PLAYING CATCH UP: With StrategyPage’s WW2 aircraft series (really a WW2-era series).

The Brits great workhorse bomber: The Avro Lancaster. As the caption notes, it tended to work at night.

Fighter conveyor: Post-WW2 actually, though the B-36 was developed during the war. I recall seeing this photo or a similar one when I was a kid in the late 1950s. I was amazed. A B-36 rigged to carry an F-84 jet in the bomb bay. Note the F-84 model in the photo is an RF-84F, meaning it’s the recon variant. (A Thunderflash, according to the wikipedia entry.) Ostensibly the strategic bomber would haul the jet close to the recon target area and release it. The jet would dash over the target, take photos, then have the fuel to make it back to base.

Th F-84 was an interim jet design and a poor one in comparison to other early jets. However, this late WW2 British jet design rates among the best of its era: The Canberra, typed in the U.S. as the B-57.

The B-52 exemplifies longevity, but so does the Canberra. I understand two or three RB-57s are still used for high altitude research. In fact, in 2014 StrategyPage reported one of NASA’s RB-57Fs was spotted at the France-U.S. airbase in Djibouti. As the post notes, Britain retired its last operational Canberra in 2006. FWIW, I saw an Afghanistan air force Canberra fly over Kabul in 2005 and do a couple of tricky turns before landing. A career USAF friend of mine flew the RB-57 version in the 1970s and early 1980s. (The recon variant has extended wings.) He told me he flew several 12-hour-plus missions in the western Pacific. His aircraft carried various recon packages; on some missions it carried a suite of radiation “sniffer” sensors. He confirmed most of the western Pacific missions took him up to 70,000 feet (another datum in the StrategyPage post). I’ve encountered military forums where folks debate the “Ten Greatest Bombers Of All Time” and the like. The Canberra has fans, for good reason.

CLARIFICATION: Meant to say the Canberra had roots in WW2 British jet bomber designs. As the wiki points out, the requirement was issued in 1944.