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(Squadron 6028) By Steve Birdsall

The design, production and testing of the B-29 Superfortress was one of the most notable achievements of American Industry. Less than five years after the Boeing Company submitted its design for the world's first truly strategic bomber, the B-29s were laying waste to Japan.

The B-29 was an airplane of superlatives...the world's first pressurized bomber, the world's heaviest production airplane, with the most powerful engines and highest wing loading.

The proof of the design's inherent excellence was the fact that all 3,960 Superfortresses differed little from each other, or from the basic design. In fact, when the first flight of the XB-29 took place on September 21, 1942, six­teen hundred B-29s had already been ordered.

The B-29 program did not run smoothly - there were production delays and bottlenecks, and problems which had to be solved as they arose. All these things cost time, and there was constant pressure, both political and military, to get the B-29s into action.

When the second flight test aircraft crashed in February 1943, killing test pilot Eddie Allen and his crew, the entire multi-million dollar program was in jeopardy. There were those of the opinion that the airplane should be cancelled, but others, in particular the commander of the Army Air Forces, General "Hap" Arnold, believed in the B-29 and fought for it. The Army Air Forces "took over" the project, and by the early months of 1944 Super­fortresses were rolling off the production lines at four factories. Boeing's first Wichita production aircraft, 42-6205, was accepted by the Air Force on October 7, 1943 and the company's first Renton-buill B-29A, 42-93824, was accepted on New Year's Day of the following year.

The other two companies building B-29s were Martin Aircraft at Omaha, Nebraska and Bell at Marietta in Georgia. Initially they produced five air­craft each under a Boeing Wichita contract, presumably from sub-assemblies shipped from Kansas. The first "all Georgia" Bell aircraft, 42-63352, was-accepted on December 30, 1943, while Martin's "first Omaha" B-29, 42-65202, was rolled out in May 1944.

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