This Date in Aviation History: August 8 - August 10

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 08/10/2018 at 12:35 • Filed to: wingspan, planelopnik history, Planelopnik

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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 8 through August 10.

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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. 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.

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

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The mushroom cloud billows over the city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 (Japanese Government)

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. 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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(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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(Author unknown)

August 10, 1949 – The first flight of the Avro Canada C102 Jetliner, the world’s second jet-powered airliner. The C102 took its first flight just 13 days after the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and while it appeared that the Jetliner would prove to be a successful design, de Havilland Canada chose instead to focus their efforts on the production of their !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! interceptor. American billionaire !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! approached de Havilland and asked them to build 30 for him, but they refused, nor would they allow Hughes to produce the Jetliner in the US under license. A second, nearly completed prototype was scrapped, and the flying prototype was broken up in 1956. Despite a promising life cut short, the C102 did give the world one lasting legacy: the word jetliner. Coined by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! for the C102, jetliner has since become the generic word for any large, jet-powered commercial transport.

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August 1o, 1896 – The death of Otto Lilienthal, an early and influential pioneer of manned flight who was known as the Glider King for his experiments with, and development of, unpowered glider flight. Born on May 23, 1848, Lillienthal worked closely with his brother Gustav and made over 2,000 flights beginning in 1891, some of which covered distances of over 800 feet. While all those flights only accounted for five hours of actual flying time, Lillienthal’s influence on the history of manned aviation far outstripped his hours in the air. The notoriety he garnered not only popularized the idea of future powered flight, but also influenced the early work of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and other aviation pioneers. Lillenthal was killed in the crash of one of his gliders when he entered an unrecoverable stall at an altitude of about 50 feet and suffered a broken neck when his glider plummeted to the ground.

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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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KingT- 60% of the time, it works every time > ttyymmnn 08/10/2018 at 12:45

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Those b-36 wheels are abso-freaking-lutely massive.

ttyymmnn > KingT- 60% of the time, it works every time 08/10/2018 at 12:53

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RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > ttyymmnn 08/10/2018 at 13:06

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It is regrettable that the XC-99 is currently mothballed awaiting interest and funds to be restored. Apparently it deteriorated quite a bit in its time outside - high magnesium alloy issues.

ttyymmnn > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 08/10/2018 at 13:09

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It’s also regrettable that there is an airworthy B-36. But can you imagine the operating costs? And there were so many beer cans to be made after they retired them.

415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 08/10/2018 at 13:22

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I was just thinking that, I remember reading it was being stored. At least it wasn’t just scrapped. I really want to go to the Smithsonian Garber facility, hopefully they have tours in there. 

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > ttyymmnn 08/10/2018 at 13:23

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Not sure on the car in that pic. Some reason to think it’s a ‘40 Buick, but I’m unsure.

ttyymmnn > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 08/10/2018 at 13:25

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You’re already way ahead of me. I’m better with airplanes. 

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > ttyymmnn 08/10/2018 at 13:43

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The “probably a Buick” comes from being able to see the edge of the taillight, the fact that fender skirts of a streamliner style and a two-tone paint job both speak to a premium auto, the muted chrome-lined not-a-running-board, and the highly unusual shape of the rear fender stamping. Most fenders of that era aren’t rounded up from the bottom that way, and to make it happen would require a strong press process with probably more steps than had been usual. Also, Buicks have relatively muted trim overall.

I’m having a hard time finding a roofline that’s a match, though, and Buick apparently had a maddening variation of trunk profiles across their Special and Super lines. It looks like there’s a canted B-pillar, which aligns with being a business coupe, but it has a lot of greenhouse for one.

All of that leads me to think it’s *actually* a similar ‘40 Cadillac.

user314 > KingT- 60% of the time, it works every time 08/10/2018 at 13:50

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At one point Convair tried tracked landing gear.

They worked after a fashion, dropping the B-36's ground pressure to 57psi, but they were heavy, complicated, and superfluous .

user314 > ttyymmnn 08/10/2018 at 14:00

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And then there’s the NB-36H Crusader, and the X-6 that would have followed.

facw > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 08/10/2018 at 14:21

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Yeah, as I recall, the USAF museum basically that the cost of the new 4th hangar made it impossible to fund restoration of the XC-99 any time in the foreseeable future, so it got shipped off to the boneyard, in the hopes that one day funds would exist.

I’ve never been able to find it in the boneyard imagery though, so I don’t know if it is stored away under cover, or if it is just broken up into enough pieces as to be unrecognizable. Pretty easy to see in old pictures of its former home in TX:

Edit: Here it is in Dayton before it went to New Mexico. It’s in significantly more pieces than it was in in TX:

facw > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 08/10/2018 at 14:21

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Yeah, as I recall, the USAF museum basically that the cost of the new 4th hangar made it impossible to fund restoration of the XC-99 any time in the foreseeable future , so it got shipped off to the boneyard, in the hopes that one day funds would exist.

I’ve never been able to find it in the boneyard imagery though, so I don’t know if it is stored away under cover, or if it is just broken up into enough pieces as to be unrecognizable. Pretty easy to see in old pictures of its former home in TX:

ttyymmnn > user314 08/10/2018 at 14:38

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And the YB-60, too.