John Shiley's B-36 What If Scenario!

The Horten/Gotha HoGoB36/229 VALHALLA - HISTORY

In November 1944, when Senator Joseph Kennedy won the U.S. presidential election, he knew that he would soon become President in a world divided into the following four spheres of influence.
1.After their stunning success in occupying England, the campaign ending with the ceasefire on November 11th, 1940, the Germans and Italians had joined Spain in an alliance of fascist powers taking over all British and French territories in Africa.
2.In order to preserve the non-aggression pact of 1939, the Soviet Union had been granted control of the Indian sub-continent.
3.Japan had taken full advantage of the situation to occupy not only China, but also the whole of south-east Asia, and large numbers of Japanese “security” troops were stationed close to all population centres in Australia and New Zealand.
4.The United States were the dominant power in north and south America, with the Canadian provinces joining the existing 48 states.
President Kennedy had decided many years before that an alliance with Germany and Japan was the only way to stop the spread of Communism, and in February 1945 the Americans began negotiations with the German and Japanese governments. The ACA (Anti-Communist Alliance) of Germany, the U.S.A. and Japan soon began to offer covert but very generous financial support to anti-communist groups in the Soviet Union, an activity which was to reap rich rewards in May 1958.

The Convair/GoB-36

In early 1941, knowing that air bases would be unavailable on any other continent, United States Army Air Force planners had begun to write the specification for a giant bomber which would be able to reach any target on the planet without refuelling. Convair won the contract with a six-engined pusher design, the XB-36.
The Germans, who had never built a successful multi-engined heavy bomber, were interested in the project, and in early 1945 participation in the B-36 project was high on their list of priorities in the German/U.S. talks. The German leader Rudolf Hess, who had taken over after the assassination of Hitler in November 1939*, was an experienced pilot and led the talks personally, assisted by his deputy and Minister for Armaments, Albert Speer.
In return for the purchase of one completed example and the licence to build up to 50 other B-36 bombers, the Germans shared their expertise in jet and rocket engines as well as their research in the field of atomic weapons.
The Horten/Gotha company, which had built large aircraft in the Great War, was awarded the contract. American experimental work on F-85 parasite fighters which would protect the bomber was modified by Horten/Gotha to incorporate their Go229 flying wing, the absence of a vertical rudder making it much easier to stow the fighter under the rear fuselage of the B-36.
The first bomber, a B-36A, was flown to Germany in early 1947, with production of 50 commencing immediately. When the Convair company decided to add four jet engines to improve speed and altitude, the Germans adopted this plan and converted all their aircraft to B-36D standard, but using Jumo 0012 turbojets which were more powerful than the J47s of the American version. Performance details were never released, but this probably gave the GoB-36D Valhalla an extra 20 m.p.h., attaining 435mph, and perhaps a maximum altitude of 50,000 feet with a 15,000lb bomb load.
Runways with a thickness of 45 cm of concrete were built at Luftwaffe bases near Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt and Hamburg, as well as in Lincolnshire at the BRAF (British Republican Air Force) base at Scampton.
The –M variant, with 24 Luftwaffe aircraft being further converted from the B-36D, and a further 24 for the U.S.A.F., was certainly the only aircraft ever to use four different types of engine, with the 4 Jumo 0012s in the wing pods and two piston engines retained in the inner bays, but two Daimler-Benz DB690 turbojets being installed in the outer engine bays, while the centre bays were fitted with MAN TD09 turbo propeller engines. These could not be used at full power on the ground because the supersonic tip speed of the propeller blades caused pain and hearing loss to the ground crews.
Performance figures for the –M version were never revealed, but the 60,000 ft altitude attained for the Moscow mission in 1958 gives some idea of how superior the –M was compared to the –D.
The GoB-36 remained in service until 1960, successfully keeping the peace until its replacement by the Convair/HoGoB-60, the swept-wing development of the B-36, with a 72% commonality of parts. 30 of these GoB60s remain in service today (2010) as a token peace-keeping force which is never likely to see action in these tranquil times.

Background

The death of Hitler, killed by Georg Elser’s home-made bomb in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich on November 8th, 1939, had led to sweeping changes in the NS regime. Hess had joined with senior officers in all three services to oust Goering, Himmler and Goebbels. Many of these officers, who had experienced the Great War, had been sickened by the Nazi policies towards Jews, many of whom had fought bravely in that war, so they quickly abandoned all such policies and closed the concentration camps, paying compensation to many of those who had suffered injustices in the previous six years.
However, the new leaders of Germany still wanted to restore what had been lost under the Treaty of Versailles, and they decided to continue the preparations for the campaign in the west which Hitler had begun. On May 10th, 1940, the offensive began, and within a few weeks the whole of the Low Countries and France had been overrun, with the British army and air force in France totally destroyed and over 300,000 soldiers captured.
The invasion of England lasted from the 15th of August until the ceasefire requested by the Chamberlain government on November 11th, the symbolic date being chosen by the German High Command.
The Germans had offered Scotland and Wales a degree of independence under German protection, and both countries had accepted this, saving themselves from invasion. The Irish government had been left to take over Northern Ireland as peacefully as possible, which it had done with only a few hundred casualties on both sides.
Georg Elser, having escaped to Switzerland ,claimed political asylum and stayed there until invited to return by the German government in mid-1942.Most Germans had accepted that Hitler had been a mentally ill fantasist, with his dreams of occupying the Soviet Union and even winning a war against the U.S., but in October 1942 Elser was shot dead by a Hitlerite fanatic on the steps of the Königsbrunn town hall, where he had been invited to receive an award from his home town. He was posthumously given the Verdienstkreuz der Deutschen Nation for his bravery. This was a man whose individual act of resistance had prevented a second world war and probably saved the lives of millions of people in Germany, the Soviet Union and the United States.

THE MODEL - GoB36M Valhalla - leader of the “Maikäfer” (maybug) mission.

The ‘plane which changed history!
The 1/72 scale model shows aircraft 23 “Elser”, the most famous of all the 50 Luftwaffe Valhallas. This was the aircraft which led the historic Luftwaffe/U.S.A.F. mission with multi-national ACA crews to Moscow on May 1st 1958, on the 40th anniversary of the Red Revolution.
20 aircraft took off from Tegel early in the morning, climbing to 60,000 feet before heading east, switching on their anti-radar equipment to mask their approach. Arriving within range of Moscow shortly before midday, they released their Go229s, which dived in line abreast formation, building up to a speed of 1,000 km/h (625 mph) and flying over the startled crowds and dignitaries in Red Square at a height of 30 metres (100ft). When the last Go229 had disappeared, people heard the droning of 40 B-36s (20 U.S.A.F. machines had joined the German formation from the west) cruising slowly over Moscow in a mocking star formation, their bomb doors open, completely invulnerable to the obsolete straight-wing jet fighters and primitive surface-to-air missiles of the Soviet air force.
Canisters dropped from the B-36s opened at 5,000 feet, showering the streets of Moscow with thousands of leaflets mocking the Soviet government’s impotence and the failure of 40 years of communism, while extolling the virtues of life in the capitalist German, Japanese and U.S. spheres of influence. At the same time, other B-36 aircraft had been dropping leaflets over all the major cities and towns of the Soviet Union.
The 20 German aircraft continued eastwards with all their Go229s safely back under their fuselages, landing at a base near Tokyo, while the American machines proceeded to Berlin, all the crews receiving a tumultuous welcome.
The immediate result was the collapse of the communist government of the Soviet Union and its replacement with a pro-capitalist regime which entered into negotiations for an alliance with the capitalist ACA powers in June 1958. It was the successful outcome of these talks which led to the era of world-wide peace and prosperity which has now lasted for over 50 years.

MARKINGS AND COLOUR SCHEME

The model is painted in the standard black and German grey night camouflage applied to all 50 Luftwaffe machines. Both colours were prone to weathering, as the B-36 had no hangars.
The markings are the standard Luftwaffe iron crosses adopted in the early-1940s, the straight-sided “Balkenkreuz” and swastika being phased out of all areas of German life following the change of policy towards the Jews and other minorities, all part of Kanzler Rudolf Hess’ policy to appease the American critics of National Socialist Germany and pave the way for an alliance with the U.S. as soon as F. D. Roosevelt stepped down in January 1945.
The insignia of all the ACA air forces taking part were displayed on the port side of the forward fuselage, and a red star on the starboard side commemorated the Moscow mission.

The story behind the buiding of the model

Just in case anyone thinks I’ve wasted a good vintage model…….
A few years ago, a former pupil who had participated in my model-building activity in my school’s Activities Week, turned up with three large boxes and said that he was going to university and would not have time to build the models, so would I like to have them?
The models were a 1:32 Revell F-104, a Revell Dornier DoX and a Monogram B-36. I built the F-104 immediately, but left the B-36 until a few weeks ago. I could see that it had no decals, and various attempts to find a set failed, so I started to think of alternatives.
When I was a member of IPMS, I belonged to sub-group called “What If……?” I never did get around to building the British Leyland B-70 Valkyrie V-Bomber, but the idea of alternative versions of history appealed to me.
My first thought about the B-36 was to paint it in RAF colours, but two shades of grey and green didn’t seem very exciting and nor did anti-flash all-over white. I then thought of German markings, and at some stage I remembered that many (35?) years ago I bought a vac-form Intermodel Gotha Go229 flying wing, which could serve as a parasite fighter attached to the rear fuselage of the B-36.
Any doubts I had about “wasting” the kit were dispelled when I discovered that a whole tree of parts was missing, including the upper surfaces of the horizontal stabilisers, three of the propeller hubs and the nosewheels. I decided that my B-36M would have four different types of engine.
I didn’t like the idea of putting swastikas on the model, so invented an alternative scenario with a benevolent post-Hitler government.

GEORG ELSER

One of my heroes. You can no doubt find out more on Google, etc. He did not escape and was executed in 1945.
His home-made bomb would have succeeded in killing Hitler if the Führer had not left the Bürgerbräukeller a few minutes earlier than planned.