Interesting Article for WWII Aircraft Buffs

[Anomalocaris]

was rendered obsolete almost immediately because of jet fighters.

Do you mean because of jet fighters or jet engines? Or both? The B-52 had jet engines, but it's not obvious to me why it should be better-suited against jet fighters. Higher speeds?

Not just higher speed, but the ability to maintain higher speed while at higher altitude.   

When fighters have a large margin of superiority in speed and altitude over the bomber, the fighter can begin within a large area around the point where the bomber is first detected, and still successfully intercept the bomber.   But if the fighter has only a small margin of superiority in speed and altitude over the bomber, then the area in which the fighter must be to intercept the bomber shrinks drastically.  This means it take far more fighters on patrol to assure a successfully interception.

B-52 is not faster or higher flying then contemporary jet fighters.  But it greatly narrows the margin of superiority in speed and altitude of jet fighters compared to B-36.  So it was far more difficult to intercept than the b-36.  This means a jet fighter force adequate to provide assurance of interception of a given number b-36 must be enlarged many times to assure interception of same number of B-52s.

---

I have been fascinated with the B-36 Peacemaker since I first saw it at the Air Force Museum as a boy. It was a year too late to see action in WWII and was rendered obsolete almost immediately because of jet fighters. I would love to have seen this thing fly, mostly because I love the heavy drone of large turboprops.

Next to a B-29:

B-36 was not a turboprop.   It was designed around piston engines, same as B-29, and aerodynamically optimized to operate within the limits of piston engines.  That's what made it    technically obsolete even before its very first flight.    

To see a bomber optimized for the much higher power to weight ratio and fuel efficiency possible with turbo prop engines, see the Tu-95.   It was about the same weight overall as b-36, and its 4 turbo prop engines weighed less than b-36's 6 piston engines.  But the 4 turbo props put out 3 times as much horse powers in total as b-36's 6 piston engines, and burned less fuel while doing it, which in conjunction with an airframe optimized to take advantage of it, gave Tu-95 150 miles per hour more speed, and 3000 miles more range.