No plane ventured so deep into the past with such ferocity as the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. Not only a bomber, but an aerial act of genius, with revolutionary engineering and daring vision. The B-29 flew not only into combat, but established the limits of the modern flight era and intrigues historians and buffs today.
It started in 1940, when the U.S. Army Air Corps challenged the aircraft manufacturers: create a plane that could fly at 400 miles an hour, carry a ten-ton bomb capacity, and journey 2,500 miles to enemy targets. Boeing came up with the Model 345, which was eventually to be the B-29. Its maiden flight in September 1942 was preceded by a multitude of innovations: pressurized cabins for the crew, remotely controlled gun turrets, an early computer-aided targeting system, and two of the largest engines that had ever been installed on a bomber then.
It was prohibitively costly to manufacture, in man-hours as in dollars. The B-29 cost more than any other American Second World War effort, even the Manhattan Project, in dollars to produce.
Naturally, lead airplanes are never perfect on the delivery date. General Curtis LeMay allegedly once quipped that the B-29 contained “as many bugs as the Smithsonian’s entomology department.” With persistence, testing, and continuous modifications, however, the airplane was a warhorse in the last few months of the war in the Pacific.
The B-29 will forever be most famous for its historic and contentious August 1945 missions. Two specially modified “Silverplate” B-29s dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The aircraft had most of their defensive armaments removed to lighten the load, and traveled in pairs. Other B-29s performed support roles, from weather reconnaissance to photography and data collection. Enola Gay and Bockscar are not merely book titles in history, but these missions were the product of careful planning and coordination.
Not even in World War II was the B-29 idle. The B-50 Superfortress, even more powerful with heavier construction, was a US Air Force Strategic Air Command workhorse. In 1949, a B-50 aircraft named Lucky Lady II made the first nonstop around-the-world flight, an clandestine one at the time that showcased the marvelous range and endurance of the airplane.
Boeing also modified the B-29 for the commercial marketplace. The pressurized fuselage and added buildup of the design gave a platform to the C-97 Stratofreighter and the Stratocruiser airliner. Passengers and cargo were flown around the globe on the planes, with the Stratocruizer providing such amenities as a lower-deck lounge, a symbol of elegance and refinement pre-faster-than-sound jets.
The B-29 even aided science. Excess planes were modified to serve as flying laboratory platforms in the decade following World War II. One, tail number 45-21847, flew over Lake Mead in 1948 to take solar radiation and cosmic ray measurements. These flying labs facilitated advancements for us in quiet ways, enhancing our knowledge of the upper atmosphere and advancing future discoveries.
None of them would have happened without the men who flew them—pilots, engineers, mechanics, and scientists who risked their lives with untested machinery and hazardous conditions. They gave the B-29 its real heart, either in war or science.
The final B-29s and B-50s are retired and on display in museums throughout the United States. Among these is the Castle Air Museum in California, where visitors are able to walk beneath the massive wings and envision the power and majesty of the airplane in flight.
They are not stagnant static relics—emptied-out reminders of something past—they are living history, reminders that there was a time when courage, creativity, and ambition colluded to establish parameters for what was possible in the realm of flight.