A B-29 Superfortress Story You Won't Believe 

Never realized how bad that crash was heard stories

Did you have permission from his family to read this letter? It seems inappropriate to me.

My grandpa served in the 6th armored division. I have his year book and it has numerous letters written between my grandmother and grandfather when they was just dating. They are actually hard to read and all in cursive which you no longer see anymore. lol.

@TJ3 regarding the 6:00 mark; One thing to point out, from one history researcher to another: in the video, the narrator reads the letter as "the fair is 87 cents round trip" but what's actually printed in the text is "the is 87.33 cents round trip". We dont use tenths of cents in common vernacular, so it should have been $87.33 cents, which is a considerable difference. This is further evidenced by the physical way that the numbers are written, with the 87 being larger than the .33, which is exactly how they appear on price signs.

@@joelpiva1541 they sold the letter. So yes.

Wow, thank you for the comment Carl. RIP. Got your story scheduled for late February by the way! So get ready :)

@@TJ3 TJ - if it turns out as half as good as the rest of your video's - it will be a grand slam as far as I am concerned - can't wait! 🙂

God Bless all our lost battle buddies

my family also just got new the my great uncle who was shot down during the ploesti raid in 1943and has been missing since then has been identified and we will be having his funeral soon

@@tylerroach7287 May your great uncle rest in peace! 😞

There were picket boats and submarines along the flight path of the later missions. There is a story of one crew who walked off the wing of a 29 onto a submarine and they didnt even get their feet wet. Note: extra fuel tanks were taken out when it was found that some pilots managed their engines well and returned with sufficient fuel. The conundrum was that extra fuel was extra weight that caused high(er) fuel burn.

My father was an intelligence officer for the 20th AAF photo recon section stationed on Guam 1944-1945. He hopped a flight to Tinian with a buddy to see a friend from back home assigned to B29’s. Walking down the flight line he turned and asked his friend what was up with a certain B29 he noticed that had the bomb bays draped in tarps. His friend said” Need to know, Chris” knowing in the intel business that was that, he stopped asking questions. The next day he was awakened by a sergeant and hastened to a briefing where he was asked to evaluate some recon photos. General LeMay said” What is your take on these” Dad,stunned, said “Sir, these are the most devastating pictures of an incendiary bombing that I personally have ever seen! How many B29’s flew this mission?” LeMay answered”One B29,Chris and it wasn’t an incendiary bombing, it was one bomb.” I suppose you can guess what my father witnessed being loaded behind those tarps on the Enola Gay…

My dad was in the 462nd. He was a parachute rigger, but he bunked with engineering. My dad got mad a Curtis LeMay for cutting the flight engineers pay.

Well done to everyone who worked to bring this video to us.

No problem! I’m glad we were able to work together to make this video possible. You’ve done an amazing job bringing Luther’s story to light for all to see. Thanks!

I've got a good b17 story about my dad if your interested

Were any surviving members of this family consulted in any way before their story was appropriated?

Thank you!

The Millenium Falcon was based on the B-29.

​@@moodswingy1973As were the spaceships in the 1950's comic Dan Dare. The main artist / writer was near the front and could see the last, desperate uses of V2 rockets at "short range", actually witnessing the launches on the horizon then taking cover because his base was the target. He watched the rocket age born right in front of him (and nearly died from it)

Thank you for sharing!

Thank you very much!

🤮

I felt that too... However : seeing what an evil bastard fate befell the lone survivor, perhaps merciful he WAS killed in the plane. = Germans gave Allied Bomber crews among the worst treatment (Pforzheim & Russelheim as example), but at least you MIGHT have a remote chance of becoming a PoW , whereas against the even more cruel Japanese , bailing out was practically a given death sentence - (Generalising, of course !!)

​@@hawnyfox3411Fire bombing of Osaka was 2 months ago in March 1945. 100,000+ civilians burned to death. Half million homeless. What can you expect the Japanese civiliand being less cruel. I am a Chinese so I am impartial.

@@rafaleyu = Given you say it was only 8 weeks earlier, it's almost certain that NONE or indeed very few Japs would've known about it (except local) Wasn't 'shared' for the sake of Japanese morale "at home" lest panic would spread - Also, given Japan's evil treatment of Chinese (1937 on) I'm very surprised that you come over across as "impartial" - you must be young

WOOOO!

.. I'm right there with you brother...If god existed, why wouldn't he end all wars...

its because of man that wars are fought, he gave us "free will" to live our lives. So all of the wrongs you have done in your life are your fault and not Gods. Its the same with nations and human history. Its easy to blame God but not ourselves.@@ltdees2362

Thanks :)

which has nothing at all to do with this video, this isn't all about you or your desire to spread basic knowledge about Loran

Much appreciated!

Pacifist naivete is infinitely worse, as it allowed both Hitler and the Japanese Empire to build up a powerful arsenal and unleash it upon the world. The same is happening now as RECYCLED evil and sexual perversions are being sold out to us through overwhelming propaganda to keep us naive and progressively more enslaved teaching us to totally hate anyone who dares think by him/herself and thos efighting for real freedom, defective and flawed as they may be. The battle is now in our hearts and minds so we destroy ourselves. Faith in God is the ultimate weapon against this, even when, as this family in the video suffered, casualties occur, of one form or another. If Faith in god was truly useless, it would not be so consistently attacked and demonized so, again, we proceed to demonize ourselves.

It's a bigger shame the world and Americans forget how many people they saved and liberated in aisa and Europe. - A Singaporean

The pacifist, appeasing naivete that so greatly empowers tyrants and all evil is a much, much, much greater evil than fighting evil. World War II defeated evil tyrants. It was not a love for war convention that the USA started.

Believe me, America going to war against Japan and Germany wasn't an act of altruism or to save any Asian lives. America was attacked by Japan and war was declared against her by Germany . @@SCATXXV

The pacifist naivete that empowers all tyrants and all evil so much, the true source of all wars, is infinitely worse.

The distance for this long range mission would have been a lot to ask of single seat recons like the Spit and Lightning. It was a 3,000 mile roundtrip for the B-29s from Tinian. Iwo was closer but Mustang fighters had been operating from there for only a month- not sure if any recon Mustangs were available tho. That leaves the Mosquito. Til then the longest mission had been around 2400 miles/ 8 hours. An up-fueled Mossie was in the works about the time this mission took place. Unfortunately it wasn’t there just yet.

Good points. I still believe this was a suicide mission with nothing to show for it except the loss of a Brave crew only a few months before the end of the war in the Pacific.@@orcstr8d

Nonsense. These missions happened all the time, they just don't make videos about all the successful ones. You sound like a fool condemning this from hindsight and out of ignorance.

Nope just one dead guy. There were 100,000,000 different instances of this exact scenario in WW2 alone💀

Thanks for watching!

They're using warthunder (game), it looks nice in cinematic mode

Thanks Sparky!

A fascinating note! Thanks for sharing.

Here's some food for thought: What would this world be like if Germany, Japan and Italy won WWII? War isn't a good idea, BUT war is the only way to stop war... 15:05

Nah, the AA got them

@@terrancenorris9992 More food for thought. What if Germans and Italians and Japanese people told their stpd "leaders" to go fk themselves the moment they dragged their nations in a suicidal destructive world war? That way there would be no need for other people get in a war that had millions of innocent victims.

@@Coco3Pirata Nah, stpd orders got them.

​​@@hariszark7396 Quit being such a drama queen and try learning about what you're talking about, there's reasons, and very good one's at that, why sending reconnaissance aircraft on mission's alone was standard procedure, it wasn't up to the commanding officer of this mission to send them alone, it wasn't his decision that was how all photo reconnaissance mission's were flown both in the Pacific and Europe. If you'd stop and think for a minute instead of just reacting then the thought just might have crossed your mind that sending more of them on a mission that only requires one aircraft would have resulted in even more getting shot down. Also, explain to me how multiple aircraft would have saved this one, how exactly would that have worked? Because they were shot down by ground fire they weren't attacked by fighter's. They weren't sent on their mission for "someone's gain" and I have no clue where you get that nonsense from, the were sent on a photo reconnaissance mission and they were sent on it because in a war information is the most powerful weapon there is, they weren't on a bombing mission, they were on a photo reconnaissance mission and photo reconnaissance mission's were absolutely vital so that the people running the show could determine how much damage was done by a bombing mission so they could determine whether or not further bombing mission's would be needed to take out the target, since you need to have everything else explained to you there was virtually no way of telling whether or not targets were actually destroyed by bombing mission's due to the amount of dirt and debris in the air above the target after the last of the bombers passes over, that's why photo reconnaissance mission's flown afterwards were absolutely necessary, they weren't flown for "one man's benefit" whatever it is that's supposed to mean, how some commander was supposed to have personally enriched himself from a photo reconnaissance mission is something that just eludes me .

did they even have cameras on board to photograph the damage to the city?

the AC-130 is a converted transport plane, yet used in an attack role… it happens