B-45 — The Tornado Survivors (2024)

The US Army Air Force was very impressed with the performance of the newGerman Arado 234 jet bomber. The Ar-234 was faster than most of theallied fighter aircraft, and it proved to be nearly impossible to intercept when flying a bombing mission. The USAAF decided that it hadto obtain both short range jet bombers in case WWII lingered on, as wellas longer range jet bombers to use in the Pacific against Japan. Requirementswere issued for the so called "Class of 45" bombers. The two short rangebombers would be the North American B-45 and the Convair B-46, while thelarger long range bombers would be the Boeing B-47 and the Martin B-48.

Three of the four members of the class of 45 would be conventional straightwing aircraft, while the B-47 would use captured German test data. This gavethe B-47 a huge advantage. Like the B-47, the B-48 would be a six-engineheavy bomber. But hampered by the straight wing and an engine configurationthat did not operate they way it was predicated based on wind tunnel testing,the B-48 dropped out of the race fairly quickly. The USAAF knew that thefuture was the B-47, but it would be several years before the B-47 wasavailable. Meanwhile, the B-45 was quickly outclassing the B-46 in testing,so the B-46 was dropped, and the B-45 was put into production as a criticalstop-gap until the B-47 was ready.

The production order for the B-45 Tornado was 190 aircraft. There were3 XB-45, 96 B-45A, 10 B-45C, and 33 RB-45C recon variants built for a total of 142 aircraft. Initial use of the B-45 proved that it was arelatively poor bombing aircraft. The USAF wanted to deploy the B-45to the far east, but found that it had too short of range to reach Hawaii,yet was too big to go by ship. At this point in time, it looked likethe B-45 might end up being used strictly for training and transition.

At that point, world affairs intervened. The Korean war proved that theB-29 was no longer able to match with the new jet interceptors such asthe Soviet MiG-15. That meant that B-29 aircraft sitting on nuclearalert in Europe were likely to not be able to carry out their mission.A decision was made to convert the B-45A to be nuclear capable. Thiswas no small feat considering the amount of electronics needed to delivera nuclear weapon, and the large variety of nuclear weapons in the inventory.But from May of 1952 until July of 1958, the B-45 stood front line dutyas the nuclear arm of the USAF in Europe. While the B-45 was far fromideal, and its limited range meant it would be a one way mission, the B-45was all we had until the B-47 came on-line.

The final production run of B-45 was the C model. These were mostlybuilt as camera ships to be used for photo reconnaissance missions.A key mission was bomb damage assessment following conventional bombingstrikes. The RB-45C could carry four different types of cameras. Itproved to be an excellent photo recon aircraft. Recently declassifieddocuments show that the RB-45C was used for deep penetration missionsinto the Soviet Union by both USAF and RAF crews during the mid-1950s.

While the B-45 had an awkward beginning and served for only a shortperiod of time, it still managed to rack up a list of Air Force firsts.This included the first 4-engine jet bomber, first air-to-air refuelingof a jet aircraft, and the first jet bomber to stand nuclear alert.The photo recon version paved the way for future dedicated recon aircraftsuch as the U-2 and SR-71.