Comments by "Keit Hammleter" (@keithammleter3824) on "Propeller INSANITY - The Convair Model 37!" video.

  1. 6 engines x 28 cylinders x 2 plugs per cylinder = 336 plugs. That's one of the factors that led to the B36 being withdrawn very early - it just took too much labour to keep flight ready. See my first post.
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  2.  @markfrost8745  : Quite so. In the military, you follow orders. If it catches fire, execute the fire check list and hope. If you survive, well, you get ordered to fly again. In civilian use, after 2 or three fires reported in the news media no one would fly in the thing. No one wanted to fly in a Comet long after they fixed the design flaws. Anybody who thought it was reasonable to convert the B36 into a civilian airliner must have been smoking really good weed.
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  3. Well, at least the Model 37 wasn't as completely stupid as the British Bristol Brabazon - a monster prop airliner designed by a government committee (who thought that only rich people flew) that no airline was remotely interested in. But .... On of the factors in driving the USAF away from piston engine large bombers like the B36 and on to large jet bombers like the B52 came from when the B36 was deployed to an Alaskan air base. The general commanding the base wrote a blistering report saying it was just about impossible to keep the B36 flight ready. One problem: 6 engines each of 28 cylinders = 336 spark plugs. You could expect at least one random plug failure per flight, as each flight meant a total of over 3000 spark plug hours, and it just took way too long to change them all before each flight. To get the same overall reliability as say a B17, spark plug life would need to be 5 times longer - not possible. Similar reasoning applies to other components. The pusher configuration and misfiring led to serious fires. And it flew too slow to ever get to enemy targets before being shot down anyway. If maintenance cost is too high, and reliability too low, for military use, it is most definitely no good for civilian use. A few fires in the news and nobody would fly in the thing.
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