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of airplanes, many of which would be built in Wichita. It was the first time Schaefer had heard the news, but the next morning he received an official directive from the War Department directing him to purchase, with the utmost haste, “jigs, dies, fixtures and all critical materials essential to production of the B-29 at Wichita.” As if that revelation was not stunning enough, the directive added that delivery of the first airplane was scheduled for February 1, 1943, only 21 months away.
The shocking news came at a time when the Wichita Division of Boeing was unprepared to tackle anything the size and complexity of the Superfortress. The factory was already hard-pressed to deliver hundreds of PT- 13-, PT-17- and N2S-series primary trainers that were desperately needed by the Air Corps and the United States Navy to train pilots. Far more shocking, however, was that no facility existed to build the B-29. Schaefer’s situation could be summed up like this: Wichita had been called upon to obtain tooling that did not exist, install
them in a phantom factory, manufacture the world’s most sophisticated bomber whose design and systems were constantly in flux, and build it with non-existent, unskilled labor that had no training or experience for such a task. Furthermore, General Arnold and the Air Corps wanted the first B-29 delivered on-time, or better yet, ahead of schedule.
The challenge facing Boeing-Wichita was breathtaking. To succeed, Schaefer and his management team would have to declare “war” on the B-29 itself. Wichita had been selected as the site to build the super bomber because it was located in the nation’s heartland, safely away from both coasts and enemy attacks. The B-17 was in production at Boeing’s main factories in Seattle, Washington, and there was no room there to handle production of the giant bomber. Southern California was already busy with aircraft manufacturing, and the East Coast was not a candidate. Fortunately, Boeing’s Wichita team had a nucleus of personnel that could tackle the task. Still, the Air Corp’s rigid timetable coupled with the sheer scope of the program caused many people to doubt it could be done.
The first step was building a factory whose square footage boggled the imagination. In June 1941, ground was broken for a huge manufacturing and assembly complex designated as Boeing-Wichita Plant II. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December, the pace of construction accelerated significantly and the initial part of the factory was completed by the Cleveland,
General Henry H. Arnold shakes hands with J. Earl Schaefer on January 11, 1944, at Boeing’s sprawling Plant II facility in Wichita, Kansas. Next to them is B-29A number 175 – the last bomber Arnold wanted to activate the 20th Air Force. Arnold’s inscription on the fuselage reads: “The end of a good job splendidly done, thanx from the AAF.”
On November 11, 1944, the crew was forced to land the bomber in the Soviet Union and remained there until the end of the war. Arnold’s B-29, however, eventually served as a template for the Tupolev Tu-4 heavy bomber. (WICHITA STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES)
28 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
AUGUST 2016