#kris-new

Understandable, and I respect you for sticking with her in that journey.

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees

The serious answer is that the B-29 was meant to be a huge leap forward in heavy bomber technology. Bigger, tougher, with more range and crew comfort than the B-17 and B-24, it was to absolutely rule the skies. The Superfortress program was enormously expensive. The B-29 program was more expensive than the Manhattan Project. Adjusted for inflation, developing the B-29 cost more than $43 billion in today’s dollars. (The Manhattan Project, also adjusted, comes in at about $29 billion). Each individual B-29 had a fatter price tag than a naval destroyer.

And for all that, the plane was a disaster. Its engines were fire-prone; many take-offs were aborted and abandoned bombers lit the night sky at the end of the runway. Intended to fly higher and faster to be immune to enemy fighters, the B-29 encountered high-speed air currents over Japan that reduced its true speed to about 60mph, forcing it to seek gentler airspace where it was just as vulnerable to enemy planes as everyone else.

It was like the heavy bomber version of Cyberpunk 2077: not only did it not live up to the hype, it was a huge disaster for a lot of people, and ultimately didn’t do much that its competitors couldn’t. Except for one thing:

It was big enough to carry nukes. Nothing else, in the US or elsewhere, could. And for that sole capability, the B-29 entered the history books forever.

I treat my twotter as how I treated my Facebook when I was 14 (I never shut up)