B-36 Peacemaker Museum

The B-36 Peacemaker Museum is a non-profit organization dedicated to "Dedicated to the preservation of the rich aviation history of North Texas".

Original purpose of the museum

The museum was originally created to preserve and display the last Convair B-36 built. Of 386 B-36's built from 1946 to 1952, only four survive. B-36-J-III 52-2827 "City of Fort Worth" was built in Fort Worth, Texas in 1952, and was retired in 1958. It was displayed at Amon Carter Field, later Greater Southwest Airport, from 1958 until the late 1970s, when it was moved to Carswell Air Force Base. Exposed to the extremes of Texas weather, the giant aircraft slowly deteriorated. In the early 1990s the aircraft was disassembled and moved indoors to hangar space at the factory where it was built, donated by Lockheed Aircraft. A group of dedicated volunteers, many of them retired Convair employees who had worked on the original B-36 assembly line, spent 40,000 man-hours restoring the plane.

The complete story of the preservation and restoration effort is told on "Saving the Last Peacemaker," a CD-ROM available through the Museum's giftshop.

Transfer of the B-36 to Arizona

The aircraft is officially owned by the National Museum of the United States Air Force (NMUSAF), but was on loan to the B-36 Peacemaker Museum. In 2006, it was agreed that the Peacemaker Museum did not have the proper resources to restore and exhibit the aircraft, and the aircraft was trucked to the Pima Air & Space Museum (PASM) in Tucson, Arizona where it is being restored and will be exhibited after restoration. In the Tucson climate it is possible to display aircraft outdoors without the kind of deteriorization that occurred in Fort Worth. The National Museum of the United States Air Force still retains ownership of the aircraft. The future direction of the B-36 Peacemaker Museum is still undecided.

External links

* [http://www.b-36peacemakermuseum.org/ Museum website]
* [http://www.pimaair.org/collection-detail.php?cid=58 B-36 "City of Fort Worth" page at Pima Air & Space Museum]