Peace Through Superior Firepower/Bombers: Difference between revisions

The successor to the B-29 in US service; it was probably the first truly intercontinental bomber. The jet engines of the era were still rather unreliable and fuel-thirsty, so it had six huge piston engines mounted in its wings, in a pusher configuration no less. The thing was huge; although it wasn't the heaviest, it was the largest combat aircraft ever constructed (the record for "heaviest combat plane" goes to the Tu-160 and there are larger transport aircraft). It carries what still qualifies as an enormous bombload (up to 86,000 pounds of ordnance). It dates back to the WWII era; the US was worried about the security of [[Nineteen Eighty-Four|Airstrip One]]...err, the United Kingdom, and wanted a bomber that could reach targets in Europe from the North American mainland. (Admittedly, Sealion was a crapshoot at best, but that's another story.) There's just something about it, in terms of aesthetics it would fit nicely into [[BioBioShock Shock(series)]] if the game wasn't set underwater. Anyway, it was slow, especially compared to jet bombers like the B-47, although that one was somewhat short-legged and had to be based relatively close to the Soviet Union in order to reach its targets there. Later, in order to give them a higher dash speed over a target and through the worst of the Soviet air defenses, they were fitted with four jet engines in two underwing pods (2 engines per pod), so later variants had a total of ten engines, resulting in a joke about "six turning and four burning" .<ref>the piston engines tended to catch on fire due to a design flaw (the engines were designed for a "tractor" configuration, and reversing it put the carburetors ahead of the engine, so they wouldn't be warmed by engine heat, making them tend to ice over at altitude), resulting in some less complementary jokes on the configuration</ref>. Its sheer size, coupled with it being constructed mostly out of magnesium, led to its [[Fan Nickname]] of "Magnesium Overcast". It also carried a ridiculous amount of defensive armament ([[The Other Wiki]] lists ''[[More Dakka|sixteen]]'' [[More Dakka|cannons]]). Later, though, the cannons (except for the tail guns) were deleted along with other stuff in an effort (called the [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|"Featherweight"]] program) to increase range and service altitude (afterwards, some of the Featherweighted B-36s were documented to reach heights of well over 50,000 feet--makingfeet—making them quite hard to intercept for a while, until fighter and SAM designs became advanced enough to allow for effective interception). An all-jet-powered, swept-wing derivative, the XB-60, lost the competition to the Boeing B-52.

* Interestingly, it also remains the only mass-produced combat aircraft ever to have been capable of delivering the heaviest conventional bomb ever made: the T-12 "Cloudmaker" 19.776627 metric ton (43,600 &nbsp;lb) earthquake bomb. A single B-36 could carry two of them.

A Boeing offering; a graceful looking jet bomber and the ancestor of no less than three distinct aircraft: the B-47's larger brother, the B-52, the accompanying KC-135 tanker aircraft and the revolutionary 707 airliner. It served alongside the B-36 for a while before both were replaced by the B-52. They were rather short-legged, mostly being based in the UK. Variants with cameras were used for armed photo-reconnaissance (!) over the Soviet Union, including a really ballsy mass overflight of Vladivostok.

A North American offering. The US was worried about how well their bomber force could survive in the face of Soviet air defenses; for a while, their answer was to fly higher and faster, and the XB-70 was the ultimate expression of this trend: a high-altitude Mach 3+ jet bomber which could generate lift by ''riding its own sonic shockwaves''. In the late 1950s it was believed that improvements in SAMs and air defense technologies would overtake what was manageable and practical for a manned aircraft, putting the viability of the B-70 in question. The B-70 program was put on hold in 1958/59 while a thorough evaluation of this issue was conducted. This showed that the promised advances in surface-to-air missiles were not taking place and were unlikely to be attained any time soon. In fact, even today surface to air missiles have not reached the level of performance predicted in 1957 and the B-70 would still be beyond their effective reach. It was alos claimed that the Valkyrie had radar and thermal signatures that were abnormally large. this also was incprrect; the B-70 did have a very large radar cross sections from the side but nose-on it had only 40 percent of the RCS of a B-52 and this could be cut still further by using radar absorbing materials already being used on the SR-71 and A-12. Nor was the production B-70 likely to be that costly; USAF figures for a 350 aircraft fleet with 60 reconnaissance RS-70s was about $18 million per aircraft. This was twice the cost of a B-52H or 50 percent more than a B-58A. What really killed the B-70 was the need for funds to develop a multi-role combat aircraft that eventually became the F-111. The two XB-70s that were built were very valuable research aircraft, and very much deserving of their moniker.

Known among the crews as the "Bone" ("B-ONE" spelled out). The B-1A project was terminated due to being too expensive, and Carter (although he couldn't really say it at the time) deciding to focus his efforts on the B-2 instead. Reagan restarted the project with some modifications (reducing the max speed and turning the plane into a low-level penetrator) as the B-1B, and in all 100 were built. 67 remain in service with others lost in accidents or cannibalised for parts. With a four-person crew (women have flown it into combat), it has been optimised for the conventional role- i.e. it no longer can carry nukes- and used in a number of conflicts as such. It has an internal bomb load of 37,000 &nbsp;kg, second only to the Tu-160. It could add another 27 tonnes externally, but this is both pretty much prohibited by START I (which also effectively bars the plane from carrying air-launched cruise missiles) and would compromise the quasi-stealth capability of the aircraft (though neither has stopped the USAF from hanging targeting pods at these points, partly because the Taliban don't have radar) - it's estimated to have a radar cross-section 1/50 of the similar sized B-52. A proposed upgrade, the B-1R, would fully recommission all external hardpoints, upgrade the radar to track air targets, and allow bombs to be interchangeable with air-to-air missiles to create the world's largest fighter plane (as well as giving it the world's [[Intentionally Awkward Title|most awkward nickname for an aircraft]]).

* One appears in ''[[Real Genius (Film)|Real Genius]]''.

That's right. As if arming them with nuclear weapons wasn't bad enough, they came up with a bunch of screwy proposals. They'd have had to carry a lot of shielding and seat the crew as far away as possible from the reactor, for obvious reasons. And it would probably be best if the crew didn't have too many children, for similarly obvious reasons. As insane as it may sound, it did offer some range and performance advantages; in the end, though, the concept was rendered obsolete by, among other things, ICBM technology. A modified NB-36 actually flew with a reactor onboard, although this was just a small 1MW model and the idea was to test the effects of radiation on aircraft systems and crew. There was a proposed B-36 derivative, the Convair X-6, which would have been a bona fide nuclear flier. Eek.

Named after the [[Elvis Presley]] song. A nuclear-tipped stand-off weapon intended to be used by B-52s, so as to improve their survivability in the face of Soviet air defenses, some of the best in the world if stretched thin in some places.