Was the B29-Superfortress a Failure? 

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The B29's remote control gun system is worthy of a video of it's own.

I once read the memoirs of a pilot who flew the RB-29. He could compare the 29s from the Korean War with their Soviet copy called the Tu-4. Interestingly, he noted that Soviet designers got rid of many of the “permanent diseases” of the prototype (especially in the fuel system). Some decisions shocked the Americans. But there were also quite funny and curious moments. In particular, the passage to the rear gunner's cabin on Soviet copies was painted in two colors. And no one knew why. It turns out that the interned plane that landed on Soviet territory had this paint job. It was decided to copy 1-in-1. The composition of these two paints was even analyzed and complete chemical copies were made! :) And, many years later, one of the Soviet designers visited the plant where the 29s were produced and asked why there were two colors and what was the point of that? No one could remember until they found an old worker who answered this question: “One of the paints ran out in the middle of the passage into the stern gunner’s cabin, and there was no paint of the same color in the warehouse, so I just took the first paint of a different color that came across. .." :)))

My dad was a WWII vet and he was a crew chief for a Consolidated PBY. He loved that plane and later in the war he had a chance to switch to a B-29 crew. He said he walked over to the plane, looked inside at the engine and checked around inside. He saw oil and fluids everywhere and he was so shocked that he didn’t switch and stayed with the PBY crew. He stayed in the Air Force and worked on the KC-135 until he retired. Miss you pop.

My dad was a "waist" gunner (explained by Curious Droid) on a B-29 based on Tinian Island in 1944. He's alive today due to surviving a crash on takeoff on his 3rd mission over Japan. One of the right side engines froze and the prop could not be feathered causing the right wing tip to hit the ground and the plane cartwheeled killing the co-pilot at the end of the runway. My dad told me that he almost got stuck in the burning wreck because the door near him would not open due to the twisted fuselage. He pushed a crew member away that was struggling with the latch to open the door and used newly found superhuman strength to work the latch and they both got out.

My Grandfather was a captain of A-26s and B-24s in 1943 and '44, and was transitioning to fly the B-29 in summer of '45. In fact he was stationed on Tinian at the time the atomic attacks were launched from there (of course he knew nothing about them - Tibbetts' group was secreted away at the remote edge of the base). Anyway, he HATED the B-29. He told me that whenever he looked at the B-29, the thought "I'm going to die in that thing." would cross his mind. Remember this is a guy with over 2 years of solid combat experience at this point. B-29s were routinely overloaded with bombs and gas well above their designed takeoff weight (actually a common practice in wartime), meaning all 4 engines had to be at max takeoff power for much longer than it is wise - especially as these engines were known to fail. If you lost any engine in the first 5-10 minutes, you would end up in the sea. And then there is the pressurization component. If the pressurized fuselage was compromised, they were known to "unzip", splitting open along a convenient seam or stress line, and basically dumping everything in it suddenly out into space. He hated it.

One correction: the jet stream was not “unknown” in the 1940s, it was just unknown to the Americans. Wasaburo Oishi measured the jet stream in the 1920s but his work was ignored in America and Europe. Great and interesting video, as always!

The B-36 is just ridiculously big. You get such an impression of how huge the B29 is and then there's it's bigger brother almost literally overshadowing it.

After the war, the B-29 had a second production run on the other side of the iron curtain as the Tu-4.

My Father was a Seattle Firefighter when the Frye packing plant fire happened. He said that there would have many more deaths but that most of the employees were out of the building on their lunch break. My father also had the dubious job of escorting the coroner around so that he could identify which bodies were human and which were hogs. The bodies were burned so badly the coroner had to try to stick his finger into a body, if it went in it was a human if it didn't go in it was a hog. I'm so glad that this part of WW2 history is still alive. We all need to learn from history. Thank you Curious Droid for bring us this story

It was the only bomber on the planet, with the possible exception of the B32, which was a far less complex “backup plan”, (it never saw any significant use and they were all scrapped just after wars end) that could carry the nukes to Japan. Period. The two bombs it dropped on Japan ended WW-II and saved a probably something like one hundred thousand Americans. Since the first divisions that came ashore were considered wiped out by the planners. This from a Marine I met that was in one of the replacement divisions being added to the USMC to replace those destroyed. With the bomb drops he never left the US. Then surely multiple millions of Japanese. They were training civilians to attack Americans with sharpened bamboo sticks. And then the suicide rates of civilians on the Marianas and Okinawa (where according to my Father they would send little kids into behind the lines chow lines with grenades). And yes the 29 had a high non-combat loss rate. MANY aircraft in the War did since many like the B-29, B-26 and others were very high performance, many had high loss rates while still in the US because they were far more advanced and faster in all respects than anything they were trained on.. The R3350 was perhaps beyond state of the art in 1940-42 and it needed more time to refine it. The war did not allow this. So with its problems the R3350.was the only choice. And the B-32 used it as well. I did find the NACA improvements/refinements very interesting. Bottom line? The B-29 saved a LOT of lives with two missions, the Japanese dead could easily have run into the loss of a significant portion of the population of Japan from combat, suicide and starvation with the invasion. 10% loss would have been 7 +- million and consider ALL those in the military as dead since very few ever surrendered. A lot of Americans alive today probably would not be here, me for one. Since my Father could easily have died in Japan.

The B29 completed two very important sorties. On that basis alone, it was a rousing success.

Fact: There are more planes in the ocean than there are submarines in the sky

Well done. My father was a government inspector at Boeing/Wichita during the war and oversaw some aspects of production. Even though I was very young, I remember him coming home carrying the worries of the R-3350s along with him. Completed airplanes were flown to Pratt, Ks to get upgrades before they could be delivered to the AAC for service. "The History Guy" did an episode covering this major undertaking as "The Battle of Kanas". One of the issues with overheating was that the original design of the engine had the front row of exhausts going forward to a collector just inside the front cowl ring - this allowed heated air from that area to pass rearward over the engine; In the redesign, they changed the heads to run the exhausts to the rear, much like the venerable R-2800 had done. Eventually, the 3350 became a good engine but went through a tortured development process.

My dad was a USAAF B29 co-pilot flying out of Saipan during WWII (1944/45). After the war ended he briefly left the military, but within a year or two was invited back when the USAF and SAC were formed. During this second stint he spent a lot of time piloting KB29 (refueling) version of the airplane flying out of a USAF base in England, but later also acted as a multi-engine flight instructor in many of the mid and heavy aircraft throughout the 1950s. He didn't talk much about WWII, but had quite a few tales about the aircraft in general. Much of what is related in the video about the problems with the early B29 is quite accurate. While flying the refueling version KB29 dad had a favorable "reputation" among the crews, because he pushed to take off as quickly as possible. They were assigned to fly near the borders of the USSR and loiter for 8 hours, to be available to refuel any friendly jets patroling the area in need. The sooner they got on station, the sooner they could put in their 8 hours and return home. Dad would conduct some parts of the check list during the take off roll down the runway! I think he learned this technique flying the earlier versions of B29 with the engines that were prone to overheating until some airspeed and altitude could help cool them down. But the worst close call he had was in one of the later airplanes and unrelated to those earlier problems. They were assigned a KB29 that had seen major repairs. Shortly after takeoff out of England, after climbing to 12K or 15Kk feet over the N. Sea in thick clouds, the airplane suddenly started banking and would not level out with the controls. It also was losing altitude, starting a gradual downward spiral, but they had no idea why. The clouds were so thick they could barely see the inboard engines on either wing. They used engine throttles to regain some control and set a heading to return to base, but were still losing altitude. It wasn't until they dropped below the clouds at 1500/2000 feet that they saw one of the aelerons had torn off the wing! They had no choice but to dump their full load of jet fuel. Lightened up and using throttle controls, they managed to safely land the airplane. It was only after climbing out they discovered that pieces of the aerleron had also struck and damaged the vertical and horizontal stabilizers, as well as the rudder. That airplane never flew again. Rather than risking another air crew in it after another round of repairs, it got parked and used for spare parts. Dad's favorite was the B25... he said it was like driving a sports car, after driving a big truck or bus. Oh, and he also confirmed that the flight crew motto for the B36 "two turning, two burning, two joking, two smoking, two unaccounted for" was a whole lot more accurate than the official USAF motto "six turning, four burning" that referred to that airplane's six thrust propeller engines and four jet engines. There were also some nicknames for the B36.. the Flying Pencil was one. Another, more vulgar name refers to part of the male anatomy. BTW today my great-nephew crews a USAF B2 as part of the 509th Wing... Dad's wing in England around 75 years ago was also the 509th. Finally, there has always been some controversy about the use of the atomic bombs, dropped by B29s flying from Tinian, in the same Marianas island chain as Saipan where dad flew. On the one hand they were horrifically powerful weapons and killed many people (although not as many as some other, more conventional bombing raids both in Japan and in Germany). On the other hand, the A bombs likely helped bring the war to a swift end, as suggested in this video. If it had been necessary to invade Japan the war likely would have lasted years longer and far more people would have died on both sides. Another factor that likely caused Japan to capitulate but often isn't mentioned, was that the Soviet Union had just declared war on Japan too. There had been a Japanese/Russian non-aggression pact through the reat of WWII. But Russia declared war on August 7, the day after the A bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and 2 days before Nagasaki was struck. Russia brought a million man army to the fight.

The B-29 wasn't as bad as the B-36. At least the B-29 didn't mount their engines backwards, like the B-36. The B-36 carburators would freeze up because they were in front of instead of being behind (and thus warmed by) the cylinders in the B-29. The biggest operational problem with the B-29 was they overloaded them and the Marianas runways were too short.

Essentially, the B-29 suffered from many of the same overheating issues that plagued the Heinkel He 177 bomber. A group of engineers at Rechlin, the Luftwaffe's main testing center, actually implemented some 50-plus fixes fairly similar to what was done with Curtis-Wright R3350 engine to the troublesome Daimler-Benz DB610 engine and got it to work perfectly, but the fix came too late in the war for the Luftwaffe. Fortunately for the USAAF, the R3350 engine did get tested at NACA's excellent Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory (now NASA Glenn Research Center), and as the video showed, implemented a large number of fixes to drastically reduce the chance of engine overheating.

My grandfather was a B-29 navigator. His plane went down returning to Tinian and he was officially declared MIA/KIA.

A couple of years ago, I got to see one of the currently two airworthy B-29s. I was just taxiing by to depart and it was there for an airshow. It's quite something to see such a rare aircraft and one rt that changed the world.

My Grandfather was a mechanic on the B-29 T-N-Tiny on Tinian Island. For every flight the mechanics would line up & cheer each time their B-29s would make a successful takeoff. For something special they would load the aircraft with beer & enjoy a cold brew when they would return. The added weight was worth it.

In American football we have a play called a "Hail Mary" in which the team on offense throws the ball downfield in desperation, hoping that one of their receivers will catch it, score and win the game. It's a low-percentage move, but our football history and real-life histories are filled with glorious tales of "Hail Mary" victories. The B-29 is one of those stories. It's a miracle that it worked well enough to deliver two a-bombs to the Land of the Rising Sun... but it did!

I once heard someone say that in large aircraft, after takeoff your priorities are altitude, then airspeed. But because of the need to get airflow to cool the engines in a B-29, you had to prioritize speed first, then altitude.

Had an old neighbor who was a crew member on 29s in the Korean War. Super nice man, RIP Mr. Garretty.

Fantastic presentation Paul I always look forward to your work.

Everybody know that the "Enola Gay" dropped the 1st atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Few know that "Bockscar" dropped the 2nd atomic bomb on Nakasaki. Kudos for you for the photo of "Bockscar" at 05:15 I worked on Saipan and visited Tinian. The old airfields are still there, along with the loading stations on Tinian for the atomic bombs. I just need to visit Alamagordo, New Mexico, site of Trinity test, the 1st atomic bomb test. And then Hiroshima to round out my "Trinity" of nuclear sites.

Great program - thanks. Those engines were approaching the limits of what piston motors could achieve before the advent of the jets. The B-29 and the C/W engines were certainly rushed to get into production to participate as soon as possible in that war. In my experience as a design developer I have learned there are three considerations for every such major project - quality, cost and timeliness. You can get any combination of two - but not the third. For example - you can get a good airplane, on budget - but not quickly. Or you can get a good aircraft quickly - but it will be expensive. And so on.

Great video as always. Wondering if it would be possible to do a follow-up video about the B-36 and it's technical issues?

Content like this is why I support you on Patreon. Well done!

I had no idea about the overheating problems. Thanks for sharing.

Another great video. Keep them coming.

Excellent and fair coverage, as usual!

Very well researched and narrated. The footage was also very appropriate.

Awesome vid, Paul!! I always wanted to see an in-depth vid of the B-29.

your videos are so well done and so interesting

They had the B-50 (an improved B-29) which did see some limited action in the Korean War for recon but by that time it was obsolete with the coming of jet bombers.

While Consolidated was working on the Dominator they were also designing and building the B-36.

You are the only RU-vid channel that is so interesting that I even watch your paid commercials. Great stuff as always, Paul!

I had fortunate employment with a casting company with military contracts, while serving as a machinist for the Nevada National Guard. I find this video wonderful for its demonstration of the complexity of prototype. Mechanics, materials, thermodynamics and structural integrity according to stresses applied. Beautiful video👍🏻

Great stuff as always Paul.

I always wondered if the B29 could have been powered by the R-2800. The later war P&W engine rated with much more power than the Wright engine but little problems.

Ah the fabled B-29 I'm definitely looking forward to watching this. I was watching your last video about NASA hearing the sounds of stars and planets and I was enthralled by everything you said. After watching it I spent the next hour or so listening to the different sounds of our galaxy. Keep up the great work mate. 😃

Statistics with the downing of bombers in the Pacific are no good because of the internal war in Japan. The Japanese Army and Navy both more or less represented the north and south of Japan and about a dozen corporations with government powers. They were not friends and were as likely to fight each other as anyone else. Part of this feud was both sides said catching bomber's was the other's job and they both refused to coordinate bomber defense and sometimes they could not be bothered to inform each other of incoming bombers.

Thank you, Paul! Another great video!

Another great video. Thanks Mr Shilito

I've watched everything you've ever uploaded and this was one of the best videos you've ever produced

Always great videos

As always a great video, I also hope droid is doing wonderful after his health scare. God bless you all

Another video full of interesting information that will teach me lots of things! It's a great weekend!

Awesome work as usual. 👏👏👏👏😊👍

Great job Keep it up From Argentina

Another great film, thank you!

Learned a lot on this one. Thanks!

I had to laugh at Star Wars when they showed these manually operated ray gun turrets on Solo's space ship. I said they had remote and computer controlled gun turrets on bombers in WW TWO

The B-29 was specifically ordered for the Pacific (not European) theater before the US entered the war because the US knew longer range than the B-17 and B-24 would be needed there. This was not the bomber project initiated to guard against Britain falling out of the war. That project was the ultra long range bomber that eventually became the B-36. But after the Battle of Britain was won and the Battle of the Atlantic stabilized it became less likely that Britain would fall out of the war, so at that point the B-36 was put on the back burner and the B-29 got top priority for development and production.

Great video! It reminded me to dig out my old copy of Martin Caidin’s A Torch To The Enemy, a great book for anyone interested in knowing more about the B-29 story and the incendiary raids that devastated many Japanese cities.

Well done i knew of the overheating issues but u went into great detail. Thank u

19:54 HOLY CRAP!!! LOOK at that size difference between the B-29 and the B-36 shown on screen!! I never before understood HOW much bigger the B-36 Peacemaker was before now! It's a true monster!

Excellent work on this one. I love WWII history.

Good show ! Thank you Sir.

The B-54 was to be the ultra superfortress bomber. Personally I think LeMay cancelled the B-54 so the Boeing company could get some sleep. They were working on the B-47, B-52, and the prototype of what was to become the 707/KC-135 family of bombers, jet transports, and tankers. Not to mention Boeing was still working on the KC-97 and who knows what else?

My father - who passed away in 2016 age 94 - was a B-29 USAAF navigator in the Pacific. I still have his original flight jacket with squadron insignia. Our family is Friends of Doc and my son and I have toured FIFI.

My father was a navigator-bombardier on B-29's. I shouldn't be here to write this. During training in the states, one of the props ran away, departed the shaft, walked down the wing, plunged into the fuselage at the navigators station and departed the a/c. Dad was up forward at the norden bombsight. One one of the daylight missions his plane lost one engine to flak, and on the same wing, the other engine to what was likely an accidental ram (glancing blow) by a Japanese fighter. It took the flight crew 20,000 feet to re-learn how to fly the airplane, and even so, the missing weight of the second engine is I expect why I'm here to type this. They got back to Tinian in ground effect.

Excellent job, superior quality. The way a documentary should be. Thank you.

Thanks, Paul!

That’s an amazing picture @19:54 between the B-29 and B-36 size

Thanks for the great video about the B29. Great photos and videos. Looking forward to future investigation of all aircraft.

EXCELLENT video. Thanks very much. Greetings from Mexico City.

Very informative, thank you

There are some great trivia questions in this episode. I had no idea that anything even came close to the Manhattan Project price tag, much less beat it by fifty per cent.

I think the problems came from it using the most advanced technology available at the time which meant using tech that was pushing the limits

Curtis Lemay, wasn’t he the head of SAC and operation chrome dome in its inception? The name rings a bell. My grandfather Russell Robertson Sr. served in WWII and was one of the fortunate ones who survived the storming of Omaha Beach in Normandy. God bless you grandpa and I wish I could have spent more time talking about the things you endured and the sights you saw with the obvious grace and non disclosure of what was happening that may have been the subject matter of and for any service member who did what had to be done to survive. RIP grandpa.

Most interesting, thank you. This is the kind of info of which you don't normally get to hear. 👍👍

Definitely. Those B29 engines had turbochargers the size of commercial truck tires. The turbos look alot like the early turbojet engines. In my mind, the early turbojets are those B29 engines, made reliable, by deleting a lot of moving parts.

Just to keep the development in context: Boeing had been working on privately funded long range bomber designs since 1938. Model 322 through to Model 341. Boeing reworked the 341 design during early 1940 based on the information coming from the European war front. This design would become the Model 345. Both Model 345 prototyes were ordered on 24 August 1940. A year later, in September 1941, 250 B-29 aircraft were ordered. On 21 September 1942, the first XB-29 flew. The first YB-29 service test aircraft flew in October 1943. By April of 1944, the first B-29 group had arrived in India. The pace of the B-29 development was incredibly fast, even by wartime standards. At the same time as Boeing were developing and testing the aircraft, other manufacturers and subcontractors were gearing up for production. It is hardly surprising that so many issues were encountered. The B-29 was structurally, aerodynamically and technically more advanced than other heavy bomber of WW2. Despite the technical and tactical deployment issues, the B-29 was an outstanding aircraft. It made all other heavy bombers obsolete overnight. It remained in frontline USAAF/USAF service after WW2, saw combat in Korea and was briefly operated by the RAF as a stopgap until the "V" bomber and Canberra fleet was ready.

Great video, Paul...👍

Pretty good account. It was developed during operation. Curtis Wright had a management problem. Some of the changes made to the R 3350 were already suggested beforehand and rejected. It started out as an oil leaky hot running firetrap and the magnesium crankcase made the fires spectacular.

Verry intresting, thanks! Greetings from Norway!🇳🇴

Of course it was not a failure. It devastated the cities of Japan. Yes the engines had some issues that had to be sorted, but a war was on and the risk was part of the equation.

5:42 B-26 Marauders! 14:33. I was at a CAF AirSho in 2007 and was in the hangar within earshot of two mechanics who were talking about FiFi, their B-29 which was grounded at the time. One of them said he was working on her and the socket wrench slipped...and punched a hole in the firewall which was weakened due to corrosion.

That is one heck of a story. Great video.

Nice job!

Great detailed video

Dear Curious Droid, your videos imo are so well done and so interesting, we'll researched, it's a privilege to be subscribed to your channel, thank you

Thank you. I think this might be your best video yet.

It was a pinnacle of technological evolution at the time.🎉🎉🎉

Thanks Mr. Droid.

A friend of ours was on the "Last Mission" over Japan 5 days AFTER Nagasaki. The target was Japan's largest oil refinery, which was 90% destroyed. They lost no planes to enemy fire. 50+ years later, when info was declassified, he discovered that the main reason for destroying the oil production was to keep it out of the hands of the USSR, who were mobilizing toward Japan. The amazing part is that the Emporer had already recorded his surrender speech, which was set to be broadcast the next morning. But hard-liners in the military had planned a couple so they could continue the war. Tokyo lay in the path to the oil refinery. When the B-29s flew over, there was an emergency black out. The confusion this caused disrupted the coup, and the surrender came the next day. Without this happy accident, the war might have continued.

Saved to my watch later playlist. My great uncle was a mechanic for bombers in WW2, quality control at home. He was really not impressed with a lot of what he saw, and told my mother at some point that he had great admiration for the pilots that went up in them, he'd never go up in one himself without thoroughly checking it over first. By his inflection my mother understood him to mean mechanical problems were frequent and very dangerous. After doing a bit of research on my own for when he was in service and the history of different bombers, I am pretty sure he meant this one as by even the early war, let alone the late war, B-17s had a lot of the mechanical issues ironed out (and were already relatively reliable even compared to other prototypes when it was one). I didn't see anything out of the ordinary for B-24s. I looked at a number of other heavy bombers and this was the only thing that really jumped out at me as being likely what he was referring to, unless we had a light bomber like the A-20 that I didn't look into enough. He passed away when I was very young, well before my interest in history and particularly WW2 was developed.

Great video

An interesting story to cover might be how the Soviet Union copied the B-29 to such a degree they even had the same engine problems. Their version of the B-29 was the Tupolev Tu-4

Of the 3,970 B-29's built, there are only two that are airworthy and flying today, Fifi and Doc. What's great is that Doc is housed in a hangar at the same facility where those planes were built in Wichita, KS. Talk about a homecoming!

The problems with engines were very reminiscent of those with the Avro Manchester and Heinkel 177 Greif. I sometimes wonder if they might have done better to used a larger number of smaller engines as Avro did with the Manchester to produce the Lancaster. Maybe using 6 or 8 Pratt and Whitney R2800s would have been better. Some loss of aerodynamic efficiency would have been balanced by fewer crashes.

C.D. is one of my Top Five RU-vid channels , very well done.

It accomplished its design and operationa intentions. Thats a win in my book

Dad was an 18 year old B-29 navigator. He hated the airplane, the army air corps and the US government for endangering his life so callously. His plane experienced both of the big killers, engine fire and a run away prop. Only the skill and experience of the AC saved the plane and crew. The B-29 was rushed to combat without adequate testing and correction.

There was a B-29 Superfortress called the Kee Bird that crash landed in the artic near Greenland. A Former SR-71 Pilot decided to try "Saving" the incredibly rare plane. They made a NOVA Documentary on it and it was a series of Tragedies. The lead mechanic dies when they are 90% done with the job and we see his health go from bad to worse to being medivac flown out from the Arctic where he later died. They put all new engines on the plane and planned on flying it out of the Arctic without replacing any of the other million of parts. They get the to Taxi down a plowed runway they made. They Jurry-Rigged a gas can to feed fuel to the "Putt Putt" Auxiliary Power Unit. Bouncing around the snow spilled the fuel and set fire to the entire Aircraft. So sad to see the Kee Bird just go up in flames. The Documentary is the most Dramatic Real life documentary I've ever seen. If you want to see this horror show it's now on RU-vid. Just search "B-29 FROZEN IN TIME - THE CRASHED & ABANDONED WWII/ COLD WAR BOMBER" is the title of the video. Cheers.

I keep a 1945 Portuguese Edition of the _Reader's Digest_ with an article called "Make Way for the B-29". In it, the new bomber is praised as something so futuristic as people has never seen before. The remote controlled turrets are mentioned, and described at length as a marvel of technology, and no issues whatsoever are disclosed with them nor with the engines. The war was not over and back then the Press understood the importance of proper censorship, unlike nowadays. And I have another one from 1943 with an article called "Hard life in a Heavy Bomber", describing a typical mission in a B-17, the terrible cold, the enemy fire... That one is much more sober. 😬

Thanks. Impressive looking plane.

Love your videos. They are very educational and good entertainment. We have a variant of the B-29 - the Tu-4 :-)

You have spelled their wrong in your thank you message to your patreons at the start of the video. Contents is amazing as usual so thank you for top quality stuff.