In the days before the US Air Force Museum's expansion, the B-36 was kept in the same display hangar as the WW2 aircraft. They all fit underneath it..no extra elevation was needed. In fact, they had to cut a hole in the metal above the hangar door so the tail could get into the hangar at all.
Standing on its own "feet" (standard gear), a six footer can easily walk underneath the fuselage to see the open bomb bay doors. Without ducking. At all. The original gear (that Icefox called "runway breakers") applied so much weight per square inch that only specially designed runways could accommodate it. They eventually changed the gear to a set of 4 tires per gear to distribute the weight better. The plane was designed to fly for 24 hours on a single fuel load, without in flight refueling. When first deployed, it could fly higher than contemporary FIGHTERS could.
You cannot conceive of how big this is until you see it. A B52 is smaller, and sits MUCH closer to the ground.
My favorite project was "FICON" -- Fighter Conveyor. Although the escort version was bit ridiculous (the "Goblin"), they did make a recon carrier version This project would port a specially modified F-84 thunderflash (the recon version of the thunderstreak) all the way to the edge of USSR airspace. Then, the recon plane would be let down by trapeze and send off for a mission. On completion, it would rendezvous with the B-36, snag the trapeze, get retracted (partly) into the bay, and hitch a ride back home.
From what I remember, they may have actually run some of these operations.
