Boeing B–29 Superfortress
A series of historical images of the legendary Boeing B-29 Superfortress during WW2, depicting its life at the Pacific resort.
Although it bore the “Superfortress” tag, a nod to another game-changer, the B-17, which was used in heavy bombing raids against Germany in the war in Europe, the B-29 was an altogether better plane. It had a cockpit and rear crew compartment, four 18-cylinder Wright Duplex-Cyclone turbofan engines, and the power to carry much larger payloads than the B-17 and carry them much farther, allowing crews to strike targets that had previously been out of reach, such as Tokyo.
The attack at the center of Gladwell’s podcast is the firebombing of Tokyo on March 9–10, 1945, known as Operation Meetinghouse, which destroyed more than 15 square miles of the city, killing an estimated 100,000–125,000 people and injuring a hundred thousand others, and destroying the homes of more than a million people. It was the first widespread use of a new weapon called Napalm, developed by scientists at MIT. The raid could not have been carried out without the B-29. The same is true of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In his podcast, Gladwell takes a subtly critical view of the development of weapons and delivery systems for them, which caused mass casualties. LeMay is said to have worried that he would have been tried as a war criminal if the United States had lost the war. At the same time, Gladwell pays close attention to the arguments for such attacks. There were two main arguments in favor of attacking cities. Civilians, the proponents of chemical and atomic warfare argued, were part of the enemy nation’s war effort, and therefore valid targets for bombing. Perhaps more persuasive was the argument that such bombings prevented even greater loss of life. Without these twin rationales, there would have been no B-29s, no Manhattan Project, and no napalm—the gasoline-based agent used in hundreds of attacks on Japan and later in Korea and Vietnam.
TECHNICAL NOTES:
Armament: Eight .50-cal. machine guns in remote-controlled turrets plus two .50-cal. machine guns and one 20-mm cannon in the tail. 20,000 lbs. of bombs
Engines: Four Wright R-3350s of 2,200 hp each
Top speed: 357 mph
Cruise speed: 220 mph
Range: 3,700 miles
Ceiling: 33,600 feet
Span: 141 feet 3 inches
Length: 79 feet
Height: 9 feet 9 inches
Weight: 133,500 lbs. maximum
