Steampunk C-130 Idea

[zenrat]

Only for the younger crew members who were yet to have kids.

Obviously a steampunk nuclear reactor would be called something like McColms Patent Plutonium Furnace.
IRL Convair worked on nuclear powered aircraft.  They have the advantage that while they might be bombing you, you don't really want to shoot one down.

[Captain Canada]

That's a good point Fred !

[McColm]

Convair came up with an idea to power the Saro Princess and the NB-36H was ordered to serve as an early flyable testbed.The reactor provided no power to the aircraft.
Oddly the X-6 shows the P-1 atomic powerplant with four X40 engines under the mid-fuselage. The atomic reactor would have been located in bomb No.4 immediately above them. ( photo of model in Jay Miller collection via Lockheed Martin).

[McColm]

Then there was the Air Research and Development Command funded by Convair to investigate the feasibility of deploying seaplanes for missions then being developed for the B-58 Hustler, the WS-110 (B-70 Valkyrie) and WS-125A ongoing nuclear aircraft program.
This lead to studies of a seaplane version of the B-58, both conventional powered and nuclear, moving from 4 to six jet engines.
The WS-125A was cancelled in 1957, the USNavy strongly considered nuclear turboprops for subsonic missions. In December of that year the USNavy proposed to the DOD to conduct an early flight demonstration of such a system using a modified Saunders-Roe Princess flying boat that was available. There were two designs considered. The first was a four engined version with Pratt & Whitney T57 engines: two chemical and two nuclear. The other configuration had six engines: two T57 nuclear and four T34 conventional turboprops.
The USNavy reaffirmed the requirement for the Princess test program to the DOD in October 1958 but never received a reply.

[McColm]

There was another study by Convair into a nuclear seaplane-Model 23 (1955) which in my opinion looks like a flying boat version of the Vickers Valiant bomber, this was to be powered by four Pratt & Whitney J57 turbojet engines adapted for operation in conjunction with it's circulating fuel reactor.
Model 23A had a delta wing and T-tail.
The Model 23B had a 50 degree swept wing with turbojet engines located over the rear wing. Unfortunately this design was too advanced for its time and the project killed off in 1961 according to the book 'Convair Advanced Designs 1923-1962'.

[wuzak]

For the Me 264 program an aviation steam turbine was proposed.

Design had been done on the system and some components had been manufactured by the end of the war.

These were to be 6000hp turbines, fed by 4 boilers each (IIRC), with associated condesners, etc.

One of the stated advantages was that the turbine could be run at 100% overload (ie 12,000hp) for prolonged periods - I am assuming it was until the boilers couldn't keep up enough steam.

There were to be two of these turbines installed on the Me 264. The options were for a large diameter geared propeller running at around 1200-1400rpm, or a smaller diameter propeller running at the turbine rpm of about 5000-6000rpm.

[McColm]

A flying steam locomotive kitbashed to a C-130!