Boeing B-29
Superfortress
The most advanced bomber of the Second World War — a pressurised, computer-aimed, very-long-range machine that firebombed Japan, delivered the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and cost more to build than the atomic bomb itself.
The bomber that out-cost the atomic bomb
When the US Army Air Corps drew up its requirement for a pressurised, very-long-range “hemisphere-defence” bomber in 1939–40, it was asking for an aircraft years ahead of anything then flying. Boeing’s answer, the Model 345, became the B-29 Superfortress — a four-engine giant that could carry ten tons of bombs across the Pacific, fly above 30,000 feet in a heated, pressurised cabin, and defend itself with remote-controlled turrets aimed by an early analogue computer. Almost every system on it was new, and almost every one had to be made to work at once.
That ambition came at a staggering price. The B-29 programme is commonly estimated at around $3 billion — more than the roughly $2 billion spent on the Manhattan Project, making it the single most expensive US weapons programme of the war. Its development was troubled: the prototype first flew in September 1942, but in February 1943 the second aircraft caught fire in the air and crashed, killing Boeing’s chief test pilot Eddie Allen and everyone aboard. The culprit — overheating, fire-prone Wright R-3350 engines — would dog the type throughout its career.
From bases in the Marianas the B-29 carried the strategic air war to the Japanese home islands. Under General Curtis LeMay the campaign shifted from high-altitude “precision” raids to low-level night incendiary attacks that burned out large areas of Japan’s cities; the Tokyo raid of 9–10 March 1945 remains the deadliest air raid in history. On 6 and 9 August 1945 two B-29s, Enola Gay and Bockscar, dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These events are recorded here soberly, as history — the aircraft was the instrument of a campaign whose human cost was immense.
01The B-29 Superfortress and the birth of the very-long-range bomber: why America bet $3 billion on it
The B-29 was conceived before the United States entered the war, when planners feared they might have to strike distant enemies from bases far away. The specification demanded range, altitude and bomb load far beyond the B-17 — and pressurisation so crews could operate for hours above the weather and most defences. Meeting it required a new wing, new engines, new turrets and a new fire-control system all at once, and the aircraft was ordered into mass production “off the drawing board” before testing was complete.
The gamble worked, but only just. The R-3350 engines, the guns and the pressurisation all needed fixing in the field, and the “Battle of Kansas” in early 1944 saw crews rebuilding finished bombers by hand outdoors in winter to get them combat-ready. For all its cost and trouble, the Superfortress gave the United States a strategic reach no other air force could match — and it shaped the post-war bombers and tankers that followed.
What makes it special
A pressurised cabin and computer-aimed guns
The B-29 was among the first bombers with pressurised crew compartments, letting its ~11 men work in shirtsleeves above 30,000 ft. Rather than pressurise rotating turrets, Boeing gave the gunners sighting stations and a General Electric central fire-control system — an analogue computer that remotely aimed small streamlined turrets, correcting for ballistics, lead and parallax in real time.
Range, payload and altitude no bomber matched
Built for “very long range,” the Superfortress could carry up to 20,000 lb (~9,000 kg) of bombs to targets well over a thousand miles away and cruise above most fighters and flak. That reach is precisely what made the trans-oceanic bombing of the Japanese home islands from the Marianas possible — a capability no other WWII aircraft could offer.
The Wright R-3350: power, and fire
Four Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone twin-row radials, ~2,200 hp each with twin turbo-superchargers, gave the B-29 its performance — but they ran dangerously hot. The rear cylinders overheated, and magnesium engine components could ignite and burn through a wing spar in seconds. Engine fires cost crews their lives in testing, training and combat.
02The B-29’s remote gun turrets: how a computer aimed the Superfortress’s guns
Most of the B-29’s defensive guns were not held by the men who fired them. Gunners sat at sighting stations — in the nose, an upper “barber-chair” position, two side blisters and the tail — and the General Electric central fire-control system slaved the aircraft’s four remote turrets to their sights. An analogue computer corrected each solution for gravity and air resistance, for the target’s movement, and for the parallax between sight and turret. According to the Smithsonian, the system delivered accuracy at far greater range than hand-aimed guns, and a gunner could hand control of a turret to another station — even automatically if he was incapacitated.
03The B-29’s Wright R-3350 engines: the fire risk that killed crews
The R-3350 was rushed into service and never fully shed its reputation for catching fire. Its rear cylinders ran too hot, and flammable magnesium in the crankcase and other parts meant that once an engine fire started it could burn through the wing structure before the crew could react. The flaw killed Boeing test pilot Eddie Allen and his crew when the second XB-29 came down in Seattle on 18 February 1943, and caused losses throughout the war. Revised cowl-flap procedures, better baffling and constant maintenance tamed the problem, but engine reliability remained a worry for as long as the type flew.
Full specifications
Baseline: figures below are for the Boeing-built B-29 of 1944–45 with Wright R-3350-23 engines and the standard eleven-man crew. Where the Renton-built B-29A or the stripped B-29B differ, the difference is given in grey. Published B-29 numbers vary between wartime pilot manuals, post-war summaries and museum data, and operating weights drifted upward through the production run, so treat single-decimal precision with caution.
Dimensions & weights
- Crew
- 11 typical pilot, co-pilot, bombardier, navigator, flight engineer, radio operator, radar operator, two or three gunners at the sighting blisters and a tail gunner; 10 to 14 carried depending on mission and variant
- Length
- 30.18 m 99 ft 0 in
- Wingspan
- 43.05 m 141 ft 3 in; B-29A 43.36 m / 142 ft 3 in with its redesigned wing centre section
- Height
- 8.46 m 27 ft 9 in to the top of the fin
- Wing area
- 161.3 m² 1,736 sq ft; B-29A 159.8 m² / 1,720 sq ft
- Empty weight
- 33,800 kg 74,500 lb; the B-29B, with turrets, sighting stations and ammunition deleted, came out roughly 2,300 kg / 5,000 lb lighter
- Loaded weight
- 54,430 kg 120,000 lb, typical combat gross weight
- Max takeoff weight
- 60,560 kg 133,500 lb; heavier overload departures were nonetheless flown from the Marianas with full fuel and incendiaries
- Internal fuel
- ~36,140 litres ~9,548 US gal maximum, wing tanks plus bomb-bay auxiliary tanks; the wing tanks alone held roughly 30,900 litres / 8,170 US gal, and one bomb bay was routinely given over to fuel on the longest missions
Performance
- Max speed
- 575 km/h 357 mph at 30,000 ft (9,150 m); the stripped B-29B was about 10 km/h / 6 mph faster
- Cruise speed
- 350 km/h 220 mph at 25,000 ft (7,620 m)
- Rate of climb
- 4.6 m/s 900 ft/min at sea level at combat weight; the climb to 25,000 ft took the better part of three quarters of an hour, burning fuel that shortened the mission
- Service ceiling
- 9,710 m 31,850 ft; lightly loaded aircraft worked above 10,000 m / 33,000 ft, where crews met the jet stream over Japan and precision bombing largely failed
- Combat radius
- ~2,575 km ~1,600 miles with a useful bomb load — the number that made the Marianas-to-Japan mission possible at all
- Ferry range
- ~9,000 km ~5,600 miles maximum ferry range, clean and without bombs
- Takeoff run
- 1,650 m 5,400 ft ground roll at maximum weight in still air; the Marianas bomber strips were cut to 2,440 m / 8,000 ft precisely because a fully loaded B-29 needed the room
- Landing run
- 1,070 m 3,500 ft at normal landing weight with full flap and brakes
- Bomb load
- 2,270 kg typical — ~9,070 kg maximum 5,000 lb was the usual load on long high-altitude precision runs to Japan; ~20,000 lb was the maximum over short ranges; the low-level night incendiary sorties of 1945 typically carried 5,400–7,300 kg / 12,000–16,000 lb of firebomb clusters
Propulsion & systems
- Engines
- 4 × Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone, turbosupercharged 18-cylinder twin-row air-cooled radials (R-3350-23, -23A and -57 in the main production blocks), each fed by two General Electric exhaust-driven turbosuperchargers
- Power each
- 1,640 kW 2,200 hp at takeoff
- Engine reliability
- A serious and lethal weakness in early service This has to be said plainly: the R-3350 was dangerously unreliable when the B-29 entered service. It overheated, swallowed valves and caught fire — and because crankcase and accessory-section components were magnesium, an engine fire could become a magnesium fire that no extinguisher could put out and that could burn through a wing spar in minutes, taking the wing off. Engine fires killed crews in development, in training and on operations: the second XB-29 prototype went down at Seattle on 18 February 1943 after an engine fire, killing Boeing test pilot Eddie Allen and his crew as well as people on the ground. Cowl-flap, baffling, oil-feed and fuel-injection changes reduced the problem through 1944–45 but never entirely cured it.
- Propellers
- 4-blade Hamilton Standard constant-speed 5.05 m / 16 ft 7 in diameter, fully feathering; Silverplate aircraft used reversible-pitch Curtiss Electric propellers to shorten the landing roll
- Pressurised crew compartments
- Forward and aft cabins joined by a tunnel, plus a pressurised tail station A genuine first for a production bomber. The forward compartment carried pilot, co-pilot, bombardier, navigator, flight engineer and radio operator; the aft compartment carried the fire-control gunners and the radar operator; the tail gunner sat in a third, separate pressurised cell. The two main compartments were connected by a padded crawl tunnel roughly 10 m / 33 ft long running above the two bomb bays. The bomb bays themselves were left unpressurised, so bombs could be released at altitude without dumping cabin pressure. In normal cruise the crew worked in shirtsleeves without oxygen masks at heights where earlier bombers froze; the price was that a single shell or blister failure could explosively decompress the cabin.
- Remote-controlled gun turrets
- General Electric central fire-control system with analogue computers Four remotely operated turrets, plus the tail guns, aimed from transparent sighting blisters rather than from the turrets themselves. Each sight drove an electromechanical analogue computer that solved the gunnery problem continuously: the parallax between the gunner's blister and the turret metres away, the lead needed for a crossing target, gravity drop and bullet ballistics, and corrections for the bomber's own airspeed, altitude and air temperature. Control of a turret could be handed between stations, so one gunner could fight two or more turrets at once, and the top gunner acted as fire-control coordinator. It was genuinely advanced — a computerised, networked defensive system a decade ahead of common practice.
- Defensive guns
- 12 × 12.7 mm M2 Browning .50 in guns in four remote turrets and the tail position; the forward upper turret carried four guns on the B-29A and later blocks. Many early aircraft also mounted a 20 mm M2 cannon in the tail beside two .50s; it was widely removed because its trajectory did not match the machine guns and it jammed. The B-29B kept only the radar-directed tail guns.
- Radar
- AN/APQ-13 3 cm ground-mapping and blind-bombing radar in a retractable radome between the bomb bays, developed from the H2X; 315th Bombardment Wing B-29Bs carried the higher-definition AN/APQ-7 Eagle, and AN/APG-15 gave the tail guns radar direction
- First flight
- 21 September 1942 XB-29 prototype from Boeing Field, Seattle, flown by Eddie Allen
- Service entry
- 1944 first combat mission on 5 June 1944 from Indian bases against Bangkok; first raid on the Japanese home islands on 15 June 1944; Marianas-based operations from late 1944
- Built
- ~3,970 by Boeing at Wichita and Renton, Bell at Marietta and Martin at Omaha; production ran to 1946 and totals differ by a handful between sources depending on whether cancelled and converted airframes are counted
- Unit cost
- ~US$639,000 the period figure usually quoted for a 1945 airframe, and one to treat loosely: unit cost fell steeply as production scaled, and accounting conventions differed. The B-29 programme as a whole cost roughly US$3 billion in wartime dollars — more than the Manhattan Project.
- Cost per flight hour
- ~US$10,000–15,000 a modern warbird figure, not a wartime one, and extraordinary by any measure. Only one B-29 is currently airworthy — Doc, restored at Wichita and flying since 2016 — after FIFI, the Commemorative Air Force aircraft that carried the type alone for decades, stood down from flying. Four R-3350s consume on the order of 1,500 litres / 400 US gal of avgas an hour, and fuel is the smaller half of the problem: the type's engines, magnetos and cylinders are hand-made or salvaged, an engine change is a five-figure event, and the operators fund flying through tour stops, ride revenue and donations. Published hourly figures are operator estimates and vary widely with how overhaul reserves are counted.
04The B-29 Superfortress’s cost: the most expensive US weapons programme of WWII
The Superfortress was extraordinarily expensive to develop and build. The programme is widely estimated at around $3 billion in wartime dollars — more than the roughly $1.9–2 billion spent on the Manhattan Project — which made it the costliest US weapons programme of the Second World War, more expensive than the atomic bomb it was built to carry. Unit prices varied by model and year: one museum cites a 1944 figure near $605,000, with averages across the run put closer to $900,000. These totals are period estimates repeated across many sources rather than audited final accounts, and should be read as order-of-magnitude figures.
Armament & payload
The B-29 carried the war's heaviest bomb loads, its most sophisticated defensive system and its most consequential single weapons
Everything about the B-29's armament was built for one problem: flying very far, very high, with a large load, and defending itself while doing it. The result was a bomber with a computerised remote-turret system that no contemporary matched — and then, within a year of entering combat, a campaign that discarded the guns entirely and sent the aircraft in low at night with firebombs. Both extremes, and the atomic missions that followed, are documented below as they happened.
Defensive guns & turrets
The B-29 was the most heavily and most cleverly defended bomber of the war. Twelve 12.7 mm / .50 in M2 Brownings sat in four remotely operated turrets — two above the fuselage, two below — and in the tail. No gunner sat in a turret: they aimed from pressurised sighting blisters, and the turrets followed. Early aircraft added a 20 mm M2 cannon in the tail alongside two machine guns, but it was unreliable and its trajectory did not match the .50s, so most units took it out. As Japanese fighter opposition collapsed in 1945, whole wings flew with turrets and ammunition stripped out to trade defensive weight for bombs and fuel.
Fire-control system
The General Electric central fire-control system was the B-29's most advanced feature after its pressure cabin. Each sighting station fed an analogue electromechanical computer that continuously corrected for the parallax between blister and turret, for target lead, for gravity drop and bullet ballistics, and for the bomber's own airspeed, altitude and outside air temperature. Turret control could be passed between stations, so a single gunner could direct several turrets against one attacker and the top gunner coordinated the whole engagement. It was fragile, power-hungry and maintenance-heavy — and it worked.
Bombs (conventional)
Two bomb bays fore and aft of the wing carried general-purpose bombs on vertical racks: typically 500 lb / 227 kg and 1,000 lb / 454 kg M-series weapons, up to 2,000 lb / 907 kg, with a maximum of about ~9,070 kg / ~20,000 lb over short ranges against a typical 2,270 kg / 5,000 lb load on the long high-altitude runs to Japan. Precision bombing from above 9,000 m ran into the jet stream and near-permanent cloud over the home islands and was largely ineffective. B-29s also flew Operation Starvation from March 1945, laying more than 12,000 aerial mines in Japanese home waters and the Shimonoseki Strait — by tonnage a small effort, and one of the most efficient of the campaign in shipping sunk.
Incendiaries
From March 1945 XXI Bomber Command switched to low-level night incendiary attack. The main weapon was the M69: a small napalm-filled bomblet dropped in aimable E46 clusters that broke open above the target, scattering thirty-eight submunitions over Japanese cities built largely of wood and paper. Aircraft flew at 5,000–9,000 ft at night, stripped of guns and ammunition, carrying 12,000–16,000 lb of firebombs each. The first such raid, Operation Meetinghouse on the night of 9–10 March 1945, sent roughly 300 B-29s over Tokyo and burned out about 41 km² / 16 sq miles of the city. It killed on the order of 100,000 people, most of them civilians, and left around a million homeless: the deadliest single air raid in history. Similar attacks followed on more than sixty Japanese cities through the summer of 1945.
Atomic mission fit (Silverplate)
Sixty-five Silverplate B-29s were built or converted to carry the first nuclear weapons. The forward bomb bay was rebuilt around a single British-type shackle and sway braces for one very large weapon, the bay doors were made pneumatic for fast opening, fuel-injected engines and reversible-pitch propellers were fitted, and all armament except the tail guns was removed to save around 3,200 kg / 7,200 lb. On 6 August 1945 the Silverplate B-29 Enola Gay dropped the uranium bomb Little Boy on Hiroshima; on 9 August 1945 Bockscar dropped the plutonium bomb Fat Man on Nagasaki. The two attacks killed well over 100,000 people, the great majority of them civilians, with deaths from burns, blast and radiation continuing for years afterwards; estimates of the final totals differ substantially between sources. These are the only uses of nuclear weapons in war. The strategic and moral debate over the atomic attacks and over the firebombing campaign continues among historians and is not settled here.
Post-war & special fits
The airframe outlived the war by a wide margin. KB-29M hose tankers and then KB-29P aircraft with the Boeing flying boom created practical aerial refuelling for Strategic Air Command. WB-29 weather reconnaissance aircraft flew long-range meteorological and air-sampling sorties — a WB-29 filter run detected the first Soviet nuclear test in 1949. F-13 and later RB-29 photo-reconnaissance conversions mapped Japan before the raids and kept working through Korea, where B-29s returned to conventional bombing from 1950. The Soviet Union, handed three B-29s interned after emergency landings in 1944, reverse-engineered them without licence into the Tupolev Tu-4, which in turn seeded the Soviet strategic bomber and airliner line.
Three typical B-29 missions
- High-altitude precision
- 2,270 kg of 500 lb general-purpose bombs, full 12-gun defensive fit 5,000 lb carried from the Marianas to Japan at 9,000–10,000 m / 30,000–33,000 ft in daylight formation, one bomb bay often given to fuel. The doctrine the aircraft was designed for, and the one that produced the poorest results: jet-stream winds above 160 km/h and near-constant cloud wrecked bombing accuracy.
- Low-level night incendiary
- 5,400–7,300 kg of E46/M69 incendiary clusters, guns and gunners largely removed 12,000–16,000 lb carried at 1,500–2,700 m / 5,000–9,000 ft at night, single aircraft in a bomber stream rather than formation. Stripping the turrets bought bomb weight and range; it also meant accepting night fighters and flak with almost no defence. This was the fit flown on Operation Meetinghouse over Tokyo on 9–10 March 1945.
- Silverplate atomic
- One Little Boy (4,400 kg) or Fat Man (4,670 kg) weapon on a single shackle, tail guns only 9,700 lb and 10,300 lb respectively; armament and armour stripped, fuel-injected engines, reversible propellers, small crew plus weaponeers. Flown by Enola Gay to Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 and Bockscar to Nagasaki on 9 August 1945, each with instrument and observation aircraft in company.
Fits varied sharply by mark, by wing and by month. A 1944 B-29 flying daylight precision missions from India and a mid-1945 B-29B of the 315th Bombardment Wing with only radar-directed tail guns were, in armament terms, different aircraft; Silverplate machines were different again. Weapon weights and load figures below are representative rather than fixed, and squadron practice often departed from the manual.
Variants
B-29 variants, conversions and the copy that was never licensed
- B-29
- The initial production standard, built at Boeing Wichita, Bell Marietta and Martin Omaha; four remote turrets, tail guns, AN/APQ-13 radar, R-3350-23 engines.
- B-29A
- Renton-built, with a redesigned wing centre section, marginally greater span and a four-gun forward upper turret; the last version in production and the most numerous post-war.
- B-29B
- Bell-built and deliberately stripped: all turrets and sighting stations deleted, leaving only radar-directed tail guns under AN/APG-15, roughly 5,000 lb lighter and slightly faster; flown by the 315th Bombardment Wing with AN/APQ-7 Eagle radar on night attacks.
- Silverplate
- Sixty-five aircraft modified for nuclear weapons: single-point British-type bomb shackle, pneumatic bomb bay doors, fuel-injected engines, reversible propellers, armament reduced to the tail guns.
- F-13 / F-13A
- Photo-reconnaissance conversion with a camera bay in place of bombs; mapped Japan ahead of the bombing campaign and was redesignated RB-29 after the war.
- KB-29
- Aerial tanker: KB-29M with a trailing hose system, KB-29P with the Boeing flying boom that established the American refuelling standard still in use.
- WB-29
- Weather reconnaissance and atmospheric sampling aircraft; a WB-29 filter mission detected the first Soviet nuclear test in 1949.
- B-50
- The developed successor, originally designated B-29D: a strengthened airframe with 3,500 hp Pratt & Whitney R-4360 engines and a taller fin, close enough in outline to be mistaken for a B-29 and different enough underneath to be a new aeroplane.
- Tu-4
- The Soviet Tupolev Tu-4: an unlicensed reverse-engineered copy of the B-29, produced without Boeing's permission or knowledge from three American aircraft interned after emergency landings in the Soviet Far East in 1944, and built in the region of 850 examples.
Roughly two dozen B-29s survive today, almost all of them static museum exhibits, and only one is currently airworthy: Doc, restored at Wichita and flying since 2016, after FIFI stood down from flying. The two aircraft that flew the atomic missions are both preserved: Enola Gay at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia, and Bockscar at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.
From drawing board to the atomic age and beyond
The requirement
The US Army Air Corps calls for a pressurised, very-long-range heavy bomber; Boeing’s Model 345 is selected and ordered in quantity before it has flown.
First flight
The XB-29 prototype flies on 21 September at Boeing Field, Seattle, with test pilot Eddie Allen at the controls.
The Eddie Allen crash
On 18 February the second XB-29 suffers an engine fire and crashes into Seattle, killing Allen, his crew and people on the ground — exposing the R-3350’s fire risk.
Into combat
B-29s enter service and fly their first missions in June, striking from India and China before the campaign moves to the newly captured Marianas.
Operation Meetinghouse
General LeMay switches to low-level night incendiary tactics; the Tokyo raid of 9–10 March remains the deadliest air raid in history.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
On 6 and 9 August the B-29s Enola Gay and Bockscar drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Japan announces surrender on 15 August.
Copies and cousins
The USSR reverse-engineers interned B-29s into the Tupolev Tu-4; the RAF borrows B-29s as the “Washington,” and the B-50, KC-97 tanker and Stratocruiser airliner grow from the design.
Korea, then retirement
B-29s bomb through the Korean War until MiG-15 jets force them onto night raids; the type leaves front-line US service soon after.
Twelve stories from the Superfortress
“She flew” — and then she burned
Boeing’s finest test pilot died proving the bomber that would end the war.
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The Battle of Kansas
The B-29 nearly failed on the assembly line before it ever reached Japan.
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Bombing Japan from China
The first raids on Japan came the hardest way possible — over the Himalayas.
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The Marianas solution
A few square miles of Pacific coral unlocked the bombing of Japan.
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LeMay rewrites the rulebook
Frustrated by high-altitude misses, one general changed the tactics — and the toll.
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Operation Meetinghouse
The deadliest air raid in history is one many people have never heard of.
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Hiroshima, 6 August 1945
A single B-29 opened the atomic age.
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Nagasaki, 9 August 1945
Three days later, a second bomb fell.
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Stalin’s carbon copy
The USSR built its first strategic bomber by cloning an American one, bolt for bolt.
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FIFI and Doc
Of nearly 4,000 built, just two still fly.
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The engine that fought back
The B-29’s deadliest enemy was often its own powerplant.
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When jets ended the bomber’s daylight war
Over Korea the piston-engined queen of WWII met the jet age head-on.
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The Superfortress in pictures
The Superfortress on film
Video coming soon. A verified, high-authority documentary embed will be added here.
Where the Superfortress flew
The record that defines it
The B-29 was a bomber, not a dogfighter, and its record is written in reach and in consequence. Flying from the Marianas it carried the strategic air war to the Japanese home islands — culminating in the firebombing campaign and the atomic missions of August 1945. These figures are stated plainly, as history.
Compare the combat record of every military aircraft. Figures as of July 2026.
Everything people ask about the B-29
Can I fly in a B-29?
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Which B-29s dropped the atomic bombs?
Why was the B-29 so expensive?
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You can’t fly the B-29.
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Every fact, checked
- National Museum of the US Air Force — Development of the B-29Official USAF development history and combat-debut dates.
- Smithsonian NASM — Defending the SuperbomberThe GE computer-corrected remote turrets and pressurised gunner stations.
- Smithsonian NASM — The Flight of the Enola GaySober, primary-museum account of the Hiroshima mission and crew.
- The National WWII Museum — Operation MeetinghouseDetailed, factual account of the 9–10 March 1945 Tokyo firebombing.
- This Day in Aviation — 18 February 1943The fatal XB-29 test crash and the R-3350 engine-fire flaw.
- Air & Space Forces Magazine — Carbon Copy BomberHow the USSR cloned interned B-29s into the Tupolev Tu-4.
- The Aviation Geek Club — The Washington bomberRAF Washington B.1 service, numbers and disposal.
- B-29 DocConfirms the two airworthy B-29s and Doc’s 2016 return to flight.