The B-29 Superfortress

The B-29 Superfortress was the most expensive weapon to manufacture during World War II. It was also the most important because the atomic bomb, the second most expensive weapon of the War was undeliverable without it. It was too large to have been dropped by any other plane.

The B-29 was built by Boeing because of the need for the United States to have a long range bomber with a sufficient payload to make its use worthwhile. Originally the plane had been conceived with the idea of bombing Germany from the Continental United States should Britain and Russia both fall, and the United States found herself the only major power in the world capable of stopping Hitler. Fortunately, with Britain and Russia both holding out against Hitler, the United States could scale back the needed requirements of the bomber, which was good since the range needed in the case of Germany's triumph was beyond a quick solution with 1940's technology,

Ironically then, the bomber it was decided would be used in the Pacific. Because of the desperate need of a long range heavy bomber: however, the bomber was rushed into service too quickly which resulted in early failures of the bomber in flight due to engines overheating. In the Pacific, this was almost a certain death sentence for pilots and crews forced to ditch in the Pacific Ocean. The early problems were eventually solved, though pilot and crew fatalities from being forced to ditch in the ocean from battle damage were only vastly relieved when heroic marines conquered, Iwo Jima, a Japanese fighter and early warning base which was also large enough for crippled B-29's to land on.

The B-29’s operational range was 1600 to 1800 miles. It had a cruising speed of 342 miles an hour and was pressurized so that the crew could operate the plane at a height of 30,000 feet without specially heated flight suits. The plane also had remote control operated machine guns.

The first missions out of China were unsuccessful because of primitive ground facilities and because the accuracy of bomb drops was horrible; as a new phenomenon, the jet stream was discovered which caused havoc on bomb trajectory in flight to ground. When the United States conquered closer islands to Japan in the Pacific that brought Japan in range of the B-29 where American expertise could be fully realized (as there were no Himalayan Mountains to cause logistics problems ) the War effort received a big boost, especially when added to the arrival of General Curtis Lemay.

Lemay stopped the inaccurate high flying precision bomb drops through the jet stream. Instead, he used lower level carpet incendiary bomb drops. He left all gunners behind but the tail gunner so he could pack in more bombs, using height layered bomb drops to confuse Japanese fighter. It worked. Finally the B-29 dropped the atomic bombs which brought Japan's surrender.

For those retrospectively opposed to the 2 bombs use who will do no dying in holding the opinion, you might consider this: every month the war continued, 100,000 Chinese civilians died from the war. Each day in the last year of the war, 1500 Allied prisoners of war died. In order to win with a blockade even in the face of these statistic, at least 10 million Japanese would have starved to death. Also, in an invasion, every Japanese subject was considered a solider by the Japanese government. Estimated deaths of Japanese civilians in an invasion were assumed to be in the 10 million range with 250,000 to 1 million American sailors, soldiers, airmen and marines dying.

By