I love the B-29 it’s my favorite bomber the fact that it is amazing firepower and yet carry large bomb payloads is very cool. Also my great grandfather who sadly past away a couple years ago actually flew on the B-29 and I believe was on of the gunners.
My dad’s cousin Don Dahle flew B-29s and hated them because of the engines. He said that it was common to return from a mission with several dead cylinders. A piston would melt in a cylinder or it would suck a valve. They couldn’t afford to shut down a damaged engine so they continued running that engine which only added to the damage. Apparently it was a rare thing to return without some sort of damage in all 4 engines. He said he would return to base with as many as 13 dead cylinders. I was surprised! As a kid I thought the B-29 was pretty cool, but apparently it took some time to work out the bugs. All of the lessons learned by Boeing in their World War II bombers went into the B-52. That’s why the B-52 is still flying.
The signal from a plexiglass HUD reticule fed a mechanical computer to actuate servos that aimed the guns. An early electronic interface, this steam punk computer corrected for speed, altitude, temp etc. to give the system unprecedented accuracy. One of the most advanced technologies of the war.
No, it's called the Superfortress because the B-17 was called the Fortress hence the B-29 was the "Superfortress", just like the B-24 was called the Liberator the B-32 was called the Dominator!!
Back in the early 80s I lived in Atlanta and this B-29, FIFI, was at one of the smaller airports for people to see. It is truly massive and the noise level, well, you have to hear it for yourself.
It is said, mes amis, that sometime after the first B-29 aeroplatform did a low level recon-mission o'er Tokyo, mes amis, the Empress Nagako (the wife of Emperor Hirohito), wrote in a letter: “Every day from morning to night, B-29's fly freely over the palace making an enormous noise. As I sit at my desk writing and look up at the sky, countless numbers are passing over. Unfortunately... the B-29 is a splendid plane.”
The turrets on the B-29 did not even use tracers. All that the gunner had to do is estimate the wingspan of the enemy fighter and track it with the holographic sight. The fighters wouldn't even know they were fired at until they were hit multiple times.
I can remember building one of these as an airfix model ...and being disappointed of windowless gun turrets and no little man to stick in them ..... now after watching this i feel so safe with that technology i could do a mission myself ...... ha ha joke
Although it had the "computerized" fire control, plenty of B 29s were shot down by the Japanese and later by the Chinese in Korea. I met the famous German fighter pilot Franz Stigler at an airshow in 2005. He said he was shot down 9 times, mostly by bombers. He was referring to B 17s and B 24s with only the gunner's skill firing the weapons. And Franz escorted Ye Olde Pub and Charlie Brown out of harms way!!😮😮😮
computers are, in a general sense, a machine that can perform complex calculations fast. It wasn't necessarily the (electrical) computers we know of today. They could have the angle of each gun, the airspeed of the aircraft, and the speed of the enemy aircraft (not sure how that would be obtained though.. radar?) and machinations could provide a solution of what point to fire the guns at
These were analog computers, not digital computers. They had machinery and electrical circuits to create certain preprogrammed outputs from the inputs. (The old-style analog odometer on older cars is an example of an analog computer.)
B-29 mission Toyota , BMW, Kawasaki , Mitsubishi , Volkswagen , Ferrari , Audi ,Mercedes -Benz Fiat , Mazda , Suzuki , Subaru ,Nissan , Datsun they supplied the military of the Axis power Porsche . And so on
not to forget this bomber is the one who drop the atom bomb on hiroshima and nagasaki(not this one the one who drop it was enola gay,and the other one i forgot the nickname)
THANK YOU for not using metric measurements. Serious question: did they get the problems with the engines worked out before the war ended? I've read about a lot of in-flight engine fires. And I'm going to assume that's something y'all don't have to worry about when you fly FiFi around now. She's a gorgeous lady. Do fly around to air shows? Do you ever come to Minnesota ?
