This Date in Aviation History: August 7 - August 9

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 08/09/2019 at 12:35 • Filed to: wingspan, Planelopnik, TDIAH

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Welcome to This Date in Aviation History , getting of you caught up on milestones, important historical events and people in aviation from August 7 through August 9.

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A Convair B-36D Peacemaker, powered by six piston engines and four turbojet engines. (US Air Force)

August 8, 1946 – The first flight of the Convair B-36 Peacemaker. As the world hurtled toward WWII, the concepts of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! were taking shape. The theories of WWI Italian general !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! espoused that large scale bombing of factories and cities would cripple a county’s means of waging war and destroy the nation’s morale to keep fighting. These precepts were later championed by American general !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the man who is seen today as the father of the US Air Force. As war approached, the US began to develop its own heavy bombers, and would hone the practice of strategic bombing in the coming conflict. Bombers such as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! became iconic of the US bombing campaigns, but the bomber that came to symbolize the post-WWII Cold War, the massive B-36 Peacemaker, was actually designed two months before the US entered the war.

A prototype Convair XB-36 takes off. The massive single main wheels were later replaced by four smaller wheels after causing damage to runways. (US Air force)

As the German Wehrmacht swept across Europe following the invasion of Poland in 1939, the situation looked increasingly grim for England. While the US had not yet entered the war, it was clear to American war planners that, should England fall to the Nazis, there would be no European base from which to launch bombing missions against Germany and occupied Europe. The only alternative would be to fly from bases in North America, and any bomber operating from the US or Canada would need an unrefueled range of nearly 6,000 miles. In light of that eventuality, the B-36 was actually designed in 1941, and Convair told the Army they would have two flying prototypes by 1943. But Convair was so busy building the B-24 Liberator and developing the B-32 Dominator, much more traditional bombers, that the B-36 was placed on the back burner and wasn’t pursued in earnest until the end of the war. But by that time, the mission had changed from an ultra-long range conventional bomber to an ultra-long range nuclear bomber. While a huge piston-powered bomber seemed somewhat of an anachronism at the dawn of the jet age, no other aircraft had the range necessary for such deep strikes, as early jet engines were notoriously thirsty and had a limited combat radius.

In a stark display of just how massive the B-36 was, here it dwarfs a B-29 Superfortress at Carswell AFB in Fort Worth in 1948. (US Air Force)

The B-36 was the largest mass-produced piston-powered aircraft ever built, dwarfing the B-29 and, at 230 ft, its wingspan was greater than any combat aircraft ever produced. Initially, the somewhat ironically named Peacemaker was powered by six massive !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! 28-cylinder radial engines in a pusher configuration, the same engines that powered the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and host of other large American warplanes. Later, four !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turbojets were added to augment take off power and increase speed during bombing runs. The Peacemaker’s four bomb bays could carry up to 86,000 pounds of bombs, more than ten times the load carried by the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . It was also the only bomber capable of delivering the 43,600-pound !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! “earthquake bomb.” The B-36's nuclear capabilities were equally formidable, with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! hydrogen bomb, the biggest and heaviest nuclear bomb ever produced, in its arsenal. For defense, the B-36 had six retractable, remote-controlled turrets each armed with a pair of 20 mm cannons.

The Peacemaker entered service with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1948 and began its role as a nuclear deterrent, and the RB-36 reconnaissance variant was flown on spying missions around the periphery of the Soviet Union and its client states. Despite being a weapon of war, no B-36 ever dropped munitions on an enemy, nuclear or otherwise. The B-36 served as an important test bed, and was modified to carry a nuclear reactor to investigate nuclear powered flight. It was also modified into the enormous !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! strategic airlifter.

A B-36 and the cargo carrying variant XC-99 in flight. Only a single XC-99 was built. (US Air Force)

Due to its vulnerability to Russian jet fighters and its lack of inflight refueling capability, the Peacemaker’s service life was a relatively short 10 years. The mammoth bomber gave way to modern jet bombers such as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and, of the 384 Peacemakers built, only four remain on display.

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August 9, 1945 – The United states drops the Fat Man atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. As WWII in the Pacific dragged on through 1945, the Allies were increasingly concerned that an invasion of the Japanese homeland would be the only way to bring an end to the war. But the expected fanatical resistance of the Japanese people meant that such an invasion would lead to an unprecedented loss of life, and the Allies hoped that dropping a nuclear bomb on Japan would bring about an end to the conflict and avoid a costly invasion. Following the horrific atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, the Japanese government showed no sign that they were willing to do capitulate, even in the face of such devastating weaponry. In fact, Japanese military leaders started making preparations for martial law that would prevent any Japanese from trying to make peace with the Allies. Following a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! from President Truman that more attacks would be forthcoming if the Japanese refused to surrender unconditionally, the president made good on his word and decided to continue the nuclear bombing until Japan yielded.

The USAAF targeting map for Nagasaki. (National Archives)

The next mission after Hiroshima was originally slated for August 11, but predictions of poor weather over the target areas pushed the date up to August 9. The designated target for the bombing was the city of Kokura, the secondary target to Hiroshima on August 6. Kokura was home to the biggest arms factory in Japan and, like Hiroshima, it had been spared from conventional and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! raids because the Allies wanted to measure the true effects of the atomic bomb. The mission was carried out by another specially modified !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! named Bockscar after its regular commander, Capt. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . But Bock was not on the pilot rotation for the mission and the aircraft was instead commanded by Maj. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , who had accompanied the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! on the Hiroshima mission flying another B-29 named !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Capt. Bock instead piloted The Great Artiste and carried scientific instruments to measure the blast.

At 3:49 am on August 9, Sweeney and his crew departed Tinian, but when they arrived over Kokura they found that smoke from the firebombing of the nearby city of Yahata obscured their view. Sweeney was under orders to drop the bomb visually rather than by radar, so he elected to divert to Nagasaki, their backup target. During the war, Nagasaki was one of Japan’s largest seaports, housed critical industries for the production of ordnance and shipping, and was home to the Mitsubishi Shipyard. The city also had many more buildings of traditional wood construction, unlike Hiroshima, which had more concrete buildings. At the time of the bombing, there were an estimated 263,000 people in the city, of which only 9,000 were Japanese soldiers. The rest were civilians, along with 2,500 conscripted Korean workers and 400 Allied POWs.

Mark III nuclear bomb, “Fat Man” (US Department of Defense)

The bomb chosen for the mission was codenamed !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (officially Mark III), an implosion-type nuclear bomb with a solid plutonium core. When it detonated over Nagasaki, the blast from Fat Man was greater than 21,000 tons of TNT, and anywhere from 40,000 to 70,000 inhabitants were killed in the initial explosion and resulting fires. Only 400 people in underground shelters survived. The city of Nagasaki is nestled between mountains, and had the topography not contained the explosion, the death toll could have been considerably higher.

“Like a graveyard with not a tombstone standing.” The devastation of Nagasaki, six weeks after the bombing. (US Marine Corps)

Due to a pump failure on board Bockscar , the crew did not have access to 600 gallons of fuel for the return flight, and they were unable to reach Tinian. Instead, they diverted to Okinawa and made an emergency landing on the busy airfield, firing flares to alert the controllers of their critical situation. With engines shutting down from fuel starvation, Bockscar came to a stop behind a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! that was waiting to take off. After the second atomic bombing, and with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of yet more nuclear attacks, the Japanese government finally capitulated on August 15. The official surrender ceremony that ended the Second World War was held on board the battleship !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (BB-63) in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945.

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Short Takeoff

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(US Air Force)

August 7, 1990 – Operation Desert Shield begins. Following the Iraqi !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, US President !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! deployed US forces to Saudi Arabia to protect America’s strategic ally from further aggression by Iraqi President !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Air assets of the US Air Force and US Navy teamed with aircraft from Saudi Arabia, Great Britain and France, eventually forming a coalition of 48 nations resolved to oust Saddam from Kuwait. Five months of air operations to protect the buildup of 120,000 soldiers saw Operation Desert Shield become Operation Desert Storm, with the Coalition invasion to liberate Kuwait beginning on January 17, 1991 in what would come to be known as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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(NASA)

August 7, 1963 – The first flight of the Lockheed YF-12, a two-seat interceptor variant of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! reconnaissance aircraft. The YF-12 was developed in response to an Air Force requirement for an interceptor to replace the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! that would be capable of speeds up to Mach 3. Following the cancelation of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , Lockheed’s !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! proposed version of the A-12 that would be fitted with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! fire control system and armed with !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! missiles, specially modified to be fired by the YF-12 from internal missile bays. The Air Force ordered three prototypes and, during flight testing, the YF-12 set speed and altitude records for an interceptor of 2,070 mph and 80,257 feet. The YF-12 program was canceled in 1968, though the prototypes served as NASA test aircraft until 1979.

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(US Navy)

August 7, 1951 – The first flight of the McDonnell F3H (F-3) Demon, a single-seat fighter and interceptor developed for the US Navy as the successor to the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Unlike other fighters that were swept-wing variants of earlier sraight-winged aircraft, the Banshee was designed from the start with swept wings in an effort to counter Soviet fighter aircraft, though it was not capable of supersonic flight. Problems with engines plagued the Demon throughout its service life, and it was retired before it could serve in the Vietnam War. Despite difficulties with the Demon’s development, it ultimately served as the basis for the design of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , which replaced the Demon in Navy service.

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August 7, 1929 – The Graf Zeppelin (LZ-127) begins the first circumnavigation of the world by air. Before the great ocean-spanning airliners, Zeppelins were the primary means of intercontinental travel. The Graf Zeppelin took its maiden flight on September 18, 1928, and completed its first flight to the United States the following month. At the urging of US newspaper magnate !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the Graf Zeppelin began its eastward flight around the world by leaving Lakehurst, New Jersey and flying for Friedrichshafen in Germany before heading across the Soviet Union, Siberia, Japan, and then across the Pacific Ocean and back to New Jersey. The circumnavigation took 12 days to complete and covered 21,000 miles. On board was Hearst reporter !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! who became the first woman to travel around the world.

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August 7, 1928 – The first fight of the Curtiss Robin. Following the end of WWI, aviation transitioned from a purely military activity into the civilian sector, and designers sought to supply simple, relatively low-cost aircraft for the flying public. Making use of surplus !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! 90hp engines, Curtiss designed a high-wing monoplane with a wooden wing and tube frame fuselage that had room for a single pilot and two passengers. By the time production ended, Curtiss had built 769 Robins, and they served in almost every conceivable function, from personal use to carrying airmail to serving as a small airliner to carrying cargo. It also served as a platform for daredevils, including Dale “Red” Jackson, who performed over four hundred slow rolls without stopping in 1929. Later, Jackons teamed with Forrest O’Brine and set an endurance record by flying nonstop for 27 days. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! also flew a Robin in what he claimed was an accidental flight from New York to Ireland in 1938.

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(UK Government)

August 9, 1996 – The death of Sir Frank Whittle. Born in 1907, Whittle was an engineer who served with the Royal Air Force in WWII and is given credit for inventing the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! engine (Germany’s !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , who worked independently from Whittle, receives credit for the first operational jet engine). Following work on development of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! concept, Whittle’s breakthrough came when he replaced the motorjet’s piston engine with a turbine and patented the concept in 1930. However, the British government saw little value in Whittle’s engine, so he formed !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to develop the engine on his own. By 1940, the Air Ministry finally placed a contract with Whittle to mount his engine in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! test aircraft, which first flew on May 15, 1941, and then the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the Allies’ only operational jet fighter of WWII. Following the war, Whittle worked in the British aviation industry and taught at the US Naval Academy.

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(US Air Force)

August 9, 1980 – The death of Jaqueline “Jackie” Cochran. Cochran was born on May 11, 1906 in Muscogee, Florida and learned to fly after just three weeks of instruction. In the 1930s, Cochran was the only woman to compete for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , won five !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and still holds more speed, distance and altitude records than any other pilot, male or female. During WWII, Cochran helped establish the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (WASP), in which women pilots were trained to ferry military aircraft in the US to free up male pilots for war duty. After the war, Cochran continued setting records in jet aircraft and, in 1953, she became the first woman pilot to break the sound barrier while piloting a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . She was also the first woman to land and take off from an aircraft carrier. Cochran died in 1980 at the age of 74.

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August 9, 1956 – The first flight of the Fiat G.91, a fighter-bomber designed to provide a standard lightweight strike aircraft for NATO as part of the NATO Basic Military Requirement No. 1 in 1953. Designed as a tactical ground support aircraft following experience gained in the Korean War, the G.91 was powered by a single !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turbojet and had a maximum speed of 668 mph. It was armed with either four .50 caliber machine guns or two 30mm cannons in Luftwaffe service, and external hardpoints could accommodate up to 1,500 pounds of external stores including rockets, bombs, external drop tanks. The G.91 entered service with the Italian Air force in 1958, followed by West Germany, Italy, and Portugal. The G.91 also served as the platform for the Italian !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! demonstration squadron from 1964-1981. A total of 770 were built, and the type was finally retired by Italy in 1995.

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Connecting Flights

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If you enjoy these Aviation History posts, please let me know in the comments. And if you missed any of the past articles, you can find them all at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . You can also find more stories about aviation, aviators and airplane oddities at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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user314 > ttyymmnn 08/09/2019 at 13:05

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Initially, the somewhat ironically named Peacemaker was powered by six massive Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major 28-cylinder radial engines in a pusher configuration, the same engines that powered the Boeing B-50 Superfortress and host of other large American warplanes. Later, four General Electric J47 turbojets were added to augment take off power and increase speed during bombing runs.

The addition of the jet pods lead to crews saying they had “ Six turnin’, four burnin’”, though with the somewhat questionable reliability of both the jets and radials that quickly devolved to “T wo turning, two burning, two smoking, two choking, and two more unaccounted for.”

As bad as idea as it probably was, the NB-36H was the best looking of the B-36 models:

Strangely enough, there do not appear to be any in-flight p hotos of a B-36 w ith its turrets extended. Best I could find are a few ground photos:

And one from a flight sim showing all four turrets:

facw > ttyymmnn 08/09/2019 at 13:08

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armed with Hughes AIM-47 Falcon missiles, specially modified to be fired by the YF-12 from internal missile bays 

Of note is that the AIM-47 could be equipped with a very small nuclea r warhead.  Given that the YF-12 could only carry 3 missiles (though it’s easy to imagine that in the production aircraft they could have repackaged the fire control to fit a fourth), it’s likely this is how they would have been set up. With so few shots, you’d need to make each one count.

ttyymmnn > facw 08/09/2019 at 13:10

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There’s been talk recently of reviving the YF-23 as a stealthy bomb truck. That would be cool. I always liked that aircraft.

ttyymmnn > user314 08/09/2019 at 13:12

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I don’t know, but the YB-60 was pretty good looking for a giant death machine.

ttyymmnn > user314 08/09/2019 at 13:13

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I don’t think I’ve ever seen a photo of the turrets extended.

facw > ttyymmnn 08/09/2019 at 13:22

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I feel like there’s always talk of that. I don’t expect it will happen, especially with Northrop getting the LRSB contract (they’ll want to use all their political muscle to protect that).

If anything, I’d suspect you’d have a better chance of restarting F-22 production, while simultaneously building the X-44:

which would fill the strike role, while having significant commonality. Probably though, all the defense contractors are focused on 6th gen fighters at this point.  

user314 > facw 08/09/2019 at 16:32

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Yeah, that’s back when they were still expecting to be attacking large formations of Soviet Tu-95s. Pop off one or two nukes and disrupt the whole group. Once we figured out the Russians didn’t have waves of Bears, and then I/SLBMs became the favored method of launching a nuclear strike, the whole idea of nuclear-armed interceptors became moot.

Another little side note is that the idea was floated of developing an ASM version of the Falcon. The idea was far enough along that the Air Force planed to mount them on their new R B- (later RS- ) 71 Blackb irds. The idea was shelved though, and Curtis LeMay, who never liked it in the first place, lobbied to have the plane’s mission, and thus its designation, changed to Strategic Reconnaissance . LBJ approved, but the preview copies of the speech given to the media weren’t updated, giving rise to the urban legend that the president screwed-up the name, forcing the USAF to change it .

user314 > user314 08/09/2019 at 16:57

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Speaking of Bears :

Two US F-22 stealth jets and two Canadian CF-18 fighters intercepted the [2] nuclear-capable Russian Tu-95 Bear bombers after they entered Alaskan and Canadian Air Defense Identification Zones, which extend approximately 200 miles off Alaska’s western coast, NORAD said in a statement.

kanadanmajava1 > ttyymmnn 08/09/2019 at 17:28

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B-36's huge single tires weren’t only weird landing gear solution that they experimented with.

ttyymmnn > kanadanmajava1 08/09/2019 at 17:38

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I’ve seen those photos before, but I don’t know if they ever actually did any landing tests with them. That’s a pretty crazy solution.

facw > ttyymmnn 08/09/2019 at 20:51

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If it allowed operations from unprepared/minimally prepared field, you can imagine it being super appealing. If it looks like the Soviets are up to something you disperse the bomber fleet and there’s no way they can hit every flat piece of land in the Great Planes, so they’d have no realistic way to win in a first strike unless they had total surprise.