IL Convair B-36 Peacemaker was built to fly intercontinental bombing missions lasting well over a day, at altitudes where the crew needed a pressurised cabin. Pressurising the whole of a 162-foot fuselage was not practical, and the bomb bays could not be pressurised at all, because their doors had to open in flight. So the B-36 had two pressurised compartments, one forward and one aft, with the bomb bays between them, and a sealed tunnel to link the two.

Two Cabins and a Tube

The forward compartment held the flight deck and most of the crew: pilots, flight engineers, bombardier, navigator, radio operators and gunners, about ten men in all. The aft compartment, behind the bomb bays, held about five more, mostly gunners, along with bunks and an electric range. An Air Force history of B-36 crews describes the tunnel simply as the link between the forward and aft pressurised areas on either side of the unpressurised bomb bays.

The tunnel itself ran along the top of the bomb bays for about 85 feet, roughly the length of two city buses, and was about two feet across. There was no room to crawl comfortably. Instead, a crewman lay on his back on a small wheeled cart and pulled himself along an overhead rope.

Hot Meals by Trolley

The cart carried more than people. Because the galley was in the aft cabin, the same trolley worked as a dumbwaiter, sending hot food forward through the tunnel to the men on the flight deck. On missions that could last more than 30 hours, that mattered.

The arrangement had its moments. The Smithsonian’s Air & Space magazine recounted the story of a new captain who went aft to use the facilities without asking how they worked, with predictable results for his boots.

Not the First

The idea came from the B-29 Superfortress, which also had separate pressurised compartments joined by a crawl tunnel over its bomb bays. The B-36 simply needed a much longer one, and the wheeled cart was the answer to its length.

What the Popular Version Gets Right

The 3D reconstruction going around is accurate: two pressurised cabins, unpressurised bomb bays because their doors opened in flight, a sealed tube along the top of the bays about as long as two city buses, and a crewman lying on his back on a wheeled cart to roll through it. The rear cabin did hold bunks and gunners. We found no source for a separate relief crew in the aft compartment; the bunks let the regular crew of about 15 rest in turn on very long missions.

Sources: “B-36: Bomber at the Crossroads”, Air & Space Magazine (April/May 1996); Tony R. Landis (ed.), Peacemaker Personnel, Air Force Materiel Command History Office; National Archives photograph of the XB-36 crew tunnel, via HistoryNet; John Weeks, “B-36: The Peacemaker Survivors”.