That is mind blowing.

People ooh and aah over that stupid ME262 that didn't even make a dent in the outcome of the war but that thing pales in comparison when it comes to how technologically advanced the B29 was. A computer augmented defensive guns system that gave it an 11 to 1 kill to loss ratio against enemy fighter's, that's higher than the P51's 10.2 to 1 kill to loss ratio that was sent to escort B29's. First bomber in the world that all were factory built with radar for bomb aiming when optical aiming wasn't possible due to visibility issues. Enough electronic equipment on board that they could be sent on electronic surveillance mission's. First mass production high altitude pressurized bomber. Highest flying and fastest heavy bomber of the war. A proper flight engineer's station. The list just goes on and on with it.

B29 obsolete 6 years after introduction.

Even today it's functionally a spaceship, to think, as you say, that barely 40 years prior aircraft were made of wood and fabric it's amazing.

People say that this is "mind blowing". I don't think so. It doesn't diminish the accomplishments of all individuals involved in the advent of flight. But if you look at the curves regarding aircraft, automobiles, locomotives, wireless communications, computing, etc... this is the human condition compounding itself once knowledge was commodified and easily distributed.

😂❤

The tunnels or the tail gunner position was uncomfortable?

Uncomfortable compared to what?

Uncomfortable compared to a dc6? Idk

@@BoleDaPole I was thinking first class in a British Airways 747, but yeah.

He could talk to his buddies.

Maybe he like being alone🤘

@@briancooper2112 yeah, they did have intercom ...

I met one in the 70s, and liked the stories he said from B 17 to 29

@@jamesgetz8945 history has always fascinated me

Thanks for sharing that story. For young fellas who grew up in the poverty of the 1930's seeing a B-29 for the first time, must have been like seeing a spaceship. The prospect of crashing into Japan, or the ocean, must have been a daunting concern.

My father was also a B-29 navigator. I have his dress tunic, binoculars and 1911A1 pistol. He hated the B-29 and the lies the Air Corps told about it. Operational losses claimed more B-29's and their crews than did the Japanese. Engine fires and runaway props were the most common failures and dads plane experienced both over time. Only the experience and skill of the AC saved the plane. We lost dad in 2007.

I've read that after testing, the highest scoring candidates were slated for navigator! And you have his genes!

I volunteer at a non-profit airport with a man who is 89. He wasn’t old enough to fight in wwII but was in the Air Force in the 50s and helped fly several B-29s across country to be decommissioned. He told me the same thing, that he’d always take naps in the tunnel.

@@CarburetorThompson I like hearing stories about the old timers! 😀

That's a name that you don't hear too often.

Did he say why exactly he declined? Fear of residual radiation from the bomb, feeling it was in poor taste or not wishing to relive bad memories?

​@GhostRider659 there is no "residual radiation". Use common sense ya douche and you get a few reasons why a ww2 vet wouldn't want to revisit something from ww2. My grandpa broke down in France when he landed at the airport. That was in 99, more than 50 years after the war. Those guys saw atrocities in person that you don't understand what it's like to go thru until you have been in it yourself. In 2016 the last year of my grandpa's life when dementia was at its worst, where did he think he was? Back in ww2 Europe. Don't ask dumb questions.

Curious to see exactly how they accessed the bomb bay to arm the bombs.

@@Roddy556 Same way Major Kong got in there. They depressurize as they approach the combat zone.

@@JohnDoe-fu6zt is there a little hatch the open in case they want to go for a bomb ride?

​@@Roddy556 Of course, how else could they ride it down waving a cowboy hat?

@@Roddy556They were able to open and access it. In fact, one of the problems with “Little Boy” was that it was assembled correctly so the crew aboard the “Box Car” had to take the bomb out and fix it mid-flight. 😊

No. The development + manufacture + support + deployment + use of ~3000 B-29's cost more than the A-bomb development to the stage of 4 usable prototypes. Not in any way an equivalent comparison.

Maybe. The bombardier once they reached altitude went down the tunnel and armed each of the bombs. After they cleared bombing run and out of range of flak went back to the bomb bays with a face mask and small O2 bottle, and, without a parachute on, stood on some kind of ledge, holding on, kicked out any bombs that failed to release, mostly due to ice. Turns out Kadena is tropical and it rains, and at 19,000’ over the Yalu it’s freezing cold. If your pilot was concerned about getting lost over the ocean the co-pilot and the bombardier navigated too, including shooting the stars if night. Pilot looks at results to see all three are close, then uses the navigator’s results to steer by. Mostly watching for possibility of co-pilot and bombardier having close results and navigator being way off. I don’t know that ever happened, but caution required. Occasionally logging all the standard 15-minute checks at the flight engineer’s station, under normal cross training regime, although maybe only on training missions. I’m not sure. And for the couple hours over the peninsula watching for MiGs, and occasionally firing at them if not on final bomb run. Noting any trains or trucks seen over enemy territory for debrief session. With 0.45 on, escort camera with similarly armed sergeant in Jeep to photography. Debrief, after the required drink of course. Eat. Then drink heavily till you can sleep. Even after being up maybe twenty-two hours fear makes sleep difficult and restless without the booze. Oops, forgot another one. On takeoff be ready to open bomb bays and salvo bombs if you lose an engine. At combat load you need 500’ of elevation to have time for this to happen. Don’t have 500’, crew dies.

@@billsmith5109 You are right, I did not consider any of that! I was just thinking of some ww2 footage, where B-29s are flying across the Pacific and what a view the bombardier had of the ocean! I did read Leonard Cheshire's biography, where he marvelled at being in a warplane at 35,000 feet, wearing normal clothes. Very different from 12,000 feet, in winter, over Germany....

They had no intention of "winning" WW2 by themselves. Nor of "Defeating" the USA. They were never going to TRY to invade any of the "Western" homelands in force. Winning for them, was knocking out the American ability to interfere with Japan gaining control of southern Asia. And without the Bomb, ( which the Japanese had no idea about ) and if the U.K. and Commonwealth had made an armistice with hitler and Italy, which they may well have been forced to do, the American forces may very well have been insufficient to both protect against hitler, AND invade the Japanese Empire. When they attacked, the Battle for Stalingrad was not decided yet. The British and Commonwealth troops had had a string of defeats. If they had lost North Africa, which they almost did, Spain was poised to enter the war on the side of the fascists. If hitler had knocked Russia out of the war, or forced it to sue for terms, AND the Japanese had of got the American carriers, things may well have gone past the point that the Americans COULD risk the full scale destruction of Japan with conventional weapons. It was a dumb gamble, but no part OF their gamble was "winning WW2".

@@MartinMcAvoy Maybe they floated up that high on way home. Ship much lighter after dropping combat overload of bombs and most fuel gone. Burn two thirds on way out, one third on way back to Kadena. Only once, bombardier gets on intercom, asks pilot how long he’s been asleep. They’re asleep. So is everyone else. Not good. Ship just flying itself south across the Pacific. The downside of longer range. Getting up at 0001 or more commonly 0200 doesn’t get you much rest. Stress. The long hours of those massively loud engines just a couple dozen feet away.

Old chain email joke: Mistakes a certain toothbrush-moustached Austrian made during WWII #4175: Saying "The US has only 300 times the industrial capacity of Japan. What are you, chicken?" to Tojo.

I once read that a member of Stalin's copy team; when he came across a body patch, made an exact copy of it out of fear.

I doubt soviets B29 had computer fire control system and sophisticated. electronics as original. Soviet concorde was rubbish

@@Eric-kn4yn The French sabotaged the Tu-144 with skid marks...

​​​@@hoilst265 BS nice try comrade

That has to be a joke, right?. Even my girlfriend, who is crazy petite, has shoulders that are 17 inches across.

​@@uncletiggermclaren7592no, definitely not a joke. He did the barrel crawl two or three years ago. As did many battleship sailors in their day. You'd be told to put on your work clothes and told to crawl through the barrel. There's pictures of sailors sticking their heads poking out of the guns pointed up at an angle to the sky. I'm sure I could do the crawl, even at 43 and 6 f, the human body is quite foldy.

@@Salty_Balls How wide are your shoulders ?. Mine are 19 inches, so it is simple fantasy to imply I could get into a 16 inch tube. Naked, I wouldn't have fit even in the Biggest Rifle, on Yamato-dono. And I have met MANY American Marines who make my shoulders ( and belly) look petite. You say you have seen it, so I will just remain skeptical, but will go looking for all these photos you talk about.

@@Salty_Balls OK, went and saw someone do it. I stand corrected. Be interesting to see his size compared to me.

@@uncletiggermclaren7592 I'm an electrician, I'm used to very tight spaces in attics and crawls spaces. I've been in spots I was convinced were impossible to get into and figured I'd have to be cut outta. But somehow always manage and I'm 6ft and 200lbs. One of my helpers in the past was a firefighter and he said part of their training was crawling through a really confined tube and learning to deal with it. What he described to me sounded like torture, even compared to the barrel crawl.

Better that than jap 20mm shells!

Incorrect: it was MORE expensive than the Manhattan Project.

@@russellupsumgrub9633 Thank you

I was going to ask if you were a fat kid, but I better not. 😂 I'm a fat man nowadays. 😂

@@redtobertshateshandles I am too, nowadays. Then I was very weedy. I can remember thinking how did adults do this? Oh the good old days when I could bend over and still breathe!

That "guy" was Slim Pickens. Famous character actor who also appeared in "Blazing Saddles" among many other movies of the time.

@@johngaither9263 Or Major Kong, to give the character's name.. 😁

One B-29 was sent to England just to confuse the Germans. It did not fly combat missions but was parked and flown where German agents could observe and then report on it.

With or without brakes! 😀

​​​@@MartinMcAvoy B 36 longer tunnel.

Basically a mechanic's creeper for crawling under cars.

The crew had warm flight suits often electrically heated similar to the B17 and B24. It is just a lot nicer to not have to be breathing through a mask and fighting the cold (which could get to -45 ) all the way from base to target and back.

​​@@ret7army over target B29 was not pressurised ?

​@@Eric-kn4ynNo, it was depressurized before reaching a combat zone. Breaching a pressurized fuselage would result in explosive decompression.

@@Eric-kn4yn It would be too dangerous if the plane got bullet holes while it was pressurized. You saw what happened to the Boeing plane when that dummy door blew off? The crew on a B-29 wore heated flight suits like the B-17. Needed oxygen masks when over the combat area.

Ringling Brothers Circus still does it.

yep xD

My understanding is the circular cross section tunnel was replaced with a modified tunnel with a flatter bottom. The revised tunnel was needed to increase the bomb bay size.

Thanks that’s the best answer I’ve heard - makes sense as there was not much room but there had to be an added cross-support to allow the overhead latch. Thought the tunnel might have removed but then there were stories of crews going back and forth.

@@WWIIUSBombers I remember seeing Colonel Tibbets being interviewed and saying that after the bombing of Hiroshima, he had not slept for 24 hours, so he handed over control to Captain Lewis and found a bunk to take a sleep. So the Enola Gay must have had a connecting tunnel, if modified. The Colonel said he was tired and slept well....

It was introduced on B36 if memory serves.

@@xandervk2371 B36 tunnel much longer.

​​@@xandervk2371B36 longer tunnel.

Dad said they wore heavy mittens. Inside these they wore gloves if they needed to do something that required more dexterity. Inside these they wore silk gloves in case they needed even more dexterity for a few moments. They never took off the silk. At least bombardiers followed this plan.

@@billsmith5109 Just to confirm, you are talking about the B-29 rather than the B-17?

@@gort8203 B-29, though Dad did fly in B-24’s in WWII. He did say over N. Korea it was regularly -40f at altitude.

exactly

Debatable.

@@Eric-kn4yn We have the numbers, you know.

All the guns on the B-29 were remotely operated, 'computer' controlled, and very effective.

My father said that by late in the war when he was present that Japanese fighters would not enter a formation of B-29s except to Kamikaze into the lead aircraft. They would stand off and lob 20mm cannon rounds toward the planes but were not very good shots or pilots either for that matter.

Hopefully it is clear releasing cabin pressure is equivalent to increasing cabin altitude