The Convair B-36 "Peacemaker" is a strategic bomber that was built by Convair and operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) from 1949 to 1959. The B-36 is the largest mass-produced piston-engined aircraft ever built. It had the longest wingspan of any combat aircraft ever built, at . The B-36 was the first bomber capable of delivering any of the nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal from an internal bomb bay without aircraft modifications. With a range of  and a maximum payload of , the B-36 was capable of intercontinental flight without refuelling.

Entering service in 1948, the B-36 was the primary nuclear weapons delivery vehicle of Strategic Air Command (SAC) until it was replaced by the jet-powered Boeing B-52 Stratofortress beginning in 1955. All but four aircraft have been scrapped.

Development

The genesis of the B-36 can be traced to early 1941, prior to the entry of the United States into World War II. At the time, the threat existed that Britain might fall to the German "Blitz", making a strategic bombing effort by the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) against Germany impossible with the aircraft of the time.

The United States would need a new class of bomber that would reach Europe and return to bases in North America, necessitating a combat range of at least , the length of a Gander, Newfoundland–Berlin round trip. The USAAC therefore sought a bomber of truly intercontinental range, similar to the German Reichsluftfahrtministerium's (RLM) ultralong-range Amerikabomber program, the subject of a 33-page proposal submitted to Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring on 12 May 1942.

The USAAC sent out the initial request on 11 April 1941, asking for a  top speed, a  cruising speed, a service ceiling of —beyond the range of ground-based anti-aircraft fire—and a maximum range of  at . These requirements proved too demanding for any short-term design, far exceeding the technology of the day, so on 19 August 1941, they were reduced to a maximum range of , an effective combat radius of  with a  bombload, a cruising speed between , and a service ceiling of —above the maximum effective altitude of Nazi Germany's anti-aircraft guns, save for the rarely-deployed 12.8 cm FlaK 40 heavy flak cannon.

World War II and after

As the Pacific war progressed, the USAAF increasingly needed a bomber capable of reaching Japan from its bases in Hawaii, and the development of the B-36 resumed in earnest. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, in discussions with high-ranking officers of the USAAF, decided to waive normal army procurement procedures, and on 23 July 1943—some 15 months after the Germans' Amerikabomber proposal's submission made it to their RLM authority, and coincidentally, the same day that, in Germany, the RLM had ordered the Heinkel firm to design a six-engined version of their own, BMW 801E powered Amerikabomber design proposal—the USAAF submitted a "letter of intent" to Convair, ordering an initial production run of 100 B-36s before the completion and testing of the two prototypes. The first delivery was due in August 1945, and the last in October 1946, but Consolidated (by this time renamed Convair after its 1943 merger with Vultee Aircraft) delayed delivery. The aircraft was unveiled on 20 August 1945 (three months after V-E Day), and flew for the first time on 8 August 1946.

After the establishment of an independent United States Air Force in 1947, the beginning in earnest of the Cold War with the 1948 Berlin Airlift, and the 1949 atmospheric test of the first Soviet atomic bomb, American military planners sought bombers capable of delivering the very large and heavy first-generation atomic bombs.

The B-36 was the only American aircraft with the range and payload to carry such bombs from airfields on American soil to targets in the USSR. The modification to allow the use of larger atomic weapons on the B-36 was called the "Grand Slam Installation".

The B-36 was arguably obsolete from the outset, being piston-powered, coupled with the widespread introduction of first-generation jet fighters in potential enemy air forces. However, its jet rival, the Boeing B-47 Stratojet, which did not become fully operational until 1953, lacked the range to attack the Soviet homeland from North America without aerial refueling and could not carry the huge first-generation Mark 16 hydrogen bomb.

The other American piston bombers of the day, the B-29 and B-50, were also too limited in range to be part of America's developing nuclear arsenal. Intercontinental ballistic missiles did not become sufficiently reliable until the early 1960s. Until the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress became operational in 1955, the B-36, as the only truly intercontinental bomber, continued to be the primary nuclear weapons delivery vehicle of the SAC.

Convair touted the B-36 as the "aluminum overcast", a so-called "long rifle" giving SAC truly global reach. During General Curtis LeMay's tenure as head of SAC (1949–57), the B-36, through intense crew training and development, formed the heart of the Strategic Air Command. Its maximum payload was more than four times that of the B-29, and exceeded that of the B-52.

The B-36 was slow and could not refuel in midair, but could fly missions to targets  away and stay aloft as long as 40 hours. Moreover, the B-36 was believed to have "an ace up its sleeve": a phenomenal cruising altitude for a piston-driven aircraft, made possible by its huge wing area and six 28-cylinder engines, putting it out of range of most of the interceptors of the day, as well as ground-based anti-aircraft guns.

Experimentals and prototypes
Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation (later Convair) and Boeing Aircraft Company took part in the competition, with Consolidated winning a tender on 16 October 1941. Consolidated asked for a $15 million contract with $800,000 for research and development, mockup, and tooling. Two experimental bombers were proposed, the first to be delivered in 30 months, and the second within another six months. Originally designated Model B-35, the name was changed to B-36 to avoid confusion with the Northrop YB-35 piston-engined flying-wing bomber, against which the B-36 was meant to compete for a production contract.

Throughout its development, the B-36 program encountered delays. When the United States entered World War II, Consolidated was ordered to slow B-36 development and greatly increase Consolidated B-24 Liberator production. The first mockup was inspected on 20 July 1942, following six months of refinements. A month after the inspection, the project was moved from San Diego, California, to Fort Worth, Texas, which set back development several months. Consolidated changed the tail from a twin-tail to a single, thereby saving , but this change delayed delivery by 120 days.

Changes in the USAAF requirements did add back any weight saved in redesigns, and cost more time. A new antenna system needed to be designed to accommodate an ordered radio and radar system. The Pratt and Whitney engines were redesigned, adding another .

Design

The B-36 took shape as an aircraft of immense proportions. It was two-thirds longer than the previous "superbomber", the B-29. The wingspan and tail height of the B-36 exceeded those of the 1960s Soviet Union's Antonov An-22, the largest ever propeller-driven aircraft put into production. Only with the advent of the Boeing 747 and the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy, both designed two decades later, did American aircraft capable of lifting a heavier payload become commonplace.

The wings of the B-36 were large even when compared with present-day aircraft, exceeding, for example, those of the C-5 Galaxy, and enabled the B-36 to carry enough fuel to fly the intended long missions without refueling. The maximum thickness of the wing, measured perpendicular to the chord, was , containing a crawlspace that allowed access to the engines. The wing area permitted cruising altitudes well above the operating ceiling of any 1940s-era operational piston and jet-turbine fighters. Most versions of the B-36 could cruise at over . In 1954, the turrets and other nonessential equipment were removed (not unlike the earlier Silverplate program for the atomic bomb-carrying "specialist" B-29s), resulting in a "featherweight" configuration believed to have resulted in a top speed of , and cruise at  and dash at over , perhaps even higher.

The large wing area and the option of starting the four jet engines supplementing the piston engines in later versions gave the B-36 a wide margin between stall speed (VS) and maximum speed (Vmax) at these altitudes. This made the B-36 more maneuverable at high altitude than the USAF jet interceptors of the day, which either could not fly above , or if they did, were likely to stall out when trying to maneuver or fire their guns. However, the U.S. Navy argued that their McDonnell F2H Banshee fighter could intercept the B-36, thanks to its ability to operate at more than . The USAF declined the invitation from the U.S. Navy for a fly-off between the Banshee and the B-36. Later, the new Secretary of Defense, Louis A. Johnson, who considered the U.S. Navy and naval aviation essentially obsolete in favor of the USAF and SAC, forbade putting the Navy's claim to the test.

The propulsion system of the B-36 was unique, with six 28-cylinder Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major radial engines mounted in an unusual pusher configuration, rather than the conventional four-engine, tractor propeller layout of other heavy bombers. The prototype R-4360s delivered a total of . While early B-36s required long takeoff runs, this situation was improved with later versions, delivering a significantly increased power output of  total. Each engine drove a three-bladed propeller,  in diameter, mounted in the pusher configuration, thought to be the second-largest diameter propeller design ever used to power a piston-engined aircraft (after that of the Linke-Hofmann R.II). This unusual configuration prevented propeller turbulence from interfering with airflow over the wing, but could also lead to engine overheating due to insufficient airflow around the engines, resulting in inflight engine fires.

The large, slow-turning propellers interacted with the high-pressure airflow behind the wings to produce an easily recognizable very-low-frequency pulse at ground level that betrayed approaching flights.

Addition of jet propulsion
Beginning with the B-36D, Convair added a pair of General Electric J47-19 jet engines suspended near the end of each wing; these were also retrofitted to all extant B-36Bs. Consequently, the B-36 was configured to have 10 engines, six radial propeller engines and four jet engines, leading to the B-36 slogan of "six turnin' and four burnin' ". The B-36 had more engines than any other mass-produced aircraft. The jet pods greatly improved takeoff performance and dash speed over the target. In normal cruising flight, the jet engines were shut down to conserve fuel. When the jet engines were shut down, louvers closed off the front of the pods to reduce drag and to prevent ingestion of sand and dirt. The jet engine louvers were opened and closed by the flight crew in the cockpit, whether the B-36 was on the ground or in the air. The two pods with four turbojets and the six piston engines combined gave the B-36 a total of  for short periods of time.

Crew
The B-36 had a crew of 15. As in the B-29 and B-50, the pressurized flight deck and crew compartment were linked to the rear compartment by a pressurized tunnel through the bomb bay. In the B-36, movement through the tunnel was on a wheeled trolley, pulling on a rope. The rear compartment featured six bunks and a dining galley and led to the tail turret.

Landing gear

The tricycle landing gear of the XB-36 featured a single-wheel main landing gear whose tires were the largest ever manufactured up to that time:  tall,  wide, and weighing , with enough rubber for 60 automobile tires. These tires placed so much ground pressure on runways that the XB-36 was restricted to Carswell Field adjacent to the factory in Texas, Eglin Field in Florida, and Fairfield-Suisun Field in California. At the suggestion of General Henry H. Arnold, the single-wheel gear was soon replaced by a four-wheeled bogie. At one point, a tank-like tracked landing gear was also tried on the XB-36, but it proved heavy and noisy. The tracked landing gear was quickly abandoned.

Weaponry

The four bomb bays could carry up to  of bombs, more than 10 times the load carried by the World War II workhorse, the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, and substantially more than the entire B-17's gross weight of . The B-36 was not designed with nuclear weapons in mind, because the mere existence of such weapons was top secret during the period when the B-36 was conceived and designed (1941–46). Nevertheless, the B-36 stepped into its nuclear delivery role immediately upon becoming operational. In all respects except speed, the B-36 could match what was arguably its approximate Soviet counterpart, the turboprop-powered Tu-95, which began production in January 1956 and is still in active service . Until the B-52 became operational, the B-36 was the only means of delivering the first generation Mark 17 hydrogen bomb,  long,  in diameter, and weighing , the heaviest and bulkiest American aerial nuclear bomb ever. Carrying this massive weapon required merging two adjacent bomb bays.

The defensive armament consisted of six remote-controlled retractable gun turrets, and fixed tail and nose turrets. Each turret was fitted with two 20 mm cannon, for a total of 16. Recoil vibration from gunnery practice often caused the aircraft's electrical wiring to jar loose or the vacuum tube electronics to malfunction, leading to failure of the aircraft controls and navigation equipment; this contributed to the crash of B-36B 44-92035 on 22 November 1950.

The Convair B-36 was the only aircraft designed to carry the T-12 Cloudmaker, a gravity bomb weighing  and designed to produce an earthquake bomb effect. Part of the testing process involved dropping two of the bombs on a single flight mission, one from  and the second from , for a total bomb load of .

The first prototype XB-36 flew on 8 August 1946. The speed and range of the prototype failed to meet the standards set out by the USAAC in 1941. This was expected, as the Pratt & Whitney R-4360 engines required were not yet available, and the qualified workers and materials needed to install them were lacking.

A second aircraft, the YB-36, flew on 4 December 1947. It had a redesigned, high-visibility, yet still "greenhouse-like" bubble canopy, heavily framed due to its substantial size, which was later adopted for production, and the engines used on the YB-36 were more powerful and more efficient. Altogether, the YB-36 was much closer to the production aircraft.

The first 21 B-36As were delivered in 1948. They were interim airframes, intended for crew training and later conversion. No defensive armament was fitted, since none was ready. Once later models were available, all B-36As were converted to RB-36E reconnaissance models. The first B-36 variant meant for normal operation was the B-36B, delivered beginning in November 1948. This aircraft met all the 1941 requirements, but had serious problems with engine reliability and maintenance (changing the 336 spark plugs was a task dreaded by ground crews) and with the availability of armaments and spare parts. Later models featured more powerful variants of the R-4360 engine, improved radar, and redesigned crew compartments.

The four jet engines increased fuel consumption and reduced range. Gun turrets were already recognized as obsolete, and newer bombers had been limited to just a tail turret, or no gunners at all for several years but the development of several air-to-air missiles, including the Soviet K-5 which began test firings in 1951, eliminated the last justifications for keeping them.
In February 1954, the USAF awarded Convair a contract for a new "Featherweight" design program, which significantly reduced weight and crew size. The three configurations were:
 Featherweight I removed defensive hardware, including the six gun turrets.
 Featherweight II removed the rear compartment crew comfort features, and all hardware accommodating the McDonnell XF-85 Goblin parasite fighter.
 Featherweight III incorporated both configurations I and II.
The six turrets eliminated by Featherweight I reduced the aircraft's crew from 15 to 9. Featherweight III had a longer range and an operating ceiling of at least , especially valuable for reconnaissance missions. The B-36J-III configuration (the last 14 made) had a single radar-aimed tail turret, extra fuel tanks in the outer wings, and landing gear allowing the maximum gross weight to rise to .

Production of the B-36 ceased in 1954.

Operating and financial problems
Due to problems that occurred with the B-36 in its early stages of testing, development, and later in service, some critics referred to the aircraft as a "billion-dollar blunder". In particular, the United States Navy saw it as a costly bungle, diverting congressional funding and interest from naval aviation and aircraft carriers in general, and carrier–based nuclear bombers in particular. In 1947, the Navy attacked congressional funding for the B-36, alleging it failed to meet Pentagon requirements. The Navy held to the pre-eminence of the aircraft carrier in the Pacific during World War II, presuming carrier-based aircraft would be decisive in future wars. To this end, the Navy designed , a "supercarrier" capable of launching huge fleets of tactical aircraft or nuclear bombers. It then pushed to have funding transferred from the B-36 to USS United States. The Air Force successfully defended the B-36 project, and United States was officially cancelled by Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson in a cost-cutting move over the objections of both Secretary of the Navy John L. Sullivan and the Navy's senior uniformed leadership. Sullivan resigned in protest and was replaced as Secretary of the Navy by Francis P. Matthews, who had limited familiarity with defense issues, but was a close friend of Johnson. Several high-level Navy officials questioned the government's decision in cancelling the United States to fund the B-36, alleging a conflict of interest because Johnson had once served on Convair's board of directors. The uproar following the cancellation of United States in 1949 was nicknamed the "Revolt of the Admirals", during which time Matthews dismissed and forced into retirement the serving Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), Admiral Louis E. Denfeld, following Denfeld's testimony before the House Armed Services Committee.

The congressional and media furor over the firing of Admiral Denfeld, as well as the significant use of aircraft carriers in the Korean War, resulted in the Truman administration subsequently ousting both Johnson and Matthews in their respective secretary roles, and in the design and procurement of the subsequent  of supercarriers, which were of comparable size to United States, but with a design geared towards greater multirole use with composite air wings of fighter, attack, reconnaissance, electronic warfare, early warning and antisubmarine-warfare aircraft. At the same time, heavy manned bombers for the SAC were also deemed crucial to national defense and, as a result, the two systems were never again in competition for the same budgetary resources.

Operational history

The B-36, including its GRB-36, RB-36, and XC-99 variants, was in USAF service as part of the SAC from 1948 to 1959. The RB-36 variants of the B-36 were used for reconnaissance during the Cold War with the Soviet Union and the B-36 bomber variants conducted training and test operations and stood ground and airborne alert, but the latter variants were never used offensively as bombers against hostile forces; they never fired a shot in combat.

Maintenance

The Wasp Major engines had a prodigious appetite for lubricating oil; each engine required a dedicated 100-gal (380-l) tank. Normal maintenance consisted of tedious measures, such as changing the 56 spark plugs on each of the six engines; the plugs were often fouled by the lead in the 145 octane antiknock fuel required by the R-4360 engines. Thus, each service required changing 336 spark plugs. Another frequent maintenance job was replacing the dozens of bomb bay light bulbs, which routinely shattered during test firing of the turret guns.

The B-36 was too large to fit in most hangars. Since even an aircraft with the range of the B-36 needed to be stationed as close to enemy targets as possible, this meant the plane was largely based in the extreme weather locations of the northern continental United States, Alaska, and the Arctic. Since the maintenance had to be performed outdoors, the crews were largely exposed to the elements, with temperatures of  in winters and  in summers, depending on the airbase location. Special shelters were built so the maintenance crews could be given a modicum of protection. Ground crews were at risk of slipping and falling from icy wings, or being blown off the wings by propeller wash running in reverse pitch. The wing roots were thick enough, at , to enable a flight engineer to access the engines and landing gear during flight by crawling through the wings. This was possible only at altitudes not requiring pressurization.

In 1950, Convair (then still Consolidated-Vultee) developed streamlined pods, looking like oversize drop tanks, that were mounted on each side of the  fuselage to carry spare engines between bases. Each pod could airlift two engines. When the pods were empty, they were removed and carried in the bomb bays. No record was made of the special engine pods ever being used.

Engine fires

As engine fires occurred with the B-36's radial engines, some crews humorously changed the aircraft's slogan from "six turning, four burning" into "two turning, two burning, two smoking, two choking and two more unaccounted for". This problem was exacerbated by the propellers' pusher configuration, which increased carburetor icing. The design of the R-4360 engine tacitly assumed that it would be mounted in the conventional tractor configuration—propeller/air intake/28 cylinders/carburetor—with air flowing in that order. In this configuration, the carburetor is bathed in warmed air flowing past the engine, so it is unlikely to ice up. However, the R-4360 engines in the B-36 were mounted backwards, in the pusher configuration—air intake/carburetor/28 cylinders/propeller. The carburetor was now in front of the engine, so it could not benefit from engine heat. This placement also made more traditional short-term carburetor heat systems unsuitable. Hence, when intake air was cold and humid, ice gradually obstructed the carburetor air intake, which in turn gradually increased the richness of the air/fuel mixture until the unburned fuel in the exhaust caught fire. Three engine fires of this nature led to the first loss of an American nuclear weapon when a B-36 crashed in February 1950.

Crew experience

Training missions were typically in two parts, a 40-hour flight—followed by time on the ground for refueling and maintenance—and then a 24-hour second flight. With a sufficiently light load, the B-36 could fly at least 10,000 mi (16,000 km) nonstop, and the highest cruising speed of any version, the B-36J-III, was at 230 mph (380 km/h). Engaging the jet engines could raise the cruising speed to over 400 mph (650 km/h). Hence, a 40-hour mission, with the jets used only for takeoff and climbing, flew about 9,200 mi (15,000 km).

Due to its massive size, the B-36 was never considered sprightly or agile; Lieutenant General James Edmundson likened it to "sitting on your front porch and flying your house around". Crew compartments were nonetheless cramped, especially when occupied for 24 hours by a crew of 15 in full flight kit.

War missions would have been one-way, taking off from forward bases in Alaska or Greenland, overflying the USSR, and landing in Europe, Morocco, or the Middle East. Veteran crews recall feeling confident in their ability to fly the planned missions, but not to survive weapon delivery, as the aircraft may not have been fast enough to escape the blast. These concerns were borne out by the 1954 Operation Castle tests, in which B-36s were flown at the combat distance from the detonations of bombs in the 15-megaton range. At distances believed typical of wartime delivery, aircraft suffered extensive flash and blast damage.

Experiments

The B-36 was employed in a variety of aeronautical experiments throughout its service life. Its immense size, range, and payload capacity lent itself to use in research and development programs. These included nuclear propulsion studies, and "parasite" programs in which the B-36 carried smaller interceptors or reconnaissance aircraft.

In May 1946, the Air Force began the Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft project, which was followed in May 1951 by the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion (ANP) program. The ANP program used modified B-36s to study shielding requirements for an airborne reactor to determine whether a nuclear-powered aircraft was feasible. Convair modified two B-36s under the MX-1589 project. The Nuclear Test Aircraft was a B-36H-20-CF (serial number 51-5712) that had been damaged in a tornado at Carswell AFB on 1 September 1952. This aircraft, designated the XB-36H (and later NB-36H), was modified to carry a , air-cooled nuclear reactor in the aft bomb bay, with a four-ton lead disc shield installed in the middle of the aircraft between the reactor and the cockpit. A number of large air intake and exhaust holes were installed in the sides and bottom of the aircraft's rear fuselage to cool the reactor in flight. On the ground, a crane would be used to remove the  reactor from the aircraft. To protect the crew, the highly modified cockpit was encased in lead and rubber, with a  leaded glass windshield. The reactor was operational, but did not power the aircraft; its sole purpose was to investigate the effect of radiation on aircraft systems. Between 1955 and 1957, the NB-36H completed 47 test flights and 215 hours of flight time, during 89 of which the reactor was critical.

Other experiments involved providing the B-36 with its own fighter defense in the form of parasite aircraft carried partially or wholly in a bomb bay. One parasite aircraft was the diminutive McDonnell XF-85 Goblin, which docked using a trapeze system. The concept was tested successfully using a B-29 carrier, but docking proved difficult even for experienced test pilots. Moreover, the XF-85 was seen as no match for contemporary foreign powers' newly developed interceptor aircraft in development and in service; consequently, the project was cancelled.

More successful was the FICON project, involving a modified B-36 (called a GRB-36D "mothership") and the RF-84K, a fighter modified for reconnaissance, in a bomb bay. The GRB-36D would ferry the RF-84K to the vicinity of the objective, whereupon the RF-84K would disconnect and begin its mission. Ten GRB-36Ds and 25 RF-84Ks were built and had limited service in 1955–1956.

Projects Tip Tow and Tom-Tom involved docking F-84s to the wingtips of B-29s and B-36s. The hope was that the increased aspect ratio of the combined aircraft would result in a greater range. Project Tip Tow was cancelled when an EF-84D and a specially modified test EB-29A crashed, killing everyone on both aircraft. This accident was attributed to the EF-84D flipping over onto the wing of the EB-29A. Project Tom-Tom, involving RF-84Fs and a GRB-36D from the FICON project (redesignated JRB-36F), continued for a few months after this crash, but was also cancelled due to the violent turbulence induced by the wingtip vortices of the B-36.

Strategic reconnaissance

One of the SAC's initial missions was to plan strategic aerial reconnaissance on a global scale. The first efforts were in photo-reconnaissance and mapping. Along with the photo-reconnaissance mission, a small electronic intelligence cadre was operating. Weather reconnaissance was part of the effort, as was long-range detection, the search for Soviet atomic explosions. In the late 1940s, strategic intelligence on Soviet capabilities and intentions was scarce. Before the development of the Lockheed U-2 high-altitude spy plane and Corona orbital reconnaissance satellites, technology and politics limited American reconnaissance efforts to the borders, and not the heartland, of the Soviet Union.

One of the essential criteria of the early postwar reconnaissance aircraft was the ability to cruise above , a level determined by knowledge of the capability of Soviet air-defense radar. The main Soviet air-defense radar in the 1950s was the American-supplied SCR-270, or locally made copies, which were only effective up to in theory, an aircraft cruising above this level would remain undetected.

The first aircraft to put this theory to the test was the RB-36D specialized photo-reconnaissance version of the . It was outwardly identical to the standard B-36D, but carried a crew of 22 rather than 15, the additional crew members being needed to operate and maintain the photo-reconnaissance equipment that was carried. The forward bomb bay in the bomber was replaced by a pressurized, manned compartment that was filled with 14 cameras. This compartment included a small darkroom, where a photo technician could develop the film. The second bomb bay contained up to 80 T-86 photoflash bombs, while the third bay could carry an extra , droppable fuel tank. The fourth bomb bay carried electronic countermeasure equipment. The defensive armament of 16 M-24A-1 20-mm cannons was retained. The extra fuel tanks increased the flight endurance to up to 50 hours. It had an operational ceiling of . Later, a lightweight version of this aircraft, the RB-36-III, could even reach . RB-36s were distinguished by the bright aluminum finish of the camera compartment (contrasting with the dull magnesium of the rest of the fuselage) and by a series of radar domes under the aft fuselage, varying in number and placement. When developed, it was the only American aircraft having enough range to fly over the Eurasian land mass from bases in the United States, and large enough to carry the bulky, high-resolution cameras of the day.

The standard RB-36D carried up to 23 cameras, primarily K-17C, K-22A, K-38, and K-40 cameras. A special 240-inch focal length camera (known as the Boston Camera after the university where it was designed) was tested on 44-92088, the aircraft being redesignated ERB-36D. The long focal length was achieved by using a two-mirror reflection system. The camera was capable of resolving a golf ball at an altitude and side range of . That is a slant range over . The camera and the contact print of this test can be seen at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright Patterson AFB.

The first RB-36D (44-92088) made its initial flight on 18 December 1949, only six months after the first B-36D had flown. It initially flew without the turbojets. The 28th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing based at Rapid City AFB (later renamed Ellsworth AFB), South Dakota, received its first RB-36D on 3 June 1950. Due to severe material shortages, the new RB-36Ds did not become operationally ready until June 1951. The 24th and last RB-36D was delivered in May 1951. A total of 24 RB-36Ds were built. Some RB-36Ds were later modified to the featherweight configuration, in which all but the tail guns were removed. The crew was reduced from 22 to 19. These aircraft were redesignated as RB-36D-III. Modifications were carried out by Convair from February to November 1954.

With a range of , RB-36Ds began probing the boundaries of the Soviet Arctic in 1951. Although on-board equipment indicated detection by Soviet radar, interceptions at the B-36's service ceiling would have remained difficult. RB-36 aircraft operating from RAF Sculthorpe in England made a number of overflights of Soviet Arctic bases, particularly the new nuclear weapons test complex at Novaya Zemlya. RB-36s performed a number of rarely acknowledged reconnaissance missions and are believed to have frequently penetrated Chinese (and Soviet) airspace under the direction of General Curtis LeMay.

In early 1950, Convair began converting B-36As to a reconnaissance configuration; included in the conversions was the sole YB-36 (42-13571). These converted examples were all redesignated RB-36E. The six R-4360-25 engines were replaced by six R-4360-41s. They were also equipped with the four J-47 jet engines that were fitted to the RB-36D. Its normal crew was 22, which included five gunners to man the 16 M-24A-1 20-mm cannon. The last conversion was completed in July 1951. Later, the USAF also bought 73 long-range reconnaissance versions of the B-36H under the designation RB-36H; 23 were accepted during the first six months of 1952, and the last were delivered by September 1953. More than a third of all B-36s were reconnaissance models.

Advances in Soviet air defense systems meant that the RB-36 became limited to flying outside the borders of the Soviet Union, as well as Eastern Europe. By the mid-1950s, the jet-powered Boeing RB-47E was able to pierce Soviet airspace and conduct a variety of spectacular overflights of the Soviet Union. Some of these flights probed deep into the heart of the Soviet Union, taking photographic and radar recordings of the route attacking SAC bombers would follow to reach their targets. Flights that involved penetrating mainland Russia were termed sensitive intelligence (SENSINT) missions. One RB-47 flew  inland and photographed the city of Igarka in Siberia.

As with the strategic bombardment versions, the RB-36 was phased out of the SAC inventory beginning in 1956, the last being sent to Davis–Monthan Air Force Base in January 1959.

Obsolescence

With the appearance of the Soviet Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 in combat over North Korea in 1950, USAF propeller-driven bombers were rendered obsolete as strategic offensive weapons. Both the B-36 and the B-29/B-50 Superfortresses were designed during World War II, prior to the jet age. A new generation of swept-wing jet bombers, able to fly higher and faster, was needed to effectively overcome the MiG-15 or subsequent Soviet interceptors if the Cold War escalated into armed conflict. In 1952, while the Korean War was still in full combat, the Convair YB-60, developed from the B-36, entered a design competition with the Boeing YB-52. By early 1953, the Boeing product had emerged as the preferred design.

After fighting in Korea had ceased, President Eisenhower called for a "new look" at national defense. His administration chose to invest in the USAF, especially SAC, retiring nearly all of its B-29/B-50s in favour of the new B-47 Stratojet, introduced in 1951. By 1955, the B-52 Stratofortress was entering the inventory in substantial numbers, which replaced B-36s.

Two major factors contributing to the obsolescence of the B-36 and its phaseout were a lack of aerial refueling capability (instead requiring intermediate refueling bases to reach planned targets deep in the Soviet Union) and its slow speed (making it vulnerable to jet interceptors and thus severely decreasing its likelihood of reaching targets in Soviet territory).

The scrapping of B-36s began in February 1956. Once replaced by B-52s, they were flown directly from operational squadrons to Davis–Monthan AFB, Arizona, where the Mar-Pak Corporation handled their reclamation and destruction. Defense cutbacks in FY 1958 compelled the B-52 procurement process to be stretched out and the B-36 service life to be extended. The B-36s remaining in service were supported with components scavenged from aircraft sent to Davis–Monthan. Further update work was undertaken by Convair at San Diego (Specialized Aircraft Maintenance, SAM-SAC) until 1957 to extend the life and capabilities of the B-36s. By December 1958, only 22 B-36Js were still operational.

On 12 February 1959, the last B-36J built, AF Ser. No. 52-2827, left Biggs AFB, Texas, where it had been on duty with the 95th Heavy Bombardment Wing, and was flown to Amon Carter Field in Fort Worth, where it was put on display. Within two years, all B-36s, except five used for museum display, had been scrapped at Davis–Monthan AFB.

Variants

XB-36
Prototype powered by six  R-4360-25 engines and unarmed, one built.
YB-36
Prototype, s/n 42-13571, with modified nose and raised cockpit roof, one built later converted to YB-36A.
YB-36A
Former YB-36 with modified four-wheel landing gear, later modified as a RB-36E.
B-36A
Production variant, unarmed, used for training, 22 built, all but one converted to RB-36E.
XC-99
A cargo/transport version of the B-36. One built.
B-36B
Armed production variant with six  R-4360-41 engines, 73 built, later conversions to RB-36D and B-36D.
RB-36B
Designation for 39 B-36Bs temporarily fitted with a camera installation.
YB-36C
Projected variant of the B-36B with six  R-4360-51 engines driving tractor propellers, not built.
B-36C
Production version of the YB-36, completed as B-36Bs.
B-36D
Same as B-36B, but fitted with four J47-GE-19 engines, two each in two underwing pods, 22 built and 64 conversions from B-36B.
RB-36D
Strategic reconnaissance variant with two bomb bays fitted with camera installation, 17 built and seven conversions from B-36B.
GRB-36D
Same as RB-36D, but modified to carry a GRF-84F Thunderstreak on a ventral trapeze as part of the FICON program, 10 modified.
RB-36E
The YB-36A and 21 B-36As converted to RB-36D standards.
B-36F
Same as B-36D, but fitted with six  R-4360-53 engines and four J47-GE-19 engines, 34 built.
RB-36F
Strategic reconnaissance variant of the B-36F with additional fuel capacity, 24 built.
YB-36G
See YB-60.
B-36H
Same as B-36F with improved cockpit and equipment changes, 83 built.
NB-36H
One B-36H fitted with a nuclear reactor installation for trials, had a revised cockpit and raised nose. This was intended to evolve into the Convair X-6.
RB-36H
Strategic reconnaissance variant of the B-36H, 73 built.
B-36J
High altitude variant with strengthened landing gear, increased fuel capacity, armament reduced to tail guns only and reduced crew, 33 built.
YB-60
Originally designated the YB-36G, s/n 49-2676 and 49-2684. Project for a jet-powered swept wing variant. Due to the differences from a standard B-36 its designation was changed to YB-60.
Model 6
Proposed double-deck airliner marrying the fuselage of the B-36 with the wings and empennage of the YB-60; not built.

Related models

In 1951, the USAF asked Convair to build a prototype of an all-jet variant of the B-36. Convair complied by replacing the wings on a B-36F with swept wings, from which were suspended eight Pratt & Whitney XJ57-P-3 jet engines. The result was the B-36G, later renamed the Convair YB-60. The YB-60 was deemed inferior to Boeing's YB-52, and the project was terminated. Just as the C-97 was the transport variant of the B-50, the B-36 was the basis for the Convair XC-99, a double-decked military cargo plane that was the largest piston-engined, land-based aircraft ever built. Its length of  made it the longest practical aircraft of its era. The sole example built was extensively employed for nearly 10 years, especially for cross-country cargo flights during the Korean War. In 2005, this XC-99 was dismantled in anticipation of its being moved from the former Kelly Air Force Base, now the Kelly Field Annex of Lackland AFB in San Antonio, Texas, where it had been retired since 1957. The XC-99 was subsequently relocated to the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB for restoration, with C-5 Galaxy transports carrying pieces of the XC-99 to Wright-Patterson as space and schedule permitted.

A commercial airliner derived from the XC-99, the Convair Model 37, never left the drawing board. It would have been the first "jumbo" airliner.

Operators

United States Air Force – Strategic Air Command
2d Air Force
 72d Strategic Reconnaissance Wing – Ramey AFB, Puerto Rico (October 1952 – January 1959)
60th and 301st Strategic Reconnaissance Squadrons, Tail Code: Square F
8th Air Force
 6th Bombardment Wing – Walker AFB, New Mexico (August 1952 – August 1957)
24th, 39th and 40th Bombardment Squadrons, Tail Code: Triangle R
 7th Bombardment Wing – Carswell AFB, Texas (June 1948 – May 1958)
9th, 436th and 492d Bombardment Squadrons, Tail Code: Triangle J
 11th Bombardment Wing – Carswell AFB, Texas (December 1948 – December 1957)
26th, 42d and 98th Bombardment Squadrons, Tail Code: Triangle U
 28th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing – Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota (May 1949 – April 1950)
77th, 717th and 718th Strategic Reconnaissance Squadrons, Tail Code: Circle X
 42d Bombardment Wing, Loring AFB, Maine (April 1953 – September 1956)
69th, 70th and 75th Bombardment Squadrons
15th Air Force
 92d Bombardment Wing – Fairchild AFB, Washington (July 1951 – March 1956)
325th, 326th and 327th Bombardment Squadrons, Tail Code: Circle W
 95th Bombardment Wing – Biggs AFB, Texas (August 1953 – February 1959)
334th, 335th and 336th Bombardment Squadrons
 5th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing – Fairfield-Suisun AFB (later Travis AFB), California (January 1951 – September 1958)
5th, 31st and 72d Strategic Reconnaissance Squadrons, Tail Code: Circle X
 9th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing – Fairfield-Suisun AFB, California (May 1949 – April 1950)
1st Bombardment Squadron
 99th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing – Fairchild AFB, Washington (August 1951 – September 1956)
346th, 347th and 348th Strategic Reconnaissance Squadrons, Tail Code: Circle I

Note: SAC eliminated tail codes in 1953.

Surviving aircraft
 only four complete B-36 type aircraft survive from the original 384 produced.
RB-36H

 AF Ser. No. 51-13730 is at Castle Air Museum at the former Castle Air Force Base in Atwater, California. It was previously displayed at the former Chanute Air Force Base in Rantoul, Illinois from 1957 to 1991.

B-36J

 AF Ser. No. 52-2217 is at the Strategic Air Command and Aerospace Museum, formerly located at Offutt Air Force Base, and now off-base near Ashland, Nebraska.
 AF Ser. No. 52-2220 is at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Its flight to the museum from Davis–Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona on 30 April 1959 was the last flight of a B-36. This B-36J replaced the former Air Force Museum's original YB-36, AF Serial Number 42-13571 (see above). This was also the first aircraft to be placed in the museum's new display hangar, and was not moved again until relocated to the museum's latest addition in 2003. It is displayed alongside the only surviving example of the massive  lower main gear strut, single wheel and tire that was used on the original XB-36.
 AF Ser. No. 52-2827 is at the Pima Air and Space Museum, adjacent to Davis–Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona. This aircraft was the final B-36 built, named The City of Fort Worth, and lent to the city of Fort Worth on 12 February 1959. It sat on the field at the Greater Southwest International Airport until that airfield was closed and the property was redeveloped as a business park adjacent to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. Some attempts were made to begin restoration at that location through the early 1970s. It then moved to the short-lived Southwest Aerospace Museum, which was located between the former Carswell Air Force Base (now Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth) and the former General Dynamics (now Lockheed Martin) assembly plant, where it was originally built; some restoration took place while at the plant. As Lockheed Martin had no place to display the finished aircraft, and local community efforts in Fort Worth to build a facility to house and maintain the massive aircraft fell short, the NMUSAF retook possession of the aircraft and it was transported to Tucson for loan to the Pima Air and Space Museum. It was fully restored and reassembled at that museum, just south of Davis–Monthan AFB, and is displayed at that location.

Notable incidents and accidents
Though the B-36 had a solid overall safety record, well above average for the class and time, 10 B-36s were involved in accidents between 1949 and 1954 (three B-36Bs, three B-36Ds, and four B-36Hs). A total of 32 B-36s were written off in accidents between 1949 and 1957 of 385 built. When a crash occurred, the magnesium-rich airframe burned easily.

On 14 February 1950 off the northwest coast of British Columbia on Princess Royal Island, 17 crewmen parachuted from their blazing B-36B; 12 crewmen were found with one injured, and five were reported missing.

On Labor Day, Monday, 1 September 1952, a tornado hit Carswell Air Force Base, Fort Worth, damaging aircraft of the 7th and 11th Bomber Wings' complement of B-36s. Some two-thirds of the USAF's entire B-36 fleet was affected, as well as six aircraft being built at that point at Convair's Fort Worth plant. The base was shut down and operations transferred to Meacham Field. Joint repairs by Convair and the USAF got 10 of the 61 B-36s running within two weeks and repaired the other 51 aircraft within five weeks; 18 of 19 heavily damaged aircraft (and the six damaged and unfinished aircraft at Convair) were repaired by May 1953. The 19th (#2051) had to be scrapped, and was used as a nuclear testing site ground target. One heavily damaged aircraft (#5712) was written off and rebuilt as the NB-36H Nuclear Reactor Testbed aircraft.

On 18 March 1953, RB-36H-25, 51-13721, flew off course in bad weather and crashed near Burgoyne's Cove, Newfoundland, Canada (). Brigadier General Richard Ellsworth was among the 23 airmen killed in the crash.

B-36s were involved in two "Broken Arrow" incidents. On 13 February 1950, B-36 serial number 44-92075, crashed in an unpopulated region of British Columbia, resulting in the first loss of an American atom bomb. The bomb's plutonium core was dummy lead, but it did have TNT, and it detonated over the ocean before the crew bailed out. Locating the crash site took some effort. On 4 November 2016, however, an object similar to the bomb was reported to have been located by a diver near the archipelago of Haida Gwaii,  off the coast of British Columbia; the Royal Canadian Navy said vessels would be deployed to investigate the object. After investigation, the Royal Canadian Navy determined that it was not the lost bomb. Later in 1954, the airframe, stripped of sensitive material, was substantially destroyed in situ by a U.S. military recovery team.

On 22 May 1957, a B-36 accidentally dropped a Mark 17 thermonuclear bomb  from the control tower while landing at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The weapon had come loose from its mount and fell through the bomb bay doors, creating a large hole in the bottom of the aircraft, and sending the aircraft into an uncontrollable climb due to the sudden and unexpected loss of weight. Only the conventional explosives detonated, as the bomb was unarmed. The aircraft made a safe landing. These incidents were classified for decades. See list of military nuclear accidents.

Specifications (B-36J-III)

Notable appearances in media

In 1949, the B-36 was featured in the documentary film, Target: Peace, about the operations of the 7th Bombardment Wing at Carswell AFB. Other scenes included B-36 production at the Fort Worth plant.

Strategic Air Command is a 1955 American film starring James Stewart as a Major League Baseball star and World War II veteran who is called back to active duty to become a B-36 pilot and flight commander for SAC.

The documentary Lost Nuke (2004) chronicles a 2003 Canadian expedition that set out to solve the mystery of the world's first lost nuclear weapon. The team traveled to the remote mountain site of the 1950 British Columbia B-36 crash.

See also

References

Notes

Citations

Bibliography
 Barlow, Jeffrey G. Revolt of the Admirals: The Fight for Naval Aviation, 1945–1950. Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 1994. .
 Ford, Daniel. "B-36: Bomber at the Crossroads". Air and Space/Smithsonian, April 1996. Retrieved: 3 February 2007.
 Grant, R.G. and John R. Dailey. Flight: 100 Years of Aviation. Harlow, Essex, UK: DK Adult, 2007. .
 Jacobsen, Meyers K. Convair B-36: A Comprehensive History of America's "Big Stick". Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Military History, 1997. .
 Jacobsen, Meyers K. Convair B-36: A Photo Chronicle. Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Military History, 1999. .
 Jacobsen, Meyers K. "Peacemaker." Airpower, Vol. 4, No. 6, November 1974.
 Jacobsen, Meyers K. and Ray Wagner. B-36 in Action (Aircraft in Action Number 42). Carrollton, Texas: Squadron/Signal Publications Inc., 1980. .
 Jenkins, Dennis R. B-36 Photo Scrapbook. St. Paul, Minnesota: Specialty Press Publishers and Wholesalers, 2003. .
 Jenkins, Dennis R. Convair B-36 Peacemaker. St. Paul, Minnesota: Specialty Press Publishers and Wholesalers, 1999. .
 Jenkins, Dennis R. Magnesium Overcast: The Story of the Convair B-36. North Branch, Minnesota: Specialty Press, 2002., .
 Johnsen, Frederick A. Thundering Peacemaker, the B-36 Story in Words and Pictures. Tacoma, Washington: Bomber Books, 1978.
 Knaack, Marcelle Size. Encyclopedia of U.S. Air Force aircraft and missile systems  Volume II: Post-World War II Bombers, 1945–1973. Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1988. .Online - via media.defense.gov
 Leach, Norman S. Broken Arrow: America's First Lost Nuclear Weapon. Calgary, Alberta: Red Deer Press, 2008. .
 Miller, Jay and Roger Cripliver. "B-36: The Ponderous Peacemaker." Aviation Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 4, 1978.
 Miller, Jay. "Tip Tow & Tom-Tom". Air Enthusiast, No. 9, February–May 1979, pp. 40–42. .
 Morris, Lt. Col. (ret.) and Ted Allan. "Flying the Aluminum and Magnesium Overcast". The collected articles and photographs of Ted A. Morris, 2000. Retrieved: 4 September 2006.
 Orman, Edward W. "One Thousand on Top: A Gunner's View of Flight from the Scanning Blister of a B-36." Airpower, Vol. 17, No. 2, March 1987.
 Puryear, Edgar. Stars in Flight. Novato, California: Presidio Press, 1981.
 Pyeatt, Don. B-36: Saving the Last Peacemaker (Third Edition). Fort Worth, Texas: ProWeb Publishing, 2006. .
 Shiel, Walter P. "The B-36 Peacemaker: 'There Aren't Programs Like This Anymore'". cessnawarbirds.com. Retrieved: 19 July 2009.
 Taylor, John W.R. "Convair B-36." Combat Aircraft of the World from 1909 to the present. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1969. .
 Thomas, Tony. A Wonderful Life: The Films and Career of James Stewart. Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1988. .
 Wagner, Ray. American Combat Planes. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1968. .
 Wilson, Stewart. Combat Aircraft since 1945. London: Aerospace Publications, 2000. .
 Winchester, Jim. "Convair B-36". Military Aircraft of the Cold War (The Aviation Factfile). Rochester, Kent, UK: The Grange plc., 2006. .
 Wolk, Herman S. Fulcrum of Power: Essays on the United States Air Force and National Security. Darby, Pennsylvania: Diane Publishing, 2003. .
 Yenne, Bill. "Convair B-36 Peacemaker." International Air Power Review, Vol. 13, Summer 2004. London: AirTime Publishing Inc., 2004. .

External links

 USAF Museum: XB-36
 USAF Museum: B-36A
 Video of The B-36 from Strategic Air Command. 5:32
 "I Flew with the Atomic Bombers", Popular Mechanics, April 1954, pp. 98–102, 264.
 AeroWeb: B-36 versions and survivors
 "Race For the Superbomb: Lt. Gen. James Edmundson interview transcript: Flying B-36 and B-47 planes". PBS Online.
 ZiaNet: B-36 operations Walker AFB Roswell New Mexico 1955–1957
 "I Flew Thirty-One Hours in a B-36", Popular Mechanics, September 1950
 Size 36, 1950-produced "first public film" on the B-36, in detail

B-36
B-36
Convair B-36
Six-engined pusher aircraft
Aircraft with auxiliary jet engines
Articles containing video clips
Shoulder-wing aircraft
Aircraft first flown in 1946
Ten-engined aircraft

Convair B-36 Peacemaker


Capesize ships are the largest dry cargo ships with ball mark dimension: about 170,000 DWT (deadweight tonnage) capacity, 290 m long, 45 m beam (wide), 18m draught (under water depth).  They are too large to transit the Suez Canal (Suezmax limits) or Panama Canal (Neopanamax limits), and so have to pass either Cape Agulhas or Cape Horn to traverse between oceans.

When the Suez Canal was deepened in 2009, it became possible for some capesize ships to transit the Canal and so change categories.

Routes
Major capesize bulk trade routes include: Brazil to China, Australia to China, South Africa to China and South Africa to Europe.

Classification

Ships in this class are bulk carriers, usually transporting coal, ore and other commodity raw materials.  The term capesize is not applied to tankers.  The average size of a capesize bulker is around , although larger ships (normally dedicated to ore transportation) have been built, up to .  The large dimensions and deep drafts of such vessels mean that only the largest deep-water terminals can accommodate them.

Subcategories of capesize vessels include very large ore carriers (VLOC) and very large bulk carriers (VLBC) of above 200,000 DWT. These vessels are mainly designed to carry iron ore.

See also
 Cape Route
 List of Panamax ports
 Cargo ship size categories
 Suezmax

References

External links
Ship sizes

Ship types
Ship measurements

Capesize


A transform fault or  transform boundary, is a fault along a plate boundary where the motion is predominantly horizontal. It ends abruptly where it connects to another plate boundary, either another transform, a spreading ridge, or a subduction zone. A transform fault is a special case of a strike-slip fault that also forms a plate boundary.

Most such faults are found in oceanic crust, where they accommodate the lateral offset between segments of divergent boundaries, forming a zigzag pattern. This is a result of oblique seafloor spreading where the direction of motion is not perpendicular to the trend of the overall divergent boundary. A smaller number of such faults are found on land, although these are generally better-known, such as the San Andreas Fault and North Anatolian Fault.

Nomenclature
Transform boundaries are also known as conservative plate boundaries because they involve no addition or loss of lithosphere at the Earth's surface.

Background
Geophysicist and geologist John Tuzo Wilson recognized that the offsets of oceanic ridges by faults do not follow the classical pattern of an offset fence or geological marker in Reid's rebound theory of faulting, from which the sense of slip is derived.  The new class of faults, called transform faults, produce slip in the opposite direction from what one would surmise from the standard interpretation of an offset geological feature.  Slip along transform faults does not increase the distance between the ridges it separates; the distance remains constant in earthquakes because the ridges are spreading centers.  This hypothesis was confirmed in a study of the fault plane solutions that showed the slip on transform faults points in the opposite direction than classical interpretation would suggest.

Difference between transform and transcurrent faults

Transform faults are closely related to transcurrent faults and are commonly confused. Both types of fault are strike-slip or side-to-side in movement; nevertheless, transform faults always end at a junction with another plate boundary, while transcurrent faults may die out without a junction with another fault. Finally, transform faults form a tectonic plate boundary, while transcurrent faults do not.

Mechanics
Faults in general are focused areas of deformation or strain, which are the response of built-up stresses in the form of compression, tension, or shear stress in rock at the surface or deep in the Earth's subsurface.  Transform faults specifically accommodate lateral strain by transferring displacement between mid-ocean ridges or subduction zones. They also act as the plane of weakness, which may result in splitting in rift zones.

Transform faults and divergent boundaries
Transform faults are commonly found linking segments of divergent boundaries (mid-oceanic ridges or spreading centres).   These mid-oceanic ridges are where new seafloor is constantly created through the upwelling of new basaltic magma.  With new seafloor being pushed and pulled out, the older seafloor slowly slides away from the mid-oceanic ridges toward the continents.  Although separated only by tens of kilometers, this separation between segments of the ridges causes portions of the seafloor to push past each other in opposing directions. This lateral movement of seafloors past each other is where transform faults are currently active.

Transform faults move differently from a strike-slip fault at the mid-oceanic ridge.   Instead of the ridges moving away from each other, as they do in other strike-slip faults, transform-fault ridges remain in the same, fixed locations, and the new ocean seafloor created at the ridges is pushed away from the ridge. Evidence of this motion can be found in paleomagnetic striping on the seafloor.

A paper written by geophysicist Taras Gerya theorizes that the creation of the transform faults between the ridges of the mid-oceanic ridge is attributed to rotated and stretched sections of the mid-oceanic ridge. This occurs over a long period of time with the spreading center or ridge slowly deforming from a straight line to a curved line. Finally, fracturing along these planes forms transform faults. As this takes place, the fault changes from a normal fault with extensional stress to a strike-slip fault with lateral stress. In the study done by Bonatti and Crane, peridotite and gabbro rocks were discovered in the edges of the transform ridges.  These rocks are created deep inside the Earth's mantle and then rapidly exhumed to the surface.  This evidence helps to prove that new seafloor is being created at the mid-oceanic ridges and further supports the theory of plate tectonics.

Active transform faults are between two tectonic structures or faults. Fracture zones represent the previously active transform-fault lines, which have since passed the active transform zone and are being pushed toward the continents.  These elevated ridges on the ocean floor can be traced for hundreds of miles and in some cases even from one continent across an ocean to the other continent.

Types
In his work on transform-fault systems, geologist Tuzo Wilson said that transform faults must be connected to other faults or tectonic-plate boundaries on both ends; because of that requirement, transform faults can grow in length, keep a constant length, or decrease in length.  These length changes are dependent on which type of fault or tectonic structure connect with the transform fault. Wilson described six types of transform faults:

Growing length:  In situations where a transform fault links a spreading center and the upper block of a subduction zone or where two upper blocks of subduction zones are linked, the transform fault itself will grow in length.

Constant length: In other cases, transform faults will remain at a constant length.  This steadiness can be attributed to many different causes.  In the case of ridge-to-ridge transforms, the constancy is caused by the continuous growth by both ridges outward, canceling any change in length.  The opposite occurs when a ridge linked to a subducting plate, where all the lithosphere (new seafloor) being created by the ridge is subducted, or swallowed up, by the subduction zone.  Finally, when two upper subduction plates are linked there is no change in length. This is due to the plates moving parallel with each other and no new lithosphere is being created to change that length.

Decreasing length faults: In rare cases, transform faults can shrink in length.  These occur when two descending subduction plates are linked by a transform fault.  In time as the plates are subducted, the transform fault will decrease in length until the transform fault disappears completely, leaving only two subduction zones facing in opposite directions.

Examples

The most prominent examples of the mid-oceanic ridge transform zones are in the Atlantic Ocean between South America and Africa.  Known as the St. Paul, Romanche, Chain, and Ascension fracture zones, these areas have deep, easily identifiable transform faults and ridges.  Other locations include: the East Pacific Ridge located in the South Eastern Pacific Ocean, which meets up with San Andreas Fault to the North.

Transform faults are not limited to oceanic crust and spreading centers; many of them are on continental margins.  The best example is the San Andreas Fault on the Pacific coast of the United States.  The San Andreas Fault links the  East Pacific Rise off the West coast of Mexico (Gulf of California) to the Mendocino Triple Junction (Part of the Juan de Fuca plate) off the coast of the Northwestern United States, making it a ridge-to-transform-style fault.  The formation of the San Andreas Fault system occurred fairly recently during the Oligocene Period between 34 million and 24 million years ago. During this period, the Farallon plate, followed by the Pacific plate, collided into the North American plate.  The collision led to the subduction of the Farallon plate underneath the North American plate.  Once the spreading center separating the Pacific and the Farallon plates was subducted beneath the North American plate, the San Andreas Continental Transform-Fault system was created.

In New Zealand, the South Island's alpine fault is a transform fault for much of its length. This has resulted in the folded land of the Southland Syncline being split into an eastern and western section several hundred kilometres apart. The majority of the syncline is found in Southland and The Catlins in the island's southeast, but a smaller section is also present in the Tasman District in the island's northwest.

Other examples include:
 Middle East's Dead Sea Transform fault
 Pakistan's Chaman Fault
 Turkey's North Anatolian Fault
 North America's Queen Charlotte Fault
 Myanmar's Sagaing Fault

See also

References

 International Tectonic Dictionary – AAPG Memoir 7, 1967
 The Encyclopedia of Structural Geology and Plate Tectonics – Ed. by Carl K. Seyfert, 1987

Structural geology
Plate tectonics
Faults (geology)
Strike-slip earthquakes

Transform fault


A custard cream is a type of biscuit which is popular in the United Kingdom. It looks like a biscuit sandwich with a cream center.

Like the American Hydrox or Oreo, the custard cream can be eaten by twisting the two biscuits apart and eating the center first.

Other websites
 Custard cream review from nicecupofteaandasitdown.com

Desserts

Custard cream


Benoît Battistelli (born 12 July 1950 in Paris, France) is a French civil servant, former president of the European Patent Office (EPO) (2010-2018), and former head of the French National Industrial Property Institute (INPI).

Career
Benoît Battistelli graduated from the École Nationale d'Administration (ÉNA, English: National School of Administration) in 1978. From 1978 to 2002, he held various posts in French government departments and the French embassies in Italy, India, Poland and Turkey. Later, from June 2002 to April 2004, he was assistant director of staff of Nicole Fontaine, former President of the European Parliament.

From 12 May 2004 to June/July 2010, he headed (more precisely, he was the directeur général, i.e. chief executive officer) the French National Industrial Property Institute (INPI, standing for Institut national de la propriété industrielle in French), in charge of patents, trademarks and industrial design rights.

Battistelli chaired the Supervisory Board of the European Patent Academy from July 2005 to July 2008. He was also chairman of the Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation. He was elected to the post of Deputy Chairman of the Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation on 5 December 2006 for a three-year term. Then, later the Administrative Council appointed him as its Chairman for a three-year term, from 5 March 2009 until March 2012, although his election in March 2010 as President of the European Patent Office meant that he had to step down as Chairman of the Administrative Council.

In 2008, he had been named as one of the potential candidates to succeed Kamil Idris to lead the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), but Francis Gurry was eventually selected for the post.

President of the EPO
On 1 March 2010 he was elected president of the European Patent Office (EPO), after a long and controversial series of meetings of the Administrative Council. He took up the post on 1 July 2010, for a term of five years. He was the sixth president of the EPO, the second Frenchman to hold the post, and the first president who has previously held the post of Chairman of the Administrative Council.

Under Battistelli's tenure, the EPO played an important role in the preparatory work for the introduction of the unitary patent, which has yet to come into existence. In this context, Battistelli was listed in 2014 by the Managing Intellectual Property magazine as one of the 50 most influential people in intellectual property. In June 2014, Battistelli's term of office as EPO president was extended for a further three years until 30 June 2018, amidst concerns from the EPO staff. In July 2018, he was succeeded by António Campinos.

Discontent within the EPO staff
Battistelli's presidency has encountered discontent among the staff and has been marked by industrial actions with an escalation of the conflict in 2014. Discontent on the part of staff has been attributed to Battistelli's style of management which, according to reports in the German newspapers Die Zeit and Die Welt, was perceived by staff as being unduly autocratic and unsuited to a European intergovernmental body such as the EPO, and, according to an article in the French newspaper Le Monde, has been brought in relation with suicides among the EPO staff since 2013. Battistelli's management style has also been criticized in the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, and by Philip Cordery, member of the French National Assembly. In an interview to the German business lawyer journal JUVE, Siegfried Bross, former judge at the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, expressed the view that EPO's organization giving its president excessive powers is "principally incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)" and that EPO's president, Benoît Battistelli, acted in 2015 against an EPO staff member "without legal legitimacy".

On 9 March 2018 a petition signed by 924 patent examiners denounced "the submission to constraints that are no longer compatible with fulfilling appropriately our duties within the Search and Examination divisions". They wrote: "We are far too often put in front of the dilemma of either working according to the European Patent Convention and respecting the examiner's guidelines, or issuing 'products' as our hierarchy demands".

Computer tapping controversy
In June 2015, shortly before a meeting of the EPO President with the European Parliament, news broke of a controversial computer tapping action which apparently took place at the EPO towards the end of 2014. An article published in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung stated that it had obtained an internal report which showed that the EPO had tapped two publicly accessible computers that had been identified as a source for leaked information. The systems were placed under surveillance using cameras and keylogging and this led to the suspension of a member of staff. These events led the Bavarian Data Protection Commissioner, Thomas Petri, and the Federal German Data Protection Commissioner, Andrea Voßhoff, to raise concerns regarding data protection matters at the EPO.

Local political life
As of 2014, he was also town councillor (French: "conseiller municipal") of the French municipality of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (Yvelines).

Honorary degrees
In 2013, Battistelli received an honorary professorship from Renmin University of China, Beijing, and, in 2014, the Menéndez Pelayo International University in Santander, Spain, awarded him an honorary doctorate.

References

Further reading

External links
 Benoît Battistelli at the European Patent Office
 Benoît Battistelli at Who's Who in France
  Interview (dailymotion.com) (JoCIF)
 Questions by epi to the candidates for the position as President of the EPO, Mr. Benoît Battistelli by the European Patent Institute (epi), October 2009.

Living people
1950 births
European Patent Organisation people
20th-century French civil servants
21st-century French civil servants

Benoît Battistelli


Sheringham Point Lighthouse is located on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, near the community of Shirley. Built in 1912 following the fatal wreck of the SS Valencia six years earlier, it is still used for navigation. The point was named for William L. Sheringham who took part in various naval surveys although not in this area.

The lighthouse and surrounding property is currently owned by the Canadian Coast Guard and fenced off, though the lighthouse can be seen easily from a trail beside the fence. , the Sheringham Point Lighthouse Preservation Society is working to acquire the property from the Coast Guard and turn it into a public park.

Oceanographic research

From 1968 to 1989, the Sheringham Point Light was part of the British Columbia Shore Station Oceanographic Program, collecting coastal water temperature and salinity measurements for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans everyday for 21 years.

Sheringham Point Lighthouse Preservation Society

The Sheringham Point Lighthouse Preservation Society (SPLPS) was established in 2003 by local residents of Shirley, British Columbia, when the Canadian Coast Guard suggested deeming the Sheringham Point Lighthouse and its surrounding lands as 'surplus'. The SPLPS's mission is "to preserve the Sheringham Point Lighthouse structures and property; to ensure, through education, research, community action and consensus building, that the Sheringham Point Lighthouse, surrounding property and historic access routes remain accessible to the community and visitors now and in the future; to document and recognize the historical importance of the Sheringham Point Lighthouse and those who lived and worked there."

In 2010, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) officially declared the lightstation and surrounding lands surplus.

On May 29, 2015, The Honourable Leona Aglukkaq, Minister of the Environment and Minister responsible for Parks Canada, announced that 74 heritage lighthouses across Canada had been designated under the Heritage Lighthouse Protection Act.

ON June 8, 2015, the SPLPS received a letter from Minister Aglukkaq, indicating that the Sheringham Point Lighthouse was included on that list. Meanwhile, the Society and the Capital Regional District (CRD) have been working together to acquire the station and lands to create a park accessible to the public.

At an Apr 3, 2017 news conference, the SPLS announced the largest ever private donation to a lighthouse in Canada. The Westaway Charitable Foundation will be assisting the restoration with $550,00 over several years.

Keepers
 Eustace Travanion Arden (1912 – 1946)
 Tom Charles Cross (1946)
 Alfred Dickenson (1946 – 1948)
 Thomas Westhead (1948 – )
 Frederick Arthur Mountain (1959 – 1968)
 James D. Bruton (1968 – 1987)
 Kurt Cehak (1987 – 1989)

See also
 List of lighthouses in British Columbia
 List of lighthouses in Canada
 Henri de Miffonis

References

External links

 Aids to Navigation Canadian Coast Guard
 Information from Lorne's Lighthouses
 Sheringham Point Lighthouse Preservation Society

Lighthouses completed in 1912
Lighthouses in British Columbia
1912 establishments in British Columbia
Historic buildings and structures in British Columbia

Sheringham Point Light


The United States Army beef scandal was an American political scandal caused by the widespread distribution of extremely low-quality, heavily adulterated beef products to U.S Army soldiers fighting in the Spanish–American War. General Nelson Miles called the adulterated meat "embalmed beef," and the scandal also became alternatively known as the Embalmed Beef scandal.

Background to the scandal
The United States Army was poorly prepared for the war. The contract was arranged hurriedly and at the lowest-possible cost by Secretary of War Russell A. Alger from the Chicago "big three" meatpacking corporations, Morris & Co, Swift & Co, and Armour & Co. In the atmosphere of pre-regulation-era Chicago, the companies took advantage of Alger's inattention and favorable attitude to the industry (as well as the Army's immediate need for large amounts of cheap beef to provision the expeditionary forces) by further cutting corners and reducing quality on the (already heavily adulterated) product they shipped for the US contract.

The scandal
As a result, most of the meat arriving in Cuba was found to be so poorly preserved, chemically adulterated, or spoiled that it was toxic and dangerous to consume. The meat caused an unrecorded number of illnesses and death from dysentery and food poisoning, having an especially deadly effect on the thousands already weakened by the epidemics of malaria and yellow fever which were ravaging the unprotected American troops and would eventually kill twice as many men as combat with the Spanish. Since yellow fever frequently causes symptoms similar to bacterial food poisoning (fever, vomiting, severe or bloody diarrhea), little connection was made at the time between illness and consumption of the Chicago beef. The scandal was first broken by Major W. H. Daly, chief surgeon on the staff of General Miles, in September 1898.

The court of inquiry

In the months following the 1898 Spanish–American War, during a court of inquiry held to investigate problems in the U.S. Army's food quality, Commanding General Nelson A. Miles made reference to "embalmed beef." Miles, a Civil War Union Army veteran, had many years of experience with army provisions. At the onset of the Spanish–American War, he recommended to Secretary of War Russell A. Alger that local cattle be purchased in Cuba and Puerto Rico for the Army's use, rather than using preserved or refrigerated meat that had been transported from the United States. This would have followed the Army's traditional practice of procuring fresh beef from local sources.

Despite his requests, the Army was dedicated to supporting the Chicago meatpacking industry, which eventually shipped hundreds of tons of refrigerated and canned beef to the Army from the mainland. In his testimony before the court of inquiry, General Miles referred to the refrigerated product as "embalmed beef," and provided the court with a letter from an Army Medical officer describing the product. "[M]uch of the beef I examined arriving on the transports from the United States ... [was] apparently preserved by injected chemicals to aid deficient refrigeration," the medical officer wrote. "It looked well, but had an odor similar to that of a dead human body after being injected with formaldehyde, and it tasted when first cooked like decomposed boric acid ..."

As for the canned product, Miles reported, during the war he had received many complaints about its poor quality. His officers provided many striking descriptions of it. "The meat ... soon became putrid," wrote one colonel, "and in many of the cans was found in course of putrefaction when opened." An infantry major declared that "'Nasty' is the only term that will fitly describe its appearance. Its use produced diarrhea and dysentery." Still another officer noted that "It was often nauseating and unfit for use. It should no longer be issued."

Miles also made public statements, reported in the newspapers, claiming that the canned meat was the after-product of the process for making beef extract. "There was no life or nourishment in the meat," charged Miles. "It had been used to make beef extract, and after the juice was squeezed out of it the pulp was put back in the cans and labeled 'roast beef.'" As for the embalmed beef, Miles stated "I have the affidavits of men who have seen the process of embalming beef ... treating it chemically for the purpose of preserving it."

While other officers, notably General Wesley Merritt, who had commanded an Army corps in the Philippines during the war, denied having heard of any trouble with the meat supplies, Miles refused to be silenced.

When the Commissary General, Brigadier General Charles P. Eagan, was called to testify, he strongly denounced Miles as a liar. This resulted in Eagan being court-martialed and being suspended from duty until he reached the mandatory retirement age.

Results of the scandal
Although there were no official findings of large-scale trouble with meat supplies, the newspapers stirred up public opinion on the subject. This contributed to the growing criticism of Secretary of War Alger's handling of the Army during the war (a phenomenon that became known as "Algerism") and by the summer of 1899, President William McKinley decided that Alger had to go. On August 1, Alger resigned at McKinley's request.

The Veterinary Corps' founding on June 3, 1916 was partially sparked due to the medical incompetence displayed in the beef scandal.

See also
 Meatpacking
 Foodborne illness
 Russell A. Alger

Further reading
 "The Army Meat Scandal," New York Times, Feb. 21, 1899.
 Laurie Winn Carlson, Cattle: An Informal Social History, Ivan R. Dee, 2002, pp. 131–33.
 Edward F. Keuchel, "Chemicals and Meat: The Embalmed Beef Scandal of the Spanish–American War." Bull. Hist. Med. 1974 Summer;48(2):249–64.
 "Merritt's 'Embalmed' Beef," New York Times, Dec. 28, 1898.
 United States Senate, Food Furnished to Troops in Cuba and Porto Rico, Pt. 3 Serial # 3872 (GPO 1900) pp. 1913-ff.

References

Spanish–American War
United States military scandals
Beef
Presidency of William McKinley
Adulteration
Food safety scandals
Meat packing industry
Events that led to courts-martial

United States Army beef scandal


Alfred Lyall (6 February 1796 – 11 September 1865) was an English philosopher, editor, clergyman and traveller.

Early life
Alfred Lyall was the youngest son of John Lyall (1752–1805), of Findon, Sussex, and Jane Comyn (c. 1756–1824). His eldest brother George Lyall, sometime member of parliament for the City of London, became chairman of the East India Company. Of his other brothers to reach maturity, John Lyall was a lieutenant-colonel in the Bombay Army, at that time under the command of the East India Company, Haseldine Lyall joined the Royal Navy, while William Rowe Lyall entered the church and became Dean of Canterbury.

Lyall was educated at Eton, matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in November 1813, and graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1818. Following this he spent some time studying and travelling on the Continent, with extended stays in Frankfurt and Geneva. Lyall was especially drawn to Italy, where he acquired some knowledge of art. He was an incessant reader, a serious student of history and philosophical works, but also a lover of poetry.

By 1820 all of Lyall's surviving brothers and sisters were married and settled, while he was still a bachelor, living with his widowed mother at The Square, Findon, West Sussex. The property is known today as Grey Point. Findon records show that another property called Avery's, larger but less elegant, located a short distance away, also belonged to the Lyall family around this time.

Literary interests
Lyall literary leanings brought him an invitation to become editor of The Annual Register, an influential review, which he did from 1822 until 1827, returning to it again in 1837. The winter of 1825–1826 he passed visiting Madeira and Portugal. On his return he published in 1827 a comprehensive narrative entitled Rambles in Madeira and in Portugal. The book was accompanied by a folio volume of lithographic sketches by his friend and fellow traveller James Bulwer, an accomplished artist and keen naturalist.

Subsequently, Lyall returned to Findon and immersed himself in metaphysical studies. His elder brother William Rowe Lyall, taking him in hand, steered him towards an ecclesiastical career.  The church was considered a good choice for educated gentry without private means, as it offered a secure and comfortable benefice, while generally allowing the incumbent enough leisure time to pursue literary interests. Before yielding to his brother's advice Lyall wrote a second book, entitled A Review of the Principles of Necessary and Contingent Truth, published anonymously in 1830. This was a complex metaphysical discourse mainly attacking the theories of Hume and Reid. It was intended as an introduction to a projected work of several volumes that was never executed.

Career and family
Lyall took holy orders in 1829, and was appointed curate in Findon. Around the time of his ordination he became engaged to a 20-year-old girl from another old Scots family. Mary Drummond Broadwood (1809–1878) was the fourth daughter of James Schudi Broadwood (1778–1851) of nearby Lyne House, Surrey. Mary's paternal grandfather John Broadwood had established the Broadwood piano company after marrying the daughter of his business partner Burkat Schudi, the Swiss harpsichord maker. Mary's mother was Margaret Schaw Stewart (1778–1849), whose great-uncle was Daniel Stewart of Glenbuckie, best remembered for his association with Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite rising of 1745.

The couple were married in December 1830 and by 1835 had moved to Coulsdon, where Alfred was acting as curate in charge. Subsequently, in 1837, he was appointed vicar of Godmersham in Kent.

At the request of the publishers Rivington's, Lyall resumed editorship of The Annual Register after moving to Godmersham, but was soon forced to relinquish the work due to health problems. Thereafter he continued to make sporadic literary contributions to other publications. Most notably in 1848 he was asked to collaborate on the Encyclopedia Metropolitana, an ambitious project conceived by Samuel Taylor Coleridge for the dissemination of universal knowledge, and published in a series of main divisions, over a number of years, each division consisting of multiple volumes. Lyall contributed to the Third Division: History of the Christian Church, covering the fourth to twelfth centuries, which appeared in 1850–51. In 1856 he published another book anonymously, entitled Agonistes, or Philosophical Strictures, which gained him a certain literary reputation. This was his third and last sole-authorship book, a collection of polemics attacking the high churchmen's enemies of the day, most particularly the philosophical theories of John Stuart Mill.

Nine children of the marriage survived, two of which – Alfred Comyn Lyall and James Broadwood Lyall – had distinguished careers in British India, leading to Lieutenant-Governorships and knighthoods.

Later life
The family's final move came in 1848, when they relocated to Harbledown, a small parish located on a rise overlooking the cathedral city of Canterbury, where his elder brother was now Dean. Alfred did not naturally have the makings of a parish priest – he was too remote from the ordinary people of his congregation, a shortcoming his wife appears to have energetically made up for with charitable work. Despite being a little too 'broad' in his views for a country parson he seems to have given what was expected of him, and was by all accounts well liked and respected by the community he served. Nonetheless, it was wise to take the precaution of publishing his philosophical works anonymously, for it was not altogether appropriate that he should be seen by his congregation as engaging in metaphysical arguments on subjects deemed outside the realm of his parish duties. In any event, his intended circle of readers was undoubtedly well aware of the author's identity – there was little need to advertise his writings further than necessary.

Alfred Lyall remained as rector of Harbledown for the remainder of his life. He died while on a visit to Llangollen, Wales, on 11 September 1865, and was buried at the parish church of St. Michael's, Harbledown, where there is a tablet to his memory.

References

Further reading
Burke's Landed Gentry, 1886 ed.
Dictionary of National Biography
Dewey, Clive, The Passing of Barchester, 1991.
Durand, Mortimer, Life of Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall, 1913
Holland, Bernard, Letters of Mary Sibylla Holland, 1898
Martin, Valerie, This is Findon Village

1796 births
1865 deaths
English philosophers
People from Findon, West Sussex
People educated at Eton College
Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
People from Harbledown

Alfred Lyall (traveller)


Ernest Philip Alphonso Law CB CVO (26 August 1854–25 February 1930) was an English historian and barrister.

Law came from an old Westmorland family and was a grandson of Lord Ellenborough, Lord Chief Justice of England. The diplomat Sir Algernon Law was his brother and Major-Generals Francis Law and Victor Law were his half-brothers. A Roman Catholic, he was educated at Oscott College and University College, London, from which he graduated BA in 1874. He was called to the bar by the Inner Temple in 1878 and practised on the South-Eastern Circuit and at the Parliamentary bar. From 1891 to 1896 he was Comptroller and Secretary of the Provident Institution Savings Bank.

An expert on Tudor history, Law was appointed official historian at Hampton Court Palace and given a residence there, The Pavilion, where he lived until his death. He was also a Shakespeare scholar and a scholar of historic gardens, designing the knott garden and the Elizabethan borders of Shakespeare's garden at New Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was a trustee of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. He also designed the sunken garden at the Brompton Hospital Sanatorium at Frimley and the garden theatre at Esher Place. He authenticated the Cunningham Papers at the Public Record Office, the 17th-century account books of the Office of Revels which had been bought by the British Museum in 1868.

His best-known work was A Short History of Hampton Court (1897), abridged from his longer histories. He also wrote History of Hampton Court, Royal Gallery of Hampton Court, Vandyck's and Holbein's Pictures at Windsor Castle, Kensington Palace, Shakespeare as a Groom of the Chamber (1910), Some Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries (1911), Dancing on Ice (1911), More about Shakespeare Forgeries (1913), England's First Great War Minister (1916), The Tempest as originally produced at Court (1920), Mantegna's Triumph of Julius Cæsar, as now hung in the old Orangery at Hampton Court (1921), Commonwealth or Empire (1921), Shakespeare's Garden (1922), Henry VIII's Great Kitchen at Hampton Court, and Hampton Court Gardens: Old and New (1926).

He was appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the 1920 New Year War Honours and Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO) in the 1926 New Year Honours.

He died at The Pavilion, Hampton Court and is buried in the churchyard of St Mary Magdalen Church, Mortlake.

His widow Katherine, whom he married in 1890, died at Hampton Court in 1954 at the age of 99. A great beauty in her younger days and a recluse after her husband's death, she was one of the longest residents of the palace.

Footnotes

References
Obituary, The Times, 26 February 1930
Who Was Who

External links

1854 births
1930 deaths
People from Westmorland
Alumni of St Mary's College, Oscott
Alumni of University College London
Members of the Inner Temple
English barristers
19th-century English historians
English art historians
English Roman Catholics
Shakespearean scholars
English landscape architects
Companions of the Order of the Bath
Commanders of the Royal Victorian Order
English male dramatists and playwrights
English male poets
19th-century English lawyers
20th-century English historians
Burials at St Mary Magdalen Roman Catholic Church Mortlake

Ernest Law


Michael Derry O'Donoghue (born 18 January 1996) is an Irish footballer who plays as a left-back.

O'Donoghue joined Colchester United's Academy in 2013, having previously progressed through the Reading Academy and the Leyton Orient Academy. He made his professional debut and his only appearance for Colchester in November 2014, before leaving in January 2017 to join Haringey Borough, until 2019 moving to Concord Rangers, only to return to Haringey Borough FC in 2020.

Career
Born in Islington, London, Irishman O'Donoghue joined League One club Colchester United's Academy in the summer of 2013, signing from Leyton Orient to begin his two-year scholarship with the club's academy. He had previously been signed to the Reading Academy.

During his first season with Colchester, O'Donoghue helped the under-18 side to win a league and cup double. He provided an assist for Macauley Bonne in the Youth Alliance Cup Final held against Bradford City at Valley Parade on 29 April 2014 in a 4–2 win for Colchester.

A ruptured achilles tendon injury which ruled Tosin Olufemi out for the entire 2014–15 season meant that O'Donoghue would be back-up only to Ben Gordon at left-back. Following further injuries to Magnus Okuonghae and Frankie Kent, O'Donoghue was named in the starting line-up for Colchester's League One match with Barnsley on 14 November 2014. He made his debut and played the full 90 minutes in the 3–2 defeat at Oakwell. He then set his sights on keeping his place in the team, but found himself pushed out of the starting eleven by Queens Park Rangers loanee Cole Kpekawa.

O'Donoghue was ruled out for the remainder of the season in December 2014 after rupturing cruciate ligaments during a training session. Despite his injury and with his contract expiring in the summer, O'Donoghue signed a one-year extension with Colchester on 8 May 2015.

After a season of recovery from knee surgery during 2015–16, O'Donoghue impressed enough in the development squad to earn himself a new contract, and signed a one-year extension in May 2016.

On 20 January 2017, O'Donoghue was released by Colchester United by mutual consent. He joined Isthmian League Division One North side Haringey Borough, and went straight into their starting eleven for Borough's 6–0 win over Soham Town Rangers on 21 January.

Career statistics

Honours
Colchester United U18
2013–14 Football League Youth Alliance South East winner
2013–14 Football League Youth Alliance Cup winner

References

External links

1996 births
Living people
Footballers from Islington (district)
Republic of Ireland men's association footballers
Men's association football fullbacks
Reading F.C. players
Leyton Orient F.C. players
Colchester United F.C. players
Haringey Borough F.C. players
English Football League players
Isthmian League players

Michael O'Donoghue (footballer)


Bernard Vincent Finnigan (born 8 December 1972) is an Australian former politician who served as a member of the South Australian Legislative Council from 2006 until 2015. He was appointed in May 2006 as a member of the South Australian Branch of the Australian Labor Party to the Legislative Council in a casual vacancy triggered by the death of Terry Roberts. Elected at the 2010 election, Finnigan briefly served in the Rann government cabinet from February until April in 2011, when Labor suspended him from the party, sitting thereafter as an independent backbencher until his 2015 parliamentary resignation. He was the Acting Police Minister at the time of his arrest.

Labor suspended Finnigan from the party pending the verdict of a criminal trial after he was charged with child pornography offences in 2011, totalling 30 various charges over time. Only two charges ended up proceeding to trial – on 10 November 2015, Finnigan was found not guilty of one count for attempting to access child pornography, however he was found guilty of one count of accessing child pornography. Finnigan announced his immediate parliamentary resignation on 12 November. On 9 December following sentencing submissions, Finnigan had a conviction recorded, was added to the sex offenders register, and was given a 15-month suspended sentence with a three-year $1,000 good behaviour bond.

Peter Malinauskas filled the upper house casual vacancy in a joint sitting of the Parliament of South Australia on 1 December.

Early life
One of twelve children, Finnigan was born in 1972 in Mount Gambier, South Australia and grew up in nearby Eight Mile Creek on the family's dairy farm. He attended Allendale East Area School and Tenison Woods College in Mount Gambier before attending the University of Adelaide. In 1993 he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree. While still at university he joined the Australian Labor Party.

Finnigan began working for the South Australian branch of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA) in 1995 as a union official, before becoming the same union's assistant secretary in 2000. This latter position was one he held for five years. There, he was a protégé of future Senator Don Farrell.

Parliament
On 2 May 2006, Finnigan was appointed to the South Australian Legislative Council (upper house) as Labor's candidate to fill the remainder of the term left vacant by the death of former minister Terry Roberts. Finnigan described his own policy interests as including "economic development, industrial relations, federal-state relations, family issues and building social capital". Having participated in a number of parliamentary committees, he served as Parliamentary Secretary to Premier Mike Rann from April 2010 until he was appointed as a minister. He was third on Labor's upper house ticket at the 2010 election and was subsequently re-elected with an eight-year term, set to expire in 2018.

A Catholic, Finnigan was a member of Labor's right-wing (Labor Unity) faction. In his maiden speech on 8 May 2006 Finnigan told the Parliament that "I am a servant of Christ and subject of His reign in history". During June 2008 on a conscience vote, he was among a number of Labor MLCs who joined Liberal and Family First MLCs to vote down an amendment to give same-sex couples legal access to gestational surrogacy. Finnigan opposed the legalisation of euthanasia. In 2009 he was described as "one of the most influential figures in Parliament" and a likely backbench candidate for the ministry, after the promotion of Tom Koutsantonis.

Promoted to the Rann cabinet on 8 February 2011, Finnigan was appointed to several ministerial portfolios simultaneously: Industrial Relations, State/Local Government Relations, and Gambling. As well as those, he became Labor leader in the Legislative Council, and served as acting police minister while Kevin Foley, the serving police minister, was overseas.

Criminal charges
Finnigan resigned as a minister and as a member of the South Australian Executive Council on 21 April 2011. The night before his party resignation, Finnigan was arrested and charged with four child pornography offences. Rann requested that Finnigan be suspended from the party while his case was before the courts, with the suspension endorsed by the party's state executive on 3 May 2011. As the alleged offences were considered a sex crime, South Australian law prohibited publication of his name in connection with the charges until he had entered a plea. He was committed for trial pleading not guilty.

The four charges he originally faced were dropped in favour for seven counts of obtaining access to child pornography and five for possession, some counts of which were aggravated by the alleged age of the children depicted. On 29 June 2012, Finnigan was charged with 14 additional counts of obtaining access to child pornography, seven of them aggravated to be heard in the District Court of South Australia before a jury.

On 24 September 2012, Finnigan was committed to stand trial on five aggravated counts of taking steps to obtain child pornography and one aggravated count of obtaining child pornography, at which point the statutory suppression on naming the accused within South Australia expired. Eight other charges were dropped. Five of the six charges of taking steps to obtain access to child pornography were dismissed by the magistrate handling the case on 13 May 2013. In June 2013 prosecutors refiled previously dismissed charges against Finnigan.

Outcome
Though a total of 30 various charges were investigated over time, only two charges ended up proceeding to trial. On 10 November 2015, Finnigan was found not guilty of one count of attempting to access child pornography, however he was found guilty of one count of accessing child pornography. Finnigan announced his immediate parliamentary resignation on 12 November, avoiding a potential future disqualification from sitting in parliament due to a conviction. During sentencing submissions, Finnigan's lawyer urged the court not to record a conviction and argued that Finnigan was being vilified, abused, and threatened with violence and death on a daily basis, and lived in constant fear of retaliation up to and including vigilante acts, and was concerned about a future inability to be an employed functioning member of society. It was also argued that the offence was "at the lowest end of the scale". On 9 December, Finnigan had a conviction recorded, was added to the sex offender register, and was given a 15-month suspended sentence with a three-year $1,000 good behaviour bond.

Peter Malinauskas filled the upper house casual vacancy in a joint sitting of the Parliament of South Australia on 1 December. Premier Jay Weatherill spoke during the joint sitting, stating in particular: "We in the Labor Party must accept responsibility for the fact that it was one of our own who diminished the standing of the South Australian Parliament through his behaviour".

References

External links

Snelling and Finnigan on 891 Breakfast- 891 ABC Adelaide, 9 February 2011

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1972 births
Living people
Independent members of the Parliament of South Australia
Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of South Australia
Members of the South Australian Legislative Council
University of Adelaide alumni
Australian trade unionists
Australian people of Irish descent
Australian Roman Catholics
Australian politicians convicted of crimes
Politicians convicted of sex offences
21st-century Australian politicians

Bernard Finnigan


In the military, chaff are small thin pieces of metal which are shot out of an airplane or warship. These thin strips of metal make it harder for enemy radar to detect where the plane or ship is. The thin strips of metal also make it harder for radar-guided missiles to hit the plane or warship. The chaff tricks the enemy and helps to keep the plane or warship safe. Chaff was invented during World War II.

Weapons

Chaff (countermeasure)