On Thu, 4 Mar 2021 15:17:22 -0800 (PST), Tom Kunich
wrote:

Hey John, I saw a picture of a heavy bomber circa just post WW II that had 6 reverse runny internal combustion engines and four jets on near the ends of the wings. From the serial number on the fuselage they had to have made at least 100 of these things but I've never heard of them before. Do you know what these things were? They appeared to have forward and aft gunnery positions So it had to have an extremely long range where they couldn't keep fighter cover.

It was a B-36D and there was an early version (B-36B?) with only the
receips..

They had a 15 man crew and could carry something like 80,000 lbs of
bombs and had 20mm cannon in the turrets rather then the 50 cal in
other bombers. The upper and lower turrets retracted into the fuselage
and there were a nose and tail fixed turret.and they had a range of
something like 10,000 miles, at 240 mph, or something like 40 hours
flying time. There was also a RB-36 photo reconnaissance version,

Two of my gunners on the RB-50 crew had been assigned to B-36's and
used to tell wild stories about 4 day flights.

They were replaced by the B-52 and I read that the last SAC B-36 was
scrapped in 1959.
--
Cheers,

John B.