Three months after V-E Day, on August 20, 1945, the B-36 Peacemaker strategic bomber was presented. Its first flight took place on August 8, 1946
Before the US entered World War II, in early 1941, the Convair B-36 Peacemaker was first developed. A strategic bombing campaign by the US Army Air Corps (USAAC) against Germany at the time would have been difficult with the aircraft available due to the possibility that Britain may succumb to the German “Blitz” menace.
The US would require a new class of bombers with a combat range of at least 5,700 miles (9,200 km), or the distance between Gander, Newfoundland, and Berlin, in order for them to reach Europe and return to bases in North America. Since the German Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM) was developing an ultralong-range bomber called the Amerikabomber, which was the subject of a 33-page proposal given to Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering on May 12, 1942, the USAAC desired a bomber with genuinely intercontinental range.
The B-36’s development was restarted in earnest as the Pacific War went on because the US needed a bomber that could reach Japan from its bases in Hawaii more and more.
In consultations with high-ranking US Army Air Forces (USAAF) officers, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson decided to forgo standard army procurement procedures, and on July 23, 1943 – the USAAF sent a “letter of intent” to Convair, ordering an initial production run of 100 B-36s before the completion and testing of the two prototypes, some 15 months after the Germans’ Amerikabomber proposal made it to their RLM authority, and coincidentally, on the same day that, in Germany, the RLM had ordered the Heinkel firm to design a six-engined version of their own, BMW 801E powered Amerikabomber design proposal.
August 1945 was the deadline for the first delivery, and October 1946 was the deadline for the final one, however, Consolidated (by this point known as Convair after its 1943 merger with Vultee Aircraft) postponed delivery. Three months after V-E Day, on August 20, 1945, the plane was unveiled, and it took to the skies for the first time on August 8, 1946.
If the B-36 Peacemaker had entered World War II, how useful would it have been?
‘It would have been awesome,’ explains Myke Predko, an aviation Expert, on Quora.
‘While the cruise speed of the B-36 was basically the same as the B-29 (around 235 MPH) it could do it at over 40,000 feet! There were no anti-aircraft cannon that could reach that altitude in World War II.
‘Its range of 4,000 miles (in the early versions) with a 10,000 lb payload didn’t quite give it the range to attack Japan from the Aleutians but it could easily attack Berlin from Iceland. For shorter distances, the aircraft could carry up to 72,000 lbs of bombs.
‘Of course, if any fighters could climb to an altitude which would put the B-36 in danger, it could ably defend itself with 16 20mm cannon (12 in remote turrets).
‘There would only be one issue and it isn’t a trivial one – the B-36 required much longer, wider, and thicker runways than any other aircraft up to that point in time. When the first B-36 made its first flight, there were only three runways in the world that could handle the aircraft. The efforts to build B-29 runways around the world would be seen as creating goat paths in comparison to the effort that would be required for the B-36.’
Predko concludes;
‘But I would expect the war would have been over much, much sooner.’
Photo by U.S. Air Force