Engineers placed five gun turrets on the fuselage: a turret above and behind the cockpit that housed two.
To protect the Superfortress, Boeing designed a remote-controlled, defensive weapons system. For the crew, flying at altitudes above 18,000 feet became much more comfortable as pressure and temperature could be regulated in the crew work areas. More revolutionary was the size and sophistication of the pressurized sections of the fuselage: the flight deck forward of the wing, the gunner's compartment aft of the wing, and the tail gunner's station. This wing design allowed the B-29 to cruise at high speeds at high altitudes but maintained comfortable handling characteristics during slower airspeeds necessary during takeoff and landing.
#Enola gay exhibit splattered with red paint before opening plus
In April 1941, the Army issued another contract for 250 aircraft plus spare parts equivalent to another 25 bombers, eight months before Pearl Harbor and nearly a year-and-a-half before the first Superfortress would fly.Īmong the design's innovations was a long, narrow, high-aspect ratio wing equipped with large Fowler-type flaps. The Army was impressed with the Boeing design and issued a contract for two flyable prototypes in September 1940. Boeing, Consolidated, Douglas, and Lockheed responded with design proposals. It described an airplane that could carry a maximum bomb load of 909 kg (2,000 lb) at a speed of 644 kph (400 mph) a distance of at least 8,050 km (5,000 miles). Several years of preliminary studies paralleled a continuous fight against those who saw limited utility in developing such an expensive and unproven aircraft but the Air Corps issued a requirement for the new bomber in February 1940. Army Air Corps leaders recognized the need for very long-range bombers that exceeded the performance of the B-17 Flying Fortress. On August 14, 1945, the Japanese accepted Allied terms for unconditional surrender. Enola Gay flew as the advance weather reconnaissance aircraft that day. Sweeney piloted the B-29 Bockscar and dropped a highly enriched plutonium, implosion-type atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. Tibbets, Jr., in command of the Superfortress Enola Gay, dropped a highly enriched uranium, explosion-type, "gun-fired," atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. During the war in the Pacific Theater, the B-29 delivered the first nuclear weapons used in combat. Boeing installed very advanced armament, propulsion, and avionics systems into the Superfortress. Boeing's B-29 Superfortress was the most sophisticated, propeller-driven, bomber to fly during World War II, and the first bomber to house its crew in pressurized compartments.