EXACTLY!!!! My dad fought on Tinian and Saipan and would've been part of the Japan invasion force.
Without this aircraft, many of us wouldn't be here, as our Fathers/Grandfathers would likely have died on the beaches of Japan, along with millions more innocent civilians and enemy soldiers.
Therefore...bite me.
Thank you. Ask the thousands of victims who died at Pearl Harbor during a sneak attack by a country that had not declared war against us. Ask those who managed to survive the Bataan Death March how they feel about it. Ask why the Japanese transported US and British POW's stuffed like sardines into ordinary merchant ships by the thousands and did not mark the ships (like they were supposed to) and were torpedoed by US subs. All of the POW's were locked below deck and none survived when this happened. (more than once). Ask the Chinese who suffered horrific abuse, older men who were experimented on to see what might help the emperor in the future. Chinese women rounded up and sent to Japanese-held areas for use as "pleasure woman" for the Japanese army/navy.
Wow, there is a picture on that wikipedia page of the B-36 and the B-29 side by side. It dwarfs the B-29. Crazy.B-29's are awesome and all... but (imho) the B-36J is the bomb. I mean it was literally built as a conveyance/deployment device for the first hydrogen bombs ever made. And it's just a sexy plane.
Wow, there is a picture on that wikipedia page of the B-36 and the B-29 side by side. It dwarfs the B-29. Crazy.
EDIT: It was even larger than the B-52! By almost 50ft (wingspan)!
The B-36 was a amazing plane. The later versions could carry 86,000lbs of bombs in 4xbomb-bays which is more bomb-load than the B-52. Still carries the record for most engines on a USAF aircraft with 10 engines. However the B-36 when first designed, the atomic bomb program had not even started. However it just turned out that it's huge bomb-bays could easily carry the largest nuclear devices without a issue.
The two most inner engines on each wing could be accessed in-flight by the flight engineers if needed to do repairs.
B-36 take-off from the 1955 film strategic air command with Jimmy Stewart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGjyH2ulsCk
B-29's are awesome and all... but (imho) the B-36J is the bomb. I mean it was literally built as a conveyance/deployment device for the first hydrogen bombs ever made. And it's just a sexy plane.
While amazing, it was also troublesome. Since the engines were in a "pusher" configuration they had a tenancy to overheat. Normally a radial-type engine benefits from the airflow in the typical "tractor" configuration and the carb's are protected from icing as they were installed so that engine heat prevented it but the B-36 had icing issues, used a lot of oil and the leaded gas of that era meant a lot of fouled plugs. From the Wiki page on it, "This aircraft met all the 1941 requirements, but had serious problems with engine reliability and maintenance (changing the 336 spark plugs was a task dreaded by ground crews)"
Yikes!, 336 plugs!, see 'ya in a week or so LOL.
EXACTLY!!!! My dad fought on Tinian and Saipan and would've been part of the Japan invasion force.
Without this aircraft, many of us wouldn't be here, as our Fathers/Grandfathers would likely have died on the beaches of Japan, along with millions more innocent civilians and enemy soldiers.
Therefore...bite me.
I would say that's doubtful considering the Japanese never directly responded to the nukes being dropped, but surrendered the moment the Russians declared war on them and opened a second front. Even if the bombs had never been dropped, the war wasn't going to last much longer. The Japanese wanted to protect the emperor at all costs, including accepting the shame of defeat.
Buy why waste so much money? just for the lulz? to remind everyone that we have won only one war and that too by condemning more than 100,000 innocent civilians generations to nuclear radiation?