The intent of this channel is to provide educational videos related to US produced WWII bombers. The material is presented by Keith M. I’m a retired Boeing airframe structures engineer. I have worked on various commercial and military products. I have an interest in all things WWII history and especially the Bombing portion of the conflict. I’ve been volunteering at a local aviation museum since 2017 and provide museum guest tours of the B-17 and B-29. I also authored and presented the Museum’s 2022 and 2023 Bomber Training class to new museum volunteers.
The Japanese Unit 731 for Biological and Chemical development was weaponizing diseases and developing their own inhumane weapons and only stopped after their surrender. The military had formed civilian units to be armed with any weapon, including bamboo spears to be sacrificed against American artillery, machine guns, armor, and air support. It was have been a slaughter on an unseen scale. The Japanese were starving to death hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war and their army was still killing Chinese in China. Any weapon that forced them to surrender before the invasion saved many more times Japanese than the weapons inflicted.
I just waited for an hour and a half in the hot Carolina sun only to get rushed through 12 feet of the interior of a B-29 in about a minute... It was worth it!
My dad was assigned to Dallas Fort Worth as a mechanic. Prior to this he was at Pueblo CO on B24s. He told me many stories about the Supersfort teething troubles, especially with the engines. I recently reviewed some videos detailing problems with the fire control system, and it's obviou😮😮s that this aircraft was truly cutting edge technolog, so teething teething troubles were unsurprising. Ultimately its defects were corrected, and it served admirable until jet powered bombers supercede it. But my Dad always preferred the Liberator.
I've really enjoyed your WWII US Bomber series. At some point you may have to consider starting on a Cold War US Bomber series. They've got a B-47 and a B-52 at The Museum of Flight, right? Or, maybe, as a way of transitioning, you could cover the differences between the B-29 and the B-50 bombers. Thank you for all your work on this excellent series.
Great presentation. Thanks. Btw: At the Mellon Institute, built in the ‘20’s, there is a large auditorium, wood paneled and beautiful. Behind every single seat was a built in ashtray. In the 1980’s, I asked the Oldtimers if they were used, and the answer was yup. Imagine an auditorium with 200+ people all smoking like smokestacks.
My first job after getting out of the Navy in 1976 was with a company with several small desktop computers. Two had different printers, one had a tape drive, and so on, so we kept on switching computers all day long. I got tired of the smokers never emptying ashtrays on each one, butts overflowing, ashes drifting in the breeze of people walking by. One day I got mad enough to just dump the entire ashtray in the trash, and did that on each computer I used. By the end of the week, there were no ashtrays left. The most amazing part is that none of the smokers complained or wondered. They just stopped smoking at the computers.
My father was a WWII veteran and a 27 year career soldier. He was addicted to unfiltered cigarettes and died at the age of 70 from heart and lung disease. Growing up as an Army brat most of my friends fathers were also WWII veterans who all were addicted to cigarettes. I remember that they all began to die off in the 1980s. Seeing all the ashtrays installed in the B-29 crew positions it is not hard to understand why they had become addicted to cigarettes and how the cigarette corporations made bank during WWII.
Incredible to think the army and Marines (at least) were just handing out five-packs of cigarettes with meals twice a day, and this didn't stop until the early 70s.
My little brother was a crew chief on a B-52. He never smoked (other than killer weed) until he was in the USAF. He joined because he had a feeling that his number was gonna come up in the draft lottery. His early time as a crew chief was spent getting his airplane ready for the klaxon at various SAC bases. Every once in a while all the crew chiefs could take a break in the smoking area off of the line. Frequently somebody would have to go attend to something during these breaks. Everybody would say, "Let Butler go and do it - he's not smokin'." So - my brother started smoking then. He served on Guam, then Thailand. He used to say "F**k Guam and the cloud it blew in on." He liked Thailand. Whenever his airplane came back with no squacks the crew would give him a case of beer to share with his buddies.
'The Flight Engineer is the busiest member of the crew'. Well, the Navigator's response might be: "oh, really?" No doubt the FE can get very busy at times, but during cruise he is monitoring, fine tuning, and occasionally switching fuel valves. The navigator has a constant workload for most of the flight, and if he is shooting celestial or sun lines over water while making all his pre-comps, calculations, and plots he doesn't ever get much of a break. You gotta feel for navigators.
I was an RC-135 navigator and we were very busy especially when shooting cell. But the other crew members were extra nice to us when flying in artic regions in the middle of the winter. Thanks for sharing.
@gort8203 well seeing as how NASA, widely considered one of America's most forward thinking gov't agencies, mangaged to overlook the hazards of an oxygen enriched fire over 20 years later I wouldn't doubt there was an incident or near miss during the war. You're right it's obviously not allowed but that doesn't mean people don't break the rules. Smokers love smoking.
@gort8203 over twenty years later NASA was still having issues with oxygen enriched fires so I wouldn't doubt they had an incident or near miss during the war.
Star Wars was partly inspired by The Battle of Britain film and the Millenium Falcon cockpit was more likely based on a Heinkel He111 bomber. At least one of the scenes is more a less a re-enactment of a scene from the Battle of Britain (except that the He 111, unlike the Millenium Falcon doesn't get away.)
