Aviation Ancestry - March 2012
B-29 Superfortress-Part III
By Scott Schwartz
Pilots-eye view of B-29’s dropping incendiary bombs over their targets. (Photo courtesy of the United States Air Force)Despite the inauspicious start to B-29 bombing operations during WWII, raids on Japan itself were being flown by June, 1944. The first of these were flown on the 15th of that month, when 94 China-based Superfortressesbombed the Imperial Iron and Steel Works in Yawata, Japan. This raid was merely a harbinger of things to come. With the successful invasion of the Marianas, B-29s based there would now be able to strike at the heart of Japan itself. And so it was, that on Nov. 24, 1944, more than 100 B-29s departed from the Marianas and struck the Musashino Aircraft factory in Tokyo.
From then on, things only became worse for the Japanese.
During the months that remained until the atom bombs were dropped on Japan, most of Japan’s major cities were the targets of bombing with high explosive and incendiary bombs.
Day and night raids wreaked havoc on Japanese cities. During one of the last “conventional” bombing raids, 836 B-29s attacked Japan on Aug. 1, 1945. By the time that the incendiary/high explosive attacks had ceased, 34,000 sorties had been flown, 160,000 tons of bombs had been dropped, and 371 B-29s had been lost.
One of the few major Japanese cities that had been spared from conventional attack was Hiroshima.
Delivering the atomic bomb was more complicated than simply hoisting the weapon into the bomb bay of a B-29 and taking off. The size, shape, and weight of the bombs required special modifications to the aircraft in connection with what became known as Project Silverplate. Silverplate was the code name given to the atomic bomb missions, themselves.
The modification program began with 17 B-29s being selected from the production line at random. From these aircraft, the remotely-fired gun systems were removed, and the turrets were faired over. The tail guns were left in place. Further, special bomb-racks, braces, shackles (designed by the British), release units (also designed by the British), and different bomb-bay doors were installed on these aircraft. Aside from the absence of the gun turrets and their associated sighting blisters, the SilverplateB-29s looked just like any other B-29.
Wendover Army Air Base was the site of the atomic bomb “drop” tests, which ran through most of 1944. Well, they didn’t drop actual atomic bombs, but rather inert devices meant to simulate the size and weight of the actual weapons, for practice. In December of that same year, the first unit ever formed for the purpose of delivering nuclear weapons – the 509th Composite Group – was activated by the US Army Air Forces.
Lest the reader think that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions were the only ones flown by the 509th during WWII, it should be noted that the group flew quite a few practice missions to deliver conventional weapons. On these missions, the group’s aircraft carried “counterfeit” markings of other units in order to maintain its low profile.
All of the practice drops, aircraft modifications, and training paid off, of course. Flying the a B-29 that he named for his mother – Enola Gay – Colonel Paul Tibbets Jr. and his crew dropped a 9,000 pound atomic bomb (which was referred to as Little Boy) on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. The date was Aug. 6, 1945. A second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, three days later, from a B-29 (named Bocks Car) flown by Major Charles Sweeney. Both cities were utterly destroyed, but the Japanese government didn’t make public its decision to surrender for six days. This was due primarily to haggling amongst Japanese government officials, as well as an attempted coup by fanatical officers who still wanted to fight to very nearly the last man, woman, and child. The idea was to inflict enough casualties on the Americans to force more favorable surrender terms. Nevertheless, Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan on Aug. 15, 1945. The final non-atomic B-29 mission had been flown on the previous day, when more than 740 B-29’s attacked various targets throughout Japan.
With the war over, large numbers of B-29s were ferried to bases in the United States for storage. Some were broken up for scrap, but many were put back into service with the newly-independent United States Air Force, during the late 1940s. The truth is that the B-29 was the only strategic bomber available while its replacements – namely the Convair B-36 and the Boeing B-47 – were under development.
Once the newer bombers became available, the scrapping of the B-29 fleet was begun in earnest. However, the fire of the scrapper’s torch was extinguished, when another conflict broke out during the early 1950s. This new war would require the Superfortressesto fly combat missions in the Pacific skies once again.
