service of 20-30-40+ years. The B-36 by mid 50's was not gonna  cut being a penetration SAC bomber to the USSR. It may have had a better chance against communist states  allied to the USSR. Now had the McDonnell F-101B Voodoo been in production  say 5 years earlier and used as a long range    bomber, escort fighter it could have aided planes like B-36 and later B-47 as a forward escort fighter to  go after any Soviet Migs that would try to attack these bombers. But also SAM's were becoming a favorite defender of both the  USSR/East Bloc and  the USA/West by the late 1950's. Deep penetration was not  going to be long afforded by either side's long range nuclear bomber  forces by the early 60's.

 

But the B-36 Peacemaker was  a remarkable bomber for its era and again at a  crossroads of  military aviation.

 

[Tailspin Turtle]

In 1949 (see Revolt of the Admirals), the U.S. Navy was convinced that it could detect incoming B-36s with radar and successfully intercept and shoot them down with F2H Banshees. A version equipped with a radar in the nose was developed to provide an all-weather and night capability; one Banshee was also evaluated with a McDonnell-design afterburner to increase the rate of climb. The superior performance of the MiG-15 at altitude compared to the F-86 and its armament was the direct result of the requirement to intercept B-36s. That's not to say that some Peacemakers wouldn't have gotten to their targets.