Some More of our Bombs are Missing!

02/28/19 • 20 min

Six turning and four burning... what a sight it must have been to see the mighty Convair B36 Peacemaker fly. Less of a welcome sight would be watching a nuclear weapon being dropped by one in Canadian territorial waters only a few hundred miles North of Vancouver! This is the story of Bomber 075 and its sad ending!

The later marks of the Peacemaker had an additional 4 jet engines!

Convair XB-36 main landing gear.

The US Mk4 nuclear bomb.

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the USAF and the US Gov.

The later marks of the Peacemaker had an additional 4 jet engines!

Convair XB-36 main landing gear.

The US Mk4 nuclear bomb.

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the USAF and the US Gov.

Previous Episode

One of our Bombs is Missing

A B17 crew training before deploying to Europe during WW2 managed to put a little town in Oklahoma on the map but not in the way they might like!

The M38A2 100lb practice bomb was no small device when dropped from a few thousand feet!

How the centre of Boise City might have looked on the night it was bombed!

The B17 Flying Fortress.

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Doug Kerr, the USAF, Google World and Airwolfhound.

Next Episode

Capture Prone

There is a particular class of Military personnel who, at least in my time, were referred to as Capture Prone. Whilst for me it was something that was treated as a mild annoyance, during conflict, being captured represents a true hazard. For the crew of a downed B-24 Liberator, Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am, during WW2 who faced the fury of the German people, it would be deadly.

A Consolidated B-24 Liberator

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Jerry J. Jostwick and the US Gov/USAF archive.