Page 28 - Volume 10 Number 8

Wichita Builds the B-29
During 1943-1944, the “Peerless Princess of the Prairie” became the epicenter of Boeing’s struggle to give General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold the Superfortress bombers he needed to inflict horrific destruction upon the homeland of Japan.
by Edward H. Phillips
The Imperial Japanese Navy’s surprise attack on the United States military base at Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, galvanized isolationist America into the most formidable arsenal of war the world had seen up to that time. Although President Franklin D. Roosevelt believed Hitler’s Third Reich in Europe was the Allies’ primary adversary, he realized that the fight against Japan would have to be waged across the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. America’s goal, set forth in Roosevelt’s famous speech before Congress on December 8, was total victory over Germany, Italy and Japan.
As 1942 began, the United States was swept up in the process of rapidly transitioning from a nation at peace, to a nation at war on a global scale. Wichita, Kansas, had been building military airplanes since 1940, with Beech Aircraft Corporation, Boeing-Stearman, Cessna Aircraft Company and other smaller firms already hard at work when the first bombs fell upon Pearl Harbor’s “battleship row.” The military training aircraft being built in the city played a critical role by training thousands of much needed pilots, bombardiers, navigators and gunners as the Army and Navy expanded by leaps and bounds to “get men to the front” and start fighting the enemy.
Of all the weapons of war produced by the United States, one would emerge to stand tall above the others – the Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bomber. Although designed to operate at very high altitudes, the B-29’s most difficult mission would be fought on the plains of Kansas as Boeing struggled mightily to compress a five-year program into three, while making major modifications to the airplane on the assembly lines in Wichita. By war’s end, nearly 4,000 Superfortress bombers had been produced by three airframe companies – Boeing, the Glenn L. Martin Company and Bell Aircraft. The bombers built by these manufacturers eventually equipped 40 strategic bombing groups (21 located at forward combat bases) with more than 2,100 aircraft. During 1944-1945 raids by hundreds of the bombers would unleash death and destruction upon Japan’s major population centers, killing people by the tens of thousands and burning entire precincts to the ground. Finally, in August 1945, a lone B-29 would deliver the knockout blow that finally brought Japan to its knees and ushered in the Atomic Age.
First, however, some background on the B-29 program will be helpful in setting the stage for Wichita’s role in the overall initiative. Design and development of the
Superfortress began in 1939 when the Army Air Corps expressed its interest in a new heavy bomber to replace the B-17 “Flying Fortress” that had entered full-scale production. At the War Department in Washington, D.C., the Air Corp’s boss, Major General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, appointed Colonel Walter G. Kilner to form a committee to establish exactly what the Air Corps wanted in its next- generation heavy bomber. Late in 1939 Arnold received approval to
The Superfortress bristled with defensive armament, including four turrets with 0.50-caliber machine guns with 11,500 rounds of ammunition, and a 20mm cannon in the tail with 100 rounds. The turrets were remotely controlled through a sophisticated system of scanners. (WICHITA STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES)
AUGUST 2016