Consolidated Vultee, which later became Convair, built some of the world's best flying boats in the 1930s, and the world's best bombers during World War II. Convair's six-engine B-36 strategic bomber was credited with keeping the world safe during the early throes of the Cold War. But before all these great aircraft took to the skies, scores of ideas and concepts were proposed and analyzed by company management to determine if production would even be feasible.