Convair B-36 Peacemaker

The Convair B-36 Peacemaker was the American strategic bomber that gave the United States Air Force its first aircraft able to fly between continents and back without refuelling. Convair built 384 of them, and it remains the largest mass-produced piston-engined aircraft, with the longest wingspan of any combat aircraft. Six Pratt and Whitney Wasp Major radial engines turned pusher propellers, and from the D model onward four General Electric J47 turbojets were added, giving ten engines in all. The B-36 flew with Strategic Air Command from 1948 to 1959 as the main carrier of the first thermonuclear gravity bombs, and it was never used in combat. Reconnaissance versions flew higher and farther than other American aircraft of the day, and the NB-36H tested an operating nuclear reactor in flight. the jet-powered Boeing B-52 replaced it, and only four examples escaped scrapping.