The B-29 Superfortress
Video from the channel Johnny Johnson about Boeing B-29 Superfortress, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 14:04. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.
What it's about
A general overview of Boeing's B-29 Superfortress that intercuts clips from films, TV series, and a video game in which the aircraft appears. It notes that it is mostly associated with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and with the Bell X-1 program.
Historical context
The distances involved in the Pacific called for a bomber with far greater range than the B-17 or B-24. Boeing funded studies of pressurized aircraft from 1938, and in 1939 the Air Corps set the specification for a superbomber. Boeing beat out Douglas and Lockheed, received the production order in May 1941, and the XB-29 first flew in September 1942. The second prototype crashed in Seattle in February 1943 after an engine fire. The Wright R-3350 engines overheated, and their fires could burn through the wing spar. The aircraft operated first from China and later from Saipan, Guam, and Tinian. The night raid on Tokyo on March 9, 1945, Operation Meetinghouse, was the most destructive bombing raid in history.
Key facts
3,970 units were built between 1943 and 1946; 26 survive, two of them airworthy. It measured 99 feet long with a 141-foot wingspan. Its pressurized cabins were connected by a tunnel, and the remote-controlled turrets mounted ten .50-caliber machine guns and a 20 mm cannon. The program cost $3 billion, more than the Manhattan Project. The Soviets copied it as the Tupolev Tu-4, and its derivative, the B-50, remained in service until 1965.