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Spent a week in Kansas and was lucky enough to find a little time to stop and see a B-29 that still flies. Got to sit in the navigator seat, crawl around and it struck me how amazing the men who flew them are. The plane is huge and yet some parts are so lightweight (they call the outside a skin for a reason- it’s like a thick soda can).
To anyone who served in any branch of the services, thank you. Monday is the day to commemorate you, but I wanted to start early.
Very cool! I’d love to be able to sit or better yet, take a ride In one of those things. Thank you to everyone who served!
That's a great shot. Thanks for posting that. The Superfortress was one of the 4 aircraft ( Stratojet, Canaberra, and the Sled) my dad was a member of crew for and the only one he actually flew on (tailgunner). Twice a week when I visit my mother, I see the early 50's newsprint photo in the frame of a 4'x3' completely perfect pencil drawing of the same photo, depicting the bellyflopped Superfortress my dad was on after it crashed. It got taken down not by flak or Korean Migs, but by a flock of geese they hit on approach that flamed both starboards. The bombardier died in the crash, the rest of the crew were all injured but survived.
The Superfortress is definitely a much more attractive aircraft intact and pristine. :)
Hope all the vets have a great day.
My dad took Aeronautic at Sacramento City College and was an aircraft mechanic in the US Navy in World War II.
He was stationed on the small island of Palmyra, very near Christmas Island, near the equator in the Central Pacific.
Imagine the great men who designed all these incredible aircraft that helped us win World War II?
Think about the American women and old men who built all the aircraft, tanks, ships and weapons too.
When you see an old man with White hair you never know what amazing stories he might have.
They were a different breed in my opinion.
My father signed up for the navy on December 9, 1941, on his birthday two days after Pearl Harbor. He told me how after basic training he was sent to Pearl Harbor and saw the entire thing first hand. He told me he never forgot how immense the destruction was. He was assigned to a fuel oil tanker, and his duty record looked like a history of the pacific campaign. He was in the Doolittle raid task force,
Midway, Corregidor, Marianas turkey shoot, Leyte gulf, Iwo Jima, and many smaller actions. In all that time his ship only once came under fire despite being a sitting duck.
We talked a lot over the years and I always was amazed how matter of fact he was about being such a part of history. Most everyone who was there seemed the same. These people saved the free world, they knew it-they did it and then they went home and went to work making America the shining light of the world.
And they made it seem easy when we all know it was anything but...
That's a great photo of a great aircraft. A B29 delivered the only two nuclear bombs used in the history of war, targeting Japan and ending the war in the Pacific. Lots of history there....
Such a magnificent machine. I would love to see a B29 in real life some day.
Nice plane. I didn’t realize there was a second flyable B-29 in the world...the other being the CAFs FiFi in Midland, TX. And while WWII was heck of a fight, we didn’t drop the bombs on Japan to end the war. It was already over - capitulation was a foregone conclusion. The B-29 fire bombing campaign killed far more people and destroyed far more of Janan’s industrial base (which was hard because much of it was interspersed with living and other work areas) than both atomic bombs combined. We dropped those bombs to show the Russians what we were capable of.