FLYING THE BIG B-50’s
Lt.Col. B. C. Reed (USAF, Ret.)
F-84E, 49-2115 secured in the three-point position on the trapeze of GRB-36F, 49-2707. (Air Force Museum Collection, via Jim Solenberger).
Flying Aircraft Carriers of the USAF: Project FICON
Section 1: Thunderjet
In the early years of
the cold war, the United States Air Force was faced with a requirement for
an airplane that . could photograph targets deep inside the Soviet Union,
Large areas of the Soviet Union, were inaccessible to conventional U. S.
reconnaissance airplanes. There was no airplane with sufficient range lb
reach deep into the Soviet Union, that could also fly low and fast enough
to evade Soviet air defenses.
The giant Convair B-36 was used extensively for
reconnaissance in the early post-war period. They were built in two major
versions, the standard B-36 bomber variant and the RB-36 version tailored
for aerial reconnaissance. The B-36 bomber was equipped with four bomb
bays, The RB-36 version had an additional pressurized compartment for
camera gear in place of the forward bomb bay of the B-36 bomber. RB-36s
carried electronic reconnaissance and countermeasures equipment in the
rear bomb bay. The doors of the rear bomb bay were removed and the opening
was skinned over. The remaining two bomb bays were equipped with a single
pair of bomb bay doors, 100-pound photoflash bombs were carried in the
center bomb bays to illuminate the landscape below the airplane for night
photography.
The RB-36 had great endurance and could carry large
reconnaissance cameras. The reconnaissance bombers flew long missions
along the perimeter of Soviet Bloc countries taking long-range oblique photographs into the interior of the target countries using extremely long
focal-length telephoto lenses. They also used the electronic
reconnaissance gear to ferret out sources of radio, radar, and telemetry
signals within the target countries.
In 1950,the Air Force initiated a program to equip
RB-36s . . . .
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