That second B-36 certainly is LOW and SLOW.... Kinda makes you wonder if he was having performance problems once airborne... BUT THEN he seems to find some power, pulls back on the stick and begins a gradual climb toward altitude while also executing a turn.
By the two different camera angles of the low flying bomber(s), it was either TWO people filming OR TWO separate passes and/or aircraft executing similar flight profiles.
Back in the days of rooftop TV antennae it's no wonder the prop-wash off those big pusher propellers wiped those flimsy sticks off the shingles... along with some roofing and decking too. It takes a lot of wind to push a plane like that into the air.
A little thread necropost here because I just saw your reply. Everything I've ever heard/read about the B-36 was that it was barely an airplane. If you take WWII recip technology and design it to carry 2-3 Fat Man sized bombs to Europe (the design was initially an XBLR paper airplane project in case Hitler succeeded in invading the UK during WWII) and then return before efficient aerial refueling was invented, you end up with an enormous, slow, flying fuel tank.
Add in really long missions, the low level of automation at the time, the need for effective onboard antiarcraft defense (because the airplane can't outrun
anything), and the amount of 'care and feeding' six 4,360 cu. in. radial engines need, and you get a 13 man crew. The package ends up being taller and wider than a B-52, weighs about the same and carries about the same mass of payload, but goes less than half as fast (cruise speed of 200 kts vs. 442 kts for the BUF).
An airplane with a clean cruise speed of 230 mph is going to climb at no more than 175 mph. That plus a 230 ft wingspan means you have a true aluminum overcast - it's climbing out at around the same speed as a Beechcraft Bonanza but looks like the Goodyear Blimp.
Six buried four-row radials made for a lot of maintenance per flight hour. USAF didn't fly them any more than they had to, and training flights were scheduled around the maintenance requirements of the aircraft, not the other way around.
Curtis LeMay could not wait to get rid of the airplane - he persuaded Boeing to hurriedly build a miniature lower-tech sibling of the forthcoming revolutionary B-52 (the B-47) for the express purpose of getting away the Convair Monstrosity sooner.
The B-36 was so big, so slow, and so unreliable that SAC bases had to be far larger than you'd think. Loring was built as a double wing base with three squadrons of B-36s and several squadrons of KB-50s and then KC-97s to refuel them. The AVGAS storage bunkers outside of west gate were substantial - and not required once the B-52 arrived. Neither was the second wing, because the BUF was so much faster, easier to maintain, and had been designed to capitalize on flying boom aerial refueling.
The B-36 was so underpowered that the standard 12000 foot (2 mile) SAC runway wasn't long enough on a hot day. That's what the four jet engines are for - just to get it into the air before you run out of runway. They were shut down once the airplane was cleaned up and climbing out.
