B-29 Flies Again!

http://mortefontainevillage.pagesperso-orange.fr/marcbrecy/b29.html

Keep Harrison Ford away from that thing.

Been following Doc's progress on Facebook. Chokes me right up.
Yup, Dad story follows: As a teenager, he worked at Wright's in NJ building those engines.
After VJ Day, Dad switched over from fighters to B-29s (On Okinawa, I think) to learn multi-engine. Became an instructor-pilot on them. He said when he was doing the walk-around on one, he found his own inspection stamp on one of the engines!
His one war story (Post-war story?) was when a nose wheel failed to lower. He told the rest of the crew to get into the tail to make the plane tail heavy. Then he did a 2-point landing keeping the nose up. After the plane slowed down - damn, I forgot if he said the crew's weight let the tail down onto its bumper, or if he let the nose down gently.

IIRC my dad saw some take off in Japan during the Korean War

I'm still broken up about that one they salvaged out of Greenland only to have it burn up as they were taxiing out to take off.

The Cornfield Bomber is a better aviation story.

That was physically painful to watch.

My dad was an Air Force mechanic in the early 1950s and the B-29 was still (sort of) in service then. He worked on the engines, got to ride in the planes sometimes.

Sweet. Now, we need a flying B-50.

And a B-52.

Oh wait. Still got those.

FTFY

I would be most interested in a flyable B-58 Hustler.

Oh man, I love classic airplanes, and she's a beauty. ♥
I still remember visiting Wright-Patt AFM and standing under the B-29 "Bockscar" they had there (I don't know if it's still there, as this was 23 years ago), which was the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. I've always had a soft spot for the B-29 ever since that visit. It was just an incredible piece of mechanical wizardry.

Mine is a little more realistic.

When we visited the USAF Museum in the late 60s, they had a B-29 fuselage that you could walk through. There was a tour guide who started describing things, but Dad just started pointing at stuff and telling what it was, and telling stories, and the guide just smiled and shut up.

It's conceivable that the B52 could outlast the DC3. The most recently manufactured B52 was built almost 60 years ago. They could well go on flying till they're 100.

One of the reasons, like the DC3, is ruggedness and simplicity.

By contrast, the B1 (2 billion bucks a pop) requires 55 hours of maintenance for every hour flown. Oh, and don't forget to keep them in the hangar so they don't get rained on. Seriously.

Yeah, but there's not a whole lot of difference between a B-50 and a B-29.

Get a B-36 back into flying shape and you've really done something.

Make this happen, President Trump.

That's pretty funny, but also pretty cool.

I have a soft spot for all of those old planes, but the thing I liked the most was seeing the rockets at the Kennedy Space center. Also, if you ever go to Nags Head, NC they have a Wright brothers museum that's pretty cool. I remember when I was in middle school we visited the Air and Space museum in DC. and they had the Enterprise in display. Now that it's been restored, I probably should go back to see it.

That would be the B-2, not the Bone.

And of course the B-2 would have cheaper per-copy if Congress hadn't cut production at 25 and let the full 100+ be built. Same with the F-22.

Yes, thanks for spotting that. Christ, I was thinking B2 and picturing B2 .... and wrote B1. Always reread everything.

Another thing about the B2 is that ultimately only 20 were ever purchased. That's quite an investment for a mere score of high-maintenance, rain-vulnerable aircraft that need to be kept in climatized hangars.

Hopefully NG will learn from it, and make the upcoming B-3 more maintenance-friendly.

Hopefully there will be a true revolution and people will bury the military/industrial complex.
But ah ain't a-holdin ma breath.

Let me retire first, 'kay? Two more years.

OK. Anyway, you're pretty far down my who-to-shoot-first-after-the-revolution list.

'Preciate it.

The B-2s were not designed to be workhorse bombers flying in every small scale conventional conflict imaginable.

They were designed to deliver nuclear weapons against Soviet mobile ICBMs in a nuclear war.

and for people oohing and awing about long lifespan of the "venerable" B-52 bombers, remember that the B-52s in service today have been relentlessly upgraded and modified repeatedly over the years. To the point that all the upgrades for each bombers costs several times as much as the original bombers again.

Not to mention that since the B-1 bomber entered service in the late 1980s, B-52s have not had to routinely fly low level missions that are extremely hard on aircraft and eat up airframe life dramatically. Basically for the last 30 years the B-52s have been handled both in combat and in training very gingerly.

Next bomber very likely won't have a flight crew aboard. That will reduce the cost.

Seems to me that missiles have basically made nuclear bombers (manned or otherwise) beside the point. And probably more with every passing day.