A nuclear reactor over Texas

On 17 September 1955 a giant six-engined bomber took off from Fort Worth with a live nuclear reactor in its bomb bay. The Convair NB-36H was not powered by it; the reactor ran during flight so engineers could measure radiation and shielding for an atomic aircraft that was never built. It was the first operation of a nuclear reactor aboard an aircraft, and it summed up Convair perfectly: a company that built the biggest, the fastest and the strangest machines of the early Cold War, and then threw away its fortune on airliners.

Consolidated plus Vultee

Convair was born of wartime arithmetic. In 1943 Consolidated Aircraft of San Diego, maker of the B-24 Liberator and the Catalina, merged with Vultee Aircraft, maker of the BT-13 Valiant trainer, to form Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation. Everyone called it Convair, first informally and then officially. It inherited the huge Lindbergh Field works in San Diego and a new Fort Worth plant built for B-24 production. In March 1953 the conglomerate General Dynamics bought it, and from then on Convair was a division of General Dynamics, though its name stayed on the aircraft.

The Peacemaker

Its first giant was the B-36 Peacemaker, first flown on 8 August 1946. With six pusher piston engines, later supplemented by four jets, it has the longest wingspan of any combat aircraft, and with 384 built it remains the largest mass-produced piston-engined aircraft. For years it was America’s main nuclear delivery vehicle, the only bomber assigned the largest early thermonuclear bombs. Alongside it Convair built the XC-99, a double-deck transport for 400 troops, and the twin-engine Convair 240 airliner family, of which 1,076 were built.

Deltas: Dagger, Dart and Hustler

Convair then bet on the delta wing. The F-102 Delta Dagger interceptor flew in 1953 and 1,000 were built. Its refined successor, the F-106 Delta Dart, set a world speed record of 1,525.95 mph with Major Joseph Rogers in 1959 and guarded US airspace until 1988. One F-106, the Cornfield Bomber, landed itself in a Montana field in 1970 after its pilot ejected, and flew again. The B-58 Hustler was the first bomber capable of Mach 2; it set 19 speed records, including Tokyo to London in 8 hours 35 minutes in 1963. It was also expensive and unforgiving: 26 of 116 were lost in accidents.

Strange machines

Convair’s engineers loved an outlandish brief. The F2Y Sea Dart, a jet fighter on water skis, became the only seaplane ever to exceed the speed of sound; one broke up in 1954, killing its pilot. The XFY Pogo was a tail-sitting fighter that took off and landed vertically, flown by James Skeets Coleman in 1954. The R3Y Tradewind was a turboprop flying boat, the XB-46 a sleek jet bomber prototype. None of these went far — but they show a company that rarely took the obvious route.

The jetliner gamble

The real damage came from the civil market. Convair chased Boeing and Douglas into the jet age with the Convair 880, first flown on 27 January 1959, and the faster 990 Coronado, first flown on 24 January 1961. The 990 reached 675 mph in testing, the fastest true airspeed of any jet transport at the time. Only 65 and 37 were built, and General Dynamics lost around $185 million on the 880 programme alone, by some estimates far more. Convair never built another airliner of its own, and spent its later decades making airliner fuselage sections, including for the MD-11.

The rocket that outlived the company

Convair’s most enduring creation was not an aeroplane. The SM-65 Atlas became America’s first operational ICBM and then a space launcher: an Atlas carried John Glenn’s Friendship 7 into orbit, and Atlas-Centaur rockets launched Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11. WD-40 found its first use protecting the Atlas skin. Convair also developed the Tomahawk cruise missile. Then the end came quickly. General Dynamics sold the missile division to Hughes in 1992 and space systems to Martin Marietta in 1994; the MD-11 fuselage contract ended the same year. A workforce that once numbered 18,000 in San Diego fell to zero, and in 1996 the last Convair entities were dissolved.

Fabrikalar

• Lindbergh Field plant · San Diego, California — Former Consolidated works that built B-24s; demolished
• Kearny Mesa complex · San Diego, California — Demolished 1994–1996
• Fort Worth plant · Fort Worth, Texas — Built for B-24 production; later home of the B-36, B-58, F-111 and F-16

İnsanlar

• Joseph Rogers · USAF major — Set the F-106 world speed record in 1959
• James F. Skeets Coleman · test pilot — Flew the XFY Pogo

Rekorlar ve ilkler

• B-36: largest mass-produced piston-engined aircraft and longest wingspan of any combat aircraft
• NB-36H: first operation of a nuclear reactor aboard an aircraft, 1955
• F2Y Sea Dart: only seaplane to exceed the speed of sound
• B-58 Hustler: first Mach 2 bomber; 19 speed records including Tokyo–London in 8 h 35 min, 1963
• F-106: world speed record 1,525.95 mph, 1959
• Convair 990: 675 mph, fastest true airspeed of any jet transport at the time
• Atlas: first operational US ICBM