Asked to design the ultimate cold-war bomber as a toy, this was the best I could come up with. I was told to make it bristling with guns, and be *extreme.* Make it so that any red-blooded boy of ten would want to play with it. Needless to say, he wasn't satisfied. My sense of realism doesn't permit me to create the sort of over-the-top piece of crap he really wanted. All the same, it's the sort of toy I would have wanted to play with.
Category All / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 1000 x 1280px
File Size 178.4 kB
I have unbuilt model kits of both the B29 and B36. They're about the same size. Or so it seems. The B39 is 1/48 scale and the B36 is 172!!! And the Peacemaker is still the somewhat larger of the two.
It was not actually the largest plane that has ever flown, though. The Bristol Brabazon was about 15 feet longer than the B36, but its wingspread was 5 feet shorter. And then there's the Hughes Hercules "Spruce Goose," by far the largest aircraft every to fly... even if only once.
It was not actually the largest plane that has ever flown, though. The Bristol Brabazon was about 15 feet longer than the B36, but its wingspread was 5 feet shorter. And then there's the Hughes Hercules "Spruce Goose," by far the largest aircraft every to fly... even if only once.
Great design! Yes, that is 1952 Cold-War kid's wetdream bomber.
That could be the Evil Empire Bomber. The 100,000 bombers that would attack from under teh South Pole and A-Bomb my neighborhood to extinction! Us Good Guys-- our bomber would have JET ENGINES! Woo-hoo! And Robot Guns! (Shooting Robot Fighter parasite planes!)
That could be the Evil Empire Bomber. The 100,000 bombers that would attack from under teh South Pole and A-Bomb my neighborhood to extinction! Us Good Guys-- our bomber would have JET ENGINES! Woo-hoo! And Robot Guns! (Shooting Robot Fighter parasite planes!)
The Russians have always loved huge things. Maybe its a response to the huge empty spaces they live in. Or maybe its just the totalitarian mind-set, which has existed since the first Czar learned to read and write. More recently, the USSR had built in secret an immense ground effect machine called the "Ekranoplan." It's part boat and part sea-plane, but uses its wings not so much to create lift as to compress air below, and form a cusion. To enhance the ground effect, the jet engines blow air back over the wings. It wasn't a great success. Though it worked, it was useless over anything but water, and still water at that. For carrying an invasion force over the Black Sea it couldn't be matched. For anything else, it was useless. But it was BIG. And Russians love BIG.
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