Here comes the:
Super-Bombers of the Last Great War:
By the end of the Last Great War or WW3, the principal combatants (except for the USSR) had all moved to acquire bombers with true intercontinental ranges in excess of 12,000 kilometers. This extreme range demanded extreme designs, as best represented by the classical US superheavy bomber, the B-36. With a wing 7 and a half feet thick, and 230 feet from wingtip to wingtip, the B-36 achieved long range by the simple American expedient of being bigger, heavier and having enough fuel to fly that far. Powered by the formidable Wasp Major engine, the B-36 was a sluggish, lumbering beast-at least, before the appearance of the B-36D, augmented with four jet engines, making it the only jet-powered super-bomber. The B-36 also was able to leverage the free nations various bases to often launch attacks from closer to it's enemy heartland than they could strike back in turn, letting it carry more defenses or bombs, up to 33,000 kilograms of bombs.
Far more technically elegant-and also crazy-was the HRE's GrossBomber project, a design which used a common wing and fuselage but different engines for the long-range bomber and it's vital companion-the refueling tanker. HRE in-flight refueling research began in 1940, but due to opposition from the general staff, and a general fondness for tinkering around with the technology, the project dragged on for nearly five years. At the end of it though, the GrossBomber was a four-engine design larger than the B-29 that was made to use not the gasoline of other planes, but the diesel powered Jumo-224. This however, broke commonality with the refuelling tankers, which filled their own internal tanks with gasoline to power six older BMW radials. The tankers therefore could not refuel each other without extensive refits-and while raids were attempted after such refits were carried out, even a basic raid was an airial ballet with at least three squadrons going up for every one that struck the target-one pair of tankers escorted the bombers to about mid-atlantic, refueled them, and then returned, while a second set would be sent up to meet them on the return trip. These mid-ocean rendevous were critically important, as the tankers had to navigate to possibly damaged bombers running low on diessel after a long nuclear attack run. However, they were also vulnerable to mid-ocean intercepts by enemy carriers, and had to fly unescorted beyond the range of any help. This design also featured many advanced and somewhat tempermental systems, and one prototype was fitted with turboprop engines.
The most technically ambitious and complex concept for a bomber was the G11N, a Japanese design with eight engines turning four contra-rotating sets of propellers. These engines, the Ha219, were 18 cylinder radials arranged front-to-back inside a lengthened engine nacelle, and despite additional coolers and exhaust tubes, needed close watching by the flight engineers to avoid engine fires. This huge bomber was designed to use Japanese meteorological knowledge to ride the newly discovered Jet-stream around the world, and thus would have the longest range bombing runs of any plane-taking off from bases in Japan, it would then fly across the pacific and attempt to bomb targets in the United States, before landing in HRE controlled parts of Europe. However, this flight profile posed several challenges. First, the long flight required a crew-change as flights covered more than 220 degrees of the earth's surface, which, even at jet-stream boosted speeds, were too long for the crew that took off to be alert for the landing. This required a small bunk-area where substitute pilots and a flight engineer could rest, taking the plane's crew from eight (Pilot, Copilot, navigator/bombardier, radio operator/meteorologist, flight engineer, three gunners) to eleven in the cramped pressurized cockpit. Pressurization added weight, but made the plane comfortable enough to operate at extreme ranges. However, such extremes came at extreme risk-even slight deviation from the jet stream would mean that the plane would be unable to reach it's European landing zones, and Japanese meteorologists had to carefully predict when their highway would align with a viable target. About half of the G11Ns met this fate, dropping from fuel exhaustion into the Atlantic ocean-one didn't even make it that far, crash landing in Quebec. The design's light bombload-only 5000 kg-made it by far the least effective bomber overall. Only about 10 were ever built, but the factory that built them is now in our hands, though the tooling may soon be disassembled.
