The Manhattan Project, which built the atomic bomb, cost the United States roughly two billion dollars.
The B-29 Superfortress cost three.
It is the detail that most surprises people about the aircraft, and it is not a rhetorical flourish — the B-29 was the single most expensive weapons programme of the Second World War, more expensive than the bomb it would eventually carry. Understanding why explains almost everything about the machine.
An aircraft with a shirtsleeve environment
Bomber crews in 1943 flew at 25,000 feet in open, unheated aircraft, breathing through oxygen masks, wearing electrically heated suits, losing fingers to frostbite.
The B-29 was pressurised. Crews flew in ordinary uniform.
The problem was the bomb bay, which cannot be pressurised because it has to open. Boeing's solution was to pressurise the nose and the rear section separately and connect them with a padded tunnel running above the bomb bays — about ten metres long, just wide enough to crawl through. Crew members moved between the two halves of their own aircraft on their hands and knees.
Guns that aimed themselves
The second expensive idea was the defensive armament. Instead of gunners sitting in each turret, the B-29 had four remote-controlled turrets operated from sighting stations elsewhere in the aircraft, linked by an analogue fire-control computer that corrected for range, altitude, airspeed and temperature.
One gunner could take control of more than one turret. If a gunner was hit, another could take over his guns from a different part of the aeroplane. In 1944 this was close to science fiction, and it was a substantial part of the bill.
The engines that kept catching fire
The money did not solve everything. The Wright R-3350 engines were rushed into service and overheated badly. The crankcases were magnesium, which burns fiercely once alight and cannot be put out with a standard extinguisher. An engine fire could burn through a wing spar in under a minute.
More B-29s were lost to engine failures and fires than to Japanese fighters. Crews learned to climb slowly, level off to cool the engines, and watch the cylinder head temperature the way other crews watched the sky.
What three billion dollars bought
An aircraft that could carry nine tonnes of bombs 3,000 miles at 30,000 feet, above most of what was sent up to stop it. It ended the war in the Pacific, served in Korea, and was copied almost rivet for rivet by the Soviet Union as the Tupolev Tu-4 after three of them force-landed in Siberia.
Just under four thousand were built. Two survive in flying condition.
The model
COBI's Boeing B-29 Superfortress, set 5774, is a 1:48 model in the Historical Collection, with printed markings rather than stickers, a display stand and a plaque.
It is in stock and ships from our own shelves.
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