Convair B-36 Peacemaker - Warbird Tech Series Volume 24

Convair B-36 “Peacemaker”
Warbird Tech Series Volume 24
By Dennis R. Jenkins
Reviewed by Ned Barnett
(Review Copy provided by Specialty Press)

This is an update of a review first published in early 2000; but book hasn’t changed, but new information on the B-36 has made this fine volume even more useful and relevant – and the release of 1/144th scale Peacemaker kits add a further incentive for revisiting this remarkable little 100-page book.

The B-36 served operationally for just 10 years, from 1948 to 1958 – it was slow for it’s time, cruising at just 250 mph, but the Peacemaker flew so high that it was largely invulnerable for most of it’s career. With an unrefueled combat range of 10,000 miles, missions of 40 hours were not uncommon – though they must have been butt-busters of monumental proportions. This book – from Specialty Press’s excellent Warbird Tech series – does an excellent job of capturing the sheer enormity of this remarkable huge aircraft, known with irony and a bit of affection as “Magnesium Overcast.” The war-winning atomic bomber, the B-29 Superfortress, looked like a Piper Cub when parked in the B-36’s shadow (which Convair and the Air Force did a lot, for PR purposes).

It also captures the details, with sketches of the turrets and engine installations, close-up photos of cockpits and bomb bays and low-slug auxiliary jet engines. It should come as no surprise that the B-36 was frequently modified to fulfill special missions – perhaps most amazingly as an aircraft carrying an operational nuclear reactor (which did not power the plane, but only tested airborne radiation shielding). At least one B-36 was modified as an all-jet YB-60, intended as a competitor to the Boeing B-52 but – at a top speed roughly 100 mph less than the B-52 – too little, too late.

The book has a relative few color photos – most B-36s weren’t all that colorful – but the author found a color shot of a gaudy B-36 used to drop test atom bombs over Nevada and the Pacific – this one looks like a cross between a circus wagon and an 8th Air Force “formation ship.” Modelers who see this photo will absolutely want to figure out a way to build it. However, what it lacks in color it makes up for with line drawings – many from documents created by Convair and the Air Force for Peacemaker crews and ground crews – that really make this aircraft come to life.

Whether you like military technology and aviation history or whether you’re a modeler looking for reference material and interesting ideas, the Warbird Tech Convair B-36 “Peacemaker” is a book you’ll want to add to your personal library.