Cold War Gallery of the National Museum of the United States Air Force features airplanes representing the Cold War years. It reflects how the technological advances of the era manifested themselves in the form of modern systems and were adopted in modern combat. The aircraft collection is represented by a wide range of platforms such as fighters, strategic bombers, attack aircraft, reconnaissance aircraft, heavy transport, and training aircraft (NMUSAF Virtual Tour, n.d.). The Convair B-36 Peacemaker dominates in the gallery since this plane flew to the museum in 1959 and thus became the last flying B-36.
In addition to the official code B-36, the aircraft received the unofficial name “Peacemaker”. According to the plans of the American military-political leadership, peacemaking was one of the most important and convincing arguments in protecting American strategic interests in the post-war world (Shi, 2018). For its time, the B-36 aircraft was a unique engineering structure in the field of aircraft construction. It was a cantilever all-metal monoplane with an upper wing, equipped with six-piston engines installed in the nacelles on the wing, three-bladed pushing propellers, and three-wheeled retractable landing gear with a nose wheel (NMUSAF Virtual Tour, n.d.). The main design features of the B-36 aircraft were mainly determined by the requirement to obtain a long flight range with a sufficiently large payload.
The Convair B-36 Peacemaker is an important object of the Cold War. For the defense of the country and the attack on the aggressors, the country needed powerful strategic aviation equipped with aircraft capable of delivering crushing blows to the enemy’s territories (Avalon Project—Truman Doctrine, 2019). The United States Air Force aimed to design and build a giant bomber aircraft. Convair, which created the B-36 bomber, positioned it as a miracle of technology and a super-long-range aircraft. Indeed, for a decade after the start of the Cold War, the B-36 was the main aircraft of the United States Air Force.
References
Avalon Project—Truman Doctrine. (2019). Yale.Edu. Web.
NMUSAF Virtual Tour. (n.d.). Www.Nmusafvirtualtour.com. Web.
Shi, D. E. (2018). America: The essential learning edition—Combined volume 2nd edition. WW Norton, Incorporated.