A Convair B-36J Peacemaker, the largest bomber ever built by the United States, was slowly rolled out onto the grounds of the Pima Air and Space Museum on Wednesday, July 1 at 9:15 am.
The plane has been secured in its new site, enabling visitors to walk directly under and around the massive plane.
The staff of the Restoration division at the museum, assisted by volunteers, slowly escorted the huge plane, which has a 230-foot wingspan and is 162 feet long, from the restoration area of the museum to its display location on the northwest side of the museum close to Valencia Road.
This plane, called the “City of Fort Worth”, is the last B-36 built by Convair at its Fort Worth, Texas plant. It was delivered to the Air Force on Aug. 14, 1954. The plane is owned by the National Museum of the United States Air Force, which assigned the loan of the B-36 to the Pima Air & Space Museum for restoration and public display in June of 2005.
The restoration crew, led by Scott Marchand, director of collections and restoration at the Pima Air & Space Museum, drove to Ft. Worth, Texas and coordinated transport of the plane to Tucson.
“For the past four years, the restoration crew has been painstakingly and lovingly putting this plane back together. It was transported to Tucson in pieces. More than 24,000 man hours have gone into this project, involving 5 technicians, several restoration experts and many volunteers,” said Yvonne Morris, executive director of the Pima Air & Space Museum.
“Restoring the B-36 is a huge achievement for our museum,” she said. “And it is a great addition to our collection.”
The Pima Air & Space Museum, located at 6000 E. Valencia Road in Tucson, Arizona, houses 300 aircraft on 80 acres. The collection includes an SR-71 spy plane, one of President Kennedy’s Air Force One’s, a super guppy plane from NASA, and numerous historic aircraft and helicopters. The museum is open daily from 9 am to 5 pm. For more information, visit pimaair.org.
The preceding information is from Bolchalk FReY Marketing.
This article appears in Jul 9-15, 2009.
When do we get to tour the insides, the guts, of this USA war machine? There seems to be room…
Are there plans, Messina?
I don’t think they have that on display yet at the Air and Space Museum. Sorry, Red Star!
This is good to know. Thanks for the info, Irene. I find the Air & Space Museum fascinating and surreal.
So exciting … this huge B-36! — In his younger life, my late husband (C. L. Swieczkowski) was part of the USAF crew that manned one of these magnificent aircraft out of Walker AFB in NM. I did not know him, back then, but I DO know “that big girl was his mistress!” He was so proud of USAF service and of ‘his’ B-36 … a scale model was displayed with pride in our home. Sadly, he was too sick to go and see THIS B-36, and passed away in 2010. I made the visit in his name, back in 2011. Thank you, USAF and Pima Air & Space Museum, and ‘God Bless The USA!’