Warbird Information Exchange

Yeah...it's OK Would look much better sitting in my front lawn! How about you box her up, mail her to me and let me borrow her for say the next 20 years

Fabulous job to all involved in such an incredibly huge job! Lotta love and elbow grease went in to making her that pretty, eh?

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Earn my respect and never lose it.
Demand my respect and never gain it. -Me

...just another plane dreamer.

Congrats to the Pima crew on a job well done!

I've been following 2827 since 1977 or so, when I helped take her apart for her move from Greater Southwest Airport to Carswell Field, outside the gates of the plant where she was built.

The interior was restored in Fort Worth in the 1990's, but the restoration group lacked the resources to properly reassemble and display the aircraft.

Here are some before-and after pics: http://www.itasca.net/~corrie/B36-2827/

one more link with old pics and the ft worth story, if it had not been for those guys, it wouldn't have been around for Pima to do their job on it.
http://www.cowtown.net/proweb/last_one.htm

A threat to national security are you serious? What a shame as that would have made a fantastic but expensive airshow act and an awsome sight in the skies as well!!

Are there any videos of the engines running?

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Cheers,
Peter

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No video - remember, this was the early 1970's. Some TV newscasters still used the phrase, "Film at 11." Portable video cameras required a crew of two. However, I think the Saving the Last Peacemaker CD has a photo of one of the engines running, cowlings off, a crewmember laying on top of the nacelle, probably adjusting the carb. (They only had one set of working engine instruments, so they could only run one engine at a time. But they did get all six running, or so I was told when I got involved in 1976 or so.)

When the crew was taking 2827 apart for the move from the Carswell gate into the Lockheed hangars, it was discovered that the fuel system had a number of serious leaks. There's a good chance she would've caught fire on her first flight.

As far as putting one on the airshow circuit goes, scan through the FIFI thread to get an idea of the scope of the effort required to keep a B-29 in the air these days, and then look at this photo:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... d_B-36.jpg

Still, I would dearly love to hear that distinctive drone live, and not just through the speakers on my TV or PC...

What an amazing job the Pima crew did !!!

Awesome !

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Michel C
Thousands of a/c pics at Passion-Aviation

Hmmm, yep, that puts a little perspective on it. Yep, yep, yep.

I think a B-36 held 32,000 gallons of gasoline. Lets see, 32,000 times $4.00 equals...... Way too much!!

1.28 million dollars. How many gallons an hour does it burn? And oil? How about the jet fuel?

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

I think each engine had a 100+ gallon oil tank and each engine burned 1-10 gallons an hour? The jets burned Avgas.

The J model carried 36,000 gallons of fuel, and could stay airborne for 48 hours. Mr. Sliderule says that fuel consumption was on the order of 700gph. About $8 a second. Of course, that's calculated from max-duration missions, leaned out at 40,000 ft.

Oh, don't forget the spark plugs: 56 per engine.

100 gal of oil per engine, which did not need to be changed. It was consumed and replenished.

Ground crew have estimated that it took about 800 hours of ground maintenance for each flight hour.

I found this site with some interesting info: http://www.zianet.com/tmorris/b36.html

This was a machine that taxed the resources of the US Air Force.

GREAT read about being a crewmember in SAC. Highly recommended!

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Sure, Charles Lindbergh flew the plane... but Tom Rutledge built the engine!

Visit Django Studios online or Facebook!

Uh, no! $4.00 x 32,000 gallons = $128,000.
Oooops! Only missed it by a factor of 10. Must have mis-typed a decimal point.

In any case, the B-36 has always been one of my favorite bombers. Somebody earlier mentioned that they had an issue with the cockpit greenhouse. Maybe they just meant the condition of the actual "glass" on the Pima B-36. As a pilot, I've often fantasized about the view from a B-36 cockpit.

The B-36 is about the only thing that makes it possible to put up with June Allyson and the rest of the melodrama (i.e. "soap opera") aspects of the Jimmy Stewart movie "Strategic Air Command" - and ole' Jimmy was a little too old to supposedly be playing pro baseball and having his first child, too. Don't get me wrong, I never miss a chance to watch it when it comes on the tube, but only because of the aerial shots of the B-36. OK, maybe also the aerial shots of the B-47's...

Can you imagine how popular a flying B-36 would be at airshows? And how impossible it would be to put fuel in it (per above)....

The glass on 2827 was in pretty good shape, considering. Back in the 70's a few of the panes were crazed, one had been shot, and one was missing. The guys in Ft Worth did a great job fixing up her front office, as you can see here: http://www.itasca.net/~corrie/B36-2827/

Stewart may have been a little old to be a pro baseball player, but he was spot-on for a WW2 bomber pilot recalled to active duty.

And while June may have been trying to channel Gracie Burns in her performance, she IS mighty cute in that white skirt.

Speaking of the supporting cast, ever notice that Tom Doyle, the ball club's manager, is played by the same actor that played the master scrounger Sergeant Clancy in "Flying Leathernecks"? Character actor Jay C. Flippen had a lot of range. The good Reverend was also in both films. James Bell had a few lines as a colonel in Wayne's film.

My favorite line from the whole movie was when they got off the C-97 coming back from Thulie, Greenland, the General lit up a cigar while standing next to the airplane. One of the ground crew turned to Jimmy Stewart and asked "doesn't he know that the airplane might blow up?" and Jimmy says...

"It wouldn't dare!"