Nonetheless, most bombers that rolled off the assembly line weren’t ready for combat, and had to fly directly to over-taxed modification centers where space was so limited that many of the planes were modified and repaired outdoors in the punishing Kansas winter. By the end of the war, Boeing’s plant in Wichita would produce 4.2 B-29 Superfortresses per day. Using a workforce that had largely never even touched an airplane at the time, Boeing managed to shrink the per-bomber build time from 150,000 hours to just 20,000. In order to meet the seemingly impossible demand for new bombers, a massive hiring and training enterprise-coupled with efforts aimed at simplifying production-revolutionized aircraft manufacturing. That meant the engines were installed in B-29 airframes without sufficient testing. But prior to the purchase of the engine for the B-29, Curtiss-Wright had slowed development of it in favor of other, better-selling power plants. It also had to be able to manage the massive weight of burgeoning new weapon systems all while offering precision strike capability from high altitudes.Īt the time, only one engine could handle the job: the 2,200-horsepower Wright R-3350. The B-29 had been initially intended for the European front, but it soon became clear that it would be fighting mostly in the Pacific, making range an increasingly essential part of its design. The bomber was designed to be an answer to the Army Air Corps’ request for a “hemisphere defense weapon,” meaning it needed exceptional range. You didn’t have that in the B-29, and that, in itself, lent to the range of the bomber.” It’s not only about how nerve-wracking it can be in combat, but just the fatigue these crews experienced. “You’re exposed to the elements at above 20,000 feet and you’re having to be on oxygen bottles and wearing heavy winter flight gear. “Look at how incredible crew fatigue could be on a B-17 bomber, say, in Europe,” Bohannon says. "Quite simply, the B-29 was the gateway aircraft to the modern United States Air Force." While comfort may not sound like something you really need in a bomber, it can have a direct effect on crew capability and overall wartime strategy, he says. “They were incredibly innovative in how they decided to pressurize the aircraft, which led to incredible crew comfort,” says Bohannon. The B-29 would be the first pressurized and soundproofed bomber cabin, allowing the crew to fly comfortably and communicate without the need for large head sets.
Instead, factory workers without any aviation experience were tasked with assembling the massive bomber and modifying parts they didn’t understand in order to piece together the disparate new technologies. By some estimates, each of the major features introduced on the B-29 would normally have seen up to five years of testing under normal circumstances. With development and production happening more or less simultaneously, technical problems plagued the effort. The front lines of World War II were in Europe and the Pacific, but Kansas was its own kind of battleground as engineers and assembly workers fought against terrible weather and repeated delays in production of the B-29. Air Force inventory." The Battle of Kansas “It laid the groundwork for all future strategic aircraft in the U.S. “Quite simply, the B-29 was the gateway aircraft to the modern United States Air Force,” Bohannon says. The race for the bomber of the future was on, and its legacy would be lasting. government had already placed an order for 1,500 of the new bombers, but when Roosevelt made that promise, fewer than 15 were airworthy. Roosevelt still pledged to base at least 175 B-29s in China, within striking distance of Japan, in a year’s time. But despite the tragic test flight and ongoing production struggles-blame resource shortages and an unskilled workforce-President Franklin D. The crash was a massive setback for a program that could not afford to fail. “Even once the aircraft was rolled out, there was still a level of secrecy involved with its different components.” Air Force Global Strike Command tells Popular Mechanics. “The B-29 was a groundbreaking program, and like any such program, you want to try to hide the design and development stage as much as possible from your adversaries,” Shawn M.