![]() ![]() “You’re exposed to the elements at above 20,000 feet and you’re having to be on oxygen bottles and wearing heavy winter flight gear. ![]() “Look at how incredible crew fatigue could be on a B-17 bomber, say, in Europe,” Bohannon says. “Quite simply, the B-29 was the gateway aircraft to the modern United States Air Force.” While comfort may not sound like something you really need in a bomber, it can have a direct effect on crew capability and overall wartime strategy, he says. “They were incredibly innovative in how they decided to pressurize the aircraft, which led to incredible crew comfort,” says Bohannon. The B-29 would be the first pressurized and soundproofed bomber cabin, allowing the crew to fly comfortably and communicate without the need for large headsets. Instead, factory workers without any aviation experience were tasked with assembling the massive bomber and modifying parts they didn’t understand in order to piece together the disparate new technologies. By some estimates, each of the major features introduced on the B-29 would normally have seen up to five years of testing under normal circumstances. With development and production happening more or less simultaneously, technical problems plagued the effort. The front lines of World War II were in Europe and the Pacific, but Kansas was its own kind of battleground as engineers and assembly workers fought against terrible weather and repeated delays in production of the B-29. Air Force inventory.” The Battle of Kansas “It laid the groundwork for all future strategic aircraft in the U.S. “Quite simply, the B-29 was the gateway aircraft to the modern United States Air Force,” Bohannon says. The race for the bomber of the future was on, and its legacy would be lasting. ![]() government had already placed an order for 1,500 of the new bombers, but when Roosevelt made that promise, fewer than 15 were airworthy. Roosevelt still pledged to base at least 175 B-29s in China, within striking distance of Japan, in a year’s time. But despite the tragic test flight and ongoing production struggles-blame resource shortages and an unskilled workforce- President Franklin D. The crash was a massive setback for a program that could not afford to fail. “Even once the aircraft was rolled out, there was still a level of secrecy involved with its different components.” Air Force Global Strike Command tells Popular Mechanics. “The B-29 was a groundbreaking program, and like any such program, you want to try to hide the design and development stage as much as possible from your adversaries,” Shawn M. The XB-29, the first Superfortress ever built. ![]()
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