Actually, the Super Bomber B-29 should level Germany. They were only used in Asia. Bombers of the type dropped the atomic bombs, ending World War II. But over Korea, the B-29 miracle weapon was already hopelessly obsolete.
In Germany, interest in the B-29 Superfortress has always been less than that in the B-17. This is not surprising, since the B-29 was only used in Asia during the war. Only one bomber became famous, the “Enola Gay”. The plane that dropped the atomic bomb “Little Boy” on Hiroshima was named by the commander after his mother.
But the B-29 Superfortress was a marvel of engineering, the most advanced bomber of World War II. The silver, streamlined aircraft was fundamentally different from all others. The B-29 was designed to meet two requirements: Very long range and extreme altitude. The B-29 was designed as early as 1939 – as a weapon against Germany. The Americans feared that Hitler might occupy all of Europe and the British Isles. So they demanded an extreme range bomber.
Too high for defense
There was little resistance against the B-29. The machine flew so high that most fighter pilots and anti-aircraft guns could not reach it. The crew would not have been able to endure this with only breathing masks. The B-29 therefore had three pressurized cabins – an absolute novelty. The crew had to remain in them. Therefore, the four towers with machine guns were remotely controlled. Their engines had 18 cylinders and delivered 2200 hp. The B-29 could drop nine tons of bombs. The weapon-ridden B-17 could only carry two tons of bombs on long-range missions.
The “Enola Gay” has been in the National Air and Space Museum in Chantilly since 2003. “The B-29 was a marvel of modernity,” says Jeremy Kinney of the Smithsonian Institute. The restoration took 20 years. “It was the most advanced propeller-driven aircraft that had been seen up to that point. But you have to combine that with the mission of the Enola Gay. Here we have a bomber with a bomb that destroys a city.”
On September 21, 1942, the US B-29 Superfortress made its debut flight from Seattle. The program to build the bomber was running at full speed. In 1943, when Allied bombers were destroying cities and industrial plants in Germany, US bombers could not yet reach mainland Japan. Only the conquest of islands and the B-29 should bring the war to the Japanese islands. Due to the time pressure, the first machines were assembled before all tests were completed. There were special centers for them in order to later bring them up to the level of the production version. In total, Boeing built 2766 B-29s. Bell Aircraft Co. assembled another 668 giant bombers and Glenn L. Martin Co. another 536. Production ended in 1946.
B-29 over Japan
B-29s flew the first combat mission on June 5, 1944 over Bangkok in preparation for the Burma campaign. The bombers could not reach Japan until the USA built airports on the Mariana Islands in the South Pacific. From there they destroyed Tokyo, sometimes a thousand machines took part in the attacks. B-29s were chosen for the atomic bombs because the Superfortress was the only machine capable of carrying a ten-ton bomb.
The Enola Gay rear gunner, Staff Sgt. Robert Caron, watched the blast over Hiroshima and later wrote, “I can still see it – that mushroom and that turbulent mass – it looked like lava or molasses covering the whole city covered and it seemed to flow outwards into the foothills where the little valleys came into the plain and all the fires kindled past so soon it was hard to see anything because of the smoke.” Co-Pilot, Capt. Robert Lewis is said to have stammered, “My God, what have we done?”
The men suspected nothing of the 100,000 victims – according to a conservative estimate. The plans assumed minor losses. The Americans thought the Japanese were taking refuge in the bomb shelters. In reality there was no alarm as only two US planes could be seen in the sky. The Japanese thought it would be a reconnaissance mission.
No machine for the jet age
The Korean War then showed how quickly a technical marvel can become obsolete. This is where B-29s flew most of the bomber missions. Until the Mig-15 appeared. The Mig-15 was a second generation jet fighter. Regarded as the best fighter plane of the time, it was first flown by experienced Soviet pilots. In just five days between October 22-27, 1951, the Migs downed eleven B-29s. And they increased. Then, in a single day, October 30, the US lost twelve B-29s and four escort F-84E fighters. That was the end of the Superfortress era.
