Scaleworld

   
B-36: Moving the Last Peacemaker                                           
A Photo Chronicle
By Richard Marmo
Scale Publications, ©2005
$19.95 plus Shipping

Guest Review by Chris Banyai-Riepl

This new CD from Scale Publications offers an interesting and rarely seen subject: the dismantling and transporting of an aircraft. What makes this truly remarkable is that it is a B-36 that is being moved. With a length of 162 feet and a wingspan of 230 feet, this is not an easy plane to move!

The title "Moving the Last Peacemaker" is fitting in many ways. The aircraft depicted was indeed the last B-36 to roll off the assembly line on August 10, 1954. It also was the last B-36 to be retired, making its last flight from Biggs AFB, Texas on February 12, 1959, to Fort Worth, where it was put on display at Amon Carter Field. In 1969, due to the closing of the airport, the plane had to move. In an ambitious plan, this B-36 fulfilled another last, that being the last B-36 to run all six of its piston engines. The Peacemaker Foundation had hoped to fly the plane from the airport to nearby Meacham Field, where it would be restored and maintained as a flying(!) museum. The Air Force stepped in and shot this plan down, forcing people to rethink their plans. This is where this CD comes in, chronicling the move from Amon Carter Field to its new location 30 miles away.

To sum up the story of this fascinating bird, over the next several decades, teams of volunteers worked painstakingly to restore the last B-36. Talks were constantly underway with the City of Fort Worth to try and build a museum or display area for this large aircraft, but eventually all options fell through with Fort Worth. During that time, the B-36 managed to be fully restored. The B-36 is not homeless, though, as it has been accepted at the Pima Air Museum and will be transported there soon, where hopefully it will be assembled for one final time.

This CD-ROM is set up to automatically run in a slideshow format. There are nearly 900 photos presented here, and just about every possible angle is covered. When a plane is disassembled for transport, the potential for seeing some unique areas are high, and Richard Marmo has captured many of these. Examples include the propeller hubs, wheel axles, and rear instrument panel wiring. Superdetailers could go nuts with all of this information! The photos are all black and white, and some are captioned.

The nature of the CD, though, leaves a couple things to be desired. First, the instructions state that the viewer must set their screen size to 800x600. This is not entirely true, as higher resolutions can see the images, but they will be stretched out to the larger size, resulting in pixelization and a loss of detail. Second, as this is a slideshow, there is no way to print these photos for use in modeling. Unless you have a computer screen right next to your modeling bench, it will be difficult to use this as a modeling reference.

From a historical perspective, though, this is a great series of photos, and will form an excellent complement to the recent B-36 books that have come out in the last 5 years or so. My thanks to Scale Publications for the review sample.