Courtesy of a link provided by our Australian correspondent Andrew, here's a half-hour video of a flight aboard one of only two surviving B-29 Superfortress bombers from World War II. Given that we're still in August, the month (in 1945) when two atomic bombs dropped by B-29's brought World War II to an end, I thought it might be interesting to see how the world looks from inside one of these bombers' big glass noses.
That was the highest of high-tech back in the day. Those four big piston engines certainly make the plane "shake, rattle and roll" as it flew, and you can see from the pilot's actions how the controls were constantly in use to keep it straight and level.
A fascinating bit of history.
Peter
4 comments:
IIRC, the B-29 program wound up costing more than the Manhattan Project. Here are two videos on the B-29 gun system.
Part 1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nskFayhBcy0
Part 2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h4yBxydz0E
Living history: when I was a wee lad there was an old coot who often appeared on TV for interviews - Bertrand Russell: mathematician, philosopher, and latterly anti-nuclear campaigner. Russell himself had met Lenin: here's what he had to say about that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TK9c-caEcw
I later found out that he had been brought up by his grandparents. His grandfather had met, and had a discussion with, Napoleon!! Here he is reflecting on his life and his family's.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL_sMXfzzyA
Re: piston-powered flight, in the parody movie "Airplane" they dubbed in the drone of heavy piston engines throughout the scenes aboard the jet aircraft.
In Seattle we had a disastrous XB-29 prototype flight failure February 18 1943 test pilot Eddie Allen. It took off from Boeing Field with one engine ablaze the crew put that fire out, then another engine caught on fire. The fire was not put out. There was an attempt made to return to Boeing Field but instead it struck a major power line, causing a power substation to explode, then crashed into a 5 story brick building which was the Frye Meat Packing Plant. The crew was all killed including two members that parachuted from a height -250 feet- that could not allow their chutes to open. The plane struck and destroyed the Frye building. Most employees of the plant remained at lunch - the crash occurred 12:26 pm.
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