Fallout Superbomber

T

Thorgrimm

A Smooth-Skin
Gents in another thread St. Proverbius was mentioning about what type of bomber would have hit China and the rest of the world. To me it has that Fallout feel to it. Well here is my nomination The B-36J Peacemaker. All comments and replies are welcomed.


http://www.aviation-central.com/1946-1970/images/af-bomber/afb1d-dx.gif

Here is a little blurb about it:

Convair B-36 Peacemaker

General Dynamics (Convair) B-W
Type: heavy bomber reconnaissance and weapon platform

Engines: six R-4360 41 and four General Electric J47-1 single-shaft turbojets

Dimensions;
span 230 ft
length 162 ft
height 46 ft 9 in

Weights: empty 1 150,000
Performance: maximum speed
439 mph (707 km/h).

Armament: normally, sixteen 20 20mm cannons in eight remotely controlled turrets, in nose and tail and in six retractable installations along the fuselage. Covered by sliding doors except when extended for use.

Internal bomb load up to 84,000 lb


The B-36 was the largest American bomber every produced. Its 230 foot wingspan was almost fifty percent longer than that of the huge B-52 that replaced it. During its eight years of service, it one of one of America's major deterrents to aggression by a potential enemy. It was "keeping the peace." Its is famous for "never having fired a shot in anger."The B-36's primary mission was intercontinental nuclear strikes deep within the Soviet Union.
Development of the huge plane began in 1941 when it appeared that Great Britain would soon fall to Nazi Germany. The Army Air Force wanted a bomber that could fly from the United States to Europe, drop bombs, then return (combat radius) The prototype first flew on August 8, 1946. The first operational models were delivered to the Strategic Air Command 1948. There were many problems with them and the fleet was not fully operational until 1951.
The Peacemaker achieved its design objective. Its combat radius with a 10,000-pound payload (one small nuclear bomb) was 3,740 nautical miles. With its maximum of bomb load of 86,000 pounds, (conventional bombs), its combat radius decreased to 1,757 nautical miles.
Each B-36 cost $3.6 million. A total of 388 aircraft were produced. The last one was built in August of 1954. On 29 June 1955 the first B-52 was delivered to SAC. All of the B-36s were delivered as or converted to "J" models, which had two jet engines added to each wing. (This was essentially the inboard engine nacelle from the B-47). The all-jet bomber soon took over the Peacemaker's duties. The last B-36 was retired in 1959.


Cheers Thorgrimm
 
Very likely they would have used such a design, but since it was in the sci-fi future of Fallout flavor (say that a few times fast, bleh), I would expect that there would be some esoteric changes.

One of the first is that no real world model name would be applied to the plane unless it was meant to be a special thing; maybe a long-crashed one in the woods that is reminiscent of an old sci-fi flick or book mentioning that design, in the era from which Fallout was taken from, would suitably fit.
 
Roshambo, i agree as they would use other names, i was just thinking of the way the bomber looked, both future, jet engines, and retro, prop engines, on the same design. And that was one of the things i liked the most about Fallout was the retro and futuristic look at the same time in the game. :D


Cheers Thorgrimm
 
I'd say they were fusion powered props. After all, after the bombs started dropping, it took over two hours for the "world to be reduced to cinders". Two hours is much longer than ICBMs would take(especially from an orbital platform, Brios), but really fast bombers fit that time frame.
 
@Saint Proverbius, that is a good thought, inline with the fusion race you stated they had instead of a space race, and that would give them the fuel to go to thier target and back.


Cheers Thorgrimm
 
Well, I figured it like this. We have a large navy with lots of ships that all have radar. We knew China was hostile so we most likely had some naval vessels up around the Berring Straight to watch for an attack. If the President in Fallout 2 is correct, the Chinese bombers were launched first. So, we scrambled ours when we got that warning.

If our bombers carried several bombs, they wouldn't really have to all fly over the same cities, so they could split up. Likewise, the Chinese bombers would do the same. The only places that would need multiple bombs would be things like The Glow, but one bomber could still do that. You can fly across China at 2.5 times the speed of sound, so it's not unlikely that a bomber could manage this. If they fly really high, this isn't much of a problem at all - especially for a fusion engine. You can still fly high up because you don't really have to be accurate with a nuclear bomb. As long as you hit the town, you win.
 
I would just like to ask a few questions.

How do the bombers go through enemy airspace unscathed? I mean against small countries like Iraq, sure, they don't have very advanced weapon systems.

However in the case of China, they are most likely a superpower (if not then made strong by soviet support), and would have sufficient means of defense against bombers. This includes ground based anti-aircraft weaponry and interceptor aircraft.

Lastly, how much damage did this nuclear war really do? In Fallouts case, I am going to assume that the country was nuked to hell. This would state that almost every industrial, financial, and military installation would be nuked along with the obvious command and control targets. In following this explanation, you would need a crapload of bombers unless the bombers were immune to anti-aircraft and interception countermeasures.
 
DarkCorp said:
I would just like to ask a few questions.

How do the bombers go through enemy airspace unscathed? I mean against small countries like Iraq, sure, they don't have very advanced weapon systems.

However in the case of China, they are most likely a superpower (if not then made strong by soviet support), and would have sufficient means of defense against bombers. This includes ground based anti-aircraft weaponry and interceptor aircraft.
Click to expand...

Depends on how far up these bombers travel, doesn't it? Jets are very limited in how high up their can fly unless they're specially designed for it like the SR-71. Now, if they were using fusion props for the bombers and jets for intercepting, then there's the problem of altitude for the jets.

Also, without miniturized electronics, how well do you think SAMS would work at very high altitudes against something tavelling 2.5 times the speed of sound?
 
That's counterintuitive. Why have more nukes than you need?

What I think is that Moscow was littered with hardened strategic targets, hence one missile per target, to make sure the targets are destroyed.
 
That's what ended the Cold War, building all those damned nukes we didn't need. The USSR was doing the same thing. We just had more money to burn.
 
this is long and most of you probably know all this, but-

Part of it had to do with the tech at the end of the cold war.

Early in the cold war, nukes, even those fired by missile were pretty inaccurate. YOu didn't didn't need to aim much to destroy Hiroshima.

But with 1960s you had hardened targets, targets that theoretically could withstand a nuclear blast. You also see very accurate and MIRVed ICBMs that were supposed to take out those harden targets. Most ICBMs were probably targetted at the other guys missiles- destroy his on the ground before they get you.

That said, the change in technology required the triad system (bomber, icbm, slbm- sub launched ballistic missile). In the 60s, the bomber was slow and capable of being shot down but generally recallable (see the film Failsafe for the problem of recalling bombers after a certain point). You could threaten a nuclear war with a bomber but give the otherside time to back down. Thus in '73, Nixon and Kissenger deploy the bombers out of Guam and tell the Russians not to deploy solidiers to Egypt during the '73 war. Your ICBM was needed for the hard target. The SLBM was, in the 60s, not very accurate but it could hide- the ICBM that had the best defense of all. SO that's what you count on for your second strike.

Of course you could mix and match the strategy, but the idea behind MAD was assured destruction through multiple platforms that did different things. By the end of the Cold War different technologies change that too. Stealth bombers mean you can destroy the ICBMs without fueling your own. Accurate SLBMs can fire first and quickly, making it a surprise.

The technological changed during the Cold War meant that while you could theoretically destroy the enemy, innovation also meant the strategy of deterrence or compliance had to evolve as well. Uncertainty meant that you overstock. How long is the shelf life of your weapon before the other side has a response. If they can jam your cruise missiles, destroy your ICBMs in flight, sink your subs, etc.... well how about a death beam from space! What if they take out our Command and Control- automatic doomsday machine.
 
@DarkCorp, If we continue with the fusion analogy, if you look at the description you see it had 8 remote controlled turrets, now imagine 8 remote controlled PLASMA turrets. Without the long range AA missiles that transistor electronics makes available, the B-36 Superbomber would be almost impossible to take out. :wink:


Cheers Thorgrimm
 
I refuse to believe US military was so stupid they built 399 missiles only to aim them at one target and happily celebrate an arsenal increase.
 
I don't think the bomber in the inro for Fallout was the kind used to deliver the nukes, it was probably just used as a conventional bomber or just shown to get the 50's feel of Fallout.

The world was clearly destroyed by ICBM's due to the maxson holodisc saying "They let the A-bombs fly" Even though ICBM's did not exist in the 1950's (I don't think they did at least), you gotta realize thats its 2077 and allthough most of the technology *looks* like its from the 50's, a lot of it is surely 21st century.
 
Then tell me you little fuck why does Tim Cain think the war was waged with airbombs, not missiles?
 
calculon00 said:
The world was clearly destroyed by ICBM's due to the maxson holodisc saying "They let the A-bombs fly" Even though ICBM's did not exist in the 1950's (I don't think they did at least), you gotta realize thats its 2077 and allthough most of the technology *looks* like its from the 50's, a lot of it is surely 21st century.
Click to expand...

I think the important word in what Maxson says is "A-bombs".

You have to realise that Fallout's 2077 is in a lot of ways less advanced than our 2004. CRTs are on their way out with LCD screens becoming more and more popular. They were popular even when Fallout was in production, used on laptops, PDAs, and so forth. Yet Fallout uses MONOCHROME CRTs for displaying nearly everything.
 
Just a little info on bomb wing deployments, which would not change, even in the Fallout universe.

Travis AFB CA., 5th and 9th SBW Mather AFB CA., 320th SBW
March AFB CA., 22nd SBW Castle AFB CA., 93rd SBW
Beale AFB CA., 456th SBW Clark AFB PI., 307th SBW
Kadena AFB Oki., 376th SBW Anderson AFB Guam, 43rd SBW
Larson AFB WA., 462nd SBW Fairchild AFB WA., 92nd, 99th SBWs
Davis-Monthan AFB AZ., 303rd SBW Walker AFB NM., 6th SBW
Glasgow AFB MT., 91st SBW Carswell AFB TX., 7th, 11th SBWs
Bergstrom AFB TX., 340th SBW Biggs AFB TX., 95th, 97th SBWs
Dyess AFB TX., 96th SBW Amarillo AFB TX., 461st SBW
Sheppard AFB TX., 494th SBW Abilene AFB TX., 341st SBW
Altus AFB OK., 11th SBW Forbes AFB KS., 40th, 90th SBWs
Schilling AFB KS., 310th SBW Lincoln AFB NB., 98th SBW
Offutt AFB NB., 55th SBW Ellsworth AFB SD., 28th SBW
Grand Forks AFB ND., 319th SBW Minot AFB ND., 450th SBW
Little Rock AFB AR.,70th, 384th SBWs Barksdale AFB LA., 2nd,301st
Lake Charles AFB LA.,44th,68th SBWs Columbus AFB MS.,454th
Wright-Patterson AFB OH., 17th SBW
Lockbourne AFB OH., 26th SBW Bunker Hill AFB IN., 305th SBW
Wurtsmith AFB MI., 379th SBW Kinchloe AFB MI., 449th SBW
K I Sawyer AFB MI., 410th SBW Dow AFB ME., 397th SBW
Loring AFB ME., 42nd SBW Pease AFB NH., 509th,100th SBWs
Westover AFB MA., 99th SBW Plattsburgh AFB NY., 380th SBW Griffiss AFB NY., 416th SBW Hunter AFB GA., 308th SBW Turner AFB GA., 484th SBW Robins AFB GA., 465th SBW Pinecastle AFB FL., 321st SBW McCoy AFB FL., 306th SBW
Homestead AFB FL., 19th SBW Elgin AFB FL., 39th SBW
Ramey AFB P.R., 72nd SBW

All of these deployments are as of 1952. As you can see if all these Strategic Bombardment Wings were equipped with the superbombers there would be no pressing need for missiles.

Each Bomb Wing consists of 3 Bomber squadrons of 12 planes each for a total of 36 planes per wing.

Cheers Thorgrimm
 
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