Hattie Hearn, curator: "As the clouds of war gathered over Europe and Asia in the late 1930s, American military planners were facing a problem. While the United States primary four engine bomber, the B-17 Flying Fortress, was a reliable workhorse, it would never have the range or power to carry a full payload non-stop across the Pacific or the Atlantic.
Enter the world's first super bomber - the B-29 Superfortress. Designed to go faster and higher than any bomber before it, the B-29 would redefine the limits of aerial warfare.
With the dubious honour of being history's deadliest bomber and the only aircraft to drop a nuclear weapon in combat, the B-29 is arguably the most important and controversial aircraft in human history. This is the B-29 Superfortress.
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Controversy swelled around the B-29 long before it took its first flight in 1942. The US Army Air Force's demands pushed designers and engineers to the limit. They wanted a super bomber that could deliver 20,000 pounds of bombs to a target over 2.5 miles away. The only way to achieve this would be to fly at higher altitudes where the air was thinner. But that required a pressurised aircraft. While pressurised cabins had been developed for airliners, no one had ever designed a pressurised bomber.
But aircraft manufacturer Boeing had a head start. The company had already developed a pressurised cabin for its 307 Stratoliner passenger plane and this gave them the edge over the competition. In 1940 Boeing was awarded the contract to build a prototype and work began on the XB-29.
The development of the new super bomber would become the most expensive project of the entire war, totalling $3 billion, equivalent to $49 billion today. The cost of design and production exceeded even the Manhattan Project by $1 billion. Each B-29 cost approximately half a million dollars to build, over double the cost of a B-17. Despite their huge price tag, the US Army Air Force ordered 250 B-29s months before it had even taken its first flight.
So, what made this new super bomber so special?"
Lionel Hooke, Pilot 757 Naval Air Sqdn, Fleet Air Arm: "It was a big airplane, a big, big, very impressive airplane, like the typical, it was just an upgraded Fortress, you know the Fortress, but bigger, much bigger. But they certainly worked very well."
Hattie Hearn: "The most distinctive feature of the B-29 is its shape. Unlike the art deco-inspired B-17, with its smooth curves and jutting lines, the B-29 is cylindrical and sleek, right down to its flush rivets. This was for a good reason – a circular co*ckpit was easy to pressurise, while a sleek fuselage and long wing improved aerodynamics.
This revolutionary air frame housed an Innovative new crew setup - six crew members were located in the forward pressurised compartment, including the flight engineer, a new full-time position responsible for ensuring that all the flight systems were in working condition.
A pressurised tunnel behind the co*ckpit provided access to the aft pressurised compartment. This is where the B-29s computerised Fire Control System was located. Traditional man turrets were not suitable for high altitude missions carried out by B-29s, so a remote-control system was introduced.
Four turrets, two on top of the fuselage and two underneath, were controlled from sighting stations inside the pressurised compartments.
Sitting on an elevated seat nicknamed the 'barber's chair', the central Fire Control Gunner could take control of any of the aircraft's gun positions remotely.
The B-29 was the first bomber to use radar as standard equipment and it proved to be vital in improving the accuracy of bombing at night and in heavy cloud cover. The radar antenna was in the ray dome at the bottom of the aircraft. This equipment was so sensitive that the ray dome was censored in official photographs of the aircraft.
But the B-29s real sting was its bomb load - up to 9,000kg worth, which was housed in two bomb bays. The release of bombs would alternate between the two bomb bays to maintain aircraft stability.
Packed with so many innovative new features, it’s no surprise that the B-29 was the heaviest aircraft of its day. To get it off the ground, Boeing fitted the B-29 with four right R 3350 Duplex Cyclone radial engines. These supercharged 23,200 HP engines were the most powerful piston engines in production, but they were notorious for overheating, with devastating consequences. On one of its first test flights the engine of an XP-29 caught fire and the plane crashed into a factory in Seattle, killing all 11 crew members and 20 factory workers. It was an inauspicious start for the career of this super bomber and things weren't going to get any easier.
The B-29 was central to US strategy in the Pacific as a high-altitude bomber, however, operating from airfields in China and India was a logistical nightmare, with fuel and ordinance having to be flown over the perilous Himalayas. A solution was found on the remote Marianas islands, where US Marines had just fought a brutal campaign to capture key landing strips. As well as placing US planes closer to the Japanese home Islands, the airfields were on a direct supply line from the United States by ship.
On November 24th, Mariana's based B-29s flew their first mission against the Japanese home Islands, when 88 unescorted planes bombed Tokyo. The first attacks on the Japanese capital since the infamous 1942 Doolittle Raid. This strategy of high-level bombing continued until early 1945, but results were less than impressive. B-29s turned back in droves due to recurring mechanical failures. Worse still, no one had accounted for the strong, unpredictable winds that are found at high altitudes over Japan. Now identified as jet streams, these gusts could reach up to 200 mph, making precision bombing impossible.
Foiled by winds, US planners hoped to harness the power of a different element of nature - fire. Under the leadership of General Curtis LeMay, a strategy of low-level night time incendiary bombing was deployed to devastate Japan's cottage industries. This was a controversial move. Most Japanese houses were constructed of wood and bamboo and LeMay knew that firebombing would lead to huge civilian losses. But with the B-29 yet to prove itself effectively in combat and pressure increasing to deliver a knockout blow to Japan, there seemed to be little choice.
B-29s were stripped of their guns to allow for M-69 incendiary bombs, and in some cases Napalm bombs, to be loaded. The climax of these incendiary attacks came on the night of the 9th to the 10th of March, when 279 B-29s firebombed Tokyo. It lasted for 2 hours."
Raymond F. Halloran, POW & B-29 Navigator/Bombardier: "That was a terrible night, March 10th. And I don't know how I lived but you could feel the heat and I heard people screaming, probably mothers and children trying to get into the moat. I was right across from the Emperor’s Palace and they were trying to get into the water to avoid the heat."
Hattie Hearn: "The individual fires caused by the bombs joined together to create a blazing Inferno. When it was over, 16 square miles of the centre of Tokyo had gone up in flames and nearly 100,000 people had been killed, more than the estimated casualties of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. A mere fourteen B-29s were lost in the raid. The B-29 had defied it critics, but at what cost?"
Yoshiko Hashimoto: "People were burning alive. My baby was screaming on my back, a tremendous cry. I looked back and saw something bright in his mouth. I was astounded, it was a spark of fire. I decided to dive into the river with my baby."
Hattie Hearn: "Grieving Japanese civilians and military personnel had little sympathy for the B-29 crews that were forced to bail out. Many were executed immediately, while others were submitted to extreme forms of torture."
Raymond F. Halloran, POW & B-29 Navigator/Bombardier: "I was soon overrun, and I was stoned and beaten with clubs and bars, iron bars and dragged. You got a pretty good working over, but I think before we form judgment, if somebody had bombed our city here and the enemy is on the ground, the same thing would have happened. I was taken on a truck, I didn't know where I was going, I was blindfolded all the time that I was in Japan. Interrogations were brutal, I won't go into detail. They hated us B-29ers, with cause."
Hattie Hearn: "The incendiary raids had a devastating effect on Japan and yet the war still raged on. Allied planners believed that the only way to secure an unconditional Japanese surrender was by unleashing a new unprecedented weapon - an atomic bomb. As early as 1943, it was decided that the B-29 was the only air frame in the US inventory capable of carrying out the mission, despite the aircraft still being incomplete at that point. Extensive modifications were made to allow B-29s to carry and drop the bomb and survive the resulting shock wave and radiation. These modified B-29s were known as the Silver Plate Fleet, after the project's code name.
A silver plate B-29 named Enola Gay took off from the Marianas at 2:45 am on August 6th, 1945. An atomic bomb was dropped at 8:15 am and exploded about 2,000 ft above the city. The blast destroyed four square miles and killed an estimated 70,000 people. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped a plutonium bomb, nicknamed 'Fat Man', on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people."
Geoffrey Leonard Cheshire, official British observer during dropping of atomic bomb on Nagasaki: "On my aircraft, there were three taking part - lead aircraft carrying the bomb, one carrying scientific monitoring instruments and the third carrying cameras, and I was in the third. The flash just lit the co*ckpit, the moment I first saw it, it was like a ball of fire, but the fire rapidly died down and became a churning, boiling, bubbling cloud, getting larger and larger and rocketing upwards and I would thinkthat within 2 or 3 minutes it was at 60,000 ft."
Hattie Hearn: "On the 15th of August, Japan surrendered, and the B-29 would go down in infamy for its role in ending the war and heralding the atomic age. Production of the B-29 was phased out after the Second World War with the last example completed by Boeing's Renton factory on the 28th of May 1946, but unlike many of its wartime contemporaries, the B-29 wasn't destined for the scrap heap. In fact, the air frame played an important role as the US's primary nuclear deterrent in the immediate post-war years.
Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, engineers were experimenting with their own version of the B-29 - the Tupolev TU-4. In the summer of 1944, three B-29s made emergency landings in Russia and were swiftly whisked away to a facility in Moscow. With these three air crafts, Soviet engineers began one of the most complex and audacious reverse engineering projects ever. The finished bomber was almost identical to the B-29.
However, when British Air Crews came face to face with a B-29, they were less impressed than their Soviet counterparts. In the early 1950s, the RAF received 87 B-29s from the United States, which they renamed the Washington."
Reginald Croot, Pilot with 57 Sqdn, Bomber Command, RAF: The Americans said, "Here you've got an aircraft - at 40,000 ft - drop a pee in a barrel". Well I think in England, we got up to 25,000, we were about its upper limit. That didn't impress us at all and their so-called Norden bombsight was terrible compared with our own bombsight that we used in the Lanks even, yeah."
Hattie Hearn: "Built in May 1945, this Superfortress 4461748 never saw combat during the Second World War. With the outbreak of the Korean War, however, in 1950 it was taken out of storage and assigned to the 307th Bomb Group. Soon adorned with a razorback bore motif and the name 'It's Hawg Wild', the bomber took part in operations over North Korea against communications and supply centres.
However, the B-29 was an easy target for jet engine MiGs and losses were high. With the arrival of the Convair B-36 and subsequently the B-52 Stratofortress, the B-29's days were numbered.
The B-29 can be seen as the bridge between the piston-engine bombers of the Second World War and the nuclear enabled air aircraft of the Cold War period. In a way, its state-of-the-art equipment hindered it in its primary role as a high-altitude bomber, while the hands of progress meant that it had soon been overtaken by the time of the Korean War.
The B-29 was an expensive gamble that eventually paid off for the US, giving them the tool to end the war with Japan. However, it's the moral implications of this choice that will immortalise the B-29 as the plane that redefined history."
