By April 1944, the first operational B-29s of the newly formed 20th Air Force began to touch down on dusty airfields in India. The program required thousands of sub-contractors but with extraordinary effort, it all came together, despite major teething problems. Both Curtiss-Wright and the Dodge automobile company vastly expanded their manufacturing capacity to build the bomber's powerful and complex Curtiss-Wright R-3350 turbo supercharged engines. Boeing built new B-29 plants at Renton, Washington, and Wichita, Kansas, while Bell built a new plant at Marietta, Georgia, and Martin built one in Omaha, Nebraska. Building this advanced bomber required massive logistics. Fourteen service-test YB-29s followed as production began to accelerate. By the end of the year the second aircraft was ready for flight. The first XB-29 took off at Boeing Field in Seattle on September 21, 1942. B-29s also routinely carried as many as twenty different types of radios and navigation devices.
The B-29B was equipped with the AN/APG-15B airborne radar gun sighting system mounted in the tail to assist in providing accurate defense against enemy fighters attacking at night. These systems were accurate enough to enable relatively accurate bombing through cloud layers that completely obscured the target. Depending on the type of mission, a B-29 carried the AN/APQ-13 or AN/APQ-7 Eagle radar system to aid bombing and navigation. They aimed the guns using computerized sights, and each gunner could take control of two or more turrets to concentrate firepower on a single target.īoeing also equipped the B-29 with advanced radar equipment and avionics. Gunners operated these turrets by remote control-a true innovation. 50 caliber machine guns and a 20-mm cannon (in early versions of the B-29) were fitted in the tail beneath the rudder. One of these turrets fired from behind the nose gear and the other hung further back near the tail.
#CREW OF ENOLA GAY FROM LOUISIANA PLUS#
50 caliber machine guns (four guns in later versions), and another turret aft near the vertical tail equipped with two machine guns plus two more turrets beneath the fuselage, each equipped with two. Engineers placed five gun turrets on the fuselage: a turret above and behind the cockpit that housed two.
To protect the Superfortress, Boeing designed a remote-controlled, defensive weapons system. For the crew, flying at altitudes above 18,000 feet became much more comfortable as pressure and temperature could be regulated in the crew work areas. More revolutionary was the size and sophistication of the pressurized sections of the fuselage: the flight deck forward of the wing, the gunner's compartment aft of the wing, and the tail gunner's station. This wing design allowed the B-29 to cruise at high speeds at high altitudes but maintained comfortable handling characteristics during slower airspeeds necessary during takeoff and landing. In April 1941, the Army issued another contract for 250 aircraft plus spare parts equivalent to another 25 bombers, eight months before Pearl Harbor and nearly a year-and-a-half before the first Superfortress would fly.Īmong the design's innovations was a long, narrow, high-aspect ratio wing equipped with large Fowler-type flaps. The Army was impressed with the Boeing design and issued a contract for two flyable prototypes in September 1940. Boeing, Consolidated, Douglas, and Lockheed responded with design proposals. It described an airplane that could carry a maximum bomb load of 909 kg (2,000 lb) at a speed of 644 kph (400 mph) a distance of at least 8,050 km (5,000 miles). Several years of preliminary studies paralleled a continuous fight against those who saw limited utility in developing such an expensive and unproven aircraft but the Air Corps issued a requirement for the new bomber in February 1940. Army Air Corps leaders recognized the need for very long-range bombers that exceeded the performance of the B-17 Flying Fortress. On August 14, 1945, the Japanese accepted Allied terms for unconditional surrender. Enola Gay flew as the advance weather reconnaissance aircraft that day. Sweeney piloted the B-29 Bockscar and dropped a highly enriched plutonium, implosion-type atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. Tibbets, Jr., in command of the Superfortress Enola Gay, dropped a highly enriched uranium, explosion-type, "gun-fired," atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. During the war in the Pacific Theater, the B-29 delivered the first nuclear weapons used in combat. Boeing installed very advanced armament, propulsion, and avionics systems into the Superfortress. Boeing's B-29 Superfortress was the most sophisticated, propeller-driven, bomber to fly during World War II, and the first bomber to house its crew in pressurized compartments.