View From The Porch: Today In History: Six turnin', four burnin'.

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Today In History: Six turnin', four burnin'.

August 8th, 1946 marks the maiden flight of the Aluminum Overcast, the Big Stick, the Convair B-36 Peacemaker. Jimmy Stewart was not flying.

16 comments:

Mark said...: Okay, did you make "Aluminium Overcast" up, or do I find someone else to gripe at for my fizzy sinuses and misdirected beverage?; 6:27 AM, August 08, 2007
Tam said...: That would be one of its common nicknames, actually. :); 6:29 AM, August 08, 2007
Anonymous said...: AKA Magnesium Overcast because it was one of the first aircraft to make such extensive use of magnesium.

I my have to repurpose that 6 turning 4 burning thingie.; 7:09 AM, August 08, 2007
Anonymous said...: "Six turning and four burning"??

OMG, think of the carbon footprint that thing must create!; 8:57 AM, August 08, 2007
Tam said...: Imagine the carbonized footprint it left with its 42 ton bomb load.; 9:04 AM, August 08, 2007
The Old Man said...: You'd see why she was the "Overcast" if y'all got to the AF Museum at Wright Pat.
Goblins.\, anyone? *snicker*; 10:01 AM, August 08, 2007
NotClauswitz said...: It was great in that old movie with the gigantic radiation-fed flying praying mantis...; 12:09 PM, August 08, 2007
Anonymous said...: I happened to have been wasting time on Wikipedia earlier this week and came across the B-36 entry. Best part: "Thus the B-36 came to have ten engines, more than any other mass-produced aircraft. If all engines functioned normally at full power during the pre-takeoff warm up, the lead flight engineer would say to the captain "six [engines] turning and four [engines] burning". Erratic reliability led to the wisecrack "two turning, two burning, two joking and two smoking," with two engines not accounted for." Sounds like my workplace

CAPTCHA = hdolpc - Heavy Duty One Laptop Per Child?; 12:56 PM, August 08, 2007
Anonymous said...: Convair also built one of the slickest delta-winged bombers ever, the B-58 Hustler. Trouble was, with cost overruns the airframe could have been built from gold and would have incurred a lower cost per unit. The weapons pylons were also incompatible with everything currently in the inventory at the time as well.

There was one on static display on a pylon over by Meacham or Carswell in Ft. Worth years ago; I haven't been over there in awhile and I'd hope it is still there. Maybe I'll do Google Earth and see if it's still there. Might be one on display at Barksdale as well.

Looks like a big lawn dart on a stick. Really a beautiful aircraft.

Regards,
Rabbit.; 1:26 PM, August 08, 2007
Anonymous said...: Google up YB-60 sometime.

A B-36 with swept wings and b-52 jet pods.

Too slow for adoption, but big.; 2:13 PM, August 08, 2007
Comrade Misfit said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4:19 PM, August 08, 2007
Comrade Misfit said...: (Had to delete the earlier one due to a serious typo)

"Six turning and four burning."

Except that the jet pods didn't come along until the B-36D model was developed.

I have to wonder how well those turbines worked burning 155/145 aviation gasoline. Purple gas (because of the dye added, compared to green [100/130], blue [91/96], red [80/87], brown [70/73]) had a lot of tetraethyl lead in it and it may have salted up the hot section of those J-47s.

But I don't know for sure.; 4:21 PM, August 08, 2007
Billy Beck said...: Peacemaker Trivia: Walt Soplata is believed to be the only private individual in the whole world with a B-36 in his yard.

http://tinyurl.com/f4mzv; 8:22 PM, August 08, 2007
Gewehr98 said...: From your resident B-52 and WC-135 guy, it's my understanding that the name "Aluminum Overcast" has been in continual recycle for large airframes since WWII. During my crew dawg days, we used it to describe Lockheed C-5 Galaxy trash haulers. Of course, the moniker gets recycled every now and again, most recently seen on the EAA's own restored B-17G:

http://www.b17.org; 10:18 PM, August 08, 2007
Anonymous said...: Rabbit,
There was one of the B-58's still in use by someone in the late '70s. I was nearly blown off the 101 freeway one evening by it's jetwash as it came in to land at Moffet NAS in the South Bay(San Fran). That planform with the 4 widely spaced engines was unique. That overpass is inline with their main runway, so I was REAL close! (He was a mite low, I think.)
NASA shared the facility, and did a lot of test flights there, including daily U-2 sorties.; 10:38 PM, August 08, 2007
NotClauswitz said...: Will, they always come in low for fun over the golfers at Sunnyvale Muni. A couple years ago months ago a C-130 Air National Guard unit flying on practice maneuvers with the back door open accidentally dropped a big bundle that landed near a group on the fairway...; 2:07 PM, August 09, 2007