AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 89 / 163

Plate 89 of 163 · Second World War · Long-range heavy bomber

Boeing B-29A Superfortress

B-29A Superfortress, painted as 44-61748 ‘It’s Hawg Wild’, IWM Duxford’s Boeing B-29A Superfortress, built at Renton, Washington, flown on night bombing raids over North Korea by the 371st Bomb Squadron, 307th Bomb Group from Kadena, Okinawa in 1952–53, used as a missile target at the Naval Weapons Center at China Lake, California from 1956, given to the Imperial War Museum by the US Navy in 1979 and flown across the Atlantic to Duxford as G-BHDK in March 1980, now displayed in the American Air Museum: a four-engined, pressurised long-range heavy bomber of 141 ft 3 in span with four Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone eighteen-cylinder radials in long underslung nacelles, a rounded, heavily framed glazed nose, a high-aspect-ratio wing, a tall fin with a long dorsal fillet, remotely controlled dorsal and ventral gun turrets, sighting blisters, a tail gun position and a twin-wheel tricycle undercarriage, shown standing level with the nose-wheel doors open: natural metal above gloss black undersides that rise to a scalloped edge on the fuselage and nacelles, a yellow nose band, wing tips and fin tip, the 307th Bomb Group’s black square ‘Y’ and the black serial ‘461748’ on the fin, ‘UNITED STATES AIR FORCE’ on the forward fuselage, star-and-bar insignia on the rear fuselage and under the wings, the charging-hog nose art on the starboard side, ‘748’ in yellow on the nose-wheel doors and black propellers with yellow tips.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as 44-61748 ‘It’s Hawg Wild’, IWM Duxford’s Boeing B-29A Superfortress, built at Renton, Washington, flown on night bombing raids over North Korea by the 371st Bomb Squadron, 307th Bomb Group from Kadena, Okinawa in 1952–53, used as a missile target at the Naval Weapons Center at China Lake, California from 1956, given to the Imperial War Museum by the US Navy in 1979 and flown across the Atlantic to Duxford as G-BHDK in March 1980, now displayed in the American Air Museum: a four-engined, pressurised long-range heavy bomber of 141 ft 3 in span with four Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone eighteen-cylinder radials in long underslung nacelles, a rounded, heavily framed glazed nose, a high-aspect-ratio wing, a tall fin with a long dorsal fillet, remotely controlled dorsal and ventral gun turrets, sighting blisters, a tail gun position and a twin-wheel tricycle undercarriage, shown standing level with the nose-wheel doors open: natural metal above gloss black undersides that rise to a scalloped edge on the fuselage and nacelles, a yellow nose band, wing tips and fin tip, the 307th Bomb Group’s black square ‘Y’ and the black serial ‘461748’ on the fin, ‘UNITED STATES AIR FORCE’ on the forward fuselage, star-and-bar insignia on the rear fuselage and under the wings, the charging-hog nose art on the starboard side, ‘748’ in yellow on the nose-wheel doors and black propellers with yellow tips. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (2.1 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the B-29A Superfortress modelled here.

History

The Superfortress

Early in 1940 the US Army Air Corps asked for a “hemisphere defense” bomber able to carry a ton of bombs more than 5,000 miles, far beyond the reach of the B-17. Boeing’s answer, the Model 345, was a much larger aircraft with a slender high-aspect-ratio wing for long range, four of Wright’s new eighteen-cylinder R-3350 engines, and a crew compartment at each end of the fuselage, pressurised and joined by a tunnel over the bomb bays, so that the crew could fly for hours at high altitude without oxygen masks. Its guns were in remotely controlled turrets aimed from sighting blisters through an analogue computer. The first XB-29 flew at Seattle on 21 September 1942, and the second crashed into a meat-packing plant the following February, killing Boeing’s chief test pilot Eddie Allen and his crew, after an engine fire.

The programme went ahead on a scale never tried before, with B-29s built by Boeing at Wichita and Renton, Bell at Marietta and Martin at Omaha before the design was finished. The engines were rushed into service and prone to overheating and fires, and the first B-29s were flown from India and China against Japan and Japanese-held targets in June 1944. From the end of 1944 they flew from new airfields on Saipan, Tinian and Guam in the Marianas, and in March 1945 Curtis LeMay switched them from high-altitude daylight raids to low-level night attacks with incendiaries, which burnt out much of Tokyo and most of Japan’s other large cities. On 6 and 9 August 1945 the B-29s Enola Gay and Bockscar dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

By the time production ended in 1946, 3,970 had been built. B-29s bombed North Korea throughout the Korean War, at night once Soviet-built MiG-15 jets made daylight raids too costly, and they were converted into tankers, weather and rescue aircraft and the mother ships for the Bell X-1 and other research aircraft. The RAF borrowed 87 as the Washington B.1 from 1950, to fill the gap until the V-bombers arrived, and the last American B-29s were retired in 1960.

This airframe

B-29A 44-61748 “It’s Hawg Wild”

44-61748The airframe modelled

44-61748 was built by Boeing at Renton, Washington, as a B-29A, and in March 1952 joined the 371st Bomb Squadron of the 307th Bomb Group at Kadena on Okinawa. As “It’s Hawg Wild” it flew night bombing missions over North Korea until the armistice in July 1953. In 1956 it was sent to the Naval Weapons Center at China Lake in California as a target, and it survived there in good enough condition that, when the US Navy gave it to the Imperial War Museum in 1979, it was made airworthy again. Registered G-BHDK, it was flown across the Atlantic by way of Maine, Newfoundland, Greenland and Iceland and landed at Duxford on 2 March 1980, the last B-29 to make the crossing. Severe corrosion in the bomb bay had to be repaired before it went on display, and it is now in the American Air Museum, the only complete Superfortress in Europe. The model shows it as displayed there: natural metal above gloss black undersides that rise to a scalloped edge on the fuselage and nacelles, a yellow nose band, wing tips and fin tip, the 307th Bomb Group’s black square “Y” and the serial “461748” on the fin, “UNITED STATES AIR FORCE” on the forward fuselage, star-and-bar insignia, “748” in yellow on the open nose-wheel doors and black propellers with yellow tips. Every photograph found shows the starboard side, so the hog nose art is painted on that side only and the port side’s markings are assumed to match; the hog is a simplified outline of the painting.

See it at IWM Duxford

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Superfortress in 2 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 163 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.