The Heroes We Needed: The B-29ers Who Ended World War II and My Fight to Save the Forgotten Stories of the Greatest Generation
“For anyone interested in the B-29 and the men who flew it during the closing period of the war in the Pacific, this is a fascinating and deeply personal book . . .”
Aviation history, particularly military aviation, draws enthusiasts that spend years researching a single aircraft and its history. This new volume is truly a labor of love for its author who has spent over 20 years researching the biggest bomber of World War II and the young men who flew it on hazardous missions over Japan.
The conception of the B-29 began shortly after World War II started as the U.S. grappled with the stunning use of airpower by the German Luftwaffe and the need to greatly expand both aircraft technology and production capacity to meet the likely demands of a global conflict. The Army Air Force realized they would need a new bomber that could fly much higher and farther than existing aircraft to conduct missions over the vast stretches of the Pacific.
While both the Army Air Force and American industrial capacity grew at a rapid pace, there were numerous technical and management growing pains as both struggled to keep up with the demands of a rapidly expanding air armada. The Boeing B-29 Superfortress was truly an engineering and management marvel that could only have been built during the exigency of a world war. The author describes the crash design, testing, and ultimate deployment of this aircraft into combat as the second most ambitious technical program of the war after the atomic bomb.
The author certainly makes a compelling case describing the significant impediments that occurred as Boeing and the Army Air Force pushed the limit of piston aircraft technology. This was most apparent in the engines used in the B-29. The ultimate design in radial piston aircraft engines, the 18-cylinder Wright R-3550 engines tried to provide an extraordinary amount of horsepower in a lightweight engine. The challenges in metallurgy and design created enormous teething problems for the engine that took months to completely correct and made the aircraft hazardous to fly even under non-combat conditions.
The only flyable prototype XB-29 crashed during a crucial test flight in 1943, killing all 11 Boeing aircrew. At any other time in history this might have been a fatal blow to the further development of the aircraft, but the Army Air Force didn’t hesitate to not only begin an investigation into the cause of the accident, but to continue production of more prototypes. In addition to the engine issues, the aircraft would continue to be plagued with teething problems even as the first aircrews began to assemble to train on the aircraft.
The author has collected a number of these compelling oral histories and interviews. These aircrews were incredibly young for the responsibilities and risks they volunteered to face. The typical B-29 crew consisted of four officers and seven enlisted aircrew, many of whom had never been in an airplane before the war. They were more likely to die in a crash, be forced down somewhere over the long stretches of the Pacific with no hope of rescue, or in the worst case, bail out over Japan where they were likely to be tortured and killed by the Japanese.
Moving into the operational history of the aircraft in 1944–1945, the author highlights a little-known aspect of the first raids on Japan conducted by these bombers. Although typical histories of World War II in the Pacific highlight the U.S. invasion of the Marianas Islands and their subsequent development as B-29 bases for the strategic bombing of Japan, the first raids on Japan by the newly formed 58th Bomb Wing were actually launched from bases in China. These raids took a huge logistical effort that could only be accomplished by the U.S. as every drop of fuel and all bombs and spare parts had to be flown from India over the Himalayan Mountains to specially constructed airbases.
Even when the B-29s started to fly en masse over Japan from their new bases on Saipan and Tinian it wasn’t until General Curtis LeMay took over command of the XXI Bomber Command and developed the weapons and tactics to decimate Japanese cities that the B-29 began to have a telling effect on Japanese morale and war production. But even then, it was unlikely the Japanese would surrender without a bloody and protracted invasion of the Japanese home islands. The author then relates how the B-29 fit into the Manhattan Project as the delivery platform for the first atomic bombs since only an aircraft with the carrying capability and range of the B-29 could have dropped the bombs that ended the war.
The book is very well illustrated with a number of rarely seen photographs and diagrams showing the complexity of the aircraft. The author also provides some anecdotes of his own journey of discovery of the aircraft and the men who flew it. For anyone interested in the B-29 and the men who flew it during the closing period of the war in the Pacific, this is a fascinating and deeply personal book dedicated to the Greatest Generation aviators that risked their lives in these aircraft.