What History Never Told You About the B-29 Superfortress

you know the B-29 super Fortress the advanced heavy bomber that took to the skies in the final years of World War II to hammer enemy targets from the air but in this video we will cover some things that you may not know the fascinating points that may often get overlooked in history so here are five things that you likely never knew about the remarkable B-29 [Music] to begin with today we will cover the Staggering cost of development of the B-29 both in dollars and in lives the initial need for the B-29 came about even before World War II began for the United States even though they were not technically at War yet the U.S recognized that it was very likely that it too would soon be Tangled into the conflict developing across the globe and while the B-17 was already deep into development it was concluded that the Flying Fortress would be inadequate for use in the Pacific Theater if the United States were to eventually go to war with Japan so the U.S Army Air corps requested a bomber with both a heavy payload and a longer range ideally more than 3 000 miles in 1940 Boeing would submit their designs and the U.S military would order a few prototypes for initial testing and eventually three years later after quite a few fixes and setbacks the B-29 would be ordered for service production but this would come at an overwhelming cost the cost of the development cost of the B-29 actually exceeded the atomic bomb the Manhattan Project so this b29 was the most expensive project in World War II and part of that was it was so Advanced it was built in a fairly short amount of time you know there's a story of the P-51 being built in 120 days the B-29 wasn't quite that fast but the everything on the airplane was new the propellers had never been used on anything else the landing gear were B17 you know influenced but they weren't B17 landing gear they had to be developed on their own the engines you know the the rat engines around 3350s that was a brand new style of inch and brand new model of engine it had never it was built specifically for the B-29 and the immense cost of getting that project going with all the stops and starts and everything it just drove the price up it just it was all new technology it was the Gunnery system was very expensive with all the computers and everything the you know tube operated computer are in the floor of the airplane that was all had to be paid for For the First Time by the government by Boeing and there were also at the end of the day you know the B7 the B-24 there was over 18 000 of those built the B-29 there was only four thousand built and so if you break it down for cost per airplane it cost a whole lot more to build the between nine than it did the other bombers but it was immensely expensive and that was mostly because of the technology that went in and the fact that everything was new the entire development of this bomber would be plagued with problems the technology needed for the fully pressurized cabin and Powerful engines was so Advanced for the time that it was difficult for manufacturing and designs to keep up after each one of these problems arose changes needed to be made to the design and at one point in time modifications and changes were being made so fast and so often that every B-29 that came off of the assembly line was sent directly to another rebuilding Factory where the latest modifications could be made because of all of this the total cost of development of the super Fortress would come in at an astounding three billion dollars or 45 billion in today's currency to put that into perspective the full cost of the Manhattan Project which developed the atomic bomb was only 1.9 billion you know the aircraft just had a lot of things that needed to be perfected and we've I think we saw through the course of history even after World War II that the larger we built aircraft and the more complex we made them and the more precise we needed the aircraft to be whether it was dropping an ordinance or whether it was defending itself against enemy aircraft the more precise we wanted it to be the more complex it became and so figuring all that out was no doubt a learning experience for the U.S and Aviation production in general through the 1940s but in addition to these Financial costs there was also a terrible cost in the form of American lives in the crashes and accidents that occurred the most notable would be to the second prototype flying out of Seattle on February 18th of 1943. this aircraft was piloted by the most skilled and renowned test pilot in the nation at the time Edmund T Allen he was a well-respected pilot and aeronautical engineer that took nearly every large aircraft of this time up for their first test flights this included every initial model of the B-17 on this third Test Flight of the new B-29 in early 1943 the aircraft experienced a serious engine fire Allen and his crew were able to put it out but then a second fire developed that was not able to be extinguished as the plane narrowly missed buildings in downtown Seattle two of the 10 crew members bailed out but they were too low for their parachutes to open Allen and the rest of the crew tried desperately to land the aircraft at the Airfield but they would tragically crash short of the runway the aircraft would directly hit the fry meat packing plant nearby killing Allen and all others on board the aircraft as well as 19 workers inside the factory up next at number four we will take a look at the interesting first combat for the B-29 super Fortress this would take place in the summer of 1944 just one day before the Allied invasions of Normandy but on the other side of the world at the direction of President Roosevelt who was attempting to follow through on a promise to China the U.S Army Air corps sent a small force of b-29s thousands of miles across the Pacific and into India once they arrived in April of 1944 they would then be flown over the Himalayas into China to strike Japanese targets but before they did this the super Fortress would have its baptism by fire from an air base in India to strike railroad factories and Depots in Thailand this Mission would serve as a test before they were deployed to China to strike the Japanese home Islands but this would not necessarily go according to plan in this Mission approximately 100 b-29s took off to take part in the raid the targets were Bangkok Memorial Bridge as well as a major power plant nearby there would be no major enemy resistance and no enemy aircraft were reported being spotted but despite this five of the b-29s would be lost in this raid all of these were likely due to mechanical issues part of the problem with the B-29 in its early missions was the range was so immense that they had to go flying out of India and China you know there was everything that came to India and China had to be brought in on another B-29 you know every B-29 that left the states carried an engine in the front Bombay that's how the spare engines got to India and you load them up with ordinance you load them up with extra gas tanks in the back Bombay in order to make the long trip across the hump and into into the Japanese Islands takes a lot of gas to do that and you know it the the engines on the B-29 were not tested they were built from scratch for this project for the B-29 project and they were notorious for catching on fire what would happen was one of the things that would happen was the valves there was not enough lubrication getting to the valves into cylinders and so one of the valves would heat up and expand and snap off and fall down in the cylinder the Piston would come up hit the valve punch a hole in the wall of the cylinder now you've got all that you know thousand degree temperature and Fire coming out onto the tail case of the engine which was magnesium and it said in the manual in the B-29 in 1945 that an uncontained engine fire could cause Wing separation within 90 seconds and these engines were they were a great engine they just weren't developed they just weren't refined so one of the best jokes that you're some of the vet the B-29 pilot veterans cell is they say that the joke is that most B-29 have more three engine time four engine time right we had engine failures overheating we had engines that just would you know catch on fire and so the crews had to get very good at learning how to deal with those emergencies and when you're you know a thousand miles from home and there are no suitable emergency landing sites the only option you have especially when you're out over miles and miles of water is to keep flying the aircraft as disabled as it is and continue to try and get home so that plagued the B-29 for sure you know a lot of these first raids and attacks they they have to fly in close formation they need the aircraft to work flawlessly they need the pressurization system to work so that they can fly high they need the bomb systems to release correctly they need the the Bombay systems you know the the doors and all these things to happen in the right sequence and I think when you had an aircraft that was rushed into production rushed to be finished rushed to the Battle Front and then put over the target they're going to have issues in addition the bombs from the b-29s would miss their targets by more than two kilometers damaging none of their intended targets but by luck they would accidentally destroy the Japanese secret police headquarters after this less than impressive debut the challenges would continue for quite a while as the strategy and aircraft maintenance of the B-29 were perfected this included another raid shortly after on June 15th of 1944 that targeted one of the southwestern most islands of Japan in the first strike on the country since the Doula raid more than two years prior in this raid three b-29s would be lost to enemy fire and of the 68 aircraft that took off from China only one bomb would actually hit an intended target more importantly this raid would completely exhaust the fuel storages from their Chinese airfields showing that this would likely be a major problem with maintaining supplies for future missions these early combat issues would plague the China and india-based groups early on but many of these problems would be remedied by the time the air bases were established in the Pacific where the B-29 would settle into a much more successful role at number three in the list we will look into one of the more unconventional roles that the B-29 played in the second world war a role of deception when the B-29 was still in development American commanders had planned to debut the super Fortress in combat over Europe striking German targets from air bases in Egypt but as the war went on and development dragged out by the time the B-29 was ready for combat the B-17 and B-24 had already established a large presence over Europe and there was no true need for the B-29 in the battle against Hitler but the Allied strategist did not want to let the Germans become aware of that so in early 1944 a B-29 by the name of hobo Queen made her way to England and stopped by multiple RAF air bases in a tour across England with with the B-29 only being used in the Pacific you know the the thought was because in the military you have competing thoughts competing Minds at the Pentagon level of people the the guys who run the European theater won all the newest technology from them the guys at the Japanese theater want all the newest technology for them and the immense distances that bombers had to fly in the Pacific is why the B-29 was specifically built for them you know for that mission the large capacity for the bomber to carry weapons a large ordinance loaded could carry made it ideal for Europe and its ability to get above the German Fighters and above the Flack to a great extent with its uh you know ability to operate so much higher it made it a great idea the part of the problem was we didn't have enough b-29s we just flat did not have enough so there was at least one I've heard more but at least one sent to Europe to send to England and it did it you know tourism bomber bases and all that and part of that was disinformation as we still do today making the enemy think you're going to do something when you're really doing something else the idea was they knew that there would be German spies and sympathizers that would see the airplane sitting there and at the time it was a wonder weapon kind of like the V1 or the V2 was to the German military this was our wonder weapon you know really hadn't been tested yet so part of it was to let the Germans see we do have new technology you're not just going to keep shooting b-17s and b-24s down we do have airplanes that y'all can't touch and then part of it was also to let the British see this is what we have this is what we're designing because we were already looking at the end of the war what was what was Europe going to look like after the war we knew the Soviets were going to go off on their own and we would all have one common Enemy at the end of the war and I think part of it was to let the British see here's here's what we're developing what are y'all doing this is one of the only olive drab b-29s that was ever created and can thus be easily identified by this Unique Look the olive drab and gray paint that the airplane was painted in a lot of people think that was done just so it could go to Europe that's not the case the first 80 b-29s I think that were built around 80. they were all painted olive drab and gray because that was a standard bomber colors and then you know they could fly so high above the threats and all that they needed the extra weight savings more than anything so they quit painting them same thing in Europe but the first b-29s that went into combat against the Japanese were painted gray and green like that this leaflet dropped by The Eighth Air Force over the Reich describes the new bomber that is now in England and was meant to put fear Into the Heart of German soldiers and civilians to decrease support for the war but the B-29 would never actually see combat in this theater of war at number two for the most part when people think of the B-29 they tend to relate it to World War II in the bombing of Mainland Japan but many often forget that the B-29 also served in the Korean War just a few years later and in this conflict the super Fortress would actually go face to face with the most advanced jet aircraft ever designed up to this point the Soviet mig-15 this tangle in the skies would occur in the early 1950s when the B-29 was brought to serve as a daytime bombing role for strategic Targets in Korea but this role would be short-lived when a new adversary began to appear in the skies for the Soviet Air Force the mig-15 the primary reason that the mig-15 was designed or should say one of them was to shoot down b-29s so that explains why it has a heavy duty Cannon as part of its front-end armament uh not just machine gun or machine guns but setting it up with a much larger caliber shell and uh so it was successful in shooting down b-29s because it was armed like that and because it was also a pretty uh pretty fast hard to detect airplane it could you know get in there pretty quick on a B-29 and they were successful in in shooting down b-29s so their design worked this jet fighter would become an icon of Air Combat for decades to come and was years ahead of its time it was a lethal dogfighter and an extremely difficult Target to shoot down so when the formations of b-29s began to be intercepted by this new plane the results were not good for the United States by the time Korea rolled around you know World War II had only been over for five years and we had done a lot of progress in the military as far as more airplanes and you're starting to get into Jets real heavily and everything which we had at the end of World War II but by the time Korea started we didn't have any long-range bombers same problem we had when World War II started we didn't have a long-range bomber that could carry large amounts of ordinance for very long ranges and we were operating out of Japan ironically the place we had bombed in 1945 we were operating b-29s out of Japan and out of Okinawa to bomb Korea bomb North Korea and the beach one time is ideal for that because as same thing with World War II it was a nice wintertime War a lot of the time in Korea these airplanes could fly high they could fly pressurized they were heated it was Creature Comforts for the crews and all that carrying an immense amount of ordinance all the way over there and hit the target and come back home and uh but they were used because there wasn't anything else you know we didn't have B-52s yet you know there was there would be 45 tornadoes and planes like that but they didn't have the capacity bomb load capacity and didn't have the range the B-29 you know at the end of World War II it had no comparison as far as other bombers same thing happened when when Korea started there was no bomber that compared to b29 so they pulled them all out of mothballs and painted the bottoms of them black so that they didn't show up a lot of them in World War II were painted black as well but uh the thought was we'll do like we did in World War II we'll fly over the enemy so high they can't get to us the problem with that was the mig-15 it was built and not only could the mig-15 get up to 45 000 feet it could do it a whole lot faster than anybody thought it could you know it had to be the mig-15 had 20 millimeter cannons or 30 millimeter cannons whatever they were uh packed a lot of a punch more than the Japanese Fighters did during World War II and so uh when the mig-15 came into combat against the B-29 we didn't know what to do we we couldn't defend ourselves against it except by pure luck because even the Gunnery system on the beach computerized Gunnery system it wouldn't adjust quick enough to match the jet speed and so that really was the B-29 obsolete 1950 1951. maybe in the respect that it wasn't a jet bomber but at the time it could still fly higher faster and further than any other jet but it was obsolete as far as defense went it was unable to defend itself and you'll see some pictures of b-29s that they took the 250 caliber machine guns out of the tail and they put 350s back there I've even some seen some that had two 20 millimeters back there done as field modifications just to try to give themselves a fighting chance and the B-29 bombing wiser did really well but loss wise it was I don't remember the exact figures but it was pretty invisible a lot of b-29s and more importantly a lot of Crews were lost due to the mig-15 being able to get to the B-29 which was not a problem in World War II b-29s were taken down at concerning rates and even more alarming their Gunners were not effective at all against this fast and maneuverable jet fighter after 28 b-29s were shot down in these daytime missions Air Force leaders had to take a step back and reassess their strategy the B-29 would shortly thereafter be moved to a primarily reconnaissance role for the conflict over Korea one more interesting note on the Superfortress over Korea however is that there was one Gunner that did in fact take down a mig-15 jet this occurred on December 5th of 1950 when a B-29 Gunner shot down a mig-15 over anju this was likely one of the only times in history that a jet was shot down by a defensive Gunner for the final spot in today's video our Focus will be on a mission involving the B-29 that would be quite different than all others it participated in this role would be one of Aid in a large-scale Endeavor entitled operation Swift Mercy for the entire duration of the war Japanese treatment of prisoners of war was horrendous and many terrible stories began to come to light following the war around 40 percent of all prisoners taken by Imperial Japan would die in captivity causes of death varied but the most common was malnutrition and starvation so as soon as the war ended United States commanders leapt into action as they realized that the survival of thousands of Americans could rest on their shoulders immediately large numbers of b-29s were outfitted from dropping bombs to instead Supply canisters of food medicine and clothes these super fortresses took to the skies across the island of Japan which had POW camps spread far and wide to Aid in operation Swift Mercy General Douglas MacArthur ordered that all Japanese officials must Mark the roofs of any pow buildings with the letters of PW so that the American Airmen in the b-29s and other aircraft could easily identify where they were to drop supplies when the war ended the Japanese still had an immense number of American prisoners I don't know the exact number but it was a lot and a lot of the the vast majority of them that survived the war and had survived prison camp they were not in good shape they had been starved they had been terribly mistreated um the the Germans is abysmal as the Germans were they treated their prisoners far better than they than the Japanese did at least as long as they had the supplies and the ability to the Japanese never cared from day one they they thought if you surrendered or were captured it was a sign of weakness and you deserve to die when whenever the war ended and we had to get all these prisoners out it was most important that you had to feed them first because most a lot of them couldn't even travel at that point and we didn't have a way to get to them all and everything so what they did was they had the Japanese as you said paint the roofs of the barracks with PW it's interesting they said PW instead of pow prisoner of war pow didn't come along until after World War II it was just prisoners of War PW so they painted that on the roofs and these b-29s they would paint PW on the bottom of the Wings and the top of the wings so that airplanes that saw them from the air would know all their dropping supplies and they would load the bombays up in some cases on the ones that were equipped they had Wing racks on a few and they would load up supplies on their food and water and stuff like medicine and stuff like that and clothes all this kind of stuff and they would fly down low over these Japanese prison camps and would would drop this stuff and the B-29 did it because the B-29 was there there was other airplanes that as as this project progressed some b-24s did it and stuff like that because they were able to station them closer to Japan where they had to range to get there but you're the Amoro prison camp which is one of the most well-known Japanese prison camps years ago when I was flight engineering the B-29 Fifi at an air show we did a ride with a guy Mr Green he had been a flight engineer on b-29s and he had gotten shot down there was a near moral prison camp and he told me that he always loved the B-29 he said but the the most memorable day of my life with the B-29 is when I saw it coming and over the over the gulf and knew it was dropping food he said because it had been so long since I had eaten anything that wasn't filled with lice and and Vermin he said seeing that B-29 come at me with all that food he said that was the greatest sight I'd ever seen in my life the modified bombers attempted to make it to every Camp possible dropping much needed supplies to the imprisoned allies until they were able to be liberated to the Japanese that was kind of the I don't know the biggest offense to their pride now these bombers that had burned their entire Homeland down and killed most of their population now they were coming in they're dropping food for the Americans but Americans being the kind of people they are a lot of them as they got better you know physically and were able to they started giving that food to the Japanese civilians there's lots of accounts of that of the Japanese civilians lining up in what was the prison camp because they didn't have any food either they were they were the Japanese civilians were treated as badly by their government as the American prisoners were and so yes we did Supply food to our prisoners but that in turn also ended up being supplied to the Japanese civilians so typical of America we wound up helping the people that we had to defeat perk first and and we did it in World War II we still do it today this no doubt saved the lives of thousands of starving soldiers who were eventually able to make it back home to their families and freedom please comment what plane I should cover next and please consider subscribing

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Keywords: B29 Superfortress, B29, B-29 Superfortress, B29 War Thunder, B-29 WWII, B29 Bomber, B-29 War Thunder, Superfortress, B17, B-29, IL-2 Sturmovik, IL2, Flight Sim, World War II Flight Sim, IL-2 Great Battles, B-29 Bomber, World War II Bombers, Dark Skies, B-17, IL-2 Highlights, IL-2 Flight Sim, Combat Flight Sim, War Thunder, Realistic, History Channel Dogfights, Historic, Documentary, Mark Felton, Yarnhub, TJ3 Gaming, wW2 Air Combat, B-17 Flying Fortress, B29 Fifi, b-29 Fifi

Id: h1_xZGK3doU

Length: 25min 45sec (1545 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 16 2022