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With the endurance of the Superfortress, the crew could be airborne for up to 18 hours at altitudes of 32,000 feet where the temperature could drop to 50° below zero. In smaller bombers, the problem was less severe because of their limited range. During destruction testing of the Boeing 117 wing, it took 300,000 pounds of pressure to collapse the wing.Įarly on, Boeing wrestled with the problem of crew comfort in the Superfortress. Boeing had to devise a way to manufacture two wing spars which were the longest and heaviest Duralumin extrusions ever made. With the flaps retracted, the wing had very low drag, which permitted higher speeds. It had a set of flaps, which would increase the wing area by 350 square feet, for better control at slower speeds. When the wing design was finished, it was 141 feet long and had an area of 1,736 square feet. The Solution? Boeing designed its' own wing, designated the Boeing "117" wing. monster off any runway of reasonable length. Yet another would have low drag, good stall characteristics and not enough lift to get the 105,000 lb. Another would have low drag but wicked stall characteristics. Any given wing would have enough lift, only to have too much drag at cruising speed. A search for an "off-the-shelf" wing yielded nothing suitable.
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The first problem was finding a wing to lift the giant. (Photo: National Archives and Records Administration) On February 14, 1945, Warm breezes under a blue Kansas Sky, favored a vast crowd during the delivery ceremony of the 1,000th B-29 on the Boeing-Wichita flight apron.
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The YB-29s would be the "Service Test" aircraft. "-BO" was used for "Boeing-Seattle in order to avoid "-BS"). Fourteen of the first batch were designated "YB29-BW" (These last two letters in the designation were for the company name and location of the manufacturing plant. Within five months, and before a single piece of the XB-29 had been manufactured, the Army ordered 250 more B-29 aircraft.īefore the first B-29 ever flew, 1,650 were on order by the USAAF (In June 1941, the "US Army Air Corps" changed to the "US Army Air Forces"). After an inspection and approval by the USAAC, two prototype "XB-29-BO" aircraft and a static test airframe were ordered and the Boeing-Seattle plant shifted into high gear. 1 The specifications were approved in June and by the end of 1940, Boeing had completed a mock-up. When they were through, they sent the new specification to the Army Air Corps and redesignated it Boeing Model 345. It was originally designated Boeing Model 334 in March 1938 but, after taking a few suggestions from the British (who were then using a small number ofī-17Cs as Fortress Is for the RAF), Boeing began adding self-sealing fuel tanks, more armor, and state-of-the-art defensive armament amongst other refinements. Thus began the long, sometimes tragic journey which would culminate in the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, unquestionably the most formidable bombing aircraft of the Second World War. Army, Airplane, Bombardment, Specification For". Inside he found a thick document with a cover page, which began "U.S. He normally scanned all the envelopes before he read the letter, but this one caught his eye "War Department, U.S. Phil Johnson (president of Boeing Aircraft Co.) grabbed a cup of hot coffee and sat down at his desk to go through the morning mail.
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The development of the B-29 can be traced back to the XB-15 through theī-17 to meeet the USAAC requirement to carry 2,000 lbs of bombs more than 5,300 miles at 400 mph.