B-36 as a magnesium flare?

[George R. Gonzalez]

I was reading some collection of old USAF stories "Brave men of the
Stratosphere" or somesuch. In there they mentioned that the B-36 had a
magnesium skin, so it was a mite dangerous in case of fire.

Now I assume there's at least a grain of truth to this, but not a lot.

Anybody really know what parts of a B-36 were magnesium? Was this really
a designed-in fire hazard?

Regards

-- George

[Kevin Renshaw]

The fuselage skins in most of the non-pressurized area was magnesium to
save weight, and the wing skins aft of the main spar. The skins were
very thin ( 0.032 inch thick magnesium sheet). The Magnesium was used
to save weight, but was only used in areas where it could be flat
wrapped, like the fuselage. It is very difficult to form magnesium
sheet into compund curves without causing cracks. The thin gauges
worked by creating a big torsion shell. You can see definite wrinkles
in the skin in flight. The B-52 worked the same way, but in aluminum
(jet engines could drive a heavier airplane than the props)

And yes, several B-36's that suffered fires on crashing did turn into
big magnesium flares.

Kevin Renshaw

"i'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you...."

[LLundh]

I'm not sure I'd call it "designed-in" -- sounds kinda' intentional. More an
"oops" maybe. The Sikorsky H-34 also had a lot of magnesium in its skin, and
was considered by some pilots to be a very expensive flashbulb. There's a great
picture of a VNAF H-34 that got hit behind the firewall in a mortar attack.
Everything aft of the firewall is ash, which means the wall did its job, just
in reverse. Imagine a B-36 going up like that!

Cheers,
Len

[SoBernardo]

Mostly the bomb bay section of the B-36 was magnesium. If you look at photos,
you can see the differences in skin texture between the inhabited and
uninhabited sections of the aircraft.

The B-29 used some magnesium-skinned wing sections, with predictable results
when the engines caught fire, as they occasionally did.

[Lasse Hillerøe Petersen]

In article <19980217011...@ladder02.news.aol.com>, llu...@aol.com
(LLundh) wrote:

>in reverse. Imagine a B-36 going up like that!

A picture in B-36 In Action shows a crashed B-36 that burned. Pretty big
holes in the fuselage. Not much left in fact.

-Lasse

[Ogden Johnson III]

LLundh (llu...@aol.com) wrote:

: "oops" maybe. The Sikorsky H-34 also had a lot of magnesium in its skin, and

: was considered by some pilots to be a very expensive flashbulb. There's a

I was an Ops Clerk at MCAS New River in 1964. While making a run from my
squadron to group ops, I saw a UH-34D execute a takeoff and immediate
uncommanded roll from the chocks. All the crew (3) got out, but the helo
did its best to imitate that flashbulb you mentioned. It burned down to a
pile of slagged engine in about three minutes flat. The fuel load was
still burning under the foam, and it was neat to see the flames popping up
out of the foam everywhere a crash crewman stepped. It wasn't so neat to
see the pieces of rotor blades all over the flight line, thanking God that
none of them hit anybody or thing.

The accident investigation found that the lift and roll occurred during
the post-start/pre-taxi stab check, and was caused by a faulty ASE.