Inside Enola Gay - awesome

[DARISC]

Don't know if this is a repost:

Enola Gay / Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

[enzo1]

Coool!!!!

[wdfifteen]

Sweet. I wonder if one of those cool B 29 horn buttons would fit a 356A.

[GH85Carrera]

I don't think B29s have a horn.

[id10t]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

Sweet. I wonder if one of those cool B 29 horn buttons would fit a 356A.

Heck just "engineer" the whole wheel in place... (assuming you don't have a Les Leston or similar already)

[Panzer909]

Right before Thanksgiving ’99 (this is how much I remember it), there was one of those Boeing yoke buttons up on Ebay. It was taken off one of those B-29s sitting in the desert several years before. I ended up getting really busy at work that day and forgot all about it until the auction ended.

The winning bit was something crazy like $7 or something. Damn!

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by Panzer909

Right before Thanksgiving ’99 (this is how much I remember it), there was one of those Boeing yoke buttons up on Ebay. It was taken off one of those B-29s sitting in the desert several years before. I ended up getting really busy at work that day and forgot all about it until the auction ended.

The winning bit was something crazy like $7 or something. Damn!

When I worked up the hill from the Air Force Museum I used to spend at least one lunch hour a week in there. The have a B-29 fuselage you can walk through. I remember seeing the "horn buttons" and wondering if it would fit a 356. It's close. One day I went through and it was gone. Wonder if it ended up on ebay.

[azasadny]

Very cool!

[strupgolf]

Those seats don't look too comfy for a long flight, bare metal.

[sketchers356]

Is there a way to move about the plane?

[Normy]

I got a tour of "Fifi" , the flying B-29 about 5 years ago.

I was surprised how small it actually was. Granted, I fly 727's these days, and was flying 747's back then.

The interesting thing about the B-29 is that it was turned into the Boeing 367 Stratocruiser during the 1950's, and equipped with R-4360 28 cylinder engines and electric propellors. This last was a big mistake- it wasn't uncommon for the governors of these propellors to fail, then the prop went into low pitch, and the engine would rev to 5000 rpm. 5000 RPM? Hello, they call this motor an "R-4360" because it is 4360 cubic inches. That means that EACH CYLINDER was 2.6 liters! These giant pistons couldn't handle that sort of RPM, and eventually the propellor would actually break off, and go spinning off in a random direction. If it went through the fuselage....due to its diameter, it could actually cut the nose of the plane off and send it spinning into the ocean. Not a good thing-

The Boeing 367 was a B-29 fuselage with a second, larger fuselage mounted on top, making a figure-8 profile seen from the front. When Boeing designed the "367-80", or 707 in 1954, they took the 367 fuselage and simply filled it in. Instead of a figure-8, it was egg-shaped. That fuselage still exists- the 707 fuselage was used on the 727, the 757...and still in production today as the 737. That means that the 737 is really a derivative of the B-29 first produced in the 1940's. The belly panels of a B-29 and a modern 737 are not interchangeable, but they are the same shape. And Airbus makes big light of that fact-

N!

[rattlsnak]

Hmm, sure looks like a video game!

[tcar]

Originally Posted by strupgolf

Those seats don't look too comfy for a long flight, bare metal.

They 'wear' their seats. They are literally sitting on their parachutes.

They fit into the recesses in the metal seat pan.

[tcar]

Normy,

Thank you, I had no idea...

B29 to 367 morphed into a 707 et. al.

[johnco]

pretty cool until I put it into a spin. brought back memories of my first solo

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by sketchers356

Is there a way to move about the plane?

Yes. The front section, where the forward crew is located, is pressurized and it's big enough for the bombardier, the engineer, navigator, and pilots to get up and move around. There is a long tube that connects the forward area with the tail gunner's area. The crew could move from one end of the plane to the other through this pressurized tube. Some variants had "blisters" on the sides with defensive guns, but I don't know how/if they were pressurized.

[kimlangley7]

actually I think the B-29 morphed into the B-50 [looked just like a B-29] and later the KC-97 tanker .. one of the first air re-fueling tankers used by SAC.. I flew space-A in a KC-97 back in 1966 from Travis AFB to Bangkok, Thailand . I was in prep school in the states and my Dad was a advisor in JUSMAG Thailand.... 4 days to get there... quite a memorable trip...

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by kimlangley7

actually I think the B-29 morphed into the B-50 [looked just like a B-29] and later the KC-97 tanker .. one of the first air re-fueling tankers used by SAC.. I flew space-A in a KC-97 back in 1966 from Travis AFB to Bangkok, Thailand . I was in prep school in the states and my Dad was a advisor in JUSMAG Thailand.... 4 days to get there... quite a memorable trip...

Yep. The B-50 had a lot of variants (one was the first to use the R-4360 turbo-compound engines), but was basically a modified B-29.

[Jagshund]

Bombers don't necessarily make the best passenger planes . . . see "Star Dust" . . .

[Brillo]

Cool! Thanks for posting.